September 18, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4521  4522   

Johnson's Russia List
#4522
18 September 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. Los Angeles Times: Paula J. Dobriansky, Be Wary When the Bear 
Sides With a Dragon.
2. Sarah C. Lindemann: Getting the facts straight. (re the 
reliability of the press)
3. Izvestia: Alexander Sadchikov, MULTIPARTY SYSTEM AMENDED.
Voters will pay for the welfare of party leaders. 
4. Newsweek International: Christian Caryl, Along Power Avenue. 
Luxury houses for the new elite are suddenly going up in a forest 
preserve. Outraged villagers smell a rat. 
5. New York Times: Felicity Barringer, Tycoon Takes to the Road 
With Media-vs.-Moscow Wars. (Gusinsky)
6. Los Angeles Times: Robyn Dixon, Chechnya's Grimmest Industry. 
Thousands of people have been abducted by the war-torn republic's 
kidnapping machine. Tales of the survivors read like relics from 
a barbaric past. 
7. HERE AND NOW ORT PROGRAM: INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER 
FOR ECONOMIC ISSUES ANDREI ILLARIONOV.]
*******


#1
Los Angeles Times
September 18, 2000
Be Wary When the Bear Sides With a Dragon 
By PAULA J. DOBRIANSKY
Paula J. Dobriansky Is Vice President and Washington Director of the Council 
on Foreign Relations


The Sino-Russian summit this summer drew scant attention. To the extent 
it was covered at all, most commentators dismissed the meeting's 
anti-American declarations as mere rhetoric. Even the more analytical 
accounts portrayed the Beijing-Moscow rapprochement as simply a marriage of 
convenience, with the two sides espousing divergent views on many key 
international issues. These benign assessments are flawed. A real 
Beijing-Moscow strategic alliance has emerged, with major adverse 
consequences for international stability. Moreover, the establishment of this 
alliance was neither inevitable nor accidental. 
Significantly, Russia's cooperation with China is not a new phenomenon. 
It dates back to Yevgeny M. Primakov's tenure as Russia's foreign minister in 
the mid- to late-1990s, when he championed the position that joint 
Sino-Russian efforts are needed to create a more multipolar world. 
The fact that Moscow and Beijing do not see eye to eye on all issues is 
no reason for American complacency. While Russia and China do not espouse a 
common culture and have some territorial disputes dating back to the 18th and 
19th centuries, they nevertheless share several key strategic concerns. They 
both resent U.S. global dominance and are displeased with what they see as a 
growing U.S.-led international consensus in favor of humanitarian 
interventions. 
Additionally, China and Russia are strongly opposed to U.S. ballistic 
missile defense efforts, believing that any defense deployment would buttress 
Washington's international prowess and make it an even more formidable, 
hegemonic power. China also views Russia as perhaps the only reliable and 
relatively low-cost arms supplier. The fact that Russia is willing to arm its 
erstwhile rival is further proof that it views the alliance with Beijing as a 
net long-term strategic asset. Essentially, the two countries have enough 
common interests to produce a genuine, albeit limited, strategic partnership. 
Surprisingly, even those who would admit that a Sino-Russian 
international partnership has emerged seem to question its significance. 
While Russia and China cannot match U.S. power, there is no doubt that, 
working together, they can cause much global mischief. Sino-Russian efforts 
can complicate our nonproliferation efforts, exacerbate regional problems in 
Europe and Asia and make the U.N. Security Council less willing to support 
U.S. initiatives. More fundamentally, this alliance provides impetus to other 
countries to oppose U.S. policies. 
This bear-dragon entente was not inevitable. Previously, China's 
concerns about Soviet global expansionism, ideological tensions and border 
clashes all contributed to Beijing's anti-Soviet alignment. The end of the 
Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the world's only 
superpower were certain to change strategic circumstances. Yet a 
Moscow-Beijing alliance could have been avoided. It was adroit American 
diplomacy of the 1970s and '80s that resulted in Washington having better 
relations with both China and Russia than either of those countries had with 
each other. Today, U.S. foreign policy is still instrumental in shaping the 
triangular relationship. 
Unfortunately, over the last eight years, U.S. policies toward both 
Russia and China have been ambiguous and confusing. Mixed messages generated 
strains in our relations with both Moscow and Beijing and provided little 
incentive for either to work at the geopolitical level with--or at least fear 
challenging--the United States. Moreover, we missed opportunities to exploit 
real differences between Russia and China. For example, during President 
Clinton's visit to Moscow in June, President Vladimir V. Putin unveiled a 
vague theater missile defense proposal as a means of persuading the U.S. to 
abandon the national missile defense program. (President Clinton has since 
deferred any decision on the program to the next administratioin.) We could 
have seized upon Putin's proposal and publicly described it as Moscow's 
embrace of regional ballistic missile defense architecture that Beijing finds 
so repugnant. While Putin would have undoubtedly argued that his proposal was 
not designed to harm China, we nevertheless could have successfully portrayed 
the episode as an example of Moscow's indifference to China's strategic 
concerns. 
While some impetus for the Sino-Russian rapprochement was fostered by 
objective shifts in the balance of power, the U.S. has done little to shape 
or influence these developments. We have neither sought to convince Moscow or 
Beijing that their anti-U.S. inspired strategic partnership was unnecessary, 
nor have we tried to make them pay a price for it. Consequently, for the 
first time since the Sino-Soviet military clashes of the late 1960s, two of 
Eurasia's major military powers stand united in opposition to the United 
States, ready to counter most of Washington's international endeavors. 


*******


#2
From: "Sarah C. Lindemann" <echo@mail.nsk.ru>
Subject: Getting the facts straight..
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 


Throughout the last couple of weeks there has been an ongoing dialogue on
JRL concerning the reliability of the press, both Russian and Western. In
the #4250 edition of JRL we see the two working in tandem demonstrating how
no one checks event the simplest fact before transmitting information around
the world giving it weight and certainty and, thus, reinforcing the lie as
truth which was, perhaps the intent of the original source. In this case I
refer to the BBC monitoring report from September 15 Kommersant where it was
stated that "...many regions are today experiencing a real fuel shortage.
In Khakassia, Novosibirsk...,for example, the majority of petrol stations
have come to a complete halt."


Now, I have lived in Novosibirsk long enough to evaluate everything I read
in the press with regard to Russia, regardless of country of origin, with
some degree of skepticism. This time, however, it involved such a concrete
and easily verifiable fact that I assumed it had to be true even when my
husband told me this was ridiculous. This time though it was a BBC
monitoring report not just an article. So, I left the house an hour early
to leave time for alternative plans if I couldn't get gas. Well, it turns
out that even something as simple to fact check as whether gas stations in
one of the largest cities in Russia are selling gas doesn't get confirmed.
I am not interested in getting into a debate about what the motives were for
Kommersant in publishing such an article. What I am concerned about is that
the Western press perpetuates and gives force to information without first
seeing if it is accurate.


The fact is today there is gas in Novosibirsk and, in fact, there was gas
on September 15th when the article was published. The price jumped from 7r
a litre to 8r over a week ago and to 8.5r this weekend. Certainly for many
people this price hike will put using their cars out of economic reach and
most certainly will snowball into increased prices for everything. If the
BBC was really interested in monitoring instead of being a mouthpiece for
people whose motives are unclear, they should do so or change the name to
the "mouthpiece report".


*******


#3
Izvestia
September 16, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
MULTIPARTY SYSTEM AMENDED
Voters will pay for the welfare of party leaders 
By Alexander SADCHIKOV

This newspaper has the text of a draft law "On Political 
Parties in the Russian Federation," which will soon be 
forwarded to the State Duma. It will bring quite a few 
surprises to the participants in the political process. 
A theoretical dispute on the need to reduce the number of 
parties and to make a multiparty system realistic has lasted 
for several months in the Russian political quarters. The 
"party reform" was initiated by the Unity faction. These 
abstract discussions took a practical form when Alexander 
Chuyev of the Unity faction, deputy chairman of the Duma 
committee on public associations and religious organisations, 
drafted a law designed to regulate the life of political 
parties. This 37-article law stipulates who, how and why can 
create and liquidate parties, and where they would take the 
money for operation and elections.
According to that draft law, a political party is "a 
voluntary self-governed association of citizens" created on the 
basis of individual membership. In other words, only private 
individuals can be party members. There should be three 
categories of parties: federal, inter-regional and regional. 
The first should have at least 5,000 members and structures 
(branches, committees) "in the territory of over a half" of the 
constituent members of the Federation. The second category of 
parties should have at least 500 members and structures "in the 
territory of at least a half" of Federation constituent members.
And lastly, regional parties shall operate only within the 
boundaries of one constituent member of the Federation. The 
structural divisions of federal parties shall operate only on 
the basis of the territorial principle. 
The draft law gives more possibilities for membership in 
the political parties to state officials. For example, the 
president, the premier and cabinet ministers can be party 
members.
Ideological antagonists will hardly be able to coexist on the 
political Olympus, and hence the state authorities can belong 
to one party. We have had this before. On the other hand, state 
officials cannot be bound by the decisions of their parties 
when doing their duty and should be guided in their activities 
only by law and official instructions. 
The most interesting innovations stipulated in the draft 
law concern financing. A note to the draft says the task of the 
law is to make the financing of political parties transparent. 
With this aim in view, parties should get allocations from the 
state, in particular depending on the election results. In 
other words, parties will get some money from the state as of 
the moment of registration, and other funds depending on the 
results of elections. 
It is interesting that Alexander Veshnyakov, Chairman of 
the Central Election Commission, provided this model of 
financing as an example. It is even more interesting that this 
model is used in Germany. It is rumoured that Vladimir Putin 
has a special attitude to Germany. This is why such innovations 
can be easily explained. Although the author of the draft law 
claims that the new attitude to financing parties will not 
seriously affect the budget, the overall spending on the 
implementation of the law will amount to 3,264,624 roubles a 
year.
By the way, the draft law does not provide for raising the 
5% election barrier to 7%. Parties can nominate candidates to 
president and the Duma. To be able to take part in these 
elections, they should be registered at least a year before 
them.
The draft has been "unofficially" discussed in the Duma 
committee on public associations and religious organisations.
According to our information, it is being analysed by the main 
state and legal department under the president and by the 
presidential staff. 


*******


#4
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 
From: Christian Caryl <CCaryl@compuserve.com>
Subject: Along Power Avenue 


Along Power Avenue 
Luxury houses for the new elite are suddenly going up in a forest preserve.
Outraged villagers smell a rat. 
By Christian Caryl
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL 
September 25 issue— On a warm day in early September, a crowd of Russian
villagers set up a roadblock in Kalchuga, a tiny village seven and a half
miles outside of Moscow. It lasted only 10 minutes—just enough time to make
a point. 
A TV CREW filmed the group brandishing posters and chanting slogans
against a luxury housing development going up in a local forest preserve,
while red-faced policemen tried to break up the protest. Just an obscure
event? Not exactly. The demonstration blocked traffic on Rublyov Highway,
which leads from Moscow to the homes of some of Russia’s most powerful
officials. Many of the cars stopped were government limousines. “Every day
you close the road for government cars,” one of the protesters told a cop.
“But when we close the road, you push us away. Who are you working for,
anyway?” 
In another time and place, outsiders would have ignored a few
dozen souls protesting wildcat real-estate development. But this is
Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and the Rublyov Highway is the jugular vein of the
country’s political and financial elite. The five-month-old protest is
striking a nerve among Moscow’s ruling class and giving ordinary Russians
intimations of an unholy alliance of power and money in the country today.
“Nothing like this [roadblock] has ever happened before,” says Kalchuga
village elder Sergei Grachev.
The Rublyovka, as Muscovites call it, was a favorite of communist
leaders who lived in guarded compounds strung out for miles along both
sides of the road. During the Yeltsin era, non-Kremlin-dwellers were able
to savor the cachet of Russia’s most prestigious address, as long as they
had enough money. Now, leading business people, media executives and pop
stars live there, too. They even speed down the road in black Mercedes
sedans with flashing rooftop lights, just like the government bigwigs. 
For years the residents of Kalchuga, whose 30 or so traditional
homes are hemmed in by the housing developments of the megawealthy, lived
in peace with their elite neighbors. Then last May villagers noticed
construction in the local forest, a protected nature reserve. They learned
that a real-estate developer named Megatorg—the company letterhead provides
no phone number or address—had received permission to build 14 luxury
houses on a four-hectare site. In 1999, it seems, the then Prime Minister
Putin’s government released 84.7 hectares of forest preserve in Moscow
province for development—in apparent conflict, say protesters and
ecological experts, with environmental-protection laws.
If that weren’t galling enough, local government officials say they
have documentation proving that “residents in Kalchuga” OK’d the project.
Incensed villagers held town meetings and signed petitions protesting the
development. “I cry when I see the forest,” says Olga, 56, a former nurse,
who refused to give her last name. “We walked here, and fell in love here,
and rested here. And now they’ve destroyed everything.” 
The developers’ motives are less sentimental. Real estate along the
Rublyov highway fetches $10,000 for 100 square meters, not including high
rural construction costs. With millions of dollars at stake, it’s no wonder
that strangers have recently begun offering the villagers inducements,
which range from refrigerators to $200 in cash, in return for abandoning
the cause. Some, it is claimed, have also made threats. “There will be
victims,” says Boris Kazmennykh, a villager who has refused to join the
protest. “It’s getting dangerous to cross the road around here.” 
Konstantin Makarov, the head of the district that includes
Kalchuga, dismisses the activists as ungrateful “anarchists.” He rejects
the protesters’ allegations that he and other government officials are in
collusion with Megatorg. Maybe, but there does seem to be intense official
interest in the project. When a reporter and photographer from NEWSWEEK
visited the development site last week, local police threatened them with
arrest and demanded to see their identification papers, asking them,
Communist Party style, what they planned to write. Who were they working
for?

******


#5
New York Times
September 18, 2000
[for personal use only]
Tycoon Takes to the Road With Media-vs.-Moscow Wars
By FELICITY BARRINGER


Vladimir V. Gusinsky, the Russian media tycoon whose brief arrest in June on 
corruption charges put a harsh spotlight on the Russian government's blunt 
use of its powers against media critics, came to New York last week and urged 
journalists and politicians not to let the spotlight go out.


If his quick tour sometimes seemed at cross-purposes with itself — Mr. 
Gusinsky wanted to raise the visibility of his cause but insisted that 
conversations be off the record — he still made his case to everyone from 
President Clinton to Mike Wallace of CBS, from senators and congressmen to 
Lou Boccardi, the president of The Associated Press, and to editors of The 
Wall Street Journal.


While it is hardly unusual for prominent Russians to seek succor and 
financial support in New York and Washington, it was still surprising to see 
Mr. Gusinsky take Russia's government-media wars on the road, casting himself 
as the protector of a free Russian press under siege by the government of 
President Vladimir V. Putin.


Mr. Gusinsky was in New York in his capacity as president of the Russian 
Jewish Congress; he met Mr. Clinton briefly at a dinner of the World Jewish 
Congress last Monday. 


And true to his roots as a banker and — though he dislikes the term —
as one 
of Russia's oligarchs, he also met with potential investors in his 
financially fragile conglomerate, Media-Most, one of his aides said.


For some, Mr. Gusinsky, with his close ties to the former government and his 
opulent living, is a problematic spokesman for press freedom. 


His television network, NTV, has an aggressive news department, has provided 
biting coverage of the war in Chechnya and was a sharp opponent of Mr. 
Putin's candidacy last year. But in 1996, when President Boris N. Yeltsin's 
candidacy for a second term seemed threatened by his Communist opponents, the 
Communists were virtually shut out by NTV, which reaches 100 million viewers, 
clustered in Russia's large and medium-sized cities.


Like Boris A. Berezovsky, who owns ORT, the network with the largest 
audience, Mr. Gusinsky has not shied from using his media properties as 
weapons in Russia's intricate and cutthroat political and financial battles.


William H. Luers, a former ambassador to Czechoslovakia, said in an interview 
after a dinner with Mr. Gusinsky that Mr. Gusinsky's earlier actions "don't 
diminish the basic argument that he is making for press freedom." 


In light of Mr. Gusinsky's willingness to use his media properties as blunt 
instruments in national elections, his campaign to preserve press freedom in 
Russia "is a little ironic," Mr. Luers said. "But it is true that his 
television and radio stations are among the few left to say what needs 
saying. That he's not the perfect messenger doesn't mean that his case is not 
important."


Since early this year, Mr. Putin's government has proved to be increasingly 
willing to move against opposition journalists — or not to stop military 
officers, federal prosecutors or other officials who take punitive measures 
against media critics. The trend began with the detention of Andrei Babitsky, 
a Radio Liberty journalist covering the Chechnya war, and continued with Mr. 
Gusinsky's arrest and the recent decision of ORT executives to pull the plug 
on Sergei Dorenko, that network's most caustic commentator.


Media-Most has also made itself vulnerable to government pressure by making a 
deal during the Yeltsin era that gave Gazprom, the state- controlled gas 
monopoly, an equity stake in Media-Most worth about $234 million, and had 
Gazprom guarantee a $211 million loan from Credit Suisse First Boston.


Gazprom paid the loan when it fell due, and is now arguing that its various 
interests in Media-Most amount, in effect, to a controlling stake in the 
media conglomerate. Mr. Gusinsky argues that Gazprom officials are grossly 
undervaluing his enterprise, to squeeze him financially until he cedes 
control of his media to the state.


Appearing on the CNN program "Larry King Live" on Sept. 8, Mr. Putin brushed 
off a question about muzzling the press, saying, "I believe that when they 
are talking about the need to protect the freedom of expression, that's only 
a pretext to be able to cover their own commercial interests in some 
quarters."


A few days later, in a meeting with members of Parliament, Mr. Putin said he 
would not nationalize NTV, according to a report on the news agency Interfax.


Mr. Gusinsky's most influential broadcaster, Yevgeny Kiselyov, scoffed at Mr. 
Putin's statements. "I live in this country," he said in an interview in 
Moscow, and Mr. Putin's statement "does not have anything to do with the 
truth."


In New York, Mr. Gusinsky met with about 40 journalists at a dinner arranged 
by Global American Television, a Massachusetts concern that supplies programs 
like "JAG" to NTV.


Then Mr. Gusinsky went to Washington to meet with a group of members of 
Congress, including Representative Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, and 
with Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon. The meeting was arranged 
by a group championing the cause of Jews in the former Soviet Union.


******


#6
Los Angeles Times
September 18, 2000 
Chechnya's Grimmest Industry 
Thousands of people have been abducted by the war-torn republic's kidnapping 
machine. Tales of the survivors read like relics from a barbaric past. 
By ROBYN DIXON, Times Staff Writer


NALCHIK, Russia--As awkwardly as a newborn foal struggling on spindly 
legs, Lena Meshcheryakova is learning how to curl her lips up at the corners 
to make a smile. 
Drifting just beneath the surface of her 5-year-old world are the 
memories of a darker place: the cellar in Chechnya where she was held 
prisoner by kidnappers for nine months. 
When she was freed at age 3, she had forgotten how to smile. She could 
barely even speak. But she knew how to pray like the devout Muslim Chechen 
men who had imprisoned her. The words she kept shouting out were "Allahu 
akbar!" (God is great!) 
Lena, kidnapped from her Russian mother's home in Grozny, the Chechen 
capital, was a victim of Chechnya's most voracious industry, the trade in 
hostages and slaves. Thousands of people have been gobbled up by the Chechen 
kidnapping machine, which has ravaged Russia since 1994. 
The stories of survivors are like the relics of some wild, 
half-forgotten era of warlords and lawless barbarism. Victims have been kept 
in earthen pits or small cells that are often scrawled with the initials of 
hundreds of earlier captives. They have been used as slaves to dig trenches 
or build large houses for relatives of the kidnappers. 
The kidnappers have been known to mutilate their captives, even 
children, severing their ears or fingers. Gangs have sent videotaped 
recordings of mutilations and beheadings to relatives to terrify them into 
finding the ransom. Russian authorities have used the gruesome videos to feed 
anti-Chechen sentiment and boost public support for Moscow's latest war in 
the separatist republic. 
When the kidnapping industry reached its peak a few years ago, there was 
even a relatively open "slave market" in Grozny, near Minutka Square, where 
the names and details of human livestock circulated on lists for interested 
buyers. Gangs often traded hostages or stole them from one another. 
In the years between Russia's first war in Chechnya, from 1994 to 1996, 
and Moscow's launch of a new war against Chechen rebels last fall, kidnapping 
was one of the biggest sources of enrichment for criminal gangs in an economy 
that had little else to offer but oil theft, arms trade, counterfeiting and 
drug smuggling. 
The highly organized gangs hunted for victims among the wealthy clans 
from Chechnya and neighboring republics in southern Russia. Foreigners and 
Russian television journalists were in high demand. 
There were even professional go-betweens who took a commission on ransom 
deals, visited victims in their cells and dictated the despairing letters 
that captives sent to relatives pleading for the ransom to be paid. 
Nearly a thousand hostages are still being held or are dead, according 
to Russian Interior Ministry figures. 
Most of the victims were kidnapped in Chechnya or nearby. But dozens of 
people were seized in Moscow and other cities and traveled under guard to 
Chechnya in trucks with hidden cells, buried under potatoes or furniture. 
In at least one case, a hostage was doped and transported in a suitcase. 


Piecing Together a Child's Lost Months 
In her new hometown of Prokhladny, near Nalchik in southern Russia, Lena 
Meshcheryakova is rediscovering a childhood world of smiling suns painted on 
kindergarten doors, posters with cotton ball sheep and lunchtime milk ladled 
from an enamel pail. Her mother, Tatyana, 44, is gradually putting together 
the jagged puzzle of what happened to Lena in the lost nine months of her 
captivity. 
Back in her Grozny neighborhood, Tatyana Meshcheryakova, a kindergarten 
director, was resented as a Russian woman teaching the children of Chechens. 
She thinks that her family was a target for Chechen extremists because of it. 
At 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 9, 1998, she awoke to the sounds of the 
neighborhood dogs barking. Then four armed men were in her room. They took 
away her child and a pair of inexpensive gold earrings. 
The initial ransom, $15,000, might as well have been a million dollars 
for a woman who hadn't been paid in four years. Nine months later, it had 
fallen to $1,000, and neighbors, colleagues and friends helped scrape 
together the money to buy her child's life. 
Before Meshcheryakova was reunited with Lena, doctors warned her to show 
no emotion and to get no closer than a handshake, in case of infection. 
"But I decided to hug her, and when I did she was just skin and bone," 
Meshcheryakova says. The child had lost all her hair. "She was a pitiful 
sight, all covered in scabies, her skin hanging loose. She had deep bedsores 
and could barely move. She weighed 9 kilograms [20 pounds] at 3 years of 
age." 
Lena couldn't tell her mother the story. It finally emerged in painful 
scraps. She spoke of people named Ruslan and Shamil, who carried machine 
guns, and a bad-tempered woman called Larisa. 
Lena's ear was ripped, and she had a deep scar on her finger. "Larisa 
hit me with a knife for losing a slipper," Lena explained to her mother. 
She was terrified of people in camouflage and burst into tears whenever 
she saw a cellar. When her mother asked why she was always sitting with hands 
behind her back, Lena told her she was wearing handcuffs. She would greedily 
pounce on any crumbs that fell to the floor and lick the last tiny scrap from 
her plate. 


Russian Soldiers See a Cause to Fight For 
The kidnapping industry reached its crescendo in the lawless chaos after 
Russia was defeated in the first Chechen war. The kidnappings gave Russian 
soldiers a cause to fight for--which they lacked in the first war--and made 
it easy for them to hate all Chechens. 
Despite the fact that Russia has captured most Chechen territory, there 
were still 73 kidnappings in southern Russia near Chechnya in the first half 
of this year. 
According to the Interior Ministry's organized-crime department, 1,807 
people have been kidnapped since 1994. The figure excludes the thousands of 
Chechens abducted within the separatist republic and the many other people 
who didn't go to the authorities for help. 
"It's not just a disorganized bunch of cutthroats. It's a highly 
organized, well-oiled machine, and they've got contacts all over the North 
Caucasus," says Mikhail Brenner, 45, a road construction engineer who was 
kidnapped in Ingushetia, a Russian republic neighboring Chechnya, in October 
1998 along with four of his colleagues. 
In the year of his captivity, dozens of people passed through his cell, 
with its filthy mattresses and bloodstained walls. 
One of the five, Victor Zinchenko, 53, whose mother was a 
poverty-stricken widow, was beheaded in a green forest glade. The video of 
his death has been played countless times on Russian television, but the part 
never telecast shows his executioners kicking his severed head about like a 
football, says Brenner's wife, Tatyana, who got the full version of the video 
in a parcel from the kidnappers. 


Local Authorities Were Often Involved 
After the withdrawal of the Russians from Chechnya in 1996, Moscow was 
impotent to stop the kidnappings or free the victims. The local Chechen 
government's security service was no help, afraid of sparking clan vendettas. 
In fact, the Chechen authorities were often involved in kidnappings. 
Aslanbek Kharikhanov, 31, of Mairtup village, left the Chechen police force 
in disgust because so many police cooperated with gangs or became kidnappers 
themselves. Chechnya's customs service often kidnapped people while 
inspecting trains or buses. 
Even ordinary Chechens played a role in the crimes. 
Victims such as Brenner, who was guarded by old men with machine guns as 
he worked as a slave building houses, concluded that every Chechen supports 
the kidnapping industry. But ordinary Chechens are also terrified of the 
warlords and their armies. 
Siryazhdin Idrisov, 37, a farmer from Mairtup, kept a man in his 
basement in the summer of 1997. The man, who looked about 45 and Russian, was 
brought to him by a warlord. 
"What could I do? I couldn't say no to a warlord," Idrisov explains. "He 
said I would answer for the prisoner with my head or with the heads of my 
family members, and I knew he was serious. I suspect many other people in the 
village had the same problem, but we never shared it. We were just terrified, 
that is all. 
"I was afraid the man would run away, so I kept the basement closed at 
all times. I fed him well; I gave him the same food my family had. I never 
spoke to him. But I felt sorry for him. He looked very sad and frightened at 
all times. I was quite relieved when the warlord came after 12 days and took 
him away." The man's fate is unknown. 
Idrisov wouldn't give the warlord's name, saying, "I don't want him to 
come and kill me." 
The heart of the industry was the town of Urus-Martan, about 15 miles 
southwest of Grozny, controlled by the notorious eight Akhmadov brothers, 
including Uvais Akhmadov, the town's police chief. 
Kirill Perchenko, 22, the son of a Moscow art dealer, was kidnapped in 
August 1999 from one of Moscow's fashionable streets and trucked to Grozny. 
He was sold to Ramzan Akhmadov, one of the brothers, and saw hundreds of 
names, going back to 1992, scratched on the walls of the warlord's cells. 
The Akhmadovs had many rules for their prisoners. They had to keep their 
eyes down and weren't allowed to meet a Chechen's gaze. They worked at 
cobbling shoes, carrying water and other chores. 
Several times, Perchenko was given 100 strokes with wooden sticks for 
using bad language. After the first month of frequent hard beatings, he says, 
he began to get used to the pain. 
The beating that really sticks in his mind wasn't the most painful one. 
A few Chechen boys, aged 5 or 6, were encouraged to hit him while a woman 
stood nearby, laughing. 
He says that during his captivity he watched seven men being executed by 
his captors. One of his friends was bashed to death. 
Once, a hostage, a Russian officer, attacked and wounded one of the 
guards with a knife. Punishment was immediate. 
"They put him on the ground, and four hostages had to hold his arms and 
legs," Perchenko remembers. "They took a two-handed saw and killed him. He 
was lying on his stomach screaming. They cut from the back. From the back you 
hit the spine first, and it's very painful." 
"The next day they took us all out of our cell and cut off the head of 
an 82-year-old man they had taken in Grozny. They just took it off with a 
knife and said, 'For Allah,' before killing him. They put both [men's] heads 
on poles. And they took out the heart of the old man and nailed it to a 
tree." 
Perchenko managed to escape after six months in captivity. 
Only about 10% of hostages were freed by Russia's organized-crime force, 
according to former Maj. Vyacheslav Izmailov, a crusading journalist from the 
Novaya Gazeta newspaper who has devoted himself to tracing and freeing 
hostages. Most were bought, a few escaped, and some were abandoned by gangs 
when Russia started bombing towns and villages after the second war began 
last fall. 
With 950 unaccounted for in the Interior Ministry figures, it's not 
clear how many died in Russia's ferocious bombing campaign. 
"Hostages say the most terrible thing they experienced was the Russian 
bombing," says Izmailov, who believes the number of hostages is much higher 
than official figures suggest. 
The least "lucrative" hostages are soldiers, says Mikhail Suntsov of the 
ministry's organized-crime department. 
Roman Tereshchenko, a 22-year-old soldier, was sold into slavery in 
Chechnya by another soldier, Vasily Pinigin, for a few hundred dollars in 
June 1998. Pinigin was convicted earlier this year and sentenced to eight 
years in prison. It was the only trial of its type, although there were 
several cases in which soldiers betrayed colleagues to kidnappers, either for 
money or to avoid being kidnapped themselves, Suntsov says. 
The ransom for a soldier was usually $2,000 to $10,000, he says, and 10 
times more for an officer. 
Although kidnappings have been going on in Chechnya for centuries, the 
trade really took off in September 1996, when Russia ran out of captured 
Chechen rebels to exchange for Russian POWs. 
The Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, passed an amnesty enabling 
convicted Chechens serving time for various crimes in Russian prisons to be 
swapped for captive Russian civilians and soldiers. A similar amnesty was 
passed late last year. Izmailov, who arranged many of the swaps, set a 
minimum of three Russians for every Chechen released. 
The problem was that the rule implied that one Chechen life was worth 
three Russians. It was like pouring gasoline on the flames. 
"Of course it helped create a market. But the people who split the atom 
did not know it would result in a nuclear bomb," Izmailov says. "What other 
option did I have?" 


Standing Blindfolded in a Self-Dug Grave 
Telling their stories means reliving their captivity for men such as 
Maj. Vitaly Khapov, whose kidnappers clamped open his jaw and ground his 
teeth down with a metal file, or Brenner, who had to dig a grave and stand in 
it blindfolded while gunmen fired bullets past his ears. 
Oscar Wilde wrote in his story "The Happy Prince" that there is no 
mystery so great as misery--but equally mysterious is the will to survive it. 
All but one of Brenner's teeth were knocked out in vicious beatings. The 
kidnappers' aim was to break him. 
"People like that can't break your spirit," Brenner says. "They could 
hardly even read or write properly. When a beast like that is beating you up, 
you try to watch in a detached way, thinking that this person being beaten up 
is much higher than the person beating him. He's just a killing machine, 
beating you up. 
"You feel hatred for them, of course, but all the time you have a 
feeling of derision. You try not to succumb to the pain." 
Brenner escaped last fall and walked for five days to neighboring 
Ingushetia, just in time to be asked to identify Zinchenko's decomposing 
head, which had been found two weeks earlier under a bridge. 
In November 1997, Vitaly Kozmenko, 73, was seized in Grozny by three men 
in camouflage and was held in several different cells and pits. 
He spent two months in a grave-size pit under a house high in the 
southern Chechen mountains. His hands were painfully cuffed and his feet were 
chained, but he could walk a few paces. 
The owner of the house was always masked. He was curt and cruel but 
brought a bucket for Kozmenko to relieve himself into and a few boards for 
him to sleep on. After three days in the pitch blackness, Kozmenko began 
having hallucinations and he explained the problem to his guard, who 
softened. 
"I said, 'What do I call you?' He said, 'Call me Sonny,' and he called 
me Grandpa. I said, 'Sonny, can you bring me a light?' " 
With light he was able to write. Kozmenko still has a small scrap of 
worn cardboard, folded many times, that is covered in tiny illegible writing 
and hieroglyphics, his diary of two months in the pit. 
Later, he was moved to a cellar in Mairtup village, where he was chained 
to a couch. Kozmenko's limbs were so confined that he was almost sleepless, 
tormented by thoughts of being able to just rest one hand on his thigh. 
Somehow he persuaded his newest captor, Lechi, to unchain him for a night, 
despite the Chechen's fear of reprisals if Kozmenko escaped. 
After that, "I said: 'Lechi, unchain me, open the door and leave the 
house. I'll not run away.' . . . He said, 'To hell with them,' and unchained 
me for good. And I started to learn to walk again." 
Lechi borrowed several books for his prisoner, facing embarrassment when 
a suspicious friend asked him why he had suddenly become so interested in 
reading. 
"A man should not lose his spirit and should struggle to the end," 
Kozmenko says. "I suffered a lot of excruciating pain, but I survived because 
I said to myself life is given to man just once. You should do all you can to 
stay alive." 
He was released after his wife, a lawyer, agreed to defend the case of a 
rich and powerful politician who was charged with inciting a coup in 
Dagestan, a republic neighboring Chechnya. 
After 14 months in captivity, the first thing Kozmenko did when he got 
back to Moscow in January 1999 was to go to an ice hole in the frozen Moscow 
River and plunge in for an exhilarating dip. 


'Let There Always Be Blue Sky' 
In Lena Meshcheryakova's kindergarten, the words of a Russian nursery 
song decorate one wall: "Let there always be sunshine. Let there always be 
blue sky. Let there always be Mama. Let there always be me." For all the 
other children, it's just a pretty song, but for Lena the implied alternative 
is quite real. 
Lena still has rings under her eyes, and her solemn little face rarely 
lights up. She still wakes up screaming about people coming to get her. She 
is often anxious and irritable, and whenever she sees Grozny mentioned on 
television, she begs for the promise that she will never have to go back 
there. 
Lena and her mother, a widow, have been staying with a relative for 
months. Lately, there have been hints that it's time to move on from the 
house in Prokhladny, but the mother can't afford to buy her own place. 
As Tatyana Meshcheryakova tells the story of her daughter's survival, 
Lena plays nearby. She lets a ladybug run along her finger, then is chagrined 
by its apparent death due to her attention. She gently places the tiny insect 
on a matchbox. 
Gradually, Lena is recovering. "Now she has even started to be naughty," 
her mother says gratefully. "Thank God she was born. Thank God she's here." 
"It's moving! Look, Mama! It's moving!" Lena shrieks excitedly as the 
ladybug picks itself up and begins to scurry away. And suddenly, Lena is 
smiling. 
Sergei L. Loiko of The Times' Moscow Bureau and special correspondent 
Mayerbek Nunayev contributed to this report. Dixon reported from Nalchik, 
Rostov-on-Don and Moscow. Nunayev reported from Mairtup. 


******


#7
TITLE: INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER FOR ECONOMIC ISSUES 
ANDREI ILLARIONOV
(HERE AND NOW ORT PROGRAM, 21:30, SEPTEMBER 13, 2000)
SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE


Moderator: Yevgeny Primakov did not say anything about the
draft budget. That is why we can only assume that so far both
houses of parliament are against the draft budget submitted by the
government. In the Duma they say that the revenue is understated.
The Federation Council says that the distribution of revenue
between the center and the regions is unfair. Frankly, I do not
recall a single instance when a budget would be to everybody's
liking. Here and now we have the president adviser for economic
issues Andrei Illarionov.
Good evening, Andrei Nikolayevich.


Illarionov: Good evening, Alexander Mikhailovich.


Q: I have a strange proposal to you -- not to speak about
figures. In the sense that, of course, money is never sufficient
but it would be good if we had enough for everything.


A: I am afraid that we will not be able to totally do without
figures, but we'll try.


Q: Well, there is never enough money. Let us speak about the
quality of the process, about management, about the administration
of this money, how it should be spent so that we could move on and
survive.
In what ways is this draft budget better for the average
statistical citizen of Russia as compared with last year's budget?


A: In fact, both things are present, I mean the quantitative
and qualitative approach. The first hearing of the draft budget by
the State Duma will be devoted to quantitative parameters. After
that qualitative, structural parameters will follow. So, there is
no way of escaping figures.


Q: I would want our discussion to be more understandable to
listeners.


A: What does this budget give people and the country? In this
respect this budget has at least two very big specificities. First
of all, in terms of quality, and you have drawn attention to this,
well, I think this is the most qualitative budget ever drawn up in
our country in the past ten years. I mean from the point of view of
the budgetary process.


Q: Are you referring to the quality of the document or the
quality of life?


A: Quality of the document. This is very important, by the
way, because the quality of this document has a direct influence on
the quality of our life. If documents are drawn up sloppily, this
has a very negative impact on our life. This is one aspect...


Q: What about the population?


A: Excuse me, but you put a question to me and I want to
answer it at once.


Q: Good.


A: Then there is the second specificity. For the first time in
the past ten years this is a non-deficit budget, in any case the
draft that was submitted by the government to the State Duma.
More than that, the government...


Q: Are you saying that this is good?


A: Everybody believes that this is good. The matter is... Do
you borrow from your neighbors to live or you don't borrow, I mean
you in particular?


Q: Andrei Nikolayevich, this is a difficult question...


A: This is really the question...


Q: A theoretical one. 


A: This is a question that millions of our fellow citizens ask
themselves.


Q: Our fellow citizens. But we should understand that the
state is not a family, it is an enterprise and an enterprise, like
a country, can live on borrowed money.


A: We are a big, big family and we have borrowed too much. 


Q: I agree. The population's incomes...


A: Since you agree with this, I will tell you that what the
government is going to do for the first time next year is to stop
increasing our external and internal debts and start reducing them.
Very modestly. This is just a very small step but a step in the
right direction. If government really takes to this road and if
this budget is supported by the State Duma and the Federation
Council, life for all of us will become better.


Q: I will not argue with you. The population's incomes will
grow by 5 percent and inflation by 12 percent. Will people be
earning more or less?


A: The figures that you mention cannot be compared. The 5
percent growth of the population's incomes signifies real growth
minus inflation. This means that nominal incomes should grow by 17
or 18 percent.


Q: This is already good. 


A: The draft budgets provides for at least a 5-percent growth
of the population's incomes. Incidentally, statistics show that in
the first seven months of the year the population's real incomes
have grown by more than 8 percent. We haven't had such a growth for
at least 20 years.


Q: Let us turn to the Federation Council. I think that it is
rather difficult for an average person to understand what is
better: should the revenues of the regions or of the center be
bigger? What can the average person gain from this? Are you saying
that if money is to go through the federal budget, it means that
more of this money is going to reach the people? 


A: You know, I think that for the average citizen it does not
really matter if his allowances, pensions or wages are paid out of
the federal or regional budget. This is not really important for
the average citizen. But this is important for the country as a
whole. You see, if our national, federal legislation says that
veterans are entitled to a certain allowance, it is right to ask if
veterans in Moscow are different in any way from veterans who live
in Kalmykia? Are veterans living in Tyumen region any different
from those in Tyva? And so on. I think that we should answer that
if we are citizens of a single country, then legislation should
operate uniformly throughout the country.


Q: This is another matter.


A: But this is a matter we are discussing now. Because if we
have uniform national legislation, then in accordance with this
national legislation we all are citizens and then...


Q: If somebody violates a law, it does not mean that the law
should be changed. It is necessary to punish those who violate it.


A: No, the matter is that in the course of many previous years
precisely the national laws were not observed. The federal budget
was not capable of fulfilling federal laws and actually left this
at the discretion of the regional authorities, for instance, the
payment of child allowances or allowances to veterans.
Now we are actually getting back to the normal state of
things, that is, if the federal authorities adopt a law, it is the
federal authorities that must be responsible for it. This means
that they make these uniform payments throughout the territory of
the country.


Q: Is this a political or an economic problem?


A: I think that this is simply a problem evening out
conditions of life throughout the entire territory of the country
in accordance with legislation.


Q: The military budget will be bigger, yes? After what
happened with the Kursk, I think it is a legitimate question. If
the money given to the military was spent in such a way that what
happened happened, do you have to throw money at the military just
like that? What are we trying to achieve?


A: That question could be addressed to the Federal Assembly
which thinks that the increase of military spending proposed by the
government is not enough. You probably know that the colleagues in
the Federal Assembly want still greater increases. But strictly
speaking, this trend which is reflected in our budget contradicts
world trends. In the last 10 years the vast majority of countries
have been cutting and not increasing defense spending as percentage
of the GDP. So, we are acting against the world trend.


Q: I am not sure I can identify myself with your comparison of
the state to the family, but I can understand the comparison of the
state to an enterprise. You will correct me if you don't like what
I am going to say just now. It seems to me that in a normal
enterprise if a budget is too big for the manager to handle it
properly it is usually reduced, thus cutting the manager down to
size to match his status to the amount of money he manages. If the
military manager cannot use the budget properly, why increase it?
It runs counter to common sense, not to speak of the world trend.


A: Your example clearly shows that you cannot compare a state
to an enterprise.


Q: OK.


A: And by the way, it may have been a big mistake of many of
our predecessors who thought that a country could be run in the
same way as a large factory.


Q: I am not managing anything, I am simply trying to clarify
matters.


A: You see, there exists a function of defending the country.
The defense capability, protection of the country's security is a
real function whatever you might think of it. And even if our
military do not always made the best use of the money they are
given, that function remains.


Q: And so, we --


A: And so, this suggests several important conclusions. It
suggests that if the military do not cope with the money that is
due to them under the law and the Constitution, then a military
reform is held. I won't divulge any great secret if I say that the
recent decisions marked the start of a military reform.


Q: I agree.


A: And military reform is anything but cheap. But I am sure
you will agree with that.


Q: Yes, of course.


A: Well, you see, according to the legislation passed by the
Federal Assembly, discharging every individual from the armed
forces involves paying large allowances for several years ahead,
providing housing accommodation, and so on. All this costs money.
Quite a good deal of money. So, to implement a military reform
which is aimed, among other things, and indeed primarily, to
improve our defense capability, including by discharging some
servicemen, more money is required than if the reform were not
carried out at all.


Q: I think it is all about the quality of management. We still
must give an answer to the upper house of parliament which thinks
that the budget revenue figures have been understated. I understand
that the government's position is to understate the revenues so as
to have some money to meet our external debt obligations. Is that
true?


A: No, you are mistaken. The government proceeded from a
rather conservative forecast of, above all, the price of oil. It
put it at 21 dollars per barrel next year. Our colleagues,
especially in the Federal Assembly, think the price is understated
and it should be higher. And all the forecasts of inflation, the
GDP, and so on proceed from this. And that applies to revenue as
well.


Q: So, you think it is a correct assessment?


A: No, it is not a correct assessment. I would say it is too
optimistic. 


Q: Really?


A: Well, at least this is my view. Over the past few years we
saw dramatic fluctuations of the oil price. Two years ago oil cost
9 dollars per barrel. Nobody could have foreseen it. Today, more
precisely, several days ago, it was 35 dollars per barrel. And
today it dropped by 5 dollars.
If we base our budget on such shaky ground assuming that oil
prices will be stable and high, we put the wellbeing of our
citizens at risk because we may find ourselves in a situation when
we will have to cut the budget and cut the real incomes we have
just been speaking about.


Q: Well, in terms of management I agree that it is better to
understate, than to overstate, yes?


A: No, it is necessary to stick to conservative assessments,
especially of the factors which are beyond our country's control.


Q: I would suggest that we meet in a year's time and see just
how correct our forecasts were.


******