August 29, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4482 4483

Johnson's Russia List
#4483
29 August 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. TIME EUROPE: Paul Quinn-Judge, The Real Mr. Putin. The Kursk tragedy reveals Russia's President as a man of the State, not of the people.
2. Danny Cruz: Ostankino: Other Aspects.
3. Ray Thomas: PUTIN AND THE OLIGARCHS.
4. The Guardian (UK): Ian Traynor, Putin sweeps stage clean for a reborn Bolshoi theatre.
5. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Communists Offered Their Course to Putin.
6. Stratfor.com: Putin’s Coming Concession to the Oligarchs.
7. Wall Street Journal: Zbigniew Brzezinski, As Clinton Courts Russia's Autocrats, Russians Suffer.
8. The Times (UK): 'The truth about that injection.' (Alice Lagnado interviews Nadezhda Tylik)
9. World Socialist Web Site: Ute Reissner, The sinking of the Kursk and the crisis of the Russian military.
10. Segodnya: "UNITARIAN STATE ENTERPRISE" RUSSIA: A MINE PLANTED UNDER THE PRESENT ELITE. (Interview with Alexei KOSHMAROV)]


*******


#1
TIME EUROPE
September 4, 2000
The Real Mr. Putin
The Kursk tragedy reveals Russia's President as a man of the State, not of
the people
By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE Moscow 


When he emerged from the shadows last year to dominate Russian politics,
Vladimir Putin provoked a lively debate about his character, plans and
motivations. Who was Mr. Putin? Was he, as his own staffers whispered, a
cautious reformer who had learned his stuff in St. Petersburg during the
early years of perestroika? Or was he the product of his training and times
— a middle-level kgb officer whose views were formed during a period when
the Soviet Union, on the surface at least, seemed a mighty power? In other
words, a gosudarstvennik — a believer in a strong state. 


The answer to these questions has puzzled both Russians and Western
observers ever since President Putin began his four-year term in May. They
became clearer last week in the grief and handwringing following the Kursk
submarine disaster, which cost 118 lives. The tragedy has confirmed that
the second assessment of Putin is closer to the truth. 


The claims of some Western analysts that the disaster has changed Russia in
general and Putin in particular are wrong. Opinion polls indicate that he
has suffered little damage from the botched rescue operation, and public
opinion here will probably subside as fast as it blew up. What the Kursk
has done, however, is confirm what makes Vladimir Putin tick. 


Putin believes above all in the State and the need to protect its prestige.
He trusts and supports the men — especially in uniform — who serve it. He
accepts that they have a right to juggle with the truth if necessary — and
is willing to do it himself if the need arises. He also believes, as do
many kgb men of his generation, that any criticism of the state is by
definition the product of base, perhaps even sinister motives. 


The interview Putin gave to state-controlled TV last week provided an
eloquent illustration of his world-view. After expressing a sense of
responsibility and guilt for the loss of the Kursk, he quickly shifted to
an attack on critics of the operation. The main "defenders of the sailors,"
Putin noted with irony, were those "who had assisted in the destruction of
the Army, the Fleet and the State," people with villas in Spain and the
south of France. This was an unsubtle jab at two tycoons, political
wheeler-dealer Boris Berezovsky and media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky. 


Instead of taking the "easy way out" and immediately firing commanders,
Putin told viewers, he would work to restore "the Army, the Fleet and the
Country." He then laid out his own credo: "I will be with the Army, I will
be with the Fleet. I will be with the people." The order was probably not
coincidental. 


Putin's missteps during the Kursk affair — his silence, and the fact that
he stayed on vacation throughout the first week of the crisis — point to a
disastrously weak staff and total absence of feedback. Boris Yeltsin's
Kremlin was usually surrounded by a network of former advisers or ministers
who could always phone a key figure on the Yeltsin staff or a family member
and warn them when a policy was going badly wrong. Putin, who seems only to
trust a tiny group of intimates, clearly does not have such back-channels. 


But it is unsurprising that Putin does not think that he mishandled the
Kursk sinking. He has behaved in much the same way several times in the
past six months, without anything like the repercussions he faced last
week. The submarine casualty figure is roughly the number of soldiers who
die every month in Chechnya, often under horrific circumstances. The
Russian defense establishment follows the same information policy in that
war — postpone the news as long as possible, then admit the details as
gradually as the situation allows. 


This approach has usually worked. Putin has also quite often denied
knowledge of an embarrassing event, or subtly hinted that it was the
responsibility of subordinates. He did this in February, when the Radio
Liberty journalist Andrei Babitsky was handed over by the security services
to spurious Chechen guerrillas. In June, when media tycoon Vladimir
Gusinsky was arrested, he told a press conference in Germany that he had
been unable to find out why Gusinsky was in prison: he had not been able to
phone the Prosecutor General. Today, Chechnya, once Putin's abiding policy
passion, is mentioned rarely now that the military effort there is firmly
bogged down. 


The picture that has emerged of Vladimir Putin during the Kursk crisis is
of a leader profoundly imbued with the political culture that has marked
centuries of Russian history: the needs of the state always come first,
individual concerns come a distant second. When forced by events — an
election campaign or a televised tragedy — Putin will don a human face and
show concern for the ordinary people. But left to himself, he is far
happier in the embrace of his great love. The Russian State. 


*******


#2
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000
From: Danny Cruz <dcruz@matrix.ru>
Subject: Ostankino: Other Aspects


While there has been much mention of the temporary destruction of Ostankino 
as a TV tower, there is a large impact on infrastructure services as 
well. From a telecommunications perspective, Ostankino is a major hub for 
telephony, cellular and paging services.


For instance, in order to provide telephone services to the regions outside 
of Moscow City (pod-Moscovy) a telecomm operator would set up a microwave 
link to their switch in a regional city. There is current and immediate 
demand for telephony exceeding 750,000 lines outside of Moscow. Each city 
may have a small and defunct GTS (Gorodny Telefon Sistem - or City 
Telephone System) which provides between 1,000 and 15,000 lines differing 
from city to city. Waiting lists can be as long as 10 years for a "free" 
line to your home. (In other words, forget it)


Private companies have filled the void, although even they only serve the 
top 5% of any community. That 5% is ready to pay $ 1,500., to have a new 
line installed. Long-distance tariffs exceed $ 2.00 per minute! It is 
those private companies that were using Ostankino as a link to Moscow and 
the outside world. Now, none of them are functioning, leaving those in the 
regions without both TV and telephone!


Although you can see 5-7 days as the public deadline for getting TV 
stations back on air, some comments from inside the Ministry of 
Communications, can more accurately place it at over one month to get 
things running again. Needless to say, the microwave, cellular, paging 
equipment is expensive and not readily at hand for installation, even if 
Ostankino were ready.


This points out deeper woes for infrastructure in this country. As a 
glimmer of hope, there have been several discussions looking at satellite 
alternatives which may prove more robust in this disaster-prone environment.


Best Regards,
Danny Cruz
Managing Director
ComSoft Systems, Inc. - Eastern Europe Region
McLean, VA --- Moscow, Russia
dcruz@matrix.ru


*******


#3
From: R.Thomas@open.ac.uk (Ray Thomas)
Subject: PUTIN AND THE OLIGARCHS
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 


Many of your correspondents praise Putin for trying to control the
oligarchs. But this praise is as mindless as the applause for a circus
master - a bit of theatre that has little to do with reality.


The reality is that the oligarchs are identified by the control that they
have in the Russian economy and of the export of money from Russia. The
more they quake and quiver in their boots at an onslaught from the Kremlin
the more of they will shift their assets to places like Cyprus, Switzerland,
and the South of France. This will not help the Russian economy or the
Russian Government. It will just add the 'capital flight' from Russia and
further erode the tax base that Putin depends upon.


I hope that Putin's struggle with the oligarchs is shadow boxing. If Putin
is intelligent he should be seeking their cooperation. He needs them as
much as they need him. The Russian economy also needs them.


Who ever heard of an economy that was successful because it fought
capitalists?. We may not like capitalists who flout the law, create
monoplies by picking off competitors, and avoid and evade taxes on a massive
scale. But Western governments have learned that the best they can do in
the face of such de facto money making behaviour is to curb the excesses.


Putin should see that he should be trying to persuade the oligarchs to
support the Russian economy. Instead of keeping their assets abroad they
should be pursuaded to keep them in Russia. One of the most useful things
they could do - that Putin can't do - is to create a banking system in
Russia that would be independent of Kremlin and Putin's control.


Russia really needs a banking system. Putin's campaign for centralisation
of power will prevent the creation of any independent banking system and is
therefore a recipe for continued decline in the Russian economy. 


Putin should not mistake the slowness of his decline in popularity with the
success of his postures. He should realise he is a leader of last resort.
Of course the Russian people and others want him to succeed because there is
no other star around. Everybody wants him to succeed and they will continue
to applaud Putin's utterances that promise a better future. But if the
circus master fails to deliver the ending of his regime will not be pretty.


*******


#4
The Guardian (UK)
August 29, 2000
Putin sweeps stage clean for a reborn Bolshoi theatre 
By Ian Traynor 


President Vladimir Putin acted to stop the rot at the Bolshoi, the biggest 
name in the world of Russian arts, by firing the company's management 
yesterday and ordering the urgent rebuilding of the once lavish, now 
disintegrating theatre.
The general director and artistic head, Vladimir Vasilyev, 60, was summarily 
dismissed. The arts minister, Mikhail Shvydkoi, said millions of pounds would 
be spent in an attempt to recreate the house's glory days as the home of 
ballet and opera. 


A purge at the top had been rumoured for months, but yesterday's 
announcement, just as the theatre was about to open its 225th season, was 
unexpected. 


Mr Vasilyev, a former star dancer, learned on the radio that he had been 
sacked. No replacement was immediately announced, but Mr Shvydkoi named three 
orchestral conductors as contenders for the post of artistic director. 


It is also to have a new chief administrator, subordinate to the arts 
ministry. 


The Bolshoi has been in a critical condition for years, its status as the 
most prestigious cultural establishment in Russia usurped by St Petersburg's 
Mariinsky theatre under the acclaimed Valery Gergiyev. 


The Muscovite arts elite has been rife with gossip that Mr Putin would put Mr 
Gergiev in overall charge of the two institutions, but Mr Shvydkoi, an 
ambitious and highly regarded arts minister, appears to have prevented that. 


Mr Vasilyev's five years in charge of the Bolshoi began in acrimony and 
controversy: several of the performers staged the theatre's first and only 
strike in its 225-year history. 


His tenure is widely seen as less than successful, marked by a running feud 
with Moscow's music critics. 


He tried to have journalists barred from the theatre and said he hoped the 
critics would "burn in hell". 


Mr Shvydkoi said opera was to play a more prominent role than under Mr 
Vasilyev, and while the Mariinsky would concentrate on west European works 
the Bolshoi should be the showcase for Russian opera and ballet.


*******


#5
Russia Today press summaries
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
August 28, 2000
Communists Offered Their Course to Putin
Summary


As was expected, President Putin's statement against oligarchs that he made 
in connection with the Kursk submarine wreck, caused stormy response on part 
of those politicians, who have been waiting for this moment to come. The 
President said: "The loudest protectors of sailors' appeared to be those 
people who had contributed to dissolution of the Army, the Navy and the State 
for a long time". Even though Putin did not name concrete people, but only 
said that these are "tycoons, who own villas at the Mediterranian Coast, 
purchased on names of false persons or companies", the Leftist politicians 
perceived this as an attack at Yeltsin's entourage.


Duma deputy Victor Ilyuhin, who is the head of the public movement in support 
of the Army, Defense Industry and Military Research addressed Putin with a 
request to cancel the presidential decree N1, which gives immunity to 
President Yeltsin and his family. According to Ilyukhin, it was Yeltsin's 
activity at the highest post that has resulted in collapse of the Army. The 
deputy proposed that the General Prosecutor should initiate a criminal case 
so that all the culprits can be held responsible. Among those, Ilyukhin named 
not only the former President of Russia, but also several incumbent Duma 
deputies, who led the country to the catastrophe – Yegor Gaidar, Boris 
Nemtsov, Grigory Yavlinsky, Irina Hakamada and Victor Chernomyrdin. He 
suggested that they should take after "oligarch" Boris Berezovsky’s example 
and leave their deputies' status voluntarily.


It is remarkable that Victor Ilyukhin positions himself as a supporter of 
President Putin. Thus, he apparently hopes that Putin will deal with hateful 
"democrats" after he is through with oligarchs.


*******


#6
Stratfor.com
Russia: Putin’s Coming Concession to the Oligarchs
29 August 2000 


Summary 


On Sept. 19, the Russian government will put up for auction majority
control of the ONAKO oil company, one of the country’s most profitable
energy companies. Because foreigners are barred from holding more than a
fraction of any Russian oil company, the government will likely be forced
to hand over control to the powerful businessmen once known as oligarchs,
the men that Putin has publicly campaigned against. 


Analysis 


After months of trying to rein in Russia’s oligarchs, Russian President
Vladimir Putin will soon have to hand over to them a piece of the country’s
most profitable industry: oil production. The government plans to privatize
the ONAKO oil company, the 11th largest oil company in the country, selling
off 85 percent of its shares. 


The only true contenders for buying up control of the company ­ to be
auctioned off Sept. 19 with bids starting at $425 million ­ are members of
the wealthy, but allegedly corrupt, oligarchy. The president has staked
much of his presidency on diminishing the power of these men, holdovers
from the Yeltsin era. The Putin government will soon be forced to pick one
group of oligarchs over another, to control ONAKO. The ONAKO auction may
also set a precedent: It is the first of four energy companies to be
privatized. 


Russian law limits the amount of equity that foreign investors can control
in the country’s oil companies, capping ownership at no more than 15
percent, according to a June edition of the St. Petersburg Times. The
shares in ONAKO will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. 


More than 20 groups have submitted an offer, but only two are true
contenders: LUKoil, the largest oil producer in Russia, and an alliance of
three smaller companies, Yukos, Sibneft and Surgutneftgaz. Two oligarchs
direct LUKoil, Rem Vyakhirev and Vagit Alekperov, although these two men
are largely under Kremlin control. 


In contrast, the three oligarchs behind the alliance behind the other
companies ­ Yukos, Sibneft and Surgutneftgaz ­ are Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich. Putin has publicly sought their
power since taking office. They largely bought their way into power under
former President Boris Yeltsin, amassing fortunes and increasing their
political influence. Abramovich, widely considered Berezovsky’s protégé, is
a Duma member, as Berezovsky himself was until recently. 


Though not Russia’s largest companies, ONAKO is one of the most profitable.
The average Russian oil company makes less than 30 percent of its profits
from exports; ONAKO exports 40 percent of its product, enabling it to reap
the benefits of the higher oil prices outside Russia. Last year ONAKO
earned as much money as some other companies by pumping less oil, according
to Russica Information on Aug. 16. 


Allowing Berezovsky or Khodorkovsky to control the company would be a
dangerous risk for the Kremlin, considering the pasts of the two. Both
oligarchs were linked to the 1998 IMF money laundering scandal; both have
been targets of tax police raids or investigations in the past three months
according to articles in The Moscow Times in late August. Berezovsky was
notably absent from the late-July summit between Putin and the oligarchs,
while Khodorkovsky has links to businessmen recently expelled from Bulgaria
on corruption and money laundering allegations. 


For ONAKO to remain profitable so that the government can take its share of
revenues and taxes, the government needs LUKoil to win the bid for ONAKO.
Putin has already won a battle with Gazprom’s Rem Vyakirev. Second, the
government owns 15 percent of LUKoil’s stock and plays a controlling role
behind the scenes of the company. 


But the fact is that former oligarchs remain the only ones financially
stable enough to contend in the bidding. Unless Putin can get laws passed
that favor foreign investment in strategically important industries, he
will be stuck doing business with the oligarchs. 
*******


#7
Wall Street Journal
August 29, 2000 
[for personal use only] 
Commentary
As Clinton Courts Russia's Autocrats, Russians Suffer
By Zbigniew Brzezinski. 
Mr. Brzezinski, national security adviser under 
President Carter, is author, most recently, of "The Grand Chessboard: 
American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" (Basic Books, 1997).


The Kursk submarine tragedy highlights the fact that today's Russia has two 
faces. Unfortunately, the U.S. has been busily courting the wrong one.


There is the face of President Vladimir Putin's official Russia, which the 
Clinton administration has not only been hailing as a democracy but 
propitiating irrespective of its domestic or foreign misconduct, and there is 
the face of an awakening people's Russia, to which not enough attention has 
been paid.


By now it should be obvious to almost everyone that the reactions of the 
Putin regime to the Kursk disaster have been despicable. They were 
characterized by mendacity, deception, incompetence, indifference to human 
life, preoccupation with national prestige, and paranoia over state secrecy. 
The result was that whatever chance there might have been of saving human 
lives was forfeited.


Mr. Putin's callousness should have surprised only those who had been so 
quick to define him as a great reformer, the "first democratically elected 
leader in Russia's 1,000-year history" and a fitting partner at the G-7 
summit table. The fact is that Mr. Putin, and everyone in his government, is 
a product of the Soviet era. Every member of his Kremlin team could be 
serving today in the Soviet government if it still existed, and not a single 
member of the current leadership was ever a democratic dissident. Mr. Putin 
himself is not only the product of the KGB but the son of a Communist Party 
secretary at a Leningrad factory and the grandson of a trusted member of 
Lenin's, and then Stalin's, personal secret-police detail. Indeed, it would 
have been surprising if he had acted differently.


In the course of the past decade this official Russia has been the 
beneficiary of billions of Western financial aid. It is this official Russia 
that the Clinton administration has not only failed to take to task for its 
murderous policies in Chechnya but at times has even made excuses for. It is 
also this official Russia that has aided Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, sidled 
up to Iraq and Libya, threatened the Baltic republics and denounced the U.S. 
as a menacing global hegemon.


Fortunately, there is another Russia that dramatically surfaced in the 
aftermath of the Kursk disaster. It is the Russia of the tearful and 
saddened, but also fearless mothers, fathers and siblings of the lost 
sailors. These family members did not hesitate for a second to denounce 
publicly -- even to the Western media -- the heartless conduct of their 
president. It is the Russia of the many citizens, including military 
personnel, who were willing to declare publicly that foreign assistance 
should not have been rejected out of false pride. It is the Russia of the 
mass media that spared no detail in exposing official lies and in denouncing 
Mr. Putin's preference for personal leisure over public compassion.


Unlike the official Russia, this new Russia has many attributes of democracy. 
Exploiting the semianarchy that has prevailed since the fall of Soviet power, 
Russian society has acquired a new openness that includes a freedom of 
expression that is normally taken for granted in Western democracies. It has 
also cultivated among the younger Russian generation an appreciation for the 
rules of accountability, which democratic citizens have come to expect from 
their rulers.


It is this emerging people's Russia that should be cultivated by the West. In 
due time, Russian society will assert itself over the official remnants of 
the Soviet system. More Russians now sense that Mr. Putin is not so much the 
wave of the future as the last gasp of the Soviet past. Unfortunately, this 
simple distinction has been lost upon Western leaders, notably Mr. Clinton, 
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, 
all of whom have heaped unwarranted praise on the new Russian leader.


Similarly, neither the Democratic nor the Republican electoral platforms 
reflect a strategic understanding of the need to create conditions that will 
help Russian society free itself of the corrupting remnants of the Soviet 
past. Indeed, the Democratic platform's call to continue "engagement" conveys 
nothing more than simpleminded courtship of Russian officialdom.


A sharper awareness of this distinction between official Russia and Russian 
society would help to shape a policy that selectively cuts off financial 
assistance to a regime that hardly deserves, and steals much of, the money it 
receives. Instead, U.S. aid should be focused primarily on the promotion of 
nongovernmental initiatives, on wider exchanges with the younger Russian 
generation and on efforts to propagate the rule of law.


Teaching younger Russians the value of democracy should be a priority. In 
1999 the Library of Congress launched an exchange program educating some 
2,000 younger Russian local officials about the complexities of American 
democracy. That program -- reminiscent of those engaging thousands of young 
Germans and Japanese after World War II -- deserves to be enlarged tenfold. 
Moreover, it should be complemented by similar initiatives for young leaders 
from Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan -- countries whose 
independence is crucial to Russia's historic transformation.


Such a policy of genuinely democratic engagement would focus on those who 
truly deserve to be engaged: the Russian people. Those left behind would be 
the kleptocratic and dogmatic remnants of Soviet officialdom.
*******


#8
From: "Alice Lagnado" <alice@co.ru>
Subject: mrs tylik
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 


dear david: i realise most people might be bored of this by now, but i would
like to set a few records straight. things have been said that i would
differ on. this appeared in today's times of london aug.29. best, alice
lagnado, times moscow office.

The Times (UK)
August 29 2000 
'The truth about that injection' 
Nadezhda Tylik made headlines around the world when footage was released 
apparently showing her being sedated by force as she protested about the fate 
of her son and the 117 other Russians who drowned with him when the nuclear 
submarine Kursk sank earlier this month. In her first full interview, she 
talks to Alice Lagnado 


SERGEI TYLIK watched as a child how his father Nikolai, a submarine captain, 
arrived home late at night and was gone early in the morning, sometimes not 
returning for months at a time. He knew his parents' Navy wages were modest. 
He saw the broken windows and graffiti-covered entranceways in Vidyayevo, the 
closed naval garrison where they lived, cut off from the outside world by two 
checkpoints manned by soldiers. He had seen how life was in the big city of 
St Petersburg where New Russians drove Mercedes and paraded through town in 
mink coats. Despite all this, Sergei was determined to join the submariners 
and go further than his father had done. 


"He understood what it was all about. He knew it was tough," his mother, 
Nadezhda, told me through her tears. "But he dreamt of joining the Navy. He 
used to say, 'Father got as far as a first-ranking captain, but I'll become 
an admiral'." 


Mrs Tylik lost her son in the Kursk nuclear submarine accident, in which 118 
sailors perished when the vessel sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea on 
August 12. He was 24. Her daily reminders of him are his daughter Elizaveta, 
just 11 months old, and his wife, Natalya. Mrs Tylik and her husband Nikolai 
also have a daughter, Ekaterina, 20. 


Like all the mothers and wives of the Kursk sailors, Mrs Tylik's life has 
been ripped apart by a tragedy that she thinks was avoidable. 


"You look at the foreign armed forces. Maybe they also have their own 
problems, I can't say. But you look at those armies, who live like they 
should do, and you look at us, in a corner forgotten by God. For what? Why 
are we living here? I am 42 years old and my health is gone, completely. 


"I have had a lot of operations. My husband has heart problems due to nervous 
stress. Our children are always getting ill. For what? If they don't need 
such an army then they should not keep it going. 


"They will put me in prison. I can't bear this pain any longer. They have 
taken my son away from me. And what's going to happen now?" 


In 1989, the Komsomolets submarine went down in the same area as the Kursk, 
killing 42 sailors. The wives and mothers of those sailors kept quiet, 
accepting the Russian Navy culture of secrecy and knowing that they might be 
punished for speaking out. 


But the sinking of the Kursk marked a turning point for navy women. Loyal 
navy wives and mothers have found the courage to go against a deeply 
ingrained culture of secrecy and patriotism and to speak their minds in 
public, irritating the top navy command and forcing President Vladimir Putin, 
who initially stayed on holiday in the resort city of Sochi, to fly to the 
town and face the women. 


The revolution in navy attitudes reflects an earlier change in the mothers of 
Russian soldiers, who organised themselves into Soldiers' Mothers' Committees 
during the first war in Chechnya and have developed into one of the most 
effective advocacy groups in Russia. 


Nadezhda Tylik became a symbol of the navy women's new boldness when she was 
caught on camera being injected by a nurse. She was injected in mid-flow as 
she shouted at Ilya Klebanov, the deputy prime minister in charge of 
investigating the accident, at a public meeting in Vidyayevo on August 18. 


"Before, everyone kept quiet. Now we need to speak up and make the 
authorities do everything they should," she says. 


The shocking footage released last week appeared to show that Mrs Tylik was 
injected by force with a sedative in order to silence her. There were no 
signs that the nurse injecting her had asked for consent and several navy 
officers seemed to be joining in the procedure. It seemed to be evidence of 
bad medical practice. Doctors in Britain asserted that injecting a person 
through clothes could lead to infection and that they should be seated calmly 
before medicine is administered. 


It was, and still is, a compelling and extremely worrying piece of film. 


On Sunday morning, sitting in a taxi by the checkpoint at Vidyayevo naval 
garrison, her eyes occasionally welling up with tears as she recalled her 
lost son, Mrs Tylik finally got the chance to tell the full story. 


She has a heart condition, and far from being forcibly injected with a 
sedative, she says, she was given an injection of Cardiomin, a heart 
medication. She thinks she may have had a heart attack and died if the 
injection had not been given. "My husband was with me. He saw that my heart 
was getting bad. The doctors were sitting next to me. When I began to speak I 
felt my head start to spin. He held me and called the doctor over, who gave 
me an injection in my behind. Either the doctors decided themselves or my 
husband asked them. I really needed that injection. 


'I want the Government to move the wives out and give them new jobs' 


"There were doctors present because there were an awful lot of women there 
who were not feeling well. The doctors were going up and down the aisles and 
I happened to be near them so they came and gave me the injection. I knew the 
nurse, it's a small place and I have been in and out of hospital." 


At the moment when Mrs Tylik started collapsing, the film ended. She 
explained what happened next. 


"My friend's husband took me out of the hall and I was given a hot cup of tea 
and some valerian drops. I came back into the hall and I asked our 
authorities some more questions. I listened to the end and left. I said 
everything that I wanted to say." 


Mr Klebanov was battered with so many questions he couldn't reply to them 
all. "There were lots of questions and I don't know what he said back," she 
told me. "It's hard to understand his diction." 


"We met two or three days later and he apologised to me. He said he 
understood a mother's grief but that he was doing everything within his 
powers." 


Mrs Tylik doesn't seem like the kind of person to be pressured into changing 
her story or defending the Russian authorities. She was not sedated when we 
met, but clear-headed and unhesitating. 


She is not alone. A few days after the accident I received a phone call from 
Oksana Dudko, whose husband Sergei was the second in command on the Kursk.She 
and several other wives had approached journalists independently to tell 
their side of the story. She asked me to bring other foreign journalists with 
me and was filmed by the BBC. 


Soaked in grief and understandably confused by the myriad versions of what 
had caused the Kursk to sink, these women half-believed their husbands might 
still be alive and that the rescue operation should go on. 


Mrs Dudko, a slight woman in a brown leather jacket and jeans, is far worse 
off than Nadezhda Tylik despite her husband's senior position. As a school 
librarian she earned only 1000 roubles (£25) a month. She has two children 
and depended on her husband's salary. 


"My husband was the breadwinner. I know that's a bit different from in your 
country. My husband fed me and looked after me. I relied on him for 
absolutely everything," she says. 


Mrs Tylik and Mrs Dudko were not shut up crudely by the authorities. But 
there is no doubt that the Russian Navy would like to smooth over the 
accident and would prefer these women not to air their views on television. 


A number of intelligence service agents have moved into Vidyayevo since the 
accident. Security at the checkpoint has tightened so much that Russian 
traders who come from Murmansk to sell food can no longer get in because they 
do not have the right papers showing that they live in the town. And despite 
the scale of the tragedy, foreign and Russian journalists remain banned from 
entering. 


There is also considerable evidence of the navy's appalling treatment of 
bereaved relatives. Naval officials delayed telling them about the accident, 
and when they did, were too mean to pay for relatives to fly to Murmansk, 
consigning them instead to long train journeys in the cheapest seats. 


Indeed, the authorities have displayed little more than brutal disregard 
towards the victims of the worst naval tragedy of the post-perestroika era. 


'Putin did say sorry' 


There is no doubt that this is an organisation quite capable of pressurising 
families not to speak their minds. But from interviews with widows, there 
seems to be no hard evidence that this is the case. 


Mrs Tylik condemned the late start to the rescue operation but, like some 
other relatives, was swayed by President Putin's six-hour talk with them last 
Tuesday night. 


"I have confidence in Putin. He said sorry, though not right away. He has 
done everything he promised to do," she says. 


On Friday Mrs Tylik was visited in hospital by Valentina Matviyenko, the 
social affairs minister. Mrs Tylik did not seem impressed, but says the 
minister was at least genuine. "She did have pain in her eyes and she is 
concerned." 


Perhaps unsurprisingly for a woman embedded in navy life, she praised Admiral 
Vyacheslav Popov, the commander of the Northern Fleet. "He's a good man. He 
had the courage to apologise before the women that he could not save their 
husbands and children." 


Mrs Tylik and her husband Nikolai work in the navycontrolled administration 
of the town, which means that they are officially members of the Russian 
armed forces. Like any member of any armed force round the world, she was 
unwilling to speak on the record to a foreign journalist about the navy 
command's behaviour over the accident. 


They live on a reasonable income by Russian standards: she receives 1,700 
roubles (£42) a month and her husband gets £125 plus his navy pension. 


"We have saved something up. We don't need money. I want the Government to 
move the wives out of Vidyayevo and help them get new jobs," she says. 


The Tyliks plan to move back to their birthplace, Anapa, a resort city on the 
Black Sea, where they first met at school. It may be easier to find work 
there than in Vidyayevo, where both her daughter, Ekaterina, a hairdresser, 
and Sergei's wife, Natalya, a nurse, have been unable to find a job. 


Living conditions in Vidya- yevo are appalling, and in another country navy 
authorities might fear rebellion by a group of submariners with access to 
nuclear materials. There is no central heating through winters of minus 30C. 
Every summer hot water is turned off for three months. It is turned on again 
for the last weekend in July, for Navy Day. 


It was turned on again when Mr Klebanov arrived in Vidyayevo. Flats are tiny: 
rooms commonly measure 3m by 4m. Rubbish is collected rarely. 


Mrs Tylik's only comfort is her family, including her daughter-in-law 
Natalya. Like her mother-in-law, Natalya typifies the hardy Russian navy 
wife. She met Sergei at a disco in St Petersburg while he was studying at a 
naval college there four years ago. 


Without a word she moved from Russia's stunning former Imperial capital, with 
its impressive architecture and proximity to Europe, to the drab town of 
Vidyayevo. There are few bars or clubs, the weather is dreary and it is an 
hour's drive from the large port city of Murmansk, which, compared with St 
Petersburg, is grim, packed with colourless peeling apartment blocks and 
showing no signs of improvement. 


"She didn't have any difficulties in moving. She's a real navy wife: nothing 
bothered her, not even this dump of a garrison," Mrs Tylik says. 


Her granddaughter, Elizaveta, is a daily reminder of her dead son. "She's 
just like her father. If he wanted to do something he would always do it. He 
had his goal and he would always reach it." 


As she left, Mrs Tylik, a navy wife unused to her new-found fame and still 
wary of foreigners, jokes nervously about getting in trouble with the 
security services for talking to The Times. The photographer, a Russian with 
years of experience, assured her there was nothing to worry about. I hope he 
was right. 


******


#9
World Socialist Web Site
www.wsws.org
The sinking of the Kursk and the crisis of the Russian military
By Ute Reissner
29 August 2000


The sinking of a nuclear submarine of the Russian North Sea fleet on the
12th of August occurred in the midst of a conflict between the Defence
Ministry in Moscow and the Russian Chief of General Staff, which had grown
increasingly heated over the previous weeks.


The dispute, which apparently runs right through the government and
military, has its roots in the NATO war against Yugoslavia and has been
brewing for over a year. It is a consequence of the difficulties facing the
Russian military in measuring up to the tasks imposed upon it by Moscow
under conditions of a general deterioration of equipment, discipline, pay
and morale. It stems, in other words, from the contradiction between the
deplorable economic situation of Russia and the striving of the ruling
elite to consolidate itself internally and at the same time adopt the airs
of a great power on the world arena.


At the beginning of July of this year the Chief of the Russian General
Staff, Kvashnin, presented the government with a proposal for the radical
restructuring of the army, envisaging a six-fold or seven-fold reduction of
the nuclear strike force by the year 2003.


Kvashnin's proposals went far beyond the reductions contemplated for Russia
within the terms of the START-II-treaty for the decommissioning of weapons
agreed with the US in 1997. Kvashnin proposed the virtual dissolution of
Russia's independent nuclear strike forces, with the weaponry to be
redistributed between the army, air force and navy.


The justification given by the General Staff was that the Russian military
urgently required more money for its conventional strike forces. Otherwise,
it would not be in a position to successfully prosecute its war in
Chechnya. For future interventions in the Caucasus, in Central Asia and, in
general, for the struggle against “terrorism” it was necessary to insure
that adequate means were available. The army chiefs in Chechnya, it was
said, unequivocally supported this position. Kvashnin is their man and has
himself led two military operations in Chechnya.


For his part, Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev described Kvashnin's proposal
as an “act of madness”, amounting to the complete disarmament of Russia in
the face of the threat from NATO and, in particular, the US. The plans of
Marshal Sergeyev, who prior to his nomination as minister was supreme
commander of the country's nuclear forces, envisage a drawing together of
the various nuclear strike forces—air-based, water-based and
ground-based—under a single central command and a concentration of defence
spending in this area.


It came to an open altercation at a sitting of the military heads in the
middle of July, when Kvashnin and his supporters opposed the defence
minister and categorically demanded more money for the war in Chechnya. The
dispute became public, an unparalleled development up until then, and
eventually, on July 31, President Vladimir Putin fired seven senior
generals who were employed in the Defence Ministry. Those sacked were
responsible for the following departments: radiation, chemical and
biological protection, air defence troops, armaments, missiles and
artillery, foreign economic relations, ground troops and the press service.
A number of other leading officers were also forced to go, leading to
reports in the Russian press of a veritable “purge.”


On August 11, one day before the catastrophe on the Kursk, the National
Security Council met and the same differences of opinion emerged in the
course of the meeting.


The military manoeuvres involving the Kursk had begun on August 10. It was
the largest naval manoeuvre carried out by Russia in years, and was based
on the official military doctrine of the government as put forward by
Sergeyev. Amongst other exercises, the navy practised the firing of cruise
missiles, long-range rockets and torpedoes. As in manoeuvres which had
already been carried out in June of last year and which, according to
military reports, took place “in consideration of the experience with NATO
in the Kosovo war”, the scenario was one of confrontation with NATO. After
last year's manoeuvre, the Kursk had sailed to the Mediterranean and
simulated an attack on a US carrier battle group.


The war against Yugoslavia in the spring of last year led to a reshaping of
Russian defence and military doctrine. NATO actions under the leadership of
the US, which carried out bombing raids without a mandate from the United
Nations, were regarded as a direct threat to Russia. Chief of General Staff
Kvashnin stated at the time that the West was demonstrating “a growing
readiness to impose military force at various levels in a very direct and
brutal manner”. This was demonstrated by “the operations in Kosovo and
Iraq.” Kvashnin added, “We must assume that they will also proceed against
other targets, including those which are former Soviet territory.”


Putin's rise to the head of state was directly bound up with this
development. In March of 1999 Putin, at that time head of the domestic
intelligence agency FSB, was appointed to the additional post of secretary
of the National Security Council. In April 1999, under his leadership, the
Security Council began to rework Russia's defence policy. Existing military
doctrine, signed by Boris Yeltsin in December 1993, was revised. The
“expansion of NATO towards the East” was now expressly declared to be a
threat to Russian security. The new concept was tested out in various
manoeuvres, and finally in October two papers laid down new concepts for
“national security” and “military doctrine.”


On the basis of these drafts Putin, as newly appointed head of government,
undersigned a changed national security doctrine in early January 2000. The
most significant change was a revision of limitations governing the use of
nuclear weapons.


According to the previous doctrine, the use of nuclear weapons had been
limited to circumstances that constituted a “threat to the very existence
of the Russian Federation as an independent sovereign state.” According to
the new doctrine, the use of nuclear weapons is justified “if all other
means of resolving the crisis situation have been exhausted or proved
ineffective.” Such a situation had been simulated in a manoeuvre carried
out in the summer of 1999, which assumed a NATO attack on the Russian
enclave of Kaliningrad. According to the scenario upon which the manoeuvre
was based, Russian conventional strike forces were only able to hold out
for three days.


The emphasis on nuclear capability was supposed to increase the weight of
the new rulers of Russia on the international stage, and went hand in hand
with a strengthening of the state against the country's own population.
Putin invoked the glories of “great Russia” and promised to establish order
with an iron fist, knowing that, for the time being, he had the backing of
the security apparatus as well as the military.


In April of 2000, just after officially taking over the post of president,
he visited the North Sea fleet in the full glare of the media, sailed with
the nuclear submarine Karelia, which carries cruise missiles in the Barents
sea, and attended its test firing of two intercontinental rockets.


To the extent that he was not able to prevent the further economic decline
of the country, enthusiasm for Putin sank rapidly among sections of the
military. The deplorable level of equipment and pay for the troops remained
as catastrophic as they had been previously. The ten-year decline of the
military proceeded apace.


Russia was attempting to maintain its role as a military world power, on a
par with the US, under conditions where the Russian defence budget amounted
to four billion dollars, compared with the US budget of three hundred billion.


Numerous reports have been published in the international press in
connection with the sinking of the Kursk which, taken together, provide a
devastating picture of the state of the Russian military. According to
foreign experts, it is estimated that of the 1.2 million Russian soldiers
who remain from the original five-million-strong army of the Soviet Union,
no more than two hundred thousand are actually capable of combat.


Pictures of rusting submarines in the port of Murmansk have been shown
around the world, and the state of the rest of the military is no better.
Payment for members of the armed forces is so bad—even officers earn only
about 100 dollars a month—that every form of equipment not nailed to the
floor is liable to be sold off on the black market.


Putin can court the favours of the army, but he is unable to resolve its
crisis and satisfy its demands. Together with the Kursk, all the dreams
that Russia could re-emerge as a great power now lie on the seabed. A
further intensification of conflicts concerning military strategies between
General Headquarters and the government seems inevitable.


In the past few days Putin has made a number of decisions aimed at
improving his weakened position. Relatives of the sailors who died in the
Kursk are to receive compensation—savings books with the equivalent of ten
years pay. Members of the army and police, customs officers and prison
warders will receive a twenty percent wage rise from the first of December.
Those employed in the development and production of nuclear weapons will
also receive more money and improved pensions. However, compared to the
scale of the economic decline of Russia, these measures amount to no more
than mere gestures and signs of helplessness.


The crisis of the military reflects the extraordinary weakness of the
Russian bourgeoisie. Unable to implement any type of economic development,
the new Russian ruling elite is unable to emerge as an equal player on the
international stage. It compensates for its physical and spiritual
inadequacies with national self-adulation and pompous symbolism, not the
least of which was the recent naval exercise. To maintain this combination
of incapacity in fact and omnipotence in words, the 118 sailors of the
Kursk paid with their lives.
******


#10
Segodnya
August 29, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
"UNITARIAN STATE ENTERPRISE" RUSSIA: A MINE PLANTED UNDER 
THE PRESENT ELITE
Alexei KOSHMAROV, President of the Novokom 
information-analytical center, was one of the first Russian 
political technologists who designed Russia's new governance. 
He is talking below to Segodnya's correspondent Sergei MULIN on 
what has come out as a result.

Correspondent: The previous generations of Russian rulers 
lived under the "after me the deluge" principle. Now that the 
state-of-the-art submarine has sunk and the country's capital 
and its suburbs have been left without television, Russia has 
obviously entered a period of man-made catastrophes. How should 
public sentiments change in this connection?
Koshmarov: From the mystic standpoint, the Soviet myth 
that "we are ahead of the rest of the world" is dying and its 
main components are gradually falling. If the main 
technological symbol of the USSR and Russia - the Ostankino 
television tower - has been put out of order by fire, any hydro 
power station can come next.
Actually, an incredibly serious challenge has been cast to 
public self-consciousness and those people who adopt decisions.
Russia is gradually turning from a global superpower into a 
menace to the rest of humanity. That is why the elites and the 
country as a whole will have to learn to live within their 
means.
An analysis of the federal budget for 2001, even its draft, 
shows that it stipulates further spending of the resources, 
which belong to the present and future generations, instead of 
the creation of the necessary points of economic growth. 
Electoral arithmetic prompts the need to turn back at the 
politically active generation of people in their 50s and 60s 
and does not allow us thus far to grow up a new generation of 
free people who will be responsible for their own actions. The 
demographic situation requires that one person (the one who 
works) should provide for three (plus a child and a pensioner). 
But where can we get so much money and work?

Correspondent: We looked forward to breakthrough ideas 
from the past parliamentary and presidential elections. I 
remember you saying that each voting is a new compromise 
between the elites.
Has it been achieved or are we in for a new relapse into 
wrestling at the top?
Koshmarov: The latest elections have not been a compromise 
between elites; they have been an agreement reached in the 
upper echelons of power. Hence the consequences we now have to 
take.
The successor creates new mechanisms of power and forms 
political forces, doing this on his own. Whether those who 
helped him like or dislike that they are being ousted from the 
wheel of power, they should have been able to foresee such a 
possibility in the first place. We have the case of power 
restructuring in the center in the interests of the new leader.

Correspondent: Only in the center?
Koshmarov: In Russia, central power is all power, and no 
other options are possible. So-called regional governance, or, 
governance by vassals, to be more exact, has not changed but 
only passed over from one master of the country to another.

Correspondent: What about the President's envoys who 
intend to take over the management of local money flows and 
law-enforcement structures?
Koshmarov: They may want this as much as they like but who 
will let them do it? If the center gives away money, there will 
be nothing to do for the federal government. We will then have 
seven federative republics instead of Russia, and this will be 
the fulfillment of the last point of the Cold War strategy 
according to Zbigniew Brzezinski. It must be said that 
Brzezinski had ten, not seven, districts in mind.

Correspondent: The previous tectonic shift occurred in our 
elites four years ago, when, after Yeltsin's election for the 
second term, many strong personalities came to power through 
gubernatorial elections. Today, the Kremlin is putting out a 
whole echelon of generals for the struggle for people's votes.
What are the possible aftermaths of such militarization of 
civilian power?
Koshmarov: A brusque interpretation of the strong Russia 
ideology requires loyal soldiers. Who, if not the brass, can be 
the executors of the President's will?

Correspondent: Political analyst Shevtsova calls this "the 
driving-belt system."
Koshmarov: A time bomb would be a more appropriate name 
for it. There are smart people among the military, too. The 
problem is that no one believes this. No one likes the trend 
towards militarization of power. But society wished to have a 
strong leader and it has received him. It has been ordinary 
Russians, not the elites, who elected Putin. Members of the 
elites kept saying that an intellectual should be elected as 
President, but masses felt the need for a general or a colonel 
who would come and put everything in order. At the first stage 
of his premiership Putin did not say anything at all - he only 
walked and produced an impression.
The paradox is that in all its reform plans the 
President's team appeals to people. The elite has proved to be 
utterly unprepared for this, because it talks the language of 
compromises, agreements, ideals, values, norms and laws, which 
is its format. The format of people is different: to spoil all 
the oligarchs... The elite has nothing to oppose this, because 
it talks different languages with the President and people.

Correspondent: What is more probable today - the formation 
of a new elite at the top similar to the oprichniks of Ivan the 
Terrible or the creation of a kind of our own Solidarity at the 
bottom?
Koshmarov: If we take Russian historical realities, then 
the first variant is most probable. The old elite will 
partially join the new one and partially go into opposition.

Correspondent: Will we manage to do without " the external 
enemy" and its agents of influence? 
Koshmarov: The feeling of anxiety and danger will continue 
to grow in society because of our incapability to respond to 
man-made catastrophes either technologically or at the 
information level. The West will depict us as a "foe", or 
sooner, a threat to the global community. The strategic task of 
US Republicans, for instance, is to spend much money for the 
creation of new technology of security from Russia, thereby 
ensuring a breakthrough in the development of American industry.
The Iron Curtain cannot be hung again. But information know-how 
can make mince meat out of Russia. As a matter of fact, this is 
already happening for the reputation of our business abroad. We 
for our part will either stress the many-century spirituality 
of the Russian people, or begin building a "unitarian state 
enterprise" called Russia by continuing our society's 
militarization (which is also impossible because of the 
country's huge area).

Correspondent: As an expert in political know-how, how do 
you assess the reserve of the popularly loved President's image?
Koshmarov: The President has been lucky in the economic 
context thus far. The world prices of oil exceed 30% the prices 
stipulated in the budget for this year. This gives a chance to 
conduct a paternalist policy - as manifested in rises in 
pensions and wages - insignificant but real shifts for the 
better, which have been observed for more than eighteen months 
now. But prices will remain high as long as there are economic 
growth in the global community and local military conflicts. 
Our people are very tolerant. But if they do not feel any 
improvements in their living standards, the President's 
approval rating will reduce to nil in a matter of a year and a 
half.

*******

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