March 2, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4142 4143 4144

Johnson's Russia List
#4144
2 March 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Moscow Times: Catherine Belton, Putin's PR Guru Warns of Sabotage. (Gleb Pavlovsky)
2. RIA Novosti: PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE GENNADY ZYUGANOV ADDRESSES THE PEOPLE.
3. the eXile: Matt Taibbi, Press Review. March Madness Rolls On-- The Final Four. (first annual Worst Journalist Competition)]

*******

#1
Moscow Times
March 2, 2000 
Putin's PR Guru Warns of Sabotage 
By Catherine Belton
Staff Writer

He was the brains behind the whitewashing of Communist candidate Gennady 
Zyuganov in the 1996 presidential elections, and he masterminded the campaign 
to discredit Security Council chief Alexander Lebed the same year. He was an 
architect of the Svyazinvest information wars in 1997, and lost. 

But one of Russia's most influential PR gurus and master of the art of 
information war, Gleb Pavlovsky, made a comeback last year with the 
successful State Duma campaign for Unity. 

Now he's firmly installed as one of the chief engineers of acting President 
Vladimir Putin's election campaign, and in an interview Wednesday he said 
there was a fifth column within the Kremlin administration and government 
that is opposing Putin's vault into the presidency. 

"There are members of old oligarchic circles, others from the regional elite 
and a significant part of the old Yeltsin apparatus who fear losing their 
posts and old corrupt ways should Putin come to power," Pavlovsky said. 

"The main obstacles that could come in the way of a Putin victory could be 
provoked by them. There might be an attempt to torpedo the elections through 
a boycott," he said. 

"Officials could also attempt to provoke legal claims on Putin's candidacy by 
agitating local leaders into showing too much loyalty to Putin so that they 
eventually break election laws," he said. 

Pavlovsky, however, refused to name who the members of this fifth column 
might be, and analysts cautioned that his remarks could be part of his game 
plan. 

Putin and his circle have sent out signals they might try to quash the power 
of arch oligarch Boris Berezovsky. 

On Tuesday, German Gref - the first deputy head of the State Property 
Ministry and the head of Putin's 

economic research center, said the government planned to create a new state 
airline in competition with Aeroflot, which has been linked to Berezovsky in 
corruption allegations. 

Almost simultaneously, Press Minister Mikhail Lesin said the broadcasting 
license of ORT television would be up for grabs at an auction in May. 
Berezovsky is said to wield control over the station. 

Pavlovsky was cautious in discussing Putin's relations with the so-called 
oligarchs. But he conceded it was unlikely Putin would break off relations 
with the powerful financial-industrial groups. 

"The old oligarchy has been undergoing its own revolution. New groups of 
businesses are coming out on top and Putin will work with them as a normal 
part of the political process," he said. 

Pavlovsky would not elaborate further on which groups are coming out on top 
of the pile. However, he said that Putin likes to keep Berezovsky at the 
distance he is now - "which is indeed an extremely significant distance." 

"Putin sees him as a major politician and as one of Russia's major 
businessmen. But he is a private citizen and does not have any official 
position - continuing relations with Berezovsky on these levels does not hold 
any political risk for Putin," he said. 

Pavlovsky first hinted all was not well within the Putin campaign team in a 
front-page interview with Segodnya published Tuesday. He was interpreted as 
saying there was a conspiracy to oust Putin from within his campaign staff. 

Pavlovsk said his words had been exaggerated by Segodnya, owned by 
anti-Kremlin oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky. 

"There are bound to be some members of the Kremlin administration who will be 
sacked under a new President Putin. It makes no sense for them to play an 
active role in his campaign," said Yevgeny Volk, an analyst at the Heritage 
Foundation. 

"But there is very little they can actively do to oppose the Putin campaign. 
The fact that Pavlovsky publicly revealed details about infighting within the 
Kremlin is probably just part of the battle for influence over Putin among 
the political elite," he said. 

"It may also be an attempt to persuade those who think a Putin win is a 
forgone conclusion that they have to go to the ballot box anyway," he added. 

*******

#2
>From RIA Novosti
March 2, 2000

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE GENNADY ZYUGANOV ADDRESSES THE PEOPLE

Russian citizens! My compatriots! I am addressing you at 
the uneasy time, when a new serious danger threatens our 
Motherland. 
Authorities conceal from you the tragic truth about the 
situation in the country. My duty is to bring it to the 
knowledge of every elector. 
If the current course is continued, by the beginning of 
summer there will be a new collapse of the Russian economy. 
Millions of people will lose their jobs. Prices will rise 
dramatically. The last savings will be depreciated. The payment 
of pensions, stipends, benefits and wages will stop again. 
Utility and rent bills, payment for transport and 
communications will rise several-fold. 
Free education and health care will be liquidated. 

The oligarchs who have made the people poor know better 
than others that the new collapse is approaching rapidly. 
To remain in power, they have again decided to deceive you.
They have removed Yeltsin and appointed early elections before 
the truth has become known. 
It has been decided to put in the presidential seat a 
ruthless executor obedient to them who will suppress the hungry 
and protect the property of oligarchs. 
The regime of Yeltsin's heirs is bringing poverty and 
extinction to people. Dictatorship and the rampage of violence 
- this is what awaits Russia, if you let yourselves be 
deceived. 

To save the country, an immediate change of the economic 
and social course is needed. 
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the 
movement "For Victory!" who have nominated me as a candidate 
for presidency have the programme of rescue. 
We have prepared a package of urgent measures which will 
bring the economy onto the way of sustainable growth. 
These measures will be carried out by a team of 
professionals - the government of popular trust to be 
controlled by the parliament. 
Our country is big and rich. There is a countless number 
of those wishing to hanker after its riches and independence.
Unfortunately, we know this from the lessons of history. That 
is why, we shall revive the former might of our military and 
industrial complex. My most important concern will be to 
strengthen the country's defence capability and pay close 
attention to our glorious Army and Navy, raise the combat 
readiness of the Armed Forces. Russia will support the efforts 
of the world community for the liquidation of excessive missile 
and nuclear weapons and the regime of their non-proliferation 
but will always keep its Armed Forces in the state of high 
combat readiness to be able to repel any aggressor. 
We shall immediately raise pensions, social benefits and 
wages of public sector workers. 
The minimum wage and pension will be no less than a 
thousand roubles. The pay of teachers and doctors will be no 
less than three thousand roubles. I guarantee the return within 
five years of your savings depreciated by Gaidar and Kiriyenko. 
We shall restore the rights of citizens to cheap housing and 
utility services, free education and health care. 
The state will introduce tough control over prices of 
basic foodstuffs and prime necessities. 
Tariffs for electricity, transport and communications will 
be lowered. Three minimum wages will be enough to travel from 
one end of Russia to the other - from Kaliningrad to 
Vladivostok. 

I know where and how to find means to fulfil my programme. 
Our country is still very rich. 
It is enough to return to the people and the state the 
property illegally taken from them to fill all the gaps in the 
budget. 
This will make it possible to sharply reduce the taxes 
which stifle domestic production today. 
This will attract large capital investments in industry 
and agriculture. 
Millions of qualified specialists - workers, engineers and 
scientists - will be able to return to the work they like. 
All honest entrepreneurs will start breathing freely. 
I guarantee fair and timely work remuneration, 
inviolability of honestly acquired property. 
The state will render support to enterprises of all forms 
of property in the town and in the countryside, create equal 
conditions for their development. 

The economic recovery will make it possible: 
To stop the extinction of Russia. 
To ensure a worthy future for our children and 
grand-children. 
To restore the country's defence capability. 
To render real assistance to culture, strengthen the 
spiritual health of our society. 
To launch a decisive struggle with crime and corruption. 

I do not need the uncontrolled power which Yeltsin sought 
and which his heirs intend to preserve. 
I am ready to cooperate with all those who share the 
ideals of justice, popular rule and patriotism, with all those 
who respect the spiritual sacred things of our people, freedoms 
and human rights. Acting together we shall ensure peace and 
order in the country, calmness and prosperity in each home. I 
am confident that life will normalise! 

We shall build a Free Russia which we shall be able to be 
proud of. 
We shall build a New Russia which will become a centre of 
gravity for all fraternal peoples. 
We shall build a Great Russia, the first among equals in 
the world community. 
If you want it to become such, support me at the 
elections! 
The fate of our Motherland, your fate and the fate of your 
children, kith and kin is in your hands. 
Your voice can save Russia! 

THIS CAN BE DONE TODAY

Seven programme theses of Gennady Zyuganov 
1. Russian natural resources - to the benefit of the 
entire people and every individual citizen of Russia. Each 
Russian citizen will get a share in the republic's property, a 
slice of the national pie. 
2. Money from vodka sale - to the treasury and not to 
bandits. The introduction of state monopoly on wine and 
tobacco. 
3. To work and earn! A guaranteed workplace and a worthy 
earning for each Russian citizen. 
4. Fewer taxes, more goods. The reduction of taxes on the 
producers of commodities and services by 50 percent. The 
reduction of prices for fuel, tariffs for electricity, 
transport and communications by 50 percent. 
5. It is high time to stop humiliating the people by 
poverty. The immediate increase of pensions, social benefits, 
wages to public sector employees by 100 percent. The minimum 
wage or pension to be no less than 1,000 roubles. The pay of 
doctors and teachers to be no less than 3,000 roubles. 
6. For the future of the nation! Completely free education 
and medical services everywhere and for everyone. The 
preservation of the people of Russia. Special programmes of 
assistance to families, mothers and children, and the 
development of housing construction. 
7. Democratisation of democracy. The executive power shall 
not be uncontrolled. Every citizen will get a possibility to 
participate in the adoption of decisions determining his life.
The rights and freedoms not on paper but in real practice.
* * * 
The material by registered candidate for the President of 
the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov is published free of 
charge, in compliance with paragraph 1, article 50 of the 
federal law "On the Election of the President of the Russian 
Federation.") 

*******

#3
From: Matt Taibbi <exile.taibbi@matrix.ru>
Subject: March Madness Rolls On-- The Final Four
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 

the eXile
March Madness Rolls On-- The Final Four
[first annual Worst Journalist Competition]
Press Review
By Matt Taibbi

LORENZO CHARLES. Hardcore basketball fans will not fail to remember that 
name, linked for the ages, as it were, to one of the most dramatic moments 
in the history of big-time sports-underdog-of-the-century North Carolina 
State's upset victory in the 1983 NCAA championship. Charles and State that 
year beat the dunk-a-minute juggernaut many consider to be the greatest 
college team ever, the Phi Slamma Jamma Houston team of Clyde Drexler and 
Hakeem Olajuwon. Houston was winning by one with seconds remaining when 
pudgy N.C. State guard Derek Whittenburg threw up a prayer from the top of 
the key. The shot was wide by three feet, but the unheralded Charles- with 
all-world African shot-blocker Olajuwon looking on-scooped up the ball in 
midair and dunked it at the buzzer. The Wolfpack's one-point victory is 
still considered perhaps the greatest basketball upset ever.

After that game, a series of articles hit the country's sports pages 
speculating about the future of new national hero Lorenzo Charles. A 
brutish 6'7 forward with a shiny black shaved head, Charles was quickly 
judged ready for immediate NBA stardom. He was a "winner", a "great 
competitor", a "load down low" and a "naturally aggressive athlete" who 
would dominate under the basket once he got to the big leagues. Lorenzo 
bought the hype and left school early for the pros. He was on his way.

Then next year rolled around. Charles ended up sitting on the bench for 
most of the year for the Atlanta Hawks. Exposed as being too short for his 
position, there were also whispers about a drug problem. His name came up 
in police reports involving late-night incidents at Atlanta nightclubs. 
Then, with only long-suffering fans like myself still paying attention, he 
was unceremoniously cut from the NBA in the mid-1980s. By the end of the 
decade, he was wandering the earth begging for meal money, a failure at a 
series of tryouts for Italian and Israeli pro teams.

Lorenzo Charles, folks, was the exception that proved the rule. The Final 
Four of big tournaments is no place for no-name little guys. N.C. State 
made it through once, but that situation was quickly corrected. Once ol' 
Lorenzo was out of the picture, the high-priced recruits from Duke, 
Georgetown, North Carolina and all the other perpetual heavyweight 
contenders occupied the Final Four for good. Who's Lorenzo Charles now? A 
footnote. A big, bald, snarling flash in the pan. Shoulda stayed in school, 
kid.

Here in Moscow, the Final Four is here, and there are no Lorenzos in sight. 
The remaining contenders in our first annual Worst Journalist Competition 
are all from major Division 1 programs.

The Financial Times. The New York Times. The Times of London. And the Wa 
shington Post. These are your Blue Devils, your Hoyas, your Tar Heels of 
the hack world. Olajuwon promised never to let a shot like that by again, 
and he hasn't.

Welcome to the world of big-time journalism. Here, the biggest are almost 
always also the worst. Why? Because they've got more to lose. The greater 
the circulation and influence attached to a hack's byline, the more 
pressure he has from above to fuck things up. Your ordinary journalist with 
nothing to lose doesn't mind telling you that Anatoly Sobchak was a 
slimeball who bullied the St. Petersburg press and let the Tambov mafia 
take over his city. The Washington Post, on the other hand, will 
not-cannot. It has too much to lose.

And so here we are, through to the semifinals. There were some tough games 
in this round, but on the whole, the favorites held on with ease. Here's 
how it went:

John Thornhill, Financial Times, def. Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"A dream is a wish your heart makes."

Remember that song, from Walt Disney's Cinderella? It made Annette 
Funicello famous. Your average mainstream journalist has sure heard it. If 
he's a business reporter, he usually knows it by heart. Cinderella dreamed 
of marrying a charming prince; reporters at papers like the Wall Street 
Journal and (particularly) the Financial Times dream of being part of a hot 
business story, of being irreplaceable cogs in some hotly whirring part of 
the great global economic machine. Either that, or they spend all their 
time hanging around people in the investment world who are dreaming of 
getting rich, and therefore have nothing but good news to offer. In any 
case, the lives of these journalists are only harmonious if the news they 
send home about the local business climate is good.

That's why so many business reporters sound like Annette Funicello in their 
articles about the new Putin regime. Their articles are wishes their hearts 
make.

Since Rogaine-deficient Pulitzer laureate Steve Liesman of the Journal 
split town, Thornhill has emerged as the city's most enthusiastic good-news 
merchant. In the last round, he was caught arguing, with a straight face, 
that the virtual takeover of Russia's aluminum industry by blood-drenched 
mobsters Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovitch signaled a new "clean-up" 
of Russian business. In his February 28 article, "Challngers to the 
Oligarchs", he tones things down a little bit, but the message is still 
pretty much the same-that a movement is afoot to oust Russia's corrupt 
oligarchs and restore order and law to Russian business, and that things 
here may very well soon get better.

Thornhill makes his point using the vehicle of a new group of "young, 
market-wise entrepreneurs" (why are the good guys in foreign news stories 
always "young"? Why do even old reporters hate old people?) who are 
allegedly campaigning to get the oligarchs out. These young entrepreneurs, 
Thornhill argues, are sincerely interested in improving Russia's business 
climate, and believe that Vladimir Putin might be the man to clean things 
up for them. Paraphrasing Nikolai Tonkov, the 33 year-old director of the 
Yarolslavl Tire factory, Thornhill writes:

'Mr Tonkov argues that it is only if Russia cuts its oligarchs down to size 
and establishes fairer rules for everyone that the country's economy will 
ever truly revive. And he believes that Vladimir Putin, the acting 
president, may be just the man to lead such a revolution - assuming, as 
seems almost certain, he is elected president next month.'

It isn't until later that we find out that Tonkov is the head of the 
Yaroslavl branch of the Unity party. It would have been nice to get that 
crucial little factoid up top, obviously, but-- better late than never. 
However, there is some key information Thornhill leaves out entirely. For 
instance, there are missing all the reasons why Tonkov's high-ranking 
membership in the Unity party makes him a suspect source for any story 
about "clean business". Once one considers that famously corrupt 
businessmen like Vladimir Bryntsalov and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov are movers and 
shakers in Unity-and they're not the only ones of this type in the party by 
a long shot (see lead story, p.2)-it is hard to make a serious argument 
that Unity's de facto leader, Putin, has any serious plans to reform 
Russian business.

Fine, then, you say, but isn't it possibly true that Putin at least plans, 
as Thornhill says he might, to oust the oligarchs? No, the facts don't bear 
that out, either. Numerous stories have appeared in the Russian press 
lately indicating that a significant portion of the Unity Duma deputies, 
and a solid minority of non-Unity deputies as well, are actually on the 
payroll of Alfa-Bank oligarchs Pyotr Aven and Mikhail Friedman. Novaya 
Gazeta and Versiya have both reported that Putin's Kremlin chief of staff, 
Alexander Voloshin, is in fact the new de facto head of Alfa-Bank. Then, of 
course, there is the Berezovsky-Abramovitch Trans World deal, which went 
through with Putin's blessing. If Thornhill doesn't think Berezovsky 
qualifies as an oligarch, or that the Trans World deal didn't significantly 
increase Berezovsky's oligarchical political power, he needs to look for a 
new job.

Amazingly, Thornhill later goes on to use a little sleight-of-hand rhetoric 
to blame Yeltsin-era corruption on the communists, a propaganda technique 
that even the Wall Street Journal abandoned long ago as being too worn-out 
and ridiculous for even the most knee-jerk anticommunist readership to fall 
for. Note the use of language in this sentence:

'While the old Communist party nomenklatura managers and the oligarchs were 
using their political muscle to plunder Russia's richest commodity 
companies, a younger generation of entrepreneurs were building a 
competitive "new economy" by restructuring smaller Soviet-era enterprises 
and creating consumer markets.'

Thornhill here sandwiches the oligarchs between the phrases 
"Communist-party nomenklatura managers" and "Soviet-era enterprises". The 
passage leaves the clear impression that communist managers and the 
oligarchs of the nineties-who were brought into being by anticommunist 
pro-Western privatization polices-- are somehow related. This is crude 
stuff, but the old-time cold war religion dies hard in papers like the 
Financial Times.

Thornhill later tries to cover his tracks by inserting a "balancing" 
paragraph cautioning that Putin is still an unknown:

'Yet it is unclear whether Mr Putin has any intention of playing the role 
so eagerly ascribed to him? Mr Putin was appointed by "the Family", the 
shadowy grouping of oligarchs surrounding President Boris Yeltsin's 
administration, to defend their interests - not dismantle them.'

This is all fine, but it's still just 44 words of "balance", none of which 
are based on Putin's actual performance in office, in a 1,270 article 
otherwise brimming with hope and optimism. People forget that it is 
Thornhill's readership which ends up sinking Western money into Russia, 
only to get fleeced in the end. Given the amazing fact that Russia is about 
to issue GKOs again, one would hope the local business reporters would be 
more careful to give their readers a bigger taste of the proverbial Worst 
Case Scenario with regard to the local investment climate. No such luck; 
instead, we get the same story hacks like Thornhill have been giving us 
almost constantly (the exception being a brief period after the August 
crash) for nine straight years: Things Are Looking Up, and the Best is Yet 
to Come.

Thornhill had no chance in this contest. After two straight strong 
showings, Maura Reynolds bowed out of a tournament with an article that was 
not only totally devoid of her usual masses of clumsy modifiers, but was 
actually interesting, colorful, and well-written. Her February 22 piece 
about Russian minesweepers, "Russian Commandos' Mop-Up Operation Is a Risky 
Assignment" almost read in parts like something out of Hunter Thompson:

'The squad approaches the dead man. He is lying on his side. Andrei the 
sapper takes out a grappling hook. Everyone stands back as he gently tugs 
on the body, moving it a few feet. Nothing happens. The squad moves in for 
a closer look, and then Andrei calls out, ``He has no head.'

'``What do you mean, he has no head?'' Dima asks. ``Maybe the dogs ate it."

'Alexei comes down the driveway. ``No, it's a clean cut. Somebody beheaded 
him.''

'The men say they have found a number of headless corpses. Dima says 
decapitation seems to be what the rebels did to residents who refused to 
help them.'

Chechnya reporting is far overdue for this kind of thing. In a war zone as 
savage and inhuman as Grozny, people are bound to use some pretty extreme 
language, and say some pretty memorable things. Writers should be in the 
business of bringing all of this color out, but for the most part, 
reporters from Chechnya have stuck to the age-old formula of only using 
quotes that support the argumentative theses of their articles. If the 
story is about human rights abuses, we get refugees bitching about the 
Russians. If the story is about the ragged state of the Russian army, we 
get soldiers bitching that they have no socks. What we almost never get are 
soldiers saying, "Maybe the dogs ate it." We never get the punchlines.

That's the problem with mainstream news-in order to sell an editor on a 
story, you've got to give him an angle. You can't just say, "I'm going to 
hang around a bunch of guys in Grozny. Maybe they'll find a headless 
corpse." The boss in L.A. has to have that story skedded in advance, and 
what you give him usually has to fit within the agreed-upon frame, which 
usually has a semi-political/ideological slant-weeping refugees, bloodless 
commanders of artillery units, etc. If you want to know why newspapers are 
so boring, that's one big reason, that writers can't just send home what 
ever the hell they want.

In any case, Thornhill-who knocked out Reynolds's boss, Rick Paddock, in 
the first round-goes to the final four, where he will meet Michael Gordon. 
Expect real fireworks in that one. Meanwhile, Reynolds defies the spirit of 
Carol J. Williams and bows out of the tournament. Better luck next year, 
L.A. Times!


Giles Whittell, Times UK, def. Helen Womack (5), Independent

This was a close one. It came down to a desperate, fadeaway trey by 
Whittell shot right at the buzzer straight out of the halfcourt inbounds 
pass. The shot was so close to coming after the end of regulation that 
Womack actually protested the loss to the NCAA after the game. Tournament 
officials did not uphold the protest, but nonetheless conceded that Womack 
might have deserved to win-she was certainly in the game all the way.

Many, many moons ago, Womack lifted a story I'd written for the Moscow 
Times about Ukrainian serial killer Anatoly Onuprienko and rewrote it, 
copying my text almost word-for-word, for the Independent. I remember 
calling her editor to complain and getting laughed at on the phone; it's 
hard to shock a British editor.

Last week, when I looked at Womack's February 26 column, "Losing Weight By 
'Shaping' The Fat Away", I thought for an instant she'd ripped me off 
again. The column looked suspiciously like something I might have written 
myself, as a joke-so much so that I wondered whether I might actually have 
done so during one of my recent alcoholic blackouts. It wasn't until I went 
back and looked carefully at the piece that I realized that it wasn't a 
stolen eXile parody of a fat expat woman's diary, but a real column-- 
written in earnest, by the authentic, suffering overweight being, Helen 
Womack.

In truth, Womack is not guilty of much in this column other than telling us 
a lot more than we need to know about her fat, aging body. In fact, the 
very grotesqueness of self-flagellating detail present in the article 
actually raises it above the near-lethal level of dullness which generally 
characterizes these first-person/letter-from-abroad pieces of hers. 
Nonetheless, she nearly bought herself a trip to the final four when she 
wrote the following lead paragraph:

'"Strong as a horse, but you could do to lose a bit of weight," was the 
verdict of my doctor when I had a routine medical check during my vacation 
in England. Life in Russia has not been conducive to keeping fit. On dark, 
snowy evenings, it has been easier to open the refrigerator than to go for 
a brisk walk after a sedentary working day. And with so many ballooning 
Russian figures around me, I have been able to fool myself that, compared 
with them, I am still relatively slim, really.'

In any reputable health facility, qualified professionals would have 
quickly applied the bite-stick and straightjacket after that last sentence, 
thereby preventing Womack further harming herself or others by finishing 
the piece. The Independent, however, appears to be understaffed. 
"Relatively thin" compared to the women in Russia-but not, for instance, 
the women of Womack's native England? Thin compared to the women in Russia, 
the hands-down female sex appeal capital of the world-- and not compared to 
the women of England, who were so legendarily fat and ugly that British men 
once conquered half the world in an attempt to escape them?

This is yet another in a long line of bitter delusional swipes that a 
clearly frustrated Womack has leveled at Russian women in her columns over 
the years. It's not as nasty as her column calling Russian women whores for 
dressing up and wearing makeup, but it does mislead the reader into 
thinking that most Russian women are fat, that it's a land of tanklike 
babushkas, not babushkas and babes. And it does so because Womack has a 
problem with Russian women-at least that's the way it seems to me, judging 
from her previous work.

The rest of the piece is merely depressing and sensually unpleasant. After 
reaching for the fridge in the lead, Womack goes on to talk about how she 
ends up being the "fattest and oldest" woman in her shaping class, how her 
recovering muscles after her workout "eat up some of my fat", and-- in a 
most unwelcome revelation about the character of her intimate home life-- 
about how she has a habit of pigging out when her husband comes home late 
at night. She closes with yet another not-sufficiently-funny 
"see-how-gross-I-am" self-defaming type of passage:

'The hardest part was sitting down to write this article afterward. Some 
journalists reach for cigarettes; I have a pile of cookies by my computer. 
I am like the Samuel Beckett character Mary, whose hands move from plate to 
mouth "with the regularity of piston rods."
'There must be no more of that.'

It's hard to know what to say about a first-person column that doesn't 
entertain, amuse, inform, argue, provoke, or even propagandize. Like Womack 
herself, this article simply takes up a little bit too much space. 
Attention Independent editors: time to hit the shaping class.

Nonetheless, Womack will not advance in this round, because she had the 
misfortune to be matched up against Giles "Hamburglar" Whittell, who unlike 
Womack was caught with his hand in the cookie jar not just this once, but 
for the third time this month, after he again lifted a story from the 
Moscow Times.

Whittell advanced in the first round after he was caught lifting a Russian 
population decline story from Oksana Yablokova, and a story about Cossack 
folk dancers from Yulia Solovyeva. When the Times' female staffers took out 
a collective restraining order against the big swinging Brit of the local 
press scene, Whittell immediately switched to male victims. His February 14 
piece, "Putin lines up old KGB pals to run Kremlin", was a fairly 
transparent rewrite of Times editor Matt Bivens's February 11 piece, "Putin 
Leads 'Petersburg Emigration."

The tipoff that Whittell had based his Petersburg migration story on 
Bivens's is his quoting of Kareira-Kapital editor Fyodor Gavrilov as an 
authority on the exodus of "St. Petersburgers" to Moscow. Bivens quoted 
Gavrilov, too, but he had an excuse-Gavrilov, as a staffer for an 
Independent Media publication and sometimes contributor to Bivens's old 
paper, the St. Petersburg Times, was a known quantity to Bivens. Depend on 
it: had Bivens not dug up Gavrilov for his story three days before, 
Whittell would never in a million years have thought to call him. He almost 
certainly wouldn't even have known who Gavrilov was. Gavrilov is, in fact, 
the only person Whittell called for his piece, which explains why the 
information in it is not significantly different from the information in 
the article Bivens wrote.

Actually, that's putting it mildly-the information in the two pieces almost 
exactly the same. The only differences are semantic. This is becoming a 
hallmark of the Whittell method, the use of verbal subterfuges to mask 
crudely the parasitic nature of his work. Take for instance, the following 
passage by Bivens:

'Among the Cabinet ministers are many from Petersburg - including Deputy 
Prime Ministers Valentina Matviyenko and Ilya Klebanov, Communications 
Minister Leonid Reiman, Health Minister Yury Shevchenko, Cabinet 
secretariat chief Dmitry Kozak, Anti-Monopoly Policy Minister Ilya Yuzhanov 
and Nikolai Patrushev, chief of the Federal Security Service, or FSB.

'The FSB's first deputy, Viktor Cherkessov, is also a St. Petersburger; so 
are Deputy Finance Ministers Alexei Kudrin and Anatoly Zelinsky; Deputy 
Privatization Minister German Gref; Viktor Ivanov, a former KGB man who now 
handles personnel matters in the Kremlin administration; Vladimir Kozhin, 
who has replaced Pavel Borodin at the Kremlin's household affairs 
directorate; Igor Sechin and Dmitry Medvedev, both now deputy heads of the 
Kremlin secretariat; Valery Yashin, general director of state-owned 
Svyazinvest; and Igor Kostikov, the new head of the Federal Securities 
Commission.'

Here's how that passage translates into Whittell-ese:

'Six weeks before the presidential election, 17 key posts in the Kremlin, 
including two Deputy Prime Ministers and the head and deputy head of the 
Federal Security Service (or FSB), are already filled by figures who rose 
through the St Petersburg regional government when Mr Putin was the 
city'sdeputy mayor in the early 1990s.'

As is the case in the rest of the article, the theft here is so subtle, you 
would never notice it, unless you were looking. To find out where Whittell 
got the number 17, go back and count the names in Bivens's list. This is 
just another example of why reading Whittell's pieces is like watching a 
nature show about insect camouflage-you come away marveling at the subtlety 
of the evolutionary invention involved.

No need to resort to Islamic law yet, but Whittell has his hands on the 
chopping block as he heads to the final four. Womack beaten at the buzzer 
and sent home to the fridge; the Times UK advances.


Michael Gordon (2), New York Times, def. Gareth Jones (6)

After months of Stakhanovite production-Stakhanovite in both a literal and 
ideological sense-Gordon took a break in the last few weeks and did not 
file. Does this get him out of the tournament? No, it does not-not by a 
long shot. As Times bureau chief, Gordon has to be held responsible for 
allowing into print a shocking article written by subordinate Michael 
Wines, the astonishing February 20 Putin profile, "Putin Retains Soviet 
Discipline While Steering Toward Reform."

When I was home in the States a few months ago I saw an ad for a porn movie 
called "The Houston 566." In the film, a porn actress takes on 566 guys. 
I'm not sure why I even bring this up, but somehow that movie comes to mind 
when I think about this article. Probably it has something to do with the 
scale of the corruption involved. I've seen blowjob profiles before, but 
Wines's cum-guzzling 3,700-word puff piece on Russia's snakelike acting 
President puts them all to shame. It deserves a Tracy Lords lifetime 
achievement award, complete with a brass statuette in the shape of an open 
mouth. It certainly cannonballs poor Gareth Jones out of the tournament. 
Next to Wines, Jones-himself no stranger to puff profiles of powerful 
figures - comes across like Bobby Seale, or maybe Noam Chomsky.

Believe it: this Wines piece was so bad, it leveled the stadium. There will 
be yellow police line tape around the center of town for months as a result 
of this thing.

By now it is obvious to most everyone that the Clinton administration has 
made a commitment to propping up Vladimir Putin as a positive phenomenon. 
It clearly sees this as being necessary because a negatively-perceived 
Putin would expose Al Gore to charges that his administration's Russia 
policy has been a failure. As a result, American media consumers have been 
exposed to a flood of news reports describing Putin as a reformer, a 
democrat, and a strong advocate of the rule of law; the Clinton quote about 
Putin being "a man with whom we can do business" has been repeated ad 
nauseum.

This Wines piece is a compendium of all the pro-Putin propaganda the 
Times-historically a great defender of democratic party administrations-- 
felt was fit to print. It is extreme both in its presentation of evidence 
praising Putin, and in its exclusion of evidence against Putin. It begins 
by noting, with some embarrassment but nonetheless with obvious approval, 
that Putin had restored a publicly-displayed plaque and bust of Yuri 
Andropov that had been torn down in 1991. It then goes on to compare Putin 
to Andropov:

"He may have little use for Mr. Andropov's Soviet system, and a greater 
appreciation for law and order and the value and efficiency of 
Western-style business. But he has shown himself a man every bit as 
intolerant of Russia's disarray, and as determined to do something about 
it."

Now, Wines is writing his piece scarcely a week after Boris Berezovsky and 
Roman Abramovitch were allowed to take over 70% of Russia's aluminum 
business following a purchase of Trans World holdings. In also comes in the 
midst of the slaughter in Chechnya, a war probably started after Putin, or 
people close to Putin, concocted a plan to blow up the administration's own 
citizens in those apartment buildings last year. Putin worked as a deputy 
to Pavel Borodin, a man under indictment in Switzerland for crimes Putin 
could not possibly have been ignorant of. So where is the "appreciation for 
law and order and the value and efficiency of Western-style business" in 
allowing undisguised underworld figures like Berezovsky and Abramovitch to 
not only retain their oligarchical control of Russian industry, but expand 
it? Where is there intolerance of "Russia's disarray" in blowing up your 
own citizens and creating a giant war zone on your own territory? In 
kicking Borodin upstairs? In maneuvering to get the charges against Anatoly 
Sobchak dropped? Sure, there's no proof Putin blew up those buildings-- but 
there's enough that stinks about this, and other things Putin has been 
involved with, to frighten away any responsible journalist from calling him 
an honest advocate of the rule of law.

Not Wines. He serves that one up with verve, then goes on to rattle off a 
string of passages praising Putin, passages that display the remarkable 
quality of being nonsensical and somehow also incorrect. For instance:

'Mr. Putin clearly has an intellectual grasp of democracy and of what he 
has called the "historic futility" of communism. He is a veteran of an 
intelligence service in which, as an agent in East Germany in the 1980's, 
he could witness the reality of socialist economics and Soviet rule.'

Putin has an "intellectual grasp of democracy"-what does that mean? I have 
a good intellectual grasp of my big toe. So what? And what does it mean, 
that Putin's KGB past allowed him to "witness the reality of socialist 
economics and Soviet rule"? One would think that anyone who lived in the 
Soviet Union or its satellite countries would be just as sound a witness. 
Probably even sounder, in fact. After all, your average citizen in Soviet 
times, unlike the career snitch Putin, witnessed the business end of Soviet 
rule.

Wines goes on to praise Putin's "passion for order" and "desire to see 
Russia lift itself from his ashes"; he compares Putin to Charles de Gaulle; 
he lauds his judo skills and notes with admiration that he handled himself 
well in schoolyard fights; he sticks in a series of quotes by Putinites 
like Sobchak who commend Putin for his absence of interesting vices, i.e. 
his alleged distaste for alcohol and his somehow more believable distaste 
for girls; he notes with admiration that Putin is a jogger; he praises 
Putin's high school record of mainly As, mixed with a few Bs, while 
hurrying to include the comically irrelevant fact of his high school having 
been "the only school in Russia stressing chemistry"; he gives Putin credit 
for his extremely dubious claim of being a practicing Orthodox Christian-- 
"his mother secretly arranged for his baptism when he was a baby"-while 
neglecting to mention that Putin the KGB agent was in the business of 
religious repression; he describes the young Putin as "the steadiest and 
hardest-working of all" and reports with high-school-yearbookish zeal that 
Putin was "the one who made weekly current events reports to class" and 
"the sole boy who agreed to dance with girls in an interschool competition 
because the honor of No. 281 was at stake"; he reports that Putin listened 
to the Beatles and other Western rock bands (how do we know this for 
sure?); he compares Putin to de Gaulle again; the list goes on and on. 
Wines even invites us to be impressed by the fact that Putin holds not one, 
but two degrees (he actually writes it that way, "not just one? but two"), 
for some reason noting right afterward that he "played handball in high 
school" and "knows German well enough to imitate dialects." The enthusiasm 
with which Wines offers these details is of a type you normally wouldn't 
encounter more than a few feet from a coke mirror or a Burson-Marsteller 
employee. Amazingly, it flows from the start to the finish, absolutely 
unabated by any kind of balancing criticism.

Then there is this passage about Putin's high school, by itself a marvelous 
piece of revisionist history:

'The director encouraged teachers to shun lectures and rely on debates and 
even arguments to impart their lessons. The school's most popular 
instructor, a literature teacher named Mikhail Demenkov, peppered his 
course with samizdat -- banned literature circulated underground in carbon 
or handwritten copies. The history teacher, Tamara Stelmakhova, staged 
discussions on whether Nikita S. Khrushchev's promise to build a true 
communist state within 20 years was realistic.'

The first part, about the teacher "peppering" his course with samizdat, is 
just plain bullshit. This is one of those apochryphal stories that keeps 
showing up in the bios of postcommunist leaders-sort of a Moscow hack 
version of that story about Richard Gere and the gerbil. Sometimes the 
gerbil's in George Michael's ass, other times in others', but the gist is 
the same every time. Again, Wines forgets to mention that Putin ultimately 
went to work for the organization that maybe by the 1970s wasn't throwing 
people into death camps for reading banned literature, but was certainly 
ruining the lives of these people financially and professionally, if not 
actually jailing or institutionalizing them.

The second part, about discussion of Khruschev's plan, sounds in Wines's 
rhetoric like part of an argument that Putin grew up in an atmosphere full 
of the lively exchange of ideas. But think about it; of course Khruschev's 
plan was discussed in schools. It was discussed and debunked, on orders 
from above, by a government that would otherwise have had to produce a true 
communist state within a few years after these kids graduated from college.

When Wines isn't pulling every conceivable rabbit out of Putin's 
biographical hat to praise the acting president, he is constructing a very 
elaborate and highly dishonest argument in favor of the idea that Putin's 
choice of a career in the KGB is actually worthy of admiration. American 
propaganda ran exactly counter to this idea as recently as ten years ago, 
but our interests were different then. So was America. Ten years ago, no 
American readership, particularly no affluent New York readership, would 
have bought the idea that service of the KGB was an act of patriotism and 
evidence of the presence of a fertile, curious intellect. But in the age of 
widespread acquiescence to e-mail surveillance by the NSA, no-knock search 
warrants by the DEA, and the manipulation and censorship of TV 
entertainment programming by the White House, this new generation of 
freedom-hating American readers is apparently ready to embrace even the 
KGB. Here is the argument Wines offers to help make their dream reality:

'For many, it also was a coveted career choice, a club of elite Soviets 
given superior education and a unique chance to sample the forbidden world 
-- if only to fight it.'

In other words, choosing to repress the courageous human instinct to be 
free is, in its own way, like demonstrating the courageous human instinct 
to be free. One hates to use a very worn-out analogy, but this is much like 
arguing that joining the Nazi party was a means of participating in the 
Jewish experience.

At another juncture, Wines offers the incredible argument that only the 
guilty had something to fear from the KGB. It is a passage that even the 
editors of Sovietskaya Rossiya or the Limonka of our own Eduard Limonov 
would feel shaky about publishing:

'But by the 1970's and 80's, the K.G.B. -- while still feared and fearsome 
-- was no longer the tool of Stalin, sending millions to their deaths in 
the gulag. It still had ears everywhere and was vigilant for any sign of 
dissidence, but those who knew their place and their limits could stay out 
of the K.G.B.'s web.'

The fact that Wines's superiors would actually run this sort of classic 
police-state propaganda-and that chain of command starts with Gordon- 
speaks of a very high level of desperation within the Times to justify and 
apologize for the Putin regime. In contrast, Gareth Jones in his February 
23 Soviet army day piece, "Russia honours army, Chechens recall 
deportation", merely showed a very high level of desperation to get home 
early. It is inoffensive and so spare that it reads like a haiku next to 
the Wines opus. The nicest thing Jones says about Putin is that his Chechen 
policy is "tough". He does not mention handball in his piece. Not that he 
would, but still-- HE DIDN'T. And that's the important thing. Michael 
Gordon, boss and immediate editor of Michael Wines, advances to the final 
four. Jones goes home.


David Hoffman (2), Washington Post, def. Martin Nesirky, Reuters

>From the moment word arrived of former St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly 
Sobchak's death, it seemed like only a matter of time before the fucked-up 
obituaries started rolling in. One of the original "champions of democratic 
reform" in life, Sobchak was bound to get a real airbrushing from Western 
reporters in death. Absent from Russia for a few weeks, the Post's 
Hoffman-who narrowly squeezed by Gary Peach after press time in the last 
round-returned home just in time to fulfill readers' dread expectations.

Hoffman has been quiet in the tournament, but it's worth remembering that 
there is a reason why this guy was seeded second in the first place. The 
Post bureau chief is practically the only big-league Western reporter in 
town who is willing to lie outright in his articles for the sake of 
preserving this or that political line. Even the worst of the rest, like 
Gordon and Wines of the New York Times, will usually content themselves in 
their propaganda work with a mere dishonest rearrangement of the facts. 
Hoffman is different. When he needs to, when he's really in a pinch, he's 
capable of writing that day is night. In his worshipful Sobchak obituary, 
he comes up with a beauty:

'Defeated in a bid for reelection in 1996, Sobchak later suffered a heart 
attack and left for France. At the same time, he became entangled in a 
corruption investigation involving alleged bribery for an apartment. He 
returned to Russia last July, and the case was closed without charges being 
brought. He campaigned unsuccessfully for the Russian lower house of 
parliament in the December elections.'

Here's what really happened. Sobchak first became the target of a 
corruption investigation. Then, he lost the election. Then, just after a 
warrant was issued for his arrest, he conveniently had a heart attack and 
fled the country. Now, Hoffman's reworking of this chronology here is not a 
mistake. It's a lie, and you can tell it's a lie he told consciously, 
because of the careful language he used. The phrase "at the same time" was 
inserted to give Hoffman some intellectual deniability should he be exposed 
for his having reversed the corruption scandal-heart attack chronology. In 
point of fact, the corruption investigation came long before the heart 
attack, not at the same time. But if you want to get technical-and Hoffman 
does-- the arrest warrant was issued on the same day Sobchak fell ill. Does 
the same day count as being "at the same time"? Hoffman thinks he can get 
away with saying it does. But of course it doesn't-the warrant still came 
before the heart attack, and before the trip to France. This is a critical 
distinction, obviously, because "at the same time" doesn't tell you that 
the great lawmaker Sobchak fled justice, whereas "just before" would have 
at least hinted at it.

The rest of Hoffman's obit was not much better. In one point, he actually 
has the audacity to let Sobchak's corpse sink its fangs into the good name 
of Martin Luther King:

'In a 1992 memoir, Sobchak recalled that he campaigned modestly with a 
leaflet written by students, but his prospects improved after a speech one 
night at a candidates' meeting. Sobchak delivered impromptu remarks, 
borrowing the Rev. Martin Luther King's famous refrain ``I have a dream.'' 
Sobchak said he had a dream of a free, unfettered democracy, of a time when 
``greedy, incompetent leaders would lose the power to reduce our lives to 
absurdity,'' and a time when the state ``would become law-governed.'' The 
crowd was hushed.'

On the day after Sobchak's death I saw a broadcast of one of his last 
interviews on the TV show "Moment Istini". In it, Sobchak talked about how 
he had written a book of essays put together under the loose title "Anketa" 
which he intended to give to the next President-er, to Vladimir Putin, who 
he hoped would be the next president. The book, Sobchak said, contained 
"fragments of the biography of Joseph Dzugashvili" which he said would be 
very useful to Putin, because they "described Stalin's rise to power" and 
"outlined the technology of the seizure of power". How come THAT Sobchak 
never shows up in the any articles written by Western reporters? How come 
none of the reporters writing Sobchak obits mentioned the famous Moskovsky 
Komsomolets story in which Sobchak was caught on tape weepily begging 
Anatoly Chubais to quash Yuri Skuratov's criminal investigation of him? 
Instead, we get "I have a dream." No wonder black people hate us.

Whatever the reasons are for Sobchak's free ride in our press, there was 
clearly never a chance that Hoffman would break the mold. The 
carefully-massaged passage about Sobchak's corruption scandal was the only 
negative thing in the piece.

Arch wire-service villain Martin Nesirky, meanwhile, disappointed fans by 
mailing in his performance for this round. His February 15 piece, "Russian 
general slams US on missile plan" was basically little more than a verbatim 
interview with General Leonid Ivashov, head of the defense minstry's 
information department. Probably daunted by the prospect of opposing the 
Hoffman juggernaut, Nesirky did not even bother to edit out those remarks 
made by Ivashov about the United States which were both true and 
embarrassing (i.e. that the U.S. is lying when it says it needs to repeal 
the ABM treaty to protect itself from Iraq). Hoffman storms into the semis; 
the rout of the Reuters contingent complete.

Next issue: the Final Four!

*******

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http://www.cdi.org/russia