December 23, 1999    
This Date's Issues:• 3704  • 3705  3706

Johnson's Russia List
#3705
23 December 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. The Times (UK): Chechen reality belies Moscow's rhetoric. 
Despite Russian talk of an imminent victory, the signs are that the 
rebels are far from beaten, Giles Whittell writes from Pobedinskoye.
2. The Independent (UK): Secret film shows proof of massacre by 
Russian troops. By Paul Wood in Alkhan-Yurt, Chechnya.
3. Reuters: Russians confident of rapid success in Chechnya.
4. Election results from EastWest Institute's Russian Regional 
Report.
5. The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontkovsky, Russians turning 'an 
Asiatic mug'
6. Moscow Times: Yevgenia Albats, What Drove the Vote, Democracy 
or Fear?
7. The Times (UK): Anatole Kaletsky, Yeltsin the terrible. 
A kleptocracy is the best Russia can hope for from its new government.
8. Moscow Times: Jen Tracy, Berezovsky: My Media Wars Can End.
9. Christian Science Monitor: Judith Matloff, Kremlin toughens its 
stance on the foreign media. Russian military officials continue to deny 
Chechen claims that they're inflicting damage on Russia's military. 
10. Stratfor Commentary: Nationalists Sweep Russian Duma Election.] 


******


#1
The Times (UK)
23 December 1999
[for personal use only]
Chechen reality belies Moscow's rhetoric 
Despite Russian talk of an imminent victory, the signs are that the rebels 
are far from beaten, Giles Whittell writes from Pobedinskoye 
THE sky over Grozny was filled with smoke yesterday as Russian troops lit oil 
wells and storage tanks outside the city. Refugees emerged with accounts of 
another failed Russian attack, this one leaving up to 50 troops dead. 
Three days after the Kremlin's election triumph, the talk in Moscow might be 
of final preparations for the capture of the Chechen capital, but the reality 
a few miles from the western outskirts of Grozny is an army of occupation 
reeling from raids by an unseen enemy. 


A woman reached Ingushetia from Grozny yesterday with news the Russians will 
not want to hear: there were 40 to 50 bodies in Russian uniform and seven 
burnt-out tanks in Grozny's Oktyabrskaya district. Chechen fighters are 
reported to have struck on Monday, less than a week after a much larger 
Russian force was destroyed in Minutka Square. 


Over a range of low hills from Oktyabrskaya, the northern approach to Grozny 
was meant to have been secured by Russian units weeks ago. But helicopter 
gunships buzzed the area continuously yesterday, droning over the clatter of 
machineguns firing from high ground above Pobedinskoye. At night the Russians 
start shooting in the streets of the town, a group of local men said, before 
troops watching them warned us to leave. As we entered the village, three oil 
wells were burning to the south. By the time we left, a fourth was filling 
the valley with choking black smoke from the north. It had apparently been 
lit by Russians with orders to destroy the Chechens' fuel supplies. 


Unlike towns such as Alkhan Yurt and Urus Martan, closer to the mountains, 
Pobedinskoye has been spared destruction so far, because its elders persuaded 
advancing Russian troops that they were not sheltering fighters. But like 
most of Chechnya, it will be left as scorched earth. 


At the last of five checkpoints on the road to Pobedinskoye, a platoon of 
Interior Ministry troops drafted in from Murmansk joked that the assignment 
had given them a break from a long winter's night at home. There wasn't much 
else to joke about. 


"There are no civilians left in Grozny," one of them said, contradicting even 
his own superiors, who admit that there may be 35,000. "We are ready to move 
in. We are waiting for the order." 


Higher up the chain of command, the orders have been given. Emerging from a 
meeting with President Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, 
said that his generals had instructions to take Grozny with a "special 
operation". He said that the end of the war was close, but did not specify 
how close. 


With Chechen fighters stepping up guerrilla raids on several fronts, he was 
wise not to commit himself. 


Yesterday, a daring Russian operation that Mr Putin said could change the 
course of the war looked more like a debacle. Up to 1,000 paratroopers who 
were dropped into the High Caucasus last week to cut off a key Chechen supply 
line were surrounded, with Russian helicopters unable to get near with 
reinforcements, according to a Chechen spokesman. 


Near Duba Yurt, at the foot of the mountains, the Chechens claimed to have 
inflicted heavy losses on Russian paratroopers. 


The Russian Defence Ministry routinely denies such claims, but in the past 
few days it has had little good news to feed the tame Moscow press. Their 
television crews are being kept 60 miles from the front line, and Chechnya 
has slipped down the nightly news broadcasts. 


This is not the neat march to victory that Russia was still counting on when 
it flew Knut Vollebaek, the chairman of the Organisation for Security and 
Co-operation in Europe, to the heights above Grozny less than a week ago. He 
was not shown Alkhan Yurt, where a Russian unit killed 40 civilians this 
month, some in firing squad-style executions. (Nikolai Koshman, the Deputy 
Prime Minister, saw photographs of the bodies yesterday, and promised an 
investigation.) 


The OSCE did not see the field of cows that died in a hail of shrapnel 
outside Pobedinskoye. Nor did the chairman hear a Chechen there yesterday, 
who gave his name as Ruslan, and who said that if the Russians tried to stay 
in Chechnya, he would take up arms himself and fight for ten years if Allah 
let him. 


Ruslan is Russia's real problem. 
******


#2
The Independent (UK)
23 December 1999
[for personal use only]
Secret film shows proof of massacre by Russian troops 
By Paul Wood in Alkhan-Yurt, Chechnya 


As soon as you arrive in Alkhan-Yurt, it is clear the place has been through 
a terrible ordeal. Most of the buildings have been flattened, and all those 
that remain are pitted with shell or bullet holes. But it is what happened 
after the Russian forces ended their massive artillery bombardment and moved 
in that has caused such anger and grief here. 


"The Russians have been beheading people," one woman said, sobbing as she 
told her story in the muddy main street, churned up by armoured vehicles. "I 
saw the bodies of seven or eight people without heads. They threw grenades in 
the cellars where we were hiding. We have been living from hand to mouth ever 
since." 


People said the ears had been cut from some of the severed heads, taken away 
as trophies of war by the Russian troops. Many people wept openly in the 
street as they told us how drunken soldiers had begun systematically looting 
– and had shot anyone who protested. 


"The Russian soldiers came into our house and they made us kneel down," one 
old woman said. "I was crying and I said, 'I'm a grandmother, my son, why do 
you make me kneel?' They said, 'We're sent here to kill you.' I said, 'Would 
you kill your grandmother?' and they spared me. But I had to beg for my 
life." 


The villagers said that 41 men and women were killed, all civilians. If true, 
it is the worst atrocity of the war. The killings were said to have taken 
place between 1 December and 15 December. 


Towards the end of this period, refugees began telling the Human Rights Watch 
organisation that something terrible had happened in Alkhan-Yurt. The first 
reports from the village itself were carried by the BBC on Monday –
prompting 
the Russian Defence Ministry to issue a flat denial that any incident had 
taken place. 


But yesterday, Human Rights Watch was given photographs smuggled out of the 
village substantiating some of the allegations of atrocities. One picture 
showed the head of a young man partly wrapped in a blanket and placed next to 
his body. The ear on one side of his face was missing. 


And an amateur video emerged, showing that the Russian deputy prime minister 
with responsibility for Chechnya, Nikolai Koshman, made a secret visit to 
Alkhan-Yurt at the weekend, promising that justice would be done. In 
contradiction to earlier blanket denials, military sources yesterday said an 
inquiry into the allegations of a massacre was now expected. 


On the video, Mr Koshman can be seen angrily upbraiding army officers in the 
village. "You will be held personally responsible for this," he tells one 
officer, who appears to hold the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. "I have never 
seen anything like it anywhere in Chechnya." 


Mr Koshman is given documents containing the names of the dead and how they 
died. "There are eyewitnesses," he says handing the papers to a man 
identified as a military prosecutor. The film also shows piles of stolen 
goods that have been loaded into Russian vehicles: video recorders, carpets, 
crockery, an album of family photographs spattered with blood, presumably 
from the rightful owners. 


The video was taken by a cameraman working for Malik Saidullayev, a 
millionaire Chechen businessman who is an ally of Moscow against the Islamic 
hardliners, but whose home is in Alkhan-Yurt. 


Mr Saidullayev has now declared that he will run for the Chechen presidency 
after the war. One reason he is publicising this damaging material could be 
to boost his popularity by showing he can stand up to Russian excesses. 


The film shows Mr Saidullayev walking through the village, accompanied by Mr 
Koshman and several generals. He notices a dug-out full of Russian soldiers 
drinking tea and – to Mr Koshman's embarrassment – they are drinking
out of 
cups stolen from Mr Saidullayev's home. 


A spokesman for Human Rights Watch said it was vital that Western observers 
be included in the investigation. 


******


#3
Russians confident of rapid success in Chechnya
By Timothy Heritage

MOSCOW, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Chechen fighters faced fresh attacks on their 
strongholds after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the end of the 
war in the separatist region was near and other officials predicted victory 
soon. 


The Russian military said warplanes and artillery had pounded rebel mountain 
bases in the south of Chechnya on Wednesday. Artillery was used to attack 
Grozny, it said. 


A spokesman for Chechen militia loyal to Moscow said the fall of Grozny was 
imminent. 


"Grozny will be under our control in seven days," the spokesman was quoted as 
saying by Interfax news agency. 


He said the Chechen militia had already entered Grozny with Russian forces 
but the Russian Defence Ministry did not confirm his comments. 


Putin said troops were not fighting in Grozny. Asked on television when the 
war might finish, he said: "It is close." 


He declined to give a timetable, saying: "We will not set any dates, we will 
not impose any time limits." 


Russian news agencies said commanders had already received orders to seize 
Grozny with a "special operation" and had finished their preparations. 


Putin has said the Russian forces will not stage a frontal assault on the 
city, where Russian officials have estimated between 4,000 and more than 
40,000 civilians remain. 


Moscow sent paratroops and marines into the mountains last week to prevent 
the rebels reinforcing Grozny. 


Three months into their campaign in the separatist region, Russian troops 
have taken nearly complete control over the lowland valley that forms 
Chechnya's heartland. 


The capital and the mountain hideouts remain the final strongholds in rebel 
hands, but they are far more easily defended than lowland towns and villages. 


TALBOTT TO MEET IVANOV 


The military campaign has been sharply criticised by the West, which 
recognises Russia has the right to defend itself against rebels whom Moscow 
says are terrorists, but says it should not use disproportionate force. 


U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen reiterated that opposition during a 
visit to Bosnia. 


"There has to be a political settlement and we have been calling upon 
Russians to do precisely that," Cohen said. 


"We understand that acts of terrorism cannot go without response but...we try 
to indicate to Russians that they have really stepped across the bounds of 
the international acceptable behaviour in dealing with Chechnya." 


U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott was likely to deliver a similar 
message at talks in Moscow on Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor 
Ivanov. 


But a top Russian general on Wednesday deflected the criticism, saying it was 
hypocritical after NATO bombed Yugoslavia earlier this year. That operation 
was launched to end a Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo 
province. 


******


#4
Election results from:
EastWest Institute
Russian Regional Report
Vol. 4, No. 48, 22 December 1999
RRR@iews.org


Table 1: 1999 State Duma Election Results
[SMD: single member districts]


Party SMD Party Total(%) Current(%)


Communists 55 67 124 (27%) 157 (35%)
Yedinstvo 9 64 73 (16%) 0
OVR 32 36 68 (15%) 0
SPS 5 24 29 ( 6%) 10 ( 2%)
Yabloko 5 17 22 ( 5%) 45 (10%)
Zhirinovsky 2 17 19 ( 4%) 51 (11%)
NDR 8 0 8 ( 2%) 55 (12%)
Agrarian 2 0 2 20 (4.4%)
Nikolaev-Federov 2 0 2
Army 2 0 2
Pensioners 2 0 2
ROS 2 0 1
KRO-Boldyrev 1 0 1 5 (1.1%)
Rus. Soc. Party 1 0 1
Spir. Heritage 1 0 1
Independents* 87 0 87 (19%) 77 (17%)


*When an officially independent winner has a clear alliance with a specific
political party or movement, we placed the deputy with the respective party.


Table 2: 1999 State Duma Party List Results


Party Percentage


Communists 24.29
Yedinstvo 23.24
OVR 13.12
SPS 8.6
Zhirinovsky 6.04
Yabloko 5.98


Single-Member Districts


In Russia's single member districts, 69 incumbents were elected, as
well as
21 Duma members who earned their current seats through party list voting in
1995. Thus, more than half of the deputies occupying district seats in the
third Duma will be new to the body. The Communists won more single-member
seats
than any other party or movement with 55 (see Table 1). However, compared to
the 88 seats the party earned in 1995, these results demonstrate the gradual
decline of KPRF's strength in the regions. The character of KPRF's
single-seat
victories, which came primarily from the traditional red belt regions, further
demonstrates the party's slow descent. The majority of KPRF's single-seat
victories, 28, were the reelection of incumbents, suggesting that the
Communists
success is being further limited to the regions and districts that have a
strong
Communist tradition. Unlike the centrist and right wing groups, KPRF is not
making progress in further penetrating the regions and gaining increasing
levels
of support. The party had only 18 new deputies elected. Additionally, the
Communists have lost several of the allies they relied on in the previous
Duma.
Only two Agrarians were elected, for example.
Following KPRF, Otechestvo-Vsya Rossiya (OVR) earned the second largest
number of single-member seats with 32. Unlike the Communists, the
overwhelming
majority of OVR-elected deputies, 23, are new to the Duma. OVR's success
in the
single-member districts is due in large part to the active support specific
influential regional executives gave to the movement. Moscow City, headed by
Otechestvo leader Yurii Luzhkov, provided OVR with 10 seats (the city has 15
districts overall). Tatarstan, ruled by Vsya-Rossiya co-founder Mintimer
Shaimiev, contributed 3 out of a possible 5 seats. Bashkortostan delivered
4 of
its 6 seats, primarily due to the controversial vocal endorsement of President
Murtaza Rakhimov.
OVR's success in the single member districts, coupled with the 33
seats it
earned in party-list voting, could give the movement considerable clout in the
Duma. While Yedinstvo's 23.24 percent showing in the party-list polls was
quite
strong, the movement had a rather paltry showing in the single-member
districts,
where it earned only 9 seats, all except one of which went to newcomers.
Collectively Yedinstvo has 73 seats (16 percent) in the new Duma. This is
only
a slight edge over OVR, which has 68 seats (15 percent). Even if Yedinstvo
does
form a coalition with Soyuz pravykh sil (SPS), which earned 17 party-list
and 5
single-member seats (6 percent), and the remainder of Our Home is Russia (8
single member seats--2 percent) its collective strength will not reach that of
the Communists.
This situation places OVR in an important position. An OVR-Communist
coalition would prove very challenging for a Yedinstvo-based pro-government
faction. This is particularly true in the run-up to the presidential
election.
Although Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's popularity is at an all-time high due
to the success of the Chechen campaign, there are still several more months
before the presidential vote takes place. It is highly unlikely that the
prime
minister will maintain such a popular standing as the war continues to drag
on.
A Communist-OVR effort to elect former Prime Minister Yevgenii Primakov
would be
an extremely powerful force to counter the Kremlin.
However, the chances of OVR remaining a single bloc in the new Duma are
rather slim. In spite of its relative success, the movement did not gain the
overwhelming support it had hoped for. The relationship between Moscow Mayor
Yurii Luzhkov's Otechestvo movement and the regionally-based Vsya Rossiya had
its problems from the start. However, the two blocs recognized that it was
necessary to work together in order to pass the 5 percent barrier. When the
groups first contemplated merging, Luzhkov was at the top of his political
game
and was being hailed as the country's next president. It seemed logical for
regional leaders to befriend him, especially as the Kremlin increasingly lost
its grip over the regions. However, Yedinstvo's strength and Putin's
popularity
have caused Vsya Rossiya's founders to rethink their stance. If Yeltsin's
successor is indeed someone from the Kremlin's current ranks, then regional
leaders cannot waste any time paying court to the new president.
The 87 independents without any clear political leaning will also play an
influential role in the new Duma. Twenty-three of the independents elected
are
incumbents and 3 hold seats from party list voting in 1995. With no one party
holding more than 27 percent of the power in the Duma and several parties and
blocs maintaining sizable factions, the new Duma provides considerable
opportunity for coalition building.
As Nezavisimaya Gazeta pointed out on 20 December, one of the less
obvious--though nevertheless significant--groups in the new Duma will be
made up
of energy giants. Nearly all of the major oil and gas companies managed to
elect a representative to the Duma. ONAKO President Rem Khramov won his seat
from Orenburg's District 131. Sibneft head Roman Abramovich swept up
Chukotka's
seat. Former Transneft President Dmitrii Savelev was victorious in Nizhnii
Novgorod's District 122 and Chairman of Gazprom Board of Directors Viktor
Chernomyrdin won in Yamal-Nenets. Additionally, 4 representatives from
Yukos, 2
from LUKoil, and one each from the Tyumen Oil Company (TNK), Surgutneftegaz,
Slavneft, and Rosneft were elected. Such a strong energy lobby could have
considerable impact in the Duma, which currently has no strong representatives
from oil enterprises among its ranks.


*******


#5
The Russia Journal
December 21-27, 1999
Russians turning 'an Asiatic mug'
By Andrei Piontkovsky


For three centuries now, our political thinking has been wavering within a 
false dilemma - whether to blend with Europe or oppose it. This old mixture 
of attraction and resentment, which is the archetype of Russian political 
consciousness, has lately become aggravated yet again.


"We are a part of Europe, but we're being pushed out of Europe," "We would 
like a strategic partnership with the West, but we're being rejected," "They 
didn't believe our striving for peace and friendship, they saw our goodwill 
as weakness." Dozens of variations of such passages in political prose repeat 
the motifs of the famous poem written more than 80 years ago:


"Come to us! From your battlefield nightmares
Into our peaceful arms...
If you do not, we have nothing to lose
We too can be perfidious
We shall take to the wilds and the mountain
Woods, letting beautiful Europe through,
And as we move into the wings, shall turn
An Asiatic mug to you..."
("The Scythians," Alexander Blok)


The "Scythian Complex" has taken over the whole Russian political class from 
the "Westernites" to the "Statists." All of them are looking at Europe in a 
Blok-like way, "with hatred and with love;" differing, perhaps, only in the 
relative proportions thereof.


The great poet did not imagine that, thanks to modern mass media, his 
metaphor would be made real. Turning from Beijing our convincing "Asiatic 
mug," we "dictated to everyone how to live" from hundreds of millions of 
television screens, brandishing our "full arsenal of nuclear weapons." The 
European-educated comrade Jiang felt a little uncomfortable with the 
double-dyed Asian-ness of his Eurasian guest but, being a courteous oriental, 
he did not show it and approved of Russia's destruction of rebellious natives 
with all the means our imagination can think of.


"Beautiful Europe" was also ready to turn a blind eye for a long time. But, 
being sensitive people, Europeans do not like extremes, especially when these 
extremes pour out of the television into their comfortable homes. The 
cannibal ultimatum promising to "destroy by means of air and artillery power 
all persons remaining in Grozny after Dec. 11, 1999," put in a difficult 
position even those friends of Czar Boris who had for years turned a blind 
eye to the bombing of the White House, to the deaths of tens of thousands in 
the first Chechen war and to the epidemic corruption of the Yeltsin regime. 


The self-styled Russian "political elite" is having more and more trouble 
understanding Europe. Over the past 80 years, the Blok-ian intelligentsia 
that used to "appreciate all - the Frenchman's shaft of wit and the German's 
somber genius," has disappeared. In return, there is a greater readiness to 
"turn the Asiatic mug." 


Amid all these endlessly fleeting turns, one stood out - that of Yegor 
Timurovich Gaidar, the conscience of the liberal intelligentsia, beloved of 
human rights defense organization Memorial. 


He turned his eyes bashfully from the camera and explained how disgusting and 
shameful was the last Chechen slaughter, but how the current one was 
excellent and would lead to the rebirth of the army and state. He told how 
warmly he supports our excellent and moral leader and what repulsive traitors 
of the Motherland are those who dispute the wisdom of the government's policy 
in the Caucasus. 


(Andrei Piontkovsky is director of the Center of Strategic Research in
Moscow.)


******


#6
Moscow Times
December 23, 1999 
What Drove the Vote, Democracy or Fear? 
By Yevgenia Albats 


Political observers in Russia will be chewing on the results of Duma election 
for months to come. But we shouldn't overlook the qualitative changes that 
have taken place in Russian society over the last four years and that are 
represented in the Dec. 19. vote 


First, more or less stable electorates have emerged in Russia. And this 
doesn't just mean the Communists, whose electorate is traditionally firmly 
defined and practically unchanged (the Communist Party of the Russian 
Federation, along with the pygmy communist parties, went down in comparison 
with its 1995 elections less than half a percent). The so-called democratic 
intelligentsia of Yabloko also has its own electorate - in 1995, it got 7 
percent; in 1999, 6 percent. The adherents of the party of bureaucrats - the 
so-called nomenklatura capitalists - have one, too. They were represented in 
the 1995 election by Our Home Is Russia, or NDR, which got 10.3 percent back 
then. They ran in this race as Fatherland-All Russia, or OVR bloc, which 
scored 12 percent of the votes. The liberals have an electorate as well. They 
ran this time under the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, flag and relied on 
Yegor Gaidar's Democratic Choice of Russia, or DVR, electorate. Despite the 
sensation of Kiriyenko & Co.'s success - with DVR's 3.9 percent in 1995 and 
SPS's 8.6 percent on Sunday - the liberals have never quite recovered from 
the losses of painful and pervasive reforms. Back in 1993, when there were 
still illusions that the country would be transformed into some sort of 
democratic paradise, liberals did twice as well, getting 15.5 percent 
support. 


The second and most important result of the elections is that for the first 
time in the eight years of Russia's young democracy, we weren't dealing with 
just a protest vote, but rather a rational one - even though that rationale 
is somewhat twisted. If in 1995 more than 40 percent of all votes were wasted 
on different midget parties that had no chance of winning seats, then this 
election saw only 17 percent of such votes. This difference - 24 percent - 
was collected by the "strong hand party," that is, Prime Minister Vladimir 
Putin's Unity bloc. 


I strongly disagree with assertions that Unity succeeded because it's the 
so-called party of power or because of the brutal information war waged 
against its competitors, Luzhkov and Primakov. If Unity was only a party of 
power, it would have collected the same votes that NDR got in the 1995 
election, which was 10.3 percent. The real fact is that Russians gave their 
votes to those who demonstrated a strong hand, not just government resources. 


Russian society is tired of confrontations between the executive and 
legislative branches, of the unpredictability of the Kremlin, of corruption 
and waves of kompromat. OVR lost this election because it couldn't offer the 
voters any protection - the beaten and bloodied can offer no protection by 
definition. Strictly speaking, the whole OVR platform boiled down to this: We 
will come and jail those who were in power before us. To suggest this to an 
exhausted, infantile country that wants someone to take it by the hand like a 
little child and lead it into the sunny day-after-tomorrow means to doom 
yourself to failure. By giving their votes to Unity, or more precisely to 
Putin, the voters said let us have authorities that are capable of defending 
us from real - and imaginary - fears. 


Those fears (fortified by explosions in Moscow), a sense of 
self-preservation, and the necessity to somehow survive and raise your 
children are the forces driving the majority of Russian citizens. This is why 
Russians gave their votes to the strong hand. And in this sense, they voted 
completely rationally. It is the rationale of an unlawful, unstable society 
driven by nothing more than self-preservation. In its way, it is a purely 
Hobbesian society. It is the rationale of a society in transition. 


Are you repelled by such a rationale? So am I. But it is a reality. Such is 
Russian society today. It's also a reality that the conception of civil 
rights and the priority of the force of law over the law of force is - as 
before - an abstraction for Russia. This is precisely why Yabloko got only 6 
percent of the vote, which is barely more than 400,000 voters. Is that 
seeminlgy little for a country of 150 million? I will answer that for the 
type of society that Russia is, it is a lot. In 1968, when the Russians 
occupied Czechoslovakia, eight people turned out to protest on Red Square. 
Eight. 


Russian society suffers from an overestimation of itself. The West suffers 
from inflated expectations relative to Russia. It's time for everyone to take 
off their rose-colored glasses. 


Yevgenia Albats is an independent political analyst and journalist as well as 
a Moscow Times columnist. Her column, Power Play, will be back next week. 


******


#7
The Times (UK)
December 23 1999
[for personal use only]
OPINION 
Yeltsin the terrible 
A kleptocracy is the best Russia can hope for from its new government 
By Anatole Kaletsky (anatole.kaletsky@the-times.co.uk) 


How many people in the West understand the true Russian meaning of Grozny, 
the devastated capital of Chechnya? Grozny means "terrible", as in Ivan the 
Terrible, who is called Ivan Grozny in Russian. 


Why would a tsarist cartographer have named a city "Terrible"? Even if 
Chechnya was a hated colonial region where thousands of Russian officers had 
wasted their lives in a fruitless effort to subdue barbaric, fratricidal and 
unchristian mountain tribes, English and French colonists never gave their 
similarly doomed military outposts names quite as grim as that. In Russian, 
however, grozny does not just mean terrible. It also means powerful, 
awe-inspiring and ruthless. In Russian, neither the word grozny nor the Tsar 
who carried it as his monicker has the purely pejorative connotations of the 
English word "terrible". 


Now grozny may acquire an even more complex historical resonance, following 
the victory of the most aggressive pro-Chechen war parties in the Russian 
election this week. This election was dominated by the Russian Government's 
wildly popular and fortuitously timed campaign to "liquidate" the city of 
Grozny and the Chechen terrorists who have made it their "nest". 


The electoral victory for the pro-Kremlin parties has obviously been marred 
by the way that the winners' hands have been steeped in Chechen blood. The 
Russian people's bloodthirsty relish for the wholesale slaughter of the 
Chechens has offered another salutary reminder on the brink of the millennium 
that human nature, at least in some parts of the world, has changed little 
since the time of Ivan Grozny. 


The Chechens are a culturally violent ethnic group who have often lived in a 
state of mutual hostility with the Russians, but the reaction of Vladimir 
Putin, the Prime Minister, to Chechen terrorism and organised crime has 
obviously been grossly disproportionate in Western eyes - comparable to 
carpet-bombing Londonderry or Palermo in response to an IRA or Mafia outrage. 
With the millennium approaching it is a disconcerting thought that the 
Russian people still control a nuclear arsenal sufficient to destroy the 
world several times. Even more chilling is the lack of any solid evidence 
connecting the Chechens with the worst of the anti-Russian atrocities - the 
explosions in Moscow apartment buildings which killed hundreds of Russian 
families. Who really perpetrated these murders which so conveniently 
justified a hugely popular anti-Chechen campaign on the eve of a crucial 
election which President Yeltsin's supporters seemed destined to lose? The 
answer remains disturbingly unclear. 


But despite the Orwellian atmosphere in which this election unfortunately had 
to be conducted, the outcome has been hailed in the West as another great 
milestone on Russia's road to true democracy, freedom and capitalism. Setting 
aside conspiracy theories and emotional reactions to the Chechen bloodshed, 
surely it is good news that the obstructionist Communist vote has dwindled to 
the point where it was almost overtaken by the non-political Unity Party, 
whose sole manifesto commitment was to offer support for the Government's 
programme of economic reform. 


Finally, Western diplomats are saying, Boris Yeltsin's governments will be 
freed from the sabotage of a Communist-dominated parliament and the fears 
that a neo-Communist might become the next President in July. Mr Yeltsin's 
heir apparent, Vladimir Putin, now anointed with a clear democratic mandate, 
will at last be able to complete the great historic task which Mr Yeltsin set 
himself from the moment he pushed Mikhail Gorbachev from power: to make a 
return to communism impossible in Russia. 


But will this election of a "more moderate, more centrist Duma", as the White 
House described it, really advance Russia towards this goal? The answer is 
probably yes in the sense that it will help to secure economic stability and 
private property. But progress towards creating a genuinely law-governed 
democracy seems much less certain. Private property and economic stability 
should benefit from this election. A more co-operative parliament will make 
it easier for the Government to raise taxes, balance its budget, control the 
money supply and stick to agreements with Western creditors and the 
International Monetary Fund. Such policies should help to sustain the 
macroeconomic progress which followed last summer's financial collapse and 
devaluation. This progress has already been surprising, partly because of the 
doubling in world oil prices. Exactly a year ago the IMF predicted that 
Russia's GDP would fall by 8 per cent in 1999, but the latest figures suggest 
that Russia has managed almost 1 per cent growth. The Duma elections should 
help the Government to build on this success. 


Private property rights should also become more secure. The old Duma 
persistently blocked legislation on the right to buy and sell land. Without 
such laws, which will now presumably be enacted, all legal concepts of 
private property rested on shaky foundations. Much worse, from the new 
Russian capitalists' standpoint, the Communist Party had frequently demanded 
partial renationalisation of state assets that were privatised through 
"criminal practices" or were sold off at "illegal" prices. Yevgeni Primakov, 
the former Prime Minister who was largely responsible for Russia's unexpected 
macroeconomic stabilisation and is now Mr Putin's main rival, showed 
occasional sympathy for such ideas. He was especially sympathetic when the 
Communist attacks focused on oilfields, factories and media companies owned 
or controlled by some of the more notorious robber barons who enriched 
themselves in the "spontaneous privatisations" of the early Yeltsin years. 


Indeed it was the fear of financial retribution among some of the oligarchs 
closest to Mr Yeltsin's family that probably triggered the sudden removal of 
Mr Primakov and the desperate search for a more reliable successor to the 
President. This search culminated with the appointment of Mr Putin as Prime 
Minister in September and the sudden intensification of the Chechen war. It 
now seems that the previously unknown Mr Putin will have no difficulty in 
being elected President provided nothing goes too seriously wrong with the 
military campaign. And even that proviso may not be too daunting, since there 
is always the possibility of bringing the presidential election forward. 


It would seem, therefore, that the property rights of Russia's new capitalist 
class have been thoroughly secured by recent events. It in no way follows 
from this, however, that Russia will move closer to a Western-style 
capitalist system. 


More likely is the continuation of what has been called a "kleptocracy" in 
the Russian context, but is often described in Asia by the more polite name 
"crony capitalism". This is a system in which wealth and power are derived 
largely from the right to plunder the nation's natural resources. In such a 
society, the rule of law and the ownership of property depends on personal 
political protection. As in a medieval monarchy, wealth, power and legal 
status are inextricably intertwined. 


While commentators in Russia, struck by the ruthlessness, nationalism and 
commitment to capitalism of the Putin Government, are comparing his future 
regime to that of General Pinochet in Chile, a more recent comparison seems 
more apposite. In Indonesia, President Suharto's family and their associates 
gradually acquired ownership over almost 20 per cent of the economy and 
maintained political dominance for decades, working within a market-based 
economy and a political system that was only moderately repressive. 


Perhaps this is the kind of future that now awaits Russia. And after 70 years 
of communism, who is to say that the Russians would be wrong to settle for a 
bit of crony capitalism? As for the rest of the world, why should we care if 
Russia remains dishonest, as long as it does not become more grozny?


*******


#8
Moscow Times
December 23, 1999 
Berezovsky: My Media Wars Can End 
By Jen Tracy
Staff Writer


Tycoon Boris Berezovsky confirmed at a news conference Wednesday that he has 
been deeply involved in managing political news coverage on ORT state 
television, and went on to announce that the "information war" he had 
orchestrated there are now probably over. 


"I don't want to justify myself or justify others," Berezovsky said. 
"Obviously, this was a very powerful information war. It was logical and 
inevitable, as profound political contradictions existed in the positions of 
various groups." 


Berezovsky added that the information war was "not about business but about a 
clash of absolutely different political interests." 


And he praised the leading role in that war of ORT anchor Sergei Dorenko, who 
every Sunday savaged - sometimes with wit, sometimes with evidence - Moscow 
Mayor Yury Luzhkov and his ambitions of forging an opposition parliamentary 
faction. 


"Dorenko is an infinitely talented man," Berezovsky said. Noting criticism of 
Dorenko's role - some European observers of the election argued he was more 
political hatchet man than journalist - Berezovsky said, "Very bright people 
often have many opponents. Nobody will deny the huge impact of the Dorenko 
factor in what has happened [with the election results]. I think that Sergei 
Dorenko is the best journalist in Russia at this time." 


Berezovsky and Dorenko also separately confirmed Wednesday that a transcript 
of a telephone conversation between them - showing how the tycoon closely 
directed Dorenko in formulating media assaults on Luzhkov - was authentic, 
though it was perhaps compiled illegally. 


The transcript of the Berezovsky-Dorenko telephone conversation was published 
in the twice-weekly Novaya Gazeta on Dec. 16. Editors of Novaya Gazeta have 
declined to identify the source from which they obtained it. The transcript 
shows Berezovsky and Dorenko hammering out how best to use the ORT airwaves 
to link the 1996 murder of U.S. businessman Paul Tatum to Mayor Luzhkov. 


Berezovsky said the transcript "on the whole reflects the main idea" of a 
telephone conversation he and Dorenko had shared. 


Dorenko was even less cautious. Responding Wednesday to an e-mail sent by The 
Moscow Times on Dec. 17, Dorenko wrote: "Sorry, as you know, I did not answer 
you, because I spent the past week with Berezovsky. Speaking without any 
phone in Karachayevo-Cherkessia. As I remember, the published phone 
conversation is real." 


The transcript quoted Berezovsky volunteering an account of who killed Tatum, 
the high-profile owner of Americom Business Centers in the Radisson 
Slavjanskaya hotel. In it, Berezovsky names Moscow Deputy Mayor Iosif 
Ordzhonikidize and Radisson-Slavjanskaya managing director Umar Dzhabrailov 
as masterminding the killing, purportedly by hiring a hit squad of rogue 
officers from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, with help from Luzhkov. 


"I indeed discussed these questions with Dorenko. But the context, which 
allows one to interpret it in a particular way, is wrong," Berezovsky said. 
He did not repeat, confirm or deny Novaya Gazeta's account of who he believes 
killed Tatum. 


Luzhkov has denied this and other accusations aired on ORT and has won a 
court case against Dorenko for slander. No one has ever been charged with the 
murder of Tatum. 


In a second transcript published this week in Monday's issue of Novaya 
Gazeta, Berezovsky appears to be similarly directing St. Petersburg's answer 
to Dorenko - the right-wing muck-raking television journalist Alexander 
Nevzorov - on how to get the most political mileage out of the October murder 
of St. Petersburg lawmaker Viktor Novosyolov. 


Berezovsky and Nevzorov initially flirt with pinning the murder on St. 
Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. Then they instead opt to suggest in 
news coverage that the order came from Luzhkov in Moscow. 


But while Berezovsky and Dorenko have confirmed the earlier Novaya Gazeta 
transcript, this account of a Berezovsky-Nevzorov exchange has not been 
addressed by its alleged participants. 


As cameras flashed Wednesday, Berezovsky also said that he had played a role 
in "developing the ideology" of Unity - a bloc that won big in Sunday's State 
Duma elections, with nearly as many votes as the Communists - but said he did 
not take part in the "technical" aspects of its formation. 


n On Wednesday, Bashkortostan's leadership announced that it might cancel 
several programs broadcast by the ORT and RTR television channels, Interfax 
reported. 


The announcement comes after RTR's "Zerkalo" anchor Nikolai Svanidze on 
election day said he had been shown rigged election results that had been 
prepared beforehand on behalf of Bashkortostan President Murtaza Rakhimov. 


"Svanidze's assertions are a lie and a provocation. This is an open 
falsification that quasi-political circles prepared because of their 
inability to attain their objectives via an honest electoral struggle," 
Interfax quoted Rakhimov as saying Wednesday. 


Andrei Zolotov Jr. contributed to this report. 


*******


#9
Christian Science Monitor
23 December 1999
Kremlin toughens its stance on the foreign media
Russian military officials continue to deny Chechen claims that they're 
inflicting damage on Russia's military. 
By Judith Matloff, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor


The Russian military is having an anticipated tough time as it works its way 
into Grozny, entering a decisive phase in the campaign to reestablish control 
over Chechnya. But as Russia pummels the Chechen capital, officials are 
trying to do the same to the foreign media. 


Moscow's fight to regain control of the breakaway Muslim republic is not just 
being waged on battlefields. The government of President Boris Yeltsin, which 
has had a firm grip on how the three-month war was portrayed in a domestic 
media largely owned by Kremlin allies, has resorted to Soviet-style attacks 
on the foreign press for reports it dislikes. 


The shift in tactics began last week when Western news agencies reported from 
the streets of Grozny that Chechen rebels had wiped out a column of Russian 
soldiers - embarrassing coverage a few days before Dec. 19 parliamentary 
elections. In its toughest approach to foreign media in years, Russian 
responded by accusing the journalists of lying and working for other 
countries' intelligence services. 


Yesterday, Russian officials denied reports carried by the wire services that 
reported remarks by Chechen commander Adam Baibulatov. He said 1,000 Russian 
paratroopers who had landed inside Chechnya's southern border with Georgia 
were surrounded and suffering heavy losses. 


And on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry denied the report by the BBC that 
Russian troops killed 41 people earlier this month in a rampage through 
Alkhan-Yurt, a pro-Russian village west of Grozny. 


"They [the government] are actively using an old and notorious method - 
endowing themselves with the right to decide what we should or should not 
know...." says Anna Shargorodskaya, who heads the St. Petersburg branch of 
the independent Russian National Press Institute. "It used to be like this in 
Soviet times. We have to look to foreign media for alternative information." 


The war is wildly popular among most of Russia's 147 million people, as is 
the hawkish Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Analysts say Mr. Putin is counting 
on his tough stance to win the June presidential election. Putin has 
denounced foreign reports of losses in Grozny as "complete rubbish" and "a 
provocation." 


The difference between Russian and Western versions of war events has never 
been greater. In the early days of the campaign, Western television showed 
images of tens of thousands of Chechen civilians fleeing Russian air attacks. 
The Russian press, meanwhile, emphasized military advances against Chechen 
"bandits." 


Analysts say the blasts are why the military operation remains so popular, in 
contrast to the 1994-96 Chechen war, which has been likened to Russia's 
Vietnam. 


"Ideologically, the current war is more understandable for the people. They 
believe the Army is fighting terrorists," says Oleg Panfilof, an official 
with the Moscow-based Glasnost Protection Foundation. 


Resistance to the war is growing, however, as more information leaks out. One 
source is the Soldiers' Mothers' Committee, an advocacy group for draft 
dodgers and parents of soldiers missing in action in Chechnya. The group 
claims 900 men still are missing in action or unidentified from the first 
conflict. It rejects official casualty figures in this campaign of a little 
more than 500 as too low. 


"Now too, there is a big gap between official and real figures," says Maria 
Fedulova, an official with the committee. Ms. Fedulova rejects Russian media 
reports that soldiers in Chechnya are well looked after. She says most young 
conscripts are poorly fed, barely know how to use a gun, and are paid $1 a 
month. 


Soldiers returning from Chechen duty have also begun to tell local television 
stations their uncensored stories. Their accounts make Russia's operations 
far less glorious than portrayed in the mainstream media. 


But these attempts to cut through the military spin still have a long way to 
go. Very effective in shaping public opinion is the Rossinform Center, a new 
media-liaison body, through which the government puts across its take on the 
war. Regular briefings are held, resembling the Pentagon's media approach 
during the Gulf War. Rossinform also organizes tightly controlled trips to 
Chechnya for small groups of journalists. 


*******


#10
Stratfor Commentary
www.stratfor.com
December 22, 1999
Nationalists Sweep Russian Duma Election 


U.S. officials declared a victory for democracy Dec. 20 after preliminary 
results of the Russian Duma parliamentary elections indicated a sizeable gain 
in representation for centrist parties. U.S. National Security Adviser Samuel 
Berger, commenting on the elections, said the United States expects a "more 
pragmatic and less ideological" Duma. Far from a victory for Western-oriented 
reformers, the 1999 Duma election produced a sizeable victory for Russian 
nationalist parties with the small protest vote going to reformist parties. 
Western observers anticipate centrist parties will present an alternative to 
the Communists, who have dominated the post-Soviet Duma since 1995. The 
Communists, however, gained more votes than in the 1995 election, and 
veterans of the state-controlled "perestroika" reform effort guide the 
centrist blocs. Centrist parties such as Unity and Fatherland All Russia 
(OVR) won a sizeable number of seats, and the liberal Union of Rightist 
Forces (SPS) had an unexpected voter turnout. 


The United States' assumption of the vote as an unmitigated victory for 
pro-Western free market economics and democracy is overly optimistic. The 
major liberal parties in the election, the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) led 
by Sergei Kiriyenko, and Yabloko led by Grigori Yavlinski, garnered a few 
seats in the election, 8.72 and 6.08 percent respectively. However, the 
overwhelming majority of votes went to parties advocating strong, 
nationalist, centralized governments. 


The key to understanding the results of the Russian election is understanding 
the nature of the two large centrist blocs, both headed by perestroika 
veterans of the KGB. Unity does not necessarily advance pro-Western ideology. 
While Unity is seen as the party of the Kremlin, it is not the party of 
Yeltsin's Kremlin. He lost his grip on power in the Kosovo debacle, when he 
sold out Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to NATO. 


Yeltsin's move forced the Russian military to take foreign policy into its 
own hands. Unity is the party of Putin's Kremlin, and of the military, 
security and nationalist forces that put Putin in place. Unity is reasserting 
its authority in Chechnya, pressuring the former Soviet Republics and 
confronting the West at every opportunity. 


The connection between the Kremlin and Unity creates an illusion that the 
party's ideals resemble Yeltsin's. But, the party was set up for Putin, who 
backed Unity for future support in his 2000 presidential run. By lending his 
popularity to Unity, the party gained the second largest number of seats in 
the Duma. 


Putin and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov are student and master. 
Together they advocate an agenda closer to the Communists than to the Union 
of Right forces. Primakov's party, OVR, gained the third largest number of 
votes in the election. His party ran its campaign based on popularity. 
Primakov, at one time Russia's most popular politician, has been in agreement 
with many of the Kremlin's policies, and favors Russia's aggressive action 
in Chechnya. 


Without a doubt, Putin's ability to run Russia with a forceful hand has 
become popular with the electorate. The electorate, in turn, demonstrated its 
favor for a strong, centralized government by voting for Communists, Unity 
and OVR. The Russian voters resurrected a body of nationalist, not 
democratic, ideals in the 1999 Duma elections. 


*******