Center for Defense Information
Research Topics
Television
CDI Library
Press
What's New
Search
CDI Library > Johnson's Russia List

Johnson's Russia List
 

 

January 26, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4068 4069 4070

 

Johnson's Russia List
#4070
26 January 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Moskovskie Novosti: The Liberals Want To Be Back In The Kremlin.
2. Reuters: Russian liberal urges Chechnya peace talks. (Alexei Arbatov)
3. AFP: The spy who came into the Kremlin: Putin's shadowy past.
4. Moskovsky Komsomolets: Primakov's Equation. WILL EM DECIDE TO TAKE PART IN THE PRESIDENTIAL MARATHON?
5. Bloomberg: Russia's Primakov's Rating Slides in Presidential Opinion Poll.
6. Interfax: POLL SHOWS MOST RUSSIANS PREFER PUTIN AS PRESIDENT.
7. Segodnya: Leonid RADZIKHOVSKY, PUTIN: AGAINST THE STREAM?
8. Itar-Tass: Authors of Moscow Apartment Blasts Still in Chechnya.
9. The Times (UK): Giles Whittell, Cossacks dance to American tune.
10. Moscow Times EDITORIAL: Either He's Right, Or He's Bought. (Kiriyenko)
11. Index of Censorship: Christian Caryl, Objectivity to Order. Access is the key problem for journalists reporting on the second Chechen war, and is under tight military control.
12. Novaya Gazeta: Yuri Buida, THE TEN FEARS WHICH HAUNT RUSSIANS THE MOST.
13. Russian Electronic Library www.russia-on-line.com
14. Washington Post: David Ignatius, The Great Game Gets Rough.
15. Reuters: Leaders of Russia, Belarus celebrate new era.]

*******

#1
Russia Today press summaries
Moskovskie Novosti
January 25, 2000 
The Liberals Want To Be Back In The Kremlin
THE RIGHT ARE PREPARING FORCES FOR A RETURN BLOW

Summary
Today the presidential administration doesn't want to comment on the Duma 
situation. The advocates of a union with liberals, and most of all the deputy 
head of the administration Jakhan Pollyeva, feel like losers. Negotiations 
with the Communists were secret, and many Kremlin residents didn't know 
anything about them.

Anatoly Chubais, head of UES (Russian national power company), also feels 
discouraged. He has already announced his support for Putin as the "single 
candidate of democratic powers" in Russia. But Chubais is keeping silent 
instead, SPS leader (Union of Right Forces) Sergey Kirienko has chosen to 
criticize Kremlin's actions.

It is said that Pollyeva and Chubais didn't know anything about the Duma 
alliance between the "party of power" and the Communists. Negotiations 
between Unity and the People's deputy group were led by another deputy head, 
Vladislav Surkov. And the person who negotiated with KPRF (Communist Party of 
the Russian Federation) was Boris Berezovsky!

The success of the Duma combination will allow Berezovsky to restore his 
position in the government.

But supporters of liberal ideas in the Kremlin are not planning to sit around 
twiddling their thumbs. They are sure that Putin's rating is bound to 
decrease soon. Which means that he will have to ask the right for support.

The liberals have prepared a whole pack of conditions for the Kremlin if it 
asks for their service. No one doubts that this will happen soon. The 
president's administration wants the Duma to pass the START-2 Treaty and the 
Land Code as soon as possible. KPRF is against both of these laws. Which 
means that an alliance between KPRF and Unity in these questions is 
impossible. And the Kremlin will have to pay for the liberals' support.

The present disunity in the presidential administration also shows that the 
Kremlin "family" is not a unified political power after Yeltsin's 
resignation. Each of its participants has to separately fight for survival in 
the government.

******

#2
Russian liberal urges Chechnya peace talks

MOSCOW, Jan 26 (Reuters) - A senior member of Russia's leading liberal party 
Yabloko on Wednesday backed the start of talks with the leadership of 
breakaway Chechnya and said Moscow needed to change its tactics against 
rebels in the region. 

Yabloko, while supporting the fight against what Russia sees as terrorists in 
Chechnya, is one of the few groups to express opposition to the methods being 
used, and to back peace talks. 

``We have to start negotiations with (Chechen President Aslan) Maskhadov, 
which would not mean the withdrawal of our troops,'' Alexei Arbatov told a
news 
conference. 

``We must officially recognise his power on the territories that he can 
control and fight together against the gangs that he does not control,'' he 
said. 

Russia said at the start of its Chechnya offensive that it would hold talks 
with Maskhadov if he ended his support for other rebel leaders, but Moscow's 
official position has recently been to see Maskhadov and the other rebels as 
one group. 

Maskhadov has been commanding the rebel resistance from an undisclosed 
location in Chechnya's southern mountains. 

Russian generals said last week that he had been injured, but Maskhadov's 
wife has denied this. 

Arbatov said the army should change its tactics by ending the battles that 
were taking place all over the region and using troops to surround the rebels 
in three main places - along the border, around regional capital Grozny and 
in the mountains. 

At the same time, Russia's special forces could from time to time launch 
operations against particular rebel leaders. 

``We still have time to change our tactics in Chechnya and stop the senseless 
assault of Grozny which has already cost us serious casualties,'' Arbatov 
said, 

``This is not the battle for Berlin in 1945, when taking the capital meant 
victory. Now the taking of several ruins in Grozny will lead to a new phase 
of violence and partisan resistance.'' 

The war remains popular in Russia, although recent reports of mounting losses 
among Russia's servicemen could test support. Arbatov also criticised threats 
by the European Union to apply sanctions against Russia over Chechnya. 

********

#3
The spy who came into the Kremlin: Putin's shadowy past

SAINT PETERSBURG, Jan 26 (AFP) - 
When Vladimir Putin became Russia's acting president on December 31 last 
year, the question on just about everyone's lips was: Who is he?

A spy turned successful politician was as much as anyone could come up with. 
Now nearly one month later and two months from the presidential election he 
is slated to win, only a little more is known about the 47-year-old's past in 
his native Saint Petersburg.

Ask his teachers. Nobody remembers much of him.

"You always remember the rascals and the stars. Putin was neither, he was 
discreet and retiring," says Tamara Stelmahkova, a history teacher at 
Secondary School number 281 where the young Putin was a pupil.

His university teachers have even thinner memories of their new leader. Putin 
seems to have glided through the prestigious Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) 
law faculty without leaving a trace.

He got his degree in 1975 and with it, a job in a Russian secret service 
department, then part of the KGB.

Exactly what his role was in the KGB in those first years as a youthful agent 
remains something of a mystery. What has emerged is that the KGB sent him to 
Germany after a few years. He was to stay there until the end of the 1980s.

Back in Russia and still with the KGB, he was appointed rector of Leningrad 
university, a post which allowed him to keep a discreet eye out for faculty 
dissidents and to recruit KGB agents, according to Stanislav Lunev, a former 
army colonel who was employed at the time by the military secret service, a 
rival to the KGB.

In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. Putin lost no time, angling a key post 
for himself in the Saint Petersburg town hall.

The former KGB agent served as the town's head of external relations, 
alongside the liberal and popular mayor, Anatoly Sobchak.

It was a post his years abroad had qualified him for. The early years in 
Germany had given him insider knowledge into how to conduct foreign affairs.

Under Putin, the contracts began to pile up.

"Saint Petersburg owes most of its foreign investment during that period to 
Vladimir Putin," says Vladimir Churov, Putin's former deputy and now the head 
of external relations for the city.

Putin had become the first stop for anyone wanting to do business in Saint 
Petersburg. Sobchak promoted him to the post of first deputy in 1994. 
According to one former colleague, real power then lay in Putin's, not 
Sobchak's, hands.

"Sobchak was just window-dressing. Putin was omnipresent, he held the reins 
of the place," says one ex-colleague who identified himself only as Alexei.

He was, Alexei says, a tough taskmaster.

"Discipline in his department was very hard. He ruled those he worked with 
with an iron rod," he says.

"Putin knew how to be hard, but just to those below him, and how to be 
obedient and absolutely necessary to his superiors," Alexei remembers.

Churov remembers things slightly differently.

"Putin was the sort of boss who gave those under him an enormous amount of 
independence," he says.

Sobchak was ousted in municipal elections in 1996. His would-be successor 
Vladimir Iakovlev approached Putin with the invitation to join his electoral 
campaign. Putin had, after all, good contacts with just about everyone.

But Putin by then had his eye on other horizons. He went to the capital, just 
as former Russian deputy premier Anatoly Chubais had done before him. 

The rest -- a meteoric rise that took him through head of the Federal 
Security Service, to prime minister (August 1999) and then acting president 
upon Boris Yeltsin's retirement last month -- is history. 

********

#4
Russia Today press summaries
Moskovsky Komsomolets
January 26, 2000 

Primakov's Equation
WILL EM DECIDE TO TAKE PART IN THE PRESIDENTIAL MARATHON?

Summary
"I don't consider anything impossible," noted Yevgeny Maksimovich 
Primakov when asked about his political future. But it seems that the 
ex-prime minister has already made his decision.

In the first weeks after Duma elections, Primakov honestly attempted to 
continue fighting. But now the desire to not give up has been replaced by a 
feeling of weariness and disgust for all the "nice" moments of political 
fights. The Duma situation was the last straw. Rumor has it that the Kremlin 
made Primakov some promises -- that under certain conditions it would allow 
him to be elected speaker. But the alliance of Unity and the Communists was a 
very unpleasant surprise. Now Yevgeny Maksimovich has told some of his 
colleagues that he doesn't want to run for president and doesn't want to be 
the leader of the Duma party group.

But his wishes probably will not be announced for a while. Primakov doesn't 
want to leave for nowhere, and looking for a new job might take some time. It 
seems that he would be most content with the chair of head of a new 
foundation or a center for political studies. In that case, he could occupy 
himself with science or strategic analysis, read lectures and write new books.

Of course, it's possible that he will change his mind. It's known that he 
can be persuaded. In the fall of 1998 he didn't want to become prime 
minister, but he agreed. Last year, he didn't want to return to the political 
life, but he did. And now many politicians from different regions are 
strongly demanding Primakov's participation in the presidential elections. 
The problem is that even the most optimistic analysts won't promise Primakov 
a victory. And fighting for a decent defeat is not in his character.

********

#5
Russia's Primakov's Rating Slides in Presidential Opinion Poll

Moscow, Jan. 26 (Bloomberg)
-- Former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov's rating continued to 
slide in opinion polls ahead of the March 26 presidential election. In a poll 
of 1,500 Russians taken on Jan. 19 by Russia's Public Opinion Fund, 52 
percent of respondents said Primakov shouldn't even run. When asked whether 
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov should run, 69 percent said he shouldn't. Support 
for Russia's war in Chechnya also was high, with 51 percent saying troops 
should continue to advance. 

Acting President Vladimir Putin would win the presidential race if he ran 
against Primakov or Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, according to a 
poll taken on Jan. 12. If no candidate wins a majority in the first round of 
elections on March 26, there will be a second round of voting between the two 
top vote- getters. The Public Opinion Fund said its polls have a margin of 
error of 4 percent. 

Do you think Primakov should participate in the presidential election? 

Yes 38 percent 
Not (former Prime Minister) 52 percent 
Difficult to answer 9 percent 

Do you think Luzhkov should participate in the presidential election? 

Yes 22 percent
Not (former Prime Minister) 69 percent 
Difficult to answer 9 percent 

For which of the candidates would you vote, Putin or Primakov? 

Putin 71 percent 
Primakov 15 percent 
Against both of them 6 percent 
Would not vote 3 percent
Difficult to answer 4 percent

For which of the candidates would you vote, Putin or Zyuganov? 

Putin 70 percent 
Zyuganov 16 percent 
Against both of them 6 percent 
Would not vote 3 percent
Difficult to answer 4 percent 

Do you think Russian troops should continue to advance into Chechen 
territory? 

Yes 51 percent 
No 28 percent 
Difficult to answer 12 percent 

(Public Opinion Fund www.fom.ru) 

********

#6
POLL SHOWS MOST RUSSIANS PREFER PUTIN AS PRESIDENT
Interfax 

Moscow, 26th January: Sixty per cent of Russians plan to vote for Vladimir 
Putin in the elections on 26th March 2000. Twenty-one per cent of voters 
favour Communist Party leader Gennadiy Zyuganov, and 8 per cent choose former 
Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov. Yabloko leader Grigoriy Yavlinskiy can 
count on the support of 5 per cent of Russians, Liberal Democratic Party 
leader Vladimir Zhirinovskiy is supported by 4 per cent of voters, and 2 per 
cent of voters favour other politicians. 

Interfax received the information from the Agency for Regional Political 
Studies that conducted a poll among 1,600 respondents in more than 90 towns 
and villages in 52 Russian regions on 21st-23rd January. The error margin is 
approximately 2.5 per cent. 

The respondents were asked a direct question about their choice of Russia's 
future president. The overall number of respondents who named a particular 
candidate was taken for 100 per cent. Names of more than ten politicians were 
given. The agency studied the opinion of respondents planning to vote or 
assuming the possibility of voting. 

According to the poll results, 66 per cent of Russians will take part in the 
elections in any case and 19 per cent think they will vote if nothing 
prevents them from doing so. Three per cent of respondents are likely to come 
to polling stations on 26th March, 6 per cent have no intention of voting and 
6 per cent find it difficult to answer. 

The poll outcome practically did not differ from the results of the agency's 
poll of 2nd-4th January. 

Residents of West Siberia and the Urals are more prone to vote for Putin as 
compared to the rest of the country. Residents of the Central Black Earth 
Zone and the Russian Far East give preference to Zyuganov. Muscovites and 
residents of St Petersburg are inclined to vote for Yavlinskiy. The 
respondents aged 18 through 44, technicians, workers and executives prefer 
Putin more frequently than other social groups. Many older and less educated 
people have Zyuganov as their favourite. Businessmen like Yavlinskiy, while 
students prefer Zhirinovskiy. 

********

#7
Segodnya
January 26, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
PUTIN: AGAINST THE STREAM?
By Leonid RADZIKHOVSKY

The reforms that were launched in Russia in 1991 have not 
resulted in the economic rise or improved the social situation.
In late January 2000, Russia hardly progressed in terms of 
reforms since the end of January 1992. We have free prices, the 
country is open, and the rouble is convertible. But this is all.
The economy has not been restructured, we still do not have a 
class of effective owners or a large middle class and genuine 
foreign investments. 
What should Putin do in this situation? Initiate a new 
liberalisation, or strengthen state control of the economy? It 
is clear to me that the liberal mantra to the effect that "any 
state control is harmful" sounds dangerously like the Marxist 
incantation about "the only true teaching." Both are easily 
disproved by facts. For example, Chile developed well under a 
liberal regime (liberal economically and authoritarian 
politically), while the South East Asia progressed despite a 
strong state control of the economy. 
The question is not where to go -- towards the liberal or 
the etatist regime. The question is that no matter where one 
goes, one will have to tread on toes. The toes of the powers 
that be.
It was easy for Gorbachev and Yeltsin to carry out 
reforms, as they went downhill, liberating the nomenklatura 
from the boring party influence and handing state property over 
to them free. The support of such reforms on the part of the 
elites was guaranteed. This is exactly why the current system, 
which crowns the reforms, suits the bureaucrats and the 
"capitalists" they appointed. They want only one thing -- to 
preserve the current heaven of the nomenklatura capitalism. 
The country can hold the 70th or the 170th place in the 
world, but its elite has not lived so well after the 1917 
revolution as it does now. Unofficial data show that a 
considerable number of the Duma deputies are dollar 
millionaires.
How can one carry out the reforms from the top in this 
situation, contrary to the will of the ruling class? 
On which population group can Putin rely if he really 
wants to carry out genuine reforms?And how strong should he be 
to carry the reforms uphill? 

*******

#8
Authors of Moscow Apartment Blasts Still in Chechnya.

MOSCOW, January 26 (Itar-Tass) -- Terrorists involved in apartment blasts 
which shook Moscow in September last year are still in Chechnya, Alexander 
Gorbachev, deputy head of the operative search office of the Moscow police 
department, said on Wednesday. 

Denis Saidakov and Achemes Gochiyaev, suspected authors of the blasts, are 
constantly on the move, they use fake documents and "enjoy support in 
Chechnya," Gorbachev told reporters. Moscow police officers, who are taking 
part in the search, are doing their best to get hold of the bombers, he said. 

"We knew about the routes of terrorists, but always received this information 
too late," Gorbachev said. Their arrest "can take a long time," he added. 

"These criminals are not subject to the statute of limitations, and their 
criminal case is not dismissed," Gorbachev stressed. 

*******

#9
The Times (UK)
26 January 2000
[for personal use only]
Cossacks dance to American tune 
FROM GILES WHITTELL IN MOSCOW

IN TIME of hardship, it seems that not even the chance to dance the famous 
Cossack gopak for a living can keep a Russian in the motherland. Lured by 
nothing nobler than a massive pay rise, 32 members of the famed Don Cossack 
Song and Dance Ensemble have deserted their troupe after a North American 
tour to end a miserable existence that one described as that of "serf 
entertainers". The city of Rostov, where the group is based, has denounced 
them as traitors and promised to help US immigration to track them down. 
The performers, among them some of the world's finest practitioners of the 
gopak's frenzied squatting and kicking, stayed on in the United States last 
month after a 50-city tour because, even as petrol pump attendants, they can 
earn more in a day than song and dance used to earn them in a month. 

"At home, my life is mere survival," Sergei Vasilenko, 35, told the Moscow 
Times from New York after leaving the group that had shaped his life for 12 
years. "It's a terrible burden when you're unable to meet the needs of your 
teenage daughter. After that, emigration problems seem like small potatoes." 

Mr Vasilenko now dances four nights a week at New York's Russian Samovar 
restaurant. Other members of Russia's latest group of cultural defectors have 
been less lucky, landing menial jobs normally taken by ill-educated, 
monolingual immigrants from Third World countries. Few of them have work 
permits, but any work in America is a vast improvement on the $25 a month 
that the dancers used to earn. 

Anatoli Kvasov, their artistic director, has been understanding. "I don't 
reproach these people," he said. "They can be deported at any time, but they 
decided to risk it because there is nothing else they can do to improve their 
living conditions." He should know: his daughter is among the defectors. 

******

#10
Moscow Times
January 26, 2000 
EDITORIAL: Either He's Right, Or He's Bought 

Those who dislike the Yabloko party -- Yabloko means apple in Russian - 
sometimes derisively refer to its members as "the fruit." Enemies of Our Home 
Is Russia, which came into being as the vehicle of natural-gas boss Viktor 
Chernomyrdin, dismiss that party as Our Home Is Gazprom. In that same 
tradition, ill-wishers of the Union of Right Forces, or с"" Ïà†¥-å
Ñ®..., 
sometimes jeeringly label Sergei Kiriyenko & Co. the с""
Ïà§†¶_-å Ñ®..., 
the Union of Sell-Out Forces. 

Kiriyenko has now taken a risky and dubious step that will, in our view, 
determine whether his party deserves to be considered pravikh or prodazhnikh. 
If the Duma truly does immediately take up key economic legislation - first 
and foremost, laws to dramatically lower and simplify taxes on business 
activity - then Kiriyenko will be able to chalk up something of a rightist 
victory, one in the national interest. Otherwise, history will look back on 
his return to the Kremlin fold as the moment when the SPS definitively sold 
out. 

A brief recap of events: The Kremlin's pet party, Unity, is not backing off 
an inch from last week's back-room alliance with the Communists, in which the 
two parties agreed to reinstall Gennady Seleznyov as speaker and divvy up 
control of Duma committees in a less-than-democratic fashion. 

Perhaps the most odious result of this arrangement has been the decision of 
the Kremlin-Communist bloc to refuse to give a single Duma committee to 
Yabloko - and instead to favor the LDPR, which has an even smaller faction. 

It would be hard to find a more eloquent statement of Kremlin-Communist 
priorities: The nomenklatura apparently find easily co-opted nationalists 
more pleasant to deal with than liberals of principle. 

Kiriyenko's party at first shared the outrage of other smaller factions at 
this unorthodox and unfair carving up of the Duma. As well they should - it 
amounts to subverting the democratic will of the people. Acting President 
Vladimir Putin has been eloquent in insisting we must all respect the rights 
of the millions of Communist voters, even if nationally they are a minority; 
what about the millions of Yabloko and Fatherland-All Russia voters? 

On Tuesday, however, SPS and Unity met with their creator, Putin, and 
Kiriyenko emerged to announce he was back on board. 

What did SPS get in return? Two leading SPS members - Boris Nemtsov and Pavel 
Krasheninnikov - got good Duma jobs. And far more importantly, Kiriyenko says 
the SPS economic agenda will now be immediately brought to legislative life. 
Let's hope he's right - and not merely for sale. 

- Matt Bivens 

*******

#11
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 
From: Christian Caryl <CCaryl@compuserve.com>
Subject: Objectivity to Order

Dear David:

I'm sending along two articles (by me and by Alexey Simonov of the Glasnost
Fund) that appeared in the latest issue of "Index on Censorship"
(www.indexoncensorship.org). Readers should keep in mind that both articles
were written in the middle of December. Of late, the media have begun to
take a somewhat less timid line on their reporting of the war. And the
appointment of old Kremlin pro Sergei Yasterzhembsky to run info policy on
the war may well bring some new approaches.

Regards,
Christian

Index of Censorship
Objectivity to Order
Access is the key problem for journalists reporting on the second Chechen
war, and is under tight military control
By Christian Caryl
Christian Caryl is the Moscow Bureau Chief of U.S. News and World Report
magazine. He has spent the past 15 years in central and eastern Europe and
has written for the Spectator, the New Republic and the Wall Street
Journal.

A few months ago I attended a Moscow conference that brought together
journalists and policymakers from Russia and the West. At one point a young
Russian, a deputy in a provincial parliament, asked the assembled
foreigners: "During the Kosovo crisis we all saw how the Western media
whipped up public sentiment in the NATO countries in favor of military
action against the Serbs. There are many people here in Russia today who
say that we lack some way of mobilizing society in a similar way. So could
you please explain to us how you managed to do that?"

It was a question that senior Russian politicians have been asking
themselves as well. On 7 October, shortly after the beginning of what is
now being called the second Chechen war, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
oversaw the creation of a new government organization called the Russian
Information Center, or Rosinformtsentr. The center represents a realization
among the political elite that neither brute censorship nor complete
permissiveness will serve government interests. Most of the Rosinformtsentr
staffers are journalists from the government-run RIA Novosti News Agency.
The director, Mikhail Margelov, is a journalist and public relations
professional who, by his own admission, belonged for a while to the old
Soviet KGB. As a sign of his team's relative savvy, one of their first
innovations was the creation of their own website www.infocentre.ru,
designed in part to compete with two Chechen counterparts www.kavkaz.org
and www.amina.com, widely used by Western journalists desperate for views
from the hard-to-reach rebels.

An article published on 7 October on the opening of the center in the
government's official daily, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, stated: "It is to be hoped
that the Rosinformtsentr will learn the lessons of the past Chechen events,
when the country and the world effectively divided into two camps."
According to conventional wisdom in Moscow, one of the reasons for the
Russian army's catastrophic defeat in the 1994-96 war was its failure to
develop a coherent press policy. Both Russian and foreign journalists
ranged about the lines with relative freedom, and in the process produced
dramatic evidence of the Russian forces' general disarray.

Now the new Press Minister, Mikhail Lesin, has publicly criticized leading
military officers for not being open with the media, arguing that they
should provide journalists with better access to the war zone. This echoes
the views of western journalists who feel that the real problem lies with
the military, which still tends to shut journalists off rather than
considering the benefits of managed co-operation with them.

Access has remained tightly controlled, however, and Rosinformtsentr's
guided tours into Chechnya have scarcely been triumphs of proactive news
management. I travelled to Chechnya with nine Western European colleagues
at the beginning of December on a long-pleaded-for-trip organized by
Rosinformtsentr. The Russian officials accompanying us reiterated that we
would have complete freedom within the limits of the itinerary (and subject
to security considerations). In practice, of course, things were more
ambiguous. At the first stop we were brought to a house said to belong to a
Chechen field commander who had kept kidnap victims in a hole in the shed
in his backyard - an idea immediately contradicted by a Russian neighbor:
"Nope, there were no hostages here," he told us cheerfully. "I would have
known." As other journalists gathered, our Russian minders broke into the
conversation, saying that our time was up.

The pattern was repeated throughout the trip. When Chechens had positive
things to say about Russian policy in the area (and some of them did), our
minders were happy to let them discourse at length. But when a Chechen
woman in Chervlennaya began to tell us about high casualties among the
civilian population, one of the men accompanying us pushed his way through
and began denouncing her as a provocateur. Several TV crews filmed the
scene, which must have given their viewers a less than flattering image of
Russian information policy.

Despite these rather patchy attempts at intimidation, most of us were able
to garner a variety of views - some of them extremely critical of Moscow.
At a lunch hosted by Russian military officials, a press spokesman for the
Russian forces in Chechnya lectured us, Soviet-style, on the need for
"objectivity and truth" in our reporting. "If you don't write objectively,"
he said, "we won't let you come back again." Interestingly, one of our
Rosinformtsentr minders winced at this heavy-handedness - another
indication of the divide between civilian would-be news managers and their
less sophisticated military counterparts.

Few journalists, and very few foreign ones, have been able to get into the
war zone. On the side of the Chechen rebels, widespread kidnappings and, in
some cases, executions of foreign hostages have added to the risks that
journalists face. Meanwhile, Russian officialdom has kept extremely tight
control over travel. After my return from Chechnya, a Rosinformtsentr
official told me that there were 200 news organizations from around the
world on the waiting list for trips into the Russian-controlled zone.

By and large, the Russian media have done their best to follow the advice
given by Defense Minister Igor Sergeev at the Rosinformtsentr inauguration:
"He believes the actions of Russian soldiers and officers should be covered
to reflect the present-day momentum so as to make them feel 'needed by
society' and to boost their morale," ORT TV reported on 7 October.

The fact that censorship has been primarily self-imposed became apparent on
5 December, when the private NTV news channel used a high-profile news
program to show several segments on the war that called into question the
official version of events. One even quoted military experts who suggested
that the death toll among Russian soldiers was much higher than officially
acknowledged. Meanwhile, the scrappy independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta
has been highly critical of the war.

But Novaya Gazeta's circulation is small, and it is television, not the
papers, that moulds public opinion in Russia. The sad fact is that
censorship is scarcely required when most media empires are either
financially ailing, tightly subordinated to their owners' political
agendas, or both. Under such circumstances a threat of intensified
financial pressure from the government (via the tax authorities) is usually
enough to bring media managers into line. But there is also the fact that
Putin's waging of the war remains popular with the public. And until that
changes, coverage of the war by the Russian media is unlikely to changer
either.

*******

#12
Novaya Gazeta, No. 3
January 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
THE TEN FEARS WHICH HAUNT RUSSIANS THE MOST
By Yuri BUIDA

Obsession and phobias to which it may lead are of interest 
not only for psychiatrists and pharmacists. More often than not 
they make it possible to appraise the state and dynamics of 
social mentality and create a clinical-sociological portrait of 
Russians and what they call with paranoid persistence and sober 
masochism their mysterious soul. This article has nothing to do 
with schizophrenia, which belongs to a different sphere. 
Russians feel uncomfortable in their disquiet country: they 
think that their future is in future but it has happened to be 
today.
According to the data of the National Centre for Public 
Opinion Studies, or VTsIOM, the ten fears which haunt Russians 
the most are (descending mode): the illnesses of their 
relatives;
unemployment and poverty; their own diseases; arbitrariness of 
the authorities; criminal situation (it was in the last spot in 
1989 and rose as high as second spot in 1994); world war 
(second spot in 1989); ethnic-related violence; natural 
calamities;
public humiliation; and a return to massive repression similar 
to that which took place in the horrible '30s.
By and large, my personal feelings, which are based on my 
own observation and mass media reports, coincide with the 
conclusions of sociologists. However, on this "scale of fears" 
I would accentuate attention on new, or well forgotten old, 
phobias: today people are more afraid of loneliness, poverty 
and aliens.
What is more, the nature of traditional fears, such as the 
fear that one's kin, especially kids, can get sick, which has 
stably been in spot One on the "scale of fears" in the past ten 
years, has changed, together with life itself. Ten or fifteen 
years ago individual and collective mechanisms of salvation 
from or resistance to fears were more or less working. 
Intellectuals, especially those in the artistic field, 
successfully used cynicism and hypocrisy. There were many 
"escapist" routes:
becoming a bard, reading science fiction, roaming faraway 
places "in search of the fog" or scaling mountains. Today, the 
songs by Vladimir Vysotsky (an outstanding actor, poet and 
songster) are sung by Nazi skinheads, science fiction is read 
by immature youngsters, and the faraway places which used to be 
detention camps for previous generations are roamed by those 
specialising in the history of political repression.
The irrealistic reliable support of party, trade union and 
other organisations, the ultimate goal of which was to plunge 
people deeper into the realm of the lack of freedom, also 
passed into oblivion. Love for a sick-leave certificate is gone 
not thanks to the Public Health Ministry which gave secret 
directions to out-patient clinics to restrict the issue of such 
certificates to people of working age and to hospitals to 
accept as few patients of pensionable age as possible. The 
sick-leave certificate is dying because today health is money. 
Though sociologists of left orientation assure the public that 
the use of alcoholic beverages grows at a sky-rocketing speed 
today, leading to the extinction of Russia's genetic fund, the 
latter's demand for health-building and fitness equipment and 
services is growing even faster, despite financial difficulties.
The fear that one's kin and children can fall ill is 
stable but its character has changed in the past few years: 
today people are afraid of loneliness. It is a very interesting 
phenomenon. I know hundreds of people who dream of privacy. And 
this typically Russian trait raises nothing but surprise among 
my European and American friends. However, there is nothing 
mysterious about this: community living has been characteristic 
of Russians for a thousand years. They perched in tiny flats in 
which it was impossible to have any privacy. Today's fear of 
loneliness is many-faceted. Russians are willing to escape from 
the herd at last and show what they really are, especially, 
because there is no hope left for help from authorities, on the 
one hand, but they are afraid to lose the comfortable niche of 
community living, in particular, now that the group has reduced 
to the narrow circle of one's kin with the slogan "each for 
himself and against all" looming over it.
The fear of loneliness is connected with the fear to lose 
a job (the latter raised from sixth spot in 1994 to second spot 
in the post-default year of 1999). The monthly per capita 
income of 1,500 to 5,000 rubles received by the so-called 
middle class, which has reduced by about ten million as a 
result of the default, is more an irritant making people search 
for and put into action new mechanisms of adaptation such as 
the art of tax evasion, concealment of additional incomes and 
sub-leasing, than the aim.
According to different data, the number of those who are 
afraid of criminals has doubled in the past eight to ten years.
However, this problem can be viewed from a different standpoint.
The increased fear of the criminal community shows that 
Russians stop fearing the truth. They are not only ready to 
admit the existence of crime on a large scale and complain that 
corrupt officials, assassins and all kinds of schemers escape 
punishment but have the growing edge to bring pressure to bear 
on politicians and public servants who are responsible for 
their safety.
The fear of a repetition of repression similar to that in 
1937 has stably been in the last spot among the phobias shared 
by many Russians. Even during the abortive coup attempt in 
August 1991 and the dangerous confrontation of the legislative 
and executive branches in October 1993 this specific phobia did 
not spread in our society, yielding to a more amorphous but no 
less irritating fear of the arbitrariness of the authorities 
which can be summed up as follows: if something happens, no one 
will help us.
The elderly are afraid to die, which is only natural 
because in today's Russia funerals may leave their relatives 
without a penny. Intellectuals have the fear of public 
humiliation, whereas people standing at the lower level of the 
social ladder usually do not care a bit about this. People in 
the countryside tremble, due to their lifestyle, to certain 
"unknown forces" which determine weather and fate (as a matter 
of fact, they are the only category of opinion polls 
respondents who are afraid of a war in real earnest). A 
considerable proportion of city dwellers are people who moved 
in from the countryside not very long ago.
They are the bearers of irrational fears and the most frequent 
visitors of churches and mosques where they look for protection 
from the buffets of life in the city.
Xenophobia has always been the opposite of adulation for 
the West in Russia. The fear of things alien has undergone 
interesting transformation in the past five to seven years. The 
fear of Islam, which was registered for the first time in 1996, 
has ousted the fear of sects to the sidelines after the first 
Chechen war. At least five per a hundred Russians regard it as 
a hostile religion. Ethnic-related intolerance is twice as 
strong as religious and six times as strong as anti-Islamic 
sentiments (according to sociologists from Moscow State 
University). The image of a Moslem for some time superseded 
such customary images of the enemy as the American and the Jew. 
In their anonymous compositions senior-grade students explained 
their xenophobia by the fear that the dark-haired aliens are 
ousting their parents from their jobs (Sic.!), among other 
things.
It is not the first year that spin doctors have been using 
xenophobia developing into the fear of a horror ("vote or it 
will be more horrible than now"), especially in the runup to 
important political clashes. Only the fear of the ability to 
think can be more horrible than this. Actually Franklin D. 
Roosevelt was not far from the truth when he said that "the 
only thing we have to fear is fear."

*******

#13
From: "James Beale" <James@russia-on-line.com>
Subject: Russian Electronic Library
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 11:51:45 -0500
Organization: Russia Online, Inc.

Dear Friends,

Even before 1999 ended we were reminded of how quickly events in Russia can
change. Information should change as rapidly...and be easy to access.
Newspapers are slow and searching the web can be extremely tedious. There
is a better solution.

I am writing you today to introduce you to the Russian Electronic Library.

The REL was created as an electronic archive back in 1992. At that time the
archives were solely an internal working archive for the National News
Service , NSN, (Natsional'naia Sluzhba Novostei).

Imagine your own personal research Russian-language archive containing over
4 million documents covering the period 1990-1999 gleaned from over 2,000
sources.

Every day we update our database from over 445 different sources
representing all the regions of Russia and 11 countries of the CIS and the
Baltic Republics. This wealth of data makes REL the largest archive of
original full-text Russian-language electronic materials in the world.

Central Moscow Sources: Over 140 sources of information from Moscow alone!
Newspapers, journals, news agencies and bulletins.

Regional Sources of the Russian Federation: 250 sources of
information from all the regions of the Russian Federation. Coverage begins
in Kaliningrad and extends to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatki.

CIS and Baltic Sources: Over 45 sources of information: from Armenia to
Tajikistan.

The Russian Electronic Library also offers: a searchable database of Russian
legislation (updated every two weeks), monitoting of selected
Russian-language papers printed in the West, and data from Goskomstat!

The database is in Russian and contains the full-text version of the
articles. All searching must be done in Russian. We offer flat-rate access
for insitutions or pay-per-article access for individuals organizations
(open an account for as little as $50!)

More details are yours for the asking. I can send you a current listing of
the active sources in the database (in MS Word, Russian fonts required or in
MS Excel, in transliteration). If you prefer hard-copy, this can be faxed
or mailed to you. The list of sources will also be available on our web
site: http://www.russia-on-line.com.

James Beale
Russia Online, Inc.
Tel: 301-929-8981
www.russia-on-line.com

*******

#14
Washington Post
January 26, 2000
[for personal use only]
The Great Game Gets Rough
By David Ignatius

The Clinton administration continues to make happy talk about how well it is 
playing the new "Great Game" of energy politics in the Caspian region . 
Meanwhile, the centerpiece of that strategy--a set of pipelines that would 
transport oil and gas to Turkey--appears to be sagging. 

President Clinton's aides had touted his "diplomatic victory" after a 
European summit meeting last November in Istanbul, where they won pledges 
from Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to support the American 
pipeline plan. Administration officials were patting themselves on the back 
for outsmarting the Russians, who wanted to control the pipeline trade 
themselves. 

But the Istanbul proclamation, like much else in Clinton's foreign policy, 
turns out to have been partly a public relations exercise. The Russians have 
played the pipeline game harder than the administration expected--all the way 
to fighting a bloody war in Chechnya, in part to secure access routes for 
their pipelines. And America's friends in Ankara, Baku and Ashgabad may have 
been paying lip service to U.S. diplomacy--telling our visiting president 
what he wanted to hear and then making side deals with Moscow. 

A sign that Clinton's pipeline strategy is in trouble came Monday, when the 
Turkish energy ministry announced that it had failed to reach agreement with 
Azerbaijan and Georgia over terms for the so-called Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline. 
That's the U.S.-backed plan to link Azerbaijan's capital of Baku, on the 
Caspian, with the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. 

The Baku-Ceyhan plan "is collapsing of its own weight, because the oil isn't 
there for the pipeline," explains Julia Nanay, an analyst with the Petroleum 
Finance Co., a Washington consulting firm. She notes that on current 
projections, the Baku-Ceyhan line would have far less than the 
million-barrel-per-day throughput needed to make it work commercially. 

The other leg of the administration's pipeline strategy, the Trans-Caspian 
Gas Pipeline, is also wobbly. The consortium planning to build the 
line--which includes powerhouses Bechtel, GE Capital and Shell--insists that 
"we believe it's commercial and a good investment," says a spokesman. 

But the Caspian route faces strong competition from two alternative gas 
pipelines to Turkey backed by America's rivals for regional influence, Russia 
and Iran. 

The Russian gas project is known as "Blue Stream." The Russian giant Gazprom 
proposes to build this pipeline under the Black Sea. That's quite a 
technological feat, and the Russians and their Italian partner have 
encountered some delays in financing the project. But even administration 
officials now expect that it will go forward this year.

The Turks, despite their pledges to support the Clinton administration's 
plans, have been quite enthusiastic about Blue Stream. One explanation for 
this Turkish support, notes one administration official, may be the 
"persistent rumors" in the Turkish press that key Turkish politicians have 
been bribed to back Blue Stream. 

Meanwhile, the Iranians have completed their own gas pipeline to Turkey. 
Construction of the Turkish side of the pipeline has been slowed, and the 
Turks and Iranians just agreed to delay the "take-or-pay" start of gas 
deliveries until September 2001. But Nanay and other industry analysts 
predict that the Iranian-Turkish line will indeed meet that revised schedule. 

So, will the market support a third, U.S.-backed Caspian pipeline? That's the 
practical business question--with the Russians planning to send Turkey 16 
billion cubic meters of gas annually via Blue Stream, and the Iranians 
planning to send 10 billion cubic meters through their line. The 
Trans-Caspian line would add another 16 billion cubic meters, and that's a 
whole lot of gas, even for a fast-growing Turkish economy.

Even the consortium that would build the Trans-Caspian line notes that the 
field may be getting crowded. "If Blue Stream goes forward, we'd re-examine 
our design and capital plans to fit what would be a slower ramp-up," says Ed 
Smith, president of PSG International, a partnership between Bechtel and GE 
Capital that will own 50 percent of the Trans-Caspian line. 

But the administration, with its eye on the Great Game, continues to insist 
that its pipeline projects will work out fine. "We still think we've 
maneuvered all sides into this agreement rather skillfully," says Energy 
Secretary Bill Richardson. "I'll stand by what I said, that it's a foreign 
policy victory." 

If only victories were so easy. While we write position papers and framework 
agreements, Russian tanks have been leveling Grozny--and lobbing shells or 
dropping bombs on our pipeline pals, the Georgians and the Azeris. For the 
Russians, notes Bulent Aliriza at the Center for Strategic and International 
Studies, maintaining control over energy deliveries to Turkey is a deadly 
serious business. 

Russia has put some potent chips on the table in this game of pipeline poker. 
Our friends in Turkey and neighboring states might reasonably ask whether the 
United States really intends to match Russia's escalation--or whether we're 
just making a loud but ineffectual bluff. 

*******

#15
Leaders of Russia, Belarus celebrate new era
January 26, 2000
By Gareth Jones

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The leaders of Russia and Belarus toasted a new era of 
closer ties Wednesday as a union treaty between the former Soviet republics 
took effect. 

The treaty provides for a joint parliament that Russia's Acting President 
Vladimir Putin said might be elected in the autumn. 

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko was named head of a new Supreme State 
Council to oversee implementation of the treaty, which leaves the two 
countries' sovereignty intact. 

The flamboyant Lukashenko, slammed in the West for his authoritarian methods 
and refusal to embrace market reforms, heaped praise on Putin as a ``tough, 
pragmatic'' politician and said Western nations feared competition from the 
new Russia-Belarus union. 

``The treaty meets not only the national interests of our two countries, our 
two states, but also embodies the aspiration of Russians and Belarussians to 
live and work together for the common good,'' Putin said in televised 
remarks. 

Speaking after a Kremlin ceremony attended by top officials from both 
countries, Putin said the union should bring benefits to ordinary citizens, 
not just create a new bureaucratic layer. 

``It is essential to create a legal base, to form a single economic, defense 
and humanitarian space ... which will improve the life of the ordinary 
person,'' Putin said. 

Lukashenko, who has been the driving force behind the merger, called the 
treaty ``an act of historic justice.'' 

``Today we are laying a reliable foundation for the speedy development of our 
states, for the prosperity and flowering of our peoples,'' the former 
collective farm manager said. 

Belarus has about 10.4 million people, while Russia's population is about 148 
million. 

BELARUS LEADER RELIEVED TREATY IN FORCE 

Lukashenko has been concerned that Russian liberals might try to block the 
union. 

The sudden resignation on Dec. 31 of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, a 
longtime ally, briefly stoked those worries but he appeared confident 
Wednesday that Putin aimed at continuity. 

``(Putin) was and will be the most active proponent of the unification of our 
peoples,'' Lukashenko said. 

Asked about Western reaction to the union, Lukashenko said, ``Our union marks 
a strengthening; a competitor of the West becomes stronger and they don't 
want this.'' 

The union treaty coincides with serious tensions between Moscow and the West 
over Russia's military campaign in breakaway Chechnya, arms control and 
policy toward Yugoslavia. 

TREATY PROVIDES FOR COMMON LAWS, SINGLE CURRENCY 

The treaty, signed by Yeltsin and Lukashenko in December, envisages by 2005 
harmonized national legislation, uniform customs, tax, defense and border 
policy, a common securities market and a single currency. 

But Russia and Belarus remain as separate entities at the United Nations and 
other international bodies. 

The treaty provides for a joint parliament with a directly elected House of 
Representatives and a House of Union comprising delegates from the two 
national parliaments. 

RIA news agency quoted Putin as saying an election for the House of 
Representatives might take place in the autumn. 

*******

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

 

Return to CDI's Home Page  I  Return to CDI's Library