March 31, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4212 • 4213  4214

Johnson's Russia List
#4214
31 March 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. New York Daily News: Lars Erik Nelson, Russia's Prez Can't Go Back to Old System.
2. BBC MONITORING: GORBACHEV DISMISSES FEARS OF PUTIN "DICTATORSHIP"
3. Yale Richmond: Definition of an Optimist.
4. Garfield Reynolds: Re: 4213-Coalson/OSCE Propaganda.
5. Toronto Sun: Matthew Fisher, Lots of laws, little order.
6. RIA Novosti: SCIENTISTS DRAW UP MAP OF RUSSIA'S NUCLEAR-CONTAMINATED AREAS.
7. Reuters: Putin wants pro-market cabinet, better weapons.
8. AFP: Red tape and secrecy mar East-West adoptions.
9. Itar-Tass: Russia Marks Anniversary of Its Treaty of Federation. 
10. Washington Post: Charles Krauthammer, The Path to Putin.
11. St. Petersburg Times: Russell Working, Putin's First Hundred Days.
12. Moscow Times: Gary Peach, Chubais Deserves Mandate To Continue Work at UES.
13. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Andranik MIGRANIAN, A LONG GOOD-BYE 
TO OLIGARCHS. Putin Will Have to Overcome the Resistance of Oligarchs.
14. Financial Times (UK) letter: Russian 'fears' neither genuine nor justifiable. (re NATO expasnion)}

*******

#1
New York Daily News
31 March 2000
Russia's Prez Can't Go Back to Old System 
By Lars Erik Nelson

You can tell that Vladimir Putin, the new president of Russia, was really a 
spy. He complains in his memoirs that he spent his KGB career writing 
intelligence reports nobody ever read.

Yes! That rings true to life. And so does the rest of his fascinating 
autobiography, "In the First Person," which is either a candid account of a 
young man's disillusionment with communism or, for you Cold War warriors out 
there, the most artful disinformation ever to come from Moscow.

Putin, who was elected this week by Russians seeking a restoration of basic 
law and order, tells us he is a grandson of one of Joseph Stalin's cooks. He 
grew up in a wretched Leningrad slum and began studying German in grade 
school.

Learning a foreign language was a ticket to the supreme reward that Soviet 
society could give: a chance to get out of the country, as a diplomat, a 
journalist, a foreign-trade official or a KGB agent. At 15, dazzled by 
romantic spy films, he volunteered for the KGB, only to be told it didn't 
accept volunteers.

Eventually, he went to college and was recruited for the KGB's foreign 
intelligence branch. Putin insists he never took part in the KGB's ugliest 
side, the repression of dissidents.

He was, for a while, a classic true believer: a party member eager to defend 
the Communist motherland and enthusiastic about such foreign escapades as the 
war in Afghanistan. But then he recounts his first awakening.

It came from a KGB colleague whose signature was needed to authorize every 
single bomb to be dropped on Afghan guerrillas.

"I asked him how he evaluated the results of his work in Afghanistan," Putin 
says. "His answer shocked me. He looked very attentively at me and said, 'I 
evaluated my work by the number of documents I refused to sign.'"

Putin continues: "This hit me like a blow. After a conversation like that, 
you stop and think."

Putin then served in East Germany and reveals that he promptly gained 25 
pounds from drinking beer. His wife Lyudmila, a former stewardess, was struck 
by the sudden abundance of food, the clean streets and the sparkling washed 
windows.

His verdict on East Germany: "It was a harshly totalitarian country according 
our model, but 30 years behind." When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, he 
burned so many secret papers that his stove exploded, and he headed home.

He entered politics by working for former Leningrad Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, 
one of the first reformers to rise under Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika. 
During the Communist Party's last gasp, the attempted putsch of August 1991, 
"All the ideals and goals that I had when I went to work for the KGB 
collapsed." He quit the KGB and stuck his party card in a desk drawer, where 
it remains.

He rose to head the FSB, Russia's successor to the KGB, and then was anointed 
by Boris Yeltsin as acting president. He owes a good deal of his popularity 
among Russians to his ruthless prosecution of the war against separatist 
Chechnya.

But for all the apparent frankness in this memoir, which has yet to be issued 
in English, Putin remains a blank slate. Russian liberals fear he will return 
to the bad old days of censorship and authoritarianism. Western leaders find 
him to be businesslike and disciplined. His Russian fans endow him with 
superhuman qualities and expect him to crack down on corrupt oligarchs, pay 
all their back wages, raise living standards and restore Russia to its role 
as a great power.

There is no telling which way he will go. But his life story gives the 
clearest explanation of why communism collapsed: The most privileged elites
— 
party leaders like Gorbachev and KGB agents like Putin — could see that the 
system didn't work, not even for its rulers. They can't go back.

*******

#2
BBC MONITORING 
GORBACHEV DISMISSES FEARS OF PUTIN "DICTATORSHIP"
Source: RTP Internacional TV, Lisbon, in Portuguese 30 Mar 00 

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev on Thursday dismissed as unfounded 
fears that an authoritarian administration might emerge under newly-elected 
Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

"No, all these fears of a dictatorship or of a deterioration in relations 
with Europe or the United States, all of that is unfounded," Gorbachev said 
in an interview with Portuguese TV. 

"It may be necessary to take tough decisions to deal with certain serious 
problems, but there we have no choice. But the essential is that a return to 
the past, to Yeltsin-type politics, is now impossible," he said. 

Gorbachev said he hoped Putin would know how to act "firmly", especially in 
the fight against corruption. 

Russia was "a huge country and there is a lot of work to be done, a lot to be 
modernized," he added. 

Gorbachev is due to visit Lisbon next week at the invitation of a Portuguese 
newspaper. He will use the trip to brief Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, 
currently president of the Socialist International, on the goals of the 
Social Democratic Party which Gorbachev recently founded. 

He will also attend a conference on European security, the TV said. 

*******

#3
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000
From: Yale Richmond <yalerich@erols.com>
Subject: Definition of an Optimist

Fred Weir's definition of an optimist in Russia (JRL 4213) is indeed an
old joke but I prefer the version attributed to Hungarians, reputedly
Europe's most pessimistic people.

In Weir's version, "An optimist in Russia is someone who believes
tomorrow will be better than today."

In the Hungarian version, two Hungarians meet and one asks the other,
"How are things today?" The answer is, "Worse than yesterday, but better
than tomorrow."

*******

#4
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 
From: Garfield Reynolds <garfield@imedia.ru>
Subject: Re: 4213-Coalson/OSCE Propaganda

Rob Coalson's devastatingly accurate dressing down for the OSCE could also in
many ways be extended to large swathes of the foreign press and the foreign
leaders who have also been falling all over themselves to welcome Putin's
election. In such an atmosphere, how is it possible to talk of Putin's
popularity as something genuine, something generated not by the excesses of a
series of well-oiled propaganda machines but by his deeds, his personality,
his
mystique and so forth?

How can anyone talk as though Putin has received a mandate from the Russian
people? He has instead received a mandate from the only "voters" who
matter, the
nomenklatura, who are still very much with us but who now also include those
lumped under the title of oligarchs.

Considering such matters, I also see little point in all the recent
disparagements of Grigory Yavlinsky's campaign, which did well to win as many
votes as it did despite the propaganda used against him -- including, as ever,
effective bans on him traveling to numerous places within Russia and a media
blackout on state tv and radio that was only lifted for the purpose of
attacking
him when some feared that he would do too well.

It is disturbing to see so many people still treating Sunday's vote as
though it
was a real election. Even those who admit that Putin was bound to win make it
seem the sort of inevitable result as, say, Clinton's win against Bob Dole
last
U.S. election. IT WAS NOT! Russia's presidential election were a farcical show
that stripped the Russian people of all but a few remaining democratic rights.

Garfield Reynolds
Business Editor
The Moscow Times

*******

#5
Toronto Sun
March 31, 2000
[for personal use only] 
Lots of laws, little order
By MATTHEW FISHER
Sun's Columnist at Large

MOSCOW -- Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin proposes to pull Russia up off its 
knees by restoring law and order. 

It's a wonderful notion. 

From the Kamchatka Peninsula to the Baltic Sea, Russia is full of hoodlums 
with black clothes, black cars and black intentions. Putin won't have too 
look far to find many of the worst of them. They live a life of fabulous 
privilege working for, advising or making deals with the government which the 
newly elected president inherits from his patron, Boris Yeltsin. 

If by restoring law and order Putin means he intends to lock up the six or 
seven men styling themselves as oligarchs who have shamelessly divvied up the 
country's wealth among themselves, he would immediately gain the kind of 
respect and devotion from the Russian public that eluded him when, despite 
having the full power of the Kremlin behind him, he got barely half the votes 
in last Sunday's presidential election. 

But would Putin, who is to be sworn in as president on May 5, dare to lock 
the oligarchs up for stealing Russia? Boris Berezovsky doesn't think. 

Over the last decade, Berezovsky became the richest, most detested man in 
Russia by ruthlessly and brilliantly exploiting his connections to the 
Yeltsin cabal. In an already famous interview last week, Berezovsky smugly 
stated that Putin would not move against him and the other oligarchs because 
the new president would need the oligarchs and their billions. 

A lot of people here reckon Berezovsky is right. Other than perhaps making 
an example of one or two unlucky oligarchs and a few senior politicians and 
bureaucrats, it's widely believed Putin will not rock the boat because, to 
mix metaphors, to do so would be to bite the many hands that secretly feed 
him. 

Whether under the czars, the Bolsheviks, Stalin, Brezhnev, Gorbachev or the 
Yeltsin kleptocracy, Russia has always had far too much law and not nearly 
enough order. 

Given this history, and Putin's own unrevealed history as a spy in Russia 
and Germany, it can be expected the new president will use his enormous 
powers to rewrite the criminal code. But everyone figures the new laws will 
only provide cops and bureaucrats with yet another pretext to shake down the 
public. 

Russia already has too many rather than too few laws. Police constantly 
harass people in Moscow for the documents they must carry with them at all 
times. Those Russian citizens without a local residence permit can be thrown 
in jail and/or deported from the capital. 

It takes the approval of dozens of civic and state licensing and tax 
authorities to run even a small business almost anywhere in the country. So 
many civic and state authorities, even the fire department, must be bought 
off to simply sell a bowl of borscht or a set of car tires. 

Swimmers require a medical permit stating they are free from infection 
before they can swim in public pools. Passports for foreign travel, which are 
given out locally, can sometimes involve "fees" of as much as US$400. Anyone 
can buy a driver's licence without taking a test or pay a "service charge" to 
skip the unpredictable airport immigration and customs queues. 

Most tax inspectors are on the take and traffic police have a colossal 
number of petty laws at their disposal to confiscate both the vehicle plates 
and the driver's licences of those unwilling to pay them bribes. If, for 
example, a policeman deems a car to be dirty there is a fine - or a bribe - 
to be paid. During the winter virtually every driver violates this law the 
minute the key is turned. 

Rather than starting his law and order campaign by introducing new laws, 
President-elect Putin should insist existing laws are enforced fairly and 
that no one, including the oligarchs and generals, are allowed to operate 
above or outside the law. 

This is a daunting, perhaps impossible challenge. It is also the one by 
which Putin should ultimately be judged himself. 

******

#6
SCIENTISTS DRAW UP MAP OF RUSSIA'S NUCLEAR-CONTAMINATED AREAS
RIA Novosti

Moscow, 30th March, RIA correspondent Yekaterina Golovina: The creation of a 
comprehensive database of all actually or potentially dangerous sources of 
nuclear contamination on the territory of the former Soviet Union has been 
finished, a research worker from the [Moscow] Kurchatov Institute [of nuclear 
physics], Otto Lebedev, told a news conference today. 

The work has been carried out over six years by the Russian Academy of 
Sciences, the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, the Kurchatov Institute and 
the international scientific and technical centre for applied system studies 
set up by the EU, the USA, Japan and Russia to provide financial support for 
nonmilitary projects on the control and processing of nuclear and chemical 
materials. The centre has spent 55.3m US dollars on environmental projects in 
Russia, including 630,000 dollars on this particular one ... 

The researchers have collected and analysed information about nuclear power 
stations, Defence Ministry nuclear waste storage facilities, nuclear tests, 
extraction and enriching uranium ore, and production of all sorts of nuclear 
fuel and nuclear materials. They have identified the 12 most unsafe regions, 
including Russia's northwest with its Russian navy nuclear facilities, the 
city of Moscow, Moscow Region and the area near Krasnoyarsk [in eastern 
Siberia], where a plutonium combine and storage facilities containing waste 
from nuclear power stations are located. 

*******

#7
Putin wants pro-market cabinet, better weapons
By Anatoly Verbin

MOSCOW, March 31 (Reuters) - President-elect Vladimir Putin said on Friday he 
wanted Russia to have a better nuclear arsenal while pressing on with 
international talks on arms cuts. 

Speaking on a visit to a long-secret nuclear town in the Urals, he also said 
he would choose pro-market professionals for the cabinet he must put together 
after his inauguration in early May. He declined to give any names. 

Putin, a 47-year-old ex-KGB agent, was elected last Sunday mostly thanks to 
his image as a decisive man who wants to restore Russia's national pride and 
status after years of decline and humiliation which accompanied reforms. 

His remarks in Chelyabinsk 70, a research and production centre closed to 
outsiders until recently, were very much in line with this image. It was 
Putin's first trip out of Moscow since he was elected president. 

RIA news agency quoted Putin as saying his motto about wanting a strong state 
was being interpreted in the West as a potential "growth of the factor of 
force and strengthening of the armed forces and special services." This was 
wrong, he said. 

"What we are talking about is a strong state where rules are secured by laws 
and their observation is guaranteed," he said, vowing to fight corruption and 
protect all property rights, including private ownership. 

BETTER NUCLEAR ARMS FOR RUSSIA, BUT START-2 ALSO NEEDED 

Putin told a meeting of atomic industry chiefs attended by Defence Minister 
Igor Sergeyev and top energy and government officials the nuclear industry 
was vital for Russia's status "as a state capable of defending itself." 

"We must increase the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrence potential," RIA 
quoted him as saying. 

Itar-Tass news agency quoted Putin as saying the importance of the entire 
nuclear industry was growing and the task was to make it safer and more 
effective. 

He also said: "Russia holds and will continue to hold talks on further cuts 
in strategic offensive weapons, aiming at making the world safer and ridding 
it of piles of arms." 

He said the government would step up efforts to persuade the lower chamber of 
parliament to ratify START-2, an arms reduction treaty between Russia and the 
United States signed in 1993. 

The State Duma elected in December is more responsive to the Kremlin than the 
previous, Communist-dominated legislature, and the treaty has better chances 
of being ratified now. 

Russia's nuclear arsenal, the second biggest in the world, has hundreds of 
nuclear-capable missiles in silos and on mobile launchers as well as on 
strategic bombers and in submarines. 

Russia has started to deploy a new-generation Topol-M ballistic missile in 
silos and is working on mobile-launched and naval versions. But despite what 
defence experts say is preferential treatment for strategic arms, funding is 
tight. 

Russia's nuclear power stations produced 16 percent more energy last year 
than the year before, Putin said. 

He said the nuclear industry as a whole should be transformed but not through 
"mechanical" staff cuts, calling it the easiest but also most dangerous way. 

PUTIN WANTS A GOVERNMENT OF MARKET PROFESSIONALS 

Putin said his government may include figures from various parties but they 
would be chosen for their professionalism and would have to leave their party 
affiliations behind. 

The main opposition Communist Party insists on a coalition. 

"The main principles on which the work of the government will be based are 
strengthening of the state and continuation of market transformation," 
Interfax quoted Putin as saying. 

******

#8
Red tape and secrecy mar East-West adoptions

SAINT PETERSBURG, March 31 (AFP) - 
Larisa Mason couldn't take her mind off the two-month-old sickly baby from 
the minute she first saw her in a Saint Petersburg orphanage seven years ago.

Mason took video footage of the baby back to the United States to show to 
clients at her adoption agency, but was met with disinterest. So, she adopted 
the future Katarina Mason herself.

Mason, herself a Saint Petersburg native, has arranged about 570 adoptions of 
orphaned or abandoned children like Katarina in the past eight years.

Adoptions of Russian children by foreigners rose from 3,251 in 1996 to 5,604 
in 1998, according to the latest available statistics from the Russian 
government department responsible for adoptions of orphans.

But further growth is being hampered by barriers in Russia's adoption 
legislation, specialists say.

"International adoption in Russia has become a very political issue ... it's 
very difficult to work when people are thinking of politics instead of 
children," Mason said grimly.

"This is a country with a tremendous amount of pride and power, and it 
doesn't want the world to think Russians cannot take care of their own kids."

In 1998, then president Boris Yeltsin signed a revised adoption law 
tightening control over foreign adoptions and encouraging more Russians to 
adopt children.

The law allows foreign adoption agencies to operate in Russia only after 
their country signs an agreement with Russia setting out the rules. In the 
interim, prospective parents use the services of proxies and interpreters.

The adoption law currently requires that children become available to 
foreigners only after five months from the moment they are eligible for 
adoption.

Americans have adopted by far the majority of Russian children overall, with 
over 15,000 adopted since 1992 -- 4,348 last year alone.

Dr William Pierce, who formerly headed the National Council for Adoption in 
the US, said it is still difficult to adopt from Russia because of the higher 
expenses involved. In Mason's agency, for example, an adoption can cost 
anywhere from 15,000 dollars to 22,000 dollars.

Pierce also said that Russia does not provide for an escort to travel with 
the child during its first few days in the new country of the adoptive family.

"Take a child who doesn't understand English and gets frightened ... is it 
any wonder that sometimes children are very traumatized? Many more children 
could be adopted if there was more flexibility on the part of the Russian 
government," he said.

But perhaps the most daunting challenge families -- foreign or Russian -- 
face is handling medical problems of their adopted child, often ones they 
were not informed of beforehand.

In early February, the program "48 hours" on the US television network CBS 
reported the story of an American couple who adopted a child from Russia but, 
once back in the United States, found the nine-year-old girl had severe 
emotional problems.

These problems were so severe that the girl tried to kill their four-year-old 
son, the couple said.

In Russia, alcoholism, financial hardship and an increasingly unstable family 
life have more than doubled the number of abandoned children in the past five 
years, leaving about 650,000 in some form of state care, according to the 
education ministry.

Several studies done by international human rights organizations show that 
the orphanages are filled with children afflicted by a range of serious and 
chronic medical problems.

Yelena Rumyantseva, 38, a Saint Petersburg resident whose 11-year-old adopted 
son has severe developmental problems, said she received little information 
about his health before the adoption seven years ago and no advice on his 
care afterwards.

Her son has recently been diagnosed with a brain disease and is on medication.

She said she often goes through a period when she asks herself if she would 
have gone through the adoption again had she been informed of his medical 
problems.

"At those times my answer is that probably not ... but when things get better 
with him I feel foolish for having thought that," she said.

******

#9
Russia Marks Anniversary of Its Treaty of Federation. .

MOSCOW, March 30 (Itar-Tass) -- The Treaty of Federation was signed in Russia 
eight years ago today. It laid the foundations of Russian Federalism and 
actually prevented the disintegration of the Russian Federation. 

The idea of a treaty of federation had been put forth by Boris Yeltsin at the 
first Congress of the People's deputies of the RSFSR when Russia was still 
part of the Soviet Union. On April 1990, the USSR Supreme Soviet passed the 
law "Concerning the division of powers between the Union of the Soviet 
Socialist Republics and the subjects of the Federation" which levelled out 
the status of the autonomous and union republics. In August of the same year, 
Boris Yeltsin offered the regions of Russia to take as much power as they 
"can swallow." As a result, all republics within the Russian Federation 
proclaimed their sovereignty and all autonomies, except for the Jewish 
autonomous region, claimed the status of republics. 

Some of the autonomies specified that they were parts of the Russian 
Federation, while others, such as Tatarstan and the Chechen-Ingush republic, 
for instance, mentioned no affiliation. The USSR was still extant and all the 
republics without exception declared their readiness to participate in the 
constituent Union Treaty. It was a period later referred to as "a parade of 
sovereignties" 

The work on the Treaty of Federation began in December 1991 when the Russian 
leadership had grown aware of the impending disintegration of the USSR. 

At the end of December 1991, the working group in charge of drawing up of the 
treaty proposed passing a law on the division of authority and powers, but 
work continued on the treaty of federation which was eventually signed on 
MArch 31, 1992 by all constituent parts of the Federation with the exception 
of Tatarstan and Chechnya, in which the centrifugal tendencies were already 
gaining momentum. 

Formally, the Treaty of Federation comprises three documents. The first one 
divides the powers between the federal bodies of state authority and the 
bodies of power in the republics within the Russian Federation. The second 
document deals with the division of authority between the centre and the 
bodies of power in the territories, regions, the cities of Moscow and St. 
Petersburg. The third document lays down the division of authority between 
Moscow and the bodies of power in the autonomous regions and areas. 

The Republic of Bashkortostan proclaimed its reservations and declared, as is 
recorded in the appendix to the Treaty, that it is empowered to "determine 
independently the principles of taxation and payments towards the budget 
proceeding from the provisions of the laws passed in the republic of 
Bashkortostan itself. 

Another provision allowed the republic of BAshkortostan to set up its own 
legislative and judicial systems. 

Tatarstan has not signed the Treaty of Federation but President Mintimer 
Shaymiyev on February 15, 1994 singed with the federal centre an agreement 
"Concerning the division of authority and mutual delegation of authority", 
which gave rise to the desire for budgetary federalism in other regions. 

The Treaty of Federation set in motion the process of formation of the 
so-called "federation based on agreements." Following in the steps of 
Kazakhstan separate agreements with the federal centre were signed by 47 
"subject of federation", which undid quite a few "knots" of conflict but at 
the same time gave rise to the possibility of transformation of the 
federation into a confederation. The period of "privatisation of powers" by 
the subjects of federation was brought to an end on MArch 12, 1996, when a 
presidential decree was issued laying down the procedure of work on such 
agreements. One agreement stood apart from the rest signed in 1997 - 
"Concerning peace and principles of relations between them Russian Federation 
and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria." 

Disputes have continued about the principles of russian Federalism. As 
concerns the ground-laying Treaty of Federation, it was lately partly 
incorporated in the text of the Russian constitution adopted in 1993, which 
made it quite clear that all subject of federation are equal in their 
relations with the central government. Some political scientists believe that 
this constitutional formula is quite sufficient for the regulation of 
federative relations. The practice of signing agreements between the centre 
and the regions has resulted in the fact that some of the regulatory 
enactments in a number of Federation subjects have come to contradict the 
federal legislation. 

Vladimir Putin who visited Tatarstan shortly before he was elected President 
of the Russian Federation, has already declared that all relations between 
the centre and the regions, the basis for which was laid down in the Treaty 
of Federation, will have to be brought in line with the Constitution of the 
Russian Federation. Putin noted that the differences in the status of the 
regions "begin to impede the fulfilment of economic measures amd to brake 
down the economic life." 

Both Tatarstan leader Mintimer Shaymiyev and President of Bashkiria Murtaza 
Rakhimov have made it clear already that they were prepared to improve 
relations with the federal center. A new phase is apparently beginning in the 
development of Russian federalism. 

******

#10
Washington Post
March 31, 2000
[for personal use only]
The Path to Putin
By Charles Krauthammer

In late February, as the first anniversary of our intervention in Kosovo 
approached, American peacekeepers launched house-to-house raids in Mitrovica 
looking for weapons. They encountered a rock-throwing mob and withdrew. Such 
is our reward for our glorious little victory in the Balkans: police work 
from which even Madeleine K. Albright, architect of the war, admits there is 
no foreseeable escape. ("The day may come," she wrote on Tuesday, "when a 
Kosovo-scale operation can be managed without the help of the United States, 
but it has not come yet.")

The price is high. Our occupations of Kosovo and Bosnia have already cost 
tens of billions of dollars, draining our defense resources and straining a 
military (already hollowed out by huge defense cuts over the last decade) 
charged with protecting vital American strategic interests in such crisis 
areas as the Persian Gulf, the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula.

But there is another cost, more subtle and far heavier. Russia has just moved 
from the democratically committed, if erratic, Boris Yeltsin to the 
"dictatorship of the law" promised by the new president, former KGB agent 
Vladimir Putin. Putin might turn out to be a democrat, but the man who won 
the presidency by crushing Chechnya will more likely continue as the national 
security policeman of all the Russias.

What does that have to do with Kosovo? "Without Kosovo, Putin would not be 
Russian president today," says Dimitri Simes, the Russia expert and president 
of the Nixon Center.

The path from Kosovo to Putin is not that difficult to trace. It goes through 
Chechnya. Americans may not see the connection, but Russians do.

Russians had long been suffering an "Afghan-Chechen syndrome" under which 
they believed they could not prevail in local conflicts purely by the use of 
force. Kosovo demonstrated precisely the efficacy of raw force.

Russians had also been operating under the assumption that to be a good 
international citizen they could not engage in the unilateral use of force 
without the general approval of the international community. Kosovo cured 
them of that illusion.

And finally, Russia had acquiesced in the expansion of NATO under the 
expectation and assurance that it would remain, as always, a defensive 
alliance. Then, within 11 days of incorporating Hungary, Poland and the Czech 
Republic, NATO was launching its first extraterritorial war.

The Russians were doubly humiliated because the Balkans had long been in 
their sphere of influences with Serbia as their traditional ally. The result 
was intense anti-American, anti-NATO feeling engendered in Russia. NATO 
expansion had agitated Russian elites; Kosovo inflamed the Russian public.

Kosovo created in Russia what Simes calls a "national security consensus:" 
the demand for a strong leader to do what it takes to restore Russia's 
standing and status. And it made confrontation with the United States a badge 
of honor.

The dash to Pristina airport by Russian troops under the noses of the allies 
as they entered Kosovo was an unserious way of issuing the challenge. But the 
support this little adventure enjoyed at home showed Russian leaders the 
power of the new nationalism.

The first Russian beneficiary of Kosovo was then-Prime Minister Yevgeny 
Primakov. But it was Prime Minister Putin who understood how to fully exploit 
it. Applying the lessons of Kosovo, he seized upon Chechen provocations into 
neighboring Dagestan to launch his merciless war on Chechnya. It earned him 
enormous popularity and ultimately the presidency.

One of Putin's first promises is to rebuild Russia's military-industrial 
complex. We are now saddled with him for four years, probably longer, much 
longer.

The Clinton administration has a congenital inability to distinguish forest 
from trees. It obsesses over paper agreements, such as the chemical weapons 
treaty, which will not advance American interests one iota. It expends 
enormous effort on Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, places of (at best) the 
most peripheral interest to the United States. And it lets the big ones slip 
away.

Saddam Hussein is back building his weapons of mass destruction. China's 
threats to Taiwan grow. The American military is badly stretched by far-flung 
commitments in places of insignificance. Most important of all, Russia, on 
whose destiny and direction hinge the future of Eastern Europe and the 
Caspian Basin, has come under the sway of a cold-eyed cop, destroyer of 
Chechnya and heir to Yuri Andropov, the last KGB graduate to rule Russia.

Such is the price of the blinkered do-goodism of this administration. We will 
be paying the price far into the next. 

******

#11
St. Petersburg Times
March 31, 2000
LETTER FROM VLADIVOSTOK
Putin's First Hundred Days
By Russell Working

NOW that the world's leading Slavic nation has another former KGB agent at 
its helm, many voters and foreign observers are hoping Russia will flourish 
in a renaissance of the Andropov era.

Each of us has his own expectations as to what this will mean. Gennady 
Zyuganov, for example, would like to see Putin announce purges of the 
wreckers who are destroying Russian industry. Boris Yeltsin has suggested 
from retirement that Putin order workers to swig a shot of vodka every 
morning in order to help the motherland get rid of that dull ache in her 
liver.

And I am counting on Putin to increase the retirement pay of Russian-employed 
journalists to 30 rubles a month.

You see the problem here. Wanting a real platform, we project ourselves onto 
this gray man. We love him, but we do not know why. So I am pleased to 
announce a scoop that will set the minds of the world at ease. Aides close to 
Vladimir Vladimirovich have leaked to me a few points from his plan for his 
first hundred days in office.

First, Putin will apologize. If Russia is to join the family of civilized 
nations, the head of state apparently has decided, a little groveling is 
necessary. During a trip to Africa, U.S. President Bill Clinton apologized 
because one tribe of Rwandans killed 800,000 members of a rival tribe. It 
made him feel bad. He also told 250 million Americans in 1998 that he was 
very, very sorry he had ever reordered cigars for the Oval Office humidor. 
And Pope John Paul II, for his part, spent last week apologizing for the fact 
that he has failed to apologize for the Vatican hierarchy's silence during 
the Holocaust.

Putin plans to follow suit, according to sources. Speechwriters have drafted 
an address to the nation, to wit:

"All of us who worked for the KGB and its predecessor organs are sorry that 
we were only able to obtain a 96-percent confession rate in interrogating the 
enemies of the people who fell into our hands. We are sorry that so many 
millions died in the gulag system before they were able to extract their 
weight in gold from the Kolyma mines. We regret the forced famine in Ukraine, 
and in retrospect wish we had created a famine in the homelands of future 
NATO countries. The whole collectivization thing, for that matter, was a 
screwup.

"Also, I am sorry about the Bolsheviks who set forest fires in the taiga 
where Old Believers were hiding. Thousands of board-feet of timber were 
wasted, and look at the price they might have fetched in Japan. We especially 
regret the show trials, though all we really did was watch from the back of 
the courtroom. And we are sorry that we encouraged Mongolian Bolshies to 
murder 100,000 Buddhist lamas. We are prepared to help find the skulls, if 
they want."

The speech also calls for Putin to apologize for historical crimes: that Ivan 
the Terrible killed his son, that Peter the Great forcibly debearded his 
populace, and that so many of his countrymen have for centuries failed to 
bathe every day.

Second, sources claim he will open the archives of the Federal Security 
Service. Just as only former U.S. President Richard Nixon could go to China, 
so only Putin will have the moral clout to let everyday citizens stream to 
the Lubyanka and read secretly recorded exchanges such as the following:

Nikita Krushchev: (pounding his shoe): So it works this way, my friend. We 
ruin the country for seven decades, and then you will pay multibillion-dollar 
IMF loans to fix it up again. Prepare to cough up the dough, Dickie.

Nixon: Grrrr.

Finally, Putin will send all spooks to sensitivity training. Formerly, KGB 
agents extracted confessions by beating prisoners, denying them sleep for 
weeks on end, and compelling them to read five-year plans for shoelace 
factories. But now those days are nothing but a distant memory. Consider this 
lesson on kompromat from the FSB training manual:

Old Method: Confess, or we will use state media to broadcast the canard that 
you are a closet homosexual.

New Method: Confess, or we will use state media to broadcast the canard that 
you are a closet homosexual.

In short, a new era lies before Russia, one in which everything bad falls 
away and renewal is at hand. The leader is among us, the hour is at hand, and 
the new president wishes to say he is really, really sorry that this didn't 
happen sooner.

*******

#12
Moscow Times
31 March 2000
Chubais Deserves Mandate To Continue Work at UES 
By Gary Peach 

Unified Energy Systems is by far the most complex, cumbersome, and 
inscrutable company in Russia. Its operations stretch from the Baltics to the 
Sea of Japan, its assets are tremendously old and cranky, and its progress is 
often sabotaged by a combination of Soviet thinking and contemporary 
politics. No other of Russia's so-called natural monopolies, not even 
Sberbank - a savings bank for pensioners - or Gazprom - whose production 
operations are concentrated in Western Siberia - can compare to the 
complexity of UES.

UES' size is awesome in both structure and function. It is at once a holding 
company, possessing stakes in six dozen regional energy companies; an energy 
producer, owning over two dozen power plants located throughout the country; 
the sole operator of the national transmission grid; and the overseer of the 
interregional wholesale energy market. Running this seemingly unwieldy beast, 
as one can imagine, requires a special kind of executive. Specifically, an 
executive who can combine, in one persona, the qualities of manager, 
reformer, financier and politician.

The current CEO, Anatoly Chubais, would seem the perfect man for the job. 
First, his managerial skills are undisputed, and even lauded by his enemies 
(such as Boris Berezovsky and Yury Luzhkov). Second, as much as any of his 
contemporaries, Chubais is the quintessential reformer, and will probably 
remain so to the day he dies. He probably cannot imagine life without 
changes, innovations, reorganization; if it isn't being reformed, it isn't 
alive, would seem to be this executive's motto. 

Third, Chubais is an apt financier. He possesses theoretical knowledge from 
his days at the institute in Leningrad, and more importantly, has the 
practical experience in sitting down with investors, both public and private, 
and working until the result - the disbursal of finance - has been achieved. 
Given UES' almost immeasurably enormous investment requirements, this 
experience will be invaluable. Lastly, in terms of the position's political 
requirements - e.g., shuffling from one region to another in an effort to 
reach tariff and policy agreements with intractable governors - few could 
rank with the indefatigable Chubais. 

Next month will mark the end of Chubais' second year at UES, and thus far his 
tenure has been largely successful. Radical change, which the power industry 
desperately needs, has been slow to appear, but this is not surprising 
considering the 1998 financial crisis. Also, keeping in mind how often he has 
been distracted by "greater missions" - in mid-1998 to woo the IMF for $5 
billion, or the end of 1999 to lead the upstart Union of Right Forces to the 
State Duma - Chubais' accomplishments at UES seem quite amazing.

Realizing that far-reaching reform is impossible when the sector's core 
operations are so awful, UES management has concentrated on the basics. As a 
result, in 1999, the first complete fiscal year of a Chubais-led power 
market, total payments for electricity rose to 99 percent of accounts 
receivable, with cash making up 42 percent (at end of 1998 the results were 
87 and 21 percent, respectively). Equally important, UES has been paying its 
own fuel bills with better discipline, and last year increased both total and 
cash payments for gas, fuel oil and coal.

In the meantime, Chubais has put tremendous effort in improving UES' 
investment position by focusing on exports and maintaining transparent 
operations. The company currently exports less than 3 percent of output, when 
potential electricity exports can bring in billions of dollars annually. 
Holding management has therefore worked tirelessly to sign deals with foreign 
countries, in particularly non-CIS countries such as Finland, Germany, Turkey 
and China. Understanding that such business partners demand openness, Chubais 
has done his utmost to maintain an open house and regularly meet with 
investors and analysts. For UES, as well as Russia, this is a breakthrough.

Strategically, Chubais intends to steer the massive company through a long 
restructuring process. One that will eventually lead Russia's energy industry 
on the path of its European and North American counterparts: energy producers 
competing in a consumers' market. This system will require years to 
implement, but once Chubais convinces industrial users and politicians of its 
benefits, it is likely to proceed at a crisp pace.

Certainly, much remains to be done. UES still owes Gazprom 55 billion rubles 
($2 billion), wage arrears are a staggering 1.9 billion rubles ($66 million), 
and most of all, electricity production in Russia essentially remains an 
unprofitable enterprise. To add to the headaches, a recent audit judged that 
some 55 percent of UES' assets were worn out, resulting in a one-time $23 
billion deduction on the balance sheet. If this is not addressed in the next 
5 to 10 years, Russia could be unable to meet its own electricity needs.

Chubais, if given the mandate, can rectify these grave flaws. Despite the 
endless, unconstructive criticism of his past performance, he, more than any 
other businessman, has the professional qualities imperative to transform UES 
from a ministry with cement feet into a profitable public company that will 
boost Russia's trade balance even further. President-elect Vladimir Putin 
would be wise to lend CEO Chubais his unwavering support.

*******

#13
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
March 29, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
A LONG GOOD-BYE TO OLIGARCHS
Putin Will Have to Overcome the Resistance of Oligarchs
By Andranik MIGRANIAN

The just ended presidential campaign was rather unusual 
because its outcome was known well in advance. There was an 
obvious favourite -- Vladimir Putin -- and the only real 
opponent -- Gennady Zyuganov. All the other presidential 
candidates, including Grigory Yavlinsky, were knowingly the 
underdogs of the race no matter how noisy their election 
campaign might be and how much they invested in it.

Putin, Without Looking Back at Oligarchs 
Victory in the first round is Putin's great success. 
Though it was Boris Yeltsin who offered Putin as his 
"successor", the acting President managed to distance himself 
from the Yeltsin legacy and shape his own image. Having won in 
the first round, he reached his goal - to be independent from 
any groups of oligarchs which actually put Yeltsin on his knees 
in 1996. The latter circumstance gave Boris Berezovsky the 
possibility to claim that oligarchs in fact governed Russia. 
This sharply undermined state institutes and allowed oligarchic 
clans to "privatise" the state, violating the principle of its 
composition based on the unity of all constituent territories 
and creating an extra-institutional centre of power - the 
so-called Family.
Putin's election victory holds out vast prospects for the 
restoration of the prestige of the institutes of power - the 
presidential administration, government and law-enforcement 
departments. He can now set in motion the process of 
consolidating power and administrative resources.
It would be an unpardonable mistake if Putin did not use 
the present situation to begin the immediate consolidation of 
the information resource. In the past, the landslide victory in 
the first round enabled Yeltsin to form a government of people 
"from nowhere." Putin can follow this course as far as he might 
think this to be justified. Massive support in the first round 
will permit him to form practically any government he wishes.
With his rather firm positions in the Duma, Putin can have 
practically any candidate to premiership endorsed and any 
political and economic program approved. The problem is that it 
is unclear what kind of program it might be. Probably, after 
Putin makes up his mind about the program, its corresponding 
executors will be chosen.
I do not think that we are to expect any sharp changes in 
the country's political and economic course shortly. But there 
is no doubt that Putin will use his first-round victory to try 
to strengthen his own grip on power and political institutes. 
He will, first of all, try to limit possibilities for a 
manoeuvre by oligarchs and restrict their influence on the 
political process.
It is probably the first time in the past ten years of 
so-called reforms that a real chance is available to separate 
the state from business, and this is one of the most important 
tasks today.
It goes without saying that Putin will come up against 
strong and long resistance from the oligarchs. As a matter of 
fact, the latter have already tried to make his popularity 
rating a bargaining chip in the "bear" game so that the second 
round of the election should be held. But these attempts 
failed, because the oligarchs were afraid to go too far and lay 
bare their own disloyalty, which could eventually become a 
complete catastrophe for their own business.
Be that as it may, Russians have concrete expectations 
concerning Putin. As he said in his Open Letter to the Voters 
(See Daily Review for February 28, part I), efforts need to be 
earmarked to ensure equal conditions for all the economic 
players from a street vendor to the oligarch.
The future will show whether he will cope with his task. 
In the meantime, not everything is quite clear concerning 
Putin's program and the personnel with the help of which he is 
going to steer Russia out of its deep crisis.
We are unlikely to see any serious and radical changes in 
foreign policy, though the wide following Putin has will make 
the West assume a more favourable attitude towards him and 
somewhat moderate the critical tone which dominated in the 
Western mass media and political circles in the past few months 
in connection with Chechnya.
Concerning Chechnya, election victory will make Putin even 
more determined to complete the elimination of bandit units. I 
think the holding of elections in Chechnya was to show that 
Putin was elected by the entire nation, including Chechens. 
This symbolic meaning is even more important for Putin than the 
votes cast for him in that republic.

Governors Count on Reciprocity

During the election governors tried to show maximum 
loyalty to Putin. The heads of national republics decided 
against demonstrating their strength and opposition with regard 
to the acting President. It was just the other way around. They 
tried to outpace one another to ensure Putin high election 
results in their respective regions. He received up to 70% of 
the vote in Tatarstan and 85% in Ingushetia. The leaders of 
republics today know that they are vulnerable to federal 
authorities. So, realising pretty well that no separate region 
is able to compete on a par even with a rather weak federal 
government with its consolidated vertical, they are out to 
follow suit with such notorious "separatists" as Shaimiyev, 
Rakhimov and Aushev in demonstrating their loyalty.
The situation in Moscow and St. Petersburg deserves 
special attention. Putin's rather complicated relations with 
the leaders of Moscow and the Moscow region must have affected 
the results of the voting. Putin's victory was more modest here 
than in any other regions. Judging by everything, Yury Luzhkov 
and Boris Gromov did not work too hard to ensure his victory. 
Despite the up-front sign of reconciliation, there is ground to 
expect the preservation of tension in Moscow-Kremlin relations.
The situation in St. Petersburg shows that Governor 
Vladimir Yakovlev, who did his best to ensure high voter 
turnout and as high support for Putin, counts on the Kremlin's 
reciprocity. It is logical to presume that Putin will not mind 
if Yakovlev were re-elected as governor. Valentina Matviyenko 
is not a very serious rival. It is unlikely, either, that the 
might of the federal centre will be used to get her elected.

Prominent Personalities, Technical Government 
It is more likely than not that Putin will be open to form 
a sufficiently broad government. In my opinion, now is the best 
moment to integrate communists into the government, turning 
them into a system force. It is quite possible that communists 
can be drawn into government. Taking into consideration Putin's 
wide social support, enrolling people who can be of use in 
handling concrete tasks will sooner be regarded as a 
manifestation of strength than a forced step. Such a step 
towards reconciliation can facilitate the expansion of support 
for the policy of the government in the State Duma and in 
society as a whole, enabling it to achieve results which would 
otherwise be very hard to achieve.
Even the belated joining in the chorus of support for 
Putin by Yuri Luzhkov and Yevgeny Primakov to a certain degree 
eases tension in relations between Moscow and the Kremlin. 
However, Luzhkov is unlikely to enjoy the same privileges he 
had at the early stage of Yeltsin's presidency. Moscow's power 
structures and tax authorities will be put under tough federal 
control. That is why Luzhkov will be unable to challenge 
federal authorities.
Taking into consideration, however, that there are no vast 
ideological and political differences between Putin, on the one 
hand, and Luzhkov and Primakov, on the other, the latter can be 
drawn into the work of the new administration in one or another 
form.
Putin objectively needs prominent personalities because 
people from his own inner circle are not very well known at 
present. But being young, energetic and dynamic, Putin does not 
need a prominent personality as his prime minister. In fact, he 
will try to combine presidency with premiership by appointing a 
technical prime minister. Whether it will be Mikhail Kasyanov 
or someone else is a special question. Kasyanov is known to be 
a representative of a certain group of oligarchs. That is why 
he can be replaced. On the other hand, he is so "weightless" 
politically that he can very well be given the post and he will 
faithfully serve Putin. By and large, any prominent 
personalities will sooner be the entourage of Putin's 
administration. What with Berezovsky and Chubais, their 
influence will grow weaker in the context of the policy of 
"de-privatising" the state which Russia objectively needs and 
which, I wish to hope, Putin will conduct.

*******

#14
Financial Times (UK)
31 March 2000
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Russian 'fears' neither genuine nor justifiable

From Imants Liegis. 

Sir, John Lloyd's wish to encourage more western understanding for President 
Vladimir Putin's Russia (March 28) regrettably risks creating greater 
misunderstanding. By contending that Russia's "fears that Nato will expand to 
the Baltic states soon should be taken seriously", a misleading message would 
be given on three counts. 

First, Nato's open-door policy would be undermined. At the Washington Summit 
last year, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were named as candidates for 
membership. Nato is currently helping all candidates prepare for membership 
through its successful membership action plan. 

Second, this clarity by the Alliance should not be be muddied by so called 
"fears" that are neither genuine nor justifiable. How can three small 
countries with a total population of some 8m engender fear in a population 
over 10 times larger? The Baltic states in Nato pose no threat to Russia. 

Third, even if one reduced these "fears" to concerns, by taking them on board 
the Alliance would effectively be granting Russia a veto over Baltic 
membership. 

Fortunately, the wisdom of the current Alliance policy of endeavouring to 
re-engage Russia so as to explain the enlargement process in an open and 
frank way will do far more to encourage Russia's understanding about Nato's 
motives, than pandering to non-existent fears. 

Imants Liegis, Head of Latvia's Mission to Nato, Manfred Worner Building, 
Nato, B-1110, Brussels, Belgium 

******