April
6, 2000
This Date's Issues: 4229 • 4230
•
4231
Johnson's Russia List
#4230
6 April 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com
[Note from David Johnson:
1. AP: Wedding of Kournikova and Bure may be off.
2. Interfax: MAJORITY OF RUSSIANS APPROVE OF PUTIN GOVERNMENT -
POLL.
3. RFE/RL NEWSLINE: KARAGANOV CALLS FOR MOSCOW TO REJECT
SUPERPOWER
PHANTOM.'...RUSSIA WINS PLACE AMONG WORLD'S MOST CORRUPT...
ANOTHER BLOW FOR MICROSOFT?
4. Interfax: U.S. AMBASSADOR CALLS FOR MOSCOW TO NEGOTIATE WITH
CHECHEN REBEL LEADERS.
5. Itar-Tass: Government Proposes 20-Percent Cut in Taxes in Russia.
6. Moscow Times: Yevgenia Albats, Oligarch's Message Clear to Careful Readers.
7. Itar-Tass: Rao UES Restructuring Unlikely to Begin this Year -Official.
8. Interfax: JAN-FEB SEES TREBLING OF RUSSIAN OIL EXPORT REVENUES.
9. Christian Science Monitor: Fred Weir, Mir's ups and downs mirror Russian life.
10. Excerpt PRESS CONFERENCE BY MR. STANLEY FISCHER, IMF
Acting Managing Director.
11. Keith Darden: Democracy at work?
12. Transitions Online IN FOCUS: Resuscitating Russian.
13. Summary of Sergey Dorenko’s Program on Public Russian Television (ORT)
14. The Weekly Standard: Anne Applebaum, Secret Agent Man.]
*******
#1
Wedding of Kournikova and Bure may be off
April 5, 2000
MOSCOW (AP) - The marriage plans of Pavel Bure and Anna Kournikova, two of
Russia's biggest sports celebrities, may be off, a Russian newspaper reported
Wednesday.
``A wedding isn't entering into my plans just yet,'' the Florida Panthers'
star was quoted as saying by Komsomolskaya Pravda. ``Today I love hockey more
than anything else.''
Bure reportedly proposed to Kournikova at a restaurant in Florida, where the
two live. A photographer snapped the two at their table, and a $1 million
diamond ring was said to be involved.
The report was especially big in Russia, where even the most staid newspapers
splashed it across their front pages. One said the event would be a marriage
between Russia's ``first bride'' and ``first groom,'' even though the two
left their homeland long ago for the United States.
Kournikova, 18, is the world's 10th-ranked tennis player but has yet to win a
tournament on the WTA tour. Still, her beauty has made her one of the game's
most popular players.
Bure, 28, is the NHL's leading scorer with 57 goals.
*******
#2
MAJORITY OF RUSSIANS APPROVE OF PUTIN GOVERNMENT - POLL
MOSCOW. April 5 (Interfax) - More than the half of Russian
citizens, 55%, positively assess the activity of Russian President-
elect Vladimir Putin's government, 14% disapprove of its work and 31%
are undecided, the independent Agency for Regional Political Surveys
(ARPI) told Interfax on Wednesday.
This information was derived from an April 2 poll of 1,600
respondents in more than 90 urban and rural populated areas of 49
regions of Russia representing all economic-geographical areas.
The poll's statistical margin of error is 2.5%.
The survey also revealed that 10% of respondents wish to see
Fatherland-All Russia leader Yevgeny Primakov as the head of a new
Russian government.
Of those polled, 7% each favored Yabloko leader Grigory
Yavlinsky, First Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Communist
party leader Gennady Zyuganov in the position of prime minister.
Union of Right Forces leader Sergei Kiriyenko is supported by 5%
of those polled for the post of prime minister, 18% named other
politicians and 46% were undecided.
The same number, 46%, support the idea of forming a coalition
government which would comprise the principal political parties
represented at the State Duma, while 21% are against this and 33%
declined to answer.
*******
#3
RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 4, No. 68, Part I, 5 April 2000
KARAGANOV CALLS FOR MOSCOW TO REJECT 'SUPERPOWER PHANTOM.' In
an interview with "Segodnya" on 4 April, Sergei Karaganov,
head of the influential Council for Foreign and Defense
Policy, urged Moscow to give up pursuing a foreign policy
that smacks of the "superpower" policies that the Soviet
Union pursued during the Cold War. Instead, he called for a
foreign policy that avoids confrontation, "particularly with
the countries on which global development depends," and
promotes integration. With regard to the concept of a
"multipolar world," to which both Russia and China have
repeatedly subscribed, Karaganov commented that it is drawing
Moscow into the stand-off between the United States and
China. Now China is "sound economically," he said, it can
"afford" the concept of a multipolar world, particularly
since Russia, rather than China, has been actively promoting
that concept. And he added that as far as the concept is
concerned, "we are only an instrument wielded by China...and
it's time we recognized it." JC
RUSSIA WINS PLACE AMONG WORLD'S MOST CORRUPT. Russia placed
in the top 20 most corrupt countries in the world, according
to a recent Gallup International poll, AFP reported on 4
April. The poll was conducted through interviews with senior
bankers, business leaders, and government officials in each
country. Russia finished on a par with Ecuador. JAC
ANOTHER BLOW FOR MICROSOFT? Russia's military-industrial
enterprises have allegedly received "secret instructions"
from the Defense Ministry requiring them to use Russian
software instead of systems and programs produced by
Microsoft, "Vremya MN" reported on 4 April. According to the
daily, the order is intended to guarantee information
security. The next day, "The Moscow Times" reported that
draft legislation regulating the Internet has been leaked
from the State Duma. According to the daily, the draft is
very rough and would likely require significant revision
before it could be considered. Among its provisions are a ban
on spam or junk e-mail, granting the government the right to
register domain names, and substituting invented Russian
words for foreign terms such as Internet (interset) and
computer (eletronnovychislitelnaya mashina). JAC
*******
#4
U.S. AMBASSADOR CALLS FOR MOSCOW TO NEGOTIATE WITH CHECHEN REBEL
LEADERS
MOSCOW. April 5 (Interfax) - U.S. Ambassador to Russia James
Collins has called for a political settlement of the situation in
Chechnya.
Collins said they insist that in the end, there cannot be any
settlement other than a political one, adding that there will not be a
solution to the problem without negotiations.
Collins said he believes that the federal center and the leaders
of the Chechen rebels must try to find every opportunity for
negotiations, noting at the same time that this is rather hard to do.
Collins admitted that he cannot define how to accomplish this, and
everyone understands that it is far from being easy.
*******
#5
Government Proposes 20-Percent Cut in Taxes in Russia. .
MOSCOW, April 5 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Tax Minister Alexander Pochinok said
cuts can be made in the income tax only if the parliament abolishes income
tax benefits and bans credit and insurance schemes used for paying wages.
Speaking at the conference "Taxation and Advertising" on Wednesday, Pochinok
said a social tax may be introduced instead of existing taxes payable to
social funds.
At the same time, the government will propose a 20-percent reduction of taxes
in Russia. "But this will be done for those who pay taxes honestly," the
minister said.
Pochinok said if the State Duma adopts tax proposals submitted by the
government, this will reduce taxes for advertising companies by 35-40
percent.
"We are ready to make such cuts in exchange for the loyalty of this circle of
taxpayers, provided they declare their actual incomes. At the moment, those
working in the advertising business appear to be among the lowest-income
citizens", he said.
*******
#6
Moscow Times
April 6, 2000
POWER PLAY: Oligarch's Message Clear to Careful Readers
By Yevgenia Albats (albats@glasnet.ru)
If there were no oligarchs, life would be boring and the newspapers insipid,
just as in the Soviet era.
But now you open the newspapers in the morning and start playing that
wonderful game called "reading between the lines."
For example, in an article in a newspaper belonging to one of the oligarchs
closely linked with the campaign headquarters of the president-elect, the
editor discusses at length why Vladimir Putin won and his opponents lost. It
seems the author is preaching to the choir. But that's not the way it seems
to the alert reader; for him, the author's answer to the question of why the
elections couldn't be falsified explains it all.
Here's why: If Putin had been given votes, then "he would be under the thumb
of those who made it happen." That's the phrase on which the entire article
hinges, an article that will undoubtedly be placed on the desk of the elected
president. In a translation from the Byzantine into simple Russian, read: We
helped you, Mr. Putin, in every way during the elections, helped you avoid a
second round, which you shouldn't forget: a wrong step in relation to our
oligarch, and vote falsifications will be made known to your opponents. It's
a form of subtle blackmail.
A few days later, another newspaper that belongs to the same oligarch (we'll
call him BAB), renews the "blackmail" of the newly elected president again,
butin a harsher form.
In a front-page article published April 1 - April Fool's Day, when newspapers
often offer spoof articles - the respectable publication announces:
"According to information from unofficial sources, acting President Vladimir
Putin won around 42 percent of the vote on March 26, not the 44.8 percent the
Communists say he got, and certainly not 52.5 percent, as the Central
Election Commission has stated. Putin received 10.5 percent of his votes as
the result of outright election fraud."
The article is unsigned, which would lead one to think that it is the
editor's. In the lead, the author transparently hints that the article is an
April Fool's prank but suggests that the reader may want to take it as the
truth. The piece is entitled, "A Non-Joking Article."
But the seasoned reader understands: The oligarch has started a serious war;
he's bet his life on it - because this oligarch (a house in Switzerland, a
villa in Antibes, a house in London) works for a living not as a businessman,
but as a political lobbyist, through access to the higher-ups in the Kremlin.
If he has access, then our oligarch receives a serious percentage of every
deal he makes with the Kremlin's help.
Our oligarch isn't afraid of being thrown in jail, but he does fear being
shut out of the Kremlin. As soon as newspapers and TV stations stop
confirming that he influences the appointment of prime ministers, the
oligarch's business will dry up, and he'll go bankrupt. Because other
oligarchs are trying to take his place; they are insulating themselves from
the former Kremlin favorite, and are trying to get rid of him. Thus, our
oligarch once again is using a tried-and-true method (refined successfully
during the Boris Yeltsin period): With his media outlets, he's starting a
full-court press.
The oligarch wars do provide one plus: They allow the average reader to
discover information more quickly.
There's no doubt that Putin won the elections; but whether he won in the
first or second round (which didn't take place) - according to the oligarch's
newspapers, that's the big question. Whether or not Putin was "given" 10
percent of his votes or 5 percent or 6 percent will remain a secret - if, of
course, the oligarch doesn't try to break the bank. But here he's betting
with his life.
Yevgenia Albats is an independent journalist based in Moscow.
*******
#7
Rao UES Restructuring Unlikely to Begin this Year -Official. .
MOSCOW, April 5 (Itar-Tass) - The restructuring of the United Energy System
of Russia (RAO UES) can begin not earlier than in a year, a Kremlin source
said.
The participants in a recent meeting of the company's board of directors at
the Kremlin "agreed with the need to reorganise RAO UES of Russia on a market
basis".
A high-ranking official in the presidential administration told Itar-Tass on
Wednesday that the wording of the decision proposed by the chairman of the
RAO UES board of directors, Alexander Voloshin, who is also presidential
chief of staff, turned out to be too "vague".
The board of directors was not inclined to either approve or reject the
company restructuring concept proposed by Anatoly Chubais, chairman of the
company's board. "It was decided to review it thoroughly", the official said.
The work on the concept will go simultaneously at the company and in the
government. Last Tuesday, Fuel and Energy Minister Viktor Kalyuzhny said he
wanted to propose his own plan of reform.
Chubais was instructed to present the finalised concept in June. However, the
Kremlin believes that it will take more time and the document is likely to be
ready only by the middle or end of this summer.
The official said that even the first stage of the programme implementation
may take several years.
The Kremlin admits that Chubais's concept has "many substantive provisions".
But at the same time, the presidential administration says that the draft
"contains improper things".
"At this point when there is a big gap between domestic and world prices, it
is dangerous for the state to let levers of control slip out of its hands as
monopolies want," the official said.
******
#8
JAN-FEB SEES TREBLING OF RUSSIAN OIL EXPORT REVENUES
MOSCOW. April 5 (Interfax) - Russian oil export revenues in the
first two months of 2000 tripled to $3.5085 billion, $2.3281 billion
more than in the same period a year earlier, a customs agency insider
told Interfax.
Export volumes rose 3% to 20.11 million tonnes, 570,100 tonnes more
than a year earlier.
Russia exported 17.19 million tonnes of oil worth $3.0312 billion
to customers outside the CIS and 302,190 tonnes worth $27.7 million to
the CIS.
Russia delivered the most crude to Germany (3.41 million tonnes)
and Poland (2.9 million tonnes).
In February Russia exported 10.219 million tonnes worth $1.8505
billion, of which 202,190 tonnes worth $23.35 million to the CIS and 8.9
million tonnes worth $1.63836 billion elsewhere.
Russia exported 123.9 million tonnes of oil worth $13.333 billion
in 1999.
******
#9
Christian Science Monitor
APRIL 5, 2000
Mir's ups and downs mirror Russian life
Two cosmonauts dock April 6 with the aging station, which had been set to
crash.
Fred Weir
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
MOSCOW
The thrills and spills of Mir, the first and presently one-and-only permanent
orbiting space station, may be the most oft-recurring news story out of
Moscow. That is, aside from the many crises of Russia itself, whose destiny
the station has mirrored over the past 14 years with perverse fidelity.
Like Russia, which elected a youthful Vladimir Putin less than two weeks ago
amid much talk of national renewal and brave horizons, the creaking Mir
station has just been granted an unexpected new lease on life.
Russian cosmonauts Sergei Zalyotin and Alexander Kalyeri, blasted off from
the old Soviet spaceport at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on April 4. The capsule is
to dock April 6, when the crew will "knock on the door, switch on the lights,
and see how everything's going up there," according to Jeffrey Manber,
president of MirCorp. The Amsterdam-based consortium is the latest in a
string of private investors who have pledged to save the station from
imminent demise by putting up $20 million for the mission. The company's
vision is to transform the station into an orbiting hotel, tourist spa, and
movie set. But plans to send along a Russian actor for a film shoot during
the current mission had to be scrapped in a financial dispute.
After Mir was left dormant eight months ago, it was scheduled to tip out of
orbit and go down in flames above the Pacific Ocean. "Through privatizing the
renovation and maintenance of the Mir, it can stand for years to come as an
emblem of how much humanity can achieve," trumpets MirCorp's Web site. The
phrase almost might have been torn from Mr. Putin's own manifesto for
Russia's future.
A 'symbol of perseverance'
"The Mir station is like a symbol of Russian perseverance and survival," says
Yevgeny Tin, a researcher with the science commission of the Duma, or lower
house of parliament. "Yes, the Mir is leaking air, Russia is leaking capital,
but both stay afloat somehow.... The main thing is, we keep dreaming big
dreams."
Foreigners may be baffled, but every Russian understands the Mir
instinctively. Russian roads throng with little box-like Soviet-era Zhiguli
and Moskvitch cars that keep puttering along, seemingly held together by bits
of wire, electric tape, and hope. When they stall at the roadside, which is
often, someone, somehow always gets them going again.
To outsiders, the whole country looks way past its expiration date, but
Russians don't seem to notice.
At its launch in 1986, Mir was the crown jewel of the Soviet space program,
then locked in a cold-war-era game of one-upmanship with the US space agency
NASA. Soviet scientists at the time predicted that Mir's useful life would
end in 1991. In fact, the USSR fell apart that year, but Mir went staggering
on. It has orbited the Earth 77,000 times with crews drawn from 12 nations,
including Russia, the United States, Canada, Syria, Afghanistan, and Japan.
"The country that created Mir is gone, and so is the station's original
purpose," says Konstantin Kreidenko, spokesman for Rosaviacosmos, a state
agency that oversees the space industry. "[Mir] is still basically sound. We
hope it can attract enough foreign investment to keep it from crashing." Just
what the optimists have been saying all along about post-communist Russia.
Not ready to pull the plug
Russia joined a US-led international space station project in the early
1990s. But it kept crews rotating through Mir, to the consternation of NASA,
which sees Mir as draining funds from the much-delayed project.
While Russia seen hyperinflation, political turmoil, and two brutal wars in
Chechnya, Mir also stumbled to the verge of extinction. Since its launch, the
station has experienced 1,600 major technical mishaps. In 1997, crews faced
an on-board fire, a collision with a supply ship, and a series of harrowing
computer crashes that left the station without power or oxygen. The decision
was made to pull the plug around the same time foreign investors were fleeing
Russia's financial collapse in 1998.
But it's still there! "Better than ever," says Sergei Zhiltsov, spokesman for
MPO-Proton, the bureau that designed Mir. Never mind the rumors of metal
fatigue, chemical corrosion, and unexplained drops in pressure, he insists.
"Mir has been renewed and upgraded over the years. Now it's ready to enter
its most active and fruitful period of service.
"Mir is a real testimony to the Russian way of doing things."
And who can argue with that?
******
#10
Excerpt
PRESS CONFERENCE BY MR. STANLEY FISCHER
IMF Acting Managing Director
Tuesday, April 4, 2000
Washington, D.C.
A QUESTIONER: Could you just comment briefly on your trip to Russia and tell
us what you hope to accomplish there?
MR. FISCHER: Yes. There is something called the Higher Economic School--which
I don't know his formal position, but Professor Yevgeny Yasin who was the
Economics Minister in the previous government, and is sort of the granddaddy
of Russian economists and respected across-the-board, runs that institution
and decided to have a major post-election seminar. He set this up a long time
ago to discuss the reform agenda for Russia.
And he has got all the suspects lined up for this event. It will be a largely
Russian event and that is extremely important. It will be two days of
presentation of papers by Russians on how they think the economy should
develop.
Yasin is a reformer, a very realistic one. But he has invited various people
from outside and every 10 minutes I get a phone call from somebody who says I
just want to speak to you before I go to Russia and I say, I'm going to be
there, too. I don't know who is going but more and more people seem to be
going from outside as well.
Of course, I will also take the opportunity to meet with Russian officials,
including I hope, the President-elect, the Acting President Putin. We will
talk about what his views are on economic reform programs for Russia.
Inevitably we will talk about relations with the IMF.
But this is not fundamentally a negotiating mission. It is a get-acquainted,
discuss the underlying issues, discuss the way ahead, and then see what the
staff, how the staff should follow-up on that.
Russia will not have a government in place until the President is formally
inaugurated on May 7.
So, we will not be in a position probably to go into formal negotiations
before that and he may not have his program ready to present. He is playing
this very correctly, according to the Constitution for reasons that I think
we should all respect.
******
#11
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000
From: Keith Darden <kdarden@socrates.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Democracy at work?
Dear JRL Readers:
Like some others who have contributed to this list, I have been
somewhat surprised at the extent to which the State Department's account
of the recent transfer of power in Russia has received wider
acceptance. And since an understanding of the nature of this election
is significant both for scholarly and policy debates about Russia, I
thought it might be useful to stress some of the more obvious flaws in
the State Department account before it becomes the received wisdom.
The official account, put very simply, has been that we have
witnessed a free and fair election in Russia, and that a significant new
milestone has been crossed in Russia's democratic transition. Strobe
Talbot notes that the March 26 presidential election "marked the
completion of Russia's first democratic transfer of power at the
executive level in its 1,000-year history" (JRL 4227). And according to
Thomas Pickering (JRL 4217), despite the fact that Putin "had the
obvious advantage of incumbency," and the existence of some "serious
questions about manipulation of the media", the elections were fair.
Pickering concludes: "Overall, however, there were no major election
irregularities and, as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe noted, they did not affect the outcome of the elections."
I am admittedly no expert on elections or democracy, but I would
suggest that this account distorts the recent transfer of power in
Russia in many ways. I wish to note only three, with no claim to
originality.
1. Democratic Transition.
Russia has not had a "democratic transfer of power." Scholars
generally consider the bare minimum criterion of a democratic transition
to have been met when an executive willingly steps down after the loss
of an election to be replaced by an electorally victorious opponent.
This is taken to be the only clear evidence that the rules of the game
are accepted, and that elections are not subtly controlled or subject to
undo manipulation on the part of the incumbent. What took place in
Russia was something quite different. The change of the executive took
place three months prior to the election -- with the strategic
resignation of Yeltsin and Putin's ascension to the executive post as
his chosen successor. This controlled process was then subject to a
public endorsement in the March elections -- a fact which is certainly
not insignificant but does not meet the basic criterion of democratic
transition as the incumbent (Putin) remained in power. Putin thus took
over the executive through a controlled and deliberate succession prior
to the election, not by way of the election.
This distinction might seem excessively pedantic, were it not for
point #2.
2. The "Advantages of Incumbency".
To refer to the resources at the disposal of the sitting executive
in Russia in the same words as one discusses the resources available to
executives in Western democracies is deliberately misleading. When the
executive has the discretionary capacity to choose whether or not to
call in tax debts, to pay out subsidies, to replace governors, and,
through loyal proxies, to determine whether enterprises receive
sufficient energy supplies (UES, Gazprom), to determine whether a region
can export its oil abroad for hard currency or be forced to supply
non-paying domestic consumers (Transneft), or to determine whether,
where, and at what cost producers get to transport their goods (railways
admin), we should not talk about the "advantages of incumbency". We
should talk about the significant levers available to the Russian
executive to make or break the livelihood of different segments of the
Russian electorate in exchange for their loyalty -- a condition which
arguably undermines a viable democracy. Given that the Kremlin secured
or reaffirmed its control of these levers in advance of the
parliamentary elections, it is not unreasonable to assume that the
Kremlin used them (or at least threatened their use) to secure the
support of enterprise heads and regional leaders in a way that
significantly impacted the outcome of both sets of elections. In fact,
in a visit to the US after the parliamentary elections, a top Kremlin
aide essentially said as much.
3. Manipulation of the Media
If a free and fair election involves candidates with at least
somewhat comparable capacities to present their positions and criticize
their opponents in the media, this election was not free and fair.
Admittedly, the effect of the media on public opinion and voting
behavior is probably impossible to measure. But as voters must get
their knowledge of candidates somehow in order to choose who to vote
for, the effect of media coverage is undoubtably significant. Indeed,
if the manipulation and intimidation of the media did not influence the
outcomes of elections in some substantial way, one would have to ask
oneself why the Kremlin (or Kuchma, or Lukashenko, or Shevardnadze,
etc...) bothers do it. For this reason, the statements made by the OSCE
that the obvious pro-Kremlin bias of most media and other
"irregularities" had no relevant effect on the outcome of the elections
are not terribly prudent. Certainly, the Russian voting followed the
procedural rules in most cases, but this is not sufficient to constitute
a fair election. [If, for example, one participant in a road race had
been given blood doping treatments, and his two main competitors had
their legs broken on the night before competition, would anyone consider
the race fair simply because the gun was shot off at the right time and
the photo finish showed a clear victor?] Indeed, it can reasonably be
argued that if the roles had been reversed, and that either Primakov or
Luzhkov had enjoyed the media halo that was placed on Putin (or if Putin
had been subject to the character assassination that was visited on
Primakov and Luzhkov during the Duma elections), the favored candidate
would likely have won the race. In this sense, the media role was not
just significant. It was decisive.
This is not to say that the continued existence of elections in
Russia is not significant. It is. And Putin, whose carefully-spun
image remained ubiquitous and unchallenged in the media, almost
certainly earned something close to half of the vote. Readers can
decide for themselves, however, whether this constitutes democracy at
work, or is better characterized as a move towards what Hayek called
"plebiscitarian dictatorship" in which "the head of the government is
from time to time confirmed in his position by popular vote, but where
he has all the powers at his command to make certain that the vote will
go in the direction he desires."
******
#12
Transitions Online
IN FOCUS: Resuscitating Russian
by Sophia Kornienko
http://www.tol.cz/apr00/resus.html
The recent evolution of the Russian tongue has been decried by many as
soiled with foreign words and slang. Acting President Vladimir Putin is
among the embracers of traditional Russian; his newly established Language
Council will slap heavy penalties on journalists and politicians who let
so-called pollutants slip into their speech. But Russian politicos are
hardly known for speaking with the tongues of angels. One analyst concedes
that Putin himself speaks correct Russian, "but his entire vocabulary is
only about 1,500 words -- a fifth-grader's vocabulary."
******
#13
Public Russian Television (ORT)
Sergey Dorenko’s Program
Saturday, April 1, 2000
[Summary prepared by
Olga Kryazheva, Research Assistant
Center for Defense Information
okryazhe@cdi.org]
With some exceptions apathy and relaxation are typical for Russians after
the presidential elections. Politicians and state officials rush to see
Putinand divide state positions, offices, dachas, and cars.
Putin keeps silent and smiles, assuring everybody that there is time for
everybody and everything. As times goes by, nothing happens, and the
enthusiasm of the same state officials and politicians decreases.
In the meanwhile, Putin states that for the West a strong and powerful
state is a state with the increased role of the security forces and
Ministry of Defense. According to Putin, “a strong state is an effective
state.”
If Putin reads newspapers he probably knows that he will not create a
coalition with the Communists, and most likely will appoint Kasyanov as the
Prime Minister, although he personally prefers Reiman. As newspapers state,
a representative of the “Alfa” bank group Peter Aven suggested Putin become
a Pinochet and use illegal methods for fighting crime. Chubais suggested
that Putin resolve the problem of redistribution of private property among
the oligarchs. Dorenko stated that on one hand, everybody is very cautious
to express attitudes, trying not to scare Putin. On the other, Putin
prefers not to get involved, and allows people to express themselves. In
the next presidential elections not the oligarchs will oppose Putin, but
the real left opposition.
Aman Tuleyev, one of the representatives of such opposition, won the
presidential elections in the Kemerovo region. He says that the country
needs real deeds, not words, and maintains strong support in the Kuzbas.
Experts confirm that Moscow’s money and the populist ideas are the result
of Tuleyev’s popularity. Tuliyev calls for cooperation with Kremlin and
the Communists, but at the same time he provides for weak and poor.
Dorenko stressed that liberals hope that sooner or later all the KPRF
supporters will die, and noted that even with these hopes, elections
prove the number of the KPRF supporters does not decrease.
The fascism fighters are being imprisoned, the marches of the SS veterans
take place, and almost half of the population is forbidden to vote based on
ethnicity in Latvia. Practically, it is a country with an apartheid
regime. It would be logical for many democratic countries to condemn
Latvia; yet Secretary General of NATO G. Robertson and Supreme Allied
Commander W. Clark visited Latvia last week to discuss partnership and
cooperation.
Dorenko stated that ethnic Russians residing in Latvia are either
unable or unwilling to receive Latvian citizenship. The only identification
document valid in Latvia is a Latvian passport, where the nationality of
resident and citizen is commonly underlined. People are disqualified for
employment based on the national identity principle. Russian language is
not taught in schools, ethnic Russians are deprived from certain rights in
Latvia. ORT states that crisis in Russia moved Latvia closer to the West.
As a response to the NATO enlargement, the military union of Russia and
Belarus continues to strengthen. Not long ago Vladimir Putin promised to
protect Belarus. Dmitry Novazhilov, ORT reporter from Belarus, states:
“From now on we will threaten NATO.” President Lukashenka intends to create
a massive and powerful military formation on Belarus' western border, where
he will concentrate all new military armaments. Currently, Belarus does not
possess new armaments. It uses tanks manufactured in the 1980s. Belarus
authorities try to keep elite military troops on standby. The military
officials say that until Poland joined NATO, the relations between neighbor
states were stable. Although Poland states that it does not intend to
attack anybody, Belarus is getting ready to secure the border with Poland.
Dorenko reported that last week Perm OMON was attacked by the Chechen
fighters. 32 OMON soldiers died. Dorenko stressed that strongest measures
should be taken to hold Russian military command accountable for the deaths
of the soldiers. Everybody new Khattab would carry out guerilla operations,
but nothing was done to stop him. Dorenko presented the names of the
soldiers who died in the attack.
The Red Cross wants to renew its activity on the Chechen territory. It
suspended operations in the region when six Red Cross staff members were
executed there in December 1996. The investigation of this incident leads
to Khattab and his fighters. For four years nothing was done to find the
responsible until Russian officials took the investigation under their
supervision.
Next the interview with the Russian pop singer Zimfira followed. Zimfira
recently released a new album. Dorenko noted that her songs differ from
the mass pop culture in Russia and attract the public with their original
lyrics and music. Zimfira confirmed that she writes both music and lyrics.
Zimfira is originally from Ufa, but as a singer she feels more welcomed in
Moscow.
Dorenko briefly covered the dispute between the governor of the Moscow
Oblast [region] Gromov and Guta Bank. Guta Bank gave the Moscow Oblast a
credit for 4-6% yearly interest. The Moscow Oblast offered its property
worth $40 million as collateral. In reality, part of this property is worth
nothing. Gromov used a part of the credit to pay for Spartak soccer
players, and offered $20 million to the Saturn Soccer Club. At the same
time, salaries of Moscow teachers and doctors remain unpaid.
After Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov stated that he intends to build
“Russian Disney Land” on the territory of Russian village Terekhovo, Moscow
suburbs, the houses in the villages started to burn frequently. The
residents of the Terekhovo are sure that constant fires are the part of the
project. They were promised apartments in Moscow and compensation for the
land, but never received them. Nevertheless, houses are burned so often
that the state insurance company “Gosstrakh” refuses to insure them.
*******
#14
The Weekly Standard
April 10, 2000
[for personal use only]
Secret Agent Man
by Anne Applebaum (106474.1333@compuserve.com )
Moscow
Over the past few days and weeks, much has been made of the “mystery” of
Vladimir Putin, the man who now runs Russia. Yet in some ways, we know far
more about him than we ever knew about the very private Boris Yeltsin. We
know, for example, how he interprets the history of his country in the
twentieth century. And we know who his heroes are. In fact, not long ago, a
few weeks before the election, he took time out of his prime ministerial
duties to enact a ceremony commemorating both.
He chose the site with care: the Lubyanka, once the headquarters of the KGB
and its most notorious jail—prisoners exercised on its roof, and were
tortured in its cellars—and now the home of the FSB, Russia’s internal
security services. He also took heed of the date: December 20, a day still
known and celebrated by some as “Chekists Day,” the anniversary (this was the
82nd) of the founding of the Cheka, Lenin’s secret police. In that place and
on that day, both so redolent of the bloodiest pages of Russian history,
Vladimir Putin solemnly unveiled a plaque in memory of. . . .Yuri Andropov.
Given that Putin has just come to power in Russia by virtue of a democratic
vote, Andropov would seem, at first, an odd sort of hero. Andropov was
director of the KGB for many years before briefly becoming, in 1982, general
secretary of the Communist party. And he was not just some faceless
apparatchik: Andropov is still known for his fervent belief that “order and
discipline,” as enforced by the methods of the KGB—arrests of dissidents,
imprisonment of corrupt officials, the creation of fear—would have restored
the sagging fortunes of the Soviet Union.
Still known, that is, and still admired. Indeed, the idea that Andropov died
“too early,” and that Mikhail Gorbachev subsequently bungled the assignment
is a sentiment common to many in the ranks of the former KGB, some of whom
still see a conspiracy in his premature death. “They got him before he
finished the job,” one ex-officer told me wistfully. Hardly surprising, then,
that in recent months Putin, who first tried to join Andropov’s KGB at the
tender age of 15, has become the first post-Soviet leader to openly link
himself to the same set of beliefs: “Order and discipline” are favorite words
in Putin’s vocabulary too.
This is not to say that Putin is the second coming of Andropov. Putin is not
even the first leader of post-Soviet Russia to have ties to the world of
espionage and repression. Both of his predecessors as prime minister, Yevgeny
Primakov and Sergei Stepashin, were also former KGB agents. Nor was he ever a
Russian James Bond: One former elite agent, based for many years in the West
(I spoke to him in his slick offices in a new Russian bank) dismisses Putin
as a “second-rate middle lieutenant.” Oleg Gordievsky, the former KGB double
agent in Britain, is equally scathing about “the gray mass of officers” who
were sent to places like Dresden, Putin’s only foreign posting. Putin was
not, he says, part of that “cosmopolitan group of officers” that clamored for
change in the KGB at the end of the 1980s.
Nor can Putin be held responsible for bringing what Russians call the
“special services” back from the low point they reached at the beginning of
the 1990s, when the Yeltsin regime excluded them, effectively punishing them
for having participated in the coup against Gorbachev. Most observers date
their “return” not from Putin’s appointment to the prime ministership in
1999, but from 1993. That was the year Yeltsin sent tanks to fire on his
parliament—and simultaneously decided that the gaggle of squabbling democrats
around him were not up to running the country. The services were, says Mark
Galleotti, specialist in Russian security for Jane’s Intelligence Review,
“looking to regain ground just as Yeltsin was looking to regain control.”
Over the past seven years, Yeltsin has increased their funding, beefed up
their public image—books and articles have celebrated the glamorous lives of
patriotic Soviet spies—and put them to work. Since 1995, the FSB has had
permission to open mail, tap telephones, and enter private residences without
a court order—if Russia’s “national security interests” (a term left
undefined) are threatened. In 1998, the agency began demanding that Russian
Internet service providers install technology linking their computers to
those at FSB headquarters as well. Increased harassment of small human rights
and environmental organizations, particularly those investigating issues of
nuclear pollution, dates back two or three years now. Putin’s rise to
prominence is a reflection of the increased power of the security services,
not its cause.
Nevertheless, Putin is different: He is the first leader of post-Soviet
Russia to identify himself openly as a “Chekist,” using the term invented in
Lenin’s Soviet Union, and the first to express admiration for Andropov, both
in words and deeds. He has praised Andropov’s “honesty and uprightness”—and
has increased the FSB’s role in army counter-intelligence. He has laid
flowers on Andropov’s grave—and he has recreated what used to be called the
KGB’s Fifth Directorate, the department responsible for repressing political
dissidents, under the new name of the Department for the Protection of the
Constitution. Among the many former KGB officers he has put in positions of
power in Moscow is Viktor Cherkesov, now deputy director of the FSB, formerly
chief of the Fifth Directorate in Putin’s native Leningrad, and well known to
that city’s ex-dissidents. Rumor has it that Putin plans to put Cherkesov at
the head of a new branch of the security services, possibly based on the
existing “Kremlin guards,” designed, in true imitation of Andropov, to “rid
Russia of corruption” and provide the president with his own personal
security apparatus.
These actions in part account for the near-hysteria with which Putin’s
triumph is being greeted by some former dissidents (among them Sakharov’s
widow, Elena Bonner), who have predicted the coming of a “new Stalinism.”
They may also help account for his popularity. The myth of the wise,
all-knowing, secret policeman, the “patriotic Chekist” promoted in a dozen
1930s films, is still propagated in Russia, and the legend of Andropov—if
only he’d had time!—lives on outside the halls of the Lubyanka as well. With
a straight face, Boris Labusov, spokesman for the SVR, the foreign
intelligence agency, listed for me the qualities of a typical, professional
Russian spy: “a wide base of erudition. . . .knows how to work with people. .
. .makes quick decisions. . . .psychological strength.”
The less frequently examined question is whether, propaganda aside, he can do
it. If this is how Putin wants to proceed, can the former KGB really restore
“order” and “discipline” to Russia? Are Putin’s security services still up to
the job?
Walking the small side streets that lead off of Lubyanka square, one can
almost believe that they are. This small patch of central Moscow still
contains, in effect, an entire KGB village, composed of KGB buildings still
serving the same purposes they always served: There is the FSB health clinic
and the FSB club, FSB service flats and the FSB garage, the latter housed in
the shell of a 17th-century church, one of the few in the city that has not
been returned to its original use.
Of course a few things have changed: Around the corner from the Lubyanka,
what was once the KGB shop, where agents could buy goods unavailable to the
average Soviet citizen, has now become a Western-style supermarket, in which
not all of the modern FSB’s employees would be rich enough to shop. There
have been reports of housing shortages among officers, and even Labusov says
that “of course we would all like to be paid more. . . .”
And for that matter, Russia’s security services no longer form a single,
all-powerful institution—the different branches have deliberately cultivated
quite separate public profiles. The SVR’s Labusov received me in a small but
carefully restored palace, complete with mock Biedermeier furniture and silk
curtains, and seemed disappointed when I wanted to leave after an hour and a
half; the FSB’s spokesman refused to receive me anywhere, for any length of
time, for any reason. Still, their division into foreign intelligence (SVR),
domestic and counter-intelligence (FSB), border guards, Kremlin guards, and
communications experts is not as thorough as it seems. Cynics point out that
virtually every one of the KGB’s former directorates still exists, often in
the same office building, albeit under a new name. Konstantin Preobrazhensky,
an agent who resigned in 1991 (he was “TASS correspondent” in Japan), calls
the breakup “exaggerated,” noting that agents “still have the same health
service, they go to the same sanitariums, they use the same communications
system.”
Far more important than the institutional change is the dispersion of the old
cadres. In the disarray of the early 1990s, many officers left the service.
According to Gordievsky, some went into Russia’s nascent “security industry,”
a broad term that encompasses everything from the thugs who stand outside
money-changing booths to the high-tech private intelligence operations of
Russia’s major companies. Some (“the stupidest,” according to Gordievsky)
stayed put and continue to form the backbone of the security services: There
were no widespread sackings, no purges of the cadres, no democratic
reeducation.
Others, to put it bluntly, went into the world of organized crime. To put it
even more bluntly, it is not at all clear that these organized criminals lost
contact with their former comrades. Indeed, estimates of the FSB’s current
strengths, and of its ability to re-impose “order and discipline” on Russia,
depend almost entirely on one’s assessment of the relationship between those
still inside the service, and those outside it, and how conspiratorial one
feels those links to be. Andrzej Grajewski, a Pole who has written a book
about the FSB and follows its development closely, describes the three groups
as “working in tandem.” He, like many others, suspects that both mafia and
business structures do favors for the FSB and vice versa, citing the case of
recent banking scandals in New York: “The mafia couldn’t do such things if
the security services didn’t help them.”
While many ex-agents think this an exaggeration, if only because it isn’t
clear why well-paid employees of private banks would want to cooperate with
their poorer former comrades still working for the state, there is ample
evidence that the former KGB has deep and complicated links to the larger
Russian companies. Testifying in Washington before Congress, one former agent
recently described in detail the methods by which the KGB set up banks and
businesses, stealing millions of dollars of hard currency in the process.
Several of Russia’s major companies are also widely believed to have been
founded with KGB money. There is then, to many, something absurd in the idea
of the FSB “cracking down” on corruption. How can it crack down on itself?
Indeed, the security services till now have been quite blatantly used in
Russian politics not to stop corruption, but prevent corruption
investigations. Notable is the case of Russia’s former chief prosecutor, whom
mysterious sources filmed cavorting with prostitutes just as his
investigations were drawing closer to the personal finances of Boris
Yeltsin—an incident that took place when one Vladimir Putin was running the
FSB. Preobrazhensky laughs aloud when asked who is more powerful, the Russian
security services or Russian big business: “How would agents survive if the
oligarchs didn’t pay them bribes?”
If Putin’s track record is anything to go by, the use of the FSB to “restore
order” on a grand, Andropov-like scale looks unlikely. But even if a
“crackdown” on Russian oligarchs turns out to be beyond the scope of the
modern FSB, that isn’t to say that smaller ventures aren’t well within its
scope. Putin may well go after some of the smaller crooks, or at least those
who meet his definition of a crook. An example of how this might work arose
recently, with the peculiar attempt to intimidate the Voice of America
journalist Andrei Babitsky. Babitsky was detained by the FSB in Chechnya, and
then briefly vanished, allegedly “traded” to Chechen rebels, before he
mysteriously reemerged in Dagestan, new passport in hand. Putin, although
implicitly taking responsibility for the episode, has refused to apologize
for it, on the grounds that Babitsky, a Russian citizen, is “not Russian”:
Real Russians, according to Putin, “obey the laws of their country,” and
don’t sneak around behind Chechen lines, collecting information unfavorable
to the state. Among his many cryptic statements in recent weeks, Putin has
spoken of imposing a “dictatorship of law” on Russia, which sounds good if he
means that blind justice will apply to everyone, but more ominous if it means
that justice will be allocated only to those whom the president, and his
security services, designate as “true Russians.”
In fact, minor incidents of police and security service harassment of people
who pose awkward problems to the Kremlin began in the Yeltsin regime and
continue more than is usually acknowledged abroad. The first to notice this
were the small, independent, human rights and other activist groups, who were
recently forced to go through a complicated re-registration process designed
to put many of them out of business. Alexei Yablokov, an ecological and
political activist, was genuinely surprised to discover that his small
lobbying group could not be officially registered, as the constitution did
not accept that any organization other than the state could be defined as a
defender of human rights, a decision he is fighting in the courts. Another
ecologist, Alexander Nikitin—who wrote about ecological damage to the Baltic
Sea caused by Russia’s Northern Fleet until his 1996 arrest and imprisonment
for treason—was acquitted in December after the FSB’s long prosecution. But
his trial had ominous aspects: Two witnesses from the FSB, for example,
testified that even the publication of material from open sources can be
defined as a violation of state secrets, a crime punishable with prison.
As for harassment of the press, that has long been a fact of life in Russia’s
provinces: On a visit to Volgograd a few years ago, I asked a television
journalist whether she, as a state employee—most regional television is
state-owned—could report news unfavorable to the local government. “They
would take me off the air,” she said, looking at me as if I were stupid. In
Moscow, methods are more sophisticated. In the week running up to the
presidential election, “someone” broke into the computer system of Novaya
Gazeta, a newspaper that was about to print an article on Yeltsin’s and
Putin’s election finances, and destroyed the entire issue.
It is that sort of thing that makes Russia’s “special services” difficult to
dismiss out of hand. Their listening equipment may be a bit rusty. They may
have divided loyalties, they may take more bribes than they used to, and it
may be true, as one former agent said to me, that “ten years of work” are
required “before [the services are] even able to conduct normal intelligence
activity,” let alone reimpose totalitarianism. But even if nine-tenths of
Russia’s nuclear arsenal were judged defective, no one would think of
ignoring the bombs that remain—and the reimposition of totalitarianism is
probably not Putin’s aim in any case.
Before his election, Vladimir Putin may not have been very forthcoming about
his economic policies, but his views on the Russian political system have
been made clear. He favors “managed democracy,” to use the phrase of Russia’s
political scientists. It’s a system in which elections take place regularly,
you can hold public meetings, and the thought police will not arrest you for
complaining about the price of sausage—as long as you do not try seriously to
oppose the interests of the Kremlin, publish seriously damaging information
about the Kremlin, or create more than a token opposition political party.
Within this new system, whose rules are still being worked out, the FSB can
play a very useful role—and it has shown itself willing to do so already.
*******
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