December 19, 1999    
This Date's Issues: 3693 • 3694  • 3695

Johnson's Russia List
#3695
19 December 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Russia blasts Grozny, parliamentary vote ends.
2. Reuters: Communists lead Russian poll, right gains.
3. AFP: New-born Kremlin party Unity torpedoes Duma foes.
4. Bloomberg: Russia's Kiriyenko on Elections, Chechnya.
5. Reuters: Russian reformers, led by Chubais, do well in poll.
6. AFP: Solzhenitsyn Votes For First Time Since Return To Russia.
7. AFP: No US suspension of aid to Russia: Berger.
8. Newsday: Michael Slackman, The Mob Woos Voters / Russians seeking 
power at the polls.
9. Reuters: Russians seek millennium relief from woes.
10. Washington Post: Melvin Goodman, Who Is the CIA Fooling? Only 
Itself.]


*******



#1
Russia blasts Grozny, parliamentary vote ends
By Lawrence Sheets

NAZRAN, Russia, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Russian warplanes pounded Chechnya's 
capital Grozny and rebel strongholds in the south of the breakaway region on 
Sunday while voters in the rest of Russia elected a new lower house of 
parliament. 


Reuters correspondent Maria Eismont, one of a handful of reporters for 
foreign news organisations still in Grozny, said on Saturday (Eds: correct) 
the mainly elderly civilians who remained were trapped in cellars with little 
food or firewood. 


Residents who escaped at the weekend to the adjacent Russian region of 
Ingushetia, including the border town of Nazran, said most people were afraid 
to leave because of heavy bombing. 


``There are very many people left in Grozny. There is bombing and shelling 
all the time, and they are scared out of their wits,'' said Fatimat 
Habillata, who escaped on Saturday on a bus convoy evacuating 88 elderly and 
mentally ill people. 


But refugees who had made it out and were living in a train in the Ingush 
town of Sernovodsk were forcibly sent back to Chechnya on Saturday, witnesses 
and human rights officials said. 


Peter Bouckaert, an official with New York-based Human Rights Watch, watched 
the 37-carriage train leave. 


``These poor people have the brutal choice of either returning to a war zone 
or ending up in the cold. Russia is trying to remove the evidence of its 
abusive campaign in Chechnya,'' he told Reuters. 


The West, concerned at the impact of the campaign on civilians, kept up 
pressure on Russia to silence its guns and negotiate peace. 


In a newspaper interview published in Germany's Welt am Sonntag on Sunday, 
the European Union's foreign policy coordinator, Javier Solana, said Russia 
was jeopardising its relations with the West. 


Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Moscow would continue to be active 
on the international stage, but warned the West against taking concrete steps 
in reaction to Chechnya. 


``The language of ultimatums, the language of threats is not the kind of 
language one can use when speaking to Russia,'' he was quoted by Russian news 
agencies as saying. 


Russia's chief of General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, said he had offered talks 
with Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, but only about the terms of a 
surrender. 


President Boris Yeltsin has demanded the rebels lay down their arms and turn 
over guerrilla leaders Moscow blames for bomb attacks on Russian cities 
earlier this year. 


FIGHTING RAGES 


Up to 100,000 Russian troops fighting a rebel force a fraction the size 
control most of the plains in northern and central Chechnya, and are now 
concentrating their firepower on Grozny and the southern mountains leading to 
ex-Soviet Georgia. 


Officials in Mozdok, a town outside Chechnya which is the headquarters of 
Russia's forces in the North Caucasus region, told Interfax news agency that 
warplanes and military helicopters had flown 60 sorties in the past 24 hours. 


Interfax said they had struck rebel targets in Grozny, the southern villages 
of Vedeno and Shali and the remote Argun gorge, destroying a guerrilla base, 
four anti-aircraft guns, an armoured column and other infrastructure. 


Chechen rebel spokesman Movladi Udugov told Reuters by telephone from an 
undisclosed location heavy battles were raging in practically all districts 
of Grozny, including Chernorechiye, where he said Russian forces seized 
control of a resort hotel. 


Udugov said his fighters shot down two Russian helicopters ferrying supplies 
to paratroopers trying to seal Chechnya's southern border with Georgia. The 
Russian Defence Ministry said it was not aware of losing any helicopters. 


Udugov also described heavy fighting near Serzhen-Yurt, a village controlling 
access to rebel mountain bases. 


While lambasted abroad, the Chechnya campaign is popular in Russia and has 
dominated the parliamentary election campaign. 


Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a Chechnya hawk who took office just as 
fighting began in neighbouring Dagestan in August, has become Russia's most 
popular politician. 


The two-month-old bloc he backs, Unity, was leading the early election 
results, and is widely expected to end up in second place behind the 
Communists once counting is over. 


No voting was held in Sunday's election in Chechnya itself, but Moscow 
provided buses to bring some refugees in Ingushetia to polling centres there. 
Many said they voted for candidates they viewed as likely to end the war. 


``We have to stop that monster Putin and that drunken bear (President Boris) 
Yeltsin, and this is the best way to do it,'' said Yakha Dadayeva, a Grozny 
mother with 10 children. 


``See that cloud of black smoke over there? That's our city on fire,'' she 
added, pointing to the distant thin dark haze which hangs over Grozny. ``They 
want to kill us all.'' 


*******


#2
Communists lead Russian poll, right gains
By Ron Popeski

MOSCOW, Dec 19 (Reuters) - The Communist Party opened up an early lead as
expected in Russia's parliamentary election on Sunday, but a pro-Kremlin
party was running second and liberals made unexpectedly big gains. 


That left open the possibility of a new State Duma lower house of
parliament less dominated by the Communists and more balanced between
liberal backers and leftist opponents of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's
government. 


That, in turn, could boost the chances in next year's presidential election
for Putin, President Boris Yeltsin's preferred successor. 


"The results testify to the fact that voters made their choice in favour of
a young new generation ready to improve (people's) lives," RIA news agency
quoted Putin's spokesman Mikhail Kozhukhov as saying. 


The election, the third since Russia ditched communism, bypassed the North
Caucasus region of Chechnya, where Russian troops are fighting Islamic
militants. The war has helped make Putin Russia's most popular politician. 


Early official returns, based on just over five percent of the votes cast,
put the Communists in second place in Sunday's election with 25.04 percent,
behind the pro-Kremlin Unity (Yedinstvo) bloc with 29.73 percent. Unity is
also known as "The Bear" because of its campaign symbol. 


But those figures were based on returns from Russia's sparsely populated
far east, considered unrepresentative. 


An exit poll quoted by NTV television after voting ended across the world's
largest country at 1800 GMT put the Communists in the lead with 28 percent.
Unity, set up two months ago to back Kremlin policy and Putin, stood at 24
percent. 


"The Bear will get thinner and thinner as the count moves to the Urals,"
said Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov. 


Third place on 11 percent was shared by Fatherland-All Russia (OVR), a bloc
opposed to the Kremlin, and the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS), a
pro-Western party of technocrats which turned in a surprisingly strong
showing. The liberal Yabloko party was on eight percent. SPS broadly backs
Putin. 


NO VOTE IN WAR-SCARRED CHECHNYA 


As votes were being cast and then counted, Russian warplanes blasted
Chechnya's capital Grozny and rebel strongholds to the south. Thousands of
hungry civilians remained trapped in Grozny's freezing cellars. 


The three-month-old war, widely supported at home, cast a shadow over the
poll but has helped boost Putin's presidential prospects. Putin's support
has boosted ratings for Unity. 


The poll to elect a new Duma was seen throughout a rough campaign as a
dress rehearsal for next year's presidential election, the real prize in
Russian politics with powers far exceeding those of the 450-seat legislature. 


Sergei Kiriyenko, SPS leader and a ex-prime minister, said the outcome had
confounded all forecasts and could produce cooperation on certain issues
between Putin's government and a loose alliance between his party, Unity
and Yabloko. 


"Ours is one of the few parties that campaigned with an open ideology which
was supposed to be unpopular," he told NTV. 


"We can cooperate on joint action. Let's seriously take on the task of
forming a new rightist majority...This is great, this is a victory but this
is not our limit." 


The SPS is widely called the coalition of "young reformers" and many
members held posts in Kiriyenko's government before it fell after an
economic crash in August 1998. The SPS campaign in the final stages
stressed an alliance of sorts with Putin. 


The only remaining party which may yet clear the minimum five percent
barrier to secure some of the 225 seats set aside for party lists was
ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's bloc, credited with five percent.
The remaining half of the seats are decided in single constituencies. 


Yuri Luzhkov, one of the leaders of the opposition OVR bloc, was leading in
his bid to secure re-election as mayor of Moscow, with early results giving
him 70 percent of the vote -- considerably less than the 90 percent he
scored in 1995. 


The bloc, second through much of the autumn in opinion polls, slipped into
third place as its two leaders, Luzhkov and ex-prime minister Yevgeny
Primakov, faced fierce attack from television stations inclined toward the
Kremlin. 


OVR OFFICIALS STILL CONFIDENT OF GOOD SCORE 


Top OVR officials expected to collect 10 to 12 percent after all the votes
were counted and suggested parliament would benefit from a new force to
counterbalance the communists. 


"Clearly the biggest development in this election will be that the
Communists will no longer be able to dictate their conditions," said OVR
spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky. "This Duma will be fundamentally different
from the last one." 


Pre-election opinion polls had showed the Communists leading, but without a
majority. The party had stayed largely clear of the mud-slinging that
characterised the campaign and remained confident of remaining the Duma's
biggest single force. 


The party, with superior local organisation left over from the Soviet era,
were expected to win many single-seat districts. 


Alexander Veshnyakov, head of the Central Election Commission, estimated
final turnout at 55 percent, lower than 65 percent in the 1995 election but
higher than the 1993 poll. 


********


#3
New-born Kremlin party Unity torpedoes Duma foes


MOSCOW, Dec 19 (AFP) - 
The two-month-old Unity party, which has no disclosed social or economic 
program, torpedoed the principle anti-Kremlin foe in Sunday's State Duma poll.


Unity was still on the Kremlin war room drawing board when the Fatherland-All 
Russia (OVR) faction headed by presidential hopeful Yevgeny Primakov rocketed 
to the top of opinion polls over the summer.


Primakov and his running mate Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov presented a 
formidable challenge to a Kremlin inner circle seeking to assure its, and 
Boris Yeltsin's, political safety when the president leaves office next 
summer.


OVR campaigned on a staunchly anti-Yeltsin platform which caught on like 
wildfire among an electorate pummelled with Kremlin corruption reports.


Things only grew worse for the president's men when OVR drew level with the 
Communists -- which had settled comfortably in the opposition corner and 
never seriously challenged the Kremlin regime -- when corruption reports 
touched Yeltsin's family.


Moscow media reported that the first Kremlin strategist to burst into action 
then was billionaire tycoon Boris Berezovsky. He went on a cross-country 
mission in August in a bid to rally powerful regional bosses into a single 
pro-government bloc.


Berezovsky's party even developed the working title Muzhiki, which roughly 
translates into "tough guys."


But the Kremlin envoy ran into brick wall: the very regional leaders he tried 
recruiting had already been contacted by the steamrollering OVR faction.


The governor's options then seemed clear cut. Yeltsin was sporting a 
two-percent approval rating. OVR's was around 25 percent and growing.


It was then that Yeltsin fired premier Sergei Stepashin, a lacklustre former 
top national police chief who had failed to break the Primakov-Luzhkov 
alliance.


In his place came Vladimir Putin -- at first a shocking choice for a Kremlin 
that seemed to be throwing in the election towel by resorting to a 
personality completely unheard of by most Russians on the street.


Putin was instantly condemned for his dry, aggressive style. Opponents picked 
at the nearly decade-long hole in his biography which the former KGB agent 
apparently spent spying on Germany and Western technologies.


Meanwhile Berezovsky's stalled efforts with his Muzhiki were outed and 
ridiculed in the pro-OVR press. The Kremlin seemed all but doomed.


And yet everything changed very quickly when a wave of apartment block 
explosion ripped through Russian cities in August. Nearly 300 people were 
killed in attacks Moscow instantly blamed on "terrorist" in separatist 
Chechnya.


No proof was ever offered but an air war was still launched against the tiny 
North Caucasus republic on September 5. Putin grabbed the leading role in an 
offensive that came as Yeltsin slipped further out of Russia's political 
scene.


On October 1 tanks rolled into Chechnya for the first time since the 
two-sides' 1994-96 war. People long-tired of violence gripping Russia's 
volatile southern flank cheered the offensive and -- most importantly -- 
Putin.


His ratings began to climb and soon eclipsed those of Primakov. At the same 
time the Unity bloc was launched.


The little-known but long-serving Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu was 
installed as Unity leader and assigned with a well-publicized campaign to 
restore decent living conditions in the "liberated" regions of Chechnya.


OVR meanwhile had little fodder to use against Unity -- it was a brand new 
creation headed by a minister never before prominently involved in Russian 
politics.


Neither could OVR campaign against Unity's stance on the issues. Shoigu 
simply declared that he would dutifully follow whatever Putin advised.


By mid-December Putin, already carrying a 45 percent presidential approval 
rating, casualty mentioned that he would be voting for Unity come Sunday.


And the rest, as polls showed, was history.


"The pro-government bloc, and no one thought this was possible before the 
vote, now has a chance of installing its own Duma speaker," Igor Bunin, 
director of the Center for Political Technologies, told NTV television with a 
touch of awe in his voice.


********


#4
Russia's Kiriyenko on Elections, Chechnya: Comment

Moscow, Dec. 19 (Bloomberg)<
/A> -- The following are comments by Sergei Kiriyenko, leader of the Russia's 
Union of Right Forces coalition and a former prime minister, on the 
coalition's position on the war in Chechnya and performance in today's 
election. According to results of an exit poll, the coalition won 11 percent 
of the vote for the lower house of parliament, the Duma. The exit poll showed 
the Communist Party in first place and Unity in second. 


On the exit poll results (comments made at a press conference of at the 
Central Election Commission): 


``It is not just a victory, it is a stupendous victory. For us Unity is 
definitely a partner. I think that the main victory that has to happen is a 
loss of control over the Duma by the Communist's and their allies. 


``If together with Unity, Yabloko and some individuals running separately 
from party lists, we are capable of getting 51 percent in the Duma. . .for 
the first time there is a new constructive majority in the Duma will emerge. 
. .this is a colossal victory that can't be compared to anything. 


``Fatherland-All Russia could fall into two parts. . .one could cooperate 
with communists and the other part is people we could cooperate with.'' 


On Chechnya (comments carried on Russia's NTV): 


``The Union of Right Forces has a wide array of opinions, but I think, yes, 
this majority in the Duma will support the position of Putin's government 
that this anti-terrorist action is completed and the problem of terrorists is 
solved. This will happen in the new Duma. 


``Today any demonstration of force is not a support for the war, but support 
for national pride, national dignity. It is bad when the return of national 
pride is done through demonstration of force. It is terrible. It is 
unacceptable. It is the line on which the country is balancing now. National 
pride should come back, but it should come back as a pride that in the 
country people are living well and not for the fact we can flex muscles, but 
the government is obliged to protect its citizens from terrorists and in that 
I see a liberal value.'' 


*******


#5
Russian reformers, led by Chubais, do well in poll
By Anatoly Verbin

MOSCOW, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Russia's Anatoly Chubais has done it again. 


In 1996, arguably the best administrator in post-Soviet Russia masterminded 
Boris Yeltsin's re-election as president after taking over his campaign 
headquaters less than four months before the poll, when Yeltsin's rating was 
in single digits. 


In 1999, Chubais, demonised by opponents as the man who had sold Russia cheap 
during a huge privatisation campaign, was the driving force who seems to have 
brought the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) into the State Duma lower 
chamber of parliament. 


An exit poll by NTV television said SPS shared third place on 11 percent with 
the opposition centrist Fatherland-All Russia bloc (OVR), which had led 
opinion polls just a few weeks ago together with the well organised Communist 
Party. 


The NTV poll gave the Communists 28 percent and 24 percent to the pro-Kremlin 
Unity (Yedinstvo) party, a welcome partner for SPS in the Duma. 


Early results broadly reflected this picture too. 


"This a breakthrough for the right forces," Chubais told a press conference. 
"It is a second birth for the right." 


When the bloc was formed in August, Chubais, now one of the top Russian 
business figures in his capacity as head of Russia's UES electricity 
monopoly, played it safe. 


He became the head of SPS headquarters, but was not on the list of the 
coalition of "young reformers" in which he had brought together New Force 
movement of former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko and the Right Cause 
movement of former first deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov. 


The top three on the SPS lists -- Kiriyenko, who is also running for Moscow 
mayor, Nemtsov and Irina Khakamada, a former government official in charge of 
small and medium-size business, are more attractive for the ordinary voter. 


Kiriyenko was jubilant on Saturday night. 


"This is great, this is a victory but this is not our limit," he said on NTV. 


All top SPS figures have been associated by many with hardships suffered 
during economic reform and represent the liberal and radical trend which 
appeared to have been dead in Russia just a few months ago. 


"We have been considered a common grave," said Chubais. 


CHUBAIS ORCHESTRATED CAMAPIGN 


But skilful campaigning, enough funds and Chubais's good relations with the 
Kremlin assured the SPS friendly coverage on main television channels-- the 
only nationwide media in the huge country. 


Political analysts say it was a decision advocated by Chubais which played a 
key role. 


He actively backed Russia's military drive against Chechen rebels and Prime 
Minister Vladimir Putin who spearheads it. 


Liberals in SPS had serious reservations about both but kept them to 
themselves under pressure from Chubais, a strong-willed and seasoned 
politician with a fair amount of pragmatic cynicism, the analysts say. They 
say SPS might form an alliance of interests with the main pro-government 
bloc, Unity, in the future Duma and back Putin in the 2000 presidential 
election with a view to play a key role in his government. 


Unlike Unity, which was formed recently and is popular but lacks a coherent 
economic programme, SPS had produced volumes of policy documents through 
their think-tanks. 


Putin's spokesman hailed early results as a breakthrough for a younger 
generation of politicians, RIA news agency reported. 


"The results testify to the fact that voters made their choice in favour of a 
young new generation ready to improve (people's) lives," RIA quoted Mikhail 
Kozhukhov as saying. 


Two other well-known faces on the SPS list are Yegor Gaidar, the first head 
of Yeltsin's government who started market reforms in 1992 and Sergei 
Kovalyov, the best-known human rights campaigner in the country. 


*******


#6
Solzhenitsyn Votes For First Time Since Return To Russia


MOSCOW, Dec 19, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Former Russian dissident and 
author Alexander Solzhenitsyn voted for the first time since returning from 
exile in parliamentary elections Sunday, although he expressed skepticism 
about the fairness of the poll.


The writer, who returned to Russia in 1994 after 20 years in the West, 
arrived at the polling booth in central Moscow on foot accompanied by his 
wife and was immediately mobbed by a crowd of people, in footage broadcast by 
NTV television.


"I want to point out that the papers from the previous electoral campaigns in 
1993-1996 were burnt rapidly," he said. "Those who have a clean conscience do 
not need to incinerate records."


"I'm very afraid this time that the electoral documents will also be 
destroyed and manipulated," added the Nobel prize winner.


Solzhenitsyn queued up to register to vote, but did not go into a secluded 
booth, rapidly marking his choices on a corner table before dropping his 
ballot paper into the box.


The former dissident, 81, did not say why he had decided to vote in the 
elections to the State Duma lower house of parliament.


"Well, we have voted. You can see there are many of us. But can we expect 
anything good?


"Year after year, you see such below-the-belt behavior and dirty tricks on 
the part of those in power. It is difficult to believe this time we will see 
something honest and clean," the writer said. ((c) 1999 Agence 


******


#7
No US suspension of aid to Russia: Berger


WASHINGTON , Dec 19 (AFP) - 
US national security advisor Sandy Berger said Sunday that the United States 
is not considering suspending programmes of economic assistance to Russia in 
protest at Moscow's policy towards Chechnya.


As Russian war planes and artillery continued their bombardment of the 
Chechnyan capital Grozny, Berger was asked on the CBS program Face the Nation 
what leverage Washington had to follow up its verbal condemnation of Russian 
policy there.


He noted that three-quarters of current US financial assistance to Russia 
went towards funding nuclear missile reduction programmes, and "helping them 
keep control of their nuclear materials, threat reduction programmes -- those 
are in our interest."


The rest of the money doesn't go to the government in Moscow, Berger said. 
"It goes to help independent media, democracy, NGOs, to help build civil 
societies," he continued. "Cutting that off would only be against our 
interests and would not have an effect on Chechnya".


Berger's clear stance on the continuation of existing aid programmes to 
Russia came as the Washington Post Sunday reported that the US administration 
was debating whether or not to force the US Export-Import Bank to drop plans 
for 500 million dollars in loan guarantees to a Siberian oil company.


"People are genuinely torn about this," an unnamed administration official 
was quoted as saying. 'We are reviewing just about everything.


The long-planned Ex-Im bank loan guarantees to Tyumen Oil, which is 49 
percent state-owned, had already been a subject of debate here after 
allegations that Tyumen uses unfair business practices.


The Post said administration officials have legal authority to block the deal 
on the grounds of the "national interest," but appear to be looking for ways 
to avoid a controversy.


On multilateral lending to the Russian government, Berger noted that there 
was no IMF funding currently due to be released to the Russian government, as 
Russia is "not in compliance with the economic requirements.


"Obviously we will act in our national interests in making a judgement when 
the time comes on international lending," Berger added.


*******


#8
Newsday
19 December 1999
[for personal use only] 
The Mob Woos Voters / Russians seeking power at the polls
By Michael Slackman. MOSCOW CORRESPONDENT


Yekaterinburg, Russia - The blinking neon sign overhead cast a glow
inside Igor Varov's Mercedes Benz, bathing the leather seats and fax
machine in a pink hue, as the rear-end fishtailed through the
snow-covered street. Varov pumped the gas and the gun tucked beneath his
suit coat bounced on his thigh.
"It was stolen," Varov said of the car. "But the guy got the
insurance money, so he doesn't care." Varov has penetrating blue eyes, a
crew cut and a naive candor that softens his reputation as a gangster.
He gunned the engine. "That's my advertisement, for my construction
company," he said pulling the wheel straight and pointing proudly to the
flashing neon sign on the roof of a nearby building.
"What's wrong with gangsters wanting to go legit? Everyone is trying
to legitimize, to be legal. You don't know what it was like here a few
years ago.
People were being shot, blown up in the streets. People were dying.
Things have settled down." As Russians head to the polls today to elect
450 members of the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, indeed, things
have settled down, allowing Varov and his colleagues in the reigning
regional criminal syndicate, called Uralmash, to try electing one of
their leaders to the parliament. If they and other such groups around
the country succeed, it will advance an emerging order, where well-known
gangsters have become heroes by filling a vacuum created by inept
government agencies delivering neither services nor hope. Varov and
Uralmash have tapped into public weariness using strong-arm tactics to
threaten and beat local drug dealers, winning public gratitude and
possibly enough votes to elect the Uralmash leader, Alexander Habarov,
to the Duma.
"We are not running to steal, but to become guardians of our own
destiny," said Yevgeny Roizman, 37, a member of the organization. "These
Uralmash boys of proletariat background were able to survive, and now
the city belongs to them." During Soviet times, Yekaterinburg was a
closed city, located in the Urals, not far from the line that divides
Europe from Asia. Even Russian citizens needed permission to visit. It
was a drab creation of the Kremlin fathers, designed as a center of the
military industrial complex and renamed "Sverdlovsk," after Yakov
Sverdlov, the first secretary of the Communist party's central
committee.
The economy was built around massive industries, like the Uralmash
machine factory, which employed upwards of 50,000 people in a district
by the same name. It is the place where the last czar and his family
were murdered, and where Russian President Boris Yeltsin began to climb
the party ladder as a young man.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the city restored its
pre-revolutionary name and began to emerge as a regional economic
leader. Fancy stores opened. Expensive, imported cars filled the city
center. European styles replaced drab Soviet clothing.
But there is a dark side. Behind the glitter of western styles, and
the free-market facade, were four crime groups, vying for control. They
fought to control the economy, particularly the lucrative alcohol
production and distribution. In the early '90s, the struggle broke out
in open warfare, forcing citizens to stay in their homes at night, when
streets turned into a gangland shooting gallery.
In the end prevailed Uralmash - a group of young men who got their
start hustling in the factories and reportedly went on to use contract
killers to eliminate competition.
Roizman is typical of his colleagues. He is a tall, powerful man,
with a close-cropped beard and a black leather jacket. He once served
two years in prison - he says for selling jewelry in Soviet times - and
he is insistent, almost patriotic, in describing Uralmash as a positive
force. He compares their development to groups in the United States that
made fortunes bootlegging whisky during Prohibition, and he says illegal
activity is a thing of the past.
He wants Uralmash to become a dynasty like the Kennedys.
"Until that moment when you interfere with their interests, Uralmash
will leave you alone," said Roizman, who owns a chain of jewelry stores
that contribute one-third of their profits to Uralmash. "Uralmash is not
a racket. The question for us is determined. We will never deal in
prostitution, drugs, arms, or kidnaping." Like the other members of the
group, he sees nothing wrong with Uralmash protecting itself from
competition by whatever means necessary. Good business for Uralmash
means jobs and taxes for the community. He does not see a downside to
limiting competition, forcing businesses to make Uralmash a partner, or
to collecting what effectively are protection fees.
"Uralmash is not a racket," he said adamantly. "If I am invited into
someone's business I will give them money, do work for them or
participate by letting them use my name. It is not racketeering. We are
not getting paid for nothing.
What do they get with my name? If others know I am a shareholder,
they will have an easier time getting a loan. They know with my
participation they won't be robbed." Alexander Kukovyakin is another
member of Uralmash, and is running the group's new political office. He
is built like a water cooler and is fond of showing off his pool stick
and billiard trophy. He says Habarov's election is essential.
"Those financial groups that have representatives in the Duma get up
to 80 percent of the production orders," he said. But, he adds, "In this
scheme, we are not thinking about ourselves, but the interest of the
region. This way everyone will get to live better." To be sure, this is
the main platform for Uralmash, making life better for everyone. And it
is not merely relying on muscle to win the hearts and minds of the
people. It boasts of paying taxes, even bonuses to its thousands of
employees. It has paid to put two security guards in every school. It
has paid volunteers to set up local community patrols. Roizman has taken
the unusual step of actually opening a private museum in the center of
the city where he displays his collection of 18th-Century religious
icons, a move that wins over the elderly population.
The transition to legitimacy began two years ago, when the syndicate
formed a financial investment group, trading in their warm-up suits for
business suits.
The next, and arguably most important phase of their transition,
began in the summer when they formed a political party and started their
popular campaign against drug use. Their region has one of the worst
heroin problems in the country, and the police have been unwilling, or
unable to combat it.
"The process is irreversible," said Dmitry Karasyuk, a paid
spokesman.
"Uralmash can already be considered a power structure." Relying on
their tried and proven methods, they took control of an existing
antidrug program, tossed out the president, then staged a huge "rally"
in the part of town where drug sales are most prevalent. Men with shaved
heads and black leather jackets stepped from their luxury cars and
menaced local drug dealers, beating some, threatening others. They began
a detoxification program for drug users whose therapy involves
handcuffing addicts to metal bed frames, often without mattresses, while
they go through withdrawal.
The approach has won such a wide following, the public appears
willing to overlook their criminal roots.
"I see nothing bad with Uralmash," said Dr. Oleg Serduk, deputy
chief of the regional drug-treatment hospital. "They are achieving
results, real results.
We can talk about concrete actions. They pay for all of it. It makes
me happy." Even their few outspoken opponents grudgingly have had to
agree.
"They are an octopus trying to spread into different spheres and
swallow everything," said Konstantin Pudov, a spokesman for the mayor of
the city, one of the only officials to oppose the group. But, he said:
"Combating drugs is an activity that looks like Robin Hood, but is
within the law. It brings results.
That's why we support it." As the president of the drug crusade,
Varov is reveling in the public adulation it has generated and he is
hopeful it will help erase the public memory of a time his own friends
were being gunned down in the street. The last time, he said, occurred a
year ago, on the day of his son's first birthday party. His best friend,
another businessman, had been shot dead as he left home, on his way to
the party.
"It was a long time ago," he said. "That doesn't happen anymore. He
was the last one."


*******


#9
Russians seek millennium relief from woes
By Gareth Jones

MOSCOW, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Russians love a party and December 31, the last 
day of the millennium, promises to be one to remember as the nation turns 
briefly from its interminable economic problems and from the bloody war in 
Chechnya. 


The vodka and champagne will flow freely in city apartments and country 
dachas, hotels and restaurants and on squares and streets across Russia's 11 
time zones as 2000 dawns. 


Russia's leaders have eagerly hitched their colours to the millennium 
band-wagon, setting up august committees whose task -- in the words of their 
official web-sites -- is to ``think anew about the country's history and to 
weigh up the results of the past millennium.'' 


A few days into the new year, and health permitting, President Boris Yeltsin 
will travel to the Holy Land to spend the first Orthodox Christmas of the 
third Christian millennium in Bethlehem, where Jesus Christ was born. 


Patriarch Alexiy II, head of the Orthodox Church, is due to accompany Yeltsin 
on the trip, which will underscore the close ties forged between church and 
state in Russia since the demise of atheistic Soviet Communism. 


New Year was always the main annual holiday of Soviet times but in the past 
decade Christmas, celebrated according to the Julian calendar still used by 
the Orthodox Church on January 6-7, has seen a big revival. 


The holiday period extends until January 14-15, when the ``old new year'' of 
the Julian calendar gives Russians yet another opportunity to abuse their 
livers. 


Christmas trees and other decorations have been going up around Moscow since 
the start of December and many stores now boast festive window displays to 
rival any in the West in an outpouring of consumerism unthinkable just a few 
years ago. 


REVELLERS FACE DISAPPOINTMENT ON RED SQUARE 


This New Year's Eve, however, revellers who traditionally congregate on 
Moscow's Red Square by the walls of the Kremlin for the annual countdown to 
midnight face disappointment. 


The square will be accessible only to ticket-holding guests invited to a 
special musical extravaganza, which will be broadcast live on national 
television via satellite and will also be hooked up to the Internet. 


``Entrance to Red Square will be limited to about 7,000 people with 
invitations,'' said Vladimir Praslov of Moscow city's cultural committee, 
main organiser of the capital's official millennium events. 


The tickets have already been distributed to the lucky few -- senior 
officials and their families as well as the cream of the sports, cultural and 
other fields. 


``Of course there will be some disappointment that Red Square is off limits. 
That is why we have arranged musical festivals for young people at key sites 
in the centre,'' Praslov said. 


More than 100,000 people are expected to attend these festivals, which will 
be staged on Lyubyanskaya Square -- home to the old KGB -- on Teatralnaya 
Square -- in front of the Bolshoi Theatre -- and on Manezhnaya Square, which 
lies next to Red Square itself. 


In the run-up to New Year, other events planned in Moscow include a festival 
of ice sculptures and the arrival of Russia's Santa Claus -- known as Ded 
Moroz or Grandfather Frost -- on December 26 from his home in the Arctic 
wastes of north Russia. 


Praslov said the city budget for its cultural programme amounted to about 
$1.5 million. 


Galina Shvets of the city's advertising department said a further one million 
dollars had been allocated for embellishing the city to mark the millennium 
-- a campaign which continues throughout 2000 with posters, banners and other 
decorations. 


She said some 300 Christmas trees had been erected in Moscow, which is home 
to an estimated 10 million people. Key buildings in the centre, including 
city hall -- nerve centre of powerful Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's empire -- and the 
central post office, would be illuminated. 


ECONOMIC GLOOM, Y2K FEARS OVERSHADOW CELEBRATIONS 


Nearly a decade into its new capitalist era, Russia remains mired in economic 
gloom and even in Moscow, much wealthier than the provinces, people struggle 
to get by on average monthly salaries of a few hundred dollars. 


For that reason, many if not most Russians are expected to see in the new 
millennium in the comfort of their own homes. 


Nevertheless, hotels, top-notch restaurants and the country clubs beloved of 
wealthy ``new Russians'' which offer New Year deals running into hundreds, if 
not thousands of dollars, say they are fully booked for the holiday period. 


Travel agents have reported a surge in bookings for exotic locations, 
including Egypt, Thailand and Tahiti. 


Russia itself can expect to lure far fewer tourists. Apart from its bleak 
image and notoriously cold winters, it must also contend with fears about the 
millennium computer bug. 


Several Western countries, including the United States, have advised their 
nationals against visiting Russia over New Year and plan to send 
non-essential embassy staff home amid worries that basic services like 
heating and telephones may not work. 


The millennium computer bug involves older computers, which may control 
systems ranging from nuclear power stations to automatic teller machines, 
getting confused by the two zeros at the end of 2000 and causing chaos. 


Russian officials insist there are no grounds for alarm. 


``I can boldly declare that nothing anywhere near as terrible will happen as 
we are presently being frightened with,'' Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov 
told reporters last month. 


As a precaution, however, Russian and U.S. military personnel have agreed to 
spend New Year's Eve sitting side by side in a missile command centre in 
Colorado to prevent either side thinking the other has launched any of the 
missiles in their huge nuclear arsenals. 


Many journalists, Russian and foreign, are also planning to work over the 
whole New Year period in case anything goes wrong. 


Even if nothing does, the mass media can expect plenty of work as war grinds 
on in rebel Chechnya, Yeltsin's health remains a source of endless 
speculation and Russia's State Duma lower house of parliament prepares to 
reconvene after the parliamentary election being held on Sunday. 


*******


#10
Washington Post
19 December 1999
[for personal use only]
Who Is the CIA Fooling? Only Itself
By Melvin A. Goodman
Melvin Goodman is a professor of international security at the National War 
College and a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. He was a 
Soviet analyst at the CIA from 1966 to 1990. 


The Central Intelligence Agency is trying to convince itself and the American 
public that it provided U.S. decision makers with timely warnings about the 
impending collapse of the Soviet Union. The latest revisionist effort came 
last month, when the agency co-sponsored a three-day conference at Texas 
A&M's George Bush School of Government and Public Service on "U.S. 
Intelligence and the End of the Cold War." Simultaneously, the agency 
released a 378-page volume of 24 newly declassified documents that, officials 
claimed, showed the CIA did far better than its critics have said in 
anticipating the Soviet Union's demise in 1991. "The assertions that the CIA 
got it blatantly wrong are unfounded," was how one agency official put it.


At best, this is an exercise in self-deception. As one of the agency's Soviet 
analysts during the 1980s, I had a front-row seat from which to view our 
performance; if I had been invited to give my assessment at the Texas A&M 
conference, I would have offered a far more dismal--but, I believe, far more 
accurate--evaluation of how we did.


First, it is important to define the terms of this debate. The agency is 
engaging in a sleight of hand in making public a set of documents produced 
from 1988 to 1991. The CIA cannot be applauded because it warned in 1989 that 
Gorbachev's prospects were "doubtful at best" or, as one of the declassified 
document shows, because it said in November 1990 that "the Soviet Union as we 
have known it is finished." By that time, the endgame was upon us and most 
discerning observers could see that the Soviet regime was in trouble.


Instead, the agency should evaluate itself by looking at the entire record 
from the 1980s, particularly after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. 
If it were being honest (and some speakers at the Texas A&M conference made 
some of these points), the CIA would say that it had exaggerated the strength 
of the Soviet military and economy, underestimated the burden of Soviet 
defense spending and ignored Gorbachev's efforts to engage the United States 
in a series of disarmament agreements. 


The full record shows that the CIA did not anticipate Moscow's retreat abroad 
and its vulnerability at home. During the mid-1980s, the agency issued only 
limited warnings of Soviet weakness and nothing to indicate that the 
strategic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union was 
about to change radically. As a result, it could not predict, anticipate or 
even speculate about the consequences of the Soviet decline. The costs of 
failing to achieve these most basic goals of intelligence work are tangible: 
the huge defense budgets of the Reagan era; a needlessly prolonged 
confrontation with Moscow; and a lost opportunity to influence developments 
in the Russian Federation.


I'm not alone in my view of the agency's failings. Various Reagan 
administration officials--including George Shultz, who was secretary of 
state, and Colin Powell, Reagan's last national security adviser--have said 
that they were not well served by the CIA's estimates (as these forecasts are 
known in the intelligence community). Part of the problem was political: 
William Casey, Reagan's director of central intelligence, only wanted 
information that would support his view of the Soviet threat and a strategy 
of confrontation with Moscow.


There's an argument to be made (and some have done so) that the U.S. military 
buildup helped put pressure on the Soviet Union, but that's not a defense for 
faulty intelligence work. Such a strategy is the province of policy makers; 
the CIA's job is to provide its best analysis of the facts.


Controversy over the CIA's performance broke out as soon as the Soviet Union 
began disintegrating. When the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held 
hearings on the issue in 1991, I was asked to testify. I described the 
politicization of intelligence that occurred during Casey's tenure, including 
estimates that were skewed to undermine Shultz's efforts to improve relations 
with Moscow.


In 1985, Casey and his deputy director for intelligence, Robert Gates, had 
orchestrated an assessment of a nonexistent Soviet plot against Pope John 
Paul II. And a wildly off-the-mark estimate of a Soviet threat to Iran had 
been used to justify arms sales to so-called moderates in Tehran. Gates later 
denied that he had any role in politicizing intelligence, but said that he 
watched Casey "on issue after issue sit in meetings and present intelligence 
framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued." This is a remarkable 
admission from Casey's primary intelligence adviser from 1981 to 1986.


In my testimony, I described how Casey and Gates turned aside numerous 
studies that my colleagues and I drafted; these studies documented 
Gorbachev's efforts to restructure the Soviet system and to pull back from 
its involvement with the Third World. I drafted a memorandum in 1985 
concluding that the Soviet Union would not provide MiG-29s to the Sandinista 
government in Nicaragua; Gates rejected the memorandum and stated that the 
CIA should not "go out on a limb" on this issue. This was Gates's standard 
formulation for assessments that did not coincide with Casey's perception of 
the Soviet threat.


During my 24 years at the CIA, I saw occasional efforts to skew analytical 
conclusions. But these forays always seem to come from outside the agency. 
During the Vietnam War, for example, there was pressure from Johnson 
administration officials to understate the strength of Viet Cong forces. In 
the 1980s, however, Casey and Gates worked from within to slant intelligence 
on numerous policy-sensitive issues, particularly Soviet issues.


Let me be clear: My intelligence memorandums during this period--and those of 
my colleagues--did not predict the collapse of the Gorbachev regime, let 
alone the end of the Soviet Union. But if our unedited assessments had been 
released to policy makers, I am convinced the Reagan and Bush administrations 
would have had a better and earlier understanding of the changes underway in 
the Soviet Union.


For example, CIA economists had tracked the early stages of decline of the 
Soviet economy from 1976 to 1986, but Gates would not circulate most draft 
assessments that pointed to Soviet weakness. As a result, CIA estimates 
overstated the size of the Soviet economy and underestimated the economic 
burden of maintaining the Soviet military. During this period, the CIA 
estimated the size of the Soviet economy to be nearly 60 percent that of the 
U.S. economy and asserted that the growth rate of personal consumption in the 
Soviet Union from 1951 to 1988 exceeded that of the United States. (As late 
as 1986, the agency was asserting that East Germany was ahead of West Germany 
in per capita output.) The Reagan administration used these exaggerated 
numbers to justify nearly $2 trillion in total defense spending in the 1980s.


Part of the CIA's problem was a result of the fact that the agency was dead 
wrong on the most crucial Soviet intelligence question of the 1980s: Was 
Gorbachev serious? The CIA missed virtually every sign of change during the 
Gorbachev era, beginning with the significance of his accession to power, the 
political impact of the appointment of Eduard Shevardnadze as foreign 
minister, and the revolution in disarmament policy. CIA estimates provided no 
early warning of the Soviet retreat from the Third World, including 
withdrawal of its forces from Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, the Indian Ocean and 
the Mediterranean.


The CIA too quickly dismissed Moscow's claims that it would withdraw from 
Afghanistan--the first major step in Gorbachev's strategic retreat. His 
Afghan withdrawal foreshadowed his decision to not intervene at the fall of 
the Berlin Wall, setting the stage for anticommunist revolutions in Eastern 
Europe and the reunification of Germany. The CIA's misreading of Gorbachev 
meant that the agency could not anticipate these events, thus missing the 
greatest triumph of political liberalism in modern history.


The agency also distorted the military might of the Warsaw Pact and never 
anticipated that the pact would dissolve. These distortions delayed 
negotiations on a Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. In 1990, only months 
before the pact's collapse, the CIA concluded that the Warsaw Pact had 
matched or exceeded NATO's capabilities in all ground-force weapons and would 
keep pace with NATO's modernization program.


Even as late as 1988, one estimate had concluded that the "domestic problems 
of the USSR are unlikely to alter the Soviet system and the international 
appetites that spring from it." And 1988 is part of the period when, agency 
officials insisted last month, the CIA got it right.


Before the CIA can expect to convince the public that it got it right, the 
agency will have to convince those policy makers who said they were surprised 
by the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Former 
president George Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, 
recall no CIA warnings about the Soviet demise or the collapse of the Berlin 
Wall. Powell has written that the CIA could not "anticipate events much 
better than a layman watching television." Even Gates conceded in his memoirs 
that the agency had underestimated the dramatic change of course in Soviet 
policy and had neither anticipated Gorbachev's retreat abroad nor the 
destruction of the Soviet system at home.


But the most compelling voice is that of former secretary of state Shultz, 
who believed that CIA analysis on the Soviet Union was "distorted by strong 
views about policy" that blocked any discussion of Soviet weakness. In 1986 
and 1987, according to his memoirs, Shultz confronted CIA director Casey and 
accused him of providing "bum dope" to the president and warned the White 
House that the agency was "unable to perceive that change was coming in the 
Soviet Union." And in 1987, he reminded acting director Gates that the CIA 
was "usually wrong" about Moscow and that the agency had dismissed 
Gorbachev's policies as "just another attempt to deceive us."


The key to a genuine post-mortem is to examine all points of view on the 
subject. At last month's conference, however, the CIA did not want to hear 
from critics of the agency's track record, including me and two other former 
CIA officials who testified against Gates's appointment in 1991 as director 
of central intelligence. I asked the CIA's organizer of the conference to 
accommodate one of us, but he dismissed the idea.


If the CIA merely tries to exonerate itself, it cannot learn from its 
mistakes. That has happened too often in the agency's past. It should not 
happen now.


*******