February 4, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4088 4089 4090

Johnson's Russia List
#4090
4 February 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Global Beat Syndicate: U.S.-Russia Relations: A New Chill -- Russian Liberal Blames U.S. for Growing Split. (Alexei Arbatov)
2. the eXile: Press Review by Matt Taibbi. MARCH MADNESS! The eXile's 1st annual Worst Moscow Journalist Competition.

(DJ: Let me say in advance that we are NOT going to have a knock-down,
drag-out battle over this article from the notorious eXile which
manages to offend by name nearly every Western journalist in 
Moscow. Everything that is to be said about the eXile has
already been said. This piece is offered for your amusement only.)]

*********

#1
Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2000 
From: global.beat@nyu.edu 
Subject: Briefing Report: Arbatov Blames U.S. for Growing Rift -- 
Global Beat

(note: an on-line version of this document, including related resources, 
is available at <http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/>)

U.S.-Russia Relations: A New Chill 
-- Russian Liberal Blames U.S. for Growing Split
By PAUL TOOHER

Relations between the United States and Russia have seriously deteriorated 
in recent years and are unlikely to improve anytime soon, according to 
Alexei Arbatov, a leading liberal and member of the State Duma.

In an interview organized by the Center for War, Peace and the News Media 
at New York University and the National Press Institute of Russia 
Wednesday, Arbatov said that "the initial hopes and plans of the early ‘90s 
are dead. Relations have been severely damaged during recent years. And 
while Russia is not completely innocent in this -- it did some things wrong 
-- the major fault lies with the West, and the United States in 
particular."

"The West has destroyed those hopes" for greater cooperation and they’re 
unlikely to be restored "in the foreseeable future," he said during a 
telephone interview from his office in the Russian Duma in Moscow.

Arbatov dismissed the notion that the apparent warm relations between 
President Clinton and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin were somehow 
indicative of an alliance between the two nations. "I cannot agree that 
the United States and Russia were allies," he said. "The U.S. public and 
the Russian public do not see themselves as allies. They look at each 
other with suspicion, mistrust and hostility."

In large part, Arbatov blames the deterioration in relations on NATO’s war 
against Yugoslavia over Kosovo and the continued pressure from the West 
over Russia’s actions in Chechnya.

He pointed to two recent highly-publicized changes in his nation’s military 
policy -- a renewed emphasis on Russia’s possible first-use of nuclear 
weapons if its security is threatened, and the designation of NATO and the 
United States as threats to its security -- as clear signs of the new 
foreign policy likely to be implemented by acting president Vladimir Putin, 
who is expected to easily win election as president next month.

"Before, Russia had no enemies," Arbatov said. "Now, it is clearly stated 
that one of the primary threats to Russian security is the policies of the 
United States, which is keen on establishing its position as the world’s 
sole superpower and expanding its interests around the world."

The new military doctrines outlined by Putin earlier this year also 
demonstrate that Russia views NATO as a threat to its own and international 
peace and security.

"NATO expansion and its use of force in Yugoslavia are seen as primary 
threats to Russian security," Arbatov said. "NATO’s coming closer to 
Russia’s border is seen as a definite threat. And its use of force in 
Yugoslavia, in clear violation of the United Nations’ charter as well as 
various bilateral agreement with Russia, shows the new face of NATO."

In addition, Putin’s policies make clear that Russia will feel free to use 
military forces within its own borders, as in Chechnya, to resolve domestic 
problems, such as suspected terrorism or secessionist insurgencies. 
Previously, the use of the Russian army inside the country had been 
prohibited. Indeed, Arbatov noted, it is still technically outlawed by the 
Russian constitution.

While some in the Clinton administration have downplayed the importance of 
these policy changes, some of which date back to 1993 and 1997, Arbatov 
points out that what’s different now is that "they are actually being 
implemented and put into practice. Funding for strategic forces are being 
increased. Funding for conventional weapons is being increased," he 
noted.

Arbatov speculated that some in the United States might be trying to 
"produce the impression that it’s business as usual. Otherwise, they’ll be 
seen as provoking Russia, which is already hostile to the United States," 
he said.

"There is a serious new rift between the United States and Russia -- and it 
is due to Western and NATO policies," he said.

Arbatov emphasized the profound effect of the West’s military actions in 
Yugoslavia on Russian perceptions of the use of military force.

"For three years after the first war in Chechnya, which ended in 1996, 
there was a psychological taboo against the use of military force in cases 
of ethnic conflict," Arbatov said. "But NATO aggression in Yugoslavia 
removed that barrier and changed the Russian psychological climate with 
regards to the use of force, " he said.

"Russia learned its lessons well from the conflict in Kosovo," Arbatov 
said. "You can use force and disregard international legal frameworks. 
You can disregard the impact of collateral damage on civilians. You can 
use a massive amount of force against a foe. And you can control the mass 
media. These are the lessons Russia learned, either consciously or 
subconsciously, from NATO actions in Yugoslavia," he said.

"NATO’s actions in Yugoslavia inspired Russia’s actions in Chechnya," 
Arbatov said. "It produced a deep psychological wound" and changed the way 
the nation viewed the use of force to obtain a political goal. If NATO 
claims the right to use force against a sovereign state, then we are all 
the more entitled to use force to resolve a domestic issues when we are 
challenged," he said.

"Moreover, if NATO can use its force indiscriminately, they don’t have the 
right to teach us how to conduct operations within our own country."

"The change in NATO’s strategy -- by legitimizing the use of force outside 
its own area -- has affected our government’s policies. Russia has the 
right to take whatever countermeasures it deems necessary to protect its 
own security," he said.

And the lessons were learned not merely by the Russian leadership but the 
general public was well, Arbatov contends. "The public was ready for the 
use of force this time largely because of what happened in the Balkans," he 
said.

Meanwhile, efforts by Western leaders to coerce Russia to change its 
policies are not only ineffective but are actually counterproductive, he 

warned. "Russia is not Yugoslavia," Arbatov said. "The West cannot force 
Russia to change its policies. Instead, the greater the pressure, the 
greater the resistance."

And comments such as those by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, 
calling for an end to the fighting in Chechnya, only make it more difficult 
for those within Russia who oppose the government’s current policy. "It 
makes us look like puppets," said Arbatov, who is a leading member of the 
liberal Yabloko party, which opposed the ground war in Chechnya, and has a 
long history of working to improve U.S. - Russian relations.

Indeed, Arbatov took particular exception to Albright’s comments during a 
visit to Moscow this week. "Albright is seen as the one person more than 
anyone else who has made relations between Russia and the U.S. worse by 
advocating NATO expansion and pushing the war in Yugoslavia, " he said. 
"When she comes and lectures us about the use of force, it’s seen as a 
deliberate provocation."

Arbatov said the growing rift between the United States and Russia will 
make negotiations on such issues as nuclear arms reductions or U.S. plans 
to modify the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty all the more difficult.

"Russian policy postulates the inviolability of the ABM treaty. It is the 
basis for further progress on the START II and START III negotiations. 
Nuclear deterrence is now much more important," he said.

He said he believes it unlikely that Putin would submit the START II 
agreement to the Duma for ratification in the near future.

For relations to improve between the two nations, Arbatov said the United 
States needs to "stop putting public pressure on Russia over Chechnya; drop 
the linkage between IMF financial assistance and Russian policies; halt the 
expansion of NATO eastward for the foreseeable future; and restructure the 
peacekeeping operations in Kosovo so that Serbs can return and live in 
peace."

For any progress to be made on arms control, Arbatov said that the United 
States "must conduct negotiations not from a position of strength and 
recognize Russia’s legitimate concerns regarding its security."

Arbatov said Russia is committed to Chechnya remaining part of the 
Federation and that popular support for the war remains strong, despite 
reports of increased casualties. He said the government hopes that once 
the fighting has ended, Russia will be able to win the support of the local 
population by providing humanitarian assistance and establishing law and 
order within the republic. The government believes it will be able to win 
over "Chechens who are sick and tired of the outlaws who have run the 
republic."

Arbatov said the cost of rebuilding Chechnya once the fighting stops is 
estimated at $20 billion.

Paul Tooher is the assistant managing editor for the Providence Journal 
in Providence, R.I., and the interim editor of the Global Beat Syndicate.

**********

#2
From: Matt Taibbi <exile.taibbi@matrix.ru>
Subject: march madness
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000

Press Review
By Matt Taibbi

MARCH MADNESS!
The eXile's 1st annual Worst Moscow Journalist Competition

Things have gotten a little bit creepy in Moscow lately-like the world in 
general following the collapse of the Soviet empire, Russia's community of 
imported journalistic hacks and their readers have been left, following the 
ignominious departures of such famously bad Moscow-based reporters as Carol 
J. Williams, Michael Specter, and Anna Blundy, without a clear enemy to 
bring their lives into focus. True, a few familiar demons have stayed 
on-the Baltimore Sun's Kathy Lally and the Washington Post's David Hoffman 
come to mind-but in the seemingly de-ideologized atmosphere of post-crisis 
Russia even their reports have lacked the zesty literary villainry that 
once leapt off the page with such defiance and vigor. One gets the 
impression that Russia these days has become such a bummer that even the 
hacks covering it have been left too disinterested in their work to screw 
it up properly. The news these days has been reduced to a steady flow of 
grim casualty figures and glibly cynical, pseudo-academic assessments of 
Russia's labyrinthine political situation, leaving no room for the old-time 
propaganda.

Or has it? Are there newer and scarier versions of Carol J. and Mme. Blundy 
lurking in our midst, without our being aware of it? Is there a newer, more 
subtle, more insidiously innovative brand of propaganda to be discovered by 
examining the spectrum of today's foreign correspondence? We at the eXile 
decided that it was time to find out. Who's the worst of the new worst? We 
could simply speculate, but it seemed more proper to rely on the scientific 
process of competitive elimination than to leave things in the hands of 
disorganized opinion. Therefore we've organized our first annual March 
Madness Hack Tournament, in which we will pit the city's leading foreign 
correspondents head to head in direct competition to find out once and for 
all who the city's worst journalist really is.

The format is very simple. Our panel of judges selected 32 resident 
journalists from the world's leading English-language print publications 
and bracketed them into pairs for head-to-head matches. Every two weeks, 
the eXile will take one story filed by each journalist and compare it to a 
story filed by his competitor. Using a variety of criteria, our judges will 
determine scientifically which journalist in each pair wrote the more 
dishonest and/or inferior article. The worst man wins, advancing to the 
next round. After five rounds we'll have had our final and our winner, an 
event timed neatly to coincide with the NCAA basketball finals in the 
States. At the very moment some lucky hoopster cuts down his souvenir 
net-strings to toast his team's national championship, the eXile and its 
readers will be raising their glasses to the newly crowned Worst Journalist 
of Moscow, year 2000.

To even out the competition somewhat, we arranged the brackets around the 
eight journalists we considered to be the leading favorites to compete for 
the championship. These eight top seeds, headed by the legendarily moronic 
Richard Paddock of the Los Angeles Times, will face only unseeded 
competition until the third round.

There are no real rules in this competition. What we say, goes. However, 
the eXile assures its readers that it has not-we repeat, has not-determined 
a winner in advance. This is a process for discovery for us as much as we 
hope it will be for you. Honestly, if we wanted to tell you which reporters 
we simply disliked more than the others, we'd simply stick Kathy Lally and 
David Hoffman in the finals right away and skip this whole process. But 
that's not what this tournament is about. It's about finding out what's 
really going on out there-something we're in the dark about as much as 
anyone else.

What follows are the results of round one, which took place in the period 
of January 15-February 1.

Alice Lagnado, Times UK, def. Kathy Lally (4), Baltimore Sun
The second upset of the tournament, and a big one. Lally's increasingly 
blockheaded and incoherent features last year prompted a number of local 
journalists to wonder aloud about her sanity (particularly after an article 
which argued that the showing of a sexy German cigarrette ad on Moscow 
billboards proved that Russians had suffered an inexorable moral decline), 
but her first-round effort in this tournament left audiences scratching 
heads. The January 21 piece, entitled, "Russia chills journalist in 
reminder of old days", was, to put it blunty?pretty good. It described the 
attempted seizure and removal to a mental hospital of Moskovsky Komsomolets 
reporter Alexander Khinshtein, who was clearly being persecuted for writing 
articles hostile to various government officials and political heavyweights 
like Boris Berezovsky. The article was devoid of hysterics, fact-based, 
detailed, and written with some sympathy for Khinshtein and even some 
apparently genuine moral outrage. Lally lost a few points for not 
mentioning the fact that some of Khinshtein's biggest targets lately have 
been Americans-- he did two television shows in November-December 1999 
which made widespread allegations of CIA involvement in Russian domestic 
politics, mentioning former HIID chief Jonathan Hay. That fact should 
probably have been included, as it is entirely possible that U.S.-friendly 
officials/protegees in the Russian government knew of and approved the 
attempted incarceration. It also hardly escaped our notice that Lally came 
out so strongly against the attempted seizure of an obnoxious journalist 
less than two years after she made noises about having the eXile shut down, 
and was caught in one of our phone pranks considering helping the Russian 
government put us in jail. Nonetheless, she didn't blow this particular 
piece that badly.

Meanwhile, her opponent, Alice Lagnado, has been filing a serious of, well, 
frankly silly Chechen war pieces, ensuring her passage to the second round. 
Lagnado's basic schtick lately ("Cold Kills Conscripts In Trenches", Jan. 
27; "Journey of Fear Behind Russian Lines", Jan. 25) has been to go behind 
Russian lines in disguise and report on what's really going on in the 
Chechen side. Aside from the fact that Lagnado's narratives read 
suspiciously like something out of Monty Python, or more specifically like 
an Al Franken skit (the Lagnado style is eerily similar to Franken's famous 
"I'm coming to you live from a really bad neighborhood wearing an extremely 
expensive satellite remote headset" routine), her entire approach to the 
war seems weirdly inappropriate in the same way a lot of Western reporting 
out of Chechnya has been. The thing to remember is that Russia organized a 
completely rigged spectacle of mass murder and carnage, then delivered the 
show to voters using the vehicle of TV journalists and newspaper hacks. The 
reporters know this, but for some reason-either out of an urge to finally 
do that war journalism thing, or because the format they're writing in 
doesn't allow them to do otherwise-they all insist on covering the event as 
a normal war. As in, "Ok, it's all fake, it's all staged purely with the 
elections in mind, but I'll report on the troop movements and territorial 
advances and do some harrowing 'war is hell' features anyway." In Lagnado's 
case, she uses the by-now accepted "I-want-a-book-deal-like-Anthony-Loyd's" 
war reporting technique of getting herself (and other people, in her hosts) 
into dangerous situations and then writing about the experience with an 
"isn't this thrilling?"-style narrative. At times, Lagnado's articles read 
like the Bret Easton Ellis book "American Psycho", written just as badly, 
with the same humorously grotesque obsession with clothing and appearance 
in the middle of a murder story. The clearly superfluous word "chequered" 
in particular rubs the wrong way in this passage:

"I had clipped my hair up so it looked as if I had a bun under my headscarf 
like all Chechen women do. I had bought 70-rouble plastic boots and a 
chequered shopping bag in which I hid my rucksack and satellite phone?"

I can almost imagine the Bret Easton Ellis version of Chechen war coverage: 
"After getting behind enemy lines I put on a pair of velveteen Armani 
slacks and a Sasch pullover with the silver Tag Heuer crystal timepiece I 
always wear when I'm wearing black and managed to elude the Russian 
'mopping up' patrols by wearing that CK cologne the Russians never 
recognize and?"

Just like presidential campaign coverage in the U.S., where journalists 
have seemingly accepted at the outset that the candidates are openly 
manipulating the media, and now cover the campaign by writing about how the 
candidates are doing at manipulating the media, the media has swallowed its 
role in Chechnya and just gone along with it as though nothing has changed. 
As in: "We're here on a bogus pretext, but we have to file twice or three 
times a week no matter what, so we might as well make the best of it." What 
should the journalists do? Boycott the story? Write only about the 
bogusness of it all, or make the cynicism the permanent focus of the story? 
Take up guns and shoot the GenShtab? I don't know. One of those responses 
would be better than most of what the press is doing in Chechnya. Either 
way, Lagnado, who's definitely not letting these questions get in the way 
of her making her professional best of it down there, is through to the 
next round.

Brian Whitmore, Boston Globe, def. Paul Goble, RFE/RL
Whimore's Jan. 29 "Free speech seen in peril" was solid all the way 
through, but we're sending him through to the next round with a bye as a 
means of punishing his boss, bureau chief David Filipov, for sneaking away 
on a long vacation in order to get out of this tournament. Goble, who a 
little while ago fucked up a story about an alleged secret document showing 
Russian plans for genocide in Chechnya and was publicly called on it by an 
insultingly cheerful Matt Bivens, takes advantage of this lucky break to 
exit the tournament.

Geoff York, Globe and Mail, def. Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor.
Clash of the Canadian Titans. Just weeks ago, Weir and York were arrested 
together in Chechnya, and their experiences in getting out alive will soon 
be made into a Touchstone Pictures buddy-movie feature, directed by Cameron 
Crowe and starring Jeff Goldblum and Hector Elizondo as Weir. The film, 
whose working title is "Aboot 48 Hours, Eh?", is due out next spring? In 
the meantime, York gets a bye into the second round by virtue of the fact 
that he might review the eXile book soon, and we need him nervous until he 
finishes it.

Owen Matthews, Newsweek, def. Edward Lucas, Economist
Despite the fact that Matthew's January 30, 2000 "Chechnya; 'Like a Meat 
Grinder'" piece was the best thing he'd done in years, and despite the fact 
that Lucas, like York, may be reviewing our book soon, we're letting Lucas 
off the hook for the simple reason (other resident journalists take note) 
that he frequently comps us for lunches at Night Flight. The only other 
thing that can really be said here is that the "meat grinder" phrase is in 
danger of becoming the new journalistic fashion craze around here, almost 
like that business of wearing sunglasses with the tag still on them. It's 
been in the news a lot lately, and Christian Caryl of U.S. News used it the 
day after Matthews did in his Jan. 31 story about Russian war mothers?stay 
tuned. Otherwise Matthews, a born British war correspondent-a throwback to 
the days when writers like Saki had servants carry boxes of fine silverware 
and china along with cages full of wild animal pets to the front-did a fine 
job with this piece. Unfortunately, though, he's through to round two, and 
there was nothing anybody could do about it.

Giles Whittell, Times UK, def. Patrick Cockburn, Independent
Whittle advances for repeat commission of one of the oldest and most 
storied transgressions known to Moscow hackdom-- the gentle re-edit of 
Moscow Times copy for submission back home in the guise of your own work. 
Every hack in town does it and Whittell was clearly never a threat to be 
the first exception. His January 27 piece, "Vodka Worsens Population 
Crisis", was basically just a shortened version of Oksana Yablokova's piece 
on the same topic, published the day before. Don't believe me? Check out 
these two excerpts, the first from Yablokova's piece:

"Russia has an astonishingly high number of deaths from accidental alcohol 
poisoning, with 35,000 compared to some 300 a year in the United States, 
which has almost twice the population and a fair number of heavy drinkers 
as well."

Now check out this one from Whittell's piece, run one day later:

"Russia's death rate for both sexes is boosted by an astonishing 35,000 
deaths a year from accidental alcohol poisoning. The comparable figure for 
the United States, with a population nearly twice as large, is 350."

Note that both excerpts used the word "astonishing", both cited the same 
statistics (I was amused by Whittell's attempt to cover his tracks by 
confidently putting forward the exact number 350, which I'm sure he made 
up, to distance himself from Yablokova's estimate of "some 300"), and both 
compared the number of Russian deaths to an America nearly twice as large 
in population. The latter fact is particularly striking given that Whittell 
is writing for a British audience that could just have easily (and more 
appropriately) grasped a comparison to an England with a little less than 
half of Russia's population.

Whittell might have gotten a pass on this, had he not just lifted a 
different story from the Moscow Times the day before that. The day before! 
His January 26 piece, "Cossacks Dance to American Tune" was lifted from 
Yulia Solovyeva's January 25 piece, "Balailaikas Follow Brains, Ballerin 
as." In this one Whittell at least admits to quoting the Moscow Times on 
the story, but he conceals-or, perhaps it is better to say, he does not 
call attention to-the fact that literally every single piece of information 
in his piece is taken from Solovyeva's piece, again right down to some of 
the illustrative comparisons. Here's Solovyeva talking about the benefits 
of pumping gas in the States for Cossack defectors:

"Many of the artists have already found work in New York City and 
elsewhere, doing everything from pumping gas to performing in restaurants - 
and are earning in a single day more than it took them months to earn back 
home."

And here's Giles, adding a little color if nothing else, talking about 
pumping gas:

"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."

The female staff of the Moscow Times should probably consider filing a 
stalking complaint against Whittell, or at least getting a restraining 
order. He makes O.J. Simpson seem like Naomi Wolf.

This one was over in the first quarter. Cockburn hasn't written a shaky 
piece since the Ford Presidency. Plus he comped us on a lunch a while ago, 
too, with appetizers and desserts included. Whittell advances.

Gary Peach, Moscow Times, def. Daniel Williams, Washington Post
As much as we hate to see anyone from the Washington Post (even a token 
human being among their staff like Williams) exit this tournament 
prematurely, this one was a no-brainer. Since the departure of Geoff 
Winestock the Times' ranking neo-liberal bonehead, Peach scored another 
memorable performance this past week with his Jan. 25 "Analyst" piece, 
"Murky Tatneft's Rapid Rise Shows West's Forgetfulness."

In it, Peach goes to great lengths for no obvious reason to disparage 
Tatneft, making a pile of mistakes along the way. First, he cited an SEC 
report filed by the company which states "current and former Tatneft 
employees are being allowed by the Tatarstan government to split off 
oilfields from the company and form separate production entities." He calls 
this practice "blatant asset stripping". Peach neglects to mention the fact 
that every oil company in Russia does the same thing, as a means of getting 
unproductive assets off the books, a necessity forced upon them by Russia's 
regressive tax system. Peach also neglected to mention the fact that the 
State Duma passed a new law on oilfield licenses a few weeks ago which 
makes the practice legal. Why didn't Peach make a note of this? Probably 
because he didn't know it; he didn't speak to any industry experts for his 
piece. Furthermore, he writes about Tatneft, whose stock rallied last week: 
"The company borrowed $1.2 billion on capital markets over a two-year span 
and has absolutely nothing to show for it." Peach here failed to mention 
the fact that the rally had been spurred by Tatneft's announcement that it 
had just paid down $300 million of its debt.

That's a lot of mistakes to make in one small piece. Peach advances. 
Williams, who's been in Chechnya so long his teeth have probably turned 
gold, gets a pass.

Marcus Warren, Electronic Telegraph, def. Mark Franchetti, Sunday Times
This is an interesting one. Two British writers named Mark filed Chechnya 
stories on the same day which made exactly opposite factual assertions. 
Franchetti ("Feuding Chechen warlords turn war on themselves," Jan. 23) 
wrote a story about a shooting incident between Chechen warlords which 
indicated that the rebel opposition had suffered a serious schism. Warren 
("Chechen foes unite against Russians", Jan. 23) wrote the exactly opposite 
story, which was that Chechen unity against the Russians had recently 
advanced significantly, that the rebel military leaders who were "foes in 
peacetime" had come together that week in a show of public solidarity. 
Warren advances here because Franchetti got the story right. There really 
been stories circulating that Shamil Basayev had been shot in the stomach 
by rival warlord Magmed Khambiyev-and the mere presence of rumors to that 
effect would be enough to squash Warren's thesis. After all, one can't talk 
about any show of solidarity being "paraded" before the public when Shamil 
Basayev only that week had had to deny on television being shot by one of 
his own people-particularly when Basayev was only shown from the neck up 
when he made the statement.

Gareth Jones, Reuters (6), def. Christian Caryl, U.S. News and World Report
Gareth Jones is a hack's hack: a thoroughly uncomplicated organism with a 
single-celled brain, in which one may find floating a a vocabulary of about 
nineteen words-- actually about seven, if you don't include the twelve 
standard-issue wire-service cliches, words like "liberal" and "hardliner" 
and "reformer", that Reuters supplies him with. His January 18 piece, 
"Russian Duma Speaker is a smooth veteran", is a classic of wire-service 
incompetence. Back in the good old days of the "Energetic Young Reformers", 
you saw stories like this every day, in which former communists were 
refashioned as earnest young market-friendly intellectuals the West can 
depend on. Jones in these piece is giving some of that same old-time 
religion, but in this case, the former communist winning all the praise in 
his biographical facelift-Gennady Seleznyov-- actually gets to remain a 
communist.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Seleznyov is one of the most 
supremely loathsome people in the entire Russian government-which is saying 
a lot-Jones's piece is a shameless and inexcusably obvious blowjob. Every 
single paragraph, every sentence, in fact, is a worshipful paean to the 
Vision of Wonderfulness that is Gennady Seleznyov. According to Jones, 
Seleznyov is "pragmatic", "unruffled", "dapper" (dapper!), "capable", and 
"skilled"; he displays "dry wit and an independent style", and knows the 
"art of compromise". What's more, says Jones, Seleznyov is a tough customer 
who fights for what he believes in. "But as speaker Seleznyov has never 
pretended to be an apolitical figure standing above the fray of party 
politics," Jones writes, noting that Seleznyov backed the Union with 
Belarus and the impeachment of President Yeltsin. Furthermore, he's his own 
man even within the communist party:

"In contrast to the dour, often strident Zyuganov, Seleznyov, a former 
editor of the Communist daily Pravda, displays a dry wit and independent 
style which has earned him the distrust of some Communist hardliners."

So Seleznyov is one of a new breed good fairy communists, not like the 
wicked dour communists of the old days! He's a Nutra-Sweet communist! And 
since when does being a former editor of Pravda enhance one's credentials 
as a person with a sense of humor?

What's even funnier is the idea of Gareth Jones, a conformist lapdog if 
there ever was one, picking on the communists for allegedly disapproving of 
Seleznov's "independent style". Jones can't even use his own words (I 
thought "communist hardliners" disappeared from the wire-service lexicon 
about two years ago), let alone have his own thoughts. And he's picking on 
the communists?

What's more, Jones got the story completely wrong.To call Seleznyov a man 
capable of "free thinking" and "independent style" is to miss his point 
entirely. What he is is a sellout of supernatural proportions. The guy sold 
out his whole damn party throughout the entire second half of this decade, 
to the point where the word "communist" no longer means anything in an 
ideological sense at all, negative or positive. He organized rigged 
parliamentary proceedings that gave the Kremlin the appearance of an 
opposition while guaranteeing his party's acquiescence throughout on every 
single big vote that came up. He was financed by Boris Berezovsky in his 
latest gubernatorial run, a fact Jones conveniently leaves out. Whether 
you're a communist or not, you can't help but agree that a politician whose 
loyalties are in such obvious conflict with those of his electorate can't 
be anything but reprehensible and an anathema to everything democracy is 
supposed to stand for-not an "independent" thinker who can be allowed to 
claim in your article that he is committed to democracy.

This Jones piece is a forecast of the propaganda spin to come on Vladimir 
Putin. The day before Unity merged with the commies, Madeline Albright had 
come out and called Putin a "reformer". Putin shot that down right away by 
joining up with Seleznyov's crew, so the new line will take a different 
approach. Instead of letting stand the politically-embarrassing fact of a 
communist collaborator seizing power in the Kremlin during Clinton's 
presidency, the new strategy will be, I'm sure, to make it known that the 
communists in the Duma are not the same communists as the old bad 
communists. The new guys, represented by "dapper" politicians like 
Seleznyov, will be presented as "pragmatic" politicans we can work with. 
They'll be calling them "technocrats" any day now. This is interesting, 
because when it suited us to have things the other way around-when we 
needed a red opposition to make Boris Yeltsin seem a more legitimate 
democrat-reporters took the fake communists in the Duma and portrayed them 
as being hardliner holdouts who want to return to the old days of the 
Soviet Union. We've come full circle, and have Gareth Jones to thank for 
it. Ugh, what a gross world we live in. Surely even the communists 
preferred the days when we were enemies to the day when they became "men 
with whom we can do business."

Jones's opponent, Christian Caryl, exited quietly in the first round with 
his January 31 piece, "Mother's Helpers". Your basic weeping-war-mother 
story, nothing too fancy. The article did have a present tense lead 
("Anxious parents crowd the dingy hallway outside the cramped offices of
the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers?") which in itself is not a crime, I 
suppose, but I think should be discouraged in general. The danger with 
present-tense leads is that they can result in Carlotta Gall-isms, i.e. 
long stretches of straight description, cold sleet falling in the muddy 
plain, in the distance a flash of light streaks across the sky as a 
rocket-launcher hisses, proud, majestic bearded faces stare with steely 
glances at the tree-line, blah, blah, blah, and you're fucking asleep by 
the third graph. Anyway, Caryl's wasn't that bad, but the danger is always 
there.

Maura Reynolds (8), Los Angeles, def. Will Englund, Baltimore Sun
Is it live, or is it Memorex? One can read and reread the (almost) 
simultaneously-released Ryazan bomb stories written by Englund ("Russian 
Bombs Set Off Whispers", Jan. 14) and Reynolds ("Fears of Bombing Turn to 
Doubts", Jan. 15) from now until the next millenium, and not find a single 
difference, either in content or style, between either of them. Both 
stories contain the same chronology and quote the same sources. As for 
style, observe Englund donning his trusty mittens for this passage:

"On the evening of Sept. 22, a chill was in the air in Ryazan, a city of 
700,000 about 130 miles southeast of Moscow. Aleksei and Lyudmila 
Kartofelnikov had spent the day working in the vegetable garden of their 
country [aren't all dachas country dachas? -ed.] dacha?"

?while Reynolds also felt a chill in her lead:

"On a chilly night last September, bus driver Alexei Kartofelnikov saw a 
suspicious car parked outside the 13-story apartment building where he 
lives in this working-class city?"

Both were meaty, solid articles, with nothing particularly reprehensible 
about either of them-- unless one takes into account the fact that neither 
newspaper wrote stories questioning the Chechen apartment bombings, or 
noting this incident in Ryazan, until long after the Duma elections were 
over. In fact, in the end, we chose Englund's piece as the better effort 
for just two reasons. The first reason, and we're reaching a little here, 
is that Englund's piece had more color. As in, literally more color. His 
article, unlike Reynolds's, included the fact of the "mysterious Zhiguli" 
having been white-colored. Reynolds's "Russian-made" Zhiguli could have 
been, say, green, for all we know. The other is that Englund, unlike 
Reynolds, had the decency to avoid closing his piece with that most 
maddening of journo-cliches, the "One thing's for sure; time will tell" 
ending. Here's how Reynolds's piece finishes up:

Vasiliev would like to forget the whole thing: He can't believe that it was 
just an exercise, but he doesn't like the line of thought that follows.
"We have been manipulated. But by whom, and for what purpose, I can't 
say," he says. "I'm afraid we'll never know what really happened."

Yeah, well, thanks. Also, Englund filed a day earlier, which still counts 
for something in this business. Reynolds advances.

Helen Womack (5), Independent, def. Anna Dolgov, AP
Mark Twain once wrote about Fenimore Cooper: "Whenever absolute silence is 
worth about four dollars a minute, you can be sure a Cooper hero will step 
on a twig?He must have gone through a whole box of twigs in his career?" In 
the same way, whenever Independent writer Helen Womack is struggling to 
find a subject for one of her trademark "insightful" columns on Russian 
culture, you can be absolutely sure she'll drudge up some alleged Russian 
"friend" and make an ass of him in print. The latest inhabitant of Womack's 
Moscow Rolodex to don the court jester hat for the bemusement of her 
British audience is a certain "Grisha" ("Friendship Remains a Better 
Investment in Russia than a career", Jan. 18), who along with other unnamed 
friends is shown to be ignorant of politics ("Well, it may have escaped 
your notice that Boris Yeltsin has resigned", Womack quips to one friend), 
ignorant of the Western concept of a work ethic ("Lately, my Russian 
friends have been losing patience with me. They have been ringing up, 
wanting to meet, and getting the reply that I was busy. "What do you mean, 
busy?"), drunk ("So I went over with the vodka and left him to get happily 
drunk," Womack writes; it's understood that she's above joining him and 
getting drunk herself), helpless ("I have not got an insurance policy"), 
superstitious ("The next thing was to find the astrologer. "There is an Age 
of Aquarius exhibition down near the old KGB headquarters," said Grisha, no 
longer limping but leaping"), ignorant of "rational" Western medical 
procedures ("He rang a medical friend, who repeated my rational Western 
advice about the X-ray but added her own Russian diagnosis. "You know," she 
said, "a broken limb is usually a sign of something changing in your 
life?") and a hypochondriac ("It turned out he had only fallen down one 
step and twisted his ankle"). The ironic thing is that Womack was 
ostensibly writing about the peculiar intensity of Russian "druzhba", which 
she says is where "the real action happens", but friends don't write 
columns like this about other friends. Unless, that is, they're sure said 
friend doesn't read in English. Womack frequently writes columns like this 
one, seemingly always angling for a theme which she knows will allow her 
audiences back home to feel superior in comparison to the lovably hopeless 
and bumbling Russian "friends" of hers she describes. Another recent 
example was a column late last year in which she wrote about a Russian 
friend for whom a visit to England was just a "dream come true". Beyond 
these problems, Womack's Jan. 15 column was, like all of her columns, 
insufferably boring, reinforcing her status as Moscow's dullest 
"slice-of-life" columnist. Compared to Womack, Jean MacKenzie was a 
veritable Mick Jagger of journalism.

This was the kind of matchup in which, as sportwriters say, it was a shame 
that someone had to lose. Anna Dolgov's effort, the Jan. 15 "Russian 
Soldiers Feel Betrayed", was a perfect example of the kind of fast-food 
news feature writing that tempts one to call for the mass herding of 
journalism school teachers into polar internment camps. The lead follows 
strictly the classic "lead-o-matic" formula:

"EXOTIC CITY, Foreign country (Wire Service) - In the (unnecessary 
modifiers) (rustic local topographical feature) amid the (exotic local 
fauna), an (unnecessary modifiers) (authentic local protagonist) is doing 
(what he does) amid the (unnecessary modifiers) of the (exotic local fauna) 
next to the (rustic local topographical feature)."

Note the nice balance of the end phrase of the lead with the opening 
phrase. They teach this stuff in schools. Dolgov's lead goes like this:

"GROZNY, Russia (AP) - By a tumbledown wooden shack flanked by elm trees, a 
scraggy 20-year-old Russian conscript clutches a cigarette between his
fingers and stares at the snow around his feet."

The dictates of the "pyramid lead" formula (that's what they call it) 
almost always result in a secondary developmental paragraph which leads, 
suddenly and dramatically as it were, to a quote in the third graph. When 
you've read enough of these pieces, you can see that quote coming about six 
or seven words into the lead:

?A deafening burst of artillery cracks nearby, knocking clumps of snow from 
the trees and sending them to the ground with a low thud. The soldier, Dima 
Labazov, doesn't even look up.
``We are tired of this war already,'' Labazov said, his voice low and
expressionless. He said his platoon was promised it would be out of 
Chechnya
by Jan. 26, but all mention of a plane trip home has stopped.

This is the kind of writing which makes TV news seem intellectually 
stimulating. In fact, it is TV news, only not as interesting to look at. 
Image, image, quote. Narration, narration, image. Quote, narration, 
image?and so on. Nonetheless, Dolgov, didn't invent this formula, while 
Womack is an original of sorts. Womack by a hair and into round two.

John Thornhill, Financial Times, def. Richard Paddock (1), Los Angeles 
Times

Who woulda thunk it? The number 1 seed goes down! And it wasn't even close, 
folks. The FT's John Thornhill was in the zone in his Jan. 15 compare n' 
contrast piece, "Right seeks Tsar appeal." Eerily similar to a piece 
written last year by fellow Brit Anna Blundy comparing Boris Yeltsin to 
Ivan the Terrible, the thesis of this Thornhill piece falls apart, believe 
it or not, in the very first sentence-in the very first three words, in 
fact:

"Russia's rightwing politicians have discovered a new hero: Alexander III, 
the little-known 19th-century Tsar. They suggest his policies could provide 
a model for Vladimir Putin, Russia's acting president, who now seems almost 
certain to be elected to a four-year term in March."

Sounds fine, right? Wrong. Thornhill's piece continues without citing a 
single "rightwing politician" who either has previously or is willing now 
to put Vladimir Putin and Alexander III in the same sentence. In fact, it 
later comes out that the idea was nobody's but Thornhill's own. The one 
person he quotes-clearly Thornhill called around saying "What do you think 
of this idea I had?"-- dismisses the comparison out of hand and quickly 
pulls Thornhill by the ear back into the current century. "Russia will 
return to its European roots and pursue the universal values of a democracy 
and a market economy," [Elena Nemirovskaya, director of the Moscow School 
of Political Studies] says. "I think that process is inevitable although it 
will not be simple." Ouch! The most painful part of this is that Thornhill 
willing to suffer the indignity of including this revealing "illustrative" 
quote in his crippled analysis, so long as it meant he didn't have to go 
outside that day.

In contrast, the normally plodding Rick Paddock did a fair job in his Jan. 
12 Putin piece ("The KGB rises again in Russia"), even citing a Stratfor 
report which noted that Putin had been invovled with "theft for hard 
currency schemes" while a KGB agent in Germany. Most of the big bureau 
hacks have been cautiously ignoring the rapidly expanding mountain of 
evidence suggesting that Putin's main occupation for the last twenty years 
has been stealing stuff. None of the bureaux, for instance, have noted that 
Putin once defended himself against charges by the Petersburg City council 
that he had used state funds to buy real estate on the Atlantic coast of 
France by claiming that he didn't know where the Atlantic coast of France 
was. That's true, check it out. Paddock at least makes a pass at the truth 
in his piece.

Andrew Jack, Financial Times, def. Angela Charlton, Reuters
Few genres of Western feature reporting are as loathsome as the "Russia is 
dying even in the face of heroic Western generosity" type of article, 
typified by the Jack piece on the Glas literary Journal ("Writers Come in 
from the Cold", Jan. 22). There which the author finds some down-and-out 
Russian whose existence is briefly elevated to a level of near-dignity 
through the efforts of some Western donor, only to have his subject fail in 
the end to get on his feet due to the cruelty of his fellow Russians. 
Jack's article includes the inevitable scene of a Russian weeping with joy 
the first time he/she is exposed to (take your pick) a Western supermarket, 
a Western restaurant, a friendly Western cop, or, in this case, the 
progressive child-rearing theories of Western sociologist Dr. Benjamin 
Spock:

'Spock's work contrasted starkly with the more formal Russian child-rearing 
methods,
which Perova describes as "designed to train revolutionary soldiers", and
when while living in Pakistan during the 1960s she came across a copy of 
the
doctor's revolutionary approach to child-rearing, she recalls bursting into 
tears of joy."

Charlton's piece on the Orthodox Church ("Russian Church Gets Closer to 
State", Jan. 21) expresses surprise at the recent marriage between KGB vet 
Vladimir Putin and the church, despite the fact that the church has a long 
history of cooperation with the NKVD/KGB, particularly since the end of 
WWII. But Jack gets the nod here.

Michael Gordon (3), New York Times, def. Barry Schweid, AP
Gordon's Chechnya stories have been suspiciously friendly to the Russians 
lately. His Jan. 19 piece, "Frontline Priests Recruited to Raise Fighting 
Spirit," reads like something out of Stars and Stripes. It tells of the 
(imagine this next sentence being announced over the base intercom at the 
M*A*S*H 4077th) ups and downs, the bends and breaks, the triumphs and 
travails of a derring-do Orthodox priest assigned to a Russian army unit to 
raise morale and provide moral support. Gordon opens with a standard "Times 
have changed since Communism" lead:
"In the days of Soviet power, the Red Army had political commissars in 
practically every unit to make sure the soldiers obediently followed the 
Communist Party line, including atheism?. So Father Safrony's presence in 
the snow-capped mountains of Chechnya still seems a bit unusual. Dressed in 
a camouflage uniform and black knit cap, the Russian Orthodox priest is the 
chaplain to the Russian paratroopers who are fighting the Islamic Chechen 
rebels near the Chechen-Dagestani border here."

The rest of the piece is filled with ultra-patriotic gibberish spoon-fed to 
him by somebody in the Russian high command. An example is the conclusion 
of the article, a stirring quote by his priest:

"How can we not defend Russian land?" Father Safrony asked. "There is 
power. There are borders. And there is the motherland. To strengthen the 
state, the army has to be strengthened, and there is no army without the 
spirit."

And with spirit, we may guarantee the election of President Putin? Gordon's 
unabashed Russophilia has not gone without notice in the journalism 
community, where there has been talk that Gordon has made some kind of deal 
with the Russians in order to gain access to certain places in the war 
zone. If anyone out there in the Western press corps knows something more 
about this, please give me a call. Either way, Gordon's article is a 
disgrace. I'd thought this kind of writing went out of style with 
Eisenhower.

I was prepared to give this one to Gordon in a blowout, but Schweid's 
January 30 piece, "Albright in Moscow to Size Up Putin", made me hesitate. 
In it, Schweid follows in the footsteps of virtually the entire Moscow 
press corps in making one of the most infuriating omissions a Moscow 
reporter can make while covering Chechnya-namely, leaving out the 
comparison between Russia's Chechen campaign and the American attack on 
Kosovo. Others might have had an excuse for avoiding it, but on the 
occasion of Albright's visit, Schweid was simply obligated to bring the 
matter up. Instead he puts in lines like this:

'Albright noted that casualties are mounting and said Russia faces more 
isolation in the international arena as the war drags on. ``They have to 
hear over and over again that this is not working for them,'' Albright 
said.'

That paragraph just screams out for a follow-up one which said, "Russian 
officials said exactly the same thing last year when it protested against 
the U.S. attack on Kosovo." Nothing doing. Schweid deserves to be in round 
2 a lot more than, say, Owen Matthews, but he's not going. That's what 
happens when you draw Michael Gordon in the first round.

Celestine Bohlen (7), def. Colin McMahon, Chicago Tribune
The eXile is trying to suck up to McMahon because he might review our book, 
and unlike Geoff York we don't think he would respond positively to the 
pressure of being put into the second round automatically. So he's out. 
Also, Bohlen's Jan. 21 article, "Many Russians Questioning Death Toll in 
Chechnya", contained a gnarly copy-editing mistake: "Aleksandr V. Rutskoi, 
a hawkish former Soviet general who as Russia's vice
president, lead a mutiny against the Kremlin in 1993?" Now, when we at the 
eXile make copy-edit mistakes, it's evidence of our genuinness, our 
close-to-the-boneness? When the New York Times makes copy-edit mistakes, it 
means that not a single person in a chain of command stretching across some 
fifteen people didn't actually read the article. How is that possible? 
Easy--the piece was dull as hell. And I read it in big type. Imagine what 
it was like for Bohlen's New York readers. She advances.

David Hoffman (2), Washington Post, def. John Helmer, Moscow Tribune
See notes on Anna Dolgov, above, re: the "lead-o-matic." Here's the lead 
from Hoffman's Jan. 30 piece, "Putin Steps Out of the Shadows":

DRESDEN, Germany-In the gray villa at No. 4 Angelikastrasse, perched on a 
hill overlooking the Elbe River, a young major in the Soviet secret police 
spent the last half of the 1980s recruiting people to spy on the West.

Helmer wrote an interesting and very detailed (if verbose and convoluted) 
story about a Russian joint venture with the Pan American Silver Company 
("Putin and the Claim Jumpers" Jan. 25). Where does he get this stuff? 
Hoffman in a walk.

Martin Nesirky, Reuters, def. Peter Graff, Reuters
Battle of hack co-workers. Nesirky is the Jeb Magruder of the local hack 
community, the sniffling hanger-on carefully toeing the party line while 
angling for a small promotion. His news analyses are distinguished by a 
strong tendency toward wish-fulfillment reasoning, i.e." X would be good 
for Western ties with Russia, therefore we see evidence of X." A few years 
back he admitted to us that he and his bureau had softened the language of 
its reports about the Chubais book scandal because Nesirky believed Chubais 
to be crucial to the preservation of close ties with the IMF and the World 
Bank. In this case, he wishes into being an improvement of relations with 
NATO in his January 27 piece, "Russia Warms to NATO, but Why Now?".

"After almost a year in the deep freeze, Russia's ties with NATO look set 
to thaw significantly soon, even if they take a long time to defrost 
completely," he writes. "Military analysts say Acting President Vladimir 
Putin has several reasons -- ranging from domestic politics and likely 
defense cuts to European and Russian security -- for wanting to improve 
relations with the 19-nation
Western alliance now."

Nesirky quotes dependable neo-liberal talking head Yevgeny Volk of the 
Heritage Foundation and basically wings the rest. A good example of his 
sleight-of-hand analytic technique comes about ten graphs down in the 
article:

'Putin replaced Boris Yeltsin as president on New Year's Eve but remains 
prime
minister. This means he cannot leave Russia because the premier ordinarily
deputizes for the president.
'``I don't intend to violate this procedure,'' Putin said in an interview 
in
which he noted a positive trend in ties with NATO.'

How exactly did Putin note a positive trend in ties with NATO? If this 
indeed is the point of the piece, why didn't Nesirky include that Putin 
quote, instead of the one he eventually put in? My guess is that Putin's 
remarks weren't as unambiguous as Nesirky would have liked. So he stuck in 
the above quote and just declared the rest. A neat trick.

Graff's Jan. 22 piece, "Putin says alliance with Communists Not Strategic", 
repeats the increasingly irritating oversimplification of continually 
describing the SPS as liberals. What have these guys done that's liberal, 
exactly? What does the word "liberal" mean in the context of people this 
corrupt? Who knows. In any case, Nesirky's piece was still worse, and he 
advances.

********

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