July 11th, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4395 • 4396  •

Johnson's Russia List
#4396
11 July 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: Tax police raid Russian business giants following Putin threat.
2. Moscow Times EDITORIAL: Problems Lie With Putin, Not Media.
3. Jamestown Foundation Monitor: Chechnya largely forgotten, financial aid flows again into Russia.
4. The Russia Journal: Francesca Mereu, Foreigners get rough deal at hands of Moscow press.
5. Kommersant: Yuri CHERNEGA, PUTIN OUR TEFLON PRESIDENT. (poll)
6. Alvin Rabushka: New Russian Web Site.
7. Newsweek International: Andrew Nagorski, The Polish-Russian Gap.The hope that Moscow would copy Warsaw’s enthusiastic embrace of freedom? It’s gone. 
8. The Times (UK): Giles Whittell, Russia's population goes into free fall.
9. Moscow Times: Anna Badkhen, SAY WHAT?: Swallowed Words Ensure Our Freedom.
10. The Guardian (UK): Charlotte Denny, ELUSIVE BOOM SEEMS AS FAR AWAY AS EVER.
11. The Guardian (UK): Larry Elliott, POVERTY AT THE HEART OF A NATION.
12. The Independent (UK): Patrick Cockburn, Hundreds shot each 
year, but few killers caught.
13. BBC MONITORING: RUSSIAN TYCOON BEREZOVSKIY OUTLINES PLAN TO 
CREATE OPPOSITION PARTY.
14. BBC MONITORING: INFLUENTIAL RUSSIAN JOURNALIST LAUNCHES 
BLISTERING ATTACK ON PUTIN. (Kiselev)] 

******

#1
Tax police raid Russian business giants following Putin threat

MOSCOW, July 11 (AFP) - 
Tax police raided some of Russia's largest energy and media giants Tuesday in 
a new wave of searches that followed President Vladimir Putin's vow to end 
privileges for the country's business elite.

Police first launched a criminal probe into the management of Russia's 
biggest oil firm LUKoil after accusing it of falsifying tax refunds.

The market capitalization of LUKoil, Russia's most publicly traded company, 
crashed 354 million dollars on the news, Interfax reported, while Moscow's 
tiny market fell 3.3 percent by midday.

Police said criminal charges may eventually be filed against the company's 
chief Vagit Alekperov, one of Russia's most prominent 'oligarchs' who enjoyed 
cozy Kremlin ties under Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin.

At the same time, tax police also searched the offices of the under-fire 
Media-MOST company headed by Vladimir Gusinsky, a critic of Putin who is 
already facing fraud charges.

The office of the company's flagship NTV television station were raided by 
police for the first time, while a company official said nearly all documents 
dealing with the company's finances had been confiscated.

NTV chairman Yevgeny Kiselyov used the the company's highly-rated analytical 
news show on Sunday to deliver a heated attack on Putin's recent policies, 
calling the president "the chief bureaucrat in our country."

And still another police raid struck the offices of natural gas giant 
Gazprom, Media-MOST's largest creditor and shareholder who analysts say has 
been under heavy Kremlin pressure to call in its loans, thus breaking the 
fledgling media company's back.

Yet more bad news struck established Russian businesses when the Kommersant 
business daily reported that prosecutors were demanding a 140-million-dollar 
payment from Vladimir Potanin, who once held a senior economic government 
post.

Potanin is accused by prosecutors of cheating the state out of that money 
when he acquired the giant Norilsk Nickel metals plant at an artificially low 
price during an auction which he himself helped organize in 1995.

In all, political observers and market watchers said the tax crackdown 
amounted to one of the most serious attacks on embedded -- and, according to 
most, shady -- business interests in Russia's post Soviet history.

"In light of the increasing pressure on Potanin, (Alfa group chief Mikhail) 
Fridman, Gusinsky, etc. it is clear that open season has been declared on the 
oligarchs," noted Eric Kraus, chief researcher at the NIKoil investment bank.

"Once the dust settles, investors who shied away from the Russian market due 
to the fact that various businessmen were perceived to be stripping assets 
with utter impunity may wish to take notice of what appears to be a 
sea-change in the legal environment," he said.

"In the long term, this could clarify the investment climate here," added 
Troika Dialogue analyst Sylvie Armand-Delille.

Putin both during his election and state-of-nation address on Sunday 
reiterated the theme of a strong central state and a break in the cozy 
relationship between big business and government.

The so-called oligarchs are a hated class to most Russians, who profited 
little if at all from the Soviet Union's collapse while watching a select few 
win access to the crown jewels of enterprise in sweetheart deals.

Yeltsin had also repeatedly promised to rid himself of influence from the 
business chiefs, who helped finance his 1996 re-election campaign against 
Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov.

However most of those efforts, including one notably launched in 1998 by then 
prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, ended with most of the charges against the 
business chiefs being dropped.

******

#2
Moscow Times
July 11, 2000 
EDITORIAL: Problems Lie With Putin, Not Media 

"The economic inefficiency of a large proportion of mass media outlets makes 
them dependent on the commercial and political interests of the bosses and 
sponsors of these media outlets. This makes it possible to use the mass media 
for settling accounts with competitors and, sometimes, even to turn them into 
mass misinformation outlets and into a means of struggle against the state." 
-President Vladimir Putin in his Saturday state-of-the-nation address 

President Putin spoke many fine words this weekend about his respect for 
speech and media freedoms and civil liberties. His critique of the media as 
hobbled by hostile oligarch takeovers was also correct (and ironic f if not 
for the help of oligarchs willing to turn ORT and other media into "mass 
misinformation outlets," Putin would probably never have been elected). 

But one has the sense that all of his praise for the craft and institutions 
of journalism was the sugar coating the pill f the pill being this dour 
complaint about media who "struggle against the state." 

This is far from the first time Putin has complained of media who oppose "the 
state." But we still aren't quite sure what he means. 

We would think a media outlet truly guilty of opposing the state would have 
to have advocated a violent uprising or some other form of treason or 
anarchic public disorder. 

Yet judging from Putin's complaints about NTV and Radio Liberty, to take two 
examples, media are actually challenging the state whenever they dare to 
challenge politician Putin. As it was in the days of Boris Yeltsin, l'etat, 
c'est moi. 

Do media who question the war in Chechnya qualify as having engaged in a 
"struggle against the state"? We have articles in our paper today chronicling 
horrific abuses of power by men in uniform. These events happened; they are 
being discussed all over the world; the Russian army and authorities are 
getting a reputation as fascist ghouls; and our readers, and indeed all 
Russians, need to know this. 

We would argue that those struggling against the state are actually Putin and 
his men, whenever they have suppressed such vital information f as the 
government has done, with Putin's approval, by persecuting Radio Liberty's 
Andrei Babitsky, environmental journalist Alexander Nikitin, muckraker 
Alexander Khinshtein and others. 

Putin's men did not target such journalists for abuse in order to protect 
"the state." At best, they did so to protect their own narrow vision of the 
state; at worst, to protect their own skins and further their own careers. 
Either way, it is Putin, and not the media, who has the problem. 

******

#3
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
July 11, 2000
Chechnya largely forgotten, financial aid flows again into Russia

EUROPEANS RELEASE AID TO MOSCOW. In yet another indication of a willingness 
among European governments to downgrade concerns over the war in Chechnya 
in order to rebuild ties to Moscow, foreign ministers from the European 
Union meeting in Brussels yesterday moved to unblock US$55 million in aid 
to Russia. The EU had frozen the aid package last December to signal its 
displeasure with Russia's indiscriminate use of military force against 
civilians in Chechnya. The funds released yesterday fall within the EU's 
TACIS program, which aims at supporting economic reform in the former 
Soviet republics. The EU has sent some 4.2 billion euros (US$4 billion) to 
the region since the program was launched in 1991. EU ministers yesterday 
called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make good on his government's 
commitment to economic reforms and said that a priority of EU-Russia 
relations would be to support a "modern economy which benefits the whole of 
Russian society."

In order to express continuing concern over Moscow's Caucasus War, however, 
the EU ministers also called anew yesterday for Russia to seek a negotiated 
solution to the conflict and to permit independent inquiries into 
allegations of human rights abuses in Chechnya. A statement issued by the 
ministers said that the EU "will continue to bring up the issue [of 
Chechnya] in its dialogue with Russia." In keeping with this theme, the 
newly released EU funds will reportedly go to help improve the human rights 
situation in Russia. The EU aid is expected to support programs helping 
Russian citizens to defend their civil rights, to promote interethnic 
tolerance and the protection of minority rights, and to train journalists 
to work in the independent media.

In a separate announcement, the European Bank for Reconstruction and 
Development (EBRD) has said that it will boost support for Russia as much 
as possible this year (BBC, AP, Russian agencies, July 10).

Yesterday's EU action continues a pattern whereby key European governments 
have pushed the war in Chechnya onto the back burner so that they can 
pursue friendly relations with Vladimir Putin's recently installed 
government. The determination to deemphasize Chechnya, which comes despite 
continued fighting in the Caucasus and Moscow's failure to satisfactorily 
fulfill European demands relative to the conflict, was manifested in a 
recent Russian-EU summit meeting and during visits which Putin has made to 
several European capitals over the past six weeks. But the decision of 
European governments to turn a blind eye to the war in Chechnya was 
highlighted with particular clarity in Strasbourg at the end of last month, 
when EU foreign ministers rejected a move by the Parliamentary Assembly of 
the Council of Europe (PACE) to suspend Russia from the continent's leading 
human rights organization. That move led PACE lawmakers to denounce the 
ministers and to reiterate its determination to hold Moscow accountable for 
the actions of Russian troops in the Caucasus (see the Monitor, June 30).

Yesterday's statement by the European ministers expressing continuing 
concern over Chechnya will probably be treated by Moscow for what it is: 
window dressing. Russia's political elite has repeatedly denounced and 
belittled PACE while arguing that the organization's member governments 
have in fact accommodated themselves to Moscow's actions in the Caucasus. 
Yesterday's decision to unblock the TACIS aid proves once again that Moscow 
is accurately reading the mood of European governments.

******

#4
The Russia Journal
July 8-14, 2000
Foreigners get rough deal at hands of Moscow press
By Francesca Mereu 
Columnist Francesca Mereu looks into how the capital’s media negatively
portrays different nationalities.

Moscow’s media help foster the idea that people from some former Soviet
states are criminals and take Russians’ jobs, an analyst says. 

Moscow journalists are contributing to xenophobia and the formation of
negative national stereotypes. That’s the conclusion drawn by a recent
survey of the Moscow press and the terms it uses to describe people of
different nationalities. 

The survey was carried out by Professor Vera Malkova from the Academy of
Sciences Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. She spent several years
analyzing the Moscow press and noted a distinct tendency to emphasize all
that was seen as worst in different ethnic groups.

That the media helps shape people’s attitudes and views has become obvious.
It is to guard against abuse of this power of the media that various
countries, including Russia, have developed professional codes of ethics
for journalists. 

According to the Russian code of ethics, "journalists must respect the
dignity and the honor of people. ... Journalists must refrain from any
disparaging hint or commentary concerning a person’s race, nationality,
skin color, religion, social status, sex, physical defects or illness."
This is in keeping with article 19 of the Russian Constitution, which
states that "the State guarantees equality of human and civil rights and
freedoms regardless of sex, race, nationality, language, origin ...
attitude toward religion."

During the Soviet era, the media had to be very careful about avoiding any
denigrating reference to this or that nationality, as the country itself
was made up of a host of different nationalities bound, at least in theory,
by the internationalist principles of Marxism-Leninism. Today’s Russia,
however, is still a multinational country – there are more than 44
different ethnic groups living on Russian soil. And Moscow is a microcosm
of this mix of peoples. 

But while the Russian Constitution emphasizes this, beginning, "We, the
multinational people of Russia," some journalists seem to lose sight of
these principles and, as Malkova’s survey demonstrates, wittingly or
unwittingly are responsible for cultivating prejudice toward different
groups, so heightening racial tension in Moscow. The main victims are
people from the Caucasus, many of whom migrated to Moscow after the fall of
the Soviet Union, escaping interethnic conflict and economic chaos at home. 

The expression "person of Caucasian nationality" crops up frequently in the
Moscow press. It forgets that the Caucasus is home to many different
nationalities with different religions, traditions and languages, and not a
single abstract "Caucasian" nationality.

Malkova said that some papers purvey a clear set of stereotypes regarding
Caucasians. This can be seen from looking at the headlines of dailies like
Moskovsky Komsomolets and Vechernyaya Moskva, or weekly AIF-Moskva: "More
and more inconvenient guests in Moscow" (Moskovsky Komsomolets),
"Foreigners in the city: Who is making the criminal climate?" (Vechernyaya
Moskva); "Foreigners as a working reserve" (Vechernyaya Moskva), "Georgian
boyfriends run away to Russia" (Moskovsky Komsomolets) "A person of bandit
nationality is more friendly than the Komintern" (AIF-Moskva). 

Caucasians then, are seen in the press as "inconvenient guests" who
represent a threat to "native Muscovites," who "will soon be in the
minority" (AIF-Moskva). The media dwells on negative aspects, Malkova said,
citing an article in Vechernyaya Moskva where the journalist underlines
that these foreigners "take jobs, negatively influence the criminal
situation ... and often transmit diseases such as tuberculosis." Some
articles also try to inculcate the idea that a lot of crimes are committed
by Caucasians.

But within the general "Caucasian nationality" stereotype, there are also
specific stereotypes of different Caucasian peoples. The Azerbaijanis, for
example, are mostly described as bandits selling drugs and controlling
Moscow’s markets. This is the idea presented by AIF-Moskva in articles
under headlines like "Caucasian accent – Azerbaijani crime in Moscow" and
"a non-Slavic market." "In this way, Muscovites start thinking that
representatives of this minority came to Moscow with two main intentions:
to haggle and to commit crimes," Malkova said.

"Among the ethnic-based ethnical criminal groups, the Georgians stand out,"
writes AIF-Moskva. "Their main industries are robberies, drug trafficking
and kidnapping." Malkova notes that the expression "Georgian bandit" is
quite common in the Moscow press. As a result, Muscovites’ attitudes toward
the Georgian minority are largely negative.

But the Moscow press has concentrated a lot more on the Chechen situation
recently. The adjective "Chechen" is more and more frequently associated
with the word "bandit." And in their headlines, journalists sometimes
broaden this cliche to the extent that it seems to apply to all Chechens. 

Malkova said there is not one position in the press regarding the Chechens.
"There are journalists who say ‘Chechnya is part of Russia and will be part
of Russia’ [Rossijskya Gazeta], while others, who describe the cruelty of
Chechen warriors, propose to put an end to the war and to barricade
ourselves off from the rebels and bandits," (Komsomolskaya Pravda,
AIF-Moskva), Malkova said.

But in journalists’ defense, when covering interethnic issues, they don’t
always consciously realize the power their words can have and the
prejudices they can awaken. To heighten awareness of the problem, Malkova
received a grant from the U.S.-based Mott foundation to organize a seminar
for journalists about ethnic tolerance in the media. The seminar was held
late last month at the journalism and media management school of the Moscow
Press Institute.

Some journalists participating in the seminar understood how dangerous
their words could be, if not properly used, to classify ethnic groups. But
others confused the idea of respect for other nationalities with the
introduction of a kind of censorship. "We have to write the truth," some of
them objected. For this group of journalists, phrases like, "the
protagonists in the matter were a driver, a lawyer and a gypsy" (as if
being a gypsy is a profession) are simply telling people the truth.

******

#5
Kommersant
July 7, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
PUTIN OUR TEFLON PRESIDENT
By Yuri CHERNEGA

On July 6 the ARPI Agency of Regional Political Studies
provided to journalists the results of the "jubilee" poll on the
first 100 days of Putin's presidency. The main conclusion of the
sociologists is very simple: Russians love their president no
less than on March 26. 

They say the popularity of Vladimir Putin with the bulk of
population remains stable and hardly changed since the day of 
his
election. ARPI President Andrei Milekhin thinks Putin is our
"Teflon president," as the Americans say, which means that his
rating remains high no matter what he does. The economic
situation does not worry Russians yet, despite inflation that
topped 2.5% in June, sociologists say. By the way, Putin has
recently put the blame for inflation on the government, whose
rating went down from 57% to 39% in the past month, as ARPI 
polls
show. 
The situation in Chechnya worries the people more than the
economy, yet even this does not affect the president's
popularity. A few months ago ARPI respondents said the drawing
out of the war was one of the reasons that could worsen their
attitude to the president. But the latest poll showed that 54% 
of
the respondents positively evaluate Putin's actions, which 
nearly
fully coincides with the election results. Only 15% criticised
the actions of the head of state. 
The recent story with the arrest of Vladimir Gusinsky 
hardly
affected Putin's rating: 10% of the respondents now think better
of the president, and 12% think worse of him, but the majority
(54%) have not changed their opinion of the president. "The 
Putin
majority" was not unanimous only on one problem: the possibility
of joining NATO. In mid-March, only 23% of the respondents
supported that idea of the president, while the figure for early
July was already 30%. Well, what should be, must be, and the
president knows better. 

WHAT COULD WORSEN YOUR ATTITUDE TO VLADIMIR PUTIN? 
(The results of a poll held in March 2000)
1. The deterioration of the economic situation 33%
2. The appearance of a new bright leader 4%
3. The drawing out of the military campaign in Chechnya 16%
4. An attempt to resolve the Chechen conflict through 
negotiations with the fighters 7%
5. Nothing 9%
6. Difficult to say 22%
7. Some other reason 9%
ON JULY 3 PUTIN MARKED THE FIRST 100 DAYS OF HIS 
PRESIDENCY.
HAS YOUR ATTITUDE TO HIM CHANGED?

1. It became worse 14%
2. It became better 17%
3. Difficult to say 11%
4. It remained the same 58%

******

#6
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 
From: Alvin Rabushka <rabushka@hoover.stanford.edu>
Subject: New Russian Web Site

Dear Mr. Johnson,

I would be grateful if you would inform the recipients of the Johnson
Russia List that Michael Bernstam and Alvin Rabushka (Hoover Institution,
Stanford University) have recently launched a new web site devoted to the
subject of the Russian economy. The site can be found at:
<http://www.russiaeconomy.org/>http://www.russiaeconomy.org It contains
the full text of our previous book, Fixing Russia’s Banks, free on-line.
It also contains the first four chapters of our new work in progress, From
Predation to Prosperity: Breaking Up Enterprise Network Socialism in
Russia. We will post new chapters and other pertinent material to the site
on a regular basis. 

*****

#7
Newsweek International
The Polish-Russian Gap 
The hope that Moscow would copy Warsaw’s enthusiastic embrace of freedom?
It’s gone. 
By Andrew Nagorski
NEWSWEEK 

July 9 — A very old joke from the iciest days of the cold war tells the
story of a Frenchman and a Russian traveling in opposite directions on the
Moscow-Paris train. Along the way, both trains stop in Warsaw. The
Frenchman gets off, looks around and asks: “Is this Moscow?” Stepping off
the other train, the Russian asks: “Is this Paris?” 

THE JOKE WASN’T so much about the Stalinist architecture that is still
on display in the center of Warsaw amid a proliferation of sleek new office
buildings, but about the different perceptions of the atmosphere. To the
Frenchman, it smacked of repression, bleakness and deprivation. To the
Russian, it offered a whiff of relative freedom, color and opportunity.
I’m just back from a trip to Russia and Poland and, believe me, that
joke is long dead and forgotten. Not because a Russian couldn’t mistake
Warsaw for Paris, at least in terms of the smell of freedom. But because,
by the same criterion, Warsaw in no way resembles Moscow. I’ve lived and
worked in both cities, and I’ve never been more impressed by the widening
gap between them. Any hopes from the early 1990s that Russia would rapidly
move toward convergence with Poland and, by extension, Western Europe have
evaporated completely. At the same time, Poland hasn’t just turned the
corner when it comes to its political and economic transformation; it has
moved to a new neighborhood.
When I was in town two weeks ago, Warsaw was proudly playing host to a
Community of Democracies conference with representatives of more than 100
nations. It seemed perfectly natural that the city that once provided the
name for the Warsaw Pact has now earned the unquestioned right to symbolize
the rebirth of democracy. An American human-rights lobbyist buttonholed me
to explain that the conference should give birth to “the Warsaw man”
dedicated to spreading democracy further, replacing the ethos of “the Davos
man” focused only on business. But when I was in Moscow earlier, the talk
was of the signs of creeping repression under new President Vladimir Putin.
The question wasn’t whether Russia is slipping backward in terms of its
freedoms, but how far back.
Ironically, Poland is supposedly weakened by another prolonged
government crisis prompted by the breakup of its ruling coalition, while
Russia finally has a strong new leader. That misses the point, though. Like
the Italians, the Poles have become used to going about their business,
whatever the crisis of the moment. The impact of politics is tightly
circumscribed by mostly fair rules clearly understood by all. Such rules
have never taken root in Russia, where the lines between freedom and
repression, between what’s legal and illegal, are elusive at best. This
makes it easy for the old instincts—of the authorities to seek to
intimidate, and the people to be intimidated—to quickly reassert
themselves. Particularly when a new strong leader with a KGB background
encourages their re-emergence.
On the face of it, Putin’s “encouragement” has stopped short of
anything truly draconian. His major action was to have media magnate
Vladimir Gusinsky tossed into prison for four days and left facing vague
embezzlement charges that are presumably yet to be fleshed out. As one of
Russia’s “oligarchs,” Gusinsky represents a tempting target, one of those
“new Russians” whose huge wealth enrages so many of his impoverished
countrymen. But just about everyone understands that Gusinsky was singled
out because of his media empire, which includes the country’s only
independent national TV station, a radio station, a daily paper and the
weekly news-magazine Itogi (published in cooperation with NEWSWEEK), all of
which have been critical of Putin. The message is simple: if the regime can
do what it wants with a powerful figure like Gusinsky, what chance does
anyone else have? “If a polling agency would call me now to ask my opinion
of Putin, I certainly won’t say anything negative,” admitted one Russian
friend, although her feelings are very negative. As veteran human-rights
campaigner and Duma Deputy Sergei Kovalyov told me: “I don’t think there
will be severe repressive measures, but they aren’t needed.” We’re not
talking totalitarianism like in the bad old days, but we’re not talking
democracy either.
In economic terms, the contrasts are just as stark. Poland has been
Central Europe’s star performer throughout most of the 1990s, enjoying
steady growth in the 5 percent to 7 percent range. Foreign and domestic
investors are confidently putting in their money, and a solid middle class
is fast emerging. Russia looks like it has recovered from the crash of
1998, and overpriced, glitzy restaurants are full of customers again. But
this is probably more the result of rising prices for Russia’s oil exports
than of any fundamental improvement in the economy. Capital flight remains
the norm, and the rich-poor gap remains staggering. While the rich are
snapping up real estate in Cyprus, southern Spain and London, Parliament
recently set the minimum wage at just under $5. Not per day or even per
week. That’s per month. Almost no one makes that little, but it isn’t
surprising to find teachers and doctors making $35 a month.
When I left Warsaw in 1994, I closed down the NEWSWEEK bureau there.
Several other American news organizations were doing the same thing at the
time. I explained to my Polish friends that they should see these closures
as a compliment: Poland was no longer a turbulent, unpredictable place.
They weren’t necessarily convinced. But when I visited Cracow at the end of
my recent trip, one friend smiled and asked: “What are you doing in this
boring, normal country?” Unfortunately, there’s no likelihood any of my
Russian friends will offer a similar greeting any time soon.

*****

#8
The Times (UK)
11 July 2000
[for personal use only]
Russia's population goes into free fall 
FROM GILES WHITTELL IN MOSCOW

RUSSIA is facing a demographic crisis as a plummeting birth rate and 
excessive consumption of cigarettes and alcohol threaten the country's 
future. 

Barring radical changes in diet, lifestyle and the death rate among national 
service conscripts, more than half the 16-year-old boys who are alive in 
Russia today will not reach their 60th birthdays. 

Figures published by Goskomstat, the central statistical agency, indicate 
that a crumbling pre-natal healthcare system means that barely one in ten 
pregnancies results in a normal birth and less than a third of recorded 
pregnancies produced a live birth last year. 

The statistics suggest that the plunging birth rate - brought on largely by 
illness among pregnant mothers and abortion as a form of birth control - may 
be as important a factor in Russia's rapidly shrinking population as the 
country's average life expectancy, which, thanks to stress, cigarettes and 
vodka, is among the shortest in the world. 

Anaemia, heart problems, malnutrition and urogenital diseases are so 
widespread in Russia that in one recent survey of expectant mothers in the 
Saratov region, southeast of Moscow, doctors said that only a quarter could 
be considered healthy. Conditions are little better in Moscow itself, the 
only city whose healthcare system remains largely intact. In ten leading 
Russian regions, there were three times more deaths than births in January 
this year, according to Goskomstat. Overall, the country's birth rate has 
more than halved since the final years of the Soviet Union, leaving healthy 
babies an increasingly endangered sector of the population and prompting dire 
forecasts for teenagers. 

If the trends persist, there will be 22 million 13 to 16-year-olds in 2015, 
down from 30 million now. Among these, the outlook for boys is particularly 
bleak: 54 per cent will not reach pensionable age, a lower number than 100 
years ago. 

The virtual collapse of prenatal and paediatric healthcare has been a cause 
of national shame as well as heartache since it began in the early 1990s. 
President Putin broke new ground in his state of the nation speech at the 
weekend by focusing on the demographic black hole. He spoke of looming 
national "senility" and Izvestia predicted yesterday a nation of "widowers 
and old men". 

Such predictions are based on Goskomstat findings that Russia effectively has 
been emptying of people since the Soviet collapse and will go on doing so 
increasingly quickly unless there are reforms. 

The overall population has fallen by six million in ten years and could fall 
by another 39 million by 2025, based on present trends. Russia would then 
have the population of Japan spread over 11 time zones. 

Average male life expectancy crept up last year to 59, but is still more than 
ten years below that of Western Europe. 

The plunging birth rate is less well publicised and figures for infant 
mortality vary from grim to catastrophic. According to one set quoted 
recently in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 30 per cent of all Russian newborns die of 
infections. Another survey disclosed that 6,500 babies were born last year 
with correctable heart defects, but only 300 of them were operated on. 

"We have a healthcare crisis," one leading Russian sociologist said 
yesterday, "but we also have a split society. Look at the malnourished 
conscript soldiers on the front line in Chechnya and the healthy students in 
Moscow's universities. It is the difference between their parents' care for 
them, but also between a Third World and a First World country." 

*****

#9
Moscow Times
July 11, 2000 
SAY WHAT?: Swallowed Words Ensure Our Freedom 
By Anna Badkhen 

PERM, Ural Mountains -- The way we whisper politics in the kitchen, the way 
we publish samizdat, the way we smuggle our writings in our stomachs f no, 
no, they can't take that away from me. 

This was the message delivered to me last week by Mikhail Nechayev, dean of 
the history department at Perm State Pedagogical University. 

Nechayev says that the threat of the state's crackdown on the free press is 
highly exaggerated. He says the significance of Vladimir Gusinsky's arrest 
last month and the armed raid on the offices of Gusinsky's Media-MOST empire, 
in terms of oppression of freedom of speech, is nil. It's time for the Moscow 
intelligentsia to drop their conspiracy theories, Nechayev said. Nobody can 
shut us up. 

"We will always have freedom of press," Nechayev told me. "If worst comes to 
worst, we will have samizdat." 

I interviewed Nechayev the day after my visit to Perm-36, a maximum-security 
prison camp that once held the elite of political prisoners f the cream of 
the state's most loathed opposition, so to speak. Even Sergei Kovalyov, who 
later became Boris Yeltsin's adviser on human rights, was not considered 
dangerous enough at the time and therefore was held in a lower security 
prison a stone's throw away. No, Perm-36 was not meant for mediocre public 
enemies. Its poorly heated cells held only the most outrageous evildoers. 
Most of them, as luck would have it, were writers and poets. 

The camp, built in 1970 and shut down in 1987, never held more than 30 men at 
a time. All in all, 56 prisoners lived in the camp. 

One-eighth of these enemies of the state died right there, in the gulag. 
Their minds may have been strong, but their bodies couldn't cope with the 
scarce food, the bad climate and the 45 minutes a day of relatively fresh air 
in the prison courtyard. 

So here's how these antisovetchiki, these saboteurs, exercised their human 
right to press freedom: They took miniscule pieces of cigarette paper, two 
fingers wide and five fingers long, and wrote on them with sharp pencils. Up 
to 10 printed pages could fit on such piece of paper if the pencils were 
properly sharpened. The prisoners didn't mind. They had a lot of prison time 
on their hands: an average of 10 years each. 

The most important thing was to hide the pencils well. If the pencils were 
found, their owners were thrown into solitary confinement for up to one year. 

After the texts f poems, stories, appeals, statements f were written, the 
pieces of paper were rolled into tiny little rolls and wrapped in plastic. 
These plastic containers were then swallowed by those selected prisoners who 
were lucky enough to get an annual meeting with family members. During these 
meetings, the writings were defecated, to be swallowed again, this time by 
the prisoners' visitors from the outside world. The visitors had no other 
choice than to swallow these free press items, because, you see, they were 
subjected to full body-cavity searches by prison guards before leaving. 

So yes, Nechayev was right. We will always have samizdat. Nobody will ever 
deprive us of a right to swallow and then defecate paper wrapped in plastic, 
swallowed and then defecated by our loved ones. We will always find a way to 
discuss politics in a whisper, in the kitchen, in the dark. If worst comes to 
worst, we will meditate for years in solitary confinement. History proves 
that it can be done. 

******

#10
The Guardian (UK)
10 July 2000
[for personal use only]
ECONOMICS: THE STATE OF RUSSIA: ELUSIVE BOOM SEEMS AS FAR AWAY AS EVER
By Charlotte Denny

Two optimistic economists wrote a book, called The Coming Russian Boom, in
1996. After the disaster of Russia's first half decade since the fall of
the Berlin wall, they forecast that the country would be enjoying a period
of sustained rapid growth in excess of 5% a year, by the end of the 1990s. 

At the time the Russian economy had been contracting for more than six
years, and the prediction struck some observers as brave. But the authors,
one an LSE professor, the other a former Moscow correspondent with the
Economist, believed that because of its wealth of natural resources,
educated workforce and the rapid progress of economic reform, the boom
could not be far away. Large parts of the economy had been privatised and
it only remained for policy makers to sit back and wait for Russians to
discover their entrepreneurial instincts. 

Sure enough in 1997, Russia managed to produce its first expansion in
output for more than a decade - recording 1% growth over the year.
Inflation fell to 10% and foreign investors started to get excited about
the possibilities of the fledgling Russian stock market and the high
returns available on Russian government debt. For a brief period, the
Russian stock market was the best performing in the world. 

The first tremors from the Asian financial crisis hit Russia in late
October, with a plunge in stock prices which marked the beginning a year
long downward spiral. 

Foreign reserves quickly bled away as investors rushed for the exit and in
August the following year the government announced it was suspending
repayments of debts to for eigners. The only boom in Russia in the last
decade was the sound of the financial bubble detonating. 

Since 1998, the Russian economy has wobbled back into growth, but as the
OECD notes, real incomes remain considerably lower than the pre-crisis
levels, while poverty and social distress have increased. 

Last year, the economy recorded its second full year of growth since the
collapse of the wall. But with ingrained weaknesses, the prospect of a boom
remains as far away as ever. 

*******

#11
The Guardian (UK)
10 July 2000
[for personal use only]
ECONOMICS: THE STATE OF RUSSIA: POVERTY AT THE HEART OF A NATION
By Larry Elliott

There is a war memorial on the outskirts of Moscow, made up of three red
crosses designed to look like anti-tank defences. Next to it is a new
branch of Ikea. The former is there to show how close the Nazis got to
defeating the Soviet Union in 1941, the latter is a symbol of the more
successful invasion from the west half a century later. 

Gum, the store that used to be reserved for the party's leading lights and
foreign tourists, is now a shopping mall, complete with atrium, fountains
and shots of Elizabeth Hurley advertising cosmetics. But it still has very
few people in it actually buying anything, which is hardly surprising given
that a fetching little something from Dior will cost more than the average
monthly wage. 

Some Russians do, of course, shop in the arcade and in many cases they are
the same KGB officers who used to shop here before and have now turned up
in a new guise. The top 20% of Russians now account for almost 50% of the
country's income, and they have become rich beyond imagination. Certainly
beyond the imagination of ordinary Russians, who are poorer now than they
were a decade ago. Pensioners have to get by on the equivalent of 15 a
month. Beyond Moscow itself, the skin-deep nature of the new Russia quickly
becomes apparent. Mytishchi is a one-industry town, just outside the
capital, which makes cars for the metro. Out here, there are fewer Mercs,
only Ladas. The housing, poorly constructed in the first place, is
decrepit. From one end of the town to the other, there is nothing that
looks modern except for a new power station and a branch of the state-owned
savings bank, Sberbank. The public spaces are unkempt, with waist-high
grass in the parks and empty flower-beds. 

By the roadside, there are people with their goods displayed on tarpaulins.
One is selling T-shirts, with Versace emblazoned on the front. An old lady
has three punnets of strawberries on sale for 50 roubles a throw. A group
of six or seven men in late middle age, with all the familiar signs of
long-term unemployment and poverty, are trying to make a few roubles by
selling their last pathetic possessions, books without covers, a length of
flex with a plug on the end, a hacksaw without a blade. 

Further along, the road peters out and muddy tracks lead off from a
supermarket across the waste ground between six blocks of flats. Given its
location, the supermarket is well stocked, with sausage, crab, turkey,
French wines, scotch, designer water. But there seems little demand for
12-year-old Chivas Regal at 45. 

In the centre of the city, there is an administration building complete
with a hammer and sickle embedded in the masonry and a statue of Lenin in
commanding pose. But for those seeking signs that globalisation is working
there is one encouraging sign, at least. A boy of eight, looking for
something to eat or sell, climbs a tree with two friends to pick unripe
apples. He is wearing a Manchester United football shirt with Beckham
emblazoned on the back. 

*******

#12
The Independent (UK)
11 July 2000
[for personal use only]
Hundreds shot each year, but few killers caught 
By Patrick Cockburn 

On the morning of 29 June, Valery Mironov, a successful, young Moscow 
businessman, was driving his dark blue Volvo through the western suburbs of 
the city to the wholesale vodka company, Nadexpo, where he was a commercial 
director. 

A few hundred yards from the plant, surrounded by a cement wall topped with 
barbed wire, a man stepped up to the window of the car and fired at least 
eight shots at Mr Mironov, killing him instantly. There were no witnesses and 
nobody else heard the shots. 

The murder of Mr Mironov was almost certainly a contract killing. There were 
521 such murders in Russia last year, says Vyacheslav Trubnikov, chief of the 
criminal police. The modus operandi is strikingly similar in each case –
the 
victim is usually shot at close range with a pistol – and the killer is 
seldom caught. 

The death of Mr Mironov attracted only brief attention in the Russian media 
for one simple reason: on the same day he was killed two other businessmen
– 
one the deputy chairman of a bank and the other the owner of a security firm 
– were also murdered in Moscow, both with shots to the head. Three gunmen 
also wounded the chief of a construction company, but he survived. The 
victims had no connection with each other. 

Nadezhda Zezeleva, the investigator at the Moscow prosecutor's office who is 
handling Mr Mironov's case, was a little surprised at my interest in his 
death. A competent-looking, pretty woman, she asked: "Why are you so 
interested? It is a very ordinary murder." 

Contract killings are meant to be on the decline in Moscow as mafia gangs and 
businessmen consolidate their grip on businesses for which they fought after 
the break-up of the Soviet Union. But the murder of Mr Mironov, and the 
shooting of three other men on the same day, shows that hiring a hitman is 
still a common method of settling disputes. 

Asked if vodka wholesaling is known for its violent rivalries, Ms Zezeleva 
said: "The alcohol business is very profitable and where there is big 
business there are murders." She finds the Mironov case perplexing, because 
she cannot see a clear motive. In fact there are manymotives, but none of 
them quite serious enough to explain why somebody should have paid to have Mr 
Mironov murdered. 

He was aged 32 when he was shot and had prospered in business in recent 
years. He owned two apartments, luxuriously refurbished, and a new Volvo, 
worth in all about £250,000. He had debts, but he was paying them off and he 
was also owed money himself. 

Ms Zezeleva points out: "You don't kill somebody who owes you money. Maybe 
after they have paid, but not before." 

There is one incident, however, that may be connected with his death. Last 
November he was kidnapped for a day. The apparent reason was to do with the 
fact that he had been working for three years for another alcohol wholesaling 
company called Vestor, whose managing director, Marina Soboleva, was also his 
girlfriend. When they broke up, she said he owed her money. 

Mr Mironov said the money was his share of the profits. The kidnappers asked 
him to bring a sum of money to a rendezvous. Instead, he brought the police. 
However, no one was charged and Mr Mironov seems to have reached an agreement 
with Ms Soboleva. 

But there may be a simpler explanation for the murder. Mr Mironov was a good 
salesman. "Maybe some competitor did not want him in business and killed 
him," says Ms Zezeleva, who sounds despairing about ever solving the case. 

******

#13
BBC MONITORING
RUSSIAN TYCOON BEREZOVSKIY OUTLINES PLAN TO CREATE OPPOSITION PARTY
Source: 'Kommersant', Moscow, in Russian 8 Jul 00 

Russian tycoon and State Duma Deputy Boris Berezovskiy has announced that he 
has held talks with a number of prominent members of the upper house of 
parliament, the Federation Council, with a view to forming a political party 
in "constructive opposition" to the "authoritarian power" being created under 
Vladimir Putin's presidency. In an interview published in a Russian 
newspaper, Berezovskiy said that he had discussed the matter with the speaker 
of the upper house, Yegor Stroyev, as well as with Sverdlovsk Region governor 
Eduard Rossel, Kursk Region governor Aleksandr Rutskoy and Saratov Region 
governor Dmitriy Ayatskov. He accused the present State Duma, or lower house, 
of becoming "part of the executive, because it unconditionally approves its 
decisions", and said that, since the governors stand to lose the most as a 
result of the reforms being proposed by Putin, "it is they who have every 
chance of creating a new party structure". The following is the text of the 
interview, conducted by Ilya Bulavinov and published in `Kommersant' on 8th 
July: 

The RIA-Novosti agency reported yesterday that State Duma Deputy Boris 
Berezovskiy "intends to create a political party jointly with a number of 
present members of the Federation Council". The deputy declared in an 
interview with Ilya Bulavinov that he is planning not only to create a party, 
but also to "reform" the present State Duma. 

[Bulavinov] Is it true that you are creating a party? 

[Berezovskiy] Russia needs the creation of a constructive opposition. 
Otherwise the process of the centralization of power will inevitably begin. 
This will essentially mean the creation of authoritarian power in the 
country. At the same time, it is completely irrelevant whether Putin or, for 
example, [Yabloko party leader Grigoriy] Yavlinskiy is president. The new 
party must oppose this. Work will be conducted in two areas. First, there is 
the creation of an efficient and constructive party structure. Experience 
shows that today only the governors are in a position to consolidate the 
political elites: this has been proved by the creation of the Fatherland-All 
Russia bloc and the Unity movement. The danger is now at its maximum for the 
governors, and so it is they who have every chance of creating a new party 
structure. Second, the State Duma in its present form is not a legislative 
branch of power. It has become part of the executive, because it 
unconditionally approves its decisions. But the Duma has a constructive 
potential, which is now fettered by party or factional principles. Therefore, 
it would be logical to reform the Duma and create a strong new independent 
faction there. 

[Q] From whom do you intend to create it? 

[A] From deputies who belong to Unity, the People's Deputy [group], and 
Russia's Regions. Even those who call themselves right-wingers. 

[Q] With which of the deputies have you already held talks? 

[A] I would not want to name names now. 

[Q] With which of the governors have you already discussed the question of 
creating the new party? 

[A] With [Federation Council Chairman Yegor] Stroyev, [Sverdlovsk Region 
governor Eduard] Rossel, [Kursk Region governor Aleksandr] Rutskoy, [Saratov 
Region governor Dmitriy] Ayatskov, and a number of other governors. They are 
all concerned about the situation which has taken shape. 

[Q] Are practical actions already being undertaken? 

[A] We work according to the principle: first think, then act. 

[Q] But does it not seem to you that it is already too late? The president's 
draft laws on the reform of state power will soon be adopted in one form or 
another. 

[A] I do not believe that a compromise will be reached quickly. The decree on 
forming the federal districts and the package of draft laws on the reform of 
state power really weaken the power. In the end the need for constitutional 
reform will inevitably arise - this is a complex and long process. 

[Q] Is it a question precisely of creating a political party which will 
participate in parliamentary elections and nominate its own presidential 
candidate? 

[A] I rule out neither. 

[Q] Do you plan to hold any posts in it? 

[A] Not yet. 

******

#14
BBC MONITORING
INFLUENTIAL RUSSIAN JOURNALIST LAUNCHES BLISTERING ATTACK ON PUTIN
Source: NTV, Moscow, in Russian 1500 gmt 09 Jul 00 

Influential Russian journalist Yevgeniy Kiselev launched a blistering attack 
on President Vladimir Putin on his weekly analytical "Itogi" programme on 
Russian NTV. He accused Putin of disguising a quest for personal power as an 
attempt to reform the state, and said that his annual address had neglected 
important issues. He concluded with sharp criticism of the operation in 
Chechnya, describing it as indiscriminate use of force against all the people 
living there. The following is the text of the report, broadcast on 9th July: 

[Presenter] I would like to return to what [President Vladimir] Putin had to 
say about the press [during his state-of-the-nation address on 8th July]. 

Putin was throwing down the gauntlet to us: when he mentioned media which 
carry out anti-state activity, or more precisely fight against the state, he 
meant us, the NTV channel, first and foremost. We understand that perfectly 
well, and I am going to respond to this. 

The president has different ideas to ours about what the state is and what 
its interests are. I think Putin is trying to imitate Louis XIV, who said 
"the state is me". Putin's address yesterday made it clear that what he means 
by strengthening the state is strengthening his personal power. He didn't say 
a word in his address about developing parliamentarianism, nor developing 
local self-government, nor developing an independent judiciary, nor reforming 
the prosecutor's office, which has of late become the absolute shame of the 
Russian state - we'll have some more to say about that separately - nor about 
anything else. 

What we understand by the state is not a bureaucratic machine headed by a 
former member of the power structures and security services, but a democratic 
Russia with its people. We have a different view of the interests of that 
people and the state which we see as this country. We think, for instance, 
that by attempting to reorganize the regional leaders - the governors, the 
Legislative Assembly heads - into a vertical line, Putin risks bringing about 
the collapse of Russia rather than constructing a strict vertical line of 
power. 

We think that Putin and his entourage risk spoiling the investment climate in 
Russia with their attacks on the press and tough rhetoric, and causing major 
economic difficulties as a result. We think Russia should be part of the 
civilized world and part of Europe, and that making a show of visiting North 
Korea is not necessary. We think that we should ally ourselves with the 
leaders of the civilized world, not with North Korea. 

We think that lots of serious mistakes have been made in Chechnya. My 
colleague Sergey Dorenko was yesterday engaged in polemics over our position 
in his [weekly analytical] programme on Russian Public TV. I am actually 
ready to agree with Sergey Leonidovich that bandits should be dealt with much 
more harshly, but it is the bandits we should have been fighting in Chechnya, 
not just people with dark hair [in other words, all Chechens]. 

The fact is that we have always supported a tough antiterrorist operation 
with the use of force, and been just as much against the indiscriminate use 
of military force, which has caused suffering to tens and hundreds of 
thousands of civilians, not only Chechens, but lots of Russians, who have 
lived for centuries in the Russian city of Groznyy. 

If we have come out against something, it is this indiscriminate, 
short-sighted use of force, which has brought about the current situation, 
with Chechnya threatening to turn for Russia into what Ulster in Northern 
Ireland is for Great Britain: a constant sore on the body of the Russian 
state, which refuses to heal. We do not agree with the president on this. 

******