March 10, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4158 4159

Johnson's Russia List
#4159
10 March 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Siberians top Russian Internet users, connections up.
2. AFP: The spies have it: Putin's rise shows secret services in ascendency.
3. Laura Belin: Dorenko/4158.
4. Patrick van de Coevering: education and corruption.
5. The Guardian (UK): Ian Traynor, MYSTERY DEATH OF KREMLIN CRITIC: JOURNALIST WHO WAS OUTSPOKEN OPPONENT OF PUTIN-LED WAR AGAINST CHECHNYA KILLED IN MOSCOW AIR CRASH.
6. Itar-Tass: Borovik Will Be Buried at Novodevichye on Saturday. 
7. Reuters: Russia's top woman minister to run for governor.(Valentina Matviyenko)
8. BBC MONITORING: RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ADVERT FOR ZYUGANOV.
9. BBC MONITORING: RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBATE ON RADIO RUSSIA ON 9TH MARCH. (Aleksey Podberezkin and Sergey Glazyev)
10. World Socialist Web Site: Vladimir Volkov, Anatoly Sobchak (1937-2000): leading representative of capitalist "reform" in Russia.
11. Reuters: Putin tried to join KGB as schoolboy ``walk-in'' {Kommersant interview)] 

*******

#1
Siberians top Russian Internet users, connections up

MOSCOW, March 10 (Reuters) - Siberians and young men and women are Russia's 
top Internet users, a market research firm said on Friday. 

About a third of Russia's nearly seven million computers are hooked up to the 
Internet, and that percentage should rise sharply this year, ExactDATA 
research told an Internet conference, based on surveys of households and 
companies. 

Professor Yuri Polyak said he expected about two million Russian Internet 
users by the middle of this year, though computer use figures are hotly 
debated, especially recently as investors have showed interest in Russia's 
Internet. 

Polyak said surveys showed young women were about 38 percent of occasional 
users but only 20 percent of those who spent hours on the Internet. 

Among regular users, 70 percent were younger than 34 years, a quarter were in 
St Petersburg or Moscow, and one quarter was in Siberia and the Far East, 
vast empty lands which hold only 2.6 percent of Russia's 150 million 
population. 

Cities of less than 1 million had 55 percent of Internet users, Polyak said. 

ExactDATA predicted the percent of computers with Internet access would jump 
to 45 percent at the end of this year from 35 percent at the end of 1999. 

Personal computer sales would rise to 1.4 million by the end of this year 
from 1.2 million last year and one million in 1998. Sales hit a 1997 high of 
1.8 million computers, before Russia's financial crisis. 

The number of computers in Russia was 6.9 million at the end of 1999, up from 
6.4 million last year, and seen growing to 7.5 million this year. About two 
million of the computers were at home last year. 

Internet usage was highest in major cities, topped by Novosibirsk, isolated 
from European Russia but known for its scientists, where 34.1 percent of home 
computers were connected. 

Moscow had 33.2 percent of home computers connected and St Petersburg had 
32.8 percent, after which connections tapered off sharply among the 10 cities 
studied, to 22.2 percent in Yekaterinburg. 

On-line Russian shopping was dominated by computer stores, 19 percent of the 
stores advertising on the Russian Internet, followed by services, at 18.7 
percent, and home electronics and appliances dealers with 15.7 percent. 

*******

#2
The spies have it: Putin's rise shows secret services in ascendency

MOSCOW, March 10 (AFP) - 
Barring a political earthquake, Vladimir Putin will win this month's 
presidential vote, his extraordinary rise to the Kremlin capping a turbulent 
decade of haphazard reform in Russia that, paradoxically, has left the secret 
services ruling the roost.

Since the economic crash of August 1998, three former spy chiefs have held 
the office of prime minister: Yevgeny Primakov, Sergei Stepashin and Vladimir 
Putin, who since December 31 has doubled up as acting president.

Although they came to power via different routes, their ascendency coincided 
with a yearning for order, a sharp sense of humiliation at the loss of 
Russia's superpower status, years of economic hardship and a concomitant 
disenchantment with democracy.

Primakov, former head of foreign intelligence, was forced on a reluctant 
president, Boris Yeltsin, to steady fraught nerves following the 1998 debt 
crash and ruble meltdown.

Having steadied the ship of state he was abruptly sacked and replaced by 
Stepashin, a loyal former head of the FSB domestic intelligence agency.

His failure to restore state authority saw him dumped in just three months in 
favour of Putin, the sinewy career KGB officer who became FSB chief in July 

Primakov and especially Putin used their tenure in office to draft trusted 
allies from their former espionage corps into key positions in government, 
parliament and the civil service.

"It's very important to understand that over the last two years there has 
been a very clear turn to these secret service guys," said Nikolai Petrov, 
analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Centre.

"The transfer to the semi-police state, with an important role for secret 
services officers almost everywhere, started long before Mr. Putin came to 
power," he said. By replacing civil servants with former KGB people Putin was 
simply extending a trend initiated by Primakov, he added.

Within days of replacing Yeltsin at the Kremlin, Putin drafted in FSB 
generals Viktor Ivanov and Alexander Strelkov to senior posts in a revamped 
presidential administration.

A dozen FSB officers have since been recalled from Putin's native Saint 
Petersburg to fill select posts inside its Lubyanka headquarters in Moscow. 

Boris Gryzlov, head of the pro-Putin Unity faction in parliament, is another 
one-time secret services officer from Russia's former imperial capital.

"Putin wants to make no mistakes (or) fall into dependency on existing 
political clans," said Boris Makarenko, deputy director of Moscow's Centre 
for Political Technologies.

Some see in Putin a youthful version of Yury Andropov, the last spy to govern 
Russia. He took over the Kremlin in 1982 on the death of Leonid Brezhnev, 
after 15 years as KGB chief.

They believe a strong state, economic controls, a powerful military and 
discipline will be Putin's leitmotif, and fear a new era of authoritarian 
leadership.

But even two years ago, few would have predicted that an obscure former KGB 
colonel would command such a dominating position ahead of a democratic vote. 
Putin could even win election on the March 26 first round, say opinion polls.

"The most important thing is not the attempt of these guys to strengthen the 
state, but the weakness of society," said Petrov.

"The great hopes and expectations connected with democracy now have been very 
disappointed. Society is eager to listen to everyone who promises order 
instead of so-called democratic institutions like direct elections."

A wave of terrorist bomb attacks on apartment blocks last September, Putin's 
ruthless prosecution of the Chechen war and slavish coverage by state-run 
television, have triggered a radical shift in public sentiment.

Instead of stability, Russian voters now hark for firm leadership, and a 
crackdown on crime and corruption, analysts say.

The ability of Putin to embody that yearning has catapulted the former spy to 
the threshold of supreme political power.

Many of his KGB contemporaries meanwhile, have run the commanding heights of 
the economy seized during the giddy days that followed the Soviet Union's 
break-up.

"The KGB, the whole empire, is rather widely spread, connected to a lot of 
banks and behind a lot of businesses. This system has managed to come to 
power," said Petrov.

********

#3
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000
From: Laura Belin <laurabelin@excite.com>
Subject: Dorenko/4158

I would like to add something to your summary of Dorenko's ORT program last
Saturday night (March 4). Your summary paraphrased Dorenko as saying that
"Only the most serious regime of constant military pressure in Chechnya can
resolve the situation. It was too early to announce the end of the main
stage of the war."

Dorenko's commentaries over the last several months have been consistent in
calling for tough military action, but last Saturday he went much further.
In reference to last week's ambush of an OMON unit, which took place in an
area that had ostensibly been "cleansed" of Chechen fighters, Dorenko said
(I am translating directly from a transcript of Dorenko's program):

"[Russia] must act much more forcefully. It's also clear that if we don't
want to lose people, we much in the most thorough way re-examine the term
'civilian population.' And we need to firmly and accurately answer the
question: is there a civilian population there at all or is there not? And
[we need to] firmly understand that if we accept that there is no civilian
population, then this war [will go on] for two weeks. Conversely, if there
is a civilian population there, then it will be a low-level war for about 20
years. I'm not saying that we need to accept that there is no [civilian
population], or that we need to accept that there is one--we simply need to
understand that if there is no [civilian population], then the war will end
in two weeks. And if there is one, then prepare to fight a little more
quietly. The issue is not the actual presence or absence of a civilian
population, the issue is what we think about it. I think that as long as we
consider everyone there civilians except for those who make a formal
announcement requesting to be considered a bandit, that's a naive and
unproductive position."

This is more than garden-variety warmongering. It's very close to a
justification for genocide.

********

#4
From: "Patrick van de Coevering" <patrick@muh.ru>
Subject: education and corruption
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000

Education is a recurring theme on the list, and the issue of 'side payments'
is a very relevant one since it is related to the structure of education in
Russia as a whole. Corruption in education is a serious issue. No matter
whether it is called bribe or 'side payment'. Fact is that for a student,
and for society as a whole the price of education is intransparent.

Firstly, once a student enters an institution through 'side payments', he or
she is a the mercy of who ever sets the level of these payments to continue
studying. Besides that, it is not at all clear where this money goes and
whether it is used at all to improve the quality of education.

Although in a certain (but again intransparent) sense the system of
additional payments adds to a market environment of education, in which a
student can choose what to pay for, the competition is false. The current
system creates a false impression of state guaranteed education in which
state schools can abuse their state provided priviliges. Examples are
renting out state provided buildings as offices, the teaching of paying
students at the expenses of non-paying students through the university
infrastructure or the recently introduced sales tax that is only applicable
to non-state schools.

Recently I discovered another interesting side effect of paid education. One
of my collegues, who is at the same time a student at the University was
thinking out loud whether or not to go to a mandatory lecture. At my
University a student who misses a lecture can pay a small fee to visit the
same lecture scheduled at another time. Instead of asking himself the
question of how to fool the teacher into believing whatever excuse he would
make up, he checked his wallet to see if he could spare the twenty roubles
to go when he felt like it. This seems to me a more proper way of 'side
payment'.

For your information, a student at the Modern University for the Humanities
(Sovremmenii Gumanitarnii Universitet) pays 8400 roubles (including 4% sales
tax) per semester for the faculties Economics, Management, Psychology,
Computer Science and Law, and 10600 roubles (incl. tax) per semester for the
Linguistics faculty.

Sincerely,
Patrick van de Coevering
Senior manager International Projects
Modern University for the Humanities
patrick@muh.ru
www.muh.ru

********

#5
The Guardian (UK)
10 March 2000
[for personal use only]
MYSTERY DEATH OF KREMLIN CRITIC: JOURNALIST WHO WAS OUTSPOKEN 
OPPONENT OF PUTIN-LED WAR AGAINST CHECHNYA KILLED IN MOSCOW AIR CRASH
Ian Traynor in Moscow 

A prominent Russian journalist and media magnate who specialised in 
investigative exposes of the Kremlin was killed in a mystery air crash at 
Moscow airport yesterday. Artyom Borovik was one of the loudest critics in 
Moscow of the acting president, Vladimir Putin, and of Mr Putin's war against 
Chechnya. 

The small Yak-40 aircraft crashed immediately on take-off at Sheremetevo 
airport, killing all nine people, four passengers and five crew, on board. 
The cause of the crash was unknown. Police recovered the flight recorder and 
launched an inquiry, saying that they did not exclude the possibility of a 
terrorist act. 

Borovik, 39, the son of a prominent Soviet journalist, had just taken off for 
Kiev, accompanying the oil industry executive Ziya Bazayev, a Chechen 
businessman who heads the Alliance Group oil company. 

In more peaceful times, Bazayev worked in the oil industry in Grozny, the 
Chechen capital which has been destroyed by Russian bombardment and is 
occupied by Russian troops. 

'It's very difficult these days for a Chechen to be in the oil industry in 
Russia," said the former Russian prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko, fuelling 
speculation about foul play. 

The three-engined passenger jet is generally regarded as a reliable aircraft. 
The plane that crashed yesterday had been in use for 24 years. 

Pilots at Sheremetevo told Russian television that even if all three engines 
had failed on takeoff, the plane would still have been able to land 
relatively safely. 

'I don't think oil magnates use unreliable aircraft," said Vsevolod Bogdanov, 
head of the Russian journalists' union. 

Such remarks encouraged speculation that the crash was caused by a criminal 
plot, though there was no fire or explosion. Commentators surmised that 
enemies of the oil executive in Russia's notoriously ruthless business mafias 
were responsible for the deaths, or enemies of Borovik whose newspapers and 
television shows crusaded against corruption in Russia's political and 
economic elites. 

'Power in Russia is not in the hands of the democrats or the communists, it's 
in the hands of organised crime and the mafia," Borovik once famously 
declared. He was well connected politically and a respected, outspoken 
opponent of Mr Putin. 

Russian state television, servile to the Kremlin, took his Top Secret 
programme off the air last year, a decision that Borovik ascribed to the 
looming election campaigns for the Russian parliament and presidency. He 
often appeared in his own TV production, reporting on and denouncing the 
graft-filled netherworlds of Russian politics. 

'We often talk of the media wars here, forgetting the real danger," said Mr 
Bogdanov. 'Artyom [Borovik] brings to more than 20 the journalists who have 
gone." 

'His reporting was acute, honest and principled. He took risks. But I don't 
want to speculate," said the dead journalist's father, Genrik Borovik, a 
veteran Soviet-era journalist who worked for years as a correspondent in the 
US. 

Mr Borovik's newspapers, Top Secret and Versiya, concentrated on juicy 
revelations of the venality and the corruption among Russia's rich and 
powerful. In recent months, the Borovik publications have been bitterly 
critical of Mr Putin, his erstwhile KGB connections, and his closeness to the 
entourage of the former president Boris Yeltsin. 

The front page of this week's edition of Versiya is headlined 'The Routine 
Genocide" in reference to alleged atrocities perpetrated in Chechnya by 
Russian troops. Highly unusually for the generally compliant Russian media, 
the news paper features a two-page report on alleged atrocities. 

The main article in the most recent issue of the monthly Top Secret warns 
that Mr Putin could be a dictator bent on 'liquidating liberalism" who is 
exploiting the Chechen war to mask his dearth of policy ideas. 

In January, police sought to detain another prominent investigative 
journalist, Alexander Khinshteyn, and revive an old KGB practice by sending 
him to a psychiatric clinic run by the interior ministry outside Moscow. 

At the weekend the Kremlin warned the Russian media that it would take action 
against 'fabrications and provocations" in the election campaign. 

'The press service will detect all facts of lies with respect to acting 
President Putin and reserves the right to use all means necessary for an 
asymmetrical response to provocations," said a statement from the Putin 
campaign's media office. 

*******

#6
Borovik Will Be Buried at Novodevichye on Saturday. .

MOSCOW, March 10 (Itar-Tass) - Russian journalist Artyom Borovik who died in 
an air crash on Thursday will be buried at Moscow's Novodevichy Convent 
cemetery on Saturday, his colleagues at the editorial office of his 
Sovershenno Sekretno holding told Itar-Tass. 

The farewell will begin at the Central House of Men of Letters, Bolshaya 
Nikitskyaa Street from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. 

A memorial meeting will start at 1 p.m. Borovik will be buried at 4 p.m. 

********

#7
Russia's top woman minister to run for governor

ST PETERSBURG, Russia, March 10 (Reuters) - Russia's highest ranking woman 
politician, Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko, is to run for 
governor of St Petersburg. 

Incumbent Vladimir Yakovlev is expected to seek re-election but Matviyenko's 
chances seem strong after Acting President Vladimir Putin, himself a native 
of Russia's second city publicly encouraged her to bid for the post. 

``I have had to weigh up the pros and cons and have come to the conclusion 
that I should take part in the race,'' Matviyenko, 51, told supporters on 
Friday. 

Putin is runaway favourite to win Russia's presidential election on March 26. 

The glamorous and feisty Matviyenko, a former Russian ambassador to Greece 
and Malta, is one of only a handful of women in the higher echelons of 
Russian politics. 

One of her female colleagues, first deputy parliamentary speaker Lyubov 
Sliska, praised her decision on Friday. 

``The country is in such a neglected state that only women have the strength 
to restore order. Men are tacticians...Women, who have to look after the 
home, are compelled to plan for the long term,'' Interfax news agency quoted 
her as saying. 

``Our northern capital needs just such a governor, educated and European in 
outlook.'' 

St Petersburg, Russia's elegant tsarist-era capital, has become better known 
in recent years for gangland killings, including the murder of another 
prominent woman politician, the reformer Galina Starovoitova. 

Matviyenko was recalled from Athens in September 1998 to join the government 
of Yevgeny Primakov as deputy prime minister in charge of social policy, a 
post she has retained under two subsequent premiers. 

Matviyenko is married and has a son. She studied pharmaceutical chemistry in 
St Petersburg and then briefly entered national politics before joining the 
foreign ministry. She speaks English and German. 

The election of the new governor takes place on May 14. 

*******

#8
BBC MONITORING
RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ADVERT FOR ZYUGANOV
Source: Russian Public TV, Moscow, in Russian 1525 gmt 9 Mar 00 

A political advert on behalf of Communist Party leader Gennadiy Zyuganov was 
shown on Russian Public TV at 1525 gmt on 9th March. The 40-second advert 
came in two parts. 

In the first part, economist Sergey Glazyev, Agrarian faction leader Nikolay 
Kharitonov, former Defence Minister Igor Rodionov, former Culture Minister 
Nikolay Gubenko and an unidentified woman, shown individually against the 
background of crowds under red banners, saying they will steer the economy 
out of crisis, restore agriculture, strengthen the armed forces, give state 
support to culture and education, restore free education and health care. 
This was followed by an image of a smiling Zyuganov against the background of 
the Kremlin and his campaign logo with the words "To the victory of patriots. 
Russia", with an announcer saying "With Zyuganov, life will get better". 

In the second part, a series of images, including those of field commander 
Khattab, and tycoons Anatoliy Chubays and Boris Berezovskiy, were shown 
framed in a prison door to the accompaniment of jarring music. The door was 
then seen shut and latched. This was followed with another view of a smiling 
Zyuganov and his logo, with the announcer saying: "Order in the country, 
prosperity in every home. With Zyuganov, life will get better". 

*******

#9
BBC MONITORING
RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBATE ON RADIO RUSSIA ON 9TH MARCH 00

Radio Russia broadcast a presidential election debate on 9th March, featuring 
Aleksey Podberezkin, the Spiritual Heritage candidate, and State Duma deputy 
Sergey Glazyev who spoke on behalf of Communist leader Gennadiy Zyuganov. 

The radio presenter asked them to speak on the topic of the state's role in 
people's lives, which he said summed up many of the questions sent in by 
listeners. Glazyev spoke of the need for higher wages, more benefits and 
guaranteed free education and healthcare, all of which he said could be 
achieved without raising taxes, through a combination of ending capital 
flight, increasing the number of monopolies so that natural resources 
belonged to the people and ending discrimination against domestic producers. 
Podberezkin said the state should focus on education and high-tech industry, 
funding science which was too risky for private investors. He pointed to the 
necessity of targeting benefits to those in real need. He said the state 
should protect the rights of individuals and not operate through interfering 
plans and directives. Glazyev went on to say that the state should be 
effective and accountable, as should its individual representatives. He 
condemned "the oligarchic clans" he said were currently running Russia to 
their own advantage. 

There was little real debate and Podberezkin, who has campaigned for Zyuganov 
in the past, acknowledged this. The real difference between the speakers 
focused on the person of Zyuganov and his ability to move Russia away from 
traditional Communism. The following exchange ended the programme: 

[Podberezkin] What's of fundamental importance right now? I'll tell you 
frankly what I'm afraid of. It will be dangerous, a disaster, if we abandon 
the current path of development and slide either towards a bureaucratic party 
apparat - and I'm not talking about the Communist Party or the Communists, 
indeed, although, incidentally, it would be better if the Communists didn't 
take that path - or towards the usual liberalism, as happened at the end of 
the 70s, without choosing our own Russian third way of development, as we 
call it. It's hard to find fault with the programme Sergey Yuryevich 
[Glazyev] is proposing. Even in the details it corresponds with our own to a 
great extent and, incidentally, corresponds to a great extent with what 
[acting President Vladimir] Putin is doing. 

[Glazyev] What he's saying. 

[Podberezkin] Right, what he's saying and is trying to do. But, Sergey 
Yuryevich, I am not at all convinced that if Gennadiy Andreyevich [Zyuganov] 
came to power, he would actually do anything. I'm absolutely sure that you 
won't be there. When they start implementing that programme, secretaries will 
pop up and immediately start claiming jobs as ministers and deputy prime 
ministers. I'm not opposed to a particular regional party secretary becoming 
a governor. The essence of my conflict with them stemmed from the idea that 
every regional party secretary should be a governor simply because he's a 
secretary or every [Communist Party] Central Committee secretary should be a 
minister. 

[Presenter] Sergey Yuryevich? 

[Glazyev] Well, as Gennadiy Andreyevich's representative I have to come in 
here and say that the attacks on him that our listeners have heard - 

[Presenter] For the sake of argument. 

[Glazyev] - are not true. Gennadiy Andreyevich is a modest man. He doesn't 
have two or three cars but just his official car provided by the 
administrative office of the president's administration and he's been given a 
bodyguard for the duration of the election campaign. I'd like to say that in 
the person of Gennadiy Andreyevich we have an authentic and sincere Russian 
chap, a patriot, who has travelled the length and breadth of the country, who 
worked his way up, who is keenly sensitive to people's problems and is aware 
both of national interests and the interests of every family, who has, as 
they say, worked his way up a great many levels of state service and it has 
been real service of the state, as expressing the interests of the state. 
This is the very essence of his psychological makeup and the essence of what 
he has been doing throughout his life. 

As to whether he will do what is written in our programme, I'm sure he will. 
It isn't just words. No matter what is said about the CPRF faction, I can say 
that it is thanks to that faction that we have at least some kind of welfare 
legislation today that protects the interests of society and those who are 
less well-off. Child benefit, teachers' pay, the standards set for funding 
science, education and culture and healthcare are all the results of work we 
have done. As is the constant work to index-link pensions. Who introduced 
social legislation, legislation to govern development, including the 
development budget and the law on the development bank, standard funding for 
science? It was the CPRF faction, which is currently the most powerful 
detachment of people's patriotic forces, whether you like it or not. 

I'd like to stress too that Gennadiy Andreyevich isn't just the leader of the 
CPRF today. He's the leader of a movement, the all-people's For Victory 
movement. He's head of the People's Patriotic Union, which has, sadly, lost a 
number of its active participants, so to speak, but nevertheless he goes into 
the election as the representative of the voters, the representative of the 
people's patriotic forces. And our programme really isn't a party programme. 
It isn't a narrow party programme and it has no group or party objectives. It 
has a number of key principles - the first is social justice, the second 
economic efficiency, the third the principle of development, of developing 
society and the economy on the basis of state-of-the art achievements of 
scientific and technical progress. How are we going to achieve these aims? I 
talked about GDP because that's the most widely accepted indicator of 
economic activity in the world. When we talk of it growing, we're talking 
about an increase in economic activity that covers a huge variety of goods 
and services needed by society as determined these days by the market and 
consumer demands... 

There are 20,000 qualified people who can't do what they were trained to do. 
That's a huge resource that's not being taken up by the economy at the 
moment. People's savings: one in four roubles are being used - three-quarters 
aren't. They go abroad or buy dollars. There's our scientific potential, 
which has seen a 20-fold drop in support and today's economic policy has no 
use for and so on. We have vast resources and our economic programme will 
enable us to use those resources by creating macro-economic mechanisms, 
attracting money to develop manufacturing, creating special mechanisms for 
development institutions, such as a development bank, by protecting the 
domestic market for unscrupulous foreign competition, by stimulating 
high-tech exports. 

The second guideline of our programme: now we've gone into the market, the 
mechanisms of market competition must operate. Otherwise the market is a 
nonsense and only serves to make a killing for those who run it. So, ridding 
the market of organized crime and creating conditions for honest competition 
are very important guidelines in our programme. Then there is the development 
policy I've talked about: stimulating the advanced achievements of scientific 
and technical progress, which will drive economic growth since the earnings 
of science are the basis for the prosperity of society and those who can 
produce new output will win in global competition. 

Also very important is why it is Zyuganov who can implement this programme. 
You said, quite rightly, that it is a programme in the interests of the whole 
of society but there is a clutch of people who have accumulated power today 
and are manipulating it in their own interests. That's why I, who am not a 
member of the CPRF, am campaigning for Zyuganov because no-one else would rid 
the state of the oligarchs, of organized crime and corruption. We need new, 
healthy forces that come from the people. Gennadiy Andreyevich is the 
candidate to do this. 

[Podberezkin] Let me add - although the way the air time's been shared out is 
a bit odd: I've just sat and listened to Sergey Yuryevich - in theory, he's 
set out my programme too so thank you, Sergey Yuryevich. Where do we 
disagree? I was talking like this in 1995 and 1996 when I supported Zyuganov 
and managed his election campaign. I said exactly the same. Then, it has to 
be said, I saw something quite different. I saw how in the parliamentary 
faction [Yuriy] Maslyukov struggled to get away from the hordes of 
secretaries who were threatening to have him removed from the party or the 
faction or take his job away and so on. I saw much else besides. Gennadiy 
Andreyevich has never run and never really engaged in running the state. He 
is the classic ideologist, a lecturer for the Central Committee, a department 
of the Central Committee. When he got to the Central Committee, he carried 
right on doing what he'd done in the regional committee. But what's worst is 
that everyone, or most people, he's gathered together have never been 
involved in it either. At least Sergey Yuryevich was a minister a long time 
ago. 

[Glazyev] Zyuganov has been involved. He worked in central party bodies. 

[Podberezkin] Yes, he was the deputy head of the ideology department. He was 
a Central Committee lecturer. And his lectureship is all very well but when 
there are other, people with experience - 

[Glazyev] You could see Ghandi, who rescued India from colonialism, as a 
lecturer too. 

[Podberezkin] Ghandi had quite different tasks to perform - freeing India 
from British rule. 

[Glazyev] And we've got a comprador oligarchy. 

[Podberezkin] Well, I can't see anyone there. Not having the people is one 
thing but they could ask other people and experts in, but they'll never give 
any power away. The presidium will decide and determine - a historic plenum 
of the CPRF Central Committee will decide whether or not you'll get into the 
government and they'll work on the basis of their own reasoning not that of 
the state. 

[Glazyev] We're electing a president not a general secretary of the CPSU 
Central Committee. 

*******

#10
World Socialist Web Site
www.wsws.org
Anatoly Sobchak (1937-2000): leading representative of capitalist "reform"
in Russia
By Vladimir Volkov
10 March 2000

In the early hours of February 20, Anatoly Sobchak, the former mayor of
Saint Petersburg, died in Svetlogorsk in the Kaliningrad district. A
confidant of acting President Vladimir Putin, Sobchak was on an election
tour in support of Putin's candidacy in the coming elections when he died.
He was buried on Thursday, February 24 at the Nikolsky cemetery in Saint
Petersburg.

The cause of death was first reported to be either a heart attack or kidney
failure. The autopsy carried out in Saint Petersburg confirmed the original
diagnosis: Sobchak died of massive heart failure.

Cardiology professor Nikita Sinegolovsky, who had been providing Sobchak
with medical care since 1997, stated to the Interfax news agency that
Sobchak had been on the verge of death for the past two-and-a-half years.
According to the professor, Sobchak was hospitalized in 1997 because of a
third, very serious heart attack. His condition was so serious that the
doctors treating him could not decide for a month whether Sobchak was fit
to be transferred to another hospital, where he was scheduled for heart
surgery.

However, another version of Sobchak's death is also being circulated in the
Russian media, according to which he was murdered. The news program
“Serkalo” (Mirror) broadcast on Russia's RTR channel ran an interview with
two close acquaintances of Sobchak, actor Oleg Basilavshily of Soviet folk
play fame, and TV reporter Bella Kurkova. Both said Sobchak had been
feeling very well recently. They said he was full of energy and his health
condition was stable. They doubted the truth of reports that the former
Saint Petersburg mayor had died of a heart attack.

These doubts could receive added fuel from an interview, published February
22, which Sobchak gave to the newspaper Kommersant-Daily shortly before
leaving for Kaliningrad. When asked by the reporter whether he had
recovered from his illness, Sobchak replied: “I had an extensive round of
treatment this summer, as a result of which I feel fine and can work
normally.” Then he added: “There have been attempts to kill me, to destroy
me. But, thank God, I am healthy and feel full of power and energy.”

Some announcements from the media indicate that new, scandalous revelations
confirming or disproving the possibility of murder may be published this
week. Whatever the final answer to this question may be, the death of
Anatoly Sobchak is of considerable political significance. He was one of
the most important Russian politicians, a man who succeeded in gaining
great popularity during the perestroika period, and then became one of the
ideological and political leaders of capitalist restoration.

In the words of Alexander Belyayev, who ran the Saint Petersburg City
Council when Sobchak was mayor, “The death of Raissa Gorbachev, Yeltsin's
resignation from the presidency and the death of Sobchak mark the end of
the epoch of first changes, romantic hopes and peaceful revolution. These
are important figures in our country's history. Their significance lies in
their formulation of modern Russian ideology. In a sense, Sobchak is the
spiritual father of those Saint Petersburgers who are now working their way
towards the top positions in Moscow, most significantly, Vladimir Putin.”

The president of Indyem Foundation, Georgy Satarov, who worked in the
Yeltsin administration for many years, said: “The death of Sobchak is yet
another indication of the end of the romantic period of Russia's
democratization. This epoch has come to an end, and is now making way for
another, much tougher and more pragmatic period.”

A similar commentary was published by the APN news agency: “The death of
Sobchak marks the beginning of a new epoch. This is an epoch embodied by
Putin, and one in which tough pragmatists with epaulets on their shoulders
will quickly take control of the nation—a nation which is experiencing a
severe hangover after the intoxication of a spree of liberty unseen since
the days of Prince Vladimir.” [Prince Vladimir Monomach (1053-1125) brought
about the second flourishing of the Kievian-based empire of “Rus”—editor's
note].

APN underscored the contradictory nature of Sobchak's political role,
writing: “Sobchak despised the organs of state security with every fibre of
his soul. And yet he fostered the rise of KGB Lieutenant Colonel Putin, who
has now concentrated the greatest power in the land in his hands. This,
surely, symbolises the ambivalence and profound inner contradictions of
Sobchak's generation.”

Anatoly Sobchak was a highly characteristic representative of those
sections of the former Soviet intelligentsia who became convinced in the
1980s that the only alternative to the crisis of the Soviet Union was the
liquidation of the social and economic conditions created in 1917 by the
October Revolution and the re-introduction of capitalist relations. As the
capitalist reforms began to take shape, this section of the intelligentsia
started making money, or advanced to lucrative positions within the new
state apparatus.

One of the main axioms this social stratum latched onto was the premise
that private property was the only reliable guarantee for an effectively
run economy and protection against the omnipotence of the bureaucracy, and
that it formed the “natural” foundation for creating a democracy.

According to these conceptions, the development of capitalist relations
would inevitably lead to the growth and consolidation of democracy in
Russia. But, as subsequent events were to show, the opposite was true.
Consequently, people like Sobchak were confronted by the profound
disappointment of the masses in the mid-90s, and lost their former
popularity. The actual result of their political efforts was the emergence
of semi-criminal and authoritarian power structures through which a small
minority enriched itself at the expense of the broad majority of the
population.


A lawyer turned politician

The biography of Anatoly Sobchak is typical of that of a man from the
provinces who “made something of himself”. Already during the perestroika
period he had attained a high position in the second most important city of
the Soviet Union.

Sobchak was born on August 10, 1937 in the Siberian town of Chita. After
completing law studies at Leningrad State University (LGU) in 1959, he
first worked as a lawyer, then moved on to become the head of the Legal
Council of Stavropol Region in southern Russia.

In 1962 he returned to Leningrad, where he took his doctor's degree and
taught at various colleges and universities. He worked at the LGU law
faculty starting in 1973, and later became dean of the faculty. In the
1980s he was made a professor and appointed director of the LGU's Institute
of Economic Law.

During the perestroika years he was one of the most active supporters of
Gorbachev's reforms. He became a candidate for membership in the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in May 1987, and was accepted as a full
member in June 1988. Such were the beginnings of his political career.

In 1989 he was elected to the House of Deputies, and was voted onto the
Supreme Council of the USSR at the first Congress of Deputies. In this
capacity Sobchak headed the Deputies' Commission investigating the bloody
events of spring 1989 in Tiflis, the capital of Georgia.

As is known from countless publications and memoirs, the relatively young,
assiduous legal expert from Leningrad soon attracted the attention of
Mikhail Gorbachev, who gave him his full support. Gorbachev regarded
Sobchak as a loyal supporter of his reforms.

But as the perestroika period drew to a close, Sobchak switched sides and
joined Gorbachev's opponents, participating in June 1989 in the
“Inter-Regional Deputies Group”, which had been formed to support Yeltsin
and a program of radical capitalist reforms.

In June 1991 Sobchak was elected mayor of Leningrad. One of his first
official acts was to change the name of the city to Saint Petersburg. He
remained mayor until July 1996, when he lost the election to his former
deputy Vladimir Yakovlev, the current mayor of Saint Petersburg.

During the first half of the 90s, Sobchak was a loyal Yeltsin follower,
supporting the Minsk Treaty of 1991 which dissolved the Soviet Union and
the military attack on the House of Parliament in the autumn of 1993. If he
criticised the Kremlin at all, it was on the grounds of what he considered
its inconsistent efforts in carrying out policies that favoured the new
private owners.

After being voted out of office as mayor of Saint Petersburg, he began to
encounter difficulties. On October 3, 1997 he was escorted by OMON special
forces to the public prosecutor's office, where he was obliged to testify
as a witness in cases involving abuse of authority by the former municipal
administration. Sobchak suffered a heart attack during questioning, and had
to be taken to Saint Petersburg's Hospital 122, where he was revived.

He was transferred from there to the Military Academy's clinic for cardiac
and vascular diseases, which was run by one of his closest friends, and
then, for further treatment, discreetly flown by private air plane to
France, where he underwent heart surgery.

Until July 1999 he remained in voluntary emigration in France, and appeared
before the public there at lectures held at the Sorbonne and other
universities. He published numerous articles and two books, one of which
was entitled A Dozen Knives in Sobchak's Back. At the same time, the
Russian Chief State Prosecutor's Office opened proceedings against him on
charges of corruption and misuse of authority.

The political atmosphere in Moscow changed in the spring of 1999. The
impeachment proceedings against Yeltsin failed, and Chief State Prosecutor
Yuri Skuratov, who had launched the campaign against Sobchak, was removed
from office. This enabled Sobchak to return to Russia.

Sobchak now made his last attempt at establishing himself as a major
political figure, but lost in the 1999 parliamentary elections when he
stood in his old Saint Petersburg constituency. From that point on until
his death, he was an active supporter of Putin, becoming his official
confidant and adviser.


>From “patriarch of democracy” to supporter of “iron rule”

The evolution of Sobchak during the last 10 years of his life is
characteristic of the transformation that occurred in the post-Soviet
regime as a whole.

Sobchak began his political career as an opponent of totalitarianism and
state violence, an advocate of civil liberties, and a defender of justice
and law against despotism. But as things developed, these democratic
impulses increasingly took on a purely declamatory character.

The logic of the capitalist reforms demanded the implementation of a
hard-line policy that would secure a historically unparalleled distribution
of former state property to a thin layer of private owners. A form of
Social Darwinism accordingly became the mainstay of Sobchak's politics.

When the terrible social consequences of Yeltsin's reforms became
increasingly apparent and (mainly Western) newspapers began publishing
articles about the poverty of Russia's average citizens, Sobchak
demonstratively and categorically denied that there were any legitimate
grievances. Typical was his response, while on a lecture tour in the US (at
the University of Michigan), to a member of the audience who quoted a New
York Times article describing the catastrophic social conditions in Russia.
Sobchak responded by saying the Times article reminded him of the methods
used by Stalin's Pravda.

After his return from French emigration in mid-1999, Sobchak declared that
Russia needed a new politician in the Stalin mould. Sobchak suggested that
this new leader need not be as bloodthirsty as Stalin, but he would have to
be every bit as severe and iron-fisted, as this was the only way to force
the Russian people to get down to work. At the same time, he published a
new book entitled Anketa—Documents Toward a Biography of Joseph
Dzhugashvili-Stalin.

Seen in this context, his support of Vladimir Putin was quite logical. As
Putin's official confidant from the beginning of February 2000 on, he
fervently supported the political program of the acting president.

He told the Rossiya-Regiony news agency: “With Yeltsin's resignation, a
transitional period in Russia's history has come to an end, in which the
institutions of both the old and new Russia were created.... The atmosphere
of disillusionment and transition has changed. Well trained people with a
different mentality, young and energetic people, must take power—people who
know how things have to be carried out these days.”

The essential element of Putin's program is “order”, said Sobchak, adding
that there was not just one program, but several. The first program would
relate to the next two years. It would focus on instilling order in social
life and implementing strict discipline in the state apparatus, “so that
the working day of Kremlin officials does not begin with alcohol”. A second
program would have to extend over eight to ten years, and introduce a
moderately liberal development of the economy. This program would
strengthen the necessary legislation concerning private and state property,
and ensure a decisive move away from the state and criminal extortion economy.

Although Sobchak admitted that “we have not achieved a democratic, but
rather a police state over the past 10 years,” he nevertheless declared
that he saw nothing dictatorial in Putin: “The ones who are afraid of him
are the ones who have been stealing. But those who lead honest lives don't
associate him with dictatorship. His connections to the KGB and FSB [the
former Stalinist and present secret services—editor's note] must not be
regarded as a drawback, but rather a worthy characteristic of the acting
president.”

The evolution of Sobchak's attitudes entirely corresponds to the growing
self-consciousness of the newly emerging ruling class in Russia in regard
to its social interests. When it first emerged from the womb of the
Stalinist bureaucracy, it of necessity denounced state power and demanded
freedom (first and foremost, of course, freedom of private ownership).

But to the extent that this class consolidated itself in society and
concentrated the choicest morsels of the economy in its own hands, it had
little use for “democratic” flourishes. Now the “strong state” and the
“dictatorship of law” were the order of the day.

By the time of his death, Sobchak had ceased to play an independent role in
politics. As the newspaper Sevodnya put it, he rapidly became isolated as a
political leader—“and was condemned to live in this isolation”. Nobody
considered him to be an “asset”—not the officials from the old
nomenklatura, the successful “New Russian” businessmen, the Kremlin
establishment, the impoverished intelligentsia or the millions of ordinary
citizens.

>From a psychological point of view, his death due to a heart attack is the
expression of the inner conflicts associated with his contradictory role in
recent Russian history. He claimed for himself the role of “patriarch” of
Russian democracy and the Russian people, but in actual fact became the
instigator of the mafia regime, which was the only possible shape that
post-Soviet Russian capitalism could take. The balance sheet of his
politics is a pitiless judgement on the claims made by Sobchak at the
beginning of his political activity.

In its February 22 issue, the newspaper Izvestia notes that recent opinion
polls ranked Sobchak at the top of the list of unpopular Saint Petersburg
notables: “Prior to the December 19 Duma elections, about 70 percent of the
city's inhabitants expressed their negative opinion of the former mayor.”
This, concludes Izvestia, is why “the announcement of the death of the new
capital of the north's first mayor was received merely as a news item, and
largely without any sympathy”.

*******

#11
Putin tried to join KGB as schoolboy ``walk-in''
By Martin Nesirky

MOSCOW, March 10 (Reuters) - Russia's acting President Vladimir Putin was so 
keen to be a spy he walked into the KGB's local headquarters as a wide-eyed 
schoolboy to ask for a job. 

``Some old guy came out,'' Putin recalled in an extensive interview in 
Friday's edition of the newspaper Kommersant. ``Strange as it may sound, he 
listened to me straight-faced and said: 'Gratifying, of course, but there are 
couple of points.''' 

``Firstly, we don't take volunteers,'' the KGB man told the would-be agent. 
``Secondly, we pick people after they leave the military or graduate from 
university with a higher education.'' 

``They clearly thought -- he's nothing but a schoolboy.'' 

Yet Putin was evidently not easily discouraged. He asked the man if the KGB 
preferred a particular subject. Law, the man replied. Putin said he got the 
message and studied law at his hometown university in Leningrad, now St 
Petersburg. 

Putin told Kommersant he was recruited into the KGB in 1975 while at 
university but kept quiet about his schoolboy job-seeking visit. He 
subsequently spent 16 years in the KGB, five of them in then-East Germany. 

The interview was a foretaste of a book expected to be published next week. 
It covered Chechnya and Kremlin politics as well as Putin's KGB past and his 
own family history. 

EX-KGB AGENT WEARS CHRISTENING CRUCIFIX 

He told Kommersant he was secretly baptised as a baby and wears a christening 
crucifix his mother gave to him to have blessed when he visited the Holy Land 
a few years ago. 

``I put it on to avoid losing it,'' he said. ``I haven't removed it since.'' 

But Putin said he had been a loyal KGB agent and Communist. 

``For better or worse, I was never a dissident,'' he said. 

The two journalists who conducted the interview compiled the book -- 
``Conversations with Vladimir Putin'' -- after six encounters lasting 24 
hours in all. 

The book looks likely to be a fascinating read. The journalists, Natalya 
Gevorkyan and Andrei Kolyesnikov, said its aim was to shed light on a man few 
in Russia, let alone the West, knew about a year ago. 

Boris Yeltsin made Putin prime minister last August and named him his 
preferred successor as president. When Yeltsin resigned on New Year's Eve, 
Putin became acting president and is widely expected to win the presidential 
election on March 26. 

Putin said Yeltsin told him about his resignation plan two or three weeks 
before he announced it on December 31. He said he told Yeltsin he was not 
sure he was up to the task. 

``He replied, 'I had other plans when I first came here,''' Putin said. 
``'You'll succeed.''' 

PUTIN FENDED OFF EAST GERMAN DEMONSTRATORS 

Putin came to Moscow after working for the city government in St Petersburg 
since 1990 after returning from East Germany. 

As a KGB agent, Putin spent five years in Dresden working on what he 
described as political intelligence. 

The KGB office in Dresden was conveniently located in a villa next to the 
city's Stasi security police headquarters. But this also had its 
disadvantages as East Germany imploded. 

When East German demonstrators surrounded and then stormed the Stasi building 
not long after the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall they also threatened 
to enter the Soviet offices. 

``The threat was serious. We had documents there. Nobody stirred themselves 
to defend us,'' Putin recounted. ``We were prepared to do it ourselves. And 
we were forced to demonstrate that readiness. That produced the required 
effect for a while.'' 

Putin did not say what action the agents took to defend their building but 
said he later went out to speak to demonstrators when they regrouped. They 
yelled at him his German was suspiciously fluent. He told them he was an 
interpreter. 

He said he telephoned the Soviet military based in East Germany and asked for 
help but an officer told him nothing could be done without word from Moscow, 
and Moscow was silent. Eventually a unit arrived and the demonstrators 
dispersed. 

``That 'Moscow is silent' -- I had the feeling then that our country no 
longer existed,'' he said. 

******

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