January 12, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4028 4029 4030

Johnson's Russia List
#4029
12 January 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. The Guardian (UK): Amelia Gentleman, Russians to hold Chechen boys over 10 for 'thorough' checks.
2. AP: Chechens Return Home, Are Bombed.
3. Moscow Times EDITORIAL: First And Holy, But Not Former.
4. Reuters: Soviet-era Jewish homeland struggles on. (BIROBIDZHAN)
5. Itar-Tass: Putin Signs Decree on National Security Conception.
6. Newsweek International: Bill Powell and Yevgenia Albats, Russia's Mystery Man. Who is Vladimir Putin? A look at his rise to power. 
7. Theodore Karasik: Russia's northern cities.
8. Wierd Duk: Yusup Magomadov.
9. CIA Publication: At Cold War's End: US Intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1989-1991.
10. Financial Times (UK): Andrew Jack, Moscow plays down rouble fall.
11. Christian Science Monitor: Judith Matloff, Kremlin reshuffle: same faces, different chairs. Acting president's Jan. 10 Cabinet changes point to continued influence of the Yeltsin 'clan' in Russia.] 

********

#1
The Guardian (UK)
12 January 2000
[for personal use only]
Russians to hold Chechen boys over 10 for 'thorough' checks 
Amelia Gentleman in Moscow

Russia's assault on Chechnya threatened yesterday to become harsher still, 
after a senior general attributed severe setbacks in the campaign to the 
misplaced "tender-heartedness" of commanding officers. 

In the wake of a series of devastating Chechen rebel counter-attacks, the 
Russian military promised to adopt "tougher tactics" towards the local 
population. The military said Chechen males aged between 10 and and 60 would 
now automatically be treated as rebels and detained for "thorough" checks. 

Human rights organisations denounced the policy as "absolutely unacceptable". 

Federal forces said they had retaken the strategic town of Shali, 12 miles 
south-east of the capital Grozny, following a fierce battle against rebels 
who had forced their way back in after a lightning raid through Russian lines 
on Sunday. 

Witnesses said the struggle was exceptionally bitter; the Russian news agency 
Interfax claimed that as many as 250 residents - mostly civilians - had died 
in two days' fighting, while much of the town was destroyed. 

"Downtown Shali is practically destroyed. Not a single building has been left 
undamaged. Some buildings have had their roofs torn off, others have had 
their windows and doors smashed, and administrative buildings have been 
burned down," an eyewitness told the agency. 

There were heavy losses on the Russian side, too. Admitting the worst losses 
of the campaign so far, the interior ministry said rebels killed 26 Russian 
soldiers during their offensive on Sunday and Monday. Up to 15 more were 
thought to have died in fighting yesterday. 

Soldiers in Chechnya claim the casualties are much higher than reported. 

Russian artillery yesterday heavily shelled both Shali and Argun - which was 
also partly retaken by the rebels at the weekend. Further cleansing 
operations in a search for weapon stashes and rebel bases were under way by 
Russian soldiers last night, after criticism that the original searches had 
not been thorough enough, allowing Chechen fighters to hit back. 

But repeated claims by the Russian high command that "everything is now under 
control" are for the first time being greeted with widespread scepticism in 
Moscow. Even newspapers that support the acting president, Vladimir Putin, 
were yesterday fiercely critical of the army's failure even to prepare for 
possible Chechen counter-attacks. 

An editorial in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta said that "for the first time, this 
new war recalls the events of 1994-96", a bleak reference to the first 
Chechen war, which ended in a humiliating defeat for Russia. The fighters' 
skill at orchestrating sudden, damaging raids into Russian terroritory helped 
secure their victory then. 

Embarrassed by the series of Chechen counter-attacks, the commander of 
Russian forces in Chechnya, Colonel General Viktor Kazantsev, acknowledged 
that "mistakes" had been made when federal troops took control of the areas 
before Christmas. 

Asked to clarify what he meant by mistakes, he said: "They include our 
tender-heartedness and frequently absolutely groundless trust" when checking 
the area for militants. 

The army has frequently claimed it is unable to distinguish between Chechen 
fighters and civilians or refugees, hence the decision to classify all males 
between 10 and 60 as rebels. 

Peter Bouckaert, a representative for Human Rights Watch in the region, said 
the ploy was not only unacceptable but counter-productive. "One of the main 
reasons why many young men have not left areas of combat is that they are 
afraid to go through the checkpoints. This will only reinforce that fear," he 
said. 

But the Chechen rebels yesterday professed defiance, promising fresh assaults 
on Russian positions. "This is just the beginning of a series of actions 
intended to free the areas occupied by the Russians," the rebel chief of 
staff, Mumadi Saidayev, said. 

*******

#2
Chechens Return Home, Are Bombed
January 11, 2000
By ANNA DOLGOV

URUS-MARTAN, Russia (AP) - Assured by Russian authorities that it was safe to 
return to Chechnya, 4-year-old Liana Shamsudinova and her family were 
settling into their home when a tank shell ripped into the bedroom. 

The exploding shell tore the house to bits, killing Liana's mother, her 
3-year-old brother and an 8-year-old sister, said the girl's only surviving 
relative, her aunt Raisa Davlitmirzayeva. 

Liana was hospitalized with a fractured skull and shell fragments in her 
legs. The little girl cried, clutching a plastic doll as a nurse checked the 
bandages covering her shaved skull and then the plastic tubes draining pus 
from holes in her left leg. 

``They called it a liberated town. They said it was safe,'' said the girl's 
aunt, tears running down her face. 

For more than two months, Russian authorities have been urging 250,000 
refugees from Chechnya to return to parts of the republic occupied by federal 
forces, promising they would be safe. But many refugees who have returned say 
they come under regular Russian artillery fire and get caught in the middle 
of fierce battles. 

With Chechen forces launching counterattacks and striking deep into 
Russian-held territory, villages and towns have become virtual free-fire 
zones. Russian military officers concede that many areas supposedly under 
federal control remain dangerous. 

``The situation can change at any moment,'' said a Russian officer who asked 
to be identified only by his first name, Alexander. 

Liana and her family first fled Chechnya in late September, more than a month 
after Russia began its campaign to wipe out Chechnya-based Islamic militants, 
and found shelter in a refugee camp in the neighboring Russian republic of 
Ingushetia. 

The family returned home to the western Chechen town of Urus-Martan - 12 
miles southwest of the capital Grozny - on New Year's Eve. 

Chechen refugees are told little about possible dangers, as the Russian 
government, burdened with caring for the refugees, tries to get civilians to 
go home. 

Of the 250,000 people who fled Chechnya for Ingushetia, more than 80,000 have 
returned home, said Nikolai Koshman, Russia's chief emissary to Chechnya. 
Russian officials insist the returns are purely voluntary. 

``Never, under no circumstances, will we support the idea of forced 
repatriation of people,'' said an official with the federal migration 
service, Vladimir Kolomanov. 

But he refused to say whether he thought Chechnya was safe enough for 
civilians to return. ``We are not saying it is, and we are not saying it is 
not. It's up to the people to decide,'' Kolomanov stated. 

No figures are available on how many returning refugees have been killed or 
injured in fighting. Russian authorities deny reports that there have been 
any serious civilian casualties in Chechnya, despite contradictory evidence 
from journalists, aid workers and other independent observers. 

Hospitals in neighboring Ingushetia contain many refugees wounded after they 
tried to return to Chechnya, including many children. 

In a ward next to Liana's, 13-year-old Ibragim Dadayev was staring at the 
ceiling, his eyes dark with pain. 

Ibragim, his 15-year-old brother Rezvan, and their mother Zara Varayeva 
returned home to the Russian-controlled village of Kulary on Jan. 4, after 
three months in a refugee camp. 

The same night, a Russian shell hit their house, Varayeva said. Ibragim was 
wounded in the head by shell fragments; Rezvan lost a leg and an eye and had 
to be left in Chechnya, his mother said. 

Russian authorities ``would not leave us alone, always telling us to go 
home,'' Varayeva said, her voice breaking. ``We believed them - and here is 
the result.'' 

********

#3
Moscow Times
January 12, 2000 
EDITORIAL: First And Holy, But Not Former 

Boris Yeltsin certainly has a claim to the attention of history. And it is 
probably harmless to offer him the mark of respect the Kremlin is insisting 
on - he is not to be a "former president" but a "first president." (Even the 
Americans often refer to their former presidents, when addressing them, as 
Mr. President). 

In any language, calling someone the "first" can have an ambiguous flavor - 
either a recognition that this person was chronologically first, or a 
suggestion that this person is the No. 1 figure. In Russian, the construction 
of pervy prezident has just a bit more of that flavor to it - in no small 
thanks to the usage in Yeltsin's various Cabinets of the idea of a pervy zam, 
a first deputy. But never mind. Yeltsin can be Russia's George Washington. He 
is the first president. 

And as we are all still getting used to the concept of citizen Yeltsin, 
perhaps there is no point fretting either about the sight of acting President 
Vladimir Putin waiting at Vnukovo airport to receive returning private 
citizen Yeltsin upon his return from Bethlehem. 

About a decade ago, we remember Mikhail Gorbachev reduced to the humiliation 
of twiddling his thumbs and receiving the Scorpions rock group in the 
Kremlin, as Yeltsin moved inexorably closer to replacing him; but we 
certainly don't remember the sometimes-spiteful Yeltsin paying Gorbachev much 
honor or respect. At the September funeral of Raisa Gorbachev, then-President 
Yeltsin sent a wreath and his wife. But if departing presidents are accorded 
more respectful treatment, that is also only to the good. 

But then there is the startling talk of Yeltsin keeping a Kremlin office. We 
oppose this. In politics there are harmless marks of respect - and then there 
are those symbols and regalia of power that must be surrendered. Generals 
retire and take off their uniforms. American presidents leave the White 
House. 

There is an eloquence in Yeltsin keeping a Kremlin office. In his view, 
clearly, the transfer of power has already - and finally - been engineered. 

And finally there are Yeltsin's somewhat worrying comments in Israel, as 
reported Tuesday by Nezavisimiya Gazeta. In the "holy land," Yeltsin says, "I 
feel holy myself." As to how he feels having resigned, Yeltsin says, "But I 
have not yet felt my resignation [pobyval v otstavke]. Keep in mind - I am 
still the holy president!" 

He is not a former president, he is the holy president, the first president. 
He is met at the airport with all due deference by his underling, Putin. He 
is keeping the Kremlin office .... One wonders if Yeltsin understands what 
his new status is. 

********

#4
Soviet-era Jewish homeland struggles on
By Michael Steen

BIROBIDZHAN, Russia, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Zion was never meant to be this cold. 
There is snow in every direction the eye can see, coating forests, rivers, 
steppe and distant hills. 

Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region, founded as a socialist Jewish homeland in 
1934, is larger than Belgium and lies in the far east of Siberia, skirting 
China's border. The crumbling apartment blocks of the main town of 
Birobidzhan look like an old, forgotten dream. 

Seven decades ago thousands of Soviet Jews flooded into the area, some fired 
with enthusiasm to build a new society in the resource-rich region, others 
merely hungry and looking for a chance to improve their living conditions. 

Fira Kofman was among the early settlers. She arrived in 1936, straight out 
of technical college 9,000 km (5,600 miles) and eight time zones away in the 
Belarussian capital Minsk. 

``The first Jewish settlers lived in tents,'' she said. ``When they arrived 
the only people here were a few hunters and fishermen.'' 

``At first building was very hard,'' said Kofman, who still works every day 
as the guide in a museum describing the construction of Birobidzhan. 

``We had almost no tools and did everything by hand, but we wanted to come to 
a new place and build, despite the taiga, the swamps, and the tough 
conditions. We knew what to expect, but we were young,'' she said. 

The harsh environment -- warm muggy summers and sub-zero winters -- 
discouraged many early settlers who went back to European Russia and Ukraine. 
But enough of them stayed on, building a community with Yiddish-language 
schools, a theatre and a newspaper. 

STALIN'S PURGES DEPLETED POPULATION 

Despite Birobidzhan's huge distance from Moscow, it was not remote enough to 
shelter from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's purges during the late 1930s when 
most local leaders were shot. 

Stalin's obsessive belief that Jewish doctors were plotting to murder him 
delivered a further blow to the region's Jewish identity in 1948 and 1949 
when all Jewish schools were shut down, the library was ransacked and Yiddish 
books were burnt. 

There are no figures available on how many of the region's current 
210,000-strong population are Jewish, but most estimates put the number at 
only four percent. 

The most obvious non-Russian presence in the town is a group of itinerant 
Chinese traders hawking their goods in the market. 

But the deputy regional governor, Valery Gurevich, denies the region is no 
longer Jewish. 

``Almost all of the population is Jewish, they just don't know it,'' he said 
in an interview in the local government building on Lenin Square. 

To this day a large statue still dominates the square, portraying the founder 
of the Soviet Union in heroic pose, cap firmly clutched in hand. 

``There were many mixed marriages and, of course, a lot of anti-Semitism, so 
many people did not write down that they were Jewish in their (internal) 
passports,'' he said. 

This meant that later generations had no idea of their Jewish roots. 

Many of those who clung to their Jewishness in spite of the difficulties 
seized the opportunity of emigrating to Israel when the Soviet Union 
collapsed in 1991 and travel restrictions were lifted. 

Gurevich said the regional government was now trying to stem the flow. 

``People go because they have a better standard of living there. And of 
course we mind -- we're doing everything to keep people here,'' he said, 
adding that the region was hoping to discover oil under its southern marshes. 

JEWISH CULTURE REVIVING 

Travellers on the vast trans-Siberian railway, which links Moscow with the 
Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok, look twice when the train pulls into 
Birobidzhan station. A neon sign displays the town's name in Yiddish in large 
green letters. 

All official signs are in Russian and Yiddish and one of the two local 
newspapers, the Birobidzhaner Shtern, is still published partly in Yiddish. 

Its editor, Ina Dmitrienko, said only about a fifth of the 5,000 people who 
buy the paper could read the Yiddish page. 

``I hope that figure will grow over time because many children are going to 
the Jewish state schools,'' she said. When she joined the paper 10 years ago 
as a reporter, the whole paper was written in Yiddish. 

Although many of the Shtern's writers died in Stalin's work camps, the paper 
was never shut down because, like all Soviet newspapers, it was an official 
organ of the Communist Party. Its masthead still carries a small Soviet 
badge. 

Dmitrienko, whose parents arrived from Russia's second city of St Petersburg 
-- then known as Leningrad -- in 1932, said reports of the region's demise 
had been exaggerated. 

``The prospect of there being no Jews left here just doesn't threaten us any 
more. Look, 50 years ago everything was lost. Fifty years ago they closed the 
last Jewish school,'' she said. 

``But in the last 10 years, since the time of perestroika, Jewish culture has 
started to revive. 

``They said, look the last Jew will die on the newspaper's staff and it will 
close. Well, we won't close, and we've just taken on two young girls with 
good Yiddish.'' 

RUSSIAN KINDERGARTEN, JEWISH CULTURE 

The town now boasts several state-run schools that teach Yiddish, as well as 
an Anglo-Yiddish faculty at its higher education college, a Yiddish school 
for religious instruction and a kindergarten. 

The kindergarten looks like any Russian school except the children all greet 
teachers with ``shalom.'' 

``We try to teach the children about Jewish culture, though we have children 
of all nationalities here,'' said teacher Svetlana Nikolnova. 

The five to seven year-olds spend two lessons a week learning to speak 
Yiddish, as well as being taught Jewish songs, dance and traditions. 

Nikolnova said the kindergarten, set up seven years ago, had relied on 
donations from Jewish organisations outside Russia to stock its bookshelves, 
which include such titles as ``Fun with Jewish stencils'' and tapes of Jewish 
music. 

One class of six year-olds gathered around their teacher who asked them what 
they remembered about the festival of Hanukkah, which the kindergarten 
recently celebrated. 

The children thrust their hands in the air and said, in Russian, that 
Hanukkah was the festival of lights. 

But, as if to emphasise the precarious Jewishness of this frozen Zion, of the 
eight children in the classroom, only one of them was actually Jewish. 

********

#5
Putin Signs Decree on National Security Conception.

MOSCOW, January 11 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Acting President Vladimir Putin on 
Monday signed a decree on the Russian Federation's national security 
conception. According to the document received by Itar-Tass on Tuesday, some 
changes were made to the text of the conception adopted on December 17, 1997. 

The new edition defines Russia's position in the world community, its 
national interests and threats to its national security. 

Among such threats is criminalisation of public relations. The scope of 
terrorism and organised crime may grow due to changes in the forms of 
ownership often accompanied by conflicts and due to aggravation of struggle 
for power based on interests of some groups of nationalist interests. 

In this connection, fighting against organised crime and corruption has not 
only legal, but also political character, the document notes. 

Threats to Russia's national security are also displayed in attempts by other 
states to prevent Russia's strengthening as one of the centres of influence 
in the polypolar world, hamper realisation of national interests and weaken 
its positions in Europe, the Middle East, the Trans-Caucasian region, Central 
Asia and the Asian Pacific region. Such a threat is also posed by 
strengthening military and political alliances, first of all NATO's eastward 
expansion, and possibility of foreign military bases and troops appearing 
close to Russian borders. 

The Russian Federation will be resolute and firm in ensuring its national 
security. The legal democratic institutions, the structure of state power 
bodies and broad participation of political parties and public associations 
in the realisation of the conception are a guarantee for Russia's dynamic 
development in the 21st century, the document notes. 

********

#6
Newsweek International
17 January 2000
[for personal use only]
Russia's Mystery Man 
Who is Vladimir Putin? A look at his rise to power. 
By Bill Powell and Yevgenia Albats

On the eve of orthodox Christmas last week, the man who spent 16 years in
the KGB serving the greater glory of communism attended services at the
Church of the Holy Trinity in southern Moscow. Ever since he rescued his
two daughters from a burning dacha outside St. Petersburg three years ago,
Vladimir Putin's friends say, he has become an increasingly religious man.
Attending a Christmas service was no act for the cameras. But the church
was carefully selected nonetheless. In the early 19th century Mikhail
Kutuzov, the Russian general immortalized in Tolstoy's "War and Peace," who
drove Napoleon out of Moscow and then beat him all the way back to Paris,
used to go to mass there. To this day schoolchildren in Russia learn about
how the great general 
restored a defeated empire's dignity and pride.

The symbolism of that church was not lost to anyone paying attention in
Russia. The country is once again in dire need of restoration. And last
week Putin, the new acting president and the almost certain successor to
Boris Yeltsin after elections in late March, was sending a not-so-subtle
signal that he is the man for the job. This was yet another installment of
a quietly powerful image campaign that began five months ago, when he first
became prime minister. It has been crafted by a team of professionals now
surrounding him (box). But it is one that springs ultimately from Putin
himself—from who he is, friends say, and what he believes. He accepts some
advice nowadays, those close to him say, but he does not accept orders from
advisers. No president—or storied Russian general—ever would.

Boris Yeltsin plucked Putin out of utter obscurity on Aug. 9 to be his
fifth prime minister in less than two years. At the time few inside or
outside Russia (NEWSWEEK included) believed it when the president described
this faceless former KGB operative as his "heir." At the time that notion
seemed faintly comical. Yevgeny Primakov, another KGB alum with a much more
impressive resume (foreign minister, prime minister, friend of everyone
from Madeleine Albright to Saddam Hussein), was steamrollering to the
presidency. Putin's popularity rating was 2 percent in September. The
short, wiry man with the hangdog face and piercing blue eyes seemed
destined to be just another Yeltsin victim in the making.

How wrong that was. As far as the Russians are concerned, Putin has not set
a foot wrong since becoming prime minister. His appeal is plain enough. He
is tough, seems competent and is waging a popular (though for Russian
soldiers, increasingly deadly) war in Chechnya. But Russia has embraced
more than that in Vladimir Putin. It has also embraced his biography. For
better or worse—and that will not be clear for some time—he has become the
man of the moment precisely because of who he is. Yeltsin was a bombastic,
capricious, hard-drinking muzhik (a macho Russian), but his antics and
erratic rule had worn his country out.

Putin is the anti-Yeltsin. Disciplined and meticulous, he would no sooner
get drunk during a foreign state visit and impishly begin conducting a
brass band (as Yeltsin did in Berlin in 1995) than he would jump out of an
airplane without a parachute. Where Yeltsin at his best could be a
backslapping, populist pol, Putin is anything but gregarious, and can be as
icy as he looks. And if the former president was notorious for his (to put
it mildly) unhealthy lifestyle, Putin is a health fanatic. He likes nothing
better than to take long open-air walks around the government compound at
Archangelskoye, and he frequently squeezes in time to indulge his passion
for judo.

Putin is the anti-Yeltsin in an additional, politically important sense.
During his rise the former president, for all his good-drinking-buddy
qualities, was a member in good standing of the Communist Party elite.
Putin never was. He is, in contrast, the postwar Everyman Made Good. Born
under Stalin, he came of age under Brezhnev and attended a KGB finishing
school now named after former general secretary (and KGB chief) Yuri
Andropov. He made a career in the KGB at a time when that was a very
attractive proposition for a working-class son of a Leningrad factory
worker. There aren't too many Russians who hold that career choice against
him. They would have done the same if they'd had the chance. Putin was no
star, either academically or professionally. But hard work, unswerving
loyalty to his superiors and a basic competence have served him well.
Better, indeed, than anyone could have expected.

How did Vladimir Putin get here? In spy novels, and perhaps in the fevered
imagination of some Western governments now, he would be a "sleeper": an
agent put in place by an all-powerful security service, ready to be called
on at just the right moment. Putin's story, inevitably, is more mundane
than that. He was born in what was then Leningrad on Oct. 7, 1952. An only
child, he described, in a recent interview, his father, whom he resembles,
as "an ordinary man," a decorated war veteran who went on to a life spent
mainly toiling in a metal factory. Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin died last
August in his late 70s, the very week his son was appointed prime minister
(his mother had died just a year and a half before).

Putin was a decent but not brilliant student. In 1970 he entered the law
faculty of the Leningrad State University. His thesis adviser Valery Musin
says he got "good but not great grades," but was a "meticulous" student.
(Just what his grades were is not clear: his file has been pulled from the
archives of the university.)

According to Musin, the legal department at Leningrad State back then
churned out "administrators, not lawyers." Roughly 70 percent of the
graduates went on to careers in the Interior Ministry, the rest going to
local and city administrations or the party apparatus. Only a handful went
to the KGB, and that, says Musin, was considered "the most prestigious
career path of all."

Among the myths that arealready building around Putin—some peddled
consciously by his staff—is that he was a career intelligence officer, a
member of the KGB's elite crew of superspies: well educated, posted abroad,
sophisticated in the ways of the outside world, particularly in Western
business practices. Those jobs almost exclusively went to the sons of the
KGB and Communist Party elite, and that was a club to which Vladimir Putin
never belonged.

His career began in 1975 in his hometown. He got a position in a department
called Service Number One in the KGB's Leningrad office. This was not the
famed First Main Directorate (now the SVR, the Russian CIA) of the KGB,
home to the Soviet Union's James Bonds. Service Number One, which existed
in ever major provincial city, was charged with conducting foreign
intelligence on Soviet soil—in effect, trying to recruit visiting
foreigners for the KGB's purposes. Gen. Oleg Kalugin, deputy head of the
Leningrad KGB at the time Putin joined, describes it as "a very small,
auxiliary department." And Putin, adds Kalugin, "was a nobody."

Putin met his wife, Lyudmila, a former schoolteacher, while in St.
Petersburg. Then as now, friends described him as an intensely private man,
unusually secretive, they say, in talking about personal matters. Aleksei
Kudrin, who worked with him side by side for five years in the 1990s, to
this day says he has no idea when, exactly, Putin met Lyudmila, or under
what circumstances. The couple have two daughters, 13 and 14, who attend a
German school in Moscow, and whom they intend to keep out of the public eye
during the presidential campaign and beyond.

In his early KGB days the first characteristic that many of his friends
note about Putin quickly became evident: a capacity for uncomplaining hard
work. For nine years he worked in the unglamorous Leningrad job, hoping for
an overseas assignment. Finally, in 1984, he got a much-hoped-for
promotion: he was selected for a coveted yearlong stint at the most
prestigious intelligence institute in the country—the Red Banner Institute
of Intelligence (today named after Andropov). There he mastered German,
which he had started at the university, and picked up English.

By his own account, the training Putin received there would be invaluable.
And not only for his future KGB career. As one of Putin's friends describes
it, the kind of "psychological training'' he went through—how to cope under
stress, how to deal with irrational people while maintaining your own
rationality—has been essential in dealing with the "madhouse of Russian
politics," as one friend puts it.

The academy served as his ticket abroad. In 1985, he was assigned to a job
in East Germany—but whether Putin spent much time in the prestigious KGB
headquarters at Karlshorst in East Berlin is unclear. What is known is that
he was assigned to Dresden, where he spent five years under the cover of
the deputy director of the Society of Friendship, a social and cultural
club. Some former KGB officials say Dresden was a good post, one rich with
opportunities for recruiting foreigners who came to visit a large computer
factory that was based there.

Contrary to some published reports that have Putin trying to steal economic
secrets during his Dresden years, former intelligence officers say he
worked on what the KGB called the "PR line": gathering political
intelligence and trying to recruit foreigners. Whatever he did, East
Germany's famous spymaster, Markus Wolf, says he "never heard of Putin,"
and that Dresden was a "secondary" post. Kalugin goes further, calling
Dresden a "backwater." The characterization rings true. The East bloc did
not attract the top spies—they went West, or to key cold-war battlegrounds
in the Third World.

When he returned home in 1990 Putin was not retained by the KGB's first
team—its foreign-intelligence directorate. He was shunted again to the much
less prestigious personnel directorate, which farmed its officers out to a
variety of domestic assignments. And at 39, Putin was assigned to a job
normally handed out to retired officers: assistant to the deputy dean of
the Leningrad State University, his alma mater. The job description was
that of a watchdog—keeping tabs on foreign students and the widening
contacts the university had with the West during the late perestroika
period under Mikhail Gorbachev.

Nothing in putin's background at this point gave any indication that he was
headed for power in Moscow; nothing, perhaps, except for his very
ordinariness. If, in the Soviet Union, the key to forging ahead in a career
was, as the expression had it, "never sticking your head out of a moving
tram," Vladimir Putin was abiding by it very well indeed.

But in 1990, as a democratic revolution was brewing in his home city, he
took a job that would change his career trajectory. He became an assistant
to one of his former law professors. Anatoly Sobchak was then a prominent
democratic activist and member of the People's Congress of the U.S.S.R. A
year later he became the first democratically elected mayor of Leningrad.
Putin followed him to city hall.

In 1991, he formally resigned from the KGB's active reserve. Many St.
Petersburg democrats believed—and still believe—that Putin was assigned by
the KGB to the mayor's office. Infiltrating newly emerging civic groups and
other institutions was common practice at the time. "We knew from the start
we were under surveillance, so no one really cared," says one of the
leading reformers of the era. Some of Putin's acquaintances say that he
quit the KGB because he was distraught at what had happened to former
colleagues in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall. Many were
called criminals, and some committed suicide. Putin himself has given
another explanation. "I had to make a choice," he told a close friend later
on. "Either to stay in the KGB, or to work for a democratic politician."
Still, whenever challenged by democrats about his KGB service, Putin was
coolly defiant: "Yes," he would reply, "I was an intelligence officer, got
medals and rewards for the service, and I am proud of that."

Putin quickly became Sobchak's indispensable man. He proved himself to be a
loyal and highly effective manager, becoming "the gray cardinal" of the St.
Petersburg government—the man to see if things needed to get done. Sobchak
put him in charge of foreign economic relations, and Putin by all accounts
had no trouble grasping the material. Says Aleksei Kudrin, currently
Russia's deputy Finance minister, who served, as did Putin, as a first
deputy to Sobchak: "He was quick to understand economic matters, and he
made decisions." He also used his contacts in Germany to help lure foreign
investment to Petersburg, getting Dresdner Bank to cough up a big loan to
the city. Foreign businessmen almost universally describe him as quiet but
highly effective in getting done whatever he said he would do.

His record was hardly unblemished. As early as 1990, St. Petersburg
lawmakers formally investigated Putin's "mismanagement" of export licenses
issued to local metal traders. They recommended that he be fired, but
Sobchak ignored them. It was in St. Petersburg in 1996 that Putin would get
his first taste of democrat-ic politics, and it wasn't pleasant. Sobchak
appointed him campaign manager in running for re-election. He ran against
one of his other deputies—Vladimir Yakovlev, who was backed by the powerful
mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. Sobchak ran—and Putin managed—an uninspired
campaign and lost. The victor then offered Putin a job in his government.
Putin rejected it, displaying the other quality that would soon ingratiate
him with even more powerful politicians: loyalty. "It's better to be hanged
for loyalty," he told Yakovlev, "than be rewarded for betrayal." His career
in politics seemed to be over.

Not exactly. Another of the myths surrounding Putin is that at this point
Anatoly Chubais, a St. Petersburg native who was then Yeltsin's chief of
staff, served as his political guardian angel, bringing him to Moscow. Not
true. Chubais's predecessor was going to hire Putin as a deputy, but once
Chubais took over in the Kremlin, he had his own candidate for the same
job. Putin was passed over. Instead, the now infamous Pavel Borodin, who
managed the Kremlin's vast trove of property and investments, was also
looking for a deputy. Borodin has since become embroiled in the so-called
Mabetex scandal, in which he allegedly took bribes in return for
construction contracts from a Swiss company (he denies the charges). Back
then, he was looking for assistance in overseeing the Kremlin's extensive
foreign economic assets, mostly in the former Soviet bloc. With his KGB
background and experience abroad, Putin seemed to him the right candidate.
He took the job in 1996.

The move to borodin's office would be fateful for Putin's career, the move
that changed everything. Putin's admirers insist that his essential honesty
means there was and will be no taint from the Mabetex affair. And in any
event, in less than six months he was moving up again, this time with the
blessing of the then departing Chubais. He became a deputy to Valentin
Yumashev—next to Tatyana Dyachenko, Boris Yeltsin's most trusted aide. He
put Putin in charge of the powerful "oversight department," a job that
entailed riding herd on the vast nationwide bureaucracy and on regional
governors. He also enforced loyalty among his staff KGB style: many have no
doubt their phones were tapped. Key members of the Yeltsin family were
impressed.

He was on his way, and soon enough would demonstrate his unswerving loyalty
to the clan. In July 1998, Yeltsin named Putin head of the FSB, the
successor agency to the KGB. It was a job the president would have given
only to the most trusted of aides. By the following spring the Kremlin was
in the midst of a fierce power struggle with the then prime minister
Yevgeny Primakov. Himself a KGB veteran, Primakov had a large constituency
within the agency. But Putin had installed his own key people and, to the
Kremlin's delight, managed to dismiss several of those who were loyal to
Primakov. Yeltsin rewarded him in the spring of 1999, adding head of the
Security Council to his job description. Putin had gone from an effective
manager—but a subordinate—to a critical member of the inner circle, one
whose opinions were taken very seriously.

Less than a year later he is Yeltsin's heir presumptive and, much of the
nation seems to hope, their modern-day Kutuzov. Though never a candidate
for anything before, Putin now in his public statements speaks
straightforwardly to the longing in his country for a restoration of
"Russian greatness," one that will be accomplished in a way Russians are
used to: it will be led by the state. Russia, Putin believes, "will never
become a second edition of the United States or Great Britain, in which
liberal values have deep historical traditions."

This, associates say, is not packaged political hot air, designed to appeal
to Russian nationalism. It is what Putin appears to believe. How exactly he
intends to restore "Russian greatness," of course, is very murky. That is
why there is now around him a growing battle for his brain. Liberals like
Chubais believe he will empower a now impotent state to fight corruption
and prevent the further disintegration of Russia. But beyond that they
think he will pursue a free-market, liberal agenda, sprinkling their
members among his government. But others—managers of the
military-industrial establishment, for example, as well as a cadre of
young, nationalistic generals—want to write their own script for Putin, one
that might not be so appealing to the West. Ever the clever bureaucrat, he
has friends in both circles, and has not yet tipped his policy hand.

Those two contradictory strains all but define Russian history—a desire to
be accepted and integrated into the West, set against the impulse for the
country to go its own way. To date, Putin has carried out the policies of
other men, the perfect faceless apparatchik. And he is where he is now,
make no mistake, because "he had the full trust of the presidential
administration," says Gleb Pavlovsky, a longtime Kremlin insider. After the
March election, will the ever-loyal Vladimir Putin pursue corruption
allegations against the Kremlin masters who put him where he is today? Only
then will he show the world whether he can be his own man—and who, exactly,
that is.

With Owen Matthews in St. Petersburg

********

#7
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 
From: Theodore Karasik <tkarasik@mediaone.net> 
Subject: Russia's northern cities

In JRL #4023, Owen Bowcott's article on Russia's northern cities reveals
some important points about life on the Russian periphery in an Arctic
environment. While Murmansk's depiction as being located in the famine belt
by the Russian and Western press is accurate, Mr. Bowcott's representation
of Arkhangel'sk's problems may be mistaken. What Mr. Bowcott is seeing is
an age-old ritual of trans-European links and a unique local perspective of
northern Russian life. Research in the GAAO (State Archive of the
Arkhangel'sk Oblast) and interviews with locals confirms this approach. 

The Russian north, represented by the port city of Arkhangel'sk, is distinct
amongst other regions of the Russian Federation and supports the notion of
heterogeneity within the former Soviet empire and its successor regions.
While there is hardship in some other regions of the Russian Federation, the
Russian north survives on the port activities of Arkhangel'sk, particularly
its timber exports, and oil and gas extraction in other parts of the oblast,
in a province slightly larger than France. Despite the ruble collapse,
trade ties do continue with other circumpolar countries. On several
Arkhangel'sk street corners, merchants sell an abundance of food stuffs,
timber machinery, Scandinavian furniture, and computers and related
supplies. 

Arkhangel'sk and it environs developed differently from any other part of
the Russian Federation. Their advantageous geographical location helped
promote an operational port compared to the landlocked nature of other
Russian regions. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, Arkhangel'sk had one of
the first-class ports in Europe. Among the goods exported from the port and
manufactured there were shipbuilding materials, leather, canvas, cordage
(thought most of the hemp was exported for the fleets of other countries),
nets, and potash. The port could accommodate 400 foreign and domestic
large steamers all the way to Bakaritza, Solombala, and Maimakh while
loading and unloading 100 steamers simultaneously within the North Dvina
River delta. The harbor was deepened to 25 feet and ice-breakers kept the
While Sea open for eight to nine months of the year to keep Northern goods
flowing towards Europe. In fact, the Northwestern merchantry depended on
foreign business links with Nordic countries through the port of
Arkhangel'sk. They could trace their lineage and names to Germany,
Holland, and Britain, and continued to intermarry extensively with foreign
merchant families. Some spent the better part of each year in Western
Europe. Even under Soviet rule, Khrushchev established an economic zone for
the region based on the unique qualities of Arkhangel'sk. There is ongoing
process here that continues today albeit at reduced levels. What Mr.
Bowcott sees are links that have oscillated for the past several hundred
years and can be perceived as normal and natural. 

Mr. Bowcott sees also state intervention in Arkhangel'sk. I respectfully
disagree. Political and economic affairs grew differently than in other
areas of the Russian empire as a result of the links described above.

Arkhangel'sk politics and economics often focused on notions of democracy
and identity imported from Western Europe due to trade ties when land reform
issues, such as zemstva reform, were discussed in local organs of power by
citizens voicing their own opinions. According to V.V. Andreev in *Raskol i
ego znachenie v narodnoi russkoi istorii* St. Petersburg, 1870, pp.
132-138, citizens claimed that the North was heir to the Novgorodian
tradition of political and religious freedom. The northerner (severianin'),
in this view, was free from the corrupting influences of autocratic,
bureaucratic and noble Russia, self-reliant and independent, and uniquely
prepared for democratic government and an egalitarian society. These leaders
saw the peculiar needs of Northern society and economy. That view, 130
years later, remains in the minds of the populace and in the local press.
Moscow is indeed a "separate country" from the Russian north. Unlike
Chechnya, the populace considers itself part of the Russian Federation but
sees Arkhangel'sk in a distinctly Northern fashion. 

Dr. Theodore Karasik
Resident Consultant, RAND

********

#8
From: "wierd duk" <wierd@glasnet.ru>
Subject: Yusup Magomadov
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 

Many foreign correspondents in Moscow, who cover the Chechen war, know Yusup
Magomadov, a 13-year old Chechen boy from the village of Novo-Sharoi. Yusup
was heavily wounded during the bombardment of his village, both of his legs
had
to be amputated. Yusup spent weeks in the hospital in Sleptsovsk, near the
Chechen border, where he was interviewed, photographed and filmed by many of
us. He
needed further medical care which was not available in Ingushetia. So we
decided to take the boy and his mother to Moscow. Here doctors of the
Tsentralnaya Detskaya Respublikanskaya Bolnitsa performed a second
succesfull operation on his legs. Now Yusup is doing much better, but
ofcourse he needs protheses and we need the money to buy them. Russian
protheses are rather cheap, but not very sophisticated. Western protheses
cost around 9000
US-dollars. We would like to ask our colleagues and others to help raise
the money. Please feel free to e-mail and ask for more information:

wierd@glasnet.ru
Laure Mandeville - Le Figaro
Vera Kuznetsova - Vremya / MN
Wierd Duk - Elsevier / Het Parool

******

#9
CIA Publication: _At Cold War's End: US Intelligence on the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1989-1991_
http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/19335/art-1.html

This text gives an intelligence history of the last years of the
Soviet Empire. In November, the Center for the Study of Intelligence
(CIS) prepared this compendium for a conference on the end of the
cold war held at the Texas A&M University campus. The text offers an
historical narrative of the US perspective on the rapidly developing
events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during this time,
followed by an extensive online volume of intelligence documents
created during the Soviet collapse. According to the preface, the
declassification of such documents so soon after their initial
composition is unusual and evidences the CIA's new policy of "greater
openness."

*******

#10
Financial Times (UK)
12 January 2000
[for personal use only]
RUSSIA: Moscow plays down rouble fall 
By Andrew Jack in Moscow

Government officials and analysts yesterday played down the importance of the 
rouble's sharp drop in the foreign exchange markets.

Against a backdrop of otherwise promising economic figures, the rouble fell 
2.5 per cent to 28.44 to the dollar yesterday. At one point it weakened to 29 
before the central bank intervened.

The decline came in spite of a tax ministry announcement that collections 
were up more than 55 per cent on forecast levels for December, and in the 
face of figures showing consumer price inflation for December of 1.3 per 
cent, bringing growth in consumer prices for 1999 to 36.5 per cent, after a 
rise of 84.4 per cent for 1998.

Viktor Gerashchenko, head of the central bank, said the decline in the rouble 
was the result of short-term factors unrelated to the country's recent 
political changes or any fundamental economic policy shift.

However, Peter Westin from the Russian-European Centre for Economic Policy in 
Moscow, cautioned that there was still an absence of underlying structural 
reforms - such as Russia's bankruptcy system or reductions in government 
spending - which would support sustained long term economic growth.

Gearing up for his presidential campaign in March, Vladimir Putin, the prime 
minister, has announced that pensions will rise by 20 per cent from the start 
of next month, after a 15 per cent increase last October.

Mr Putin also hinted at new financial support for the army, stressing the 
need yesterday for "powerful armed forces". There are concerns that the cost 
of prolonged military operations and reconstruction in the breakaway republic 
of Chechnya - which officials concede may last at least another two months - 
could also put pressure on the budget.

Peter Boone, head of research with Brunswick Warburg, said the drop in the 
rouble's value reflected a classic pattern in countries with relatively 
poorly developed banking systems, resulting from the payments of large 
amounts of cash at the end of the year.

However he said he was optimistic about Russia's economic prospects in the 
coming months, with signs of new investment by companies and lending by 
foreign banks.

********

#11
Christian Science Monitor
12 January 2000
[for personal use only]
Kremlin reshuffle: same faces, different chairs
Acting president's Jan. 10 Cabinet changes point to continued influence of 
the Yeltsin 'clan' in Russia. 
By Judith Matloff, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

With an eye toward Western creditors and the March 26 presidential vote, 
Acting President Vladimir Putin reshuffled his Cabinet this week. 

Analysts say Mr. Putin is putting a fresh face on a stale situation and 
trying to distance himself from his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who resigned 
unexpectedly on New Year's Eve. Others say Putin is shoring up his already 
near guaranteed election. Some domestic media have begun to report 
embarrassing setbacks in the Russian military campaign in breakaway Chechnya, 
a major source of Putin's popularity. 

"His only aim is to do something to win the presidential elections," says 
Nikolai Petrov, a political analyst with the Carnegie Center in Moscow. 
"After that we will see his true colors." 

But Kremlin watchers say the Jan. 10 shakeup is largely window dressing and 
should not alter policy much. The sidelining of former senior Kremlin 
official Pavel Borodin - under investigation in Russia and Switzerland for 
alleged bribery - gives the appearance of a cleaner slate for voters tired of 
widespread corruption. And by promoting Finance Minister Mikhail Kasyanov - 
an English-speaking technocrat who has led Russia's debt negotiations with 
Western creditors - to first deputy prime minister, Putin seems to be 
indicating that tackling Russia's economic morass is a top priority. 

For the most part, however, the same faces remain. And as Putin himself has 
said, the new lineup is only temporary - until the vote. "There is not a 
single new name added. I'm sure there will not be any serious changes in the 
government's work," said Boris Nemtsov, a former Kremlin insider who is a 
leader of the Union of Right-Wing Forces, a party sympathetic to Putin. He 
was quoted in Moscow's Sevodnya newspaper. 

Various analysts believe Putin, a former KGB spy with no experience in 
government before Mr. Yeltsin appointed him prime minister in August, wants 
to present himself as a legitimate leader who could bring stability and 
restore prestige to Russia. He is heavily favored to win the ballot - but in 
Russia's mercurial politics, nothing is certain. 

Political analyst Petrov predicts the continued influence of the Yeltsin 
clan, despite the ousting of Mr. Borodin as Kremlin property manager and the 
earlier dismissal of Yeltsin's daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, who was an 
adviser to her father and is also the subject of corruption allegations. 

But there are other members of the so-called "Family" - as the Yeltsin 
entourage is known - who can still play a powerful background role. Among 
these characters, who are highly influential without holding actual office, 
are financier Boris Berezovsky and Anatoly Chubais, the head of the state 
power company. "The Family is still lurking in the shadows," Petrov says. 

As for Mr. Kasyanov, his enhanced status could be a sign that he will become 
prime minister should Putin be elected president. But while Kasyanov is 
appreciated for his knowledge of debt issues, he is remembered in Western 
financial circles as the man who gave foreign creditors the century's worst 
rescheduling deal. Many foreign investors were burned when the government 
froze the domestic debt market during the August 1998 financial crash. 
Kasyanov was in charge of negotiations on restructuring this debt, and proved 
unsympathetic to the losses of Western bankers. 

Russia has recovered substantially since then, largely thanks to a sharp 
increase in the price of its vital export - oil. But some difficult decisions 
will have to be taken in the near future. The ruble plunged to a new record 
low against the dollar this week, and the Russian Central Bank has warned 
that it will be tough to keep the currency stable while it uses hard currency 
reserves to make payments on the foreign debt. 

Ultimately, however, Putin's success at the polls may depend not on who is in 
his government, but how the military fares against Muslim separatists in 
Chechnya. Over the weekend, Chechen fighters surprised Russian forces in the 
towns of Shali, Argun, and Gudermes before pulling back Jan. 11. Chechen 
commander Momadi Saidayev told the Interfax news agency the rebels wanted to 
show that "plans to solve the Chechen problem by military means are not 
workable." 

*******


Web page for CDI Russia Weekly:
http://www.cdi.org/russia