December 15, 1999    
This Date's Issues: 3682 • 3683  • 3684

Johnson's Russsia List
#3683
15 December 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. Interfax: KOVALYOV: WEST MUST PUT PRESSURE ON BOTH RUSSIA, CHECHNYA.
2. Newsweek International: Igor Malashenko, The New Russian Isolationism. 
A wave of anti-Western bitterness and anger is building, and self-serving 
politicians are seeking to exploit it for all it's worth.
3. Moscow Times: Sarah Karush, MT Poll: Shoigu's Bloc Is Soaring.
4. Interfax: GORBACHEV CRITICIZES ROLE OF MEDIA IN CURRENT ELECTION 
CAMPAIGN.
5. Reuters: Elizabeth Piper, Politics not welcome down on Russian farm.
6. Itar-Tass: Russian Human Rights Commissioner Dwells on Chechen Events.
7. The Independent (UK): Patrick Cockburn, Splits with extremists hit
morale in Grozny.
8. Voice of America: Eve Conant reports from St. Petersburg on election. 
9. Moscow Times EDITORIAL: When State Television Rules Voters.
10. Janet Vaillant: education.
11. Philadelphia Inquirer: Gwynne Dyer, Despite efforts to spin the truth, 
Russia's the bad guy in Chechnya.
12. Obshchaya Gazeta: Vyacheslav Nikonov, Who Wants To Buy a 'Bear' in a 
Poke? (Unity Party Likely Duma Contingent Examined)] 


*******


#1
KOVALYOV: WEST MUST PUT PRESSURE ON BOTH RUSSIA, CHECHNYA


MOSCOW. Dec 14 (Interfax) - Well-known human rights activist and
State Duma Deputy Sergei Kovalyov on Tuesday said that the West must put
pressure on both Russia and the Chechens in order to get the conflict
settled.
He described the current Western position on Chechnya as
hypocritical. "The West must build up pressure on the federal government
and demand that it terminate the military operation in Chechnya," he
said at a meeting commemorating the tenth anniversary of the death of
Academician Andrei Sakharov.
At the same time, the West must also put growing pressure on the
Chechen side and demand that it terminate the bloody kidnapping business
and that those involved in it be punished, he said.
Moreover, guarantees must be provided that "civilized laws will be
used in Chechnya," he said, adding that talks with Chechen President
Aslan Maskhadov should be held in order to settle the conflict.
He admitted that "the position of many members of the Right-Wing
Forces' Union," with which he is affiliated, "is far from perfect" since
"the war in Chechnya is supported by a large segment of the population."
"It is not that the Russian public does not know that human rights are
being violated in Chechnya. The trouble is that it accepts this," he
said.
"Democracy in Russia is in a state of acute crisis," said Kovalyov.
Duma Deputy Valery Borshchev, the chairman of the Human Rights
Chamber of the presidential political consultative center, said that the
state "is ruining the human-rights movement in Russia."
"We are going through a critical period during which the human
rights movement will survive or will be forced to go underground once
again," he said at a roundtable conference on human rights in Russia and
on the tenth anniversary of Sakharov's death.


*******


#2
Newsweek International
December 20, 1999
[for personal use only]
The New Russian Isolationism 
A wave of anti-Western bitterness and anger is building, and self-serving 
politicians are seeking to exploit it for all it's worth
By Igor Malashenko
Malashenko is a political strategist with Media Most, which publishes the 
weekly magazine Itogi in cooperation with NEWSWEEK.


After 10 years of experimentation with political democracy and market 
economics, the Russian public and the Russian elite are disillusioned with 
both. Today many Russians equate democracy with crime and disorder, and the 
market economy with corruption and poverty. Who do they blame for that? Boris 
Yeltsin, of course, and his reformers—and their supporters in the West. 
Distrust of the West skyrocketed during the NATO operation in Kosovo, which 
was portrayed by key Kremlin leaders as an assault on Russian national 
interests. After
the war, public opinion slowly returned to pre-Kosovo attitudes. But a 
visceral perception of the West as an alien and hostile force remains. It has 
been stoked recently by the criticism, from Bill Clinton and various European 
leaders, of Russia's brutal assault on Chechnya. As a result, a broke and 
belligerent Russia seems to be turning ever more inward, encouraged by 
leaders who deliberately encourage and exploit nationalistic and xenophobic 
sentiments for their own advantage.


Moscow is waging the war in Chechnya not as a military but as a political 
campaign. Its declared goal is to destroy all the terrorists and guerrillas 
on Chechen territory. But this cannot be achieved by the indiscriminate use 
of force; that strategy leads to a disproportionately high number of civilian 
casualties and a relatively low level of losses among Chechen guerrillas. The 
real goal of the war in Chechnya is power in Moscow itself, and its top prize 
is the presidency. Think of it as a war of succession. The Kremlin has 
officially anointed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the official successor to 
Boris Yeltsin, and the war in Chechnya should ensure his victory in the 
presidential election in June 2000. The war is still widely supported by the 
Russian public; so is Putin.


That's fine for now. Kremlin strategists realize, however, that enthusiasm 
for Putin and the war could evaporate if the military operation in Chechnya 
fails to produce a quick and decisive victory or the official body count of 
Russian troops grows too high. To avert this threat, the Kremlin is trying to 
undermine and silence its political opponents, and to manipulate and censor 
TV stations and newspapers under its control. Putin and his supporters are 
willing to put relations with the West at risk to remain completely 
unrestrained domestically, to use any amount of force in Chechnya and to rig 
elections or shut down TV stations and newspapers that criticize the 
government line. Moreover, some of Putin's strategists have apparently 
advised him to take the initiative and respond to Western criticism with 
extremely tough rhetoric of his own. Yeltsin seems to agree with this tactic; 
witness his harsh anti-Clinton performance in China. As long as world oil 
prices remain relatively high, Kremlin strategists believe, a showdown with 
the West is not only desirable but also affordable. This misperception is 
reinforced by the traditional Russian belief in the country's inexhaustible 
natural riches.


An expanding political coalition supports this new isolationism. It is an 
unlikely combination of discredited reformers who blame the West for their 
failures, die-hard proponents of a centralized economy, a growing number of 
political leaders with KGB backgrounds and nearly bankrupt "oligarchs," such 
as Boris Berezovsky and others. All of them share a common interest in 
fencing Russia off from the West's annoying and intrusive influence.


A Russia increasingly isolated from the West will need new political allies. 
It is on the prowl for them. Last week Boris Yeltsin and Belarus leader 
Aleksandr Lukashenko—famous for his aggressive anti-Westernism—signed a
new 
Union treaty. There is also a real danger that Russia will cooperate with 
regimes in Iran and Iraq in such areas as arms sales and technology transfer. 
The Western response to such initiatives is quite predictable—and would
cost 
Russia dearly. Left out of the "modern" world, Russia would lag farther and 
farther behind industrialized countries, and even some in the Third World.


Is a period of Russian isolationism inevitable? That's unclear; though it is 
on the rise, there still is no overwhelming anti-Western consensus. In fact, 
a substantial segment of the public still supports improved relations with 
the West and is mostly immune to xenophobia. Many members of the elite 
understand quite well that isolation from the West is a dead end. However, it 
is not certain that they are strong enough to fend off the isolationist 
surge. Even if they are not, there is little doubt that sooner or later 
Russia would have to admit once again that isolation solves nothing. But by 
then it may be too late to restore itself as a viable and competitive nation.


******


#3
Moscow Times
December 15, 1999 
MT Poll: Shoigu's Bloc Is Soaring 
By Sarah Karush
Staff Writer


The pro-government Unity bloc and the Communists are neck and neck for the 
top spot in the new State Duma, according to a Moscow Times poll. 


The poll of 1,278 people across Russia was conducted over the first 10 days 
of December by the Institute for Comparative Social Research, or CESSI. 


It shows the Communists with 19 percent of the vote and Unity, also known as 
Medved, with 17.6 percent. The third-place party, Fatherland-All Russia, was 
chosen by only 9.2 percent of respondents. 


Unity's share of the vote has skyrocketed in recent weeks, jumping from the 
single digits in late November. 


While conventional wisdom has it that Unity is simply riding the coattails of 
wildly popular Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who voiced his support for the 
bloc, the campaign against Fatherland-All Russia being waged by the 
pro-Kremlin media seems to be playing a role as well. 


"Unity's success is not about the popularity of [Unity leader Sergei] Shoigu, 
although he has a very good image. Rather, it's connected to the dirt being 
poured on Fatherland," CESSI director Vladimir Andreyenkov said. 


Pro-Kremlin media, led by ORT anchor Sergei Dorenko, have been leading a 
ruthless attack on Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, No. 2 on Fatherland-All 
Russia's list, accusing him, among other things, of arranging the murder of 
American businessman Paul Tatum in late 1996. 


Although some of the accusations may, in fact, be true, the tone of Dorenko's 
show has more in common with Soviet propaganda than straight news reporting. 


But according to the Moscow Times poll, 19 percent of those interviewed said 
they completely trust the media's accusations against Luzhkov, while 31 
percent said they trust them somewhat. And while 44 percent said the 
accusations were aimed at decreasing Fatherland-All Russia's chances in the 
election and 14 percent characterized them as an attempt by Luzhkov's 
opponents to gain more power, 27 percent said the accusations are part of 
"the fight against corruption." 


A key to the success of ORT's anti-Luzhkov campaign is that it is the 
television station that reaches the most Russians. 


Forty-five percent of respondents said they trust ORT more than any other 
station, as opposed to 28 percent for privately owned NTV. 


But, asked to evaluate NTV's objectivity, 28 percent said they were unsure f 
likely an indication that many simply don't have the opportunity to watch it. 


One unintended beneficiary of the so-called media wars may be the Communists, 
who have been able to stay above the fray. 


They are are the only bloc with a party structure in place, and since they 
are not the target of the Kremlin's wrath during this campaign, they are free 
to go about the business of getting the vote out among the party faithful. 


"The Kremlin is busy trying to limit Luzhkov," Andreyenkov said. 


Polling has come under fire lately in Russia, with many people claiming the 
results are skewed and are used to manipulate public opinion. 


This fall, NTV anchor Yevgeny Kiselyov declared he would no longer show 
polling data on his weekly analytical show, "Itogi." 


But Andreyenkov said a big part of the problem is the inability of 
journalists like Kiselyov to interpret polling data properly and their 
penchant for so-called interactive polls f when viewers call in or vote on 
the Internet f which "have nothing in common with real polls." 


If the poll turns out to be an accurate prediction of Sunday's voting f and 
much could change before then, especially among the 15.4 percent who say they 
are still undecided f several other parties will make it into the Duma, 
parliament's lower house. 


The poll predicts 6.5 percent of the party-list vote will go to Yabloko, 6.4 
percent to Union of Right Forces and 5.9 percent to the Zhirinovsky Bloc. 


Andreyenkov predicted that Women of Russia, who came in at 3.2 percent, would 
also rack up enough extra votes to break the required 5 percent barrier. In 
the 1995 Duma elections, Women of Russia received 4.61 percent of the vote. 


"They're not very active in the campaign, but their name works by itself," he 
said. 


Yury Levada, head of the All-Russia Center for Public Opinion Research, said 
his polls have been showing a similar breakdown, with the Communists slightly 
higher at 26 percent. 


The ROMIR research center found Unity ahead of the Communists with 21.9 
percent vs. 17.7 percent in a poll conducted Dec. 4 and 5. 


Levada said the success of Unity has nothing to do with the party's platform 
f which remains a mystery to most of the electorate. 


"The people who are for Unity are those who used to support Fatherland. In 
[political] orientation, this is the same group," Levada said, adding that 
the campaign simply amounted to a personality contest. 


Andreyenkov said the poll was conducted by professional interviewers who made 
house-to-house visits on a random basis in 70 cities, towns and villages. 
Such polls generally have a margin of error of 3 percent, he said. 


Andreyenkov said that while the results of the poll looked like a realistic 
prediction of Sunday's voting, things could change. 


"We don't know what else the television will bring, what exposÎs, what dirt," 
he said. 


The Moscow Times also requested that CESSI ask people their opinion about the 
war in Chechnya. Twenty percent said they strongly support the government 
policy, and 44 percent said they support it somewhat. 


On the other side, 14 percent said they are somewhat opposed, and 9 percent 
said they strongly oppose it. Thirteen percent said they were unsure. 


******


#4
GORBACHEV CRITICIZES ROLE OF MEDIA IN CURRENT ELECTION CAMPAIGN


ST.PETERSBURG. Dec 14 (Interfax-Northwest) - Ex-Soviet president
Mikhail Gorbachev told Interfax in St.Petersburg on Tuesday that it is
extremely dangerous "to use the mass media as a means of provocation in
the election struggle." Gorbachev arrived in St.Petersburg to attend a
meeting of the Organizing Committee of the All-Russia Social-Democratic
Party.
He said he is deeply worried by the situation on the eve of the
parliamentary elections. "Instead of doing explanatory work, television
is showing squabbles and political mud," he said.
He expressed the hope that "the Russian citizens who have gone
through so many trials have become much more experienced and will make a
correct choice."
Speaking about the Supreme Court decision to cancel mayoral
elections in St.Petersburg on December 19, Gorbachev said that "the
situation in the most cultured and intellectual Russian city,
unfortunately, reflects the general situation in Russia." He warned the
residents and authorities of St.Petersburg against attempts to resist
this decision. "One must be guided by the supremacy of the law and of
the court verdict," said Gorbachev.


*******


#5
Politics not welcome down on Russian farm
By Elizabeth Piper

SHCHYOKINO, Russia, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Welcome to ``The New Life'' -- a 
sprawling farm south of Moscow where no one smokes, everyone knows each other 
and no one trusts pre-election promises. 


Three hundred people live in Novaya Zhizn (The New Life), a typical Soviet 
collective farm where everyone mucks in to make milk and sour cream, dig up 
potatoes and harvest wheat. 


It is a place where politicians and their campaigning ahead of a December 19 
parliamentary poll are simply unwelcome. 


``What do politicians do for us?'' said Valery Danilin, the farm's 
ruddy-cheeked chairman. 


``Germans offer us money, but our own government doesn't, they are more 
concerned with taking it away,'' he says, complaining that the government's 
punitive tax regime and disregard for agriculture have forced him to slow 
down his development plans for the 3,700 hectare farm. 


It was a common view on the collective farm, where people condemn the new 
generation of politicians as much as they do Soviet dictator Josef Stalin who 
introduced the forced collectivisation of agriculture in 1927. 


They say they are working hard to make collectivisation work, a policy which 
under Stalin led to years of famine across the Soviet Union in which millions 
of people died. 


``Our cows are more intelligent than the politicians you see on television,'' 
one woman said, smiling as she showed off packets of fresh milk produced at 
the farm just outside Tula, 160 km (100 miles) south of Moscow. 


``This really is the new life -- we get paid on time and there's fresh milk 
every day,'' she said. ``They can't offer anyone this.'' 


She intended to stay home for the election, in which more than two dozen 
parties are competing for seats in the State Duma lower house of parliament. 


POLITICIANS HAVE NO TASTE FOR POTATOES 


This farm produces tonnes of potatoes, wheat and milk every year, but the 
workers say their job is made no easier by today's politicians. 


``I cannot see anyone running in the election who will support or protect 
agriculture,'' Danilin said. ``There are no new ideas and, in my opinion, at 
the moment all they want to do is to get one over each other.'' 


Danilin, who has lived and worked on the collective farm for over 20 years, 
says the collection of cow sheds, expansive fields and pasteurising 
facilities is working well. It made a profit of about 30 million roubles 
($1.2 million) this year. 


The farm, which is slowly becoming modernised with the help of technology and 
machinery from the West, looks after its workers, he says, adding that his 
workers get regular wages unlike many in other collective farms in Russia. 


``It's hard work in winter, but we have doctors. If anything happens to 
someone there are people who will help,'' he said. ``We care about our 
workers, while today's politicians have forgotten about the people.'' 


Danilin said the West should stop throwing good money away by giving loans to 
the government. They should invest in concrete concerns, he said. 


``If Western creditors gave us money, I mean groups of people with ideas, 
instead of the government, we would use it and would pay it back with 
interest,'' Danilin said, echoing the views of many people in the region who 
say politicians cannot be trusted. 


Parties from the free market right to the Stalinist left, with 
environmentalists and ultra-nationalists, are competing for votes in the 
parliamentary poll, widely seen as a trial run for next June's presidential 
election. 


``They say lots of things before elections, they make promises and then it 
all disappears when they get in. They just want power,'' one taxi driver said 
in Tula's town centre. 


POLITICIANS -- KEEP YOUR NOSES OUT 


Danilin says politicians should keep their noses out of agricultural issues 
when the conversation turns to the much-touted introduction of a land code, 
something Russia has not been able to work out since the fall of communism. 


Reformist leaders have been struggling to resolve the land question -- there 
are no laws governing the sale and purchase of land. President Boris Yeltsin 
insists on the free sale of land, saying it is part of his crusade against 
the Communists' legacy. 


But Danilin and his workers strongly disagree, saying a wholesale sell-off of 
land will lead to agriculture's downfall. 


``Russia has always been agrarian, and to sell off its riches all in one go 
could see land getting into the wrong hands,'' he said. 


``Sell it to those who can do something with it, or let the farmers who work 
the land well use their profits to buy it gradually. Agriculture cannot go 
the same way as industry,'' he said, referring to Russia's controversial 
privatisation programme. 


Danilin and other workers said they were not alarmed by the split in the 
Agrarian party, Russia's farmers' party. 


Many Agrarians left the party's traditional alliance with the Communist 
Party, moving over to the powerful Fatherland-All Russia bloc led by former 
Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. 


``They were good at making promises before elections and then forgetting 
them,'' Danilin said, adding that the Agrarians had rarely defended 
agriculture in the Duma. 


Danilin blames Yeltsin for most of Russia's troubles. ``Yeltsin took away the 
faith. He never felt for the people,'' Danilin said. ``We already know who 
will be president, nothing's changed since communist times.'' 


*******


#6
Russian Human Rights Commissioner Dwells on Chechen Events.


GENEVA, December 14 (Itar-Tass) - The West's criticism of Moscow actions in 
Chechnya is explained with "the ignorance of the actual standing and double 
standards," Russian Human Rights Commissioner Oleg Mironov said at a news 
conference in Geneva on Tuesday. He described as "short-sighted" the stand of 
politicians trying to put pressure on Russia. 


When meeting Swiss Foreign Minister Joseph Deiss in Bern on Monday, Mironov 
told him about the situation in Chechnya and the terror unleashed by the 
gunmen. The future meeting with U.N. High Commissioner for Mary Robinson in 
Geneva is also expected to fill in the blank spaces in information about 
Chechnya. Back on November 16 Robinson made a statement presenting the 
anti-terror campaign of the Russian federal troops in a distorted light. The 
demarche of Robinson caused a strong protest of the Russian Foreign Ministry. 


The Russian authorities denied Robinson's envoy a trip to the Northern 
Caucasus. Mironov wants to get a permission for the trip and is ready to 
accompany the envoy. He hopes that the envoy will meet average Chechens, 
affected by the Chechen regime of the past few years, make sure of the 
rightfulness of the anti-terror methods and inform Robinson about the 
developments correctly. 


In the words of correspondents accredited in Geneva, Mary Robinson showed an 
inclination to double standards during the NATO aggression against 
Yugoslavia. She criticized the Yugoslav authorities and either ignored or 
briefly mentioned the sufferings of Serbs -- victims of the NATO barbarian 
bombing. 


Asked by Itar-Tass about reasons for the hypocrisy of certain Western 
leaders, who have trampled upon the international law by the aggression 
against sovereign Yugoslavia and now try to interfere in the internal affairs 
of Russia by accusing it of the violation of human rights, Mironov said 
"peace will be brought to Chechnya despite somebody's wish to have an 
explosion-prone point on the map of Russia and in Europe." 


Bearing in mind the Western campaign of blackening Russia, the Human Rights 
Commissioner explained that the Caucasian developments had "a complex set of 
reasons" and were influenced by "the history, the religion, the nationality." 
One shall be very cautious because incorrect assessments "may just harm the 
normalization in the Northern Caucasus," Mironov said. 


*******


#7
The Independent (UK)
15 December 1999
[for personal use only]
Splits with extremists hit morale in Grozny 
Demoralisation spreads among 1,200 Chechen fighters left in besieged capital 
as conflict boosts Putin's presidential campaign 
By Patrick Cockburn on the Chechen border 


Divisions with Islamic extremists and fears that the Russian army will use 
chemical weapons have demoralised the guerrillas besieged in Grozny, the 
Chechen capital. 


Rustam Kaliev, an experienced Chechen journalist, met the rebels – whose 
numbers have fallen to about 1,200 men – before he escaped from the city 
early yesterday morning by crawling through a tunnel under a railway 
embankment, on top of which were Russian troops. 


Mr Kaliev says that people in Grozny express hatred towards Shamil Basayev, 
the Chechen military commander allied to the Islamic extremists known as 
Wahhabis, who left the city last week. They blame him for providing Moscow 
with a pretext for launching the war, now in its third month, by invading the 
neighbouring Russian republic of Dagestan in August. 


Refugees confirm reports of deep popular anger against the Wahhabis, of whom 
the most famous leader is Khatab, a Saudi Arabian, who first appeared in 
Chechnya in 1995. They have never had widespread support but have significant 
financial resources, apparently sent from abroad, and they are heavily armed. 
Their Arabic version of Islam is very different from the traditional beliefs 
of the Chechens. 


Mr Kaliev, who spoke to many guerrillas and local leaders in Grozny, said 
they expressed as much hatred towards the extremists as they did towards the 
Russians. He said: "They blame the Wahhabis for abandoning Urus-Martan [a 
strategically vital town south of the capital] without a fight." 


There were reports of skirmishing between the Federation's army and 
guerrillas on the outskirts of Grozny yesterday, but for the most part the 
battle lines of the two sides are about a mile apart. 


A 12-man Russian reconnaissance unit did penetrate at the weekend to Minutka 
Square, a strategic point slightly higher than the rest of the city, but it 
was decimated, with seven or eight men killed. Chechen fighters said a report 
that federal losses were much higher was exaggerated. 


The army said yesterday that its troops had cleared the guerrillas from 
Shali, the last town held by Chechen fighters on the plains and located about 
nine miles south-east of Grozny. 


Other guerrillas have retreated into the mountains. So far, military 
casualties on both sides have been limited because the Russian Federation has 
relied on its superior fire power and has made few ground attacks. 


Mr Kaliev said there was a pervasive fear in Grozny that it would be the 
target of chemical weapons. Guerrillas fled their trenches in one sector of 
the front last week when a cloud of toxic gas, which may have escaped from an 
industrial plant hit by a shell, killed six civilians. Troops immediately 
occupied their positions. 


The Russian army has admitted issuing to its soldiers medical antidotes to 
chemical weapons, claiming that the latter might be used by the guerrillas. 


>From the beginning of the war, the Chechens hoped that Russian military units 
would take heavy losses by becoming involved in street fighting in the 
capital, but they have become dispirited by Moscow's reliance on relentless 
air and artillery attack. The federal army denied yesterday that it was 
pressing home ground attacks on Grozny. 


The number of fighters in the city has sunk to about 1,200, far lower than 
previous estimates, according to Mr Kaliev, an experienced military observer. 
He said many left at the start of the month, just before federal forces 
completed their encirclement of the city. Some had headed for the mountains 
to start guerrilla war, while others had gone to their home villages in the 
Russian-occupied zone. 


Mr Kaliev's own escape was dramatic. With two friends, he walked for four 
hours through the night protected by thick fog. Knowing they would have to 
crawl through the freezing mud to get past Russian sentries, they had covered 
themselves with plastic sacking. They were afraid that this might crackle as 
they moved so they wore another layer of clothes over the plastic. 


"I have never been so frightened in my life," Mr Kaliev said. "Chechen and 
Russian snipers were firing at each other across no-man's land and both were 
likely to target us." Finally, he and his friends were able to make their way 
to a village still not occupied by the Russians. 


Few of the civilians still in Grozny are leaving through the safety corridors 
promised by Moscow. The men are frightened that they will be arrested as 
rebels at the first checkpoint and many have no documents after years of war 
and hostile relations between Chechnya and Russia. Mr Kaliev said: "I visited 
cellars where people were hiding and there were the same people in them as 
when I last saw them a month ago." 


Surprisingly, Chechens are optimistic about the prospect of at least a 
partial Russian withdrawal next year, calculating that the invasion is part 
of the electoral campaign of the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, to 
succeed Boris Yeltsin in the forthcoming presidential election. 


******


#8
Voice of America
DATE=12/14/1999
TITLE=RUSSIA / ELECTIONS
BYLINE=EVE CONANT
DATELINE=ST. PETERSBURG


///// ED'S: THE FIRST OF FOUR REPORTS FROM ST. 
PETERSBURG ABOUT RUSSIA'S PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS SUNDAY, 
DECEMBER 19TH. /////
INTRO: Russia's parliamentary elections are only days 
away and campaigning is in its final stage. 
Candidates are touching on similar themes -- the need 
for strong leadership, a cooling of relations with the 
west, and an easing of painful economic reforms. 
Correspondent Eve Conant visited Russia's second-
largest city -- St. Petersburg, where candidates are 
trying to win votes among a traditionally liberal-minded populace.
TEXT: Colorful political advertisements dot the snowy 
avenues of St. Petersburg. One party promises a 
professional army -- a popular move as Russians 
contemplate just how many of their young men might die 
in Moscow's Chechnya offensive.Anti-western rhetoric also is a 
popular topic. 
Campaign literature for the Russian People's Union 
includes a drawing of a rat in a tuxedo, carting off 
Russia's natural resources to the west. Another 
series of drawings shows a smiling NATO soldier as he 
views a museum of tattered Russian military uniforms. 
The slogan reads -- With friends like this, Russia will no longer exist.
The leading "Fatherland-All Russia" bloc says it might 
join with the Communists to present a united front 
against the Kremlin. Both parties say average 
Russians have been robbed by their leaders, and call 
for revising privatization deals of the early 1990's.
But what seems to be characterizing these elections, 
more than anything else, is a desire for order after 
years of economic decline and chaos. A candidate in 
the liberal "Right Cause" political movement, Ruslan 
Linkov, says Russian society is at a crossroads as it 
enters the next millennium. /// LINKOV ACT - IN RUSSIAN - 
FADE UNDER 
///
Mr. Linkov says the Russian people seem willing to 
accept military methods to solve the country's 
political problems -- democratically electing military 
officers to power. He says -- Russia is practically 
ready to accept a military junta. 
Such rhetoric is due in large part to a series of 
apartment bombings that Russian officials blamed on 
Chechen militants and which gave the Kremlin the 
support it needed to wage war in Chechnya. 
One party gaining in the polls is the "Unity" party, 
backed by Vladimir Putin -- Russia's popular Prime 
Minister and architect of the military campaign in 
Chechnya. Unity billboards show party leader Sergey 
Shoigu sporting his trademark red ski jacket that he 
wears when sifting through the rubble of bombed 
apartment buildings, or when talking with Chechen refugees. 
Nineteen-year old Yulia Ostapenko stands outside a 
busy St. Petersburg metro station passing out leaflets for Unity.
/// OSTAPENKO ACT - IN RUSSIAN - FADE UNDER ///
She says Unity seems to have more young people than 
any other party, adding -- in her words -- I do not 
want old people to rule anymore.
But an elderly communist, Valentina Yozhikova, has 
different concerns. She says Russia needs a national 
idea, a philosophy to live by.
/// YOZHIKOVA ACT - IN RUSSIAN - FADE UNDER ///
She says Russians once -- lived for the idea of 
communism - that was our goal. But now, she says -- 
all we care about is getting a morsel of food."
The region's governor, Vladimir Yakovlev, a senior 
official in the "Fatherland-All Russia" movement, says 
he believes what society needs is tough leadership, not ideas. 
/// YAKOVLEV ACT - IN RUSSIAN - FADE UNDER ///
Governor Yakovlev says that in the early 1990's, 
Russians liked what he calls -- all the outspoken 
liberals with their fancy talk of politics and their 
plans for the future. But he adds -- you see the 
results. Russia is impoverished.
Another strong feature of this parliamentary election 
campaign has been the intense mudslinging. Governor 
Yakovlev says his party has slipped in recent polls 
behind the Kremlin's "Unity" party because of Moscow's 
concerted effort to discredit him and bribe away leading party members.
At the same time the liberal "Yabloko" party accuses 
the governor of unfairly cracking down on the 
opposition. As accusations fly, however, average 
Russians say they are sick of watching politicians 
wage war against each other as ordinary citizens grow poorer each day. 
/// MAN ACT - IN RUSSIAN - FADE UNDER ///
This man, rushing to catch a train, says he will not 
vote for anyone. Russia will be in ruins -- he says -
- no matter who is in power. 


******


#9
Moscow Times
December 15, 1999 
EDITORIAL: When State Television Rules Voters 


For weeks now, ORT and Sergei Dorenko have been savaging Mayor Yury Luzhkov, 
almost to the exclusion of all else. They have used computer-generated 
graphics to turn Luzhkov into Mussolini and Monica Lewinsky (in pearls); they 
have claimed, without evidence, that he is planning to quarter thousands of 
Chechen refugees in the suburbs; they have reported, as if it were fact and 
not unsubstantiated theory, that Luzhkov was behind the murder of U.S. 
businessman Paul Tatum; and so on. 


This is all done with one aim: To sink Fatherland-All Russia, and boost 
pro-Kremlin forces. Kremlin-controlled TV is f surprise! f shilling for the 
Kremlin f and in ways that appeal to the nation's worst natures. 


Yet not everyone sees it that way. When the CESSI sociological institute, on 
behalf of The Moscow Times, asked people across Russia what they thought of 
ORT's attacks on Luzhkov, nearly a third replied this was all simply part of 
the fight against corruption. 


Sixty-two percent said they believed information is presented fairly or 
somewhat fairly on ORT; only 24 percent saw it as unfair in any way. 


In fact, it turns out that Channel 1 f old reliable, with its signature 
Vremya newscasts f is the most watched and believed medium in the nation. 
When asked which television station they trusted the most, 45 percent said 
ORT, more than any other station. 


Twenty-eight percent said they most trusted NTV; 11 percent said they most 
trusted RTR, the other major state-owned channel; a mere one percent trusted 
TV Center, Luzhkov's vehicle; and just one percent trusted local television. 


In other words, 56 percent of the nation trusts the news served up by the 
Kremlin f even though this is precisely the news that has been most obviously 
warped in the service of a narrow political agenda. 


The conclusion? Propaganda works. Especially if it's artfully spiced with 
truths, as the allegations against Luzhkov have been, and with a chipper 
little war and some terrorism. ORT has demonstrated masterfully that if you 
report something confidently, unapologetically and repeatedly, it will take 
hold as a vague sort of fact. 


If nothing else, this suggests we will indeed have presidential elections in 
2000 f why mess around with union with Belarus, states of emergency or other 
messy scenarios, when ORT can deliver the people? 


And if Luzhkov and the Kremlin decide to call a truce tomorrow, as they have 
done after previous tiffs, ORT can do its usual about-face and return to 
praising the mayor. It won't be "free and fair" f but then, it was hardly 
ever "economic reform" either. Labels aside, "the family" will stay in power. 


*******


#10
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 
From: Janet Vaillant <vaillant@fas.harvard.edu>
Subject: education


I would like to take some exception to the gloomy picture of Russian
education painted by Andrew Miller. (JRL 3670) While I will not speak about
the universities, except to say that the idea that higher education is free
for most students is no longer really true, his bleak picture does not
apply fully to the schools. There has been a lot of change in schools over
the last ten years, not all of it positive, of course, but some of it quite
remarkable. Perhaps change has been easier in schools than universities
because the system of central control of schools fell apart in the 1990s,
partly as the result of the explicit policy of Edward Dneprov, Minister of
Education at the beginning of the decade, and partly because of the lack of
money provided by central government and ministry. Perhaps change at the
school level is easier than at university because schools are less
prestigious and teachers are less respected so they have less to lose.


Perhaps schools are more innovative because, as in the US, they are
compelled to be rather more directly than are universities. In Russia, it
seems that for many school teachers, the school is their life, a kind of
refuge from the nasty political world outside school walls, and they are
dedicated, idealistic people who want the next generation of Russians to be
different from the last. Whatever the reason, there has been ample room for
experiment and differentiation among schools. Now the central ministry is
trying to reassert control, but in the absence of centralized funding, it
will not be easy for them to do so. 


At the school level, there are new textbooks in history, civics and the
social sciences, as well new regional and local curriculum. Some of the new
materials merely supply minor variations on the old, but some are quite new
and challenging, offering primary sources, different interpretations of
events, and urging students to discuss and defend their own points of view.
I have sat in a lot of school classrooms, not just in Moscow and St.
Petersburg, but in towns in central Russia and Siberia, and listened to
discussions where students offered their own opinions and tried to connect
the past to present problems facing Russia. I have learned about new
courses on ecology and on the law and watched them being taught. Yes,
conditions are hard. Yes, access to good new textbooks is restricted by
lack of funds. Yes, teachers are often not paid and yes, they need
retraining and the institutions that educate new teachers are often cause
for despair. The education press is trying to fill some of the gap by
printing excerpts from new textbooks that schools may not be able to
afford, describing new teaching techniques and offering teachers a forum
for to exchange ideas. All problems are exacerbated by the extraordinary
impoverishment of the education sector.


Indicative of positive movement nonetheless was the most recent Festival of
Innovative and Experimental schools held in Moscow this past September.
This event, reported on to me by Isak Frumin, has been held annually since
the early 1990s. It is sponsored by the Association for Innovative Schools
and the Eureka Center in Moscow, an NGO. Schools compete to show their
innovative programs to their peers. In 1999, 315 schools representing 57
regions of Russia from the Far East to the Caucasus, including one in
Buinaksk, in Dagestan, entered this competition. Finalists went to Moscow
to demonstrate their projects to each other and to a committee of expert
judges. Some projects involved searches for new ways of teaching or
changing the school climate; others focused increasing community-school
interaction or on the school's possible role in social development. For the
first time this year, the Ministry of Education was involved, apparently on
the theory that schools might come up with ideas useful for country-wide
dissemination. The Ministry provided a small amount of funding for travel
and offered winners the status "Federal Experimental Site in Education." 


This status brought no money, but participation in the competition offered
teachers and school directors an opportunity for professional discussion.
The official designation is also valuable to them as some protection
against meddling by incompetent administrators on the local level. This
last consideration indicates that there is a lot of resistance to change,
and it shouldn't be underestimated. The innovative schools are few, to be
sure, and the country enormous. Nonetheless to paint Russian education with
a totally black brush does a disservice to the work of some courageous and
imaginative individuals who are trying to prepare school children to live
in a new type of society. They are extending their influence against many
odds and the professionalism of their work is high. 


******


#11
Philadelphia Inquirer
13 December 1999
[for personal use only]
Despite efforts to spin the truth, Russia's the bad guy in Chechnya 
By Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist. 


Nezavisimaya Gazeta of Moscow is normally a good newspaper, but this week
it carried a picture of a city in ruins, with the caption: "This is not
Grozny, but Pristina after the NATO bombardment."


That caption expressed the almost universal feeling in Russia that foreign
protests about Moscow's military offensive in Chechnya are mere hypocrisy
after the Western alliance's air attacks on Serbia and Kosovo earlier this
year.


The picture lied, of course: Pristina got knocked around a bit in the
Kosovo war, but the damage did not remotely compare with the
Stalingrad-style ruins of central Grozny after the first Russian attack on
the city in 1995, let alone the wholesale destruction of the entire city
now being wrought by daily torrents of rockets, bombs and shells.


The Russian government has plainly said that its aim is to erase Grozny
(which had 300,000 people in 1995) and start again elsewhere with a new
capital for Chechnya. From there, it was a short step to the chilling
decree issued last Monday by the Russian high command that all those who
did not leave the city would be killed: "Those who remain will be treated
as terrorists and bandits. They will be destroyed by artillery and
aviation. There will be no more talk. All those who do not leave the city
will be destroyed."


Never mind even that the campaign is being waged mainly for domestic
political reasons. The patriotic fervor it has unleashed in Russia is meant
to boost the pro-Kremlin Unity party (founded only two months ago, but
already second in the opinion polls) in the Russian parliamentary elections
on Sunday, and, even more important, to ensure that Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin succeeds President Boris Yeltsin in the June presidential elections.


Otherwise, Yeltsin's "political family" would then become vulnerable to
legal investigations into its ill-gotten wealth. And it may well be that
Putin, if not the generals, realizes that the campaign will inevitably bog
down in an unwinnable guerrilla war in the long run. He may not care,
provided that it still looks like a military success until June.


But this is all just tactics. Is there is any moral equivalence between
what the Russians are doing in Chechnya and what NATO did in Kosovo?


Those in the West who opposed the Kosovo campaign now gleefully insist that
there is. So do the Russians, rejecting the mounting Western criticism of
the war as cynical meddling in Russia's internal affairs. They fail to
realize that in this comparison, they are not playing NATO's role; they are
the Serbs.


In both cases a small Muslim subject people, conquered by a much bigger
Slav Christian nation generations ago and treated so brutally over the
years that they now desperately want to break away, has been savagely
punished for its ambition. Both the Chechens and the Kosovars have been the
victims of state-directed massacres and even mass deportations. The
difference is only that the Kosovars finally got NATO's military help,
whereas the Chechens never will.


This is where the West's real hypocrisy lies, if there is any. But consider
what Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair said to the Economic Club of
Chicago in the midst of the Kosovo war: "If [NATO] wanted to right every
wrong that we see in the modern world, then we would do little else than
intervene in the affairs of other countries. We would not be able to cope."


Blair's speech was a semi-official public declaration of NATO's new
doctrine for humanitarian military interventions, and it had much in common
with St. Thomas Aquinas's medieval definition of a "just war." In NATO's
formulation, not only must the offense against human rights be huge -
nothing less than incipient genocide will qualify, in practice - but also
the military operation must promise success at a reasonable cost.


The third of Blair's five "general conditions" for humanitarian armed
interventions asked bluntly: "Are there military operations we can sensibly
and prudently undertake?" In the case of Chechnya there are not, unless
NATO's leaders are keen to fight a major war, and probably a nuclear war,
with Russia.


In the long run, Russia will indeed "pay a heavy price for these actions,"
as Bill Clinton warned last week, but it is the Chechens who will exact it.
In the meantime, NATO will have to bear the charges of inconsistency
patiently, knowing that its critics are just scoring points. They don't
really want to attack Russia either. 


******


#12
Unity Party Likely Duma Contingent Examined 


Obshchaya Gazeta
9 December 1999
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Vyacheslav Nikonov: "Who Wants To Buy a 'Bear' in a Poke?" 


Who will get into parliament on Sergey Shoygu's coat tails? 
Until recently, whenever the fledgling Medved bloc's chances of 
surmounting the 5-percent barrier in the elections were discussed, it was 
viewed merely as the Kremlin's marvelous new toy. No one ever wondered 
whom this member of the animal kingdom would seat in the Duma. Now that 
some sociologists are consistently assigning Unity the third or second 
place in the campaign ratings, which would guarantee this bloc a sizable 
faction and would thereby affect our lives, this line of questioning is 
completely relevant. 
The first question is this one: Who will head the &quot;Bears&quot; 
in the Duma? Bloc leader Sergey Shoygu says that he will take a seat in 
the Duma only if Medved wins the support of more than 25 percent of the 
voters. This would be virtually impossible even with the help of the 
most sophisticated campaign and PR methods, so Shoygu will stay in office 
as minister of emergencies. Does this mean that champion athlete 
Aleksandr Karelin will automatically become the faction leader? How will 
he organize the legislative process? The second question concerns 
Karelin's helpers in this process. Unity has represented itself as a 
"gubernatorial bloc," with members representing the Russian 
heartland instead of Moscow. We would not impugn the integrity of its 
image-makers, but the bloc's election ticket lists the name of only one 
governor (Platonov from Tver), and more than a third of the candidates 
listed are from Moscow. Does this mean that all the rest are superior 
regional officials of the highest caliber? No, they are not, and the 
reasons are understandable. 
The governors joined the campaign early this year and generously 
shared their best representatives with Russia Is Our Home, Fatherland, 
All Russia, Voice of Russia, the United Right, and even Yabloko, before 
the plans for the Medved project had even reached the desk of its 
midwife--Boris Berezovskiy. Shoygu's bloc came in at the end, when the 
remaining leaders were of the third or fourth caliber at best. That is 
why the individuals listed on the bloc ticket--and the ones we are likely 
to see in the State Duma--include only a couple of officials with the 
rank of deputy governor, a few rayon administration chiefs and deputies 
of local legislatures, and many lower-level oblast officials. The 
regions are also represented by numerous individuals--mostly below the 
rank of chief executive--from all types of closed and open joint-stock 
companies, limited partnerships, and non-profit foundations with fairly 
obscure names. They might be highly respectable individuals, but what do 
they have to do with legislative work on the federal level? 
Will the "Bears" from Moscow save the day? Probably not. 
The Muscovites on the bloc's list of candidates can be divided into four 
groups. The first are television celebrities--Buratayev, Sharapov, and 
Komissarov. Those people make an appearance at the Duma only on major 
holidays and do not write laws. The second are unfamiliar mid-level 
officials from federal ministries and departments who have never been 
known to come up with any legislative initiatives or other initiatives of 
any type. The third group, which might be the best hope, is made up of 
members of the current State Duma. There are only two of these, 
however--Tarachev and Gvozdev--and only the most knowledgeable 
authorities on parliamentary procedure in Russia can judge their 
performance as deputies. The fourth and final group consists of the 
leaders and active members of the parties making up the Unity bloc. Only 
the experts specializing in the "couch" parties could list all 
of their names and titles, and even they might not remember all of their 
stated objectives. We only have a couple of these (the specialists, not 
the parties) in our country. 
As far as I know, Klintsevich's National Patriotic Party, the fourth 
on the list, has not changed its platform since 1992. It is still 
fighting for a new Constitution and the reform of the Soviet system. 
Chuyev's Russian Christian Democratic Party (he is the leader of the 
Sverdlovsk regional Medved group) has been advocating a 
"parliamentary monarchy" for the same number of years. The 
Freedom Generation, headed by Semenov, offered to become an ally of every 
non-Communist party and bloc without any success until Unity took pity on 
it. Refakh, the Muslim organization that joined Medved, is famous only 
for its earlier ties to Nadir Khachilayev, who led Russian law 
enforcement agencies on such a lengthy chase. The rest are just more of 
the same. Is it any wonder that all of Unity's legislative initiatives so 
far--the revocation of citizenship for the failure to vote, the 
elimination of local self-government, and the merger of the offices of 
Moscow mayor and Federation Council chairman--have gone against common 
sense or the Constitution? Actually, I do agree with one of its 
proposals--the elimination of party tickets in State Duma elections, so 
that the voters supporting a particular bloc will not be buying a pig in 
a poke, not to mention a whole "bear." 


******