April 25, 2000    
This Date's Issues:  4266 • 4267 

Johnson's Russia List
#4267
25 April 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Novye Izvestia: RUSSIAN POPULATION CONTINUES TO DECLINE.
2. AP: New Russian Auditor Asks For Help. (Stepashin)
3. Washington Post editorial: Russia's Free Pass. (re Chechnya)
4. Itar-Tass: No Security Threats in RUSSIA'S Doctrine-Manilov. 
5. Itar-Tass: Number of Taxes in Prospect to Be Reduced to 15-Pochinok.
6. The New Statesman (UK) book review: John Lloyd on Viktor Pelevin's Babylon.
7. Itar-Tass: People to Pay Last Respects to Writer Sergei Zalygin. 
8. New memos from the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS).
9. St. Petersburg Times Roundtable: Questioning the Value of Western Economic Input. How can foreign consultants help the Russian economy? 
10. TIME EUROPE: A World in Black and White. TIME's Yuri 
Zarakhovich on the film that inspired the young Vladimir Putin to 
join the KGB.
11. New York Times: Michael Wines, Heroin Carries AIDS to a Region in Siberia.
12. Matt Bivens: IKEA Debates.
13. Reuters: Russia and United States resume rivalry on soccer pitch.]

*******

#1
Novye Izvestia
April 22, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
RUSSIAN POPULATION CONTINUES TO DECLINE

The Russian population is estimated to have decreased by 
157,800 people (0.1 percent) over the first two months of this 
year, to make 145.4 million people as of March 1, 2000. These 
data were made public by the State Statistics Committee on 
Friday.
Meanwhile, the respective last year's figure was 138,800.
Thus, the number of Russians has been decreasing faster than 
last year. The natural decrease of the population, which has 
grown compared to the January-February figure of last year, is 
compensated (by 18.7 percent) by the growing influx of migrants 
from other countries (in January-February, 1999, it was 
compensated by 15.4 percent).
Over the first two months of this year, some 197,700 
children were born in this country, as against 193,700 in 
January-February, 1999. With the birth rate's growth by 2.1 
percent, the death rate has increased by 9.5. Over the first 
two months of this year, 391,700 people died in this country, 
as against 357,600 last year.

*******

#2
New Russian Auditor Asks For Help
April 25, 2000

MOSCOW (AP) - The newly appointed head of the Russian parliament's auditing 
office said Monday that he needs more help from Russian security and 
law-enforcement agencies to investigate money-laundering, the Interfax news 
agency reported. 

Sergei Stepashin made the comment after meeting with U.S. Representative Jim 
Leach, head of the House Banking and Financial Service Committee, the report 
said. 

Stepashin, a former prime minister, is one of the few major Russian 
politicians with a clean reputation. He was elected by the State Duma last 
week to be head of the chamber responsible for auditing government spending. 

The main topic of Stepashin's meeting with Leach was the Bank of New York 
money-laundering scandal, which U.S. prosecutors say involved up to $7 
billion. 

Russian agencies should do more to help investigate that case, Stepashin 
said, adding that an FBI agent at the meeting complained that Russian 
authorities often do not respond to U.S. inquiries, Interfax said. 

The agency also quoted Stepashin as saying the Bank of New York case included 
funds lent to Russia by the International Monetary Fund, but did not provide 
details. 

The IMF says audits have not produced evidence that any of the money lent to 
Russia was misused. 

*******

#3
Washington Post
April 25, 2000
Editorial
Russia's Free Pass

WHAT, EXACTLY, has happened in Chechnya? From refugee accounts and some 
courageous journalism, we know that Russia's war to extirpate "terrorists" 
has cost thousands of civilians their lives, resulted in the torture of young 
Chechen men at sinister "filtration" camps, destroyed the capital city of 
Grozny and driven more than a quarter of a million people from their homes. 
This still-fragmentary information suggests a campaign eerily reminiscent of 
the one Stalin visited upon the Chechen people more than a half-century ago.

Alas, many details of that episode are lost to history; if Russia's new 
president, Vladimir Putin, has his way, the current facts will be, too. 
Reports of war crimes are "disinformation," his government says; besides, 
whatever happened is an internal Russian matter. For the record, the United 
States and its European allies express shock and dismay at Russian atrocities 
in Chechnya. But they make clear at the same time that they consider other 
business with Russia more pressing--arms control, the Balkans, economic 
reform. President Clinton, who--rightly--took umbrage at Serbia's war crimes 
in Kosovo, has expressed far less indignation at Russia's overkill in 
Chechnya, even writing of Russia's "liberation" of Grozny. And far from 
insisting on the prosecution of those responsible for the Chechen 
catastrophe--a demand for criminal culpability that might have led to Mr. 
Putin's office door--the United States and Europe decided not even to press 
for an international investigation through the United Nations Commission on 
Human Rights, now meeting in Geneva. Rather, the European Union submitted a 
draft resolution that merely calls on Russia to set up its own ostensibly 
independent national commission of inquiry and to allow foreign monitors the 
unfettered access to the ravaged province that Russia has thus far denied 
them. And even in tabling that weak resolution, the EU offered to negotiate a 
different statement acceptable to Russia--i.e., one that would necessarily be 
even weaker.

Whatever the result in Geneva, Russia's fledgling democracy thus will be held 
less accountable for its actions than Indonesia, an equally incipient 
democracy whose new authorities have, with international prodding, begun a 
relatively credible probe of the recent Indonesian army killings in East 
Timor. Maybe this shouldn't surprise. Indonesia, like Serbia, is a 
non-nuclear state with far less clout than Russia in the United Nations. 
Still, Ambassador Nancy Rubin, the U.S. envoy to the human rights commission, 
was right when she said, "This session should not conclude without meaningful 
action" on Chechnya. If Mr. Clinton and other leaders do not press harder for 
such meaningful action, they will betray not only the Chechens but also 
beleaguered human rights activists inside Russia--and the principles Mr. 
Clinton has vowed to defend when the offending nations were less powerful. 

*******

#4
No Security Threats in RUSSIA'S Doctrine-Manilov. 

MOSCOW, April 25 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia's new military doctrine poses to 
threats to international security, the Russian army's General Staff First 
Deputy Chief Valery Manilov said. 

He said in an interview with Itar-Tass on Tuesday the "Russian military 
doctrine has an absolutely defensive character". 

"Will for peace and the striving to keep stability and security combines with 
readiness to ward off any military threat," Manilov said. 

"Our doctrine, unlike NATO's strategic concept, is more honest and open, 
there are no double standards in it," he said. 

Manilov said NATO's assault of Yugoslavia had shown that NATO's concept has 
no "striving to use all non-military -- political, diplomatic and economic - 
means in order to prevent a conflict from growing a war". 

In Russia's new military doctrine, "all provisions related to war prevention 
and aggression deterrence are laid out in a concentrated and consistent way", 
he said. 

"In case of an aggression against Russia, when the question will arise 
whether our state is to be or not to be, we have the right to use our whole 
military potential, including nuclear weapons," Manilov said. 

"The answer to censure of Western critics addressed to our military doctrine 
is simple" and is "there is no aggression against Russia, there is no use of 
military force and nuclear weapons", Manilov said. 

"The doctrine clearly points out that Russia consistently and firmly adheres 
to principles of partnership in respect of states that do not hatch 
aggressive plans against Russia and act within the framework of the UN 
Charter," he said. 

*******

#5
Number of Taxes in Prospect to Be Reduced to 15-Pochinok.

MOSCOW, April 25 (Itar-Tass) - The number of taxes will be in prospect 
reduced to 15, Tax Minister Alexander Pochinok told an Investments in Russia 
conference organised by the securities market on Tuesday, PRIME-TASS reports. 

The Tax Minister said there are now 28 types of taxes as against 170 in 
1996-1997. In prospect, there will be 15 taxes. Pochinok regards as unlikely 
a further reduction in the number of taxes, since that practically not a 
single European country has less than 15 taxes. 

Besides, Pochinok said, the Tax Ministry intends to lessen tax burden from 40 
percent of GDP to 35 percent without detriment to Federal budget revenue. He 
said the main thing for the MPs is to have time to adopt the main chapters of 
the second part of the Tax Code. 

The Minister considers it a priority to straighten out matters concerning the 
profit tax. It is essential, in particular, to normalise amortisation policy 
and the writing off of costs. A gradual cancellation of the turnover tax is a 
good stimulus to increase tax revenue, Pochinok believes. 

*******

#6
The New Statesman (UK)
24 April 2000
Book Review

Babylon 
By Viktor Pelevin 
Faber, 250pp, £9.99
ISBN 0571202470
Reviewed by John Lloyd 
John Lloyd is the author of Rebirth of a Nation: an anatomy of Russia 

Viktor Pelevin is one of the funniest novelists writing today, and this book, 
impressively translated by Andrew Bromfield, is an antidote to anguished 
moralising over Russia and its souls. Even more than Pelevin's great satire 
(and first novel), Omon Ra, its tone is set in a key of detached irony - 
perhaps, in the ruins of the Soviet Union, the only one available to a writer 
with no professional interest in Russia's fate.

If the Latin Americans invented magic realism, the Russians, in this century, 
invented diabolic realism - with the work of Mikhail Bulgakov, especially his 
Heart of a Dog and his nightmarish Master and Margarita as the early 
masterworks. In diabolic realism, the narrative pounds along in "real" time, 
but takes loops into dream, hallucinations and reveries, which reappear again 
in the "real" life, complete with voices, other-worldly stratagems and 
characters who may or may not be "real". Bulgakov wrote in the early days of 
the Soviet experiment (and was spared from repression by Stalin himself); 
Pelevin is an early inhabitant of wild Russian capitalism - his theme here - 
and is repressed by nothing more noxious than growing fame and recognition.

With the collapse of Soviet power, Tatarsky, who had been about to settle for 
a Soviet literary career translating poems from the "languages of the peoples 
of the USSR", becomes, through a friend, an advertising copywriter - a 
profession, wholly new to Russians, which allows Pelevin to hold up a glass 
to the madness of his society.

One of the reasons why Pelevin has become so popular in the west is that, 
with a pin fashioned from the popular disillusionment, he bursts the 
illusions and rhetoric that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union. 
"Tatarsky", he writes, "hated most of the manifestations of Soviet power, but 
he still couldn't understand why it was worth exchanging an evil empire for 
an evil banana republic." When he is given a commission to write a commercial 
for The Gap, Tatarsky writes: "Russia was always notorious for the gap 
between culture and civilisation. Now there is no more culture, no more 
civilisation. The only thing that remains is The Gap. The way they see you." 
This, like many of Tatarsky's slogans and narratives, is a wonderful blend of 
the high banality of advertising with a sustained satire on contemporary 
Russia.

In Tatarsky's penultimate job, he works for an organisation writing the 
script for public events in Russia, in which actors, or computer-simulated 
models, play the required parts of Boris Yeltsin and other public figures. In 
one virtual confrontation, Salaman Raduev, a Chechen warlord, and Boris 
Berezovsky, Russia's most influential capitalist (both real-life figures), 
play a game of three-dimensional Monopoly. "Nowadays," Berezovsky tells 
Raduev, "people find out what they think from television. So if you want to 
buy a couple of streets and sleep well, first you have to buy a TV tower." 
(Berezovsky controls Russia's largest TV network, and is said to have had 
close connections with the Chechen gangs.)

As the book develops and the satire becomes more vicious, the anger shows 
through the detachment. Tatarsky, to whom things happen rather than are made 
to happen, acquires his status symbol of a Mercedes, and enjoys feeling above 
the herd. But then he reflects: "Just take a Mercedes, even . . . a great 
car, no denying that, but the way things are arranged round here, all you can 
do with it is ride from one heap of shit to another." The heaps of shit that 
make up today's Russia - peopled by men and women crippled by their Soviet 
past, a prey to the post-Soviet beasts who have taken freedom to mean an 
opportunity for ruthless self-enrichment - exist because neither leaders nor 
led tried hard enough to do better. Yet again, for the intellectual, the only 
escape is into the inner life, or into irony.

*******

#7
People to Pay Last Respects to Writer Sergei Zalygin. .

MOSCOW, April 24 (Itar-Tass) - A ceremony to pay last respects to Sergei 
Pavlovich Zalygin, an outstanding Russian writer, who died here on April 19 
at the age of 86, is to begin at the Central House of Writers here at 11.00 
on Monday, a staff member of the editorial office of the Novy Mir literary 
journal has told Itar-Tass. Zalygin was the journal's Editor-in-Chief from 
1986 to 1998. 

Zalygin has gone down In the history of national culture as a vivid prosaic 
and publicist. His novels and stories in variably evinced readers' interest. 
Their publication began in the 1940-50s. The emergence of such works as "On 
the Irtysh", "The Commission", "After a Storm", and "South American Version" 
became marked events in Russian literature in the second half of the 20th 
century. 

In the recent period, Zalygin continue dto work actively as a man of letters 
and public figure. Works which he published in Novy Mir and other editions in 
recent years were as usual very topical and popular. 

Zalygin combined creative work with activities as an environmentalist. Many 
remember Zalygin's irreconcilable position on the flooding of lands due to 
the construction of hydro-power stations, or projects to turn the flow of 
Siberian rivers backwards. 

At the very beginning of the Perestroika era, Zalygin was appointed to head 
Novy Mir. It was precisely under his direction that the journal's circulation 
increased to record-high marks. The writer felt an inward need to bring to 
readers a number of works which were previously out of reach. On Zalygin's 
initiative, Novy Mir published and continues to publish all the best works by 
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Zalygin earned the State Prizes of the USSR and the 
Russian Federation and was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour. 

*******

#8
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 
From: Erin Powers <epowers@fas.harvard.edu>
Subject: A slew of PONARS memos

Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS)
Davis Center for Russian Studies - Harvard University
Memos 112-142 are now on the PONARS website:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ponars/memos.html

112. Putin in Russian Historical Context, Georgi Derluguian
113. The 2000 Presidential Elections: The Political Taste and Aftertaste,
Nikolai Petrov
114. Consolidation of the State and Economic Policy Scenarios Under Putin,
Vadim Radaev
115. Putin and the Provinces, Steven Solnick
116. Putin and the Military: How Long Will the Honeymoon Last? Brian Taylor
117. The Unintended Consequences of Anti-Federalist Centralization in
Russia, Mikhail Alexseev
118. Russia's Population Crisis: The Migration Dimension, Theodore Gerber
119. The State of Democratization in Russia in Light of the Elections,
Henry Hale
120. Southern Russia: The Heartland or Russia's Soft Underbelly? Ivan Kurilla
121. Russia's Nationalist Consolidation: Love it or Leave it? Eduard Ponarin
122. The Limited Reach of Russia's Party System: Under-Institutionalization
in the Provinces, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss
123. Russian Policy Towards Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States in the
Putin Era, Arkady Moshes
124. The Finlandization of Russia? The Kremlin's Geopolitical and
Geo-economic Choices, Alexander Pikayev
125. New Challenges to US-Russian Relations, Mikhail Rykhtik
126. The Views of the Russian Elite Toward NATO Membership, Dmitri Glinski
Vassiliev
127. What NATO is and How It Can Cooperate with Russia, Celeste Wallander
128. Capital Flight and Russian Economic Reform, Mark Kramer
129. Why the Russian Economy is Unlikely to Become a New "Asian Tiger,"
Vladimir Popov
130. Still Hobbling Along: An Update on the Russian Banking System, Astrid
Tuminez
131. Russia's Policy on Nonproliferation Under Putin, Vladimir Orlov
132. START and the ABM Treaty: Is a Compromise Possible? Paul Podvig
133. The Reality and Myths of Nuclear Regionalism in Russia, Nikolai Sokov
134. Russian Policy and the Potential for Agreement on Revising the ABM
Treaty, Celeste Wallander
135. Rethinking the Role of International Institutions in Post-Soviet
States, Jeffrey Checkel
136. Economic Assistance to Russia: Ineffectual, Politicized, and Corrupt?
Yoshiko Herrera
137. The Case for Assisting Russian NGOs, James Richter
138. Russia and the European Union: The Northern Dimension, Alexander
Sergounin
139. Supporting Democratic Institutions Rather than "democrats" in Russia,
Regina Smyth
140. The Role for US Democracy Assistance: Helping Build Parties from the
Bottom Up, Regina Smyth
141. Reforming the IMF? Lessons from Assistance to Post-Communist
Countries, Randall Stone
142. Human Rights Violations in Chechnya: Implications for Western
Assistance to Russia, Kimberly Marten Zisk

*******

#9
St. Petersburg Times
25 April 2000
Roundtable
Questioning the Value of Western Economic Input
How can foreign consultants help the Russian economy?

Andrei Vernikov, chief accountant, ABN Amro Bank:
To make a diagnosis and prescribe remedies just one week after a hasty 
"on-the-spot introduction" is degrading, and appears totally lacking in 
seriousness. I am very concerned that a short personal meeting with a group 
of foreign professors could convince the leadership of an enormous country to 
fundamentally alter its entire economic policy.

However, employing famous Western experts could be justified from a tactical 
perspective.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the international financial community has 
no faith in the ability of a developing country to independently generate 
clear ideas and policies, and instead prefers to rely on the opinions of what 
it considers knowledgeable authorities, whether it's the International 
Monetary Fund, or some professor well-acquainted with the U.S. 
administration's economic policies.

Poland provided an example of successfully employing such tactics at the 
beginning of the 1990s, and the entire world is still convinced that the 
Polish government followed to the letter the recipe prescribed by a 
well-known Harvard professor. There is a similar myth regarding the role of 
several foreign specialists in Yegor Gaidar's government in 1992.

If our Western partners find this more comfortable and reassuring, then so be 
it.

It would be good if during this visit - which I fear Won't be their last - 
the group of experts [from western universitites and with whom the Finance 
Ministry has been consulting] could hold to a more or less consistent set of 
views on the economy, because up to now, instead of a consensus, there have 
been attempts to formulate another chimera using a hodgepodge of economic 
theories - often even opposing economic theories.

Dmitry Orlov, president, Vozrozhdeniye Bank:
Kind advice is of course a good thing. However, we need to resolve our 
problems on our own. In our country, we have to think for ourselves. We 
learned this from Peter the Great. What was the cost to Russia of all that 
overseas science, and how well did it actually serve our national interests? 
For some reason, we have a historical propensity to love foreigners and 
everything foreign blindly, and to take a certain pious attitude toward them. 
Of course we should learn every useful and new thing. But in such delicate 
areas as finance and economics, perhaps we've borrowed enough foreign 
experience, which has proven far from indisputably appropriate in a Russian 
context.

Alexei Mamontov, vice president, Moscow Stock Exchange:
There is no doubt that they could help in some way. But it's clear that this 
particular round of consultations will have little decisive meaning. From my 
point of view, the administration needs them in order to appraise the current 
economic situation from every viewpoint and to develop a strategy. Moreover, 
the foreign economists' proposals could turn out to be completely objective 
and possibly even original. The presidential team deserves credit for its 
sincere desire to avoid haste in developing the most realistic and dynamic 
economic strategy possible. And for that, the government needs help not only 
from our own consultants, but from foreign ones as well.

Oleg Yachnik, president, Olma Group:
Each of these consultants has made a very substantial contribution to his own 
country's economy. Their activities have been focused on resolving various 
economic problems, and they have been united by the single goal of economic 
growth for their country. Today, Russia is faced with that same task of 
quickly and painlessly developing the economy and setting it on the course of 
global reform. The government's economic policies are still in the 
development stage. And the meeting with foreign consultants couldn't come at 
a better time. ... In developing the economy, we must pay heed to foreign as 
well as to our own experience.

*******

#10
TIME EUROPE
Apr. 19, 2000
A World in Black and White
TIME's Yuri Zarakhovich on the film that inspired the young Vladimir Putin to 
join the KGB
By YURI ZARAKHOVICH Moscow

Soviet officer Alexander Belov infiltrated German intelligence under the 
guise of Johan Weiss, a dedicated Nazi.

'The Shield and the Sword', Mosfilm, 1968, 325 minutes

"Books and films like The Shield and The Sword did their job. I was so 
impressed ... A single intelligence officer decided the fates of thousands." 
This is how Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin explains his decision as a 
teenager to join the KGB. 

The Shield and The Sword, the first Soviet serial blockbuster ever made, hit 
the theaters in 1968 and was a smashing success. Shot in black and white, it 
told the bizarre story of Alexander Belov, a fictitious but intrepid Soviet 
intelligence officer who during World War II penetrated the inner sanctum of 
German intelligence under the guise of Nazi Johan Weiss. Belov became privy 
to the most jealously guarded secrets of the Third Reich, and deployed a 
massive and covert anti-Nazi network of agents and saboteurs in the heart of 
Berlin. According to the best rules of Soviet political correctness, his 
force consisted of Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Yugoslavs and German 
communists, all set on liberating Europe from the Nazi plague rather than 
promoting the Soviet cause. On orders from the Soviet high command, they were 
mostly busy liberating prisoners from Nazi death camps, with a special 
emphasis on rescuing children. 

"To do this is our international duty," says a saboteur to his comrades. The 
film's protagonists use this kind of stilted language even for most personal 
dialogues. They also unravel a perfidious American plot to strike a separate 
peace with Hitler. Belov recruits his friend Heinrich, a well-placed SS 
officer, who becomes another top Soviet agent and an official in the 
Soviet-liberated Germany once the war is over. Says a Soviet intelligence 
service general to Heinrich: "Fascism is destroyed. It's up to you now to 
build a new Germany." 

Watching this almost six-hour-long rigmarole now, one wonders why it took the 
Soviet Union four years of bitter, desperate and bloody warfare, that cost 
the country 27 million lives, to beat the Germans if such a force could 
operate so easily in the heart of Berlin. Back in 1968, however, the film 
caused very different reactions. 

A shield and a sword are the emblems of the Soviet security service, known as 
the Cheka, the NKVD and the KGB during various periods of Soviet history. The 
FSB, its successor, still retains these emblems: The shield symbolizes 
protection for the Soviet people; the sword stands for punishment to their 
enemies. In reality, the shield protected the regime, while the sword was 
used to wound the people. Putin now says that he was not aware of this aspect 
of the KGB when he joined. 

In the Soviet Union it was a singular honor to accord this title to a work of 
art as a sign of its ideological purity and political value. Originally, the 
title was given to a novel by Vadim Kozhevnikov, a faithful party hack and 
secretary of the official writers' union. The communist party and the KGB 
approved the production of a screen version of the novel with the same title. 
The Putin case proves that the film worked as an effective propaganda piece. 
Though no longer a 15-year-old boy, as he was when he first saw the film, the 
Russian leader still cites it to make a point. 

Back in 1968, Soviet tanks had already rolled into Prague, but most of us 
still saw them as a part of the same shield that saved Europe in 1945. Even 
if, unlike Volodya (as he is called by close friends) Putin, we knew of 
repressions, most of us still fervently believed that the Party had put 
things right and that the Sword would never again fall on an innocent victim. 
And the film, directed by Vladimir Basov, a talented Russian film-maker, was 
such an improvement on the drab Kozhevnikov novel. It featured a 
constellation of first-class actors, including the now famous Stanislav 
Lyubshin (who played Belov/Weiss) and Oleg Yankovski (who played Heinrich). 
Yankovski went on to star in the films of Andrei Tarkovski. 

But if The Shield and The Sword still remains so authoritative a guide to the 
Russian President-elect, it may be bad news for Russia — and the world. At 
one point, Belov/Weiss tells an SS General: "My ambition is to have as few 
people as possible to order me around, and to have the right to command as 
many as possible." Of course, as a member of the Young Communist League, 
Komsomol, Vladimir Putin was not supposed to like this kind of bad-guy line, 
at all. But to quote the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, "We are not destined to know 
how our word will resound." How has that line resounded for the former 
intelligence officer whose actions now decide the fates of millions? 

"Here at the Kremlin, nobody controls me. I control them all," Putin says of 
his status as Russian President-elect. But he doesn't find the responsibility 
all that difficult, because "life is really such a simple thing." If the 
world were indeed as simple as The Shield and The Sword depicts it, Putin 
might well find his burden light. But he has a big surprise coming: the world 
isn't shot in black and white. 

*******

#11
New York Times
April 24, 2000
[for personal use only]
Heroin Carries AIDS to a Region in Siberia
By MICHAEL WINES

IRKUTSK, Russia, April 22 -- Thirteen months ago, a young man from this 
city's rough-and-tumble north side appeared at the government railroad 
workers' hospital complaining of a head wound suffered in a family fight. A 
blood work-up soon showed that it was the least of his problems: he was also 
infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. 

A year ago, AIDS was hardly heard of in the Irkutsk region. 

That was unusual. In the entire Irkutsk region, a Siberian expanse big enough 
to accommodate France and England in one gulp, health officials had recorded 
fewer than 200 H.I.V. infections since record-keeping began in 1991. 

But when a second north-side man checked into another hospital for an 
operation a few days later, only to test positive for H.I.V., the officials 
decided to investigate. 

What they found is still resounding through Irkutsk, a run-down river town of 
650,000 just north of Mongolia. The two men, it turned out, both attended 
Vocational School 44, a training institute for river transport workers. 
Further tests uncovered six more H.I.V. cases among their classmates. 

All eight shared another deadly trait: they were addicted to heroin, which 
first appeared in the city's drug subculture only six or seven months 
earlier. 

Today a region that hardly heard of AIDS a year ago has recorded 5,000 new 
cases of H.I.V. infection and registered more than 8,500 drug addicts. Those 
are the official statistics: the true figures could be as much as 10 times as 
great, officials say. 

Perhaps nowhere else in Russia have H.I.V. infections grown so explosively. 
Heroin has proven the deadly catalyst in this epidemic. It has fueled a sharp 
rise in drug use and encouraged the needle sharing that helps to spread AIDS. 

"It's a fire there," Arkadiusz Majszyk, the United Nations AIDS 
representative in Russia, said this week. "And nobody is paying attention." 

If it is a fire, then the rest of Russia is surely smoldering. The number of 
H.I.V.-infected Russians is small so far -- 33,000 by official estimates, 
perhaps 300,000 by international ones -- but the potential for growth is 
huge. 

The United Nations, which joined Russian officials on Friday to announce a 
new effort to halt the epidemic, says the virus's spread is accelerating and 
could move beyond drug users without preventive measures. 

Already 40 per cent of Russian prostitutes, who often use drugs, are 
H.I.V.-positive. The growing prevalence of venereal diseases like gonorrhea 
make sexual transmission of the virus even easier. 

And with the poverty and general breakdowns of law and mores that followed 
the Soviet Union's collapse, prostitution and drug use are thriving. 

"The second wave of infection, which will come very soon, is heterosexual 
transmission," Mr. Majszyk said in an earlier interview. "It will go for the 
next two or three years, because the main measures which should be taken are 
connected with prevention. And to work, prevention needs time." 

Time is in short supply in Irkutsk. Heroin and H.I.V. have already penetrated 
virtually every corner of this vast region, a farrago of pristine forest and 
permafrost, dying company towns and smoky industrial cities. 

Heroin has surfaced in Bodaibo, a mountain-ringed gold mining outpost 
reachable only by small plane, and in Ust-Kut, a northern river port whose 
shipping business has all but dried up. There is H.I.V. in Mama, a moribund 
mica mining village some 400 miles north of here, and in Bratsk, a good-sized 
manufacturing center far down the north-flowing Angara River. 

The Irkutsk region is home to about two million people. Simple math says the 
rate of H.I.V. infection is somewhere between 1 in 40 and 1 in 400. 

"But you really have to measure it against the number of youth," because drug 
use and H.I.V. are largely confined to the young, said Yelena A. 
Lyustritskaya, who heads a government commission on drug abuse. "And in the 
Irkutsk region there are 300,000 people between the ages of 14 and 28. So it 
turns out that every third or fourth young man at age 18 or 20 takes drugs." 

No one knows the infection rate among those users. But Dr. Maksim Medvedev, 
who screens addicts for a private rehabilitation program called Siberia 
Without Drugs, says roughly 3 of every 10 people he examines have the AIDS 
virus. 

At the government's principal rehabilitation center, 40 of the 62 inpatients 
are infected with H.I.V. Talk to some of the current and reformed addicts at 
that center, a tidy, but rundown and cheerless place, and those numbers do 
not seem so outlandish. 

"We used to be the department for glue sniffers," one of the center's doctors 
said. "There is only one sniffer here now. There are no alcoholics. They are 
all drug addicts." 

A buzz-cut 16-year-old who moved from opium to heroin said he believed that 
he had gotten H.I.V. by sharing his needle late last year. One 17-year-old 
with H.I.V. and hepatitis, who began using opium at 15 and switched to heroin 
about six months ago, offered a common theory to explain the epidemic: 
outsiders salted the heroin with the ground-up bones of African AIDS victims. 

"The countries that supply us don't have anything, only fruits," he said. 
"Siberia's rich, and they want everybody here to die." 

Natalya Kozhevnikova, a 27-year-old from a small diamond-mining town, said 
many addicts there began using drugs at ages 12 or 13. "There is nothing to 
do -- no movie theaters, no discos, nothing," she said. 

Lelia Starodumova, 23, was a swimming champion and model before she started 
opium four years ago. Now she and her husband are heroin addicts, and she 
carries H.I.V. "Ninety-nine percent of drug addicts have H.I.V.," she said 
blandly. "The only ones who aren't sick are the ones who haven't had their 
blood tested." 

In a bleak two-room apartment across town, opposite the ramshackle factory 
that produces Russia's top fighter jet, the Su-30, Andrei Kurnosov, a 
30-year-old addict, said he had been on drugs for nine years. 

When he began, he said, he was among the top five in his law class, aiming 
for a chance to study in the United States. Now he practices petty thievery 
and rolls small-time drug sellers for the 150 rubles -- about $5 -- he needs 
daily to finance his habit. 

Mr. Kurnosov says he has avoided H.I.V. through blind luck. He has shared 
needles with other addicts, the last time three months ago, although he knows 
the dangers full well. "You don't care when you need a dose," he said. "The 
fear of remaining sober and in pain overwhelms any fear of sickness." 

Heroin's death grip on its victims offers some explanation of why H.I.V. has 
raced through Irkutsk's addict population. Opium, whose less insistent 
craving grants a user some time to find a clean syringe, once was the drug of 
choice. But unlike heroin, which needs only water to be injected, opium must 
be carefully cooked and mixed. 

So when heroin suddenly appeared some 18 months ago, addicts switched en 
masse. It first came in liquid form -- in bottles or already-loaded syringes 
-- and groups of users foolishly filled their syringes from the same bottle, 
raising the odds that one infected addict would contaminate many others. 

Today heroin comes as a powder wrapped in paper "checks," Russian slang for 
the cash-register tapes that they resemble. Fifty-ruble and 100-ruble checks 
are sold almost brazenly, from newsstands and bread kiosks and by loitering 
dealers, in any number of open-air drug markets around town. 

Addicts say many police officers have been bought off, and they may be right: 
in one muddy north-side market named Treity Posylok, or Third Settlement, a 
militia jeep cruised past knots of dealers and addicts twice in 10 minutes 
one afternoon this week. 

The police, meanwhile, say the heroin trade is ballooning despite their best 
efforts to stop it. The drug comes by truck from Afghanistan and Tajikistan, 
far to the west of Irkutsk, and is distributed throughout Siberia from the 
southern Russian city of Novosibirsk. 

Irkutsk's militia seized about 400 pounds of drugs last year, well ahead of 
previous years but a pittance in comparison with the total traffic. Smugglers 
vacuum-pack heroin or hide it in shipments of rotting onions to deter 
drug-sniffing dogs. 

More and more, the trade has shifted from individual free-lancers to 
organized crime. 

"It's difficult to control the flow," the deputy chief of the eastern Siberia 
militia, Pyotr Kobalchok, said this week. "We've even arrested members of the 
Tajikistan special services who were escorting the smugglers. It's that 
well-organized." 

Beneath such frustration over Irkutsk's plight runs a subtle but pointed 
undercurrent: this region never had such problems when the Soviet Union 
existed. Addiction and AIDS are among the consequences of freedom and 
capitalism that Westerners neglected to mention when Communist rule ended a 
decade ago. 

Law-enforcement officials unanimously blame the drug problem on the opening 
of Soviet borders and the loosening of government control over ordinary 
people. 

"Back then, there were no charter flights," said Nikolai Pushkar, chief of 
the eastern Siberia transport militia, which battles drug smuggling. 
"Everything was state-owned, and it wasn't possible to negotiate with the 
state. In the past only the president could have his own plane. Now anyone 
with money can have a plane. 

"No matter how much we criticize the Soviet system, there was a certain 
ideology. We were educated in an absolutely different way. Of course, there 
were abuses when the state interfered with family life. But there were 
standards then." 

Irkutsk has declared its own war on both of its epidemics, hiring new 
narcotics police, printing educational brochures and changing the school 
curriculum to promote what officials call "the healthy way of life." But 
beyond telling people to just say no to drugs, officials have done little to 
prevent the spread of H.I.V. among addicts and have no immediate plans to do 
so. 

Proven AIDS preventive measures, like providing drug addicts with sterile 
needles or bottles of virus-killing bleach, remain on the drawing board -- in 
part, some critics say, because politicians believe that they amount to an 
endorsement of drug use. 

"We had contact with different people last year, including people from 
foreign countries where such programs are implemented," Dimitri Piven, the 
Irkutsk region's deputy head of health care, said in an interview this week. 
"Since there are different schemes, we are choosing an optimal one for 
ourselves." Mr. Piven said officials would try to put new preventive measures 
into effect among addicts before year's end. 

The addict Mr. Kurnosov, his gaunt, rheumy face a contrast to hands swollen 
grotesquely by repeated injections, said that would be too late for many 
addicts. For many others, it already is. 

"The generation of the 70's is dying," he said. "The generation of the 80's 
is already dead -- not all, not 100 percent. But 50 percent are killing 
themselves before a natural death." 

******

#12
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 
From: Matt Bivens <bivens@imedia.ru>
Subject: IKEA Debates

I wanted to weigh in on the IKEA debates.

The Moscow Times wrote 2 front-page stories about IKEA. One noted a dispute
over
whether IKEA could hang ads in the Metro comparing their catalogs to the
Bible,
and announcing that every 10th European was conceived in an IKEA bed. The
other
noted a dispute over whether IKEA could build a bridge over the
Moscow-Sheremetyevo highway near the tank trap WWII memorial.

We then carried a full-page ad for IKEA -- which arrived in the paper one
morning as a surprise to the editorial department, including me, because
that's
the way I like it: I prefer not to know what ads are coming up.

After that, we wrote a third front-page article about the IKEA opening, which
saw 40,000 people flood the store. That's IKEA's estimate, but we had several
people from our office there -- a reporter, a photographer and some who were
just shopping -- and it was in the ballpark. (One of our staff members were
even
hurt in the crowd crush, and came limping to work). Our staff also saw the 2-3
mile traffic backups on the Moscow-Sheremetyevo higway. Our office got calls
from readers asking what the road to the airport was so clogged. And our
reporter interviewed a conductor at the Rechnoi Vokzal who said buses to the
airport were running 30-50 minutes behind schedule. All because of a furniture
store.

So we put the story on front, again. (The alternative, which we also
considered,
would have been this: Bury the story -- against our better judgment -- to
protect our own reputations from unsubstantiated allegations, given the
full-page ad. I decided it was better to give the readers our best guesstimate
of the day's news than to run scared).

Since these two stories, the ad, and the third story, some have criticized our
journalism; others have gone further and claimed that we are on the take from
IKEA. (And then there is our ad department, which wants to know just how the
hell we're going to sell IKEA any ads if the editorial department keeps
putting
them in stories on front, for free! Yes, I'm getting it from my own ad
department AND from the eXile -- for the same alleged "lack of objectivity.")

As to the critique of our reporting: some of it has real merit.

I agree we should have been more careful in our treatment of the tank trap
memorial, for example. Mostly just in the tone of our reporting in some
places,
not in the substance of it. (Since then, we have made a point of putting a
nice
photograph of the tank trap being gussied up for Victory Day celebrations
on our
front page, as one way to help adjust/round out our coverage.)

I also think some of our stories read as if we were reflexively assuming
IKEA is
at all times telling the unvarnished truth (no pun intended). In part (but
only
in part), that is because Moscow City Hall has refused to comment, leaving
IKEA
to do lots of the talking in our articles.

But I just reread our tank trap article, and I would like to point out the
following, all of which is in that article:

1) Moscow says the bridge construction should stop because it obstructs a view
of the tank trap. Khimki -- the suburb just outside Moscow where the store and
the bridge are located -- says the construction should go forward. IKEA says
Moscow approved the plan last year -- and is now changing its mind. IKEA
basically says Moscow is pursuing a vendetta against them for not settling in
Moscow. Moscow City Hall did not respond to our requests for comment on any of
this.

Kommersant, for what it's worth, has reported that Moscow has been trying for
two years to move the tank trap so as to widen the road to Shremetyevo.
Kommersant, long an anti-Luzhkov paper, has also published what purports to
be a
document from Mayor Luzhkov ordering that IKEA's "illegal activities" be
investigated -- and that a press campaign be organized to "criticize the
illegal
activities of the firm [IKEA]." Again, Moscow has not, to our knowledge,
commented.

2) So the story is not: Should a pine furniture warehouse be allowed to block
the view of a national memorial? Obviously not. But "block the view" is a
pretty
subjective concept, and the story to me is: Why can't IKEA and Russia sort
this
out more intelligently? Is it because a) IKEA is insensitive and did poor due
dilligence (which I could easily believe) or is it because b) Moscow is a
corrupt city run by wiseguys (which I could also believe). Or, of course, c) a
little of both, which it usually is.

Given the evidence at hand, however, it seems to me that b) is the most
compelling -- if only because Mayor Luzhkov, who sues anyone at the drop of a
hat, has not said boo. Kommersant has basically alleged that it can
document the
mayor profaning the tank trap -- using it to toy with national patriotic
feeling
solely so as to punish IKEA. And not a word in response from City Hall? Why?
Draw your own conclusions.

* * *

A few final remarks: I don't have a problem with The New York Times devoting a
half-page to IKEA opening in Moscow; I do have a problem with The New York
Times
totally whitewashing the FIMACO story. If you do the one, you have to do the
other. It doesn't concern me in the least that IKEA gets big play on a
given day
in New York; it appalls me and frightens me that stories like FIMACO are
spiked.
These sorts of crucial, screaming-to-be-told stories are killed, skewed or
unreported so often these days that I am starting to wonder if there is any
real
difference in their approach to the news between the leading American
papers and
Itar-Tass.

And then there is The Russia Journal, an English-language newspaper being run
into the ground with great effort and at enormous expense. It provides a
service
in that you can find Andrei Piontkovsky there, and his columns are
consistently
interesting. Other than that, as near as I can tell it exists entirely to
complain that The Moscow Times has "a monopoly" (on giving away newspapers for
free?), that we charge too much for ads, that we must be lying about
something,
etc.

The Russia Journal editorial of April 24-30 was an off-putting read --
obsequious about IKEA's "very fine merchandise" which is "modern and
aesthetically pleasing," didactic about the tank trap, obvious about the
need to
smooth the path for foreign investors, obvious about the need for those
foreigners to respect the host country's culture, blah blah blah.

But I stifled a yawn and read it because the theme that ran through it was
that
IKEA had paid The Moscow Times to orchestrate coverage:

"First came stories in the Moscow Times doing IKEA's bidding. The newspaper
was
generously rewarded with a full-page advertisement, a good deal of money for a
cash-strapped paper struggling for survival. ... The 'advertorials' or
'infommercials' in the Moscow Times were shameful but perhaps
understandable. It
received a full-page advertisement from IKEA, and times are tough in the
Russian
market at the moment. ... the newspapers that define attitudes and respect
for a
nation's heritage should stop acting like prostitutes with 'pay-per-say'
articles."

I would see this as a pretty serious set of allegations. But maybe that's just
me -- after all, it's me being called a thief and a liar, so maybe I don't
have
a proper perspective.

In any case, no one at Russia Journal thought it worth asking for my
comment --
or, as near as I can see, doing any research at all on this. (Another brief
digression: The Moscow Times is not "struggling for survival;" that's The
Russia
Journal. We actually are aiming for a small profit this year. True, we have
the
luxury of planning for a smaller profit than our competitors -- because if we
miss slightly, or if our revenues in a given month don't support our expenses
that month, we can dip into the company's pockets (i.e., into Cosmopolitan's
pocket). But that doesn't change that we are a profitable newspaper,
period. We
made buckets of money in 1996 and 1997, and posted symbolic profits (reached
partly through layoffs and cost-cutting) in 1998 and 1999.)

My favorite part is when The Russia Journal editorial says: "The press
campaign,
paid for by [IKEA], would have us believe the dispute about the overpass is
actually between Khimki and the Moscow government," and then pronounces: "A
closer investigation of the matter reveals that is utter nonsense." And what
does this closer investigation entail? Not a scrap of reporting about the
particulars, just seven turgid, preachy paragraphs about how awful World
War II
was. Well, thanks. That's the kind of analysis we've all come to expect
from The
Russia Journal, which is why it's such a failure.

At the end of the day, you could quibble with our decisions to give IKEA three
front page articles, or with how we did it. But judging from DJL alone, people
are interested, which I'd think would be the #1 criteria for a good
article; and
having surveyed all that's been written, I think our original reporting, with
all its faults, has done the best job of anyone yet explaining what's going on
with this damn furniture store/bridge/tank trap dispute we all are so
exercised
about.

Cheers,
Matt Bivens
Editor
The Moscow Times
bivens@imedia.ru

******

#13
Soccer-Russia and United States resume rivalry on soccer pitch
By Patrick Lannin

MOSCOW, April 25 (Reuters) - The Cold War might be over but there will still 
be plenty of rivalry in a friendly soccer international between Russia and 
the United States on Wednesday. 

Both sides have played down the political aspect of the friendly, the first 
time the two sides will meet in Russia. 

But some have harked back to the days of superpower confrontation. 

``To show the Americans what for,'' said a headline in the weekly edition of 
mass-selling sports newspaper Sovyetsky Sport, a reference to a celebrated 
outburst by Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev's Cold War at the United States in 
1960. 

Russian and U.S. relations have been generally warm since the collapse of the 
Soviet Union. 

But many Russians recall with nostalgia the days when the Soviet Union was a 
major world power and feel a touch of resentment that the U.S. ``won'' the 
Cold War. 

This resentment burst into the open last year when hundreds of people 
protested outside the U.S. embassy in Moscow when NATO began 11 weeks of air 
strikes against Yugoslavia, a fellow Slav state with which Moscow has good 
ties. 

Russia has also been angered by the advance of Cold War foe NATO to the east, 
swallowing former Communist bloc nations Poland, Hungary and the Czech 
Republic. 

Both soccer sides played down the idea that political rivalries would spread 
onto the soccer field. 

``Politics is not an issue here,'' said U.S. coach Bruce Arena. ``This is a 
friendly competition.'' 

``You always have these views of Russia from the past especially in 
historical settings when it was the U.S. versus Russia or U.S. versus the 
USSR in sports, kind of that 'us versus them' thing,'' said U.S. midfielder 
Chris Armas. 

``I think right now, we're really excited just to be here.'' 

Sporting rivalry has often been fuelled by political tensions, although the 
focus has usually been on the Olympics and ice hockey. 

The United States have met the Russians on the soccer pitch in various forms 
over the years, first as the Soviet Union in 1979, then as the Commonwealth 
of Independent States and for the first time as the Russian national squad in 
1993. 

But they have never before played in Moscow or anywhere else in Russia and 
have also never played a competitive match. 

Honours go to Russia, who have notched up five wins. The two have also drawn 
three times while Russia has lost once. 

Russian coach Oleg Romantsev refused to be over-confident. 

``The American side has given way to no one although they have encountered 
the grandees of world football. Therefore, one must forget the idea that 
America is not a footballing country,'' he said. 

*******

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