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 Ñ"" Ïà†¥-å
Ñ®...,
sometimes jeeringly label Sergei Kiriyenko & Co. the Ñ""
Ï৆¶_-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.
*******
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