July 21th, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4415 • 4416   • 

 Johnson's Russia List
#4416
21 July 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. The Times (UK): Giles Whittell, Russia steps up expulsion of US evangelists.
2. Moscow Times: Joe Boris and Anna Badkhen, Nikitin Goes Back 
To Court, Yet Again.
3. Stephen Blank: RE:Lieven-oligarchs.
4. Steve Harrigan/CNN: Starving Pigs.
5. St. Petersburg Times: Charles Digges, Drugs Fuel AIDS Epidemic in Chelyabinsk.
6. Washington Post: Sharon LaFraniere, Doctoring A Broken Society.
7. Nezavisimaya Gazeta - Stsenarii: RUSSIAN SOCIETY AT THE TURN OF 
THE CENTURY. What Russians Think About the Future of Their Country.
8. Financial Times (UK): The oligarch who wants to be accepted: 
Russian businessman Vladimir Potanin talks of compromise, not war, 
with the Kremlin, Arkady Ostrovsky reports.
9. Reuters: Russia, U.S. pledge cooperation on arms control.]

*******

#1
The Times (UK)
21 July 2000
[for personal use only]
Russia steps up expulsion of US evangelists
FROM GILES WHITTELL IN MOSCOW

FOREIGN missionaries are being forced out of Russia and obstructed in their 
work in greater numbers under President Putin than in the year before his 
rise to power, British research has found. 

The FSB, successor to the KGB, is often behind the harassment of missionaries 
and may have been encouraged to act more boldly by a new Russian defence 
doctrine that singles them out as a possible threat to national security, 
according to the Oxford-based Keston Institute. 

Seven cases cited in a series of reports by the institute, which began to 
monitor religious freedom in the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was 
itself denounced by the Soviet Union as a cover for spying operations in 
1988, include the expulsion of 11 American missionaries from the autonomous 
Muslim republic of Bashkortostan. They were accused of activities 
"incompatible" with their humanitarian aid visas. 

A second case involved the expulsion of a US missionary from the southern 
city of Volgograd, where shortly afterwards a local newspaper quoted the FSB 
as saying "practically all American religious organisations working abroad 
are in some way connected with the US security services". 

In February a letter to Russia's State Committee on Affairs of the North from 
two officials attached to the presidential administration gave a warning that 
the US is intent on "wresting away from Russia all of the Far East". Central 
to this plan, the letter claimed, was "the religious invasion of a huge 
number of American Protestant preachers". 

The reports, based on several months' research throughout Russia, suggest 
that a decline in freedoms for religious minorities has accelerated sharply 
under Mr Putin, a practising Orthodox Christian and former KGB agent. 

A little-noticed aspect of the defence doctrine that he signed last December 
was its mention of such minorities "as a potential threat to Russia in terms 
we have not seen in public documents since the end of communism", Lawrence 
Uzzell, the director of the Keston Institute, said yesterday. 

"It may be that we're seeing a darkening of the atmosphere under this 
regime," Mr Uzzell added. "The National Security Concept is not an 
instruction, but it seems to have been a signal to local bureaucrats that 
it's now open season on religious minorities." 

In the Bashkortostan case, the seven Protestant missionaries, together with 
four children, were reportedly forced to leave by June 1 after the local 
leader, President Rakhimov, was enraged to learn they had translated St 
Luke's Gospel into the Bashkiri language. 

The group's leader, who, like many missionaries, did not want to be named, 
accused Mr Rakhimov of using the FSB "as his police force, to intimidate 
people into submission". 

The missionaries were told that "proselytism, or forcible conversion" was 
illegal. A similar view was expressed yesterday by the Russian Orthodox 
Church even though it has not been directly linked to the new wave of 
expulsions. 

"We do not welcome American missionaries because they do proselytising work," 
a spokesman said. "We cannot have a common mission and we don't agree with 
theirs." 

*******

#2
Moscow Times
July 21, 2000 
Nikitin Goes Back To Court, Yet Again 
By Joe Boris and Anna Badkhen
Special to The Moscow Times

WASHINGTON -- Believing he had put the whole long ordeal behind him, 
environmental whistle-blower Alexander Nikitin learned while in Washington 
this week that prosecutors are making another attempt to try him on treason 
and espionage charges. 

Nikitin said he was notified Wednesday evening that the Prosecutor General's 
Office is appealing his acquittal and requesting that the more than 
four-year-old case be sent back for more investigation. 

The Presidium of the Supreme Court confirmed Thursday that it has agreed to 
hear the appeal Aug. 2. If the Presidium upholds the appeal, the 24 volumes 
in the Kafkaesque case against the retired navy 
captain-turned-environmentalist will once again land on the desk of Federal 
Security Service investigators in St. Petersburg. 

Nikitin, who is in Washington as part of a tour to highlight environmental 
problems and human rights violations in Russia, said Thursday the appeal was 
a desperate act by the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which he 
consistently referred to by the initials of its Soviet forerunner, the KGB. 

"My opinion is this case has been embarrassing for the KGB so they have begun 
an additional investigation," he said during a talk in downtown Washington. 

Nikitin was charged with treason and espionage in 1996 after contributing to 
a report published by the Norwegian environmental group Bellona about the 
Northern Fleet's careless handling of the nuclear waste it generates. 

He was found not guilty by the St. Petersburg city court in December, but the 
federal prosecutor's office appealed to the Supreme Court. 

As part of its appeal, the prosecution requested permission to start over and 
reassemble the entire case against Nikitin. With unusual logic, the 
prosecution argued that the case called for reinvestigation because 
investigators had violated Nikitin's civil rights the first time around. 

Three judges of the Supreme Court, who heard the appeal in April, upheld the 
decision of the lower court. The prosecutors have now appealed to the Supreme 
Court's 11-member Presidium. 

Nikitin said this is the first time in post-Soviet history that a decision of 
the high court has been sent to its Presidium for review. 

Yury Vdovin, co-chairman of the St. Petersburg-based Citizens' Watch advocacy 
group, blamed the attempt to revive the case on the presidential envoy to the 
Northwestern federal district, Viktor Cherkesov. Cherkesov, who headed the 
St. Petersburg FSB branch until he was promoted to deputy head of the FSB 
last year, masterminded the Nikitin case. 

"Cherkesov is sore about losing the case," Vdovin said. "He wants to 
retaliate." 

Vdovin said he did not believe the Presidium could legally uphold the appeal. 
"I hope that this [hearing] will be another shameful mark in the shameful 
history of our security services," he said. 

Jon Gauslaa, a Bellona lawyer, said in a telephone interview from Oslo, 
Norway, that although the Presidium agreed July 11 to hear the appeal, which 
was filed May 30, the defense lawyers were only notified Wednesday. He said 
the lawyers were informed they did not necessarily have to be present at the 
Aug. 2 hearing. 

Nikitin said the prosecutors' action seemed timed for maximum political 
effect because it would cut short his three-month speaking tour in the West. 
He said he intended to return to Russia to continue his legal fight. His wife 
lives in Canada and their daughter is a college student in Massachusetts. 

Nikitin, who was denied permission to travel abroad while his case was 
pending, was in Washington to receive the prestigious Goldman environmental 
award that he could not collect in 1997. He also was meeting with 
congressional and administration officials. 

His appearance Thursday was sponsored by U.S.-government funded Radio Free 
Europe/Radio Liberty and Amnesty International. After the speech, he rushed 
off to Capitol Hill to address the Helsinki Commission, a panel set up by 
Congress to monitor compliance on security agreements in Europe, and receive, 
with Bellona, the Sierra Club's Earthcare Award for work in environmental 
protection. 

Nikitin was arrested in February 1996 and held in jail for nearly 11 months. 
He was initially denied a lawyer and also a doctor when he complained of poor 
health. When charges were eventually filed, they were based on military 
decrees so secret that neither he, nor his lawyers nor even the investigators 
were allowed to see them. 

But by then, Nikitin's case was attracting international concern, with 
Amnesty International naming him a prisoner of conscience. He was Amnesty's 
first Russian prisoner of conscience since the days when Andrei Sakharov was 
held by the Soviet Union in internal exile. 

In December 1996, Nikitin was released from jail on condition that he not 
leave St. Petersburg without special permission from the FSB. 

But it was a particularly grim and unpleasant sort of freedom. Nikitin 
complained that the government had tapped the telephones at his office and 
home. FSB agents not only kept him under surveillance, he said, but they also 
slashed his car tires and poured glue into his car door locks, followed his 
wife and daughter around the city and attacked one of his lawyers, Ivan 
Pavlov. 

*******

#3
From: "Stephen Blank" <BlankS@awc.carlisle.army.mil>
Subject: RE:Lieven
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 

David: the issue here is not the oligarchs, nobody I know of is defending
them. But what Anatol Lieven has overlooked is that first there is such a
thing as due process, two Putin's record on corruption is hardly
disinterested as Pavel Borodin and the Yeltsin family can attest to, third,
police capitalism is not the answer to their depredations, and fourth an
assault on the constitutional provisions for deocncentrating power away from
Moscow is not a democratic move far from it. Let us remember that Mr.
Putin deliberately expanded the chechen war to win an election, is trying
to expand his term to eleven years in office, is using the FSB and the
armed forces to try and reintegrate theformer Soviet Union and has raised
the card of the Russian diaspora in ways that quite consciously imitate
Hitler in 1938 in regard to the Sudentenland, to wit, here is his statement
to the Moldovan government, "

Russia is interested in Moldova being a territorially whole,
independent state. But this cannot be achieved unless the interests of all
population groups, including Transdniester population, are observed. Russia
is prepared to participate in creating the conditions in which all residents
will feel secure in Moldova. The political treaty must firmly ensure the
rights of all those who reside on the territory of Moldova and who consider
that Russia can be a guarantor of their rights.19

These are not the words of a democrat or someone who understands the
need for a law-based system or a man who is going to get rid of the
oligarchs "as a class". I think we all remember who indulged in such
statements about liquidating people as a class. All of Putin's policies in
these domains should arouse alarm, not defenses that the oligarchs are
wicked. So they are, is the answer then a police state and Russian
imperialism? I think not, neither do the relevant governments in Georgia and
Azerbaijan or the Baltic states in Ukraine. A state policy predicated on
the assumption of the coincidence of internal and external enemies that
justifies internal wars and these kinds of foreign policies can only bring
Russia deeper into catastrophe.

*******

#4
From: "Steve Harrigan" <harrigansl@hotmail.com>
Subject: Starving Pigs
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 

Dear David,

Here is the script of the CNN report on a pig farm that Professor Hough 
mentioned:

The pigs are hungry.
In fact, they are starving.
The only thing workers at the Yaroslavl pig farm have to feed them is 
grass.
(Farmer) "It's really painful. The pigs are going to starve again. Of 
course, that's not very good for the soul."
Before the grass arrived this Spring the pigs were fed peat and 
sawdust.
They grew so weak they had to lean against each other to remain 
standing.
Those that fell had to be removed, to avoid being devoured.
They died at a rate of 300 a day.
Just a short drive from the carnage Russians have a choice - pigs' legs 
from Denmark, pork chops from Australia, ribs from France.
In a town once surrounded by Russian pig farms, there is no Russian 
pork for sale.
(Farmer) "They buy imported pork because it's cheaper. Our pork works 
out to be more expensive because the feed is so expensive. So the farm's 
broke."
Broke and deserted, part of a national trend. There were 40 million 
pigs in Russia in 1990, according to the Agriculture Ministry. Today there 
are just 18 million.
These piglets will never make it to maturity. The local government has 
ordered the Yaroslavl farm to kill all but 2000, the number they can feed.
That has led to protests from the 2,500 workers at the farm, who now 
face unemployment and a likely struggle to feed themselves.

Steve Harrigan
CNN Moscow

*******

#5
St. Petersburg Times
July 21, 2000
Drugs Fuel AIDS Epidemic in Chelyabinsk 
By Charles Digges
STAFF WRITER

CHELYABINSK, Ural Mountains - As her boyfriend Sergei holds the lighter flame 
under a tarnished tablespoon, 17-year old Larisa's tension is so overbearing 
that conversation is impossible in his mother's small kitchen. Indeed, talk 
is out of place. The two are cooking a bag of heroin - their fifth dose that 
day - financed by begging, by theft from friends and strangers, and in spite 
of vow after broken vow that this would be the last time. But the hair matted 
with cold sweat to their foreheads - the first signs of deep withdrawal - 
attests to the fact that they need this dose.

Sergei, 18, is HIV positive from using a shared heroin needle. He is also an 
expectant father with Larisa. She is seven months along in her pregnancy, and 
also became HIV-positive sharing needles with infected friends - like 90 
percent of the 1,126 official HIV positive residents in Chelyabinsk, an 
industrial city of 1 million in the Urals region.

Health officials have long warned, however, that Russia's statistics on AIDS 
are flawed: Many thousands remain unregistered and the true number infected 
could be 10 times as high. Sergei and Larisa are a part of what is possibly 
the most shocking boom of HIV in Russia since Kaliningrad, a port city on the 
Baltic Sea where AIDS first made headlines in Russia. But while Kaliningrad 
is posting figures of seven to eight new positive diagnoses of HIV per week - 
as Kaliningrad AIDS specialist Nadezhda Kazmerchik cites - Chelyabinsk is 
posting 20 to 30 positive cases per day - matched only by Tolyatti on the 
Volga River.

Taisia Perekopskay , the chief physician at the Chelyabinsk AIDS Center, said 
in an interview that days when she diagnoses 50 cases are not uncommon. 
Moscow leads the nation with 9,193 registered cases. Daily averages for 
positive diagnoses were not available, a Health Ministry spokeswoman said. 
Russia-wide, the ministry says there are 50,626 registered cases - a number 
that was 13,500 little more than a year ago. Meanwhile, Sergei has finished 
cooking the dose - typically about 0.1 of a gram of powder sold wrapped in a 
piece of paper. The couple load a dirty common needle and are ready to shoot 
up.

Sergei, using his belt to tie off Larisa's track-marked forearm, smacks the 
map of marks to find a viable vein. He injects. Then he does himself. As the 
drug begins to take effect, Sergei talks of their miserable prospects. Soon 
they will be kicked out of this flat as his mother wearies of the couple's 
10-"check"-a-day habit, and their baby will be born homeless. Sergei is also 
on a list of HIV-positive residents as well as drug users (there are 
currently 5,000 registered in Chelyabinsk) which - besides keeping from 
working his trade as a metal worker - keeps him out of the army.

"That's I suppose good news," he slurs. As Larisa fades off, though, she 
hears one bit of disturbing news: It is almost 100 percent certain her baby 
will be born an addict, and it stands a 40 percent chance of contracting HIV 
as the virus passes through the birth canal.

These chances could be reduced by 20 percent if she began a course of 
relatively cheap AZT-like drugs called Nevirapine, which costs about four 
dollars a dose - but that is a great deal when your drug habit consumes up to 
$20 a day. "Why did no one ever tell us this?" she asks rhetorically. "This 
child was our only hope to maybe go straight. We even had a names picked out 
- Olessya or Sergei. But now? Now . . .?"

She trails off as the drug takes her and such questions matter less and less. 
Chelyabinsk used to be an overflowing industrial city on a rail hub at the 
center of the Soviet Union. A semi-closed town, it was only opened up to 
foreigners without special passes five years ago - a place were Pepsi, the 
Spice Girls and drug addicts were previously unknown, said Marina Linkova, a 
psychiatrist at an HIV education group called Take Care of Yourself.

A few years before that, as the Soviet Union was dissolving, the borders 
became harder to maintain.

According to officials with the Russian Border Patrol, who declined official 
interviews but would speak on the telephone, the heroin flows north across 
the 4,500-kilometer border Russia shares with Kazakstan - now an independent 
country - and goes straight to where it will be easiest to transport: 
Chelyabinsk. From there is continues to Western Europe.

The official refused to answer other questions or estimate how much heroin 
makes it across the borders in to Russia or remains in Chelyabinsk. "The 
problem caught us off guard," said Alexander Smirnov, press secretary to 
Chelyabinsk's Mayor Vyacheslav Tarasov. "We recognized the problem late." 
Since recognizing the problem, however, the police drug squad in Chelyabinsk 
was increased from three to 17 inspectors - and this does not include the 
hundreds of beat police who have received special training as well. "We will 
defeat drug abuse," said Smirnov.

"That was one of Tarasov's campaign promises, and he is working to follow 
through on it."

Indeed, the mayor is making a monumental effort, and some local journalists 
speculate that there is a personal angle to the machine and that Tarasov's 
own son is an IV drug addict.

"It is an open secret of sorts," said ajournalist at the local daily Vecherny 
Chelyabinsk, who requested anonymity. "I don't think we would ever have seen 
the city pull out all the stops like it has to deal with this problem 
[otherwise]."

She added that Tarasov is up for re-election in December.

Smirnov denied that claim vehemently and said Tarasov's son is "alive and 
healthy." Neither Tarasov nor his son could be reached for comment.

Still, as even the cynics admit, the sheer volume of colorful flyers, the 
leaflets, concerts and rallies, and groups of volunteer students recruited by 
the Life Without Narcotics Organization - an AIDS education mega-program 
closely affiliated with City Hall - all guarantee that the 15- to 
25-year-olds of Chelyabinsk will be one of the most AIDS-savvy generations in 
Russia.

Nearly 30 non-government organizations have mushroomed, covering the town in 
AIDS hotlines and posters. One group - AdvokaTEEN, which was started by Take 
Care of Yourself - runs a hotline that gets more phone calls a day than 
similar hotlines in Moscow do.

"And you should hear the questions they ask," said Linkova. "'Can I get 
pregnant from kissing?' 'If my boyfriends shares needles, should I have sex 
with him without a condom?' 'How do you put a condom on?'"

City Hall contributes part of its grant money to these programs, some of 
which - on conditions of anonymity - say they feel pressured by the City Hall 
line.

"We feel like we have to be nice to them and to adopt their policies," said 
one. "Even if we have strong policy differences - sometimes a huge group 
trying to solve a huge problem is not the best solution." Dr. Lyudmila 
Syutina, acting chief physician of the Chelyabinsk AIDS center, when asked, 
answers frankly:

"I am absolutely sure that the majority of my [40] patients will go out and 
use again," she said. "They'll likely use dirty needles too."

When faced with such a grim assessment, she said her only hope was that her 
patients may have learned something about the HIV virus and drug use while 
they have been in her care - that they won't infect others with the needles 
that carry the HIV virus from their bodies, that they will not draw heroin 
from the same spoon as other addicts, thus contaminating the source. "This 
will save an uncountable number of lives," she said.

Andreas Hedfors contributed to this report.

*******

#6
Washington Post
21 July 2000
[for personal use only]
Doctoring A Broken Society 
By Sharon LaFraniere

STARYE ATAGI, Russia. On a cool, sun-drenched Tuesday, Andarbek Bakayev, a 
34-year-old surgeon, hurried to the hospital in the center of his village. 

His enthusiasm was remarkable, considering the difficulties of practicing 
medicine in Chechnya these days. Bakayev hasn't been paid since May 1995. He 
has to treat patients without the help of running water, a working toilet, a 
refrigerator, an X-ray machine, lab equipment, a stable source of electricity 
or even medicine, unless a charity donates it or Bakayev buys it on the black 
market.

The hospital is really just an old school, roughly made over and pressed into 
service because the real hospital is in ruins. But an average of two dozen 
patients a day still need care, and Bakayev, slim, dark and intense, 
considers it his duty to tend to them, even if it brings his fast-growing 
family not a ruble.

Since the start of the Russian ground offensive in Chechnya in October, 
Bakayev has performed about 600 operations in his makeshift operating rooms, 
undeterred by bombs, mass arrests and the exodus of other villagers. Long 
after the head doctor took off for safety in southern Russia, Bakayev still 
stood in the hospital's doorway and demanded that patients remove their dirty 
shoes.

By most standards, war-ravaged Chechnya is no longer a functioning society. 
Russian officials report almost 100 percent unemployment. Billows of black 
smoke rise from oil refineries. Homeless families trudge the dirt roads, 
hauling the few possessions they salvaged from their bombed-out dwellings.

Yet a core of the society remains, and the most dramatic evidence of it can 
be found in hospitals such as Bakayev's.

To say Chechnya's hospitals are ill-equipped is like saying its roads are 
bumpy. Of 28 hospitals and 28 outpatient clinics visited recently by the aid 
group Doctors Without Borders, three-fourths had no medicine or other 
supplies. Most had neither running water, a refrigerator to store drugs nor a 
working X-ray machine. Forty-seven percent had no electricity on the day of 
the survey. What they do have is staff.

"The hospitals are full of doctors, full of nurses, after four or five years 
of no salary," said Kenny Gluck, who travels throughout Chechnya assessing 
health care needs for the group. The staffing levels actually exceed the 
minimum set by the World Health Organization, the group says.

"There is just this enormous level of commitment," said Gluck. "There are not 
many places in the world where you find that level of commitment. It's one of 
the saving graces of this society."

Gluck knows many medical workers who have gone to extraordinary lengths, such 
as one doctor who searched the ruins of a hospital in the devastated town of 
Shatoi to recover anesthesia, and another who operated for three months in a 
candle-lit basement.

He finds Bakayev the most impressive of them all. "People told us, 'If it 
wasn't for this man, our village wouldn't be here,' " Gluck said. "He managed 
to keep the hospital going in the face of all this chaos and social 
breakdown, and that was essential not just for health care, but for the 
society. People said the hospital in a way became the backbone of the 
village."

Starye Atagi, in the very center of Chechnya, is a hamlet of red brick houses 
surrounded by blue-tinged mountains. Mud-encrusted cows lumber across the 
narrow dirt bridges spanning a canal of brown water from the rushing Argun 
River. Big bottles of gasoline atop wooden crates line the roadside; prices 
are dirt-cheap, but there are few takers.

Starye Atagi weathered the war with minimal damage. Only 60 homes were 
damaged, and 10 of the 15,000 residents died, according to Bakayev. Though 
some villagers fled, about 3,000 people sought refuge here, he said.

At the height of the conflict, the village school closed. So did the market. 
But the flour mill kept working. And Bakayev's hospital teemed with more than 
a dozen surgeons driven out of their own hospitals by artillery attacks.

They had plenty of work. The wounded streamed in from Grozny, the capital, 
about 12 miles to the north, and from the Argun Valley to the south. 
Villagers killed cows to feed the patients and gave Bakayev money to buy 
medicine. "I saw this in the first war also," he said, referring to the 
1994-96 conflict. "People start to think about each other."

Bakayev well remembers the patients he could not save. In April, a young man 
not yet 30 tried to defuse a mine in the nearby village of Alhazurovo. 
Bakayev amputated his leg and hopped in a car to take him to the neighboring 
region of Ingushetia. The man died while relatives tried to negotiate an 
emergency pass through military checkpoints.

A 10-year-old girl, whose stomach was torn to shreds from shrapnel, went 
through surgery but then died from blood loss.

Bakayev treats anybody--a policy that caused a serious breach with the head 
doctor during the first war. He doesn't feel obliged to report the rare 
occasions when a wounded Chechen fighter asks for treatment. When Russian 
soldiers came to search his hospital in January, Bakayev said, he didn't 
mention that five Chechen fighters had just fled.

Most of the visiting surgeons have gone home now, but Bakayev's regular staff 
remains, including two surgeons, an anesthesiologist, a dentist, a 
gynecologist, a general practitioner and a pediatrician. In addition, a few 
doctors and nurses still work at the old three-story red brick hospital on 
the other side of the village.

A third of that hospital's roof, most of its windows and part of the second 
and third floors were blown away in the first war. Still, on this cloudless 
Tuesday, Tamara Idigova, a gynecologist, sat in a broken-back chair in a 
stark first-floor office, attentively listening to a middle-aged patient.

Idigova rescued her ivory-colored examination chair, somewhat singed, from a 
nearby field. She put what records she could find on a little shelf. She and 
others laid a gas pipe down the length of the corridor. Villagers made her a 
crude black metal stove--a tiny burner atop four metal legs--and she brought 
a white casserole pot from home so she could sterilize her instruments.

"We worked here during the first war. There was no money. During the second 
war, we sat under the bombs. There was no money. And now they are still not 
paying us. It is murderous. But we hold on," she said.

Bakayev's wife, Larisa, would be happy if her husband let go now. They have 
three boys under the age of 4. Her parents live in Moscow. She would go 
"anywhere that is not here," said Bakayev. He hears that other surgeons earn 
$45 a month across the border in Ingushetia, a mere two hours away.

"But I don't want to go anywhere," Bakayev said. "This is my motherland. I 
know I can make money. But now is not the time. And this is not the point."

*******

#7
Nezavisimaya Gazeta - Stsenarii
No. 7
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
What Russians Think About the Future of Their Country 
Prepared by a working group of the Russian Independent 
Institute of Social and National Problems (RNISiNP), including 
M. GORSHKOV (project director), A. ANDREYEV, L. BYZOV, A. 
ZDRAVOMYSLOV, Ye. KOFANOVA, M. MCHEDLOV, V. PETUKHOV, N. 
TIKHONOVA, N. SEDOVA, A. CHEPURENKO and F. SHEREGI

The 20th century is nearly over. Many specialists and 
experts have had their say about Russia's life in this 
departing century. As for the general public, its opinion of 
the past developments is still a secret. This predetermined the 
nature of a special national study, carried out by the Russian 
Independent Institute of Social and National Problems 
(RNISiNP), at the request of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 
March-April 2000. 
Using the method of individual standard interviews, the 
study covered 2,050 respondents aged upwards of 18. The 
respondents represented all territorial-economic regions of the 
country, including the North Western, the Northern, the 
Central, the Volga-Vyatka, the Central Black Soil Zone, the 
North Caucasian, the Volga, the Urals, the West Siberian, the 
East Siberian, and the Far Eastern regions, as well as the 
cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. 
The quota study covered representatives of 11 social and 
professional groups, including workers, the engineering and 
technical intelligentsia, the humanitarian intelligentsia, the 
staff of trade and services, transportation and communications, 
employees, small and medium-sized businessmen, servicemen and 
the staff of the Interior Ministry, urban and rural dwellers, 
urban pensioners, higher school students, and the unemployed. 
The study was held in 58 settlements, proportionate to the 
population of megalopolises, regional centres, district cities 
and villages. 
We offer you excerpts from the analytical report called 
"Russians about Life in Russia in the 20th Century and Their 
Hopes in the New Century," based on the results of the above 
study.

Reviewing the Past
According to the poll, 14.6% of the respondents think that 
the 20th century gave Russia more than any other century, but 
13.2% think it was the most difficult and troublesome century 
for Russia. However, the bulk tend to combine these two 
opposite views. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents are 
convinced that the 20th century will go down in Russian history 
as the time of unheard-of achievements and equally dramatic 
losses. 
The overall view of the role of the 20th century in 
Russian history little depends on the socio-demographic 
differences of the respondents. The above fact shows that there 
is a continuity of the generation-influenced evaluation of 
historical experience, at least at the level of a generalised 
"image of the century," in Russian society. The poll results 
revealed a rather consistent group of historical periods and 
events, of which the public has an expressly concerted opinion. 
This concerns above all the evaluation of the Great Patriotic 
War of 1941-45. Over 85% of the population said the victory of 
the Soviet people in that war was the most important event of 
Russian (Soviet) history in the 20th century. 
Other national achievements of the 20th century, on which 
the respondents were almost unanimous, were the liquidation of 
illiteracy and the introduction of mass general and higher 
education, the creation of powerful industries, achievements in 
space exploration, and free medicine. 
Representatives of different generations have a largely 
similar view of the socio-economic consequences of different 
historical periods. For example, the bulk of the respondents 
think that the industrialisation period had the greatest 
positive influence on the development of Russia (Soviet Union) 
(see Table 1). 

Table 
1
The number of Russians who positively evaluate the 
influence
of different historical periods on the development of 
Russia, different generations, in %

-------------------------------------------------------------
Historical period Age groups (years) Total
Under 30 31-50 Over 50

-------------------------------------------------------------
Reforms of the early 
20th century (introduction 
of elements of the 
constitutional regime, 
the creation of a class 
of prosperous rural 
owners, transition to 
the gold rouble) 83.2 81.7 71.9 
78.9 
The 1917 October 
Revolution 36.1 43.6 52.6 44.1
New Economic 
Policy (1920s) 57.4 66.4 65.2 63.0
The industrialisation drive 
(late 1920s-1930s) 78.3 85.5 87.2 83.7
The collectivisation campaign 
(late 1920s-1930s) 31.6 39.5 48.1 39.7
The "thaw" of the 
early 1960s 76.8 76.9 76.6 76.8
The stagnation period 
(1970s-early 1980s) 32.0 44.4 48.4 41.6
Perestroika 1985-1990 37.8 29.5 21.7 29.7
Transition to a market 
economy (1991-1999) 60.9 42.1 27.8 43.6

-------------------------------------------------------------
The people's attitude to perestroika and market reforms of
the 1990s is more complicated. Positive evaluations of that
period did not reach 50% in any of the educational groups (see
Table 2). 

Table 
2
The number of Russians who negatively evaluate the 
influence
of different historical periods on the development of 
Russia, different generations, in %

-------------------------------------------------------------
Historical period Age groups (years) Total
Under 30 31-50 Over 50

-------------------------------------------------------------
Reforms of the early 
20th century (introduction 
of elements of the 
constitutional regime, 
the creation of a class 
of prosperous rural 
owners, transition to 
the gold rouble) 12.3 14.7 21.1 
16.0 
The 1917 October 
Revolution 62.4 54.6 45.1 54.0
New Economic Policy 
(1920s) 39.1 30.3 29.4 32.9
The industrialisation drive 
(late 1920s-1930s) 19.8 12.6 10.0 14.1
The collectivisation campaign 
(late 1920s-1930s) 65.6 58.7 48.9 57.7
The "thaw" of the 
early 1960s 19.4 20.0 21.0 20.1
The stagnation period 
(1970s-early 1980s) 65.4 52.8 48.4 55.5
Perestroika 1985-1990 60.9 68.4 76.2 68.5
Transition to a market 
economy (1991-1999) 36.8 55.8 69.5 54.0

-------------------------------------------------------------
So, what lessons have Russians drawn from the complicated 
and contradictory history of the departing 20th century? The 
poll showed that Russian society has in fact not yet determined 
its attitude to the historical lessons, and above all the main 
lesson of the 20th century. The bulk of Russians are united not 
so much by "what should be done," but by "what must not be 
done." They agree (40%) above all that one need not 
mechanically copy somebody else's experience. 
It is indicative that nearly 20% of the respondents sees 
one of the main lessons of the 20th century in that life cannot 
be overhauled through a revolution. These sentiments are 
especially evident at the level of emotional associations: over 
70% of the respondents said the notion of "revolution" evokes 
negative, rather than positive, feelings in them. 

Transformation and the Moral Crisis
A negative attitude to the developments of the past 10-15 
years in Russia is directly reflected in the mass evaluation of 
the results of social reforms. This evaluation was incredibly 
harsh from the viewpoint of several moral and psychological 
aspects. To begin with, the bulk of the respondents pointed to 
the weakening of such traditionally Russian qualities as 
benevolence, emotional openness, sincerity, selflessness and 
readiness to help others, respect for women and old folk. At 
the same time, the respondents pointed to growing 
aggressiveness and cynicism. The only positive change in the 
traditional Russian qualities was the growth of activity and 
initiative, the respondents said. 
As for activity and persistency, the ability to cooperate, 
education and diligence, 54% of the respondents said these 
qualities either grew stronger, or did not deteriorate, while 
46% mentioned the erosion of labour ethics. 
Seeking to gauge the moral climate in society as precisely 
as possible, the scientists offered the respondents a scale of 
evaluations of several hypothetical situations, when they had 
to make a moral choice, that is, show readiness, or refuse to 
justify different types of actions. It turned out that only six 
out of the 18 actions suggested to the respondents, which are 
traditionally regarded as amoral (or at least unethical), were 
unacceptable to the respondents (75% of them said they could 
never justify them). These six actions are torture, drug 
addiction, high treason, and cruel treatment of animals, 
political assassinations, and enrichment at the expense of 
others. 
It turned out that Russians have a rather lenient attitude 
to such actions as tax and army service avoidance, 
misappropriation of found things and money, and prostitution.
Anyway, 30-50% of the respondents think they can be justified. 
It should be said that young people denounce actions whose 
negative evaluation amounts to the approval or rejection of 
certain moral norms 1.5-3 times less frequently, than the 
respondents from the 31-50 age group, not to mention those who 
are above 50. 
On the other hand, there are special socio-psychological 
worlds and subcultures in different types of settlements. The 
differences are especially glaring in megalopolises and 
villages.
The residents of small settlements are more integral in 
identifying the good and the evil. For example, they are more 
intolerant of virtually all forms of deviations from standard 
behaviour, especially in the sphere of personal relations. For 
example, only 23% of the respondents who live in megalopolises 
have a negative attitude to adultery, while the figure for 
rural dwellers is 54%, the figures for prostitution are 42% and 
69%, and the figures for the misappropriation of found things 
and money are 24% and 42%, respectively. Unlike the residents 
of megalopolises, rural dwellers regard army service as a 
sacred duty and denounce draft dodgers. 
So, Russian society has a multiplicity of moral standards 
at the turn of the century. This collision denotes one of the 
main elements of moral crisis in Russian society, when such 
vital internal moral qualities as honesty, uprightness and 
law-abidance are not required in life, and respect for law is 
not regarded as the only acceptable norm. 
In other words, the moral world of Russians is being torn 
apart by contradictions at the turn of the century. On the one 
hand, moral standards are plummeting and the psychology of 
connivance is gaining momentum. On the other hand, Russians 
feel somewhere deep inside that "this must not be." 
Consequently, tolerance of violation of law and moral norms is 
combined in the public consciousness with the striving for a 
strong state capable of at long last restoring order and 
helping the people to overcome the crisis, including the moral 
crisis, that has hit the country. 

European Aspirations of the People of Russia 
The study 
showed that the need to strengthen Russia's foreign policy 
positions and active protection of national interests is an 
inalienable part of the new social demand. A considerable 
growth of anti-American sentiments is a notable element. As 
many as 77.6% of the respondents experienced positive feelings 
at the mention of the USA, and only 9.0% had negative feelings 
in 1995, while the current indicator of the public antipathy 
for the word "America" raised to 43.4%.
These figures are fully corroborated by the Russians' 
evaluation of the sources of threats to their country in the 
21st century. Nearly 44% mentioned the USA in this connection 
(the second place is held by somewhat diffused "threat from the 
south," coming from different Islamic countries, above all 
Afghanistan). Dislike for the policy of the US administration 
psychologically covers also the Americans, whom Russians regard 
as one of the less likable nations. 
On the other hand, Russians make a distinction between 
prospective relations with the USA and the current and future 
relations with European countries and the EU. 
In particular, a third of the respondents expressed a 
consolidated pro-European attitude ("Russia as a part of 
Europe" + "Europe as the common home"). The opposite pair of 
opinions ("Russia is a special civilisation" + "The West is not 
interested in helping Russia") was supported by 25% of the 
respondents. This distribution of opinions shows that the 
current Russian leadership has considerable freedom of action 
in choosing its policy with regard to the EU and individual 
European countries. 
On the whole, the analysis of the data shows that Russians 
regard themselves as Europeans and would like to remain such. 
The non-European (Eurasian) cultural and historical orientation 
is rather widespread, but not dominant. Nearly two-thirds of 
Russians regard Russia as a natural part of Europe and think 
that it will eventually have closer contacts with this part of 
the world, while no more than one-third of the respondents 
supported the actively popularised Eurasian-ism.
When asked who could become Russia's most loyal ally in 
the 21st century, Russians mentioned Belarus and Ukraine. China 
and Yugoslavia shared the third place. Germany was singled out 
from the list of EU countries (the fourth place in the list of 
16 countries and regions of greatest importance to Russia).
At the same time, it should be said that the widespread 
views of the architecture of the world and Russia's prospects 
in it are rather indistinct. In particular, Russians' attitudes 
to the disputes about the unipolar and multipolar worlds 
divided into three groups of comparable strength. The largest 
group think Russia should become one of the political centres 
of such world (30%). A part of the respondents called for 
reviving the bipolar structure and the restoration of Russia's 
status of one of the two superpowers (28%). And 25% of the 
respondents expressed isolationist sentiments (it would be 
better if we paid less attention to global affairs and more 
attention to our own problems). 
On the whole, judging by their replies, the Russians 
advocate the idea of "befitting independence": We should go our 
own way, without interfering in conflicts or owing anything to 
anyone. 

* * * 

Deep qualitative changes took place in the life of Russia 
in the last decade of the 20th century. The social and 
political systems changed. The social structure was overhauled, 
with new ideas, types of activity and life strategies becoming 
widespread.
Our people have become accustomed to democratic values and 
market economy notions, and their views of the experience of 
other countries and our own past has become more objective.
In the process of these changes, Russians have become 
stronger aware of their belonging to the international 
community, above all the European world. On the other hand, the 
trends revealed by this study prompt the conclusion that the 
Russian way of development can hardly be standardised. In this 
sense, the history of Russian reforms of the past decade can be 
divided into two periods. 
The first half of the 1990s was the time of a love affair 
with the Western experience, complemented with persistent 
attempts to plant different foreign-made models into Russian 
soil. The admissibility of Russian specifics was frequently 
questioned or rejected as something obsolete.
The reaction to that lop-sided "philia" was the 
development of a conservative wave in the mid-1990s, which 
greatly determined the current state of mass mood in Russian 
society. The dominant element of that wave was the retreat from 
pro-Western sentiments of the period of the development of 
democracy to the "traditionally Russian" views, morals and way 
of life. 
However, this does not mean that Russians have turned 
their back on the prospects of global integration and the idea 
of progress. The results of the poll show that Russians are on 
the whole orientated at the modern forms of life and economic 
management. 
As for human capital, Russia still has a very high 
potential for modernisation. The revolutionary period, which 
lasted for nearly 15 years, is clearly ending. The traditional 
"Russian power," with its traditional social base and 
traditional political priorities, is reviving, although it will 
most probably preserve and even develop certain democratic 
institutes, which Russian society will hardly agree to discard 
now (elections, freedom of speech, free movement abroad, etc.).
There is a dominant viewpoint of national priorities and 
means of ensuring optimal development scenarios in the Russian 
mind. Most Russians spoke up for focusing the efforts of 
society and the state on the development of science and 
education. In view of the current raw-materials tilt of the 
Russian economy, this social demand will call for serious 
changes in the economic policy pursued in the past few years. 
At first sight, the visible dynamics of the Russian mass 
consciousness is similar to the spread of the so-called 
post-economic values in Western societies. However, this 
similarity is only skin-deep. There is no free play of 
individualised demands in conditions of over-production of 
material values in Russia, but a process of "strengthening the 
spirit" for survival in a rather complicated situation. The 
importance of material values is diminishing in Russia not 
because they have become easily available, but exactly because 
even relative prosperity is an impossible dream for a vast 
number of people. This is why it would be more correct to 
define processes underway in Russia not as movement to 
post-economic, post-materialist values, but as the development 
of a culture of spiritual concentration. 

*******

#8
Financial Times (UK)
21 July 2000
[for personal use only]
The oligarch who wants to be accepted: Russian businessman Vladimir Potanin
talks of compromise, not war, with the Kremlin, Arkady Ostrovsky reports

Vladimir Potanin, the head of Russia's Interros group, does not give the
impression of being a man in the firing line. Sitting in his ornate office
in the heart of Moscow, furnished with leather sofas and dark wood panels,
the casually dressed Mr Potanin was yesterday getting ready for a weekend
trip to the south of France. 

Earlier this month, the prosecutor general's office accused Mr Potanin of
underpaying Dollars 140m (Pounds 93m) for one of his companies, Norilsk
Nickel, during the privatisations of the mid-1990s and demanded he make
good the shortfall. The attack has been seen as part of the Kremlin's
campaign against the country's top business "oligarchs". But Mr Potanin is
talking not of war, but of compromise. 

"The Kremlin is trying to establish new relationships with the business
elite. So far it has simply tried to distance itself from the oligarchs.
Now it should tell us what to do next," Mr Potanin said. Faced with the
evident public popularity of the Kremlin's anti-oligarch campaign, Mr
Potanin is advocating a more active approach by the oligarchs themselves
aimed, at least, at improving their image in the public eye. 

"Many oligarchs fly to the south of France in their private jets and rent
yachts, they spend Dollars 2m-Dollars 3m a year, but then they put these
costs down as business expenses. This is unethical. 

"We should say to people: 'You think we were bad, but we want to be normal
and socially acceptable'. Let us promise we will all pay our personal taxes
and let us also show how much money we spend on sponsoring culture." 

Aside from Norilsk Nickel, one of the world's leading producers of nickel,
cobalt and other precious metals, Mr Potanin owns the Sidanko oil company.
He amassed his empire in the infamous loans-for-shares privatisation of the
mid-1990s, an arrangement under which the country's business elite secured
controlling shares in privatised state companies, offering in exchange
their political support for former President Boris Yeltsin. 

Yesterday he admitted that oligarchs had too much political influence and
said the government was right to seek to regain control of the situation.
The current steps, he suggested, were aimed at "softening up" the oligarchs. 

"The government clearly aims to threaten the businessmen and soften them
like clay. This clay is not ready to be used for sculpting something new.
Many oligarchs are tired of the lack of well-defined rules and are waiting
for the Kremlin to define the guidelines," he said. 

As a further step to improve their image, he suggests that Russian business
barons copy their western counterparts, and seek to develop social
partnership projects between the business and society. 

He said this was one of the suggestions he was planning to make during next
week's meeting between Mr Putin and the business elite. "We can't change
our image by employing a public relations agency (as some oligarchs have
suggested), we must show real deeds to prove our good intentions." 

However, Mr Potanin admitted his ideas on tax and other issues had not won
enthusiastic support from other oligarchs. Such an initiative, he said,
would be more effective from the president. Mr Putin could also give the
business elite a new code of conduct. That way, in the future, the
oligarchs would know what is bad and what is good. 

******

#9
Russia, U.S. pledge cooperation on arms control

OKINAWA, Japan, July 21 (Reuters) - The presidents of the United States and 
Russia pledged to continue cooperation in the field of arms control on Friday 
on the sidelines of the annual summit of the Group of Eight on the Japanese 
island of Okinawa. 

"The United States and Russia are prepared to renew and expand cooperation in 
the field of theatre missile development and to consider the possibility of 
involving other states," Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin said in a joint 
statement after their meeting. 

The statement comes amid strong Russian pressure on the United States to 
abandon plans to deploy an anti-missile defence shield Moscow says would 
violate the 1972 Anti-Missile Missile (ABM) treaty and spark a new global 
arms race. 

Washington says the proposed shield would provide limited defence against 
possible attack from what it calls "rogue states" like North Korea. 

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters Putin had also briefed 
Clinton on the results of his landmark visit to North Korea earlier this 
week. During that trip, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il offered to abandon 
his country's missile programme in return for help from other countries to 
explore space. 

President Bill Clinton and President Vladimir Putin also reiterated their 
pledge to uphold the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and to 
ensure the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban 
treaty. 

******