March 18, 2000    
This Date's Issues:  4177 • 4178 • 4179

Johnson's Russia List
#4178-
March 18, 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Putin vows to tackle poverty on provincial trip.
2. The Guardian (UK): RUSSIA'S DARKEST NIGHT OF THE SOUL: 
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN IN A RARE INTERVIEW LAMENTS HIS COUNTRY'S 
TURBULENT HISTORY AND, WITH ELECTIONS LOOMING, GIVES A DAMNING 
VERDICT ON ITS POLITICIANS.
3. The Electric Telegraph (UK): Marcus Warren, Putin's mask slips to show face of committed KGB fan.
4. The Times (UK) editorial: KREMLIN LIVES. Putin's memoir 
keeps secrets as well as revealing them.
5. Financial Times (UK): Putin is oligarchs' candidate, Russian 
election rival warns. (Titov)
6. Bloomberg: Albright Urges Further Expansion of NATO, EU, Report Says.
7. Washington Post: Senator William V. Roth Jr., Actions, Not Words. (re Chechnya)
8. Itar-Tass: ONLY "A FEW HUNDRED" CIVILIANS KILLED IN CHECHNYA - RUSSIAN GENERAL.
9. BBC MONITORING: ELECTION BROADCAST BY VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKIY.
10. New York Times Book Review: Somebody's Hero. Boris Yeltsin 
has been caricatured every which way, but Leon Aron says he was 
just what Russia needed. (Bill Keller reviews YELTSIN: A 
Revolutionary Life.)]

******

#1
Putin vows to tackle poverty on provincial trip
By Irina Demchenko

VORONEZH, Russia, March 18 (Reuters) - Acting President Vladimir Putin, 
tipped to win next weekend's presidential election, travelled to Russia's 
provinces on Saturday and vowed to lift people's low living standards. 

Putin chatted to ordinary workers and shoppers in Voronezh, an industrial 
city in central Russia, handed out awards to soldiers who had taken part in 
the military campaign in Chechnya and visited an aircraft factory. 

Keen to lure voters from both the liberal and conservative camps, Putin 
pledged higher wages and pensions, state support for domestic industry and 
lower taxes to help small and medium-sized businesses. 

``The most important thing is to rescue people from want and to give them 
clothes. This is the direct duty of the state. Our main problem is poverty,'' 
he told a meeting of regional bosses. 

But he added that only stable economic growth could help Russia overcome its 
social problems. 

``Spending on social security depends on our economic growth and so we need 
to direct maximum efforts to solve this problem. We need to give people work 
and a chance to earn money.'' 

He said small entrepreneurs were burdened by excessive red tape and high 
taxes. 

In a similarly populist vein, Putin said the state should protect Russian 
industry from too much foreign competition and could afford to halt most food 
imports. 

``We can afford to stop almost completely our food imports, including sugar. 
If not, we will simply undermine our own industry,'' Putin said. ``This is a 
matter of principle.'' 

Earlier Putin said a presidential decree would raise Russian teachers' 
salaries from April 1 and he also announced a leasing scheme aimed at 
boosting the domestic aerospace industry. 

Putin has said he will refrain from active election campaigning because as 
acting president and prime minister he has too many weighty tasks and 
responsibilities. 

But his forays into the provinces are diligently covered by Russia's national 
media and ensure that his message of a strong and respected state gets across 
to the electorate. 

PUTIN EYES VICTORY IN FIRST ROUND 

Opinion polls put Putin far ahead of his nearest rival, Communist Gennady 
Zyuganov. If he wins more than 50 percent of the vote Russia will avoid a 
second round. 

``I want to win in the first round...A second round would cost a further one 
billion roubles -- enough to pay pensions in the entire Moscow region,'' 
Putin told Mayak radio in an interview before heading for Voronezh. 

Asked about the influence of ``oligarchs'' -- wealthy, politically connected 
businessmen -- in the Kremlin, Putin told Mayak he distinguished between 
legitimate big business interests, with which he was willing to work, and 
those who had committed crimes and therefore needed to be punished. 

Some Russian liberals say Putin was chosen by Boris Yeltsin as his preferred 
successor with the connivance of powerful business interests that believe he 
will stand up for them. 

Putin has pledged to uphold and extend post-Soviet market reforms but has 
also put heavy emphasis on the need to revive the authority of the state to 
ensure laws are properly implemented and obeyed. 

He has given few details of his economic plans if elected. 

******

#2
The Guardian (UK)
March 18, 2000
[for personal use only]
RUSSIA'S DARKEST NIGHT OF THE SOUL: ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN IN A RARE
INTERVIEW LAMENTS HIS COUNTRY'S TURBULENT HISTORY AND, WITH ELECTIONS
LOOMING, GIVES A DAMNING VERDICT ON ITS POLITICIANS
Interview by Fritjof Meyer, Jorg R. Mettke and Martin Doerry. Der Spiegel
2000 

Alexander Isayevich, when you were exiled from Russia in 1974, the order
came from the top ranks of the Communist party. But in reality, it was from
the KGB. Now an officer of this same secret police force [Vladimir Putin]
is leading the new Russia. Could you have imagined this when you returned
in 1994? 

I didn't consider it impossible. We experienced neither reform nor
democracy under Gorbachev or in the entire Yeltsin era. The west lived with
the myth that democracy had been introduced to Russia under Boris Yeltsin,
and market-economy reforms put in place. When Yeltsin stepped down,
President Clinton called him the father of Russian democracy. That deserves
only the most biting scorn. 

Yet, Mikhail Gorbachev began the transition from communism with 'glasnost',
freedom of expression and transparency in public life. 

That was his only service to Russia. He experimented with half-steps and
half-hearted measures; he was a completely indecisive politician. He
dismantled the economic system that, in the Soviet time, got more things
wrong than right, but he didn't know what to put in its place. He spoke of
a socialist market economy which is simply unthinkable. When Yeltsin took
over, he wanted to do something as quickly as possible and he said it
didn't much matter what. He hastily threw together a team of bright young
men who had no idea how to go about this. Suddenly the fate of Russia was
on their shoulders. There was never a reform plan. 

With privatisation of the state economy, every citizen was supposed to
receive coupons giving him a share in the people's wealth. 

That was the purest of lies. The state's goods ended up in private hands
those of a few scoundrels and frauds. Entire industrial giants were
plundered, sometimes for only a half or 1% of their actual value. Within
two years, production dropped by 50%. Our reforms were a catastrophe. We
lost 15 years. It is a tragedy. Late in the Stone Age people realised that
the Earth can feed us. That's what we've come to today. More than half our
people were plunged into poverty and live not by wages but from their own
small patches of ground. And Gorbachevian glasnost is gone without trace. 

After your return from America, you spoke with thousands of Russians in
many regions. What do the people think? 

Our people cannot believe, even today, that what Yeltsin did was a mistake
or an error of judgment. The people are convinced that it all served only
one objective: to destroy Russia, or damage her as seriously as possible.
The myth that we now have a democracy has been so tirelessly repeated that
it finally took root. 

But you do have multi-party elections. . . 

Our state Duma is not a collection of people's representatives. Under the
communists, we had only one party and were happy with that. Now, a couple
of guys who get together in their kitchen and found a party can take part
in the Duma elections. Half the deputies enter the Duma with that sort of
party list, and they dominate the other half the people who were really
directly elected. 

At least the parliament debates and votes on laws. 

The Duma performs like a provincial theatre. They don't want to pass the
truly necessary laws. 

Which ones? 

Most importantly, on the self- administration of communities and districts.
That's where democracy must begin. . . 

Governors would be elected directly? 

That's a lie, too. For a governor to be validly elected requires voter
participation of only 25%. So whoever can get 13% of the people behind him
the votes of one-eighth of qualified voters is considered to have been
elected by the entire people. 

And the prime minister? 

Yeltsin tried out several prime ministers as possible successors and judged
them all from only one viewpoint: who would best protect his clan. In the
end, he picked Putin. 

Can Putin turn the country around? 

I distinguish between Putin's platform and Putin's personality. The Putin
platform comes from Yeltsin and his entourage, the corrupt bureaucrats, the
financial magnates. They are united by one great fear: that people will
take from them everything they have stolen, that their crimes will be
investigated and that they will be sent to jail. 

Why did they choose Putin? 

They assume that he guarantees their booty cannot be touched. Putin's first
official act as interim president was a decree that Yeltsin and his family
could never be brought to trial. Unbelievable! In many countries, even
ruling presidents are tried for their crimes. In ours, the ex-president is
untouchable. And that's about the extent of Putin's disastrous platform. 

What about Putin's personality? 

He is in many ways a puzzle. We don't know how he will act as president. He
stands at a crossroads. Either he can give in to his sponsors, and lead the
country inevitably to its ruin and him with it or he can break with clan
loyalty and pursue his own policies. 

What should he do first? 

I hope that, as a man of undeniable dynamism, he will not settle for a
puppet's role. Instead of assuring everyone that the ex-president will
never be punished, justice must prevail. That is what the people are
waiting for. 

Putin says he will strengthen state power. That seems inevitable. The
creative strengths of the people, which were repressed under the communists
and still are today, could get everything moving. Millions of Russians are
blocked by a wall of administrative and bureaucratic arbitrariness. They
have no one to complain to; no court protects their rights. Every path
toward Russia's rescue has been blocked. In some regions, the country is
falling slowly apart. 

Do you see local self-government as an answer? 

A strong central government is needed to keep the state from falling apart.
In parallel, a growing, equally powerful pillar of self-government will
spring from the communities upwards. These two power structures must
control each other. The central government has to enforce strict compliance
with the laws, while self- governing councils must control the openness and
responsiveness of state decisions on every level in the villages, the
regions, the provincial government. Otherwise, our country with its vast
distances, its countless peoples and its many religious groups cannot
survive. 

Wouldn't these two poles of power, from above and from below, eventually
come into conflict? They must complement each other, just as in the short
existence of the Rus people in Moscow in the 14th century. The tsar could
not force his will upon their representatives, he had to marshal powerful
arguments to sway their opinion. 

Would it be possible, in today's world, to develop a self- organised
economy in Russia's regions? A democracy requires that people be
independent as citizens and as economic subjects. If the exercise of power
does not flow from below to above, then we will remain in the hands of
bureaucrats and a few oligarchs. The last 15 years show that clearly. 

What do you see as the national mission of Russia? Quite simply, to save
the Russian people. We must not permit the death of Russia as a nation. Our
decline has lasted through 70 years under the Communists and 10 years after
that. A rebirth is always far more difficult it will take at least 100
years. The demographic trends in our country are frightening. The nation
loses nearly a million people a year, so greatly does the death rate exceed
the birth rate. A nation experiences losses like that only in wartime. 

What are the geographical borders of Russia in your mind? Since 1990 I've
considered Central Asia to be a region that should develop independently of
Russia. The trans-Caucasian area must also be given this possibility. I
consider it a mistake of imperial Russia that the response to calls for
help from the Georgians and Armenians, who wanted protection from the
Turks, was to absorb these peoples into the Russian state. The Baltic
peoples, too, should be allowed to go their own way. I view the separation
of Belarus, on the other hand, as a painful blow. Now Belarus again wants
union with Russia. The question, however, is the independence of Ukraine. 

That, too, pains me. I am fully ready to recognise the right of Ukrainians
to develop their own language and culture. But we are bound together by the
fates of millions of people: 63% of the inhabitants now call Russian their
mother tongue. The way I feel about the division between Russia and the
Ukraine is the same sort of pain as was felt over the division of the
German people. 

What should be done about Chechnya? 

I made my opinion clear to Yeltsin at the beginning of 1992. At that time I
told him: let the Chechens have their independence. If they want it, they
should try it. They'll come back of their own volition. Instead we had a
shameful war that ended with a shameful capitulation. The Chechens could
have been building up their state. Instead, foreign Muslim fighters
gathered in a network of training camps with foreign weapons, better than
those of the Russian army. Chechnya grew into a world problem. And now an
independent Chechnya would not be able to exist without Russia. We will
have to pump money in there, station regiments there, and face constant
attacks. 

You once wrote that in the Gulag, the Chechen prisoners were the most
determined of all. 

They are courageous fighters, a proud, unbowing people; the tough soviet
regime had such difficult problems with them that it sought to deport the
whole population. 

With the end of Communism, these problems have not been resolved. People
thought that in a country newly freed from its Communist chains, there
would be a great outburst of intellectual productivity. Are we wrong that
this has not taken place? You're not wrong. There was an explosion of
criminality. The remains of morality were devalued or denied. Many young
novelists threw their spiritual values overboard, and did not feel
responsible for their country or for their work. Yet, the road to democracy
takes time and patience and that applies to both intellectuals and
politicians. An automobile cannot come down from a high mountain by driving
off a cliff it needs to take the long series of switchbacks. People wanted
a democratic Russia overnight, without a period of transition, of learning
and of growing accustomed to it. Now we're paying the price of having tried
the great leap of driving off the cliff. 

*******

#3
The Electric Telegraph (UK)
18 March 2000
[for personal use only] 
Putin's mask slips to show face of committed KGB fan
By Marcus Warren in Moscow

VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russia's acting president since Yelstsin resigned, has let 
slip his usual mask of inscrutability to reveal the face of a passionate 
defender of the old KGB and its methods.

A book of interviews designed to reassure voters about the former spy 
expected to win next week's election has served only to arouse anxiety about 
his plans for the country. The enthusiasm with which Mr Putin justifies his 
old employer, and his silence on its history of repression, have shocked even 
those who were prepared to forgive him his 15 years in its ranks.

An influential member of his campaign team has privately admitted that the 
interviews have ruined any chance that the intelligentsia would back him on 
presidential polling day, March 26. Mr Putin's loyalty to the intelligence 
services has never been a secret, but the absence in his remarks of any 
criticism of the KGB or Russia's totalitarian past has come as an unpleasant 
surprise to liberals.

In newspaper interviews, and a book published a few days ago, he justifies 
the KGB's informers and claims that it kept a low profile. He says: "There 
were lots of people who co-operated with the organs. Co-operating with 
ordinary people is an important part of the state's existence. Agents operate 
in the state's interests." The secret police's bloody role under Stalin is 
barely mentioned. 

Describing himself as "a successful product of a Soviet citizen's patriotic 
education", he says he knew almost nothing of the purges when he joined the 
KGB. Yevgenia Albats, an expert on the security services, said: "He is the 
first major politician since the Soviet Union's collapse to praise the KGB. 
He didn't say a word about the misery it inflicted on so many lives."

Mikhail Margelov, a consultant on Mr Putin's campaign team, defended his 
remarks on the KGB. His opposition to its excesses is, he said, "so obvious 
that it doesn't need to be spelt out". Antagonising liberals is unlikely to 
damage Mr Putin's chances of winning the election and his background in the 
KGB is regarded as an asset by most Russians.

In classic KGB style, he has thrived on mystery about his intentions, 
promising the West energetic reforms while pledging at home to rebuild an 
assertive state. The Chechen war, harsh treatment of journalists critical of 
it and the increasing number of ex-KGB officers in the corridors of power 
point to a new authoritarianism.

The trend to running Russia by cloak and dagger has provoked beleaguered 
liberals. Grigory Yavlinsky, the liberal likely to come a poor third in the 
presidential election, said: "All politics in this country now take place 
either by means of recruiting people or with the help of some sort of covert 
operations."

******

#4
The Times (UK)
March 18, 2000
Editorial
KREMLIN LIVES
Putin's memoir keeps secrets as well as revealing them 

Nikita Khrushchev did it (though in secret). Mikhail Gorbachev did it (and so 
did his wife). Boris Yeltsin, a man of hearty appetites, did it twice. But 
the life story of Vladimir Putin, Russia's acting President, as told by 
himself and published this week in The Times, is a new departure in the genre 
of Kremlin almost-autobiography. 

Like his predecessors, Mr Putin was searching for the love of the Russian 
public when he let three journalists do the interviews on which this book is 
based. Dotted with snaps from the family album and reminiscences about his 
love life as well as his KGB career, the book adds flesh tints to the 
somewhat thin sketch Russians have so far been shown of the man who, every 
poll suggests, will be their next President. But, unlike any of his 
predecessors, the enigmatic Mr Putin has let himself be captured in print 
just before an election. This memoir must therefore be seen as a pre-election 
"stump" book rather than the usual exercise in ghost-written Kremlin 
self-justification. 

This shows several things about how Russia is changing. On the one hand, a 
book about a Russian leader that reads neither like dirt-digging nor 
hagiography is a step towards what would be considered, in the West, a normal 
political biography. This is worthy of praise. 

On the other hand, the cheering openness on a range of personal matters 
proves elusive once the reader examines details of Mr Putin's professional 
life. Indeed, the book dismisses as rumour what little "knowledge" 
Kremlin-watchers thought, until now, they had gleaned about his shadowy past, 
both his supposed career gathering strategic intelligence for the KGB in East 
Germany and his supposed close friendship with the liberal politician Anatoli 
Chubais. What Mr Putin himself says is that he did the less prestigious job 
of gathering local political information about a friendly socialist country; 
moreover, he says, he was later put on the Moscow promotion ladder not by Mr 
Chubais, the West's favourite reform guru and a native of St Petersburg like 
Mr Putin, but by the more scandalous figure of Pavel Borodin, an 
ex-presidential aide implicated in corruption. 

Nor do readers learn as much as they would like about Mr Putin's intended 
policies after his expected election victory. The chief plan that he touts is 
the odd-sounding one of moving Russia's parliament from Moscow to his home 
town, St Petersburg. The book is a fascinating initial sketch of a man who is 
likely to make a major mark on east-west relations. But despite the frankness 
that he now wants to project, Russian voters, and the rest of the world, will 
have to wait until after the March 26 vote to find out what future chapters 
might hold. 

******

#5
Financial Times (UK)
18 March 2000
[for personal use only]
Putin is oligarchs' candidate, Russian election rival warns

Konstantin Titov, one of Russia's 12 presidential candidates, said
yesterday that the country's forthcoming presidential elections resembled a
"dynastic transfer of power" more than a democratic contest, leaving voters
in the dark about the real intentions of Vladimir Putin, the acting
president. 

"Today Russia is experiencing a terrible situation: a model is being
constructed by which the oligarchs will prepare successors and move them on
to the political stage," Mr Titov said in an interview, referring to the
powerful business leaders who gained influence under Boris Yeltsin, the
former president. "The people, as always, remain silent." 

Mr Titov, who has governed the central Russian region of Samara for the
last nine years, has championed the most liberal programme of all the
candidates. However, opinion polls suggest he may win only 1 per cent of
the vote next Sunday. 

"A dynastic transfer of power is taking place, albeit in accordance with
the Russian constitution and federal laws. Everything has been clearly
thought out by the oligarchs and prepared by experts," he said. 

But he said the electorate might be proved right in supporting Mr Putin.
"Everything depends on who Putin is and how he will conduct himself. If he
will continue the construction of a democratic society then that is one
variant. If he only serves those who put him at the helm of power then that
is another variant," he said. 

His comments came as Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist party candidate, also
launched an attack on the acting president, during a campaign tour in the
Urals. 

Speaking to rallies in the cities of Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg on
Thursday and yesterday, Mr Zyuganov attacked Mr Putin for failing to
present an electoral programme, refusing to take part in television
debates, and signing orders to protect Mr Yeltsin from prosecution. 

The latest opinion polls suggest Mr Putin's ratings may be slipping
slightly but remain above 50 per cent. If he wins less than half the
ballots cast in the first round of voting on March 26, he will have to
contest a head-to-head battle with the second placed candidate, probably Mr
Zyuganov. 

Russian servicemen serving in remote parts of the country and Chechnya
began voting yesterday. General Gennady Troshev, in charge of the federal
forces in Chechnya, said his troops had the right to vote for whomever they
wanted. 

"But I think the military has made its choice. We know who the man is who
today stands by and supports the military as we complete our task." 

******

#6
Albright Urges Further Expansion of NATO, EU, Report Says

Venice, Italy, March 18 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright called for expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and
the European Union at a private conference in Venice, Agence France-Presse
reported. ``We must set for ourselves the goal of ensuring the continuing
integration of the continent so that conflict in eastern Europe becomes as
inconceivable as conflict in western Europe,'' AFP quoted her as saying.
Albright urged the European members of Nato and the 15- nation Europe Union
to consider including Russia and Ukraine, as well as setting broad policy
parameters to deal with the Balkans, Greece and Turkey, AFP said. 

European Union trade ministers meeting in Portugal today are set to agree a
``more realistic'' negotiating strategy in a bid to build momentum in a new
round of global trade talks, officials said. 

******

#7
Washington Post
18 March 2000
[for personal use only]
Actions, Not Words
By William V. Roth Jr.
The writer is a Republican senator from Delaware and chairman of the Senate 
NATO Observer Group. 

Over the past five months, Russian military forces have brutalized Chechnya. 
Their indiscriminate use of force has displaced more than 450,000 people, 
killed thousands of civilians and leveled Grozny. Their forces have committed 
numerous atrocities, including torture, rape and summary execution.

This relentless campaign against the Chechen people also involves the 
systematic destruction of Chechen monuments, religious buildings and cultural 
sites; the forced relocation of thousands of Chechen refugees; and the 
detention of Chechen males--many of whom never reappear.

In discussing U.S. policy toward Russia, Secretary of State Madeleine 
Albright wrote on this page March 8: "On no other issue has it been more 
important for [the United States] to be clear than on the war in Chechnya." 
The secretary went through the formality of expressing U.S. opposition to the 
vicious conduct of Russian forces.

But tragically, all that could be cited as actions taken by President Clinton 
to pressure the Kremlin to stop its atrocities in Chechnya were oral 
protests, a State Department report on human rights--which Human Rights Watch 
has criticized as too lenient on Russia--and one unreleased letter from 
President Clinton to Russia's acting president, Vladimir Putin. This only 
underscores the fact that the president has not undertaken a single concrete 
action to demonstrate U.S. opposition to Russia's cruel war.

The administration continues to endorse the Kremlin's assertion that its 
military operations in Chechnya constitute a legitimate war against terrorism 
and an effort to protect Russian sovereignty. When added to the president's 
Dec. 8 press conference statement that he "has no sympathy for the Chechen 
rebels" and his January Time magazine description of the Russian siege of 
Grozny as an effort to "liberate the city," such a U.S. statement can too 
easily be interpreted by the Kremlin as a U.S. green light.

The president's endorsement of the Kremlin's false description of events 
gives credence to Russia's untrue claim that the government of Chechnya and 
its people brought this invasion on themselves. While admittedly there were 
some provocations by some Chechens, such uncritical acceptance of the 
Kremlin's premise ignores the fact that Russia did not honor the agreements 
it signed in 1996 and 1997 with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, that it 
sought to destabilize Chechnya and that it has embarked upon an 
indiscriminate war. Above all, the administration's endorsement of the 
Kremlin's version of events has yielded no positive change in Russia's 
conduct.

The administration repeatedly has called for a political resolution of this 
conflict. But if genuine peace negotiations are to take place, they will have 
to involve the Chechen government led by Maskhadov--not stooge Chechen 
organizations created by the Kremlin.

Yet when representatives of the Maskhadov government visited Washington in 
January, not a single senior administration official, including the assistant 
secretary for human rights, was permitted to meet with them. Ignoring these 
emissaries only indicated indifference to the Kremlin's savaging of Chechnya.

Secretary Albright says that administration policy toward Russia has yielded 
results in arms control. The secretary noted that last winter Russia signed a 
"major agreement on conventional forces in Europe." The fact is that Russian 
forces today are grossly violating that treaty.

Over and over again administration officials assert that Russia's failure to 
abate its killing in Chechnya will lead to its "international isolation." Yet 
on Feb. 16, just 10 days after the Russian military declared victory over 
Grozny, NATO Secretary General George Robertson met with Putin in an effort 
to warm relations previously frozen by the Kremlin. 

During a visit to Moscow early in February, Secretary Albright enjoyed a 
friendly sleigh ride around the Kremlin with her Russian counterpart. That 
hospitality was returned later that month to Sergei Ivanov, secretary of the 
Kremlin's Security Council, when he visited Washington to discuss, among 
other items, a possible U.S.-Russian summit. He not only was escorted around 
town by national security adviser Sandy Berger but also benefited from a 
meeting with President Clinton.

The administration must approach Russia's brutality in Chechnya as more than 
just a rhetorical priority. Far too much is at stake. The Kremlin, most 
analysts predict, will not attain decisive victory. Instead, the likely 
outcome is an enduring partisan war--one that could well radicalize Russia's 
Muslim population, prompt instability in the Caucasus, harden Russia's policy 
toward that region and Central Asia and weaken Russia's democratic prospects.

*****

#8
ONLY "A FEW HUNDRED" CIVILIANS KILLED IN CHECHNYA - RUSSIAN GENERAL
Text of report in English by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS 

London, 17th March: "The military part of the antiterrorist operation in
Chechnya will end in spring," First Deputy Chief of the Russian General
Staff Valeriy Manilov, who is on a brief working visit here, told ITAR-TASS
on Friday. He said that "a group of 25,000 officers and men from the 42nd
motorized infantry division will remain in Chechnya after that. It will be
reinforced by a brigade of interior troops and a detachment of border
guards. Places for their deployment, as well as their future tasks of
ensuring security, are already determined". 

He noted that formation of governing structures would begin right after all
the territory of Chechnya was cleared of bandits. "However, the basic
distinction of the current situation from the previous period is that
military-administrative methods are being used most actively and extremely
tough federal control is being exercised over the situation in this part of
Russia," Manilov stated. 

He is sure that criminal proceedings must be instituted against the leaders
of bandit gangs. "Statistics show," he stressed, "that a full-scale ethnic
purge was under way in Chechnya in the period from 1989 to 1999. As many as
twenty thousand Russians were killed by Chechen bandits in the republic. An
exodus of the population began. Not only 250,000 Russians, but also 550,000
people of other nationalities had to flee from Chechnya. Due to this
genocide, the population of the republic decreased from 1.1m people in 1991
to 650,000 in 1994, and to 350,000 in mid-1999." 

General Manilov said that Chechen bandit gangs numbered 26,000 well-armed
men on 1st August, 1999. The federal army group, fighting them, did not
exceed 40,000 officers and men during all the three stages of the
anti-terrorism operation. "We relied not on numbers, but on the fighting
skill of our men," the general stated. "Three thousand separatists were
killed during the first stage of the operation, which lasted from 1st
August to 1st October. The so-called Chechen field commanders lost 5,000
more men in the period between 2nd October and 25th November. About six
thousand bandits were killed on the final stage, which began on 26th
November." 

Thanks to the active help of the local population, rendered to the federal
group of troops, it was possible to avoid heavy losses among the civilian
population and grave damages to populated localities. The general said that
only "a few hundred" civilians had lost their lives in Chechnya, while
eighty per cent of the republic's towns and villages "were not damaged at
all". Colonel-General Manilov noted in this connection that the West's
arguments about "unselective" blows on Chechen bandits, "unproportional"
use of force in reply to terrorism, and "huge losses" among the population
hold no water. 

******

#9
BBC MONITORING
ELECTION BROADCAST BY VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKIY
Text of election broadcast carried by Russian Public TV on 17th March 

[Voice over, video shows Zhirinovskiy addressing rally, signing autographs]
On 26th March, the Russian people will choose a president. This person will
rule the country for four years. There are many problems in the country:
social, economic and ethnic. Our fate depends on the person who undertakes
to govern this powerful state. We are fed up with the promises and empty
chatter of the candidates. Russian has long since needed a president who
does not promise, but who has the knowledge and the experience. Vladimir
Zhirinovskiy knows what the president needs to do. 

[Zhirinovskiy, speaking to camera from office, video of Orthodox
procession] In order to ensure a normal life for citizens, he should, of
course, tackle (?crucial) tasks, and for Russia, this means the army, a
powerful KGB, an independent foreign policy and government of the country
so that the Russian people are not impoverished and do not suffer, because
the Russian people are the foundation of our society. And Russian Orthodoxy
is the basis of our society's spirituality. 

[Voice over] For ten years the authorities have been persecuting Vladimir
Zhirinovskiy, but he is the only person on the political Olympus who
tirelessly defends Russian culture and the Russian people. 

[Zhirinovskiy, in office] Everyone agrees that the culture of the Russian
people lies at he basis of our culture, and the Russian army lies at the
basis of the country's defence capability, and every small people can live
and develop in peace. But if we force on everyone one hundred languages,
cultures, traditional ways of life, then it will all collapse. This is
impossible. Can there be 10 headteachers in a school. No, there can't. Nor
can there be 10 directors of a factory, nor 10 commanders of one regiment.
That is impossible. So, there has to be one unifying factor. Are the rules
of the highway code not the same for everyone? Just imagine if in one town
people drove on the right and in the next they drove on the left. There
would be crashes. There would be constant road accidents. 

[Voice over, video showed traffic accident, shots of Chechnya, rally] We
are already living through one such road accident. Chechnya. A terrifying
illustration of the twisted ethnic policy of recent years. But the roots of
this monstrous ethnic hostility lies deeper - in the persecution of the
Russian people. Zhirinovskiy knows the reasons and is reaching conclusions. 

[Zhirinovskiy, gesticulating to camera and banging the table in a different
office, against background of Russian flag and map] I will close the
[Moscow's Patrice Lumumba] University of the Friendship of the Peoples.
Russian lads from Siberia, from the Volga region from the south will study
there. The Africans will go home to Africa. I will abolish all ethnic
minority quotas. All higher education establishments will be for Russians.
Only Russians will go into the army. Only Russians will be officers. And
then we will have real students, a real army. 

[Voice over, video showed soldiers on parade] The combat morale of the army
depends directly on a correct and tried and tested ethnic policy. Russia
has always been and should always be defended by Russian soldiers. 

[Zhirinovskiy, gesticulating again, video showed Liberal Democratic Party
rally] You, young people, explain to your old people how they should vote.
Their minds are befuddled. They have been deceived and corrupted. They
don't know what to do, but you do know, you feel in your hearts, in your
guts, in your freedom-loving Russian souls. We will tell you only the
truth. There will never again be lies, or communism or dirty capitalism.
There will be a new Russia, a Russia that in the year 2000 will begin to
rebuild all its might, all its culture. Because there is no richer or
stronger power on Earth. 

[Voice over, video showed Coca Cola and Marlboro signs, shots of rural
life] Russia has many enemies and they do not hide it. Behind every
striking label are thousands of ruined Russian peasants and hundreds of
idle factories. 

[Zhirinovskiy] Never has any general-secretary of the Central Committee of
the CPSU, any Russian president or any top official ever said anything good
about the Russian people or Russian Orthodoxy. They have never said
anything about independence, Russian culture or defended the Russian
language. Well, I will be tackling, all these problems that I have set out
before you now as a matter of priority. 

[Voice over, video showed Zhirinovskiy embracing woman in street,
addressing rally and news conference] The Russian people, its language,
history and traditions are the backbone of Russian life as a whole. The
Russian people will prosper, and the dozens of large and small ethnic
groups in Russia will prosper. Everything depends on our choice. 

[Zhirinovskiy] Whatever happens, the name of the future president will be
Vladimir. Whatever happens. No matter who wins. He will have only that
name. I can guarantee that one hundred per cent. [Video showed Zhirinovskiy
against the Russian flag and the slogan "I know what to do". 

[Voice over] Vote for Zhirinovskiy. 

[Zhirinovskiy] You, young people, explain to your old people how they
should vote. Their minds are befuddled. They have been deceived and
corrupted. They don't know what to do, but you do know, you feel in your
hearts, in your guts, in your freedom-loving Russian souls. We will tell
you only the truth. 

[Voice over] Vladimir Zhirinovskiy knows what the president should do. Vote
for Zhirinovskiy. 

*****

#10
New York Times Book Review
March 19, 2000
[for personal use only]
Somebody's Hero
Boris Yeltsin has been caricatured every which way, but Leon Aron says he 
was just what Russia needed. 
By BILL KELLER
Bill Keller, managing editor of The Times, was based in the paper's Moscow 
bureau from 1986 to 1991 as a correspondent and then as bureau chief. 

YELTSIN A Revolutionary Life.
By Leon Aron.
Illustrated. 934 pp. New York:
St. Martin's Press. $35.

Has any major figure of our time been so variously caricatured as Boris 
Yeltsin? In Russia he has been, depending on the moment and the author, a 
populist spoiler, a hero of democracy, a drunken clown, a traitor to the 
motherland, a nationalist thug, the slayer of Communism, a stooge of corrupt 
oligarchs. 

Outside Russia, the conventional wisdom has tended to be unfriendly. When 
Yeltsin emerged in the mid-1980's as the Communist Party boss of Moscow, a 
rambunctious, crowd-pleasing reformer, Western officials viewed him as an 
uninvited guest at the Gorbachev honeymoon. ''What a flake!'' Secretary of 
State James A. Baker III was said to have remarked after meeting Yeltsin. 
''He sure makes Gorbachev look good by comparison.'' To scholars on the left, 
he was an irksome distraction from the attempt to humanize socialism; to 
scholars on the right, his origins as a Communist functionary in the 
hinterlands made him deeply suspect -- a typical provincial apparatchik,'' 
was the dismissive judgment of Dmitri K. Simes. He enjoyed a rush of 
adulation after his iconic photo op in 1991, defying a hard-line putsch from 
the top of a tank, and he won an infusion of loans with his attempts to 
create capitalism by decree. But over the past half decade, the Yeltsin 
persona degenerated steadily. He was the frustrated, fickle and ineffectual 
prisoner of his own cockeyed democracy, the butcher of Chechnya and finally a 
walking corpse. When he suddenly resigned at the turn of the new century, 
after eight and a half years as Russia's first popularly elected president, 
the send-offs were, at their most generous, equivocal. 

In his ambitious and perfectly timed new biography, ''Yeltsin: A 
Revolutionary Life,'' Leon Aron sets out to reclaim Yeltsin from the 
cartoonists and establish his importance as the instrument of a profound 
transformation of Russia. It is a complex and nuanced political portrait, not 
adoring but unabashedly admiring. 

Aron, who emigrated from Russia as a young man in 1973 and now resides at the 
American Enterprise Institute, cannot always contain his disdain for those 
who have underrated Yeltsin's performance. These include not only Yeltsin's 
reactionary adversaries in Russia -- here portrayed in all their vileness -- 
but the condescending intelligentsia in Russia and abroad, the Western 
governments infatuated with Gorbachev and a segment of the Western press. 
Aron's book is therefore likely to provoke some defensiveness from the sort 
of people who are normally invited to review books about Russia. 

One can only hope any fireworks will draw readers to see for themselves, 
because the book is a godsend. Such a fine, full-blooded political portrait 
of Yeltsin would, by itself, be important -- for even in the best eyewitness 
surveys of the Soviet unraveling, Yeltsin is an unfinished character. But the 
more exciting distinction of Aron's book is the context. He understands in 
his bones the weird operational milieu of Soviet Communism. He understands 
how it got that way, how it functioned during the few decades when it 
functioned, how and why it failed and how on its deathbed it produced such 
anomalous Communists as Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. He understands 
that the end of the Soviet empire was not primarily the work of a romantic 
popular uprising (although, unlike some scholars, he gives the Russian public 
its due), nor was it especially a triumph of cold-war containment; it was the 
result of the inevitable collapse of an exhausted economy propped up by a 
cynical ideology. Aron understands all this well enough to make it coherent 
and accessible. Consequently, this book is not just a welcome resurrection of 
Boris Yeltsin, it is also a superb account of the end of the Soviet 
experiment. 

Aron begins with Yeltsin's political germination 1,000 miles east of Moscow 
in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). Yeltsin, a combative farm boy who studied 
construction engineering and worked his way up the ladder as the region's 
development chief, perfected his driven, ardently populist political style 
long before his name reached Moscow. Out of school, offered the usual 
postgraduate assignment as a construction foreman, he insisted on first 
spending a year as a bricklayer, concrete maker, truck driver, carpenter, 
joiner, glass cutter, plasterer, house painter and crane operator, often 
pulling two shifts a day. In Sverdlovsk -- and later in Moscow, where he rode 
the subways and popped up incognito in the shops -- Yeltsin's insistence on 
seeing for himself schooled his eye for the failings of the system and bought 
him enormous street credibility. 

He was a gifted showman. When he was a construction boss, his favorite stunt 
was to gather a huge team and throw up a complete five-story apartment 
building in five days. Such feats of razzle-dazzle won him a measure of 
official license, which he spent on more meaningful reforms. A favorite, 
which foreshadowed Gorbachev by years, was an attack on the stifling 
egalitarian work ethic, using entrepreneurial brigades that were rewarded for 
performance, not for just showing up. He became adept at initiating 
experiments that played to the current Moscow fashion, and then pushing them 
to the brink of heresy. 

Adept as he was at the inside game, Yeltsin was the first political figure of 
national stature to really grasp the politics of public performance. Aron 
uses the French term bain de foule, bathing in the crowd, to describe 
Yeltsin's passion for full-immersion town meetings. These open-ended and 
often shockingly candid evenings of political cabaret added to the Yeltsin 
legend and forged his connection with an adoring public. By the last years of 
Leonid Brezhnev, Yeltsin was regaling audiences with megadoses of 
inconvenient truth -- even, in the cold-war year of 1981, admiring the United 
States for the tonic of ''capitalist competition.'' Some ''typical provincial 
apparatchik.'' 

In these early chapters, Aron draws heavily from Yeltsin's enjoyable but 
self-mythologizing autobiography. He has tested Yeltsin's own hindsight at 
key points by interviewing Yeltsin's contemporaries and scouring local 
archives, but at times the portrait feels a little rosy. 

Yeltsin's reputation reached Gorbachev, who summoned him to Moscow in 1985 as 
that city's party boss. For the next seven years the political pas de deux of 
these men became the defining choreography of Russia. At first, Yeltsin's 
flamboyant testing of the limits made Gorbachev look comparatively safe to 
the anxious old guard. Yeltsin excoriated the pampered elites (including 
spoiled intellectuals, who never forgave him). He lashed out at the 
hard-liners in Gorbachev's Politburo. Gorbachev chided him, then humiliated 
and demoted him, but never silenced him. Yeltsin was a useful foil. 

But as glasnost evolved into fierce iconoclasm, as liberalism fed the hunger 
for real liberation, as failed economic tinkering led to calls for free 
markets, Yeltsin was always a long jump ahead. Soon he was denouncing the 
Communist Party itself, advocating genuinely free elections and private 
property. Having been down in the engine room while Gorbachev was aloft at 
the helm, Yeltsin was far quicker to recognize that half measures were 
failing. Then Gorbachev became his foil. 

The book dawdles sometimes in recounting Yeltsin's evolution. Like most 
biographies these days, this one feels at least 100 pages longer than it 
needs to be, and at times, although his narrative skill is formidable, Aron 
seems to be recounting the machinations of plenums and elections and 
congresses in real time. So skim a few chapters. 

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Yeltsin has always been his 
remarkable agility, his capacity to absorb new information, rub it against 
his assumptions and change. Unlike Gorbachev, who never really outgrew his 
faith in benign Leninism, Yeltsin was a lifelong work in progress, much like 
Russia itself. One of the most engaging chapters accompanies Yeltsin on his 
1989 trip to America. You may remember this visit for the cold shoulder 
presented by the ever-equivocating Bush White House, or for the widely 
published gossip (methodically debunked by Aron) of Yeltsin drinking sprees. 
But for Yeltsin, whose ravenous curiosity led him to interview everyone he 
met and see everything he could see, the trip seems to have been the kind of 
genuine epiphany other Soviet visitors, including Gorbachev, were incapable 
of experiencing. The prosperity, the rule of law, the freedom and efficiency 
he witnessed in America catalyzed his notions about the fraud of Communism. 

America confirmed for Yeltsin what he was lurching toward. Getting there, 
however, proved a crushingly difficult undertaking. The relentless opposition 
of the tenacious Communists and their neofascist outriders, the squabbling 
among reformists and Yeltsin's own strategic blunders turned the economic 
transformation of Russia into a slog and demoralized his miserable public. As 
the enemies he could see and outwit gave way to dangers ''less amenable to a 
frontal political assault: inflation, depression, poverty, cynicism,'' Aron 
writes, Yeltsin succumbed to drink, depression and insomnia. He would rouse 
himself for one last electoral victory in the summer of 1996, and then devote 
his waning years to concocting a successor regime he hoped could keep the 
Communist revanchists at bay. The book went to press before Yeltsin 
surrendered his office to his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, an enigmatic 
former KGB agent who, for better or worse, represents Yeltsin's last great 
gamble. 

A biographer who regards Yeltsin as a friend of democracy must contend with 
the man's authoritarian side. Yeltsin's 1993 battle with an openly seditious 
Russian legislature, which ended with army tanks bombarding the Parliament 
building, is rather easily defended. Unpretty as that episode may have been, 
when the story is fully told there is little question that had the leaders of 
the parliamentary insurrection and their armed paramilitary prevailed, Russia 
today would resemble the miserable police state of neighboring Belarus. 

A more egregious case was Yeltsin's acquiescence in the catastrophic war 
against the breakaway province of Chechnya. The second round of that war 
continues today under Yeltsin's anointed successor. Aron makes no apology for 
the stupidity and cruelty with which that assault was carried out, although 
he points out that Yeltsin's resolve to protect the integrity of his country 
was itself well within the bounds of international law. The unpopular war, 
Aron says, ended the Russian people's romance with Yeltsin; only by 
negotiating a hasty withdrawal did he narrowly avert an electoral defeat. 
Thereafter ''Yeltsin looked more and more like a black hole: a giant star 
exerting enormous gravitational pull on everything around it, but coming to 
the end of its life, depleted of fuel and incapable of projecting light.'' 

At the same time, Aron argues, Yeltsin passed up at least two opportunities 
-- in 1991 and in 1993 -- to assume dictatorial powers by popular 
acclamation. Unlike Gorbachev, Yeltsin turned again and again to the public 
for his mandates. And he did not merely stockpile political capital; he spent 
it on noble intentions, the jump-starting of a capitalist economy, and it is 
only partly his fault that he was not more successful. ''A revolution that 
fails to live up to the fullness of its promise,'' Aron writes, ''is not a 
revolution that has not happened.'' 

Thanks in large part to Yeltsin, we have a Russia freer, less belligerent, 
more accommodating of its citizens and its neighbors. A huge if corrupted 
transfer of wealth into private hands ''broke the back of the Russian 
patrimonial state'' and allowed the beginnings of a middle class. We have a 
Russia in which power derives from the consent of the governed. 

Aron concludes that if -- a critical if -- Russia remains on this course, 
Yeltsin's ultimate place in history will be analogous to that of two other 
''authoritarian democrats'' who broke laws and spilled blood in the course of 
saving their nations: Abraham Lincoln and Charles de Gaulle. On the strength 
of this book, that provisional judgment holds up much better than the 
dismissive stereotypes that went before it. 

*******

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