August 28, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4480  4481

Johnson's Russia List
#4481
28 August 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. AP: Russian TV Tower Fire Contained.
2. AFP: Crisis, which crisis? Russians lose track of disasters.
3. Reuters: Psychologists worried about Moscow TV blackout.
4. New York Times: Michael Gordon, Chechnya Is Quieter, but 
Still a Deadly Quagmire.
5. Boston Globe: David Filipov, Rock festival softens rigors of 
Russian life.
6. New York Times letter: Walter Uhler, An Evolving Russia.
7. Baltimore Sun: Today's TV, A Look at Boris Yeltsin, the myths 
and the man.
8. AFP: Soviet dreams shattered in Russia's Far East. (Sakhalin)
9. Reuters: Russian chance for Paris Club relief slim -paper.
10. Christian Caryl: Demography article.
11. Interfax: RUSSIAN PREMIER UPBEAT ON ECONOMIC RESULTS OF 
CABINET'S FIRST 100 DAYS.
12. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Marina VOLKOVA and Vladislav KUZMICHEV,
THE GOVERNMENT NOT GUILTY OF A SINGLE FOLLY. 100 Days Ago the State 
Duma Approved Mikhail Kasyanov for the Post of Premier.]


*******


#1
Russian TV Tower Fire Contained
August 28, 2000
By NICK WADHAMS

MOSCOW (AP) - Firefighters struggled for a second day Monday to extinguish a 
fire that gutted Moscow's giant television tower, as officials said there was 
little chance that people trapped in an elevator could be saved. 


Plumes of smoke billowed from the Ostankino Tower - at 1,771 feet, the 
world's second-tallest free standing structure - on Monday morning, spreading 
out across northern Moscow as people watched from the streets below. The 
smoke disappeared by mid-afternoon as firefighters finally controlled the 
blaze, said Vyacheslav Mulishkin, first deputy director of the Russian Fire 
Service. 


He said that temporary firewalls of asbestos placed 70 meters (231 feet) up 
the tower had stopped the fire from spreading. But he said bundles of steel 
support cables running up the middle of the tower had been damaged, possibly 
threatening the structure. 


``The cables are weakened, but have not broken,'' he said. 


Automatic firefighting systems within the tower appeared to have failed or 
had run out of fire-suppressing foam, officials said. Firefighters in heavy 
rubber coats and breathing apparatus had to climb hundreds of stairs, 
carrying heavy metal fire extinguishers and other equipment. 


Mulishkin said two civilians and a firefighter were trapped in a lift high in 
the tower. Earlier Monday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said that there 
were four trapped people in the elevator, while Russian news agencies said 
there were only two. 


The elevator was too high for rescuers to reach, and the people inside may 
have been overcome by smoke. 


The fire, which broke out high on the tower's upper spire Sunday afternoon, 
broke off broadcasts for most major television stations in Moscow, though 
channels were still able to transmit nationally. 


More than 300 firefighters and other emergency workers were called in to 
battle the blaze, along with fire trucks and other equipment. A helicopter 
circled close to the tower, apparently checking for damage. 


It was the latest in a series of disasters, including gas explosions, 
industrial accidents and breakdowns in the power grid, that have underscored 
the weakened state of Russia's infrastructure due to lack of money and poor 
maintenance. 


``This emergency highlights what condition vital facilities, as well as the 
entire nation, are in,'' President Vladimir Putin said at a Cabinet meeting. 
``Only economic development will allow us to avoid such calamities in the 
future.'' 


Responding to fears that the tower could collapse, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov 
said ``a large danger arises from the physical condition of the concrete 
parts of the tower.'' But he said earlier that the risk of collapse 
``practically does not exist.'' 


A Moscow city surveyor on the scene, Vladimir Aleksin, said the tower's upper 
spire had tilted slightly, and that the tip of the structure was off-center 
by about two yards. 


The fire started after a short circuit in wiring belonging to a paging 
company. Visitors were quickly evacuated from the tower's restaurant and 
observation deck, which were engulfed several hours later as the fire moved 
down the structure. 


Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo said authorities considered it unlikely 
that the fire was set intentionally in the tower, which has become 
increasingly packed with equipment in recent years. 


Prosecutors opened an investigation Monday into whether criminal negligence 
was responsible for the fire, the Interfax news agency reported. 


Media Minister Mikhail Lesin said it would take two or three days to restore 
television broadcasts to Moscow, while months would be needed to renovate the 
tower completely, Radio Mayak reported Monday. 


Law enforcement agencies and emergency services also have circuitry in the 
tower, news reports said, but it wasn't clear whether that equipment was 
damaged. 


The Ostankino tower was erected in 1967, and like many projects of the time, 
played its own small role in the Soviet-U.S. rivalry. It surpassed the Empire 
State Building as the world's tallest structure when it was built, and held 
the title until 1975 when it was surpassed by the CN tower in Toronto. 


On the Net: 
Details on the tower: http://www.great-towers.com/towers/moscow.htm 


*******


#2
Crisis, which crisis? Russians lose track of disasters


MOSCOW, Aug 28 (AFP) - 
Blank looks as well as blank television screens greeted news of the Ostankino 
tower blaze Monday as Russians, still mourning the loss of the Kursk 
submarine, struggled to come to terms with the latest emergency.


The towering inferno, which has trapped four people in the 540-metreft) 
landmark, is the third major emergency to hit Russia this month, following 
the blast in a Moscow subway which killed 12 people and the sinking of Kursk 
nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea which killed 118.


The smoke and flames engulfing the world's second-tallest structure, no less 
symbolic of national pride than a hitherto untarnished nuclear fleet, had 
merely confirmed the impression that life in today's Russia involves lurching 
from one disaster to the next.


Even President Vladimir Putin, briefing journalists on the latest rescue 
effort Monday, was hard pressed not to draw a moral from the flurry of 
fiascoes.


"This new emergency situation shows what state our most vital objects, and 
the country as a whole, is in," the Russian leader said.


"We cannot fail to see behind this accident a broader problem, we cannot 
forget about the economy," said Putin. "This will decide whether such 
accidents strike again."


But is Russia merely accident-prone? Or does the sequence of disasters point 
to something more worrying than mere bad luck, a deeper-seated malaise?


After the Kursk submarine disaster, which humbled the once proud Russian 
navy, the media tower blaze provides yet more evidence that the wear and tear 
of its post-Soviet decline is affecting Russia's stature in the eyes of the 
world.


Twice the height of France's Eiffel tower, the needle-sharp Ostankino tower 
was completed in 1967 and heralded as a feat of Soviet engineering. It only 
ceded first place as the world's tallest structure when Toronto's CN Tower 
was unveiled.


Putin was elected in March after promising to restore the glory days, 
enabling Russian to walk tall once again, but the demise of Ostankino only 
highlights the gap between the country's state-of-the-art spin and 
start-of-collapse infrastructure.


"Only somebody with a highly-developed sense of humour can be a philosopher 
in Russia today," the daily Izvestiya noted in the wake of recent disasters.


But in fact the spate of tragedies has thrown up a surprising number of 
would-be stoics.


"The people calling our radio station say that God is punishing Russia," Echo 
Moscow's news editor Alexei Venediktov told AFP. "Putin must be asking 
himself 'why me?'"


The radio station also noted with bitter irony that the Ostankino blaze had 
wiped Russia's critical television channels, such as NTV and ORT, off the 
air, less than a week after Putin had rounded on the media for its 
no-holds-barred coverage of the Kursk drama.


Russian reporting of the submarine tragedy demonstrated how radical has been 
the transformation of the Russian media over the past decade, a period of 
time during which, according to Venediktov, other areas of the state had been 
much slower to reform.


Not quite London Bridge, but the Ostankino tower has the same iconic power 
for many Muscovites, and if it really is in danger of falling down -- as 
firefighter warned Monday -- it could signal another collapse in Russian 
self-esteem.


******


#3
Psychologists worried about Moscow TV blackout
By Andrei Shukshin

MOSCOW, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Muscovites faced blank screens on Monday after a 
fire knocked out broadcasts from the Ostankino television tower and said they 
felt part of their lives had been switched off. 


People questioned by Reuters on the streets of Moscow said they had little 
idea of how they would manage without their favourite pastime and 
psychologists said they were bracing for an upsurge in the number of cases of 
nervous disorders. 


``It will be hard without television, especially for older people,'' said 
Anna, a 77-year-old pensioner. ``For us it is a way into some sort of 
oblivion, a means to forget about all the disasters that hit Russia and weigh 
so heavily on people. 


``I feel something is missing in my life.'' 


A psychologist at Moscow's Ambrumova stress relief hotline said the tension 
would build up as days went by and people were deprived of their daily 
routine. 


``The feeling of anxiety, the feeling of fear... will only become more 
pronounced,'' he said, adding that psychologists were preparing to deal with 
an increased number of calls. 


``There are many people, especially pensioners, who live from one soap opera 
to another... and now it has been taken away from them. Naturally, there is a 
deep feeling of frustration.'' 


TELEVISION A HIT IN RUSSIA 


Television, for many years a dull catalogue of the ``achievements'' of the 
Soviet system, has enjoyed a boom in capitalist Russia with people spending 
up to five hours a day before the screen. 


Until Sunday it also proved the most reliable, staying on air even during 
great political upheavals. 


A hardline communist coup in 1991 did not end programming and an armed 
assault by left-wing extremists on the television production centre in 1993 
did not put it off the air. Imported soap operas, thrillers and leisure 
programmes which flooded the screens after the collapse of the Soviet Union 
in 1991 have won a massive and stable audience, especially among low-income 
Russians unable to afford other entertainment. 


At some points in the tumultuous post-Soviet history regional armed conflicts 
were suspended during hit serials. 


A fire which erupted on Sunday at the Ostankino television tower, Europe's 
tallest building, which transmits television signals to about 10 million 
Moscow residents and many areas outside the city, has left most screens 
black. 


Officials say it may be weeks if not months before regular broadcasting can 
be restored. An emergency solution is to pipe in the three biggest national 
channels through a limited cable network which operates in some parts of the 
capital. 


The popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said the accident might force people 
back to the pre-television era when they spent more time reading, listening 
to the radio and chatting on the playgrounds in front of Moscow's trademark 
apartment blocks. 


MUSCOVITES SAY WON'T READ MORE 


But Muscovites asked by Reuters were sceptical as to whether the television 
blackout could revive old habits. 


``Do you read books? I don't and I won't,'' said Andrei, 33, adding that he 
would now tune to cable to get as many national broadcasts as possible and 
rent more videos. 


A newspaper vendor in central Moscow said he had not noticed any pickup in 
demand since Sunday's fire. 


``Nothing can replace television. Whenever I am free I watch it. I do not 
know with what else to kill time,'' said Valentina, 40, selling confectionery 
in the street. 


Elena, 18, said her father, whom she described as a TV couch potato, was very 
upset he had already missed two thrillers on Sunday, including the 1989 U.S. 
horror movie ``The Abyss'' by ``Titanic'' director James Cameron. 


Olga, 14, said she would now be using the Internet more often to keep up with 
the news. 


But some saw a positive side to the television downfall. 


``I am very glad,'' said Tatyana, 53. ``This brainwashing stopped, maybe 
people will have more time to think.''


******


#4
New York Times
August 28, 2000
[for personal use only]
Chechnya Is Quieter, but Still a Deadly Quagmire
By MICHAEL R. GORDON


TSENTORA-YURT, Russia, Aug. 23 -- The Russian-appointed leader of Chechnya 
gestured toward the crowd that had gathered to wish him a happy 49th birthday 
at his heavily guarded home in this Chechen town. Some, he noted dryly, could 
well be rebel agents. 


"They are everywhere and nowhere," Akhmad Kadyrov said with a shrug. "Some of 
them might even be among these people." 


Mr. Kadyrov ought to know. He has already survived several assassination 
attempts, including one two months ago, which was averted when a huge bomb 
was discovered along the road 100 yards from his house. Last year, a bomb 
that was apparently intended for Mr. Kadyrov killed five of his relatives. 


It is just another week in Chechnya, a battered, dispirited but proud 
Caucasus land that continues to present Russia's gravest security challenge. 
A year after Russian troops poured into the region, the breakaway republic is 
no longer the scene of major Russian artillery barrages and pitched battles 
involving thousands of soldiers against rebels who are seeking an independent 
republic. 


But the war has not gone away. Russian casualties continue every week as the 
fighting has shifted from large-scale assaults to skirmishing and ambushes 
that have turned Chechnya into a nasty quagmire for the Russian president, 
Vladimir V. Putin, and his top generals. 


Almost everyone seems to agree that Russian firepower alone cannot bring an 
end to the fighting and that a political solution is necessary. That is where 
Mr. Kadyrov is supposed to come in, but so far a resolution of the conflict 
seems as distant as ever. 


"The war can't be ended by military means," Mr. Kadyrov said. "We Chechens 
have to stop it ourselves. If we can't, the war will go on for 10 or 20 
years." 


In the baking summer heat, Chechnya often seems deceptively quiet. There is a 
weary routine about the searches at the Russian checkpoints, the noisy 
helicopter flights to and from the Russian strongholds and the bustle at 
Chechen marketplaces. 


Even a good day, however, can be grim and frighteningly unpredictable. 


Grozny, Chechnya's nominal capital and a ruin of a city, still lacks gas, 
electricity and any visible efforts at restoration. Only a few thousand 
people still seem to live there, but now they include rebels who have managed 
to sneak back into city. 


They shoot at the Russian checkpoints at night, prompting noisy fire fights 
that residents say keep them awake. Squads of Kalashnikov-bearing Russian 
soldiers move past the kiosks and makeshift shops but do not linger long. In 
one brazen attack this week, two Russian soldiers were shot to death at 
point-blank range while they were shopping in Grozny's central market. 


"It's becoming more and more dangerous," said Yuri Vasilkov, a 19-year old 
draftee from the southern Russian town of Taganrog, who was manning a Grozny 
checkpoint. "A major attack could come at any time -- tonight, tomorrow, 
now." 


Officially, Russian generals contend that this is nothing to worry about. The 
guerrilla attacks, they insist, are just the final phase of a terrible war 
that is all but won. The military, in fact, has already made plans to station 
a permanent garrison in Chechnya to secure the peace. 


It consists primary of the army's newly created 42nd Division, whose members 
are being sent to four strategic locations. With 15,000 members, the unit is 
larger and better equipped than most. But at Borzoy, a mountain village that 
sits astride a potential rebel supply corridor to Georgia, half of the 
division's troops are young conscripts with no previous experience in 
Chechnya. The other half are "kontraktniki," essentially mercenaries who 
often have some military experience and fight for pay. 


"This is peace," insists Col. Andrei Fyodorov, 39, who commands the Borzoy 
detachment. "The situation is under control." 


Other Russian officers, however, have a dimmer view. They say the rebels may 
only have several thousand full-time fighters compared with the approximately 
80,000 soldiers and policeman the Kremlin has sent to Chechnya. But the 
rebels have also adapted their tactics. 


Instead of mounting large and costly attacks against major Russian bases and 
troop concentrations, the rebels plant mines, set off bombs and try to pick 
off small groups of soldiers -- pinprick attacks that are slowly bleeding 
Russian forces. 


According to official statistics, 17 Russian troops were killed and 52 
wounded last week, a tranquil week by Chechnya standards. All told, more than 
2,500 Russian fighters have been killed and 7,500 wounded in the last year. 


The rebels have also sought to infiltrate village administrations throughout 
Chechnya, hoping to gain control of food and other supplies so they can 
divert them to their fighters in the woods and mountains. When Russian 
officials uncovered a rebel camp last month in the Shatoy mountain region 
they discovered that it was filled with goods sent to aid the civilian 
population. 


Village officials who resist the rebels are often the targets of attacks, 
along with their relatives. In the last two weeks, local officials in 
Meskety, Nozhay-Yurt and Urus-Martan have been attacked. 


"Yes, we have cases where local administrations have been infiltrated," Mr. 
Kadyrov said. "We are setting up a new commission now to check all of the 
officials in Chechnya, to find out who is charge of what and check all 
aspects of what they are doing." 


Certainly, nobody knows the difficulty of controlling Chechnya better than 
Mr. Kadyrov, whom Mr. Putin appointed two months ago to administer the 
republic. Mr. Kadyrov is the first Chechen leader to be installed by Moscow 
since 1996. 


A former Muslim cleric, Mr. Kadyrov opposed the Russians during the first 
Chechen war, from 1994 to 1996, which routed Russian forces and gave Chechnya 
de facto independence. Mr. Kadyrov supported Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen 
commander who became the first president of the breakaway republic after that 
war. 


But after Islamic militants based in Chechnya invaded neighboring Dagestan 
and Russian troops responded by invading Chechnya, Mr. Kadyrov broke with Mr. 
Maskhadov and decided to work with the Russians. Each has denounced the other 
as a traitor, dimming the already bleak prospect for negotiations. 


Mr. Kadyrov appeared relaxed at his birthday celebration with his family and 
Chechen officials, even as machine-gun toting bodyguards stood by, chanting 
Muslim prayers before feasting on lamb, potatoes and soft drinks. 


"It does not matter if we are part of Russia or independent," Mr. Kadyrov 
said. "What does a man really need? He needs a permanent job and salary. And 
he needs to be able to leave his house safely to go work and to come back 
safely in the evening. That is what freedom means. And where should we go? We 
are surrounded by Russia." 


To encourage a political solution, he has negotiated with several field 
commanders, including Ruslan Gelayev. Several minor rebel leaders have come 
over to his side. But Mr. Kadyrov says he will never make a deal with Shamil 
Basayev or Khattab, two of the best-known rebel commanders, or with Mr. 
Maskhadov. 


Some critics doubt that Mr. Kadyrov will be able to establish his authority 
in Chechnya. They note that he cannot even control Bislan Gantamirov, a 
former mayor of Grozny who was jailed for embezzlement and released by the 
Russians so that he could fight on their side. Unlike Mr. Kadyrov, Mr. 
Gantamirov controls a Chechen militia, and he has especially close ties with 
much of the Russian military. 


When Mr. Kadyrov fired some local officials loyal to Mr. Gantamirov, the 
former Grozny mayor led a band of his men to Gudermes, the administrative 
capital and site of Mr. Kadyrov's government headquarters. It was a blunt 
show of force, and relations between the two pro-Moscow Chechens are still 
frosty. 


"Kadyrov does not have the means to control the situation inside the Chechen 
republic," said Malik Saidullayev, a Chechen businessman and a rival. 


Mr. Kadyrov asserts that he can prevail. He plans to attend a religious 
conference in the United States and, making use of his common ground with 
them as a former cleric, ask the Arab members not to provide the financial 
support that has been coming in to the rebels from Muslims around the world. 


His hardest task, however, is to persuade the Chechen people that they have 
more to gain by accepting Russian control over their republic and putting 
down their guns. For all the Russian firepower, he says, the fighting will 
not end until ordinary Chechens stop giving aid and sanctuary to the rebels. 


"We are hiding them," Mr. Kadyrov said. "We Chechens, not Kadyrov. We give 
them shelter. We feed them. If we closed all the doors to them, then everyone 
would see them. This is the only way to solve this problem." 


******


#5
Boston Globe
August 28, 2000
FOREIGN JOURNAL
Rock festival softens rigors of Russian life 
By David Filipov


RAMENSKOYE, Russia - They were stardust. They were golden. And by the time 
they got to Ramenskoye, they were, if nowhere near half a million, then 
certainly no fewer than 50,000 strong.


The scene at Ramenskoye was a massive Russian rock festival that brought the 
flavor of Woodstock to this small town 30 miles east of Moscow. Fow two days, 
40 bands from Russia and around the former Soviet Union played rock, dance, 
and alternative music from morning to midnight. A large field near a 
semiabandoned hippodrome played the role of Max Yasgur's dairy farm. And at 
times during the Aug. 20-21 festival, the clogged flow of cars on the New 
Ryazan Highway looked a bit like the New York State Thruway on Aug. 15-18, 
1969.


Even the Ramenskoye festival's slogan - ''Beer, Music and Love'' - seemed to 
recall a more carefree time and place than the tension-filled August Russia 
is enduring.


For this has hardly been the summer of love. The daily bloodshed in Chechnya, 
a blast in central Moscow that killed 11, and the tragic sinking of the 
atomic submarine Kursk, with all of its 118 men, have led some pundits to dub 
this ''Black August.''


The Ramenskoye event was supposed to be the grand finale for a summer of 
Russian rock festivals unprecedented in their size and number. But it 
occurred at the height of the submarine crisis, when many Russians were 
starting to conclude that their leaders had covered up the scale of the Kursk 
tragedy and had bungled the attempted rescue.


Some Moscow officials suggested that holding rock festivals was inappropriate 
for a time of national catastrophe. But the event went on, and at times, like 
Woodstock, got rather political. On the first day, Pavel Filippenko, the 
flamboyant lead singer of the group IFK (who once performed an entire set 
naked in front of hundreds), shouted from the stage as the band kicked into 
its cover of ''We Care a Lot'' by Faith No More: ''This next song goes out to 
the people who have [expletive] up our boys on the submarine!''


That stirred up the crowd and gave the show a Woodstock-like antigovernment 
bent, but organizers held back from turning the event into a full-fledged 
protest.


''There was too much anger and frustration about what was happening with the 
submarine,'' said Mikhail Kozyrev, program director of Nashe Radio (''Our 
Radio'') and one of the creators of the festival. ''We decided we didn't want 
to do that just from the point of uncertainty on how to control the rage if 
things get out of control.''


Kozyrev says the point of the festival - called Nashestviye in Russian, a 
play on the words for ''our'' and ''invasion,'' - was to give IFK and other 
younger local bands exposure to a larger audience.


''We might have played for 50 people before,'' said Alexander Lebedev, lead 
singer of the group Sansara from the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. ''To play 
in front of 50,000 was amazing.''


To attract the big crowd, the festival featured longer shows by such Russian 
superstars as ChaiF, Russia's equivalent of Bruce Springsteen, rock diva 
Zemfira (''She's as big here as Madonna in the US,'' says Kozyrev), and 
current Russian chartbusters such as goth rockers Bi-2 and the Yekaterinburg 
hard rock quintet Chicherina (who deleted a tune about a shipwreck from their 
song list and instead dedicated a song ''to those who are waiting for their 
sailors to come back.'')


Despite the grim backdrop, Kozyrev said he was encouraged by the festival's 
outcome.


''This summer, and Nashestviye in particular, has definitely been a step 
towards a better air and climate in the country,'' he said.


The vibe even seemed to carry over to the weather; heavy rain on the second 
day cleared up by evening. No one actually shouted ''no rain, no rain.''


But you know they felt it.


David Filipov is the Globe's Moscow bureau chief.


******


#6
New York Times
August 28, 2000
Letter
An Evolving Russia

To the Editor: 
One need not condone the Russian government's initial reaction to the sinking 
of the Kursk submarine (news article, Aug. 22) to decry attempts by the news 
media, both Western and Russian, to find it evocative of the bad old days of 
the Soviet era. 


That mind-set suggests that the Soviet Union was a static, presumably 
totalitarian, political entity. But the "new thinking" of Mikhail S. 
Gorbachev, the former Soviet president, was not an aberration but the 
culmination of evolutionary changes that commenced with Stalin's death. 


Juxtaposing the new Russia with a static Soviet Union obscures the reality 
about both. But it speaks volumes about the limitations of our own prevailing 
post-cold-war triumphalism. 


WALTER C. UHLER 
Philadelphia, Aug. 24, 2000 

******


#7
Baltimore Sun
August 28, 2000
A look at Boris Yeltsin, the myths and the man
Today´s TV
He's credited with no less than destroying the Communist Party, dismantling 
the Soviet state and starting Russia's market reforms. Did Boris Yeltsin 
really favor democracy, or was he merely seeking power? In this new 
documentary, "Yeltsin" (9 p.m.-10:30 p.m., MPT, Channels 22 and 67), friends 
and foes comment on this little-understood leader. Followed at 10:30 p.m. by 
"Widow of the Revolution: The Anna Larina Story," based on the memoirs of a 
woman who lived through most of Russia's 20th-century history. PBS. 


******


#8
Soviet dreams shattered in Russia's Far East


DOLINSK, Russia, Aug 28 (AFP) - 
Anger was palpable Sunday among the unemployed in this bare and forgotten 
town once meant to be the oil capital of Russia's Far East, but now a 
frightening show of Soviet miscalculation.


Forty kilometers (25 miles) north of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the capital of 
Russia's oil-rich Sakhalin Island lies, many here agree, a dead zone which 
people would prefer to escape, if they could.


Unemployment is rife among the young, while many of those with any job at all 
are paid trivial salary months late -- if ever.


"1993 was the end, that was when they put a gravestone on this town," said 
30-year-old army sergeant Alexander Mirnov, his lips trembling as he spoke.


"Ten years ago you could still get out of here, now we're stuck for good," he 
added despairingly.


In Communist times, wind-swept Dolinsk was actually an attractive place to 
live, drawing enthusiasts from all over the Soviet Union with promises of 
rich pay checks from a giant cellulose plant.


A small town nestling among olive-green hills, waves pleasantly lap against 
the shore at Dolinsk, on the Sea of Okhotsk coast.


But now its ugly concrete Soviet-era buildings are a prison for the unhappy 
15,000 residents, desperately trying to make ends meet.


"We're not living, we're surviving," said Roman, 50, who spent two decades 
working together with his wife in the Celulosny Bumagny Kombinat.


Money from Sakhalin's oil and mineral resources seems to flow into the 
coffers of Western multinationals and Russian oil majors in boomtown Moscow 
-- instead of being ploughed back into the impoverished island, locals insist.


"We could be another Kuwait. We have oil, gas, fish and coal, but what 
benefits do we ever see from this?" demanded Nina Ivanovna, 41, who held a 
senior post in the cellulose plant.


In 1991, just after the Soviet Union collapsed, a large Japanese firm offered 
to buy the factory, she said, but was turned down by the government in Moscow.


At the entrance to the abandoned site, a tired notice board still proudly 
proclaims how the plant, founded by a Japanese company in 1917, was reclaimed 
in 1945, when the Soviets seized Sakhalin.


It then shows production plans being fulfilled as output rises inexorably, 
reaching 82,000 tonnes in 1990 from 14,000 tonnes in 1946, with exports going 
to China, Vietnam and North Korea.


But suddenly, the picture is subverted as graphs illustrating a steady rising 
line suddenly plunge towards zero -- a mere 2,100 tonnes by 1995.


An eerie silence envelops the chimneys and tall factory buildings where once 
nearly 2,000 workers congregated every day. "Peace. Work", the slogan written 
on a wall proclaims mockingly.


Ivanovna, a senior worker at the coal-fired power station that provides the 
town with heating, said she had not been paid properly for several years.


She is still owed 35,000 rubles (1,250 dollars, 1,400 euros), about one 
year's pay.


"Last year I went to Moscow, I saw how they've spruced the place up. But 
living here I can't even buy a coat for winter," she said.


Valentina, a toothless 50-year-old still employed to guard the factory 
entrance, listlessly peeled potatoes as she boiled some tea in her tiny cabin.


Taken on at the plant when she was 18, she said she hadn't received any 
salary for the past three years. Instead she is given milk and bread.


Yet the worst anxiety for all is that the next generation will be trapped in 
this same life.


"Our 19-year-old son is coming back from his army service. What is he going 
to do? He wanted to be a computer programmer but we can't afford to pay for 
him to study," one mother said, betraying little hope.


******


#9
Russian chance for Paris Club relief slim -paper

MOSCOW, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Russia has slim chances of a cut in principal in a 
$42 billion debt deal with the Paris Club of creditor nations next year, a 
senior official at government debt agent Vneshekonombank (VEB) said. 


VEB Deputy Chairman Sergei Storchak told daily newspaper Vedomosti in an 
interview published on Monday that the government would most likely be 
offered an opportunity to delay payments, a so-called flow treatment of the 
debt meant to deal with cash flow problems. 


Russia would prefer a cut in its principal, but Storchak said a write-off 
would be difficult to get in the face of opposition from Germany, Russia's 
biggest creditor. 


"Chances (for a debt reduction) are small, because of the known position of 
our main creditor," Storchak said. 


"It will be ready to provide a flow treatment restructuring, but that does 
not mean one should not try to find a compromise decision." 


Analysts say a deal which could reduce interest rates would cut Russia's debt 
burden while maintaining the principal amount, which creditors say is 
crucial. 


A deal with the Paris Club agreed last summer reduced payments until the end 
of 2000, when Russia's programme with the International Monetary Fund 
expires, in a flow treatment. 


Storchak said that if Russia failed to get a debt relief from the Paris Club, 
it would have to ask for a consolidation period of lower debt payments of two 
years. 


"The creditors are sure to agree for this," he said. 


Russia on Friday closed a successful debt restructuring with the London Club, 
which provided for a debt reduction, but Storchak said the country's debt 
position, measured by international standards, was still difficult. 


"The country cannot afford such a debt burden," he said. 


Storchak said the government would aim to get a deal with the Paris Club next 
year, and that although the start of 2001 was close, it was not worrying. 


"Remember: we made a deal on restructuring urgent sums to the Paris Club for 
1999-2000 eight months after the financial year had started and after we were 
late on the payments," he said. 


"Of course, such a practice is not very much welcomed by the Club, but what 
can one do? The negotiating process is very hard and lengthy." 


The 2001 draft budget provides for $11.5 billion for foreign debt servicing, 
but if the Paris Club problem was not settled, the servicing would increase 
by $3 billion-$3.5 billion. 


Storchak said over the next eight years, Russia would have to pay $14 
billion-$16 billion in 2003, 2005 and 2008 and $11 billion-$13 billion in 
each of the other five years. 


******* 


#10
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 03:39:33 -0400
From: Christian Caryl <CCaryl@compuserve.com>
Subject: Demography article


Dear David:


I was wondering if you might be provide this article with a home. It was
supposed to be my valedictory piece for U.S. News and World Report (before
I left for Newsweek), but for various complicated scheduling reasons it
didn't manage to appear. So I was wondering if you might be willing to
offer this sad orphan a place to strut its (ultimately rather modest)
stuff.


Even though all the usual suspects are cited here, readers may still find a
thing or two they haven't heard yet (particularly some of these scary
micro-statistics).


And incidentally, even though this dreary topic makes the town look pretty
bad, it's actually a very picturesque place with a fascinating history, a
nice climate, and great people. So I can recommend to colleagues who are
looking to do one of those random regional stories.


Cheerio
Christian


Trouble on Main Street


It's easy to imagine a time, not all that long ago, when Andrei was a
vigorous, healthy teenager. Now, at the grand old age of 24, he is already
wasting away. His cheeks are sunken, and he carries the weight of his wiry
frame with visible effort. He is in an advanced stage of tuberculosis, the
legacy of his two years in a Russian prison filled with diseased inmates. 
"Yes, I was a criminal," says Andrei, who will reveal neither his last name
nor his crime. "I broke the law, and I received the sentence I deserved. 
But in the end I paid for my crime with my freedom, my youth, and my
health."


Andrei is no longer in jail. These days his home is the Tuberculosis
Hospital in the southern Russian city of Taganrog, population 284,000. But
here, as in prison, there is no lack of company. Fellow patients range
from other ex-cons, some in their teens, to middle-aged military officers
and farm workers. And the statistics suggest that the hospital's dedicated
but grossly underpaid staff will have their work cut out for them in years
to come. One health-care worker says that a recent test of Taganrog
schoolchildren revealed that 50% were infected with the disease. A
confidential tally by the Taganrog city government suggests an ominous
trend. In 1997 the number of children under age 14 sick with the disease
was 0; by the following year the figure had climbed to 12, and by1999 it
was 29.


Those numbers may be small, but they mirror an explosive TB epidemic in the
country at large. Demographer Murray Feshbach at Georgetown University
says that 7000 children under the age of 15 died of the disease in 1997. 
He estimates that Russia could see 200,000 new cases of TB this year; a
more optimistic estimate by the World Health Organization (WHO) puts the
number at 150,000. And TB, in turn, is just one ingredient in a vast tide
of ill health, from malnutrition to AIDS, washing over the country's
beleaguered health system - with predictably catastrophic effects on the
state of Russia's population. At the end of 1999, according to the
official statistics, there were 145.5 million Russians, 2.8 million fewer
than in 1992 - even though hundreds of thousands of people, mainly ethnic
Russians from other former Soviet republics, immigrated to Russia during
the same period. Now that trickle of immigration has stopped, and Feshbach
believes that the overall population of Russia could sink by another third
within the next 50 years. Like many other scientists, he sees implications
not just for public health, but for the economy and national security as
well: "What are the implications of that for the labor force, for the armed
forces? It's a multi-dimensional issue. It's not just demography qua
demography."


In this respect, Taganrog, an otherwise pleasant seaport town on Russia's
temperate southern rim, is anything but extreme. Indeed, according to
Natalya Rimashevskaya, Taganrog is downright average - a sort of
statistically average Russian Main Street. Rimashevskaya should know. For
the past 40 years her employer, the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow,
has been using Taganrog as a living laboratory for a unique long-term study
of nationwide health and social trends.


And the trend that emerges with startling clarity is this: Russians are
dying out. In Taganrog the birth rate has more than halved over the past
15 years (from 15.25 births per thousand in 1985 to 6.61 in 1999) - a pace
that parallels Russia's development as a whole. At the same time, life
expectancy has dropped (to a mere 59 for men, 71 for women). The result: a
statistical effect Rimashevskaya calls "the Russian cross." The
downward-sloping birth rate intersected the upward-sloping death rate in
1991, and Russia's population has been shrinking apace ever since.


There are two other places in Taganrog that tell the story. One is the
city cemetery, a rare island of growth in the city's otherwise sluggish
economy. Construction workers are feverishly clearing land for an
expansion, and plans for a new cemetery are in the works. The demand is
there: an official says that townspeople are dying off at the respectable
clip of 400 per month. At the cemetery entrance, a visitor's eye is caught
by an array of particularly ostentatious gravestones, made of polished
marble and featuring live-sizes engraved images of the deceased - all
tough-looking men who died in their 30s and 40s. One of the little old
ladies sitting on a bench nearby offers a terse explanation: "Bandits." 
But gangland killings are merely a drop in the bucket. Nicholas Eberstadt,
another U.S. expert, says that the average Russian male now runs an almost
1 in 4 chance of dying from some sort of external trauma - compared with 1
in 30 in the United Kingdom. Car accidents, drownings, and fights all take
their toll - often in lethal combination with that familiar Russian plague
of alcohol. Per capita alcohol consumption of 8 liters per year virtually
guarantees major health problems, says the WHO; Russians drink 15 liters
per capita per year. 


Then there's Maternity Hospital No. 1, where a well-tended building and
enthusiastic doctors can't quite paper over the sad reality that the baby
business has seen better times. Rooms are visibly under-occupied. These
days, doctors there say, the city's two maternity hospitals are turning out
new Russians at the rate of around 180 births a month - half of what it was
back in the early 1980s, and well under half of the cemetery's robust
figure. And it's not just that fewer women are giving birth. Today's
newborns weigh on average 200-400 grams less than they did 15 years ago,
and up to a whopping 60% of the women entering Maternity Hospital No. 1 are
suffering from anemia. "The mothers who are giving birth are sick, and
they are giving birth to sick children," says Rimashevskaya, the Moscow
demographer.


Her interviewers in the field have pinpointed a central reason for the
reluctance to give birth: The shock of Russia's economic free-fall in the
1990s, when its GDP fell by more than half. Confronted with that scale of
instability, few families feel prepared to buck the odds. Indeed,
researchers emphasize that psychology plays as much a role in the general
health cataclysm as purely physical factors. Tuberculosis is the classic
example. "TB is a social disease," says Lena Yurava, a 34-old nurse in
Andrei's hospital in Taganrog. "People have lost their jobs, and life has
become harder. In an earlier age, people got TB from unhappy love. It's a
disease that comes from stress. We could heal these people if we could
make them happy. But only God can do that."


The resulting crisis of demographic confidence is making itself felt at
every walk of life. In 1993, for example, Taganrog's Elementary School No.
12 boasted 100 first-graders; four years later there were only 80. That
decline precisely tracks the sharp drop in the birth rate that took place
in the first half of the 1990s - itself a response, Rimashevskaya argues,
to the "shock therapy" economic reforms that began in 1992. "A minimum
class size is 25," says Olga Kulikova, a teacher at School No. 12 and a
fieldworker in the Academy of Sciences study. "So that means there are now
three first-grade classes at the school where there were four before." 
Draft boards in the city are trying to cope with growing numbers of
malnourished and sickly young men. And an aging population is putting
additional strain on an already underfunded health-care system.


Local journalists say that demographics have become such a sensitive topic
in Taganrog that the city government (which owns controlling shares in the
town's media) forbids them to write about it. The city's head health
inspector, Inna Yegorova, dodges a reporter's questions about the rate of
TB infection among children. Then she excises particularly "sensitive"
figures from a recent health survey before handing it over. Even then
she's worried that she might have said too much: "They won't put me in jail
for this, will they?"


*******


#11
RUSSIAN PREMIER UPBEAT ON ECONOMIC RESULTS OF CABINET'S FIRST 100 DAYS
August 28, 2000
Interfax 


The chief results of the Russian government's first 100 days in office are 
the passage of the Tax Code, on the basis of which the 2001 budget plan was 
drafted, and the completion of the restructuring of Soviet-era debt to the 
London Club of creditors, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said. 


"Almost 100 per cent of investors took part in writing off 36 per cent of the 
debt" to the London Club, Kasyanov said in an interview with the [Moscow] 
newspaper 'Vremya novostey'. "This was done with great enthusiasm," he said, 
noting that creditors "agreed to write off virtually 12bn dollars and 
exchange [the remainder of] the debt for longer obligations - 30-year bonds." 


Kasyanov also said one of the government's near-term priorities is to prevent 
an "unfounded strengthening" of the rouble. "One can't say yet that we will 
not be able to control the situation. Even despite the additional 
expenditures related to anti-terrorist operations," he said. 


Kasyanov said that "the acuteness of other problems that might have led to a 
crisis has also dulled," including the country's debt burden. "We can really 
get by without loans from the IMF thanks to additional revenues. The Central 
Bank's reserves have risen considerably," he said. 


Another key problem is restructuring the banking system, Kasyanov said. He 
said he agreed with the Central Bank's position that now "requirements on 
banks should not be toughened to such an extent that the next day a third or 
even half of them are forced to close." 


Requirements for the banking sector should be toughened gradually. The two 
biggest problems are creating a level playing field and the lack of "long" 
money for lending to the economy, Kasyanov said. 


He also said that "Russia will pay Soviet debts to the Paris Club on the same 
terms as all the rest." While conceding that Russia "could strain itself" and 
pay 4bn dollars in 2001, Kasyanov said this would be "wrong." 


"Therefore we have always asked and ask now for a special attitude towards 
debts of the former USSR and still hope for understanding from creditors," 
Kasyanov said. 


******


#12
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
August 26, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
THE GOVERNMENT NOT GUILTY OF A SINGLE FOLLY
100 Days Ago the State Duma Approved Mikhail Kasyanov for 
the Post of Premier
By Marina VOLKOVA, Vladislav KUZMICHEV

Mikhail Kasyanov had recently marked 100 days since the 
Duma approved him for the post of premier. Although 100 days 
are not much in conditions of relative economic stability and 
the summer political respite, we can already see the advantages 
and the mistakes of the new cabinet. 
The current cabinet of ministers is unique for the 
president and the premier had over four months for forming it. 
The early resignation of Boris Yeltsin and the movement of 
Premier Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin actually launched the 
selection of candidates for the leading government posts, above 
all the post of premier. 
Although Mikhail Kasyanov initially had advantages over 
other candidates to the post (Putin appointed him the first and 
only vice-premier in early January), this did not mean that the 
result was predetermined. Other aspirants to the post were 
Leonid Reiman, the current minister of communications, Security 
Council secretary Sergei Ivanov, and Vice-Premier Aleksei 
Kudrin, all of them standing very close to Putin. On the other 
hand, when Kasyanov was approved for the post, the rest were 
given good government positions. 
Judging by the distribution of posts in the new, 
Kasyanov-led government, virtually everyone earmarked for 
ministerial posts passed the four-month-long examination. There 
was one dangerous moment for the premier in this sense. At one 
time, Kasyanov changed his mode of behaviour too much, 
apparently claiming the role of the future political leader of 
the cabinet.
But the Kremlin has always needed - and still needs - a 
technical premier, and Kasyanov was smart enough to revert to 
his old style and maintain it for the past 100 days.
The political aloofness of the current premier frequently 
looks excessive. The Kremlin quarrelled with big business, but 
Kasyanov kept away from the fighting. All his statements on 
this score were carefully drafted and excluded all possible 
evaluations of the developments. Even his participation in the 
round table of the authorities and the oligarchs, in which he 
should have had more stakes than others, passed almost 
unnoticed.
The policy pursued by Mikhail Kasyanov has already 
encouraged the people to compare his government with that of 
Viktor Chernomyrdin. There is one major difference between the 
two cabinets, though, which is that the current one does not 
have as many charismatic leaders, capable of disrupting trends 
on the market by making a single statement. There were quite a 
few such figures in the previous cabinets, in particular 
Soskovets and Chubais in the Chernomyrdin government and Viktor 
Kalyuzhny in the Putin cabinet. This not only creates the 
illusion of the absence of initiative in the government, but 
also deprives Kasyanov himself of a possibility to blame his 
mistakes on his subordinates. 
On the other hand, the current situation of Mikhail 
Kasyanov is not as shaky as his opponents try to picture it. 
The only danger to the current premier lies not in persons or 
PR attacks over the laundering of the IMF money, regularly 
launched in the Western press. Despite the outwardly tranquil 
atmosphere in and around the government, we cannot see a team 
that would be loyal to Mikhail Kasyanov and him alone. 
Virtually none of the ministers owes his appointment to the 
premier. A large part of the cabinet had been ministers already 
in the previous, Putin's and Stepashin's, cabinets. As for 
deputy ministers, where Kasyanov could recruit his team, the 
government has not been formed at this level yet. 
However, the de-politicisation of the Kasyanov government 
is relative. Although it handed over political gambling to the 
president and his staff, the government remains in the sphere 
of politics, but it concerns economic policy. One proof of this 
is the presence of a large number of liberal economists in the 
cabinet. Many decisions made today are consistently leading the 
economy away from the pressure of the state and into the free 
market space. Less liberal economists, even those who are not 
members of the traditional communist opposition, are actively 
criticising the government for this. 
There are several other negative moments. In the past 
three-odd months, the Kasyanov government failed to resolve one 
of the most acute macroeconomic problems, namely eliminate the 
excessive liquidity in the exchange rate of the rouble. As a 
result, the Central Bank is alone fighting for the stability of 
the national currency. But the trouble is that the Central Bank 
is not a subject of legislative initiative and hence cannot 
directly change the legislation in its favour. 
There are more positive than negative moments so far. The 
list of positive moments includes the approval of a short-range 
programme, which is regarded by economists largely positively 
and for the absence of which previous premiers were criticised. 
Other positive moments are the amendment of the tax system and 
the drafting of a balanced budget, which was submitted to the 
State Duma without delay. One of our interlocutors told this 
newspaper that "the government is not guilty of any major folly 
yet." The source said all its mistakes are explained by 
insufficient work and could be easily mended by its subsequent 
efforts. This concerns above all the tax reform, where some 
economists saw mistakes in the position of the government. 
The foreign economic situation also favours the Kasyanov 
government. Oil prices are climbing again, after a short fall, 
although this has its negative effects, too. The thing is that 
outside observers tend to see the cabinet's actions as relaxed.
No wonder it is criticised now for the absence of a medium-term 
perspective in its actions. 
It is quite possible that all the above shortcomings can 
be regarded as elements of the growth pains. The estrangement 
of the government from politics and the absence of a large 
number of ministers-leaders could prove to be temporary. Our 
sources in the government say the cabinet can step up its 
operation dramatically this coming autumn. It intends to 
advance a package of legislative initiatives. Besides, we will 
see the traditional autumn confrontation in the State Duma over 
the draft federal budget for the next year, where Finance 
Minister Aleksei Kudrin will have his first trial by political 
fire. He will have to fight back the attacks of the left 
opposition, which has lost the controlling block of votes in 
the State Duma but still has a considerable number of seats. 
And we should not forget that the offended governors in the 
Federation Council might block some of the cabinet's economic 
initiatives, too. 

******