July 10, 1999    
This Date's Issues: 3386 •3387  •3388

Johnson's Russia List
#3387
11 July 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. The Wilson Quarterly: Why Did Reform in Russia Fail? A Survey of Recent 
Articles.
2. The Economist: Pipeline politics in the Caucasus.
3. Financial Times: RUSSIA: Short memories, long odds. When the cataclysmic 
does not happen, the plain terrible can hold some appeal. Is this why Russia 
is back in favour with investors, asks John Thornhill.
4. New York Times: Michael Gordon, Maneuvers Show Russian Reliance on
Nuclear 
Arms; Atomic Attack Simulated.
5. Moskovskiy Komsomolets: Aleksandr Budberg, Staff Wants To Remove Yeltsin 
Early. Will Presidential Elections Be Held This Winter?
6. Andrew Miller: Little Green Men: "Special Forces" or "The Phantom
Menace"?
7. Washington Post: Abraham Brumberg: ARE RUSSIAN JEWS AN ENDANGERED
SPECIES?]

********

#1
The Wilson Quarterly 
Summer 1999
Why Did Reform in Russia Fail?
A Survey of Recent Articles

Though Russia's economy has not completely disintegrated since the
financial crash last summer, the failure of market reform is no longer in
dispute. Even before the U.S.-led intervention in Kosovo antagonized
Russian public opinion further, "democracy" and "reform" had become dirty
words. What went wrong? ask the editors of Journal of Democracy (Apr.
1999). The answer, it seems, is simple: too much reform--or not enough.

Several of the 10 contributors blame the reformers' ideological zealotry.
The disaster in Russia, says Alexander Lukin, a political scientist at the
Moscow State Institute for Foreign Affairs, resulted from a "ruthless"
effort by "fanatical 'democratic' ideologues to impose their abstract
ideal" on a country lacking "the necessary cultural preconditions." Instead
of first changing the culture, President Boris Yeltsin (and before him,
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev), egged on by "their shortsighted Western
advisors, pushed the country toward democratization 'here and now.'"

"In retrospect," writes Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr., a professor of
international relations at Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School, "the
most questionable aspect of Yeltsin's economic reform was the quick
privatization of banking and of the vast extractive industries--oil, gas,
aluminum smelting, and the like." Privatization, which rewarded "favored
courtiers" with the equivalent of medieval fiefs and took place in "the
atmosphere of a going-out-of-business sale," encouraged corruption and
weakened the state--and, more than any other single factor, was "probably
responsible" for democracy's fall from popular favor. 

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Fairbanks says, the West has viewed
Russia through "the lens of ideology," repeatedly recommending a failed
strategy of economic reform. "Where 'shock therapy' was tried," he says,
"it has had disastrous effects on the lives of most people in all the
former Soviet republics except the Baltic states." The "clear superiority
of the free market to socialism" is not in doubt, he writes, but more
attention needs to be paid to "the relationship of the market economy to
civil society and politics."

Don't blame Russia's democrats for the disaster, argue Dmitri Glinski, a
Russian scholar and a research associate at George Washington University,
and Peter Reddaway, a professor of political science there. "In fact," they
say, "the program of economic reforms designed and implemented by Boris
Yeltsin, Yegor Gaidar, Anatoly Chubais, and their Western advisers ran
counter to the most basic aspirations and tenets of the democratic movement
that had ensured Yeltsin's success in the 1989, 1990, and 1991 elections."
Though that movement, which had emerged from the underground during the
Soviet regime's final years, had "few clearly defined programmatic goals,"
and its members subscribed to various "creeds . . . from communitarian
traditionalism to liberal Marxism," they shared "broadly conceived
democratic values" and a "quintessentially Russian 'populist' vision." But
they lost--and the "radical marketeers," backed by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and others in the West, won.

Yeltsin and his associates, assert Glinski and Reddaway, have been like the
Bolsheviks of 1917, with the "self-confident, almost messianic vanguard
mentality of a self-anointed elite" imposing its own views on "the
'backward' majority." Instead of promoting independent democratic
institutions, they established an authoritarian regime and implemented
"market Bolshevism." The result: "the destruction of Russia's industrial
base . . . a decline in its population, and the danger of an irreversible
criminalization and privatization of the Russian state."

Martin Malia, a historian at the University of California, Berkeley, traces
the current woes to the radical deformation of society caused by seven
decades of communism. "Shock therapy" worked very well in Poland, which
"had a far lighter communist structural heritage to overcome," he notes,
while Ukraine, which "did virtually no reforming at all . . . is now in
worse shape than Russia."

In Soviet Russia, Malia points out, there was "a party-state
military-industrial complex, based on a now antiquated plant of heavy
industry constituting some 70-80 percent of the 'economy' and employing a
comparable proportion of the labor force. Most of this plant is still
there, though now in private hands, often those of the nomenklatura, and
operating nominally through the market. Briefly put, the problem this
heritage creates is that such a plant produces [few] goods that anyone will
buy on the free market. Yet closing down this mastodon and dismissing its
workers would be tantamount to closing down the country." Alongside this
"virtual economy," observes Malia, is a much smaller "real" one, producing
goods of genuine value, mostly raw materials such as oil, gas, and timber.
The "ferocious" struggle over these resources has produced "much of the
corruption with which Russian government is riddled."

In the Brookings Review (Winter 1999), Clifford G. Gaddy, a Fellow at the
Brookings Institution, and Barry W. Ickes, an economist at Pennsylvania
State University, argue that today's "virtual economy" arose not from
economic reform but from the avoidance of it. "Enterprises make pretty much
the same products they made under the Soviet system and in pretty much the
same way," they report. "The enterprises can continue to produce these
goods because they have a guaranteed set of 'buyers' . . . and because they
avoid the use of money. Avoiding money, through barter and other forms of
nonmonetary exchange, allows the goods to be overpriced, giving the
appearance of more value being produced than is the case. These overpriced
goods are then delivered to the government in lieu of taxes, or to
value-adders, mainly energy suppliers such as the natural gas monopoly
Gazprom, in lieu of payment. . . . As much as 70 percent of transactions
among industrial enterprises involve no money." Only when this virtual
economy is eliminated, Gaddy and Ickes maintain, "can real reform begin."

The Russian privatization program, they say, was "essentially a giveaway to
insiders--that is, the directors and workers." The manufacturing
enterprises most in need of change thus were turned over to those who had
the most to lose if they were changed. "Meanwhile, government shares in
valuable enterprises went to the large banks and other political insiders."

Such transfers "benefited the government budget only temporarily and
inadequately," James R. Millar, a professor of economics and international
affairs at George Washington University, notes in Journal of Democracy. The
immediate cause of last August's financial crisis was the government's
inability to staunch the continuing, massive flow of red ink. "Financing
the deficit eventually ran the government into the ground." A 1996 IMF
loan, which apparently was made under U.S. pressure and "helped ensure
Yeltsin's reelection," had only put off the reckoning.

Though some specialists, such as Anders Åslund, a senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former adviser to the
Russian government, insist that Russia needs to cut government spending and
urge the West to "resist the temptation to throw any more money at the
problem," their advice is going unheeded. The IMF in April announced it
will provide $4.5 billion in new loans to Russia. This, notes the Economist
(May 1, 1999), may "unlock $3 billion in loans from Japan and the World
Bank. . . . So Russia should not fall further into bankruptcy before its
forthcoming elections (parliamentary in December, presidential next year)."

It is too soon to compose an obituary for Russian democracy, declares
Michael McFaul, a political scientist at Stanford University, in Journal of
Democracy. Despite the "economic meltdown," Russia's nascent electoral
democracy survives. And in that there is hope, he says. But an economic
turnaround clearly is needed. 

********

#2
The Economist
July 10, 1999
[for personal use only]
Pipeline politics in the Caucasus
BUSINESS 
Of politics and pipelines 
B A K U 

THE imminent announcement of a big gas find in Azerbaijan by BP Amoco will 
not come as a huge surprise: it was leaked last month by the country’s 
president, Heidar Aliev. Poor news management will not, however, reduce the 
impact of the find, which could undermine some of the big powers’ plans in 
the region. 

Pipelines and politics run together in this part of the world, and the three 
competing pipelines are dear to the hearts of different 
governments. The Americans want the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the gas 
pipeline from Turkmenistan, the Russians want the Black Sea gas pipeline and 
the Turks want as many pipelines crossing Turkey as possible. 

The president’s figure of 700 billion cubic metres of gas is unlikely to be 
amended, though industry sources say it is at the “very top end” of the range 
suggested by the first test well. But there is not much oil or gas condensate 
in the field, so exporters in Azerbaijan remain well short of the 6 billion 
barrels of reserves they need to justify an oil pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan 
in Turkey. This is bad news for the Americans. 

The obvious customer for Azerbaijan’s gas is Turkey, but Turkey has already 
told Turkmenistan that its plan to export gas through a planned 2,000km 
pipeline under the Caspian and across Azerbaijan and Georgia to Erzurum takes 
priority over all other deals. The Americans are particularly keen on this 
project, because it would provide three of the region’s newly independent 
states with a source of income and so, it is hoped, help to drag them into 
the West’s orbit. Russia, meanwhile, is pushing an even more audacious plan, 
proposed by Gazprom and Italy’s ENI, to lay a gas pipeline across the Black 
Sea. Only one of these is actually likely to be built. 

With its new discovery, Azerbaijan could now join this race. Its gas is 
closer to market than Russia’s, in western Siberia, or Turkmenistan’s in 
Central Asia, which are 1,000km east of Baku. And building a pipeline to 
Turkey from Baku would be child’s play compared with the Russian project, 
which involves laying the deepest undersea pipeline in the world, through the 
corrosive sludge of the Black Sea bed. 

However, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, SOCAR, says that the 
country wants to work with, rather than against, Turkmenistan—letting the 
Turkmen pipeline go ahead, and feeding Azerbaijani gas into it. Some doubt 
that the two countries could manage such close co-operation. Brotherly love 
between these two Turkic states has not stopped them squabbling for years 
over their maritime border and over nearby oil and gas prospects. 

Turkey, meanwhile, hopes to use its position as a gas buyer to press BP Amoco 
and other consortium members, chiefly Norway’s Statoil, to build the costly, 
and as yet unneeded, Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Asked whether his country 
would buy Azerbaijani gas, a spokesman for the Turkish embassy in Baku 
replied in one sentence: “It all depends on Baku-Ceyhan.” 

*******

#3
Financial Times
July 9, 1999
[for personal use only]
RUSSIA: Short memories, long odds 
When the cataclysmic does not happen, the plain terrible can hold some 
appeal. Is this why Russia is back in favour with investors, asks John 
Thornhill

The day after Russia rocked the world's financial markets last August by 
defaulting on its domestic debt, one foreign banker fumed that he would 
rather eat nuclear waste than buy Russian paper again.

Less than a year later, foreign investors appear to have developed a taste 
for the radioactive. The prices of Russia's publicly traded post-Soviet 
foreign debt are rising. The equity market, which slumped by more than 90 per 
cent last year, is up 145 per cent in 1999, making it the best performing 
stock market in the world.

Astonishingly, the finance ministry said yesterday it was even considering 
issuing new bonds - while investors are still trying to recoup a fraction of 
their money on the ministry's defaulted bonds, known as GKOs. Boris 
Berezovsky, one of Russia's most notorious oligarchs, has been able to 
offload 1 per cent of his shares in the Sibneft oil group this week to 
blue-chip European investors. Close your eyes and you could be back in those 
heady pre-crash days of 1997.

Even some stockbrokers who are publicly plugging Russia's revival story are 
privately bewildered. "This is scary," says one foreign banker in Moscow. 
"The country has had a shot of adrenaline thanks to higher oil prices and the 
liquidity in global markets. But everything on the structural side is still a 
disaster."

Markets, though, are often swayed as much by perceptions as realities. When 
the cataclysmic does not happen, the plain terrible can still hold some 
appeal. "The lack of bad news is in itself good news and a major positive for 
the market," explains Maxim Shashenkov, managing director of Alfa Bank.

Many economists feared an explosion of inflation and a further rouble 
collapse were inevitable after Yevgeny Primakov took over as prime minister 
last September and brought several Soviet-era apparatchiks into government. 
Contrary to almost all expectations, the economic outcome proved far less 
malign. Instead of a sharp contraction of gross domestic product this year, 
Russia may even register some marginal growth.

Investors certainly expected the worst from Victor Gerashchenko when he was 
reappointed head of the central bank in September 1998. But Mr Gerashchenko, 
once labelled the worst central banker in the world by Jeffrey Sachs, the 
Harvard economist, appears to have learned that excessive money printing is 
not a good idea. He has kept a relatively tight rein on monetary policy and 
preserved the rouble within a stable trading range.

Yuri Maslyukov, the Communist MP and former head of Gosplan, the Soviet state 
planning agency, who was put in charge of the economy, soon dropped most of 
his early notions of pumping government money into industrial projects. By 
the time he was dismissed in May along with Mr Primakov, Mr Maslyukov was 
chiding the International Monetary Fund for its "socialist" recommendations. 
The IMF was urging the government to raise additional tax revenues from the 
oil companies to increase pensions and wages to the poor.

Much of the credit for this turnaround in the cabinet's thinking lies with 
Mikhail Zadornov, Mr Primakov's finance minister and now first deputy prime 
minister. He persuaded his colleagues that the inflationary route out of 
Russia's problems was a cul-de-sac. His other achievement was to bring a 
semblance of stability to Russia's rickety budget through a mixture of hard 
work, luck, brutality, and some sleight of hand.

As a result of its default on its $40bn domestic bond market and its $100bn 
of Soviet-era debts, Russia drastically reduced its debt servicing costs this 
year. Moreover, the surge in international oil prices has had a startling 
impact on the country's trade balance and tax revenues.

Troika Dialog, a Moscow-based investment bank, estimates that Russia was 
earning $21.5m a day in oil revenues while the price for Brent crude 
languished below $10. As a result of the rise in the oil price to $18.61, and 
a switch from domestic to foreign sales, Russia is currently earning more 
than $40m a day.

The government has also kept the spending side of its budget under control by 
allowing wages and pensions to lag behind inflation. That has made poverty 
worse - more than a third of the population is trying to live on less than 
$38 a month - but it has also helped the government reduce its payment 
arrears. It appears that workers and pensioners are happier to be paid on 
time - even in devalued paper - than to wait weeks to receive a higher real 
sum.

These policies have allowed inflation to remain relatively low, the rouble 
steady, and the budget more or less balanced. As one western finance official 
says, Russia may have stumbled upon a viable - if massively sub-optimal - 
"solution" to the country's most glaring macro-economic woes. The irony is 
that all this has happened in the absence of a formal IMF programme, giving 
additional ammunition to those who argue that foreign financial support has 
only frustrated the adoption of sound economic policies in Russia.

In the run-up to parliamentary elections in December, politicians are already 
scrambling to take the credit for this "success". Earlier this week, Anatoly 
Chubais, the liberal former first deputy prime minister, trumpeted the 
arrival of economic growth in Russia but claimed that the left-leaning 
government of Mr Primakov deserved no praise.

"The thanks for this, without doubt, should go to the previous government of 
[Sergei] Kiriyenko," said Mr Chubais. "Economic growth is the direct 
consequence of the rouble's devaluation of August 17." Infuriated opponents 
asked why Mr Kiriyenko's government had blown billions of dollars in a failed 
defence of the rouble if the benefits of devaluation had been so obvious.

But there is little dispute that the devaluation has transformed the 
competitive position of a large part of Russian industry. A recent survey of 
business managers found that 75 per cent believed the current economic 
conditions were favourable. Russia's inefficient producers may still make 
basic, unattractive goods, but everything sells at a price. Given the scale 
of the devaluation, which has made many imports unaffordable, it is 
surprising that they are not doing even better.

Exports of many raw materials, such as oil, timber, metals, and chemicals 
have climbed strongly, providing a cash and profit boost to many of Russia's 
biggest industrial groups. At the same time, domestically produced goods have 
begun to replace more expensive foreign imports on shop shelves. The 
proportion of imports in retail sales has fallen from 49 to 30 per cent.

The big question is whether this flickering economic activity amounts to the 
beginning of a long-term recovery. There are those who suspect that the jump 
in share prices is nothing more than what market traders call a dead cat 
bounce. Already, there are signs that the benefits of devaluation are 
weakening and industrial output is tapering off.

The government faces a dilemma in deciding how to manage the exchange rate.

Some economic advisers are urging the government to allow the rouble to 
depreciate further in line with inflation - the policy successfully pursued 
by Poland in its early reform years. A stronger rouble may help the 
government bear down on inflation, they argue, but it would also kill off the 
fragile recovery in industrial output.

The markets are assuming there will be a real appreciation of the rouble 
later this year, which will make debt servicing easier and increase the 
purchasing power of the electorate just ahead of the elections.

At present, the government is paying its foreign debts out of central bank 
reserves. It is therefore desperate to conclude a deal with the IMF this 
month enabling it to roll-over maturing loans. Even though Russia has 
defaulted on a large portion of its debt, it is committed to paying $10bn 
next year, equivalent to about 40 per cent of projected budget revenues.

The second problem is whether the budget stabilisation is sustainable as the 
political temperature rises in the electoral season. Many economists warn 
that such a fierce compression of social spending - with pensions and 
salaries lagging inflation - might backfire against the government later this 
year.

The real determinant of Russia's longer-term economic future is likely to be 
how quickly the government can complete the desperately needed structural 
reforms - which it failed to pursue throughout the 1990s - to encourage 
investment.

"Establishing the rule of law and good corporate governance, pressing ahead 
with bankruptcies, introducing a tax code and a proper banking system, and 
reducing kleptocracy - these are the real issues the government needs to 
address," says Charles Blitzer, a former World Bank economist in Moscow who 
is now chief international economist at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, the 
investment bank.

"Russia may not have fallen into an inflationary and economic abyss last fall 
but I do not yet see any evidence of a strong, sustained recovery," he says.

President Boris Yeltsin promised that his newly appointed prime minister, 
Sergei Stepashin, would vigorously pursue just these types of structural 
reforms. But it looks less likely by the day that the government will want to 
antagonise powerful corporate interests that will finance the forthcoming 
election campaigns.

The lingering hope is that a newly elected president, with a fresh political 
mandate and international financial support, may begin to tackle these 
challenges next year. The danger is that in the absence of structural 
reforms, Russia may only recover to stagnate.

********

#4
New York Times
July 10, 1999
[for personal use only]
Maneuvers Show Russian Reliance on Nuclear Arms; Atomic Attack Simulated
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

MOSCOW -- Reflecting its growing dependence on nuclear weapons for
defense, Russia's military carried out mock nuclear strikes in a major
exercise last month, the Defense Minister said Friday. 

The exercise was the largest since the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991. It involved 50,000 troops, bombers, tanks and warships from the
Barents Sea to the Black Sea. 

One of the scenarios for the exercise underscored the expanding role
nuclear weapons have been playing in the Russian military's strategy and
plans in recent years. 

According to the script for the military exercise, disclosed Friday at a
news conference by Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Russia came under attack
by an unspecified Western foe, which used non-nuclear forces. 

At first, Russia also tried to limit its attacks to conventional forces.
But its cash-starved non-nuclear forces failed to stop the enemy
onslaught, forcing the leadership to turn to its still formidable nuclear
arsenal. 

"The exercise tested one of the provisions of Russia's military doctrine
concerning a possible use of nuclear weapons when all other measures are
exhausted," Marshal Sergeyev said. "We did pursue such an option. All
measures were exhausted. Our defenses proved to be ineffective. An enemy
continued to push into Russia. And that's when the decision to use
nuclear weapons was made." 

During Soviet times, Moscow and Washington piled up huge nuclear arsenals
as they sought to best each other in the arms race. 

Still, Russia's conventional forces were enormous. In those years it was
NATO, fearing that it was outnumbered, that openly threatened to initiate
the use of nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear attack. 

Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, however, the tables have turned.
The West has become less dependent on nuclear weapons. As the conflict
with Yugoslavia showed, NATO fights its wars with with laser-guided and
satellite-guided non-nuclear bombs and missiles. 

But with Russia's military spending projected this year at about $4
billion (compared with about $260 billion for the Pentagon), the
once-mighty conventional forces have deteriorated. 

Russia's forces failed to defeat Chechnya's rebels, and Russian generals
are no longer confident that they can prevail over more serious threats.
And with a faltering economy, nuclear forces are virtually the only way
Russia can lay claim to being a world power. 

"Russia's military believes that it must rely more than ever on the first
use of nuclear weapons," said Bruce Blair, a specialist on Russian
nuclear capabilities at the Brookings Institution. "It is part
psychological and partly a planning assumption." 

The first sign of Russia's increasing dependence on nuclear weapons came
in 1993 when the Defense Ministry abandoned the Soviet-era pledge not to
be the first to use nuclear weapons. 

Then, as NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia reinforced the sense here that the
West has a huge lead in conventional military technology, President Boris
N. Yeltsin met with his top national security advisers to discuss plans
to compensate for Russia's faltering conventional capabilities by
developing short-range, tactical nuclear weapons. 

The projects and plans that were approved remain secret. But Vladim
Putin, the secretary of the Security Council, said Yeltsin had approved a
"blueprint for the development and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons." 

None of this means that NATO and Russia are necessarily on a collision
course. The Yeltsin Government has pledged to cooperate on arms control,
including seeking Parliament's approval of the Start-2 treaty reducing
strategic nuclear arms. 

And on Thursday, Yeltsin enjoined a group of Russian generals to
cooperate with NATO in enforcing the peace in Kosovo. 

"The problem of our relations with NATO and the U.S.A. is very subtle,
delicate and difficult," Yeltsin said. "Every one of you must pursue the
same line -- the President's line. We shall certainly not quarrel with
NATO outright, but nor do we intend to flirt with it." 

Russia's recent exercise, however, demonstrated the competitive nature of
the relationship. The weeklong exercise, which was held in late June, was
planned last year but adapted to take account of the Yugoslav conflict,
including NATO's ability to attack at long range with precision-guided
bombs, Marshal Sergeyev said. 

The military aim of the exercise was to test command procedures for
defending western Russia and Belarus from an attack from the West. 

"To verify the authenticity of the decisions and test procedures for
troop control, more than 50 military units participated in the exercise,"
Marshal Sergeyev said. "There have been extensive structural changes to
the forces in recent years, and we have to practice their management and
regain units' operational skills." 

The political aim appeared to be to demonstrate to the world as well as
to the Russian public that the military is still a credible fighting force. 

During the exercise, two old turbo-prop Bear bombers approached Iceland
while a couple of new Blackjack bombers approached Norway. Russian ships
maneuvered under the watchful eyes of Western reconnaissance ships and
aircraft. 

Officially, the Defense Ministry declined to specify who the imaginary
enemy was. The aim, Marshal Sergeyev told the Russian Itar-Tass news
agency, was to rehearse the defeat of the enemy and the recapture of lost
territory. 

Some Russian observers were less diplomatic. The Defense Ministry, the
newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta noted, refuses to say who the adversary is.
"But few doubt that the enemy is NATO's armed forces in Europe," it
added. 

********

#5
Kremlin Yeltsin Resignation Scheme Claimed 

Moskovskiy Komsomolets
6 July 1999
[translation for personal use only]
Report by Aleksandr Budberg: "Staff Wants To Remove Yeltsin Early. 
Will Presidential Elections Be Held This Winter?" 

A week ago Moskovskiy Komsomolets assumed that 
since certain politicians -- Sergey Kiriyenko, for example -- had 
suggested that President Yeltsin might retire early, this had not been 
done for no particular reason. 

At the time we assumed that Yeltsin's resignation might be connected 
with the main cause of his life -- the ban on the Communist Party and the 
final defeat of communism. But another scheme has appeared in the past 
few days, and it is accepted to attribute it to the political analyst and 
intellectual adventurist Gleb Pavlovskiy. This scheme has allegedly 
already been offered to the leadership of the Presidential Staff -- 
Voloshin, Dyachenko, Yumashev... -- and a principal approval has been 
received. 

The main idea is to hold early presidential elections and hand over 
power by right of succession to Nikolay Aksenenko, whom the current 
leadership likes more than others for the time being. After Yuriy Luzhkov 
rescheduled the mayoral elections for December, the Kremlin strategists 
decided to give neither him nor other candidates time for calm 
preparations for the final assault and thus create the most comfortable 
conditions for the selected successor. In crude terms, the prime minister 
is replaced in September -- Stepashin is exchanged for Aksenenko. For a 
couple of months -- October-November -- he is intensively hyped. By 
December Yeltsin is persuaded not to cling to the last six months but to 
put the country into "good hands." He leaves, and Aksenenko becomes 
acting president. Having almost unlimited powers under conditions when 
the Duma has not recovered its senses after the elections and at a moment 
when Luzhkov will be torn between a desire to remain the mayor and a wish 
to become the president (meanwhile, in Moscow he will be propped up by 
the persistent Kiriyenko), Aksenenko has almost the only chance to creep 
to the throne. From the perspective of a legal pattern, the entire ploy 
is absolutely legal and irreproachable. 

The unmanageable and freely floating Primakov, who may come up from the 
dark like an iceberg ("We know your Icebergs," as Ilf and Petrov wrote) 
and completely smash the beautiful plan, may become the main threat to 
Nikolay III. Because of this one of the main tasks of the moment may be 
to neutralize Primakov. And to disguise the true plans the idea of 
uniting Belarus and Russia with Yeltsin actually kept for a third term of 
office, will be hyped in every possible way. It is not for nothing that 
Zhirinovskiy has already been entrusted with launching this trial balloon. 

Admittedly, the Kremlin is too vigorously denying its participation in the 
organization of these rumors. Yet the matter has already gotten to the 
point where last week the chief of Lukashenka's Staff, Myasnikovich, 
gladly came rushing to Moscow to secretly ascertain whether Alyaksandr 
Ryhoravich [Lukashenka] had indeed been invited to the Kremlin. 

Boris Yeltsin's interview with Izvestiya should be indirect proof that the 
plan conceived by Voloshin and Pavlovskiy has been approved for 
implementation. According to the plan the interview should be published 
today, and among other things it is believed that Boris Nikolayevich will 
announce that "he will have a lot of free time this winter." For those 
who can read this will be the same signal as the famous phrase broadcast 
on radio with which Franco's mutiny began: "There are cloudless skies 
over all of Spain." 

At the same time it is impossible to rule out that the idea of an early 
resignation is a beautiful diversionary ploy. The participants in the 
presidential race will "lay their foundations" on it, and if it does not 
take place, supremacy will go to Stepashin, for example, who will not be 
dismissed at all. 

Like any critical ploy the plan that has allegedly been proposed by 
Pavlovskiy has its pluses and minuses. It may be played out "up front," 
but it may pursue completely opposite goals to the declared ones. One 
thing is indisputable: In Russia there are not so many politicians who 
can in terms not of schemes butof real life. And Pavlovskiy is not yet 
one of them. 

*******

#6
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999
From: ABC in Saint Petersburg <abcspb@online.ru> (Andrew Miller)
Organization: Academy of International Business Collaboration
Aubject: Little Green Men: "Special Forces" or "The Phantom Menace"?

One of the more memorable incidents from the first few weeks of 
my first year in Russia (that was three years ago now), in the 
provincial capital of Kursk out in the middle of the central European 
heartland of Russia, was dinner at an Armenian restaurant a block off 
the main drag in that, by my lights, most charming of Russian towns, one 
which I called home for more than two years.

The meal wasn't memorable for the food, although the food was 
pretty decent, nor for the live music, which was likewise engaging 
(though not, in any way that I could tell, at all Armenian), nor the 
decor, which likewise gave no indication of ethnicity (as, for that 
matter, didn't the cuisine). It was rather that, during dessert, half a 
dozen very large heavily armed men in ski masks burst into the place and 
gave the clientele a good thorough going over. Contrary to my, as you 
can well imagine, naive and somewhat shall-we-say awe-filled first 
impulse, this wasn't a robbery. The automatic weapons-toting gentlemen 
were instead members of the Otryad militsia osobovo naznacheniya, a/k/a 
OMON, and for lack of a better phrase, this was part of the 
never-ending battle for truth, justice and the Russian way. 

OMON is one of those Russia phrases, of which there are very 
many, that is highly challenging to translate into English. Literally, 
one might say "Section of the Police of Special Function." After that, 
one might be tempted to interpret the acronym as "SWAT" (Special Weapons 
and Tactics) in order to succinctly convey to the uninitiated something 
of the basic idea of this "section" and its "special" activities. But, 
as is most often the case, that temptation would be too facile.

Because the OMON don't look like policemen - nor do they move in 
the company of anyone who does. In any case, the term "police" is 
itself highly daunting to the translator, as the Russian ideas 
associated therewith probably differ markedly from those of, say, 
Americans (as would also be the case with a word like "corporation"). 
The Russian Miranda warning, for example, goes something like: "You 
have the right to do exactly what I tell you, which includes of course 
confessing immediately, or to have the crap kicked out of you in short 
order. Take your choice. Time is money. And money is losing its value 
even as we speak." Actually, the sound-alike for the Russian term 
"militsia," namely "militia" (local army) would probably hit closer to 
home.

OMON are often dressed in camouflage fatigues and berets (not 
green but grey - "One hundred men will test one day, but only those who 
look REALLY scary wear the grey beret). They look, in short, like 
soldiers. They don't appear only, or even mostly, when a gun-toting 
psycho holes himself up in some building with hostages (although they 
did surround a school in St. Petersburg a few months ago when the 
school, run by American religious types, refused - lock, stock and 
grade-schoolers - to vacate the premises after its lease ran out, 
resulting in a week-long standoff that was resolved when OMON, after 
cutting the power didn't work, raided the building and dragged out the 
staff and students within), hostage scenarios being a blessedly rare 
case in Russia, but rather often stroll freely about the streets on 
patrol and various other duties.

At the time of the Armenian repast in question, I was the only 
American resident in Kursk (indeed, as far as I know, I'm the only 
American who's ever lived in Kursk on a long-term basis in its 1000+ 
year history), and one of only two English-speaking natives, so I was of 
course well known to the officials there (who, let's just say, have 
heard rumors about some changes in government policy in Moscow since 
1992 but who are still waiting for confirmation before making any 
irresponsible libertarian changes). It might even be true to say they 
knew me better than I know myself. When my turn came, I, doe-eyed, 
showed my passport to one of the inquisitors (I don't remember now much 
of what he looked like as his conspicuously displayed snub-nosed machine 
gun consumed most of my attention) and he waved me back to my table with 
a very businesslike and reassuring, if somewhat disappointed, "relax." 
As the evening progressed it became clear that OMON had expected to find 
some person or persons present in the place who, for one reason or 
another, inconveniently, weren't. In the fullness of time, they took 
their leave. My mind, again paralyzed by American naivete‚ but rapidly 
acclimatizing, looked forward to the possibility of some emolument from 
the management, perhaps a free Armenian cognac. None was forthcoming. 
Such a policy, I later surmised, would break the bank as such raids 
aren't altogether unusual.

Which brings me to last Tuesday. I'm walking up Marata Street 
in downtown St. Petersburg, minding my own business, when I come face to 
face once again (and not for the second time) with OMON. But there's a 
wrinkle. These OMON are less intimidating, for they are only two inches 
tall and hanging in the window of a newspaper kiosk. There's a group of 
them, eight all together, in a very impressively modern looking package, 
no different really than you would expect for Teenage Mutant Ninja 
Turtles action figures, or Star Wars the Phantom Menace for that matter. 
But cheaper, of course. They cost only 50 cents. Granted, they're not 
brightly colored (all a sort of puke green), but they're nicely made and 
realistic looking nonetheless, and so its still a bargain.

It goes without saying that I buy them. They are the product of 
a Russian firm in St. Petersburg, one of those privatized facilities 
which used to make some cog or widget in the service of communist utopia 
and has now ingeniously retooled for capitalism. Seven of the figures 
are holding the selfsame snub-nosed submachine gun, in various action 
poses, with various expressions of determined patriotism, while one, the 
one I like best, helmeted and face-masked, is holding a large 
anti-projectile shield while wielding, ominously raised above his head, 
a very large (indeed, baseball bat-sized) club. In other words he's 
fully decked out in riot gear (or peaceful but inconvenient protest 
gear, as the case may be). In colorful painted scenes, the figures are 
depicted in even greater lifelike realism on the cardboard panel behind 
the plastic window. The force of commercialism is clearly with them, 
which I supposed out to be encouraging.

Isn't that special?

Andrew Miller
St. Petersburg, Russia

P.S.: This firm also distributes a set of British WW II soldiers, a 
Japanese and German set, and then of course there's the Red Army. Hard 
as I've looked, however, I've yet to discover a packet of little green 
Americans. If anybody out there has seen a set, let me know. I'll pay 
top ruble.

*******

#7
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 
From: abraham brumberg <102142.2545@compuserve.com>
Subject: ARE RUSSIAN JEWS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES?

ARE RUSSIAN JEWS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES?
By Abraham Brumberg
WASHINGTON POST OUTLOOK SECTION, July 11, l999
Abraham Brumberg is a noted authority on Russian and East European affairs.

Over the past eight months or so, Western media have carried 
alarming reports on the resurgence of anti-Jewish hatred in the former
USSR, especially in Russia and Ukraine, where most of gthe region's
approximately one million Jews reside. Russia has been the chief culprit,
with two men most associated with the flare-up-- Alexander Barkashov,
leader of a small band of rabid followers known as the Russian National
Unity Party, and former general Albert Makashov , a Communist member of the
Duma (parliament), who regularly criss-crosses the country with his
rabble-rousing message, liberally drawn from the notorious Protocols of the
Elders of of Zion and similar forgeries. 
Another Communist, Viktor Ilyukhin, chairman of the parliament's
security committee, has charged Yeltsin with surrounding himself with
Jews bent on committing "genocide" against the Russian people. The leader
of the Communist Party in and outside the parliament, Gennadi A. Zyuganov,
a man singularly adept at projecting now a moderate, now an acidulous
attitude to non-Russian ethnic groups (the first at international
gatherings, the other at home with loyal disciples), has never explicitly 
embraced the views of Ilyukhin and Makashov, and once even criticized the
latter for his "intemperance." Nevertheless, he staunchly insists that 
Jews are "overepresented" in the state's leading bodies .
As a result, emigration--in decline for several years--began to
escalate in January of this year. . At a two-day conference held at
Harvard University last March speakers warned about rising fascism and
xenophobia in the former USSR.. A colleague of mine, a distinguished
historian--himself not Jewish --came back from a recent trip to Russia
filled with harrowing stories of hooligans insulting Jews on the streets, 
kiosks inundated with scurrilous broadsheets, and public television
offering time to the purveyors of mass hatred. 
As a person with scholarly and journalistic experience in East
European matters, I was eager to see for myself, so I joined, in a private
capacity, a two week tour of Russia and Ukraine, sponsored by the US
Jewish Community Development Fund (JCDF), an organization supporting 
Jewish cultural and religious activities in the former USSR. Just
concluded, the trip in part confirmed past impressions, but it also yielded
some startling evidence of relations between Jews and non-Jews and of a
vibrant Jewish life at odds with the image of perv asiv e antgisemitism and
oppressive fearf among Jews. 
Ukraine, , where our tour started, offered the frirst set of
surprises.. Long regarded as a country steeped in brutal antisemitism.,
Ukraine has been the site of some of history's most hideous anti-Jewish
massacres. During the Second World War, many Ukrainians abetted Hitler's
New Order. There was a Ukrainian SS Division, some of the countsry's
church leaders fawned on Hitler, and some rank -and-file Ukrainians
cooperated with the Nazis in rounding up Jews and transporting them to the
gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek.
Like so many generalizations, however, this image of implacable
Jew-hatred must be treated with circumspection. In l648-49, a series of
massacres that have sometimes been described as the greatest calamity
that befell the Jews before the Holocaust, was actually directed primarily
at the Polish gentry, in fact occasionally prompting the latter, not
especially known as philosemites, to make common cause with the Jews.
During the Civil War in l9l8-19, thousands of Jews fell victim to bloody
pogroms, which were often agttgributed exclusively to Ukrainians. Not
true. Others, especially Russians serving in the White and Bolshevik
armies, were no less guilty of such crimes. . 
Still, the image of distinctive Ukrainian antisemitism lingered; it
seemed all too appropriate that many of the "anti-Zionist" screeds that
came out in the Soviet Union in the 1960s were published in Ukraine, a
few of them under the imprimatur of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
Given this checkered history, I found it remarkable that so many 
Jews I met--in Kiev, with a population of 80,000 Jews out of a total of two
and a quarter million, Cherkassy with a Jewish population of several
thousand, and Smela, with barely 200--regard the past as dead and buried.
They seem determined, for the time being at least, to stay where they are
and go on with their lives. The most disaffected Ukrainian Jews, about a
third of the total Jewish population, has already left, most of them for
Israel, the United States, and Germany. The rest, with the help of
American and Israeli institutions, maintain several synagogues (though
only about 25 percent of Ukrainian and Russian Jews consider themselves
religious), community centers, and a network of student Hillel
organizations full of self-confident young people, who, as I could see, 
take pride in their accomplishments. There are Sunday schools and
kindergardens: at one, in Kiev, I was charmed by four-year olds dancing
Israeli dances, showing off their few sentences in English, and joining
with a group of Ukrainian children in a spirited rendition of the Ukrainian
gopak. Cultural events--concerts, theatrical performances, public
lectures--take place tghroughout he country In Cherkassy, I spent sev eral
hours at a large pub lic hall wherfe Jewish veterans and others celebrated
the anniversary of the victory over Germany in l945, and where I was told b
ty several participants that such celebrations give the lie to those who
claim that Jews had tried to avoid serving in gthe arm ed forces. (In fact
Jews constituted a significantly higher proportion of soldiers and of meal
winners.) At the same time, some Jews spoke with patent sincerity of their
good relations, even deep friendships, with Ukrainians.
What explains this seeming metamorphosis? For one thing, the
Ukrainian dissidents of the l970s and l980s made an heroic--and largely
successful-- effort to resolve Jewish-Ukrainian tensions by cooperating
openly with the refuseniks and other Jewish human rights activists. 
Second, since l991 the Ukrainian leadership has not only lifted all
restrictions on organized Jewish life, but has actively helped and
supported the Jews in fashioning their institutions, thus earning the
gratitude of many. 
There is another factor: The growth of a powerfully positive sense
of membership in a Jewish community. In western Ukraine (Galicia)
antisemitism has for various historical reasons been more pronounced than
in the heavily russian East. It is still: Several young people
from Lvivi (Lvov), capital of Westerrn Ukraine, sp;oke gloomily about the
pervcasive antisemitism in their city, where putrid antisemitic
publicaitons and hateful remarks on the streets and in stores poison the
atmosphere for several thousand Jewish inhabitants. Nevertheless, even
there the cohesion and support of community organizations counteract the
daily indignities. .. "I often feel lonely and alienated during the day,"
said one young woman from Lviv wistfully, "but in the evening I find
warmth and succor in our Hillel headquarters." In answer to a question by
one of my co-travelers, she said defiantly that she planned to remain in
Lviv, "which is still my city, unless the economic situation becomes
altogether unbearable and the Jews are made to pay for it." She added,
however, that many of her friends are planning to emigrate.
After leaving Ukraine I spent a week in Moscow, the old historic
town of Tula, and St. Petersburg. Everywhere, young people demonstrated the
same insouciance as their Ukrainian peers. Middle-aged Russian Jews are
also impressed. "It is remarkable," Boris Frezinsky, a well-known
scholar, told me in his St. Petersburg apartment, "to see these young
people on the streets veritably flaunting their Jewishness." Fifty-eight
years old and half Jewish, he remembers the impact of antisemitic policies
on him and his coevals twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. We both 
recalled the typically furtive behavior of Russian Jews before the rise of
the dissident movement, when meeting an American like myself seemed to be
fraught with incalculable danger.
In Russia, more than in the Ukraine, klezmer bands proliferate,
some of them no less skilled than their counterparts in the United
States. And nowhere in Ukraine are there Jewish studies courses with
enrollments that compare with those in Russia: in Moscow alone, four
universities offer Judaica programs leading to the equivalent of a Ph.D.
degree, with roughly 650 students registered. (In one of them, the
Maimonides Academy, whose philology department is headed by Professor
Michael Chlenov, a prominent anthropologist and chairman of the Council of
Russian Jews , students who take Hebrew are also obliged to take several
courses in Yiddish)
But the biggest surprise for me was the story of the small town of
Borovichi, south of St. Pertersburg, with a Jewish population of no more
than l00. Some time ago Barkashov's hooligans took to the streets of
Borovichi, shouting obscene anti-Jewish slogans and scattering antisemitic
leaflets. The police at first pooh-poohed it as "just a minor nuisance,"
but when a local 19 year old was murdered, the police, suspecting the
"Barkashovites" (though this was never proved), sprung into action. They
expelled the Nationalists, and, asked the Jewish community to organize a
course for the police on antisemitism, its history and its causes. The
somewhat stunned Jewish community happily complied. 
Do these developments, however encouraging, suggest that the
gloomy scenarios which I mentioned at the beginning of this article are
isolated or without foundation? To assume so would be to exchange one
hyperbole for another . Yes, Russian and Ukrainian Jews are still
generally eager to proceed with their lives, in their own homes, where they
grew up and hope to raise their children. But the Makashovs and Barkashovs
continue to stage rallies--with, I was told, repercussions in Ukraine,
too-- the parliament still refuses to take any action against Makashov, and
in fact emigration has increased, though thus far not very significantly. 
In Moscow Vladimir Shapiro, an eminent sociologist, told me of a
recent survey that found antisemitism rampant in high schools throughout
the Russian Federation. And he added another caveat. The Jewish population
of Russia and Ukraine, he said, is steadily shrinking, with only one child
born for every ten deaths. This demographic slide obtains both among those
who formally identify themselves as Jews (so-called "passport Jews") and
those who consider themselves Jews regardless of their passport ethnicity.
He added that the persistence of very small Jewish families (two children
at most) is not necessarily good news for those who want to preserve the
Jewish presence in that part of the world. 
The Jews of Russia and Ukraine, then, cannot be regarded as an
endangered species. Their perseverance and sense of cohesion are
admirable. Their indifference to the propaganda of the Jewish Agency,
which has pleaded with them to go to Israel and even at times withheld
support from activities, such as Yiddish schools, that do not accord with
conventional Zionkist ideology, is also striking.
The situation, then, is fluid. The fear that Jews, as so often in
the past, may again find themselves scapegoated for their countries'
economkic ills, cannot be dismissed. . Which is to say that what their 
future holds remains to be seen.

******