September 6, 1999   
This Date's Issues: 3484 •3485  • 

Johnson's Russia List
#3485
6 September 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Sabirzyan Badretdinov: HOW TO SPEED UP RUSSIA'S DISINTEGRATION?
2. Reuters: Ravaged, shunned Abkhazia remains defiant.
3. Integrum WorldWide: Online database services.
4. The Times (UK): David Lister and James Bone, Banker tells of kidnap 
by Russian mafia. (re Alexandre Konanykhine)
5. AP: Senators Argue About Russia Politics.
6. The Guardian (UK): Paul Farrelly, Elite's underworld links exposed. 
The men growing rich from Russia's economic ruin.
7. Washington Post: Leah Bendavid-Val, A LOOK AT . . . Mirror Images.
Worlds Apart, And Much The Same.
8. Voice of America: What Next in Russia? (Discussion with Jonas
Bernstein, Paul Goble, and Anders Aslund).]

*******

#1
From: Sunset4642@aol.com (Sabirzyan Badretdinov)
Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1999 
Subject: HOW TO SPEED UP RUSSIA'S DISINTEGRATION?

HOW TO SPEED UP RUSSIA'S DISINTEGRATION?

What can an ordinary citizen of the Russian Federation do to speed up
Russia's eventual disintegration? 

Here are some of the peaceful but nevertheless quite effective practical 
ways in which any Russian citizen can make a personal contribution to
this worthy cause:

ECONOMY
1. Support protectionist measures of your regional government (for example,
raising tariffs on goods imported from other regions, thus promoting 
economic independence, etc.) Such measures weaken economic links connecting 
various regions to each other and thus contribute to Russia's dissolution.
2. Keep your savings in a local bank, rather than in a local branch of a
Moscow bank.
3. Support the idea of the introduction of a local currency. (Some 
governors, such as Edward Rossel of the Yekaterinburg region, have long 
been in favor of such a measure).

POLITICS
1. Vote for separatist-leaning candidates in local elections. 
2. Boycott federal elections.
3. Support the idea of creating a local separatist party. If such a
party already exists in your region, encourage its leaders to support
separatist-leaning politicians. 

CULTURE
1. Encourage the interest in local history, customs, folklore, etc. This
will strengthen local patriotism and make separatism more acceptable. 
2. Demand that the local authorities give more air time to local radio and TV
broadcasts at the expense of broadcasts from Moscow.
3. Learn and promote local dialect of the Russian language and try to get rid
of your Moscow accent. Remember that linguistic peculiarities strengthen
local identity. 
4. Support and promote local celebrities, artists and performers. This is
important because many Moscow-based celebrities often become symbols 
of ethnic unity.

RELIGION
1. Support laws guaranteeing freedom of religion. This will benefit the
local Muslim and Jewish communities and allow Western religious sects 
operating in Russia to continue their work, which (whether they realize this 
or not) spiritually divides Russia. 
2. Support the Russian Orthodox Church's plans to change its 
administrative-territorial structure to make it coincide with the 
administrative-political structure of the Russian Federation. Ideally, 
each Russian region must have its own religious leader connected 
to the local governor. (For example, Archbishop Mefodiy is currently 
in charge of both Lipetsk and Voronezh regions. The Governor of
Lipetsk region, Oleg Korolev, wants his region to have a separate diocese.)

EDUCATION
1. Demand the establishment of a department of regional studies at your local
university. 

OTHER AREAS
1. Support the idea of using local stamps for regional mail delivery.
2. Support the idea of creating local sports teams. Loyalty to one's local
sports team promotes regional mentality and ultimately contributes to
separatist tendencies.
3. Support the idea of adopting the local flag, local coat of arms, local
identity cards and local anthem. Support the idea of adopting a regional 
charter. Many ethnically Russian regions already have these attributes of 
statehood. 

A real Russian patriot is someone who would favor Russia's disintegration 
and who supports the right of self-determination of the ethnic minorities. 
It is not a coincidence that such outstanding Russian patriots as 
academician Andrey Sakharov, Yelena Bonner, human rights 
advocate Sergey Kovalev, political activist Valeria Novodvorskaya, etc. 
have always supported self-determination of the ethnic minorities in Russia. 
On the other hand, such people as the leader of Russia's communists 
Zyuganov, leader of the Russian fascist party Barkashov, Russian 
chauvinist and anti-Semite Zhirinovsky, etc. have always been in favor of 
the "united and indivisible Russia." It is important to understand which 
side of this problem, brought about by Russia's historical expansion, 
deserves our support. 

*******

#2
Ravaged, shunned Abkhazia remains defiant
By Lawrence Sheets

SUKHUMI, Georgia, Sept 6 (Reuters) - By dusk, a penetrating silence looms 
over Sukhumi's bombed-out, blackened buildings. Almost no one is left on the 
potholed streets of what must be one of the world's eeriest capitals. 

Crowds of Soviet tourists visiting the best Black Sea beaches Communism had 
to offer have been replaced by elderly women in black mourning dresses 
begging for handouts to supplement pensions of 10 Russian roubles (40 cents) 
a month. 

Six years after winning a war against Georgian troops, once-wealthy Abkhazia 
is an isolated, poor, forgotten pariah state unrecognised by any country. 

Despite pressure to agree to a deal with Georgia that would give it broad 
autonomy, the Abkhaz leadership vows to pursue independence whatever the 
cost. 

Abkhazia's difficult times come as little consolation to Georgia. The 
simmering conflict has cut its main trade routes and left the country 
dismembered. With no solution in sight, there are fears that a new war might 
eventually erupt. 

SOVIET BREAKUP IGNITED CONFLICT 

Like other ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union, the war in Abkhazia 
erupted as soon as the superpower started to disintegrate, fuelled by decades 
of tension between Georgians, 45 percent of the pre-war population of 
550,000, and the Abkhaz, Armenians and Russians who made up most of the rest. 

The Abkhaz, who dominated the local parliament despite comprising just 18 
percent of the population, steered Abkhazia towards independence at a time of 
rampant nationalism in Georgia which made minorities feel uncomfortable. 

Amid chaos, Georgian paramilitaries marched into Abkhazia in 1992 to try to 
snuff out the independence drive and what they said was discrimination 
against Georgians. 

A brutal war ensued that killed more than 10,000 people before Abkhaz units 
backed by the Russian military during a period of especially poor ties 
between Tbilisi and Moscow routed Georgian troops and drove out most Georgian 
civilians. 

Victory celebrations were short-lived, however. The Abkhaz had inherited a 
land devastated by the war and an international community unwilling to 
consider recognition. 

ECONOMY SHATTERED BY WAR, ISOLATION 

Then came economic sanctions imposed by the Commonwealth of Independent 
States -- successor body to the Soviet Union -- and enforced by Russia and 
Georgia. 

Abkhazia's border with Russia was reinforced, travel to and from the region 
curtailed and imports and exports limited. 

The Georgian government hoped the pressure would force Abkhazia to agree to 
broad autonomy within Georgia. 

The sanctions have helped to strangle the economy, impoverish part of the 
population and make travel for Abkhaz, whose passports are not recognised 
abroad, difficult. Yet they have not forced Abkhazia to back down. 

``The sanctions have indeed made life very difficult for many. But in some 
ways they have forced us to be much more self-reliant,'' said Roman Dbar, 
Abkhazia's ecology minister. 

Dbar, a bearded, 41-year-old entomologist, has a budget of just $30,000 for 
his entire ministry, which tries to monitor water quality along Abkhazia's 
300 km (200 mile) Black Sea coast and safeguard 150 species of unique 
subtropical plants. 

A modest number of low-budget Russian tourists, perhaps 25,000 this year, 
have begun to trickle back to Abkhazia, foreign ministry officials say. 
Bribes from Abkhaz tour companies to Russian border guards allow them to 
circumvent the supposed blockade. 

But the flow is a drop in the ocean compared to the nearly two million 
annually in Soviet times. The sanctions make it impossible to re-invigorate 
the sector. 

Other meagre government revenues come from exports of scrap metal and 
gimmicks like issuing comic postage stamps, like one featuring the comedian 
Groucho Marx and late Beatle John Lennon (Marx and Lennon). 

Crime is reportedly at epidemic levels, though down from its peak, officials 
say, and drug abuse is rampant. 

Once in jail, prisoners face a tuberculosis epidemic. Humanitarian aid 
workers say 70-80 percent of the region's 400 or so inmates may be infected. 
Some are released without having received any treatment. 

Dbar said most people, from engineers to teachers, have turned to farming to 
survive. ``Almost everyone grows their own food. It is a matter of 
survival.'' 

``Even the president (Vladislav Ardzinba) is now raising his own vegetables, 
though this is more to set an example for the rest of the nation,'' said 
Dbar. 

LEADER DEFIANT, NO END SEEN TO STALEMATE 

The charismatic, combative Ardzinba shows no sign of softening his stance and 
remains staunchly pro-independence, despite the poor prospects for 
international recognition. 

``Georgia goes begging to the West, takes money from them, and half of that 
money they steal. We live on our own means,'' the president, a 54-year-old 
ethnographer, said in an interview. 

``The sanctions cannot continue forever. And eventually there will be 
recognition. At any rate there is a higher authority than the United 
Nations,'' he said, motioning towards the sky. 

Ardzinba is the lone candidate in an October 3 poll which looks set to hand 
him a second five-year term in office. 

The Georgian government of President Eduard Shevardnadze has condemned the 
election as illegal. 

Shevardnadze's ruling Citizens' Union party faces an uphill struggle in 
Georgia's own October 31 parliamentary election against a coalition of 
opposition groups who accuse him of losing Abkhazia. 

But observers say that for most Georgians, preoccupied with their own 
economic woes, Abkhazia is a secondary issue. 

They see little chance that Shevardnadze, who also faces a presidential 
election in 2000, will ease sanctions against Abkhazia, which Ardzinba calls 
Georgia's ``last instrument of pressure on Abkhazia.'' 

Georgia says the sanctions could be lifted only if the Abkhaz allow the 
return of up to 200,000 ethnic Georgian refugees forced out of their homes 
when the Abkhaz took over. 

Ardzinba refuses to allow most to come back without a broader political 
agreement. 

Many Abkhaz, Armenians and Russians have also departed for economic reasons, 
leaving only 30 to 40 percent of the pre-war population, and a strange, 
half-empty atmosphere. 

Western diplomats say it is unlikely most Georgians will ever go home, as the 
Abkhaz would not again upset the demographic balance by putting themselves in 
the minority. 

The Abkhaz say thousands of Georgians were forcibly resettled in Abkhazia 
during Soviet times by dictator Joseph Stalin and his henchman, Lavrenty 
Beria, in an effort to assimilate them. Both men were of Georgian origin. 

``I really don't see any progress on a full political solution,'' said one 
diplomat. 

``The sides agree on many of the minor points, but I don't see Abkhazia 
signing anything that leaves them legally a part of Georgia. And the 
Georgians won't sign anything that gives Abkhazia a claim to independence.'' 

******

#3
From: "IWW/Andrei Mouradian" <integrum@ropnet.ru>
Subject: Online database services
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 

Dear David,

We are developing a large integrated online information resource devoted to
Russia and the CIS. I think it would be interesting to JRL subscribers:
www.integrumworld.com

We provide an on-line access to over 800 databases (over 16 000 000
documents, 50Gb). 24 hours a day information is being collected and updated.
10 000 new documents are added daily. Information is categorized to make
navigation as simple as possible. Our search engine supports search in all
the databases simultaneously.

Our subscribers get:

1)Full texts of national and regional newspapers, magazines, bulletins etc.
2)Complete documents or their fragments relevant to the search queries.
3)Latest news and archives of the leading national and international
information agencies.
4)Easy-to-use online English-Russian-English dictionary for 300 000 entries.

The system corrects misspelled words and can be used even without Cyrillic
keyboard.

A few words about the documents available.

1)Full texts of newspapers and magazines.
52 nationwide newspapers (Kommersant-Daily, Izvestia, etc.), 81 regional
newspapers( Magnitogorskie vesti, Nizhegorodskie Novosti, etc.), 46
newspapers of the former USSR countries (Fakty i Kommentarii – Kiev,
Narodnaya Gazeta – Minsk, etc.), 51 magazines (Itogi, Litsa, etc.), plus a
special media monitoring database.

2)Information agencies.
Reports of 23 news agencies (RIA-Novosti, Federal News Service, etc.) and 18
news-tapes of ITAR-TASS including ITAR-TASS NEWS.

3)Official statements and press releases.
Database contains archives of 34 press offices of government bodies and
major political parties(Press-office of the State Duma of Russian
Federation, Otechestvo press-office, etc.); public statements of the
government officials and political leaders.

4)Analytical and statistical bulletins.
32 official statistical bulletins issued by Goskomstat

5)Reviews of Russian finance and commodity markets.
48 databases with reviews of the Russian and the CIS markets, latest
economic trends and trend-setting events, expert opinions and perspectives.

6)Law.
26 databases on the entire range of branches of the Russian legislation,
from the international treaties signed by Russia to the Russian real estate
codex.

7)Reference info
39 databases with phones and addresses of Russian companies by industry,
government and municipal organizations, miscellaneous reference info.

8)Industry info
20 databases with comprehensive industry reports (Oil&Gas, Pharmaceuticals,
etc.).

9)Personalities
20 databases with detailed biographies of the political leaders, CEOs etc.

10)Russian Classics.
Full texts of over 700 Russian classical and modern books.

We do hope this professional research tool may be useful for JRL readers.

Best regards,

Andrei Mouradian
Integrum WorldWide/Customer service
www.integrumworld.com
integrum@ropnet.ru

*****

#4
The Times (UK)
September 6 1999 
[for personal use only]
Banker tells of kidnap by Russian mafia 
BY DAVID LISTER AND JAMES BONE 

BY THE time he was 25 he was one of the most important figures in 
post-Communist Russia. He had made a fortune after setting up one of Russia's 
first commercial banks and lived with his wife in a 50-acre residence that 
was once the home of Mikhail Gorbachev. 

But in 1992, while on a business trip to Hungary, Alexandre Konanykhine, then 
chairman of the All-Russian Exchange Bank, was kidnapped by members of the 
"Solnetsevo" mafia group controlled by Semyon Mogilevich - the gangster 
allegedly linked to the laundering of billions of dollars through the Bank 
of New York. Mr Mogilevich was traced to Budapest last week, The Sunday 
Times reported. 

Mr Konanykhine said: "My wife and I were in a restaurant in Budapest when we 
were approached by two people who introduced themselves as officers of the 
Hungarian Ministry of Security. They said the ministry was working on an 
investigation and I was needed as a witness." Speaking from California, he 
said: "They took me to a building on the outskirts of Budapest which was not 
the Ministry of Security. They led me into an apartment which had some 
criminal characters in it and a KGB officer who told me I had to turn over 
all my assets to them if I wanted to get out alive." 

Mr Konanykhine persuaded his kidnappers to take him to his hotel so that he 
could telephone Russia and authorise money transfers. "They wanted me to 
transfer the money out of the bank but they didn't even have a computer or a 
telephone. 

"It happened that my wife and I had a dinner appointment with a friend who 
was supposed to wait for us in front of the hotel. I managed to get close to 
the car and just jumped in and we raced to Czechoslovakia and took the first 
flight to the US." 

While he was being held in Budapest, the mafia stormed his bank in Moscow and 
declared themselves the owners. He lost "99.7 per cent" of his wealth. 

Many of his business acquaintances were killed or forced to join forces with 
the mafia, who by 1995 had taken control of up to 80 per cent of Russian 
commercial enterprises, according to the FBI. "Some people were poisoned, 
some shot, others hit by cars. Hundreds of businessmen were killed as the KGB 
and the mafia took control of the country," he said. He has been told that a 
price was put on his head. 

Mr Konanykhine, who has never met Mr Mogilevich and who now runs an Internet 
business, said there have been many examples of Russian money-laundering: 
"Put simply, Russia was looted. After 70 years of communism, there were no 
morals and almost no religion, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union 
organised crime took over the country." 

******

#5
Senators Argue About Russia Politics
September 5, 1999
By WILLIAM C. MANN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two senators argued about Russian politics Sunday in an 
exchange touching on Christmas presents, nuclear weapons, Jeffersonian 
democracy and a box of chocolates.

It began as a discussion on ``Fox News Sunday'' of corruption in Russia but 
turned quickly to livelier fare.

Vice President Al Gore, the Clinton administration's point man on dealing 
with Moscow, has ``been treating our whole approach to Russia as if he were 
afraid we're going to be dropped from Boris Yeltsin's Christmas list,'' said 
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

It went unsaid whether Yeltsin, a former Soviet regional Communist boss, 
makes such a list.

``You know, hindsight is 20/20, but this time (McConnell's is) 20/50,'' 
responded Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

He said administration policies have ``gone pretty darn well'' in reducing 
the nuclear threat against the United States and getting a foothold for small 
businesses in post-Soviet Russia.

``What success?'' McConnell asked. ``There's been some modest success with 
dismantling of nuclear weapons, but beyond that, the whole policy with regard 
to Russia has been a conspicuous failure.''

The problem, he said, is that ``we've tied our star to Boris Yeltsin, who has 
a 2 percent approval rating in Russia. Two percent! Nobody respects him 
anymore.''

He described that as ``kind of a Moscow myopia.''

``Mitch,'' Biden said, butting in as moderator Tony Snow tried to change the 
subject, ``my grandfather used to have an expression: You have to have 
somebody to beat somebody. ... Who do you have in mind, Mitch?''

McConnell said the United States should not pick anybody, ``but we certainly 
shouldn't try to prop up somebody who is engaged in corruption, corrupt 
behavior ... and has no support.''

``We've been dealing with Yeltsin because he's the guy there,'' Biden said. 
``The other guys behind him are no box of chocolates.''

``You know, everybody thinks there's a Jeffersonian democrat waiting to pop 
up everywhere, somewhere, some place in the world,'' Biden said. ``This is 
going to take a generation.

*****

#6
The Guardian (UK)
5 September 1999
[for personal use only]
Elite's underworld links exposed 
The men growing rich from Russia's economic ruin
Paul Farrelly

In Yeltsin's new Russia, the worlds of politics, business and organised crime 
blur into one. Key players are those who control the country's rich natural 
resources or its utilities. 

Viktor Chernomyrdin, a former Prime Minister, Anatoly Chubais, a former 
Deputy Prime Minister, and other members of the elite have denied any 
wrongdoing. But The Observer can reveal that Russian intelligence has 
established links between Chubais's business empire and a former Channel 
Islands company at the centre of 'maffiya' money-laundering. 

Gazprom - the world's biggest gas company, which Chernomyrdin now chairs - 
has also come under investigation for spiriting hundreds of millions of 
dollars offshore via a network of shell companies in Eastern Europe, Cyprus 
and Italy. 

When the Bank of New York scandal broke last month, the story seemed shocking 
but simple enough. Two senior Russian-born executives in London and New York 
had allegedly connived with Semion Mogilevich - an underworld godfather 
dubbed 'the most dangerous man in the world' - to launder $10 billion through 
a web of companies run from north London. 

Konstantin Kagalovsky - husband of Natasha Kagalovsky, the Bank of New York 
executive suspended in the US - is a senior establishment figure in the 
pro-Yeltsin camp, to which Chubais and Chernomyrdin belong. A former Russian 
envoy to the IMF, he was expected to head Chernomyrdin's campaign to succeed 
Yeltsin next year. His mentor is Chubais, who headed Russia's debt 
negotiations with the West until 1998's crash. 

He was deputy chairman of Menatep, once Russia's sixth largest bank, which 
has now had its licence withdrawn. He is a director of Yukos, one of Russia's 
biggest oil companies. Both belong to the business empire of Mikhail 
Khodorkovsky, one of Russia's controversial 'oligarchs', who amassed vast 
riches from the give-away privatisation programme kicked off by Chubais eight 
years ago. 

The Observer can reveal that according to Russian intelligence sources a 
'maffiya'-controlled firm, Arbat International, is a 20 per cent shareholder 
in TEMBR bank, the clearing bank of UES, the electricity group which Chubais 
runs. Chubais's financial relationship with TEMBR - in which UES also has a 
30 per cent stake - has also been monitored, sources say. 

Arbat International is where the police investigations began that led to the 
discovery of the Bank of New York scam. Set up by Mogilevich in Hungary and 
Alderney in the early 1990s, it actually belongs, according to Russian 
intelligence sources, to Sergei Mikhailov, head of Moscow's Solntsevo crime 
gang and the leading Russian godfather, and one of his Budapest-based 
deputies, Viktor Averin. 'Seva [Mogilevich] provides the brains and Mikhas 
[Mikhailovich] and Avera [Averin] the muscle,' one source said. 

Mogilevich first attracted the attention of Britain's National Criminal 
Intelligence Service through the money-laundering operations of Arbat and an 
associated firm, Arigon. As The Observer exclusively revealed at the time, 
the probe - code-named Operation Sword - led to the arrest of three people, 
including two City solicitors in 1995, and the Alderney operations were shut 
down. The National Criminal Intelligence Service also tipped off the FBI 
about links with YBM Magnex, a major US money-laundering firm which bought 
Arbat and Arigon. Worth $1bn at its peak, YBM was closed down after a raid by 
60 officers of the US Organised Crime Strike Force. 

Operation Sword led directly to Mogilevich's links with the Bank of New York 
branch in the City through YBM's dealings with Benex Worldwide, a customer of 
the US bank based in north London. Benex's sole director, Peter Berlin, a 
Russian, is the husband of a Bank of New York employee, Lucy Edwards, born 
Lyudmila Pritzker, who has now been sacked. Another executive, Svetlana 
Kuryautsev, was fired on Thursday. Both women reported to Natasha Kagalovsky 
in New York and were responsible for opening accounts for Russian banks and 
businesses. All deny any wrongdoing. 

Following assassination warnings, Mogilevich now lives under armed guard in 
Budapest. After his release from a Swiss jail last year, Mikhailov was 
deported to Russia and has reclaimed his position in the Solntsevo gang. 

*****

#7
Washington Post
5 September 1999
[for personal use only]
A LOOK AT . . . Mirror Images
Worlds Apart, And Much The Same
By Leah Bendavid-Val
Leah Bendavid-Val is a senior editor at National Geographic. 

The 1930s, I had always thought, were a time of ideological chasms, when 
countries under the sway of fascism differed profoundly from those adhering 
to communism, which in turn were utterly unlike the democracies. Photography 
appeared to reflect those chasms. American pictures made during the Great 
Depression seemed the epitome of straightforward, truthful documentary. 
Socialist Realist pictures made at the same time were manipulated--they were 
false propaganda.

So I was surprised, to say the least, when I stumbled upon a resemblance 
between the two sets of photos--when it occurred to me that the rural stoics 
photographed in this country by, say, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans looked 
intriguingly like the heroic peasants and workers captured in the USSR by, 
say, Yevgeny Khaldei and Mark Markov-Grinberg and others. It struck me that a 
shot of mighty turbines at the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state had very 
much the same effect as a shot of a gaping cannon mouth at Kronstadt on the 
Baltic Sea.

I discovered these similarities by chance in the spring of 1989, when I went 
to Moscow to work on a National Geographic book titled "The Soviet Union 
Today." It was a heady time. Glasnost was still new, communism was winding 
down, and it seemed possible for ordinary people like myself to move freely 
within this once restricted and therefore exotic country.

In the course of acquainting myself with the profusion of Russian 
photographs, I happened to flip through an old Soviet anthology and stopped 
at some compelling pictures of a farm woman in a field nursing her child. 
Though clearly poor and hard-working, she appeared strong and confident, 
somehow enlarged by her burdens. This was quintessential socialist realism, 
yet it brought to mind American photographs of the same period, especially 
those generated by the Department of Agriculture's Farm Security 
Administration (FSA) under the direction of Roy Emerson Stryker, head of its 
so-called historical section. During the '30s, in both countries, the 
subjects were people we could care about, and the photographs mingled realism 
with romance, albeit in varying ways and degrees.

At first blush, the comparison was an unlikely one. And yet during that era 
the two countries held several important beliefs in common, among them that 
strong actions by powerful governments could improve social conditions, that 
heavy industry and public works could solve economic problems, and that hard, 
gritty labor could be dignified and elevating, rather than demeaning. In 
order to advance this creed and especially the programs intended to implement 
it, both America's New Deal and the Soviet government set out to generate 
suitable photographs. During the '30s, federal agencies hired dozens of 
photographers to capture images that would promote Frankin D. Roosevelt's 
programs, while in the Soviet Union, officials sent out dozens of 
photographers to make pictures that would advocate Joseph Stalin's five-year 
plans and communism in general. (None of this is to suggest, of course, that 
Stalin's repressive regime was in any way comparable to the democracy over 
which Roosevelt presided.)

Early in 1995, I set out to study the Soviet pictures in earnest--a project 
that eventually led to an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 
"Propaganda & Dreams: Photographing the 1930s in the USSR and the US" 
(through Oct. 3), and a book of the same name. In this new, post-Soviet era, 
I thought it would be a simple matter to immerse myself in enormous, 
well-organized archives (everything in Russia is enormous) and feast on the 
rich collections. It turned out that there are great gaps in the Russian 
archives, and they are in disarray. There is a heartbreaking lack of 
resources to preserve them.

But, interestingly for a country in which private property was long suspect, 
much of the work is in the hands of the photographers and their families. 
Either they held on to negatives and prints from the start, or the pictures 
were returned after publication. Some photographs have made their way to 
dealers and collectors, although the 1930s have held less interest for them 
than the avant-garde 1920s or the subsequent war years. Generous Russian 
friends helped me track down material, putting me in touch with families and 
collectors in Moscow, St. Petersburg and elsewhere both inside and outside 
Russia. The owners' nearly boundless readiness to share photographs and 
stories gave the enterprise unexpected emotional meaning. 

At work in the '30s, the photographers must have known about the famine and 
starvation, the repression and executions. But I became convinced that in 
spite of the tough political and economic circumstances, they believed, at 
least for a time, that they were helping build the greatest society on earth.

Khaldei had moved from his Ukrainian hometown to Moscow in 1936. He was young 
and adventurous, and he thought his pictures could make the world a better 
place. His specialty was photographing industry. "And of course I liked to 
photograph people," he said, "since it's people, our people, who create 
things." Khaldei sat on his bed in his one-room apartment and, over morning 
and afternoon glasses of cognac, let me hold his exquisite glass plates. He 
died in 1997 at the age of 80.

Markov-Grinberg photographed a "hero" miner named Nikita Izotov. He told me 
how he admired the miner's accomplishments and aspired to high achievement in 
photography. "I concentrated on nuance," he said. "If I had shifted, 
something entirely different would have come out, a different expression. I 
wanted a resolute head, a bit upraised, looking."

It was important for me to know whether American and Russian photographers 
knew each other's work. For many reasons, I discovered, they did not. 
Nonetheless, despite stylistic contrasts--the tight, cool heroics of many 
Soviet photos versus the offhand intimacy of the American pictures--their 
work displays a remarkable convergence of idealism and a pure love of the 
medium.

The paths to getting photographs published in the two countries, however, 
were quite different. The Soviet method was simply a matter of installing 
resources and procedures to ensure the desired outcome--after all, the 
publications, like the photographs, were directed by the government. In the 
United States, the government-sponsored photographs had to make their own way 
in the marketplace. Proudly independent magazines and newspapers were at 
first skittish about using government pictures, even very good ones. It took 
time and effort to persuade them to run the FSA photographs.

These '30s photographs are still great images aesthetically, but today, when 
it has become fashionable to question the neutrality of all photography, they 
can seem simplistic in their furtherance of governmental doctrine. The other 
difference, of course, is that values have changed. In both Russia and the 
United States, citizens have their doubts about the capability of government 
to solve social problems; public works and heavy industry are no longer at 
the economy's cutting edge; and manual labor does not seem the best way to an 
improved life. In this way, too, the work of New Deal and Socialist Realist 
photographers continues to evoke similarities between their respective 
countries.

******

#8
Voice of America
DATE=9/4/1999
TITLE=ON THE LINE: WHAT NEXT IN RUSSIA

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Anncr: On the Line - a discussion of United 
States policy and contemporary issues. This week, 
"What Next in Russia?" Here is your host, Robert 
Reilly.

Host: Hello and welcome to On the Line.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin recently fired his 
fourth prime minister in less than a year and a 
half. The political disarray has been accompanied 
by revelations of massive corruption among 
Russia's political and economic elites. Meanwhile, 
jockeying has begun for parliamentary elections in 
December and presidential elections next June. 
Through it all, fundamental reform remains 
elusive.

Joining me today to discuss the ongoing turmoil in 
Russia are three experts. Jonas Bernstein is a 
columnist for The Moscow Times and a Moscow-based 
analyst with the Jamestown Foundation. Paul Goble 
is communications director of Radio Free 
Europe/Radio Liberty and a specialist on former 
Soviet republics. And Anders Aslund is senior 
associate at the Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace and a former adviser to the 
Russian government. 

Jonas Bernstein, having recently been in Moscow, 
can you describe, much less explain, the political 
climate?

Bernstein: The political climate has, needless to 
say, heated up in the last few weeks, although the 
summers are usually the doldrums there. It was 
pretty heated up all summer, but particularly in 
the last few weeks because there has been the 
formation of a new political bloc. One is 
Fatherland headed by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, 
which has now allied with a group of regional 
leaders under the name of All-Russia. And former 
prime Minster Yevgeny Primakov has joined them. 
So the political battle is now really shaping up 
between them and whomever the Kremlin decides they 
are going to put forward. 

Host: Have they not already decided?

Bernstein: President Yeltsin did name the new 
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as his heir 
apparent, but, given the amount of times he has 
shifted prime ministers, some people are waiting 
to see what is going to happen. This might not be 
the last prime minister before next year's 
elections.

Host: Paul Goble, with all of these shifts that 
have taken place over the past year and a half in 
Russia, what are they in reaction to or in 
promotion of, or can one discern purposes such as 
those?

Goble: I think it is very dangerous to try to 
give a single explanation for everything that has 
happened. There are a number of actors at work. 
Clearly, Yeltsin is looking beyond his own term in 
office and trying to make sure that once he leaves 
office he does not go to prison, or his family 
either. Second, there is obviously grave concern 
about where Russia is going. Russia has had 
enormous economic and political difficulties, and 
Yeltsin has not found any solution that seems to 
work, and he keeps looking around. Third, while in 
established democracies election times tend to be 
a time when things quiet down in terms of decision 
making, in emerging democracies, as Russia is, 
what we see is the possibility that political 
alliances could lead to radical shifts as people 
try to position themselves either to advance their 
own political goals or to prevent others from the 
same thing. So what we are seeing, I believe, is 
a certain amount of positioning to try to prevent 
or to advance particular goals, because the state 
is too weak to have an institutionalized inertia 
through an electoral period. 

Host: Anders Aslund, what is your view?

Aslund: This is a time when we have a lot of very 
different things happening, and it is hard to say 
what will be considered important in one year's 
time. Is this a time when corruption is getting 
out of hand, or is this a time when corruption is 
being revealed?

Host: What is your answer, since that is one of 
the issues in the headlines with the Bank of New 
York and revelations of money laundering, capital 
flight, or whatever is taking place?

Aslund: My guess is that we are seeing a cleaning 
up, that all this knowledge has been there before, 
but now we are seeing it really coming to a 
crunch. Clearly some people will be ousted, 
probably quite a few people will be put into 
prison, at long last, for serous crimes. But that 
is only my guess. 

Host: One of the discouraging comments about 
Russia today is that it has become a kind of 
criminal state, that you cannot distinguish 
between the Mafia and the government, that 
corruption is endemic, that eighty percent of the 
businesses, according to the interior ministry, 
pay protection, and that there really are no clean 
hands left. Is that an exaggeration, Jonas 
Bernstein, or is there a real reform party 
somewhere in Russia?

Bernstein: I think that is not an exaggeration, 
and I would also add that it is not a new story. 
I think that it is just that it is coming out now. 
There have never been really the slightest 
elements of what you would call the rule of law, 
of an independent judiciary, of protection of 
private property and private businesses, et 
cetera. And these features have really been 
present from the beginning. As a matter of fact, a 
number of the features went back prior to the 
collapse of the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev 
reform period. And I think that it is true to say 
that the corruption is endemic and rampant, but it 
has been for quite a long time. I think that just 
now we are starting to get more of an idea of what 
exactly has gone on.

Host: Paul Goble?

Gobel: I think Anders has it exactly right. I 
think that because finally people are talking 
about it. For a long time all of this information 
was available if you went to look for it, but it 
was not focused on by the Russian people or by the 
American government, let's be clear. There was a 
tendency to say, well these are just part of the 
growing pains of a shift from a Communist system 
to capitalism and democracy. And I think now there 
is a recognition that what has happened in Russia 
is not so simple as that. There are some things 
that have gone very, very wrong. And I do hope 
that the next year will see a winnowing out of 
some of the people who are guilty. I fear, 
however, that whoever comes to power through the 
Duma elections later this year, or the 
presidential vote next summer, that the people who 
come to power are not going to have completely 
clean hands either. And it is going to be 
important to us as we go through the next twelve 
to eighteen months to try to be very careful in 
saying, yes, we have one set of a criminal element 
that has now been put behind bars or excluded from 
political life, but the reality is going to be 
that the who people are going to come are not 
going to have clean hands either and we are going 
to have to deal with them anyway.

Host: There are estimates in terms of capital 
flight of from three hundred and sixty to three 
hundred and eighty billion dollars that has moved 
out of Russia since 1991. Maybe the figure is even 
higher. However, when the Duma passed recently a 
law against money laundering - in fact they passed 
it twice - Boris Yeltsin on both occasions vetoed 
it. What does this tell you about the political 
willingness within the political establishment to 
do something serious, when money laundering isn't 
even illegal?

Aslund: I do not know here exactly why Yeltsin 
vetoed it. It might have been good; it might have 
been bad. But the fundamental problem is that you 
have far too much state intervention in Russia. We 
are talking about capital flight. Would you put 
your money into a Russian bank? I would not. Would 
you hold it at home? Not very pleasant, because if 
you have a few thousand dollars lying somewhere 
where somebody knows, you will have a burglary and 
you will lose the money. The only safe way of 
keeping money for ordinary Russians is abroad. And 
this is the fundamental situation.

Goble: I think that there are several things 
going on. One, individual Russians, that is 
certainly a rational calculation, but also a lot 
of the capital flight has been the result of value 
stripping of assets, of the oligarchs going in and 
selling off assets, and then exporting the 
capital. The tragedy of Russia is that we do not 
have robber baron capitalism where the people are 
violating the law but building things. We have 
what the World Bank has occasionally called robber 
capitalism, where the people who are the new 
owners, having acquired ownership by criminal 
means or at least corrupt means, are then value 
stripping, selling things off, degrading the 
country's economy and its prospects for the 
future, and shipping the assets in massive amounts 
abroad.

Host: But that too is an old story. What, in the 
coming parliamentary campaign and perhaps the 
upcoming presidential campaign, is going to be 
addressed seriously by these coalitions that are 
in formation as we speak? For instance, you 
mentioned that Mayor Luzhkov of Moscow has aligned 
himself with Yevgeny Primakov and regional 
governors, and that the Yeltsin camp, whatever 
constitutes that today, is shaken up by the fact 
that there is a real political opposition. Are 
these groups just forming to divide what is left 
of a smaller pie, or is there a program for 
reform? Is there a program for creating a Russia 
where people would want to keep their money in the 
bank?

Bernstein: I am afraid that it is the former, that 
they are fighting over a dwindling pie. The 
problem with the issue of corruption in Russia is 
that, while it gets covered in the Russian press 
frequently, it is used by the media, which is 
increasingly controlled by these oligarchs and 
financial and industrial groups, as a weapon 
against their foes, the other oligarchs. The 
problem is that nothing ever gets done about it. 
It is used as a political weapon to attack your 
foe, but when it comes to the issue of really 
prosecuting people for these crimes, it happens 
very, very rarely. 

Host: What does a candidate say in Russia today 
that will attract voter support in parliamentary 
elections? What sort of rhetoric are they using?

Goble: They certainly have to address the problem 
of corruption because people are talking about it, 
and he has probably been accused of being corrupt 
himself. So he is going to lash back and say these 
people are even more corrupt than any of my people 
are. And while this may produce cynicism at one 
level, on the other hand I think it is terribly 
important that it is being talked about. I think 
we are watching the beginning of the creation of 
certain expectations that this behavior is wrong. 
While we all knew in the West, and while people 
who wanted to pay attention in Moscow knew about 
this old story five, six and seven years ago, the 
fact is that, when people are talking about it 
every day on television, every day in the 
newspapers, you are beginning to create 
expectations in the population that something will 
eventually be done. Will it happen as a result of 
this electoral cycle? I doubt very much. Will it 
create demands for something to be done in the 
next Duma or further afield? I'm almost certain it 
will.

Host: Anders Aslund, Paul Goble already referred 
to the hope in the early days, in the early 90s, 
that even the people who were looting the Russian 
state would use the loot in a productive, creative 
way, instead of just shipping it out of the 
country, which is what they seem to have done. 
However, you have pointed out that since the ruble 
devaluation a year ago and the Russian default on 
their loans, the sky has not fallen and that 
actually the Russian economy may even have started 
to grow. How could that have happened?

Aslund: If you look at the economic policy of the 
last year, it has barely existed. It has been 
totally passive. To the extent there has been 
economic policy, it has been keeping the budget 
under control because otherwise it was obvious 
that there would be a full-fledged economic 
catastrophe. But this has had, it seems right now, 
a positive effect on Russian enterprises. They 
have realized that they cannot get money from the 
government any longer and they cannot even hope 
for it. So they have all of a sudden, on a 
significant scale, started working for the market. 
And in Moscow today you can find a lot of decent, 
cheap restaurants that did not exist before. You 
can find decent Russian goods in the shops that 
did not get into Moscow before. And this is a 
positive sign.

Host: And Russian imports have fallen by almost 
fifty percent, and they have a surplus in exports.

Aslund: Russia has a huge trade surplus. It was 
thirteen billion dollars during the first half of 
this year, and industrial production was actually 
up by thirteen percent in July. Part of this is 
because there was such a huge fall last year; part 
of it is because of a massive devaluation; and 
part of it is because of the higher oil price that 
benefits Russia. But there is also something more. 
We are seeing that the economy is changing 
qualitatively. We have all heard about the massive 
barter in Russia, that enterprises pay each other 
with goods rather than money. They are doing so 
ever less now, month by month. We have heard a lot 
that Russian enterprises do not pay each other. 
Now, all of a sudden, they have started doing so 
to a much greater extent. Recently there has been 
a petro crisis in agriculture. Why? Because 
enterprises refuse to deliver petrol to the farms 
because they are notorious for not paying with 
money. So these are basically positive things we 
are seeing. Enterprises are fighting for money and 
they are providing what the market wants.

Host: Jonas Bernstein, do you sense any of that 
having an impact on the life of the Russians in 
any daily way? What is their view of things? Are 
they more or less overcome by the repeated 
disappointments?

Bernstein: I certainly think that is true. In 
other words, you had the August '98 devaluation. 
You also had the October 1994 devaluation. They 
had monetary reforms going back into the Soviet 
period. They have been repeatedly, the way they 
feel it, ripped off by the government. You had the 
savings loss during the inflation in 1992-93. 
That's on the one hand. So I think the skepticism 
in the average Russian is as deep as you can 
possibly imagine. On the other hand, there is some 
talk by some people of the meritorious effect of 
the devaluation having stimulated some domestic 
growth and industry. But I would also note that 
some observers, like the Fitch I. B. C. credit 
agency, said they were not sure that this effect 
would not start to wear off, and that, given the 
capital flight, given the fact that there is very 
little foreign investment and that they estimated 
that one hundred and thirty billion dollars is 
offshore, it would not make a qualitative 
difference, a sort of a breakthrough in the 
economy. 

Host: Paul Goble, where does this leave the 
International Monetary Fund, where does it leave 
U.S. policy?

Goble: I think it is going to be very, very 
difficult to get much political support for the 
United States giving more money to the I.M.F. to 
give to Russia. It's simply going to be more 
difficult with the charges of corruption that are 
now getting so much play.

Host: The American treasury secretary has 
recently said there should not be any more loans.

Goble: One Russian official responded that he was 
not quite sure what the treasury secretary of the 
United States actually was going to be looking for 
in what he said, so we will have to see how that 
plays out. But politically, charges that the 
Russians have misused money in corrupt ways or 
siphoned it off to offshore banks is going to make 
it very difficult for the American contribution to 
go up. It may very well lead to expanded tension 
between the United States and Western Europe over 
what to do with respect to Russia. And I think you 
are going to see, as the electoral process goes on 
in Russia, some of the regional splits in Russia 
between Moscow, which has been doing relatively 
well and where you do see the market taking off, 
and much of the rest of the country, where you 
cannot describe that at all. And there are going 
to be a number of candidates who are going to be 
running for the Duma and perhaps a candidate 
running for president who will be calling 
attention to the fact that it is all very well --
what you see in Moscow -- but what is out in 
Vladivostok or Irkutsk is something very, very 
different. And there you are talking about people 
advocating greater state intervention precisely 
because there are so many disasters. That is going 
to get played back here too, and that is going to 
make it harder for the West to make a contribution 
through the I-M-F as well.

Host: Right, but contributions through the I-M-F 
do not define the limits of U.S. policy. Looking 
back on this, do we conclude that American policy 
toward Russia has failed in a fundamental way, 
Anders Aslund?

Aslund: Frankly, I do not think that Russia was 
there to be lost for the U.S. I think that this is 
a massive exaggeration of how much the U.S. could 
influence Russia. To my mind, there was one time 
that the U.S. could have really made a difference, 
that was the first quarter of 1992. If the Bush 
administration had made a big support package for 
the real reformers in the Russian government, it 
could have made a difference. At the time, the 
Bush administration did not do a thing for Russia 
and that's when it was important. And what we have 
seen afterwards is quite a bit of U.S. remorse 
that the U.S. did not act when it was possible. 
And then the U.S. tried to do a little bit. It has 
never been very important, and I do not think it 
has been harmful. I do not think it has been very 
useful either. 

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have 
this week. I would like to thank our guests -- 
Jonas Bernstein from the Jamestown Foundation; 
Paul Goble from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; 
and Anders Aslund from the Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace-- for joining me to discuss 
the ongoing turmoil in Russia. This is Robert 
Reilly for On the Line. 

******