May 15, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4300 • 4301 

Johnson's Russia List
#4300
15 May 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com



Johnson's Russia List
#4301
15 May 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. Itar-Tass: RUSSIA'S Male Mortality Highest in World Report. 
2. Reuters: IMF sees Russia eager to reform, wants action.
3. AFP: PUTIN COULD NEED YEARS TO SEE NEED FOR PEACE TALKS: MASKHADOV.
4. Reuters: Russia's St Petersburg governor wins poll.
5. Izvestia: Pyotr AKOPOV and Svetlana BABAYEVA, PRESIDENT INITIATES STAFF STEP-DOWN.  Vladimir Putin Launches Reforms.
(re new districts)
6. Los Angeles Times: Yeltsin's Legacy. Jack Matlock reviews Leon Aron's Yeltsin.
7. Washington Post: Henry Kissinger, Mission to Moscow.
Clinton must lay the groundwork for a new relationship with Russia.
8. Vremya MN: NOSTALGIA FOR A "STRONG ARM" CHARACTERISTIC OF PESSIMISTS. (and other polling information)] 


******


#1
RUSSIA'S Male Mortality Highest in World Report. 


MOSCOW, May 15 (Itar-Tass) - Russia has the world's highest male mortality, 
the director of the Institute for Family Research, Valery Chervyakov, said at 
a press conference on Monday. 


He said the difference in life expectancy of men and women makes 14 years. 


Russia's annual loss of human potential in work age populations because of 
the high mortality rate is only comparable with consequences of war, 
Chervyakov said. 


He presented a report on Policy of Transitional-Period Control of Crisis 
Mortality which is based of statistical surveys in the Russian republic of 
Udmurtia and in Moscow. 


Alcohol abuse is a major mortality factor, the report said. 


*******


#2
IMF sees Russia eager to reform, wants action
By Svetlana Kovalyova

MOSCOW, May 15 (Reuters) - Russia's new leaders appear ready to carry out 
quick reforms, the Moscow chief of the International Monetary Fund said on 
Monday. 


But the official, Martin Gilman, said the IMF would not send a mission to 
discuss a new loan programme -- replacing a previous one that has been 
stalled since last year -- until a new government was in place. 


Gilman said the Fund was eager to see what policies would be adopted by 
President Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Kasyanov, expected to be approved by 
parliament as prime minister on Wednesday. 


"We have indications that Mr Putin, Mr Kasyanov, the new government, are 
united in understanding that Russia should move forward quickly to take 
advantage of the favourable situation to start implementing structural 
reforms, which is not going to be easy," he told an investment conference. 


IMF experts were in consultations with a team headed by economist German Gref 
that has been charged by Putin with drafting a reform programme, he told 
reporters on the sidelines. 


"The only real question in our minds is what aspects of Mr Gref's proposals 
will actually be adopted by the new government and in what time," Gilman 
said. 


"It doesn't mean that there needs to be a new shock, a new rush," he added 
later. 


IMF EXPERTS CONSULTING 


The government is expected to be named soon after the prime minister is 
confirmed in his post, and Kasyanov said last week the government should have 
an 18-month plan by early June. 


Gilman said IMF experts arriving in Moscow on Monday would stay until the end 
of the month and included fiscal and financial specialists. 


"The government needs to concentrate on making sure that the fiscal deficit 
and the fiscal balance would be sustainable in the medium-term context," he 
told reporters. 


He later said in his speech that the government needed to consider 
expenditures, referring to the Fund's long-held wish that Russia cut budget 
spending. 


Other key issues included reducing the amount of barter in the economy, tax 
reforms, strengthening the social safety net, and judicial, industrial and 
banking reforms, he said. 


Russia's savings -- much of them held in jam jars and under mattresses -- 
were poorly utilised and labour productivity was low, he added. 


Former Finance Minister Mikhail Zadornov, now a member of parliament, told 
the conference he expected passage this summer of a tax code and pro-investor 
legislation and that government reforms would be carried out, though slower 
than expected. 


However, he said the economy was strong and forecast federal budget revenues 
would be some $4 billion higher than target this year, which would compensate 
if the IMF declined to grant new loans. 


******


#3
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE: PUTIN COULD NEED YEARS TO SEE NEED FOR PEACE TALKS: 
MASKHADOV
May 14, 2000


President Vladimir Putin could need more than two years to realise that 
Russian forces cannot defeat Chechen separatists and seek peace talks, the 
rebel republic's leader told AFP Sunday. 


The newly-installed Russian head of state was making the same blunder as his 
predecessor Boris Yeltsin in believing his troops could deliver a knock-out 
blow to the rebels, said Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen president. 


Speaking in a secret location in the east of the breakaway republic, 
Maskhadov said the war would last for as long as it took the new Kremlin 
administration to understand that negotiations were inevitable. 


"We very well know and remember that during the first war (1994-96) it took 
Boris Yeltsin two years to understand that there was no chance of military 
victory and that he had to withdraw his troops. 


"As a new man on the political stage I think that he will need even more time 
because, as always, generals likes (Defence Minister Igor) Sergeyev, 
(Vladimir) Shamanov and (Gennady) Troshev and the others are telling Putin 
that there will be a military victory," Maskhadov said. 


Putin was inaugurated as Russia's second president exactly a week ago, having 
won a four-year Kremlin term largely on the back of popular support for the 
crackdown in Chechnya, now in its eighth month. 


Russian troops entered the rebel republic on October 1 in a self-styled 
military drive to wipe out "bandits" and "Islamic terrorists" using Chechnya 
as a base. 


Moscow used two bloody incursions into southern Russia last summer and a wave 
of deadly bomb attacks against civilians in Russia to justify the campaign, 
which has earned Russia sharp rebukes in Western states concerned about 
widespread reports of human rights abuses in Chechnya. 


The first Chechen war was a military disaster for Russia, and led to a 
humiliating withdrawal by federal forces which handed Chechnya de facto 
independence although its official political status remained in abeyance. 


Maskhadov said Putin was indulging in the same verbal excesses employed by 
Yeltsin during the previous conflict between Moscow and the tiny Caucasus 
republic. 


"After two years Yeltsin was forced to sit down at the negotiations table, 
precisely with his enemies. 


"This despite the fact that for two years all the mass media said there was 
no one to negotiate with, that Dudayev didn't control anything, that there 
were only a few dozen fighters left, and that they (the Russians) should only 
negotiate directly with the warlords or puppets," he said. 


Moscow has used similar charges to explain its refusal to talk to Maskhadov. 


"In any case, if not today, in a month or a year's time, they will be forced 
to come to the negotiating table and end this barbarous war and establish 
normal, civilised relations between the Russian Federation and the Chechen 
Republic of Ichkeria," Maskhadov said. 


He added that the war would continue until Moscow realized that it was 
"senseless" and that the conflict could not be resolved by military means. 


The Kremlin last week dismissed his demand for a face-to-face meeting with 
Putin to discuss a detail peace plan dispatched to Moscow. 


"We need international security guarantees, nothing more," to avoid the 
"deportations, genocide and war" suffered by the tiny Muslim nation at the 
hands of successive Russian and Soviet masters, he said. 


Maskhadov put civilian losses in the conflict at more than 40,000, while some 
1,500 fighters had died fighting federal government troops, compared to 
120,000 civilian dead and 2,870 military losses in the first war, he said. 


******


#4
Russia's St Petersburg governor wins poll
By Ron Popeski

ST PETERSBURG, Russia, May 15 (Reuters) - The governor of St Petersburg, 
Russia's second city, easily won re-election according to results issued on 
Monday, two days after President Vladimir Putin moved to tighten control over 
the regions. 


Vladimir Yakovlev, once a rival of the Kremlin leader, was credited with more 
than 70 percent of the Sunday vote in the city of five million, Putin's home 
town, which has earned a post-Soviet reputation as Russia's ``crime 
capital.'' 


Putin entered a hectic second week in office headed by a parliamentary debate 
on Wednesday on his choice as prime minister, economic specialist Mikhail 
Kasyanov. 


Kasyanov was expected easily to win the vote and Putin was due to appoint 
other key ministers in the coming days. 


The president initially tried to put up a rival to challenge Yakovlev, but 
appeared to have reconciled himself to victory by the flamboyant governor 
long before the result was declared. 


Yakovlev had fuelled his campaign on anti-Moscow rhetoric, saying outsiders 
were trying to blacken the reputation of Russia's once-elegant former 
imperial capital. 


St Petersburg's image as a stylish city of culture has been dented by murders 
of bankers and businessmen, nearly one a week last year, shown in gruesome 
detail on television. 


The most recent victim, a businessman who imported wines, was gunned down 
last week. The 1998 murder of a leading liberal politician, Galina 
Starovoitova, remains unsolved. 


Yakovlev's opponents accuse him of allowing the city's streets and historic 
buildings to fall into disrepair while he engages in costly projects of 
limited benefit to residents. 


Voters questioned on St Petersburg streets generally offered him grudging 
support, saying there was little alternative. 


``No sensations were expected and none occurred,'' the daily Smena said. 
Delovaya Panorama said the poll was ``Russia's main political intrigue after 
the presidential election.'' 


Yakovlev had worked alongside Putin in the St Petersburg administration of 
veteran Russian reformer Anatoly Sobchak, but broke ranks and defeated 
Sobchak in a 1996 election. 


Putin quit local government and Sobchak fled abroad amid corruption charges. 
Putin denounced Yakovlev when Sobchak, back in Russia, died of a heart attack 
earlier this year. 


PUTIN MOVES TO CONTROL RUSSIAN REGIONS 


On the eve of the St Petersburg poll, Putin gave notice that he planned to 
tighten central control over Russia's influential regional governors with a 
decree which divides the vast country into seven zones and allocates to each 
a presidential envoy. 


Putin has also dusted off constitutional powers neglected by his predecessor, 
Boris Yeltsin, and suspended laws passed by local bodies in several regions 
including Ingushetia, bordering rebel Chechnya, considered inconsistent with 
federal laws. 


NTV television's Itogi news programme said on Sunday further decrees were 
planned to bringing 15 more regions to heel. 


``The offensive against the regions has begun,'' NTV said. 


It remains unclear whether the new watchdog officials will usurp the powers 
of the regional governors, who for now enjoy considerable control over 
financial flows and security services. 


The governors have so far reacted cautiously. 


``I've discussed this decree with the president. Russia's regions already 
have plenty of powers. The key is for us all to work together,'' Yakovlev 
said as he voted at the weekend. 


Other politicians said Putin, a former KGB spy, was clearly bent on restoring 
Moscow's tarnished authority across Russia. 


``This is a serious signal to regional leaders,'' centrist parliamentarian 
Vladimir Ryzhkov told NTV. ``Any further steps in this direction would indeed 
make regional bosses nervous.'' 


******


#5
Izvestia
May 15, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
PRESIDENT INITIATES STAFF STEP-DOWN
Vladimir Putin Launches Reforms
Pyotr AKOPOV, Svetlana BABAYEVA

"What we need is stability," president Putin proclaimed in 
his inauguration speech on May 7. Six days later, on May 13, he 
threw a monkey wrench into the Russian state machinery having 
signed a decree to divide Russia into seven federal 
administrative districts. President Putin has launched his 
reforms.
Let us highlight the basic provisions of the document. 
To start with, the borders of the federal districts 
effectively coincide with those of the military districts. This 
coincidence is not fortuitous: the presidential administration 
has been talking of the need to group regions according to the 
cluster principle of the military districts for the past couple 
of months. 
The towns where the military districts are headquartered 
are made the federal districts' centres. The two notable 
exceptions are Samara and Chita: Nizhni Novgorod is the centre 
of the Volga District, and Novosibirsk, of the Siberian 
District. One explanation is that the "expat communities" of 
the two latter cities have been successful in their lobbyism. 
Still, Konstantin Titov, the current and the apparent 
future governor of the Samara Region which has not been named 
the centre of a federal district, has backed Putin's decree: 
"It limits the rights of the regions in no way."
Secondly, no ethnic republic has been made the centre of a 
federal district - Moscow seems to be poised to equalize all 
constituent members with a little help from the regional 
administrators who are interested in doing away with the 
principle of somebody being the "first among equals." The 
ethnic republics are currently more equal than others. 
Even Tatarstan's Mintimer Shaimiyev has appreciated the 
need to budge: he said he had nothing against the decree, 
provided the point at issue was to give new powers to the 
president's plenipotentiary envoys, rather than to transform 
the state setup.
Thirdly, the wording of the new regulations on 
plenipotentiary envoys is much tougher than the previous 
document - the Security Council has penned it. Thus, in the old 
version, a plenipotentiary envoy "facilitated the observance of 
federal laws, decrees and presidential instructions;" the new 
version tasks him to "monitor the observance." 
In the old version, the president's man had to "advise the 
president accordingly;" in the new version, he is directed to 
"organise control" and "effect the president's personnel 
policy," plus provide "regular national security reports." 
There is a new provision: a presidential envoy "analyses the 
law-enforcement agencies" performance and... personnel 
placement in them." Pending an amendment which is expected to 
remove governors and mayors from the process of firing local 
police force chiefs, the provision means that the provincial 
law-enforcement structures" will soon be controlled - via 
plenipotentiary envoys - by Moscow alone. 
These correspondents have been told that the envoys are 
also expected to be given powers to conduct the president's 
policies in emergency situations and in conditions of martial 
law. 
Will the governors be compensated in any way? They would 
love to control the local governments - many provincial 
administrators would not even mind the Kremlin's right to fire 
them. But Putin will hardly make this present to them. 
The "power vertical" is yet to be reinforced and the next 
step - to be made sometime this coming summer - is to publicly 
fire a governor for multiple violations of the federal 
legislation. A law to the effect is being drafted by the Duma: 
a governor who has violated the law twice will be thrown the 
book at before he knows what hit him. 
Other stages of the reform include elections to the 
Federation Council - but the regional administrators are exempt.
To effect these reforms, Putin will have to overcome serious 
resistance on the part of the regional elites who have grown 
used to doing what and when they like. 
But this resistance is not the largest obstacle yet. The 
presence or lack of political will be the earnest of success - 
or failure - of the reforms whose first stage was launched on 
May 13. 
If the new president understands what he wants to attain - 
and restoring the "power vertical" is but the minimum 
requirement for society's recovery - he will do it.

******


#6
Los Angeles Times
May 14, 2000 
[for personal use only]
Book Review 
Yeltsin's Legacy 
By JACK F. MATLOCK JR. 
Jack F. Matlock Jr. is the author of "Autopsy on an Empire: The American 
Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union." 


YELTSIN A Revolutionary Life By Leon Aron; St. Martin's Press: 934 pp., $35 


"There is nothing more difficult to plan or more uncertain of success or more 
dangerous to carry out than an attempt to introduce new institutions," 
Niccolo Machiavelli advised his prince in the early 16th century. Boris 
Yeltsin seems to have understood the difficulty, because he wrote shortly 
after becoming president of Russia that "[n]ot a single reform effort in 
Russia has ever been completed." Fortunately, this did not prevent him from 
trying to build a new Russia from the debris of the collapsed communist 
empire. It should not be surprising that his success was less than complete. 


Nevertheless, Russia's difficult transition has surprised many observers. 
Acting as if the Russian Federation began its independent history in 1991 
with a well-functioning economy and society, many journalists and scholars 
have tended to heap all the blame for Russia's problems on the former 
president and the persons he placed in power. These critics forget (if they 
ever understood) that when the Soviet Union collapsed, the country was on the 
brink of famine. Its currency was worthless as a repository of value. Control 
of the command economy had collapsed. None of the institutions essential to a 
market economy existed, and Russia's Communist-dominated legislature was 
against creating them. 


Furthermore, more than seven decades of totalitarian control had atomized 
society. The country had been run as a giant criminal enterprise, with the 
Communist Party controlling all institutions from behind the scenes. Laws 
were enforced only when it was in the interest of the party. Courts decided 
cases not on their merits but on the basis of "telephone law"--the unofficial 
but binding diktat of Communist Party officials. At least a quarter of the 
gross national product was consumed by a voracious military-industrial 
complex.


To survive, Russia required not just reform but a complete revolution in the 
way the economy and government worked, in the structure of society and in 
public attitudes and habits. There was no way to carry out these revolutions 
in sequence; they had to occur simultaneously because progress in one was 
normally a precondition for progress in others.


No conceivable political leadership could have managed a successful 
transformation in months, or even in a few years. Some of the changes 
inevitably would have taken more than a single generation to complete. Yet 
those who condemn Yeltsin's leadership seem to assume that a miracle was 
possible and that anything short of a miracle evidence of political failure.


Leon Aron takes on such feckless critics in his detailed but readable 
biography and offers a defense of the former Russian president more powerful 
than Yeltsin himself has managed to articulate. "Yeltsin: A Revolutionary 
Life" is, furthermore, not just a biography. A century ago the book might 
have been entitled "The Life and Times of Boris Yeltsin," because it deals as 
much with the times in which Yeltsin lived as it does with the man himself. 
But understanding the context in which Yeltsin rose to power and the 
circumstances under which he exercised it is essential if we are to place in 
perspective the achievements and failures of the first president of the 
Russian Federation.


Perspective is the critical element. Yeltsin's shortcomings are numerous and 
have been so well publicized that they obscure his achievements. His 
recurrent bouts with illness, his lack of attention to detail, his 
ill-considered comments (often retracted), his habit of dismissing top 
officials without apparent preparation or justification, his occasional abuse 
of alcohol, his alleged tolerance of corruption in his official family--the 
list could be extended--have dominated the news from Russia in the daily 
press and on radio and television. These are not trivial faults, but they 
involve matters that are far from decisive for Russia's future. The real 
question is whether Yeltsin managed to set Russia on a course that can lead 
to a free, democratic and eventually prosperous society or whether he 
squandered the opportunity to do so.


In Aron's words, "If . . . a Russia peaceful, free, open to the world and 
gradually growing richer begins to take root and solidify," Yeltsin can be 
placed in an "exclusive club" of those "who took over great countries on the 
very brink of a national catastrophe, held them together, repaired and 
restored them, and, in the process changed them fundamentally for the better."


* * *
Aron's narrative ends a few months before Boris Yeltsin's surprise 
resignation at the end of 1999. Nevertheless, everything that has happened 
since his book was written is consistent with the judgments offered in the 
biography. Despite widespread speculation throughout Yeltsin's tenure that he 
would subvert the electoral process and never relinquish power voluntarily, 
he left office in a manner consistent with the constitution and made clear 
that his successor would have to win an election.


Yeltsin's critics generally fault him for bungling Russia's transition. In 
their eyes, he allowed dreamy theoreticians to impose "shock therapy" on the 
nation's economy in 1992, with the result that inflation soared, wiping out 
savings. Then, it is alleged, rapid privatization of most state assets 
brought on the rule of super-rich oligarchs. Yeltsin also was accused of 
flouting democratic principles by sending tanks against a rebellious 
parliament in 1993 and of violating campaign spending laws when he won 
reelection in 1996.


As Aron demonstrates, none of these arguments is persuasive. They take 
actions out of context and ignore both cause and effect. They sometimes 
measure Russia by standards no country lives up to. As for "shock therapy" in 
1992, it is clear that without the price liberalization that was immediately 
introduced, Russia would probably have experienced a famine. A sharp decline 
in the ruble's value was inevitable because of the orgy of money printing 
that marked Mikhail Gorbachev's last years in office. The Russian Supreme 
Soviet opposed most of the "therapy" and ordered the State Bank (under its 
control, not Yeltsin's or his government's) to continue heavy subsidies to 
state industries, which produced hyper-inflation. Crime of all types became 
more apparent because it was not suppressed by a police state and elements 
from the police state became part of the criminal world. Was this the result 
of bad policy or inevitable as the Yeltsin governments tried to avoid the 
abuses of a totalitarian past while building the basis for a civil society 
and the rule of law? What nation in history has managed to avoid similar 
lawlessness (though not always to the same degree) as it built the 
institutions of a market economy? Neither the author nor this reviewer can 
think of any.


There is no question that rapid privatization produced what can appropriately 
be termed grand larceny of state assets and that it has been followed by a 
pattern of insider deals, corrupt relations with government, special 
privileges and the further impoverishment of persons near the economic bottom 
of Russia's highly stratified society. The effects are serious, and Russia 
still has not overcome them. But those who assert that this result could 
easily have been avoided have not explained how. Nobody has devised a 
practical plan for privatizing state assets fairly when there are no sources 
of legitimate private capital in society.


There were only two courses open to the Russian government in 1992 and 1993: 
to privatize rapidly whatever this required or to delay privatization until 
more institutions had been built to support a market economy. The latter 
course, however, had a catch--two catches, in fact. Delaying privatization 
would have preserved enough of the old system to prevent building the 
institutions a market economy needed. (This has been the experience of 
Ukraine, which delayed large-scale privatization.) Also, if privatization had 
been delayed, attempts to reestablish state control of the economy (a goal 
held by the majority in Russia's parliament at that time) would have been 
likely. Understandably, Yeltsin opted for the quick and dirty privatization 
managed by Anatoly Chubais. It left much control of the economy in the hands 
of the managers from the Communist era and the newly minted oligarchs but 
avoided total economic collapse and the civil conflict that would have 
followed.


So far as representative government is concerned, Yeltsin used military force 
against a rump Supreme Soviet in 1993, but only after its leaders had 
repeatedly violated the constitution and had attempted to seize power by 
force, having rejected Yeltsin's proposal to settle their differences in a 
new election. The dispersal of the Supreme Soviet was followed by a 
referendum that approved a new constitution and an election that put 
Yeltsin's opponents in control of the new parliament, renamed the State Duma. 
One of its first acts was to grant amnesty to those who had plotted against 
Gorbachev in 1991 and Yeltsin in 1993--an act which Yeltsin opposed but 
accepted, as he had an earlier court decision permitting the restoration of a 
Communist Party.


The war against Chechnya that Yeltsin authorized in 1994, in contrast, was an 
egregious error--though not, as some charged, an act of imperialism, since 
Chechnya was legally a subject of the Russian Federation with a right to 
autonomy but not to secession. Furthermore, the Chechen leaders had seized 
power by force, so their authority to represent the desires of the people in 
Chechnya was unproven.


Nevertheless, the war not only ended in failure and united many Chechens 
against Russia, but also violated the principle established by Gorbachev, 
that force should not be used to solve political problems. Gorbachev's 
fidelity to that principle had permitted Russia and the other Soviet 
republics to gain their freedom from the Soviet Union without setting off a 
civil war. The 1994-96 war against the Chechens seriously damaged Russia's 
embryonic democratic institutions and its image abroad. It was overwhelmingly 
unpopular and was settled shortly after Yeltsin's reelection in 1996 on terms 
that conceded all important Chechen demands except formal sovereignty. That 
was left to be decided by 2002.


When Russia reopened the war just after Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin prime 
minister in 1999, Russian public opinion had changed. This time, it was a 
popular war. Russians had seen Chechnya become a center of crime and 
lawlessness, replete with Islamic militants intent on establishing Sharia 
law, including public hangings, severed hands and the like. Kidnapping had 
become a daily occurrence, and when ransom was not paid promptly, the victims 
were often murdered. The elected government in Chechnya seemed either 
impotent or complicit in the crimes. Finally, forces from Chechnya invaded 
Dagestan, a neighboring Russian province, and terrorists--assumed without 
clear proof to be Chechen--bombed apartment houses in Moscow and other 
Russian cities, killing hundreds of people.


The second war in Chechnya, still under way, occurred after "Yeltsin: A 
Revolutionary Life" went to press. It has been conducted with inexcusable 
brutality and will doubtless hamper development of a humane, law-based 
government in Russia. But Chechnya has been an exception in Moscow's policy 
toward the Russian Federation's territorial units. Relations with the other 
88 have been negotiated without the threat of violence. The resort to 
military force that has occurred in Chechnya is unlikely to be repeated 
elsewhere.


We cannot know history's ultimate judgment of Boris Yeltsin. His reputation 
is likely to be controversial for a long time, as Russia either progresses 
toward a more just and stable society, stays mired in corrupt crony 
capitalism or retrogresses into the authoritarianism by which it has 
traditionally been ruled. Nevertheless, only those blind to the realities of 
Soviet communism can argue that Yeltsin left the country in worse condition 
than that prevailing when he took office.


In Aron's words, Yeltsin "managed, somehow, to resolve the key dilemma of 
modernity. . . . He engineered a transition to the market without resorting 
to terror and dictatorship, and he married capitalism and democracy in a 
country that had known little of the former and none of the latter." The 
author might have added that Yeltsin continued to cooperate with the United 
States and its European allies even when they exacerbated his problems at 
home by effectively excluding a friendly Russia from European security 
decisions and using NATO in ways they had promised not to.


Aron proposes the following one-sentence summation of Boris Yeltsin's life 
work: "He made irreversible the collapse of Soviet totalitarian communism, 
dissolved the Soviet Russian empire, ended state ownership of the 
economy--and held together and rebuilt his country while it coped with new 
reality and losses."


If you agree with this assessment, you will read this book with delight, 
because it provides abundant evidence to support its conclusions. If you 
disagree, you owe it to yourself to read it. But beware: It could well change 
your mind. 


******


#7
Washington Post
May 15, 2000
[for personal use only]
Mission to Moscow
Clinton must lay the groundwork for a new relationship with Russia.
By Henry Kissinger
Los Angeles Times Syndicate


President Clinton's visit to Moscow next month will take place in anomalous 
circumstances. The new Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is developing 
policies intended to shape Russia's future. President Clinton, near the end 
of his eight-year term, must be careful not to foreclose his successor's 
options.


The difference in perspective is compounded by a gulf between the two 
leaders' perceptions of the nature of international politics. Putin has 
articulated a set of principles to enable Russia to resume the role of a 
great power and "to uphold its national interests in the international 
arena." The Clinton administration seems to believe that reform of Russia's 
domestic institutions is the major solvent to bring about stable 
Russo-American relationships. Hence its policy emphasizes constant 
exhortation regarding internal developments in Moscow. And its political 
agenda stresses a view of arms control that, if implemented, is certain to 
trigger a political explosion in this country.


This is the real gap that challenges the two leaders when they meet in 
Moscow. Great powers have interests that they seek to vindicate by their own 
efforts or to adjust by diplomacy. But the administration policy toward 
Russia has focused on Russia's domestic redemption. The Moscow visit can make 
progress if it begins the process of treating Russia as a serious power. It 
will fail if it becomes the occasion for disquisitions on Russia's domestic 
structure or for arms-control schemes doomed to failure in America.


Western leaders have pursued a dialogue with the new Russian president. They 
have showered him with accolades testifying to his intelligence and 
commitment to reform, and, somewhat condescendingly, as a "quick learner." In 
the process, they have abandoned the moral precepts they proclaimed less than 
a year earlier. Then, they justified their Kosovo policy as a new moral 
dispensation that would no longer ignore domestic repression as an internal 
matter. But when, six months later, Chechnya produced an almost precise 
replica of Kosovo with even higher civilian casualties, they changed their 
tune. The "freedom fighters" of Kosovo were transformed into "rebels" in 
Chechnya. President Clinton specifically approved Russia's right "to oppose 
violent Chechen rebels."


Having deplored excessive self-righteousness over Kosovo, I do not advocate 
it as a precedent for Chechnya. But the rapid oscillation in the West's 
foreign policy between extremes of moralism and expediency leaves a vacuum 
with respect to exactly what the new Russian leader is to be engaged about.


Our European allies have made clear their aim. It is to establish Europe as 
Putin's principal interlocutor during the formative period of the new Russian 
presidency and our presumed preoccupation with our own presidential campaign. 
Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed a role for Britain as "pivot" and applied 
it to the contentious issue of missile defense: "Our role is very much to 
build understanding of the various points of view, both of Russia and the 
United States"--not exactly a ringing endorsement of the American position.


The West has a stake in a peaceful and democratic Russia that would 
contribute to a more stable international order. And Russia is clearly in a 
historic transition. But history, culture and geography have left a legacy 
that cannot be removed by "dialogue" for its own sake. Throughout Boris 
Yeltsin's period in office, Western leaders acted as if they were a party to 
Russian internal politics. Ignoring a corrupt economy and autocratic 
governmental practices, President Clinton, on the occasion of Yeltsin's 
resignation, spoke of Russia as having emerged as "a pluralist political 
system and civil society competing in the world markets and plugged into the 
Internet." He explained Yeltsin's leaving office as "rooted in his core 
belief in the right and ability of the Russian people to choose their own 
leader. . . ." Almost every other observer viewed Yeltsin's resignation as a 
skillful manipulation of the Russian constitution in order to entrench as his 
successor a protege practically unknown six months earlier. And in Russia, 
the Yeltsin era is widely viewed as a surrender to an American strategy to 
keep Russia weak.


In these circumstances, Clinton's journey to Moscow is threatened by premises 
disproved by experience. "The president," announced his spokesman Joe 
Lockhart, "hopes to use his visit to speak to a broad spectrum of Russian 
leaders who are building new democratic institutions, civil society and a new 
market economy." But when heads of state meet, their goal should be to 
mitigate existing differences or indicate a specific direction toward 
cooperative relations. Lectures on domestic institutions often create, above 
all, the impression of American presumption and domineering.


Russian domestic reform is not a favor Putin does for America; it is imposed 
on him by reality, as he himself has pointed out. There are some ways we can 
and should help, but in the end, Russian domestic economic reform is a 
Russian internal problem that depends largely on Russian decisions.


The deepest foreign policy challenge posed by Russia is how a potentially 
powerful country with a turbulent history can evolve a stable relationship 
with the rest of the world. For four centuries, imperialism has been Russia's 
basic foreign policy as it has expanded from the region around Moscow to the 
shores of the Pacific, the gates of the Middle East and the center of Europe, 
relentlessly subjugating weaker neighbors and seeking to overawe those not 
under its direct control. From the Holy Alliance to the Brezhnev Doctrine, 
Russia often has identified its security with imposing its domestic structure 
on its neighbors and beyond. Now reduced to the boundaries of Peter the Great 
in Europe, Russia must adjust to the loss of its empire even as it builds 
historically unfamiliar domestic institutions. The West does itself no favor 
by pretending that Russia already has culminated a process that is only in 
its inception or by celebrating Putin for qualities he has not been in office 
long enough to demonstrate.


Paradoxically, Putin may prove an effective interlocutor because he does not 
seem to play the game of appealing to our preconceptions. He emphatically 
does not share the Western assessment of Russia's internal evolution. In his 
seminal manifesto, published late last year, Putin declared that "it will not 
happen, if it ever happens at all, that Russia will become the second edition 
of, say, the United States or Great Britain. . . . For Russians, a strong 
state is not an anomaly, which should be got rid of. Quite the contrary, they 
see it as a guarantor of order and the initiator and the main driving force 
of any change." Putin explicitly reaffirmed Russia's imperial tradition in 
his inaugural address: "We must know our history, know it as it really is, 
draw lessons from it and always remember those who created the Russian state, 
championed its dignity and made it a great, powerful and mighty state." 


This attitude was reflected in a Russian national security policy document 
adopted on Oct. 3, when Putin was prime minister: " . . . to create a single 
economic domain with the members of the Commonwealth of Independent 
States"--that is, all the former constituent republics of the Soviet Union 
(with the exception of the Baltics, which are nevertheless facing constant 
Russian pressure).


The document does not define what is meant by a "single domain." Even were it 
possible to confine such an ambition to the economic field, it surely would 
be resisted by almost all the former subject states. But Russian policy under 
Yeltsin and, so far, under Putin has as one of its objectives to make 
independence so painful for those states--by the presence of Russian troops, 
the encouragement of civil wars or economic pressure--as to cause return to 
the Russian womb to appear as the lesser of two evils.


Thus the leader Clinton is about to meet seeks cooperation on economics, but 
in politics he will attempt to generate countervailing pressures to what he 
considers America's quest for domination. Russia is bound to have a special 
concern for security around its vast periphery, and the West should be 
careful about extending its military system too close to Russia's borders. 
But, equally, the West has a right to ensure that Russia will seek security 
by measures short of domination. If Russia becomes comfortable in its present 
frontiers--and with 11 time zones there is no obvious reason for 
claustrophobia--its relations with the outside world rapidly will normalize. 
But if the strengthening of Russia as a result of reform produces gradual 
encroachment--as, in effect, all its neighbors fear--Russia's quest for 
domination sooner or later will evoke Cold War reactions.


Thus for a discussion with Putin to be meaningful, Clinton needs to focus on 
two subjects. One is to ensure that Russia's voice is respectfully heard in 
the emerging international system. At the same time, President Clinton must 
stress--against all his inclinations--that geopolitics has not been 
abolished. America cannot remain indifferent to Russia's support of Iran's 
nuclear program, its systematic attack on American policies in the Gulf, 
especially in Iraq, and its eagerness to foster groupings whose proclaimed 
aim is to weaken so-called American hegemony. America should respect 
legitimate Russian security interests. But this presupposes a Russian 
definition of "legitimate" compatible with the independence of Russia's 
neighbors and such serious American concerns as proliferation of nuclear and 
missile technology.


President Clinton has implied another major objective on his visit to Moscow: 
a breakthrough on arms control, specifically regarding the ABM treaty, 
missile defense and reductions of offensive weapons. A word of caution is in 
order. The administration is highly uncomfortable with missile defense. If 
unavoidable for domestic reasons, it clearly prefers to squeeze it into a 
framework where it is confined to threats from so-called rogue states such as 
North Korea. Yet an ABM system aimed at North Korea also will be useful 
against a threat from China, and a strategic defense against China that omits 
Russia implies a definition of national security priorities that will 
profoundly affect all other international relationships. A lame-duck 
president should not attempt definitive breakthroughs on so controversial a 
subject.


As for offensive limitations, the administration is proceeding with the same 
avoidance of public and congressional consultations that wrecked the 
Comprehensive Test Ban treaty. There has been no public discussion or serious 
briefing with respect to the implications of a ceiling of 1,500 warheads that 
the administration reportedly seeks. How is this to be distributed among 
existing categories of weapons? Does it require different types of weapons? 
What is the relationship to missile defense? What would be the impact on 
global deterrence and foreign policy commitments? Among the priorities of a 
new administration must be to develop a nuclear strategy to answer such 
questions without resorting to stale numbers inherited from the Cold War.


While Putin is concentrating on the modernization of Russia, which has its 
own momentum, our challenge is to deal with its international consequences. 
And, in what is left of the Clinton administration, the best that can be 
achieved in this respect is to start, rather than conclude, a dialogue.


The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of Kissinger 
Associates, an international consulting firm that has clients with business 
interests in many countries abroad. 


******


#8
Vremya MN
May 12, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
NOSTALGIA FOR A "STRONG ARM" CHARACTERISTIC OF PESSIMISTS 


QUESTION: Are there situations when the nation needs a
strong and powerful leader, the "strong arm"?
OPINION OF ORDINARY RUSSIANS:
Today power should be concentrated in one authority ...... 29%
Our people always need a "strong arm" .................... 41%
Power must not be allowed to concentrate
in one authority.......................................... 17%
Difficulty to answer...................................... 13%

OPINION OF THE ELITE:
Today power should be concentrated in one authority ...... 21%
Our people always need a "strong arm" .................... 14%
Power must not be allowed to concentrate 
in one authority.......................................... 43%
Difficulty to answer...................................... 22%


OPINION OF A JOURNALIST (Nikolai Ulyanov):

Russians Longing for "Strong Arm"
Such a difference between the opinions of ordinary Russians
and the elite on the usefulness of a "strong arm" for the 
country
is the projection of an old Russian dispute about the aims and
the means. The majority of ordinary people, who better know the
real conditions of the lower and middle cross-sections of our
society, which is the country's main productive force, - 70% of
polled respondents - are for tough leadership. These
cross-sections formed back in the Soviet era. Their
representatives remember the times of rather stringent 
discipline
in the work place, in the army and in public life and associate
such conditions with the country's sufficient might. The elite,
or, to be more exact, its considerable part, in this case
expresses the longing for liberal freedoms, which is
characteristic of Russian intellectuals, regardless of the
situation in the country and in the world.
At the same time, a sufficiently high percentage of this
group of respondents - 35% - admit the possibility of a "strong
arm" (compared with 45% of the liberal members of the creme de 
la
creme). This is the result of the slowing down of democratic
reforms in Russia and the growing opinion among intellectuals
that liberal values per se cannot be the panacea against all
social ailments, on the one hand, and the popularity of Vladimir
Putin, an undoubtedly tough and resolute but also modern and
educated politician, among them, on the other.

QUESTION: THE GOVERNMENT SAYS THAT THE MILITARY STAGE OF 
THE
STRUGGLE AGAINST TERRORISTS IN CHECHNYA IS NEARING COMPLETION.
HOW WOULD YOU APPRAISE THE RESULT OF THIS OPERATION?

OPINION OF ORDINARY RUSSIANS:
Federal troops have won and rebels have been routed.......... 
10%
The aim has not been achieved and the victims among
Russian servicemen and peaceful civilians were in vain....... 
23%
The remaining armed rebels will continue a guerilla
war.......................................................... 
47%
Difficulty to answer......................................... 
20%
OPINION OF THE ELITE:
Federal troops have won and rebels have been routed ......... 
7%
The aim has not been achieved and the victims among
Russian servicemen and peaceful civilians were in vain ...... 
29%
The remaining armed rebels will continue a guerilla
war.......................................................... 
64%


OPINION OF A JOURNALIST (Alexander Shaburkin):

Russians Are Ready for Further Hostilities
The overwhelming majority of respondents have a realistic
view of the situation in Chechnya. This is true of those who
think that the aim of the counter-terrorist operation has not
been achieved and who are sure that a guerilla war will 
continue.
These two answers, in fact, do not exclude but sooner supplement
each other. The results of the poll show that Russians are
morally ready for the continuation of the military action in the
Northern Caucasus.
According to official statistics, there are upwards of 
5,000
extremists, including 2,000 in the mountains and 3,000 who have
managed to infiltrate flatlands controlled by federal forces. 
The
latter figure is particularly alarming, it characterizes the 
term
"guerilla war", for which our military have such a strong
aversion. Support from local population is the main criterion of
this type of hostilities. This is what scares the Russian
military. The three thousand extremists who have been dispersed
across the flatlands are acting with the direct support of local
"peaceful" civilians. This does not give any ground to talk of
any support for federal authorities on the part of local people.
Absolutely right are those respondents who think that the
aim of the operation has not been achieved. Federal forces have
not completed their mission for the elimination of terrorists in
Chechnya as a whole and they have to continue it. This is borne
out by daily "hot news reports" from the Northern Caucasus. The
main goal of the entire campaign is slightly different. It is to
return the Chechen republic into the Russian legal framework and
ensure normal life there. And it will be a long way to this goal
even after the end of the hostilities.

QUESTION: HOW WILL RELATIONS BETWEEN PRESIDENT PUTIN AND
HIH GOVERNMENT, ON THE ONE SIDE, AND OLIGARCHS, ON THE OTHER,
DEVELOP?

OPINION OF ORDINARY RUSSIANS:
Putin will overcome the influence of oligarchs
on the regime ............................................. 21%
Putin will put an end to the excessive influence of 
some oligarchs, compared with others ...................... 24%
Oligarchs will completely take power into their
hands...................................................... 13%
Difficulty to answer....................................... 42%
OPINION OF THE ELITE:
Putin will overcome the influence of oligarchs 
on the regime.............................................. 14%
Putin will put an end to the excessive influence of
some oligarchs, compared with others ...................... 57%
Difficulty to answer....................................... 29%


OPINION OF A JOURNALIST (Yekaterina Grigoryeva):

Struggle Against Oligarchs Is Outside of Public Interest
Oligarchs can sleep tight: despite repeated assurances by
the new President that they all will live like ordinary bakers,
few people believe that this will happen. The elaboration of a
pattern of relations with oligarchs is one of the rather
important tasks for Putin. Opinion polls show, however, that 
this
process is only beginning.
The majority of respondents were unable to answer how
relations between Putin and his team, on the one hand, and
oligarchs, on the other, will develop. It is indicative that the
percentage of those who had difficulty to answer this question 
is
also rather high among the elite. In the meantime, it is
difficult to expect other results. While the progress and 
results
of the Chechen campaign are made public every day and are known
to practically all, the declared campaign to make the oligarchs
"equidistant" is doomed to remain in the shade: such processes 
do not tolerate too much openness.
It seems, at the same time, that the toughest of Vladimir
Putin's pronouncements have yielded fruit. Only 13% of Russians
have a pessimistic view that oligarch will completely take power
into their hands. The elite appraises the situation differently
in principle, believing that this is no longer topical. This is
evidence of the beginning of the destruction of the legend about
omnipotent oligarchs. As a matter of fact, this is the aim that
Putin had in mind when he promised that his decisions would be
based exclusively on considerations of national interests, 
rather than the benefits of big capital.
Nonetheless, the largest number of respondents believe that
Putin will be able only to put an end to the excessive influence
of some oligarchs, compared with others. But this, too, will be
not a bad result of his activity. By and large, the final 
victory is a long shot yet.

QUESTION: HOW HAVE YOU OFTEN FELT LATELY?

OPINION OF ORDINARY RUSSIANS:
Calm and sure .............................................. 27%
Anxious and gloomy ......................................... 24%
Good and jolly ............................................. 19%
Indifferent ................................................ 16%
Irritated and aggressve .................................... 5%
Difficulty to answer ....................................... 9%
OPINION OF THE ELITE:
Calm and sure .............................................. 50%
Anxious and gloomy ......................................... 7%
Good and jolly ............................................. 29%
Indifferent ................................................ 14%

OPINION OF A JOURNALIST (Igor Shevelev):

Things Seem to Be Changing for the Better Strange as it 
might seem, Russians are not in a very bad mood, judging by the 
opinion poll results. Whether this is because of spring or due 
to the growing number of jobs, positive feelings are 
characteristic of nearly half of the respondents. We should 
bear in mind that a quarter of our population did not reveal 
their attitude to themselves or to the world and only a third 
feel either gloomy or irritated and aggressive. As a matter of 
fact, we can watch something of the kind in any bus or Metro 
train: some people are smiling as they think looking into the 
window, others are dozing and still others are trying to pick 
on those next to them.
The subject of the poll is so unstable and subjective that 
it is difficult to figure out why some people think that their 
life is lost, while others, who are in the same situation, are 
quite content with everything. A person without permanent abode 
can feel happier than a bank director, though both belong to 
the famous risk groups. Jean Jacques Rousseau was sure, for 
instance, that only "natural" people, that is, insufficiently 
educated people, could be happy.
This poll gives food to think whether this judgement is 
really true. Those belonging to the elite of the society think 
they are much happier than ordinary people. Four-fifths of our 
society's creme de la creme are sure to sing in the bathroom in 
the morning, as they are overwhelmed with feelings and good 
mood.
On the other hand, only one in five members of the elite bears 
the look of stoic indifference or solemn gloom, probably 
knowing something special. Anyway, the results of this opinion 
poll do not confirm the conclusion that knowing too much is 
fraught with making one feel sad.
-------------------------------
"Opinion of Ordinary Russians" data are based on the 
representative results of the weekly polls conducted by the 
Agency for Regional Political Research, or ARPI, among 1,600 
people in each of the regions of the Russian Federation.
"Opinion of the Elite" data are based on the results of 
opinion polls conducted by experts in different spheres, 
including politics, economics, mass media, culture and sports;
experts asked the same questions as the ARPI pollsters.

*******



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