September 26, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4538• 4539  •4540 

Johnson's Russia List
#4538
26 September 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. AP: Russian Capitalism Doomed By Crime. (Sergei Khrushchev)
2. Moscow Times EDITORIAL: OSCE Nod Doesn't Aid Democracy.
3. Jamestown Foundation Monitor: CHUBAIS GOES TO SCHOOL. 
4. Bloomberg: World Bank Study Shows Corruption in Eastern Europe 
Growing.
5. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Leonid Pronsky, REASONS FOR A CRISIS REMAIN.
What Reformers Have Done to Our Economy.
6. Stephan Solzhenitsyn: RE: 4534/York on Solzhenitsyn.
7. Elizabeth Riley: Failed Crusade -- Stephen Cohen.
8. Dale Herspring: Kursk.
9. gazeta.ru: Controversial Eavesdropping Order Ruled Unlawful.
10. Moscow Times: Alexei Pankin, NTV, ORT: R.I.P.
11. Newsday: Michael Slackman, Trapped in Refuge. Africans who flee 
to Russia find racism, xenophobia.



*******


#1
Russian Capitalism Doomed By Crime
September 25, 2000

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The son of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev says
the market economy will never succeed in Russia until government corruption
is wiped out. 


``You ask a person in the countryside, 'What do you think of democracy?'
and they will say democracy has brought crime,'' Sergei Khrushchev said
during a weekend speech at the University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute. 


Khrushchev and his wife, Valentina Golenko, became U.S. citizens last year.
He is an astrophysicist and a senior scholar at Brown University's Thomas
J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies. He recently published
``Nikita Khrushchev: Creation of a Super Power.'' 


******


#2
Moscow Times
September 26, 2000 
EDITORIAL: OSCE Nod Doesn't Aid Democracy 


Compared to the melee of the Yugoslavian elections, Russia's own
presidential vote, in retrospect, looks almost air-tight. At least Western
observers were part of the proceedings. In Yugoslavia, observers were
denied entry visas. 


Since the dawn of the democratic "experiment" in Russia, Western observers
have been trumpeted as a virtual guarantee of free and fair elections f as
if merely by being here, a handful of well-intentioned foreigners could
magically lift the spell of political coercion and corruption and let the
healing begin. 


Russia, of course, is not that simple a case. But observers continue to
operate as though it were. With fewer than 400 observers on hand to monitor
a tiny fraction of Russia's 95,000 polling stations on March 26, the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe delivered its
preliminary verdict just one day later: The election marked "further
progress for the consolidation of democratic elections in the Russian
Federation." 


On May 19, having had over a month to fully digest the information given by
the members of its International Election Observation Mission, the OSCE
merely added a final layer of gloss to its original thumbs-up: The
elections were "a benchmark in the ongoing evolution of the Russian
Federation's emergence as a representative democracy." 


Admittedly, a mission that comprises fewer than 200 two-person teams is
necessarily limited in what it can observe f particularly with a schedule
that allows no more than an hour at any one polling station. It may well be
that the majority of the OSCE monitors in fact saw nothing out of the
ordinary during their cursory inspections. (The Moscow Times interviewed
one observer who spent an entire night at a single territorial commission
and did note numerous procedural violations. In the end, however, he said
it was not enough to recommend canceling election results from that area.) 


But is the OSCE receptive to supplemental information? Apparently not. In
response to The Moscow Times' extensive documentation of pervasive vote
falsification in the March elections, the organization has said that it
will stick by its report until fraud allegations are validated by a court
of law. (In fact, elections law violations apparently have already been
admitted by prosecutor's offices in a number of complaints related to the
vote that put Vladimir Putin in office.) 


The OSCE appears ready to wash its hands of the whole affair and
congratulate itself on a job well done. But there is ample evidence that
the Russian presidential elections do not deserve the legitimacy that an
OSCE nod delivers. If this is the best a well-intentioned Western mission
can do, then perhaps next time they should just stay home f like they are
with the Yugoslavian elections. 


******


#3
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
September 25, 2000


CHUBAIS GOES TO SCHOOL. In what some observers are interpreting as a sign 
that Anatoly Chubais is in political trouble, the erstwhile Russian reform 
icon and privatization architect who now heads United Energy Systems (UES), 
Russia's electrical power grid, has reportedly left Russia to take a 
month-long management course at a Swiss business school. His decision to 
leave Russia for such a long period simply to improve his professional 
qualifications looks particularly peculiar in light of the fact that the 
country is entering winter and the current period is critical in UES's 
preparations for supplying power to provide heating (Segodnya, September 
25). Chubais' reported departure follows an announcement last week by 
Russia's tax police that at the end of August it had launched a criminal 
probe into allegations that UES had failed to pay 3.2 billion rubles ($115 
million) in taxes. A UES spokesman subsequently admitted that the company 
owned the back taxes, but said that they were being paid off as agreed to 
with the tax authorities. The spokesman said the new probe involved 
Chubais' decision following the Kursk submarine sinking to donate 4.2 
million rubles (US$151,000) to a charitable fund for the sailors' families. 
Tax officials have said that money should have been used to pay off UES's 
tax debt (Reuters, September 21; Moscow Times, September 22).


Several analysts of the Russian market said last week that the new probe 
was probably little more than another attempt by the authorities to show 
who is boss. But news of the investigation and Chubais' reported departure 
for Switzerland appears to be another sign that his relations with the 
authorities are growing increasingly precarious. In July, the Audit 
Chamber, an independent state agency charged with monitoring the use of 
federal budget funds, began an investigation into whether a stake in UES 
had been illegally sold to foreigners. Chubais charged that the Audit 
Chamber investigation was politically motivated and an attempt to "destroy 
the basis of the state system" by "those who need things to be bad and 
unstable in the country" (see the Monitor, July 14). While this sale took 
place before Chubais became the head of UES, it did occur while he was 
overseeing Russia's privatization process. The Audit Chamber completed its 
investigation into UES earlier this month and handed its findings over to 
the Prosecutor General's Office (Russian agencies, September 19). Those 
findings have not yet been made public.


Ironically, the Audit Chamber allegations concerning the illegal sale of 
UES shares to foreigners came on the heels of a revolt against him by many 
of those very same foreign shareholders who had been crucial in ensuring 
his accession to the post of UES's top manager. They charged that Chubais' 
plans for restructuring UES by selling off the company's power generating 
assets would destroy shareholder value and was responsible for the sharp 
drop in the price of UES share prices which began in March of this year 
(see the Monitor, June 16).


On top of all this, Chubais stirred some controversy earlier this month 
when he began carrying out a threat to cut off energy users who had payment 
arrears to UES. In one case, a UES subsidiary in the Invanovo region cut 
off power to a Strategic Missile Forces base for not paying its energy 
bills. Officers at the base responded by sending troops to capture the 
local power station (Moscow Times, September 13). Following this and other 
similar incidents involving delinquent customers, Prime Minister Mikhail 
Kasyanov ordered a ban on cutting power to strategically important 
installations (Segodnya, September 25).


Another sign--albeit indirect--that Chubais' position may be shaky was 
Putin's meeting last week with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel 
prize-winning author and Soviet-era dissident. Solzhenitsyn and his wife 
met with Putin in the Kremlin on September 20, at the president's 
invitation. The following day the writer praised Putin for being cautious 
and careful in his judgment, having a "lively mind," having "no thirst for 
personal power" and being "guided by the interests of the state" (Globe and 
Mail [Canada], September 22). Last year, Solzhenitsyn gave similar praise 
and support to Yevgeny Primakov, strongly criticizing Primakov's removal as 
prime minister (see the Monitor, June 4, 1999). Immediately after returning 
to Russia from exile in 1994, Solzhenitsyn strongly criticized the economic 
reforms launched under then President Boris Yeltsin, singling out 
privatization, which was masterminded by Chubais, for having empowered and 
enriched a new criminalized ruling class. In an interview in July, Chubais 
warned that Putin had fallen under the influence of Solzhenitsyn, whose 
ideas, Chubais claimed, "today fully coincide with the most reactionary 
part of the Russian secret services and the Communist Party" (Vlast, July 
28). Last year, at the start of the latest Chechen war and during 
parliamentary elections, and again this year, during presidential 
elections, Chubais unequivocally supported both Putin and his policies.


While the latest investigation against UES does not necessarily mean that 
Chubais is doomed to be fired as the electric monopoly's top 
manager--something his enemies, particularly those in the Communist Party 
of the Russian Federation, have been seeking for some time--it may mean 
that he will be unable to move allies into key positions if, as some 
analysts expect, there is a ministerial shake-up later this autumn. Some 
observers have predicted that Mikhail Kasyanov would be removed as prime 
minister and replaced either by Sergei Ivanov, secretary of the Security 
Council, or Deputy Prime Minister Aleksei Kudrin. Ivanov is a close Putin 
associate who, like the head of state, is a KGB veteran, while Kudrin is a 
long-time member of Chubais' "St. Petersburg team." Chubais' current 
problems may make it less likely that Kudrin moves up the ladder.


******


#4
World Bank Study Shows Corruption in Eastern Europe Growing

Prague, Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- A decade after the fall of communist rule
in Eastern Europe, corruption is becoming more widespread and diverse as
private businesses pay off governments and bribery becomes entrenched, a
World Bank study found. 


In the former Soviet Union, public perceptions of corruption are among the
highest in the world, the study found. 


``If you go to the south of France, you can find Russian cabinet ministers
and members of parliament,'' said Peter Aven, president of Alfa Bank,
Russia's biggest private bank. ``In Russia, it's acceptable for members of
the government to live beyond their salaries.'' 


The World Bank study, released at a conference during the annual meetings
of the bank and the International Monetary Fund, also found that state
asset sales, foreign investment and foreign loans have done little to
reduce corruption and have even exacerbated the problems in some cases. 


A survey of company executives found that new companies are more likely to
be involved in paying bribes than state-owned or formerly state-owned
companies. 


``New companies pay more than twice as much of their revenue as privatized
or state-owned companies in bribes,'' said World Bank official Joel
Hellman, one of the authors of the study. ``This is the most dynamic part
of the economy, and it is the one being hurt the most.'' 


Foreign companies in joint ventures with local companies are just as likely
to pay administrative bribes and even more likely to attempt to be involved
in corrupt practices as local companies. 


Foreign Capital 


``We need to ask the question, to what extent is capital coming in from
outside a force for reform and to what extent are investors simply trying
to maintain or gain a monopoly position,'' said Susan Ackerman, of Yale
University, a legal expert. ``Multinationals need to think about the global
investment environment as well as their own positions.'' 


The study suggests that international institutions like the bank and IMF
should also alter their behavior, said Frank Vogl, a former bank official
who now is vice chairman of Transparency International, an anti-bribery
group. 


``Should the World Bank continue to lend to these countries, where there
are massive levels of corruption?'' Vogl asked bank officials. ``Your own
report shows that you are adding to the problem.'' 


Other people attending the corruption conference asked whether the IMF
should have made a $10 billion loan to Russia in 1996 as President Boris
Yeltsin was seeking re-election, even though Russia had met almost none of
the criteria for the loan. Yeltsin was running behind the communist
challenger when the loan was given, and later won the election after
traveling around the country making expensive promises, to build schools
and hospitals and pay wage arrears to state workers. 


``To provide support just for political considerations sends the signal
that goals are more important than means,'' said Aven. ``That's why the
support for Yeltsin in 1996 was a big mistake.'' 


World Bank officials, however, said the lenders had learned from their
mistakes and were applying new conditions when they made loans. 


``There has been quite an effort to take this analysis and use it in
determining the bank's activities,'' said Hellman. ``These are now being
taken into consideration with our institutional assessments.'' 


*****


#5
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
September 23, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
REASONS FOR A CRISIS REMAIN
What Reformers Have Done to Our Economy
By Leonid PRONSKY, economist

Why is production falling rather than growing in Russia?
Disregarding references to the lack of Western aid, there can 
be only one answer: because there is no demand. It is 
impossible to image a country having sufficient demand and 
reducing production at the same time. It's an absurdity.
Demand means money supply. Is there enough money in Russia?
The country's money reserves have increased several 
hundred times over since 1992. But this giant growth of demand 
has in no way affected our industry and agriculture. What is 
more, they have even lost about half of their demand and, 
correspondingly, of their production. Who, then, stood to gain?
It is trade in foreign commodities and dollars, into which 
all that additional money supply has been converted. Such a 
huge influx of demand facilitated a long and swift growth of 
these two spheres, a real boom in the development of these two 
spheres alone (plus the sphere of management, which has 
swallowed even more). Only in trade and the banking-financial 
sphere the number of jobs sharply (by more than a half) 
increased during the reforms, while in all the other spheres 
(with the exception of management) it decreased. Foreign-made 
consumer goods account for more than 50% of all consumer 
purchases in Russia and the purchase of dollars for 85% of 
people's savings.
Demand for foreign goods and dollars has made our country 
curtail domestic production and start selling foreign goods and 
dollars.
Our production will be short of money and lack demand 
unless our people stop buying foreign commodities and dollars 
and switch to domestically produced goods and national currency.
As the primary consumer of newly printed rubles, the 
sphere of trade in foreign commodities and dollars is at the 
same time the primary generator of inflation in our country. 
Commodity prices grow at a surpassing rate. Nevertheless, in 
all the years of the reforms, with the exception of the 
post-August 1998 period, this has never led to a change over of 
our demand from foreign commodities, which have kept growing 
more and more expensive, to cheaper domestic goods. Why so?
To answer this question it is sufficient to analyze our 
demand. In 1992 the employees received about 70% of all incomes 
and the employers (owners) and managers (factory directors) 
about 16%. It is a normal ratio, which is approximately the 
same as the division of incomes in all the industrialized, or 
"civilized," countries. However, our new owners and managers 
took away 25% of the consumer money supply in 1993, 40% in 1994 
and almost 50% in 1995, while the share of the employees had 
been reduced to 39% by that time.
At present, the employees and transfer receivers consumer 
about half of the national income, whereas the owners and 
manager, who constitute no more than15% to 20% of the country's 
population get the other half (with yuppies, who constitute 10% 
percent of them, getting 30% of the national income and the 
lowest-paid employees only 2.4%).
As a result of such an outrageous division of incomes, the 
consumption of the bulk of the country's population does not go 
beyond the framework of absolutely necessary food products and 
is mostly satisfied with nationally produced goods. The demand 
of society's top class is mostly satisfied by imported luxuries.
Under these circumstances, despite any growth on the price 
of imports consumers are simply unable to change over to 
domestically produced goods because domestic industries do not 
manufacture anything of the kind.
Our domestic production will be short of money and lack 
demand until our ruling class either stops buying foreign 
commodities and dollars and switches over to domestic products 
and national currency or returns its employees - the main 
consumers of Russian products - more than half of their incomes.
It goes without saying that neither will be done, and our 
economy will not grow (without foreign aid).
It seems that all this contradicts the factual growth of 
the Russian economy, which began last year. Experts explain its 
growth by the devaluation of the ruble in August 1998. I think 
the real reason is different. The thing is that a mass 
devastation and impoverishment of the inmates of the 
financial-speculative bubble that burst that year (the 
so-called middle class, as the press called them) made them 
switch over from dollars and imports to domestic products. They 
started consuming things Russian not because imports became 
more expensive but because they lost their "jobs." If members 
of the "middle class" were not thrown into the street but 
retained their incomes, even if in a reduced form, they would 
continue buying foreign "yogurt" and dollars (though in smaller 
quantities), rather than cheap Russian kefir and chicken 
quarters. And then, there would have been no domestic 
production growth.
However, it looks like the results of the August 1998 
"purge" have already been reduced to nil. The lucky growth of 
oil prices helped the "middle class" to recover. Its members 
will soon be able to buy imports and dollars again, while our 
industry will have a new slump.
Is there a more reliable and long-term way to switch 
domestic demand to our domestic production?
There are two ways: one is "natural" and the other is a 
"forced" one. The former is the one we are following now by 
some misunderstanding and the will of our liberals. Namely: we 
are waiting for our industry to conquer its Western rivals in 
our own market. When this happens, our demand will naturally 
turn to domestic production. However, because our industry, 
which is deprived of such demand, is not only unable to win the 
battle on the market but even to survive, it badly needs 
Western investments. This "natural" way is a Utopia.
The "forced" way means enhancement of state control over 
foreign and currency trade up to its complete monopolization by 
the state.
This is how we should have begun our transition to the 
market back in 1992.
The liberal reform was based on the idea that "natural" 
restructuring would follow price liberalization. This is how 
our liberals thought. Prices would grow higher where demand is 
the highest. These enterprises would have profits and start 
quickly developing. Those who are unable to attract enough 
demand would perish. This would ensure the restructuring of the 
entire economy from a twisted planned to a normal market one.
If they had prevented (a) the monopolies getting out of 
control, (b) managers getting out of control and (c) foreign 
and exchange trade getting out of control, we might have 
escaped the present catastrophe. But they had allowed such a 
"freedom." Hence we had an even more ugly restructuring than 
under communism. The prices of our raw materials exporters, 
monopolists and traders in imports and dollars grew quicker. As 
a result they "swallowed" the whole of demand. The country's 
non-raw materials industries and half of agriculture lost 
demand. The country turned into a raw-materials appendix of 
Western monopolies.
The main evil of Gaidar's reforms is not price 
liberalization but the fact that they surrendered our market to 
Western competitors, lifting control over foreign trade. We 
will either restore this control, or we will no longer be an 
industrial power. No one in the world, except ourselves, needs 
our industry.
For our industry to develop, it should survive. But this 
is only possible if someone buys what it produces. Why cannot 
it be us?

******


#6
From: "Stephan Solzhenitsyn" <Stephan@TRCSOLUTIONS.com>
Subject: RE: 4534/York on Solzhenitsyn
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 200


Dear David, 


Regarding Geoffrey York's article in Globe & Mail (JRL 4534) about my
father: some humorous commentary indeed. And some hogwash, too.
Solzhenitsyn -- "seduced" by Putin? "Months of secret Kremlin courtship"?
What a game it must all be to our esteemed journalist -- so much so that he
imagines it is all a shallow game to Solzhenitsyn, as well.
As York would have it, ideological fancy -- and not an interest in the
public welfare -- must be driving Solzhenitsyn. And is there any
explanation as to why York would leave out any substantive DISagreements
between the two conversants, even though Solzhenitsyn spoke publicly of
these after the meeting? (Example of such disagreement: the Federation
Council. It's fair to say, I think, that the future of that body is a
consequential issue in Russia today -- but you won't find any mention of it
in York's piece.)


On Putin's part, too, York essentially paints what seems, to me at least, a
simplistic picture of a politician who finds no interest in the matters of
public policy with which he has been entrusted, and lives purely for power,
for endorsements, and, apparently, for a nice hot cup of tea. 


Pass the lemon, please.


******


#7
From: "Elizabeth Riley" <Eriley@WWNORTON.com>
Subject: Failed Crusade -- Stephen Cohen
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 


Dear David Johnson:


Your readers might be interested to know that W. W. Norton has just
published Stephen F. Cohen's book FAILED CRUSADE: America and the Tragedy of
Post-Communist Russia (September 25, 2000; $21.95).


The book has three parts. In Part I, Cohen presents a close and highly
critical examination of the way U. S. Russia-watchers -- policymakers,
journalists, economic advisers and academics -- have perceived and reported
that country since 1992. Part II is the author's own analytical narrative
of developments in Russia and in U.S.-Russian relations from 1992 to
mid-2000. In Part III, Cohen argues that U.S. policy toward post-Communist
Russia has been the "worst American foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam"
and sets out his own blueprint for an entirely new policy.


FAILED CRUSADE is now available in bookstores across the country.


Yours,
Elizabeth Riley
Assistant Director of Publicity
W. W. Norton and Company 


******


#8
From: falka@ksu.edu (Dale Herspring)
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 08:53:12 -0500
Subject: Kursk


Once more to return to the Kursk. It has been suggested that a 
"neutral" observer look at the American subs that were in the area. 
Two problems. Who defines who is a neutral? He or she would 
have to be from a highly technical country to have any idea what he 
or she was looking at. This would mean countries such as China, 
Germany, the UK, France, Russia, Canada and perhaps a few 
others. Might make it difficult to find a "neutral" acceptable to the 
Russians. Even then it is not clear that these observers would 
know what they were looking for. It is not just a matter of a few 
scrapes and cuts. At Bob English points out, the outer hull on a 
submarine is very sensitive.


This brings me to my second point. Who is going to provide a 
security clearance for the "independent Observer?" I realize this 
may sound a bit silly to the casual observer, but to those who "go 
down to the sea" in submarines it is not. Their survival -- in a 
combat situation -- is based on secrecy. Why should they permit 
anyone who is not cleared get near these boats? I hope and 
expect the US Navy to hold to its position of -- not only no, but hell 
no.


As I said before, I think the answer is pretty clear. The Russians 
were testing a new torpedo -- one which used very volatile hydrogen 
peroxide -- and it did not work. Rather than admit that they 
screwed up, the Russians are looking for a scape goat. Besides, I 
don't know what others think about the US Navy, but if the Kursk 
had a major collusion with an American submarine, I doubt 
seriously that it would be possible to keep it secret, even if one 
wanted to. Shipyard workers, sailors, someone would have already 
let it leak.


******


#9
gazeta.ru
September 25, 2000
Controversial Eavesdropping Order Ruled Unlawful
The Russian Supreme Court ruled the order No.2239 ‘On the principles of
implementation of technical means for ensuring operative activities in
telephone, mobile and wireless networks’ issued by the Communications
Ministry on July 25th of this year unlawful. The order permits the Federal
Security Service (FSB) to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, pager
messages, and personal communication across the Internet without having to
obtain a court decision or warrant beforehand. 
On Monday, September 25, the Russian Supreme Court ruled that eavesdropping
on personal communication could be allowed only under a court decision or a
warrant issued by a prosecutor. A clause of the order obliging telecom
operators to install necessary eavesdropping equipment at their own expense
was found unlawful. The equipment should be installed at the federal
budget’s expense. 


A journalist from St.Petersburg, Pavel Netupsky, filed the suit. Netupsky
argued that in accordance with the Russian Constitution and federal
legislation, eavesdropping on telephone conversation, paging messages, and
personal communication via Internet could be allowed only under a court
ruling. 


In August, the Russian Ministry of Justice registered the Communications
Ministry’s order No.2339 ‘On the principles of implementation of technical
means for ensuring operative activities in telephone, mobile and wireless
networks.’ The document was never published, despite the fact that it
interferes with human rights. 


That document permits the FSB, formerly the KGB, to eavesdrop on telephone
and cellular phone conversations and to access private email and
pager-transmitted messages without notifying operator-companies and without
obtaining permission from the judicial authorities. 


In August, Gazeta.Ru contacted the Communications Ministry for comment. A
source in the Ministry informed us that authorities had been working on the
measure for nearly five years and that Reiman’s order is the first step in
a plan to introduce new legislation on law enforcement structures and their
operative activity. The order No.2339 is a supplement to the ‘Federal Law
On Operative Activity.’ 


The law stipulates that law enforcement authorities are allowed to
eavesdrop, not only on criminal suspects, but also in emergency cases on
anybody, without obtaining a warrant. An emergency case is defined as a
situation where reliable evidence exists that there might be a threat to
the military, economic or ecological safety of the Russian Federation. 


According to the new order, investigators must notify the court within 24
hours of beginning the surveillance; the court then has 24 hours to adopt a
decision. In other words, in line with the Law on Operative Activity,
so-called operative workers (operativniky) are allowed to eavesdrop on any
citizen for two days without any warrant or court decision. 


What’s more, the new order obliges operator-companies to take measures to
prevent anyone from exposing the techniques used by the authorities’
workers. Any information concerning SORM (specialized internet and
telecommunications eavesdropping equipment) maintenance must be classified
as confidential and only a limited number of specialists may work with the
equipment. 


In line with order no. 2339, all communication service providers are
obliged to purchase and install the so-called ‘SORM’ eavesdropping
equipment at their own expense. The additional expenses will inevitably
have to be met by the customer and will constitute an infringement of
consumer rights. 


The law enforcers’ unauthorized intrusion into the private lives of Russian
citizens has become a hotly debated issue in Russia of late. However,
neither operator companies nor their clients have yet openly opposed the
introduction of SORM. Operators are wary of loosing their license and as
for the clients, perhaps many of them still remember an interesting
precedent established in the summer 1998. 


In other words, before eavesdropping on Russian citizens law enforcers will
have to obtain a legal warrant authorizing them to do so. 


The state law enforcement agencies will have to install necessary equipment
at the federal budget’s expense, and not at the expense of telecom operators. 
******


#10
Moscow Times
September 26, 2000
NTV, ORT: R.I.P.
By Alexei Pankin (sreda.mag@g23.relcom.ru)
Alexei Pankin is the editor in chief of Sreda, a media magazine. He
contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.


The turmoil over NTV and ORT television stations poses difficult questions
for those who care about freedom of the press in this country. Let's start
by considering a historical analogy.


In 1992, Uday, the older son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, launched the
newspaper Babel. For the Iraqi populace, Uday, his father's darling and an
unruly hooligan, was probably the most hateful figure after Saddam himself.
Yet Babel was an instant and smashing success, the only newspaper that
contained uninhibited attacks on Iraq's top officials, including members of
Hussein's own clan.


Saddam too was happy with his son's initiative: It furnished an outlet for
Iraqis to vent their frustrations and provided ***kompromat*** useful for
maintaining control over Iraq's ruling elite. For Uday, Babel was a means of
consolidating influence on his father, eliminating competitors from the
spheres of business he had penetrated, and making inroads in areas already
divided by others, including his own kin. Soon, he launched Babel TV and
became Iraq's top media magnate.


Uday was not Saddam's puppet. On the contrary, he often put his father in
awkward situations, including vis-a-vis his powerful relatives. After one
ugly incident involving a bloody shootout, Saddam reportedly personally
raided Uday's house, found 60 expensive cars in the garage and ordered them
sprinkled with gasoline and set on fire. But Saddam was never known to
interfere in Babel's editorial policies.


Imagine now that Saddam would have fallen out with Uday and taken over his
media holding. Would this warrant that the international community
supporting freedom of speech intervene against Saddam on behalf of Uday?


Last Friday, the Russian Press Freedom Support Group sent a letter to
President Vladimir Putin. Heads of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the
International Federation of Journalists, the International Federation of the
Periodical Press, the International Press Institute and the World Press
Freedom Committee, wrote, "We are forced to reach the distressing conclusion
that, on balance, the developments have clearly been both threatening and
dangerous for the future of free speech and press freedom in Russia." They
formulated 10 points they said made them feel distressed, including
continued official pressure on Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky to
divest themselves of their news media ownership in favor of state control,
and the dismissal of ORT anchorman Sergei Dorenko and the demise of his
popular news analysis program.


For all the vast differences between totalitarian Iraq and pluralistic
Russia, private media empires in both countries are strikingly similar: They
were both formed by acting as parasites on the state and serving the state,
and they promoted the interests of their masters, which had little or
nothing to do with objective information for the public.


Let's look at Dorenko's case. It is an outrage when the state interferes in
the editorial policies of a media outlet, even if it does hold a controlling
stake in that outlet. Yet, isn't Dorenko's "popular news analysis program" -
outright lies, calumnies and slander airing Saturday during prime time on a
channel reaching 100 per cent of the population - the equivalent of porn
stars giving live lessons on sex education on "Sesame Street"? Would many of
us parents care who might take these lessons off the air - the government or
the station management? Or, if we don't like state interference, shouldn't
we have harsh words for those who initially admitted hard-core porn on a
children's program? Shouldn't we, in criticizing state interference, boycott
the channel?


Yet Dorenko is a manifestation of what ORT is all about: a purely political
project, as Berezovsky himself admits. It was instrumental in the
re-election of Boris Yeltsin in 1996, and in eliminating Putin's competitors
in 1999-2000. ORT also helped Berezovsky get rid of those who either
competed with him for access to state coffers (e.g., Vladimir Potanin's
UNEXIM and Gusinsky's Media-MOST) or those who tried to limit such access
(former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov). And while in control of ORT,
Berezovsky was for a time Deputy Secretary of the Security Council - i.e., a
high-ranking civil servant.


The case of NTV is somewhat different. This was a sincere effort to launch
an independent television company, only to be fatally compromised in 1996,
when Igor Malashenko, then director general, joined the re-election staff of
Yeltsin. As a senior member of the team, Malashenko must have had a say in
deciding which way boxes loaded with cash should be carried from government
offices.


Figuratively speaking, some of those boxes ended up at NTV. Media-MOST
representatives now claim, correctly, that Gazprom is a state-controlled
company. It is hardly a coincidence that Gazprom became a major NTV investor
just as Malashenko joined Yeltsin's team. I will not elaborate on the many
other ways NTV was reimbursed by the state for its electoral services; all
this has been widely reported in recent days.


Putin and his peers must be genuinely surprised at being told that they are
attacking independent media. From their standpoint, they are just reigning
in members of their own gang who have split off to run a competing business
without settling debts - in cash or in kind - with their colleagues. This is
not to say that a government racket is justifiable. This is only to say
that, in any country of the world, no matter how democratically mature, any
government sooner or later would have treated in the same way a press that
would have happily accepted, or proposed, a "cash for loyalty, no cash no
loyalty" mode of behavior.


By entering into an incestuous relationship with the state, ORT and NTV
committed a cardinal sin of independent media and brought capital punishment
upon themselves. International solidarity on the issue of freedom of the
press in Russia could be put to better use if, along with condemnation of
repressive actions by the state, corrupt practices of the media were
denounced, too.


*****


#11
Newsday
September 25, 2000
BITTER LANDS
Displaced Peoples In the Former Soviet Union
Trapped in Refuge
Africans who flee to Russia find racism, xenophobia
By Michael Slackman (mslack@rinet.ru)
RUSSIA CORRESPONDENT


Moscow - After his lawyer bribed a jailer to look the other way, Manfred 
Ewang, an activist in the West African nation of Cameroon, slipped out of the 
cell where he had been tortured for a month and ran for his life. He carried 
a student visa, $105 in borrowed cash, a few tattered newspaper clippings 
about his political battles and the tropical-weight clothing on his back. 


He had never seen a snowy winter, never known life as a black man in a white 
society, never spoken a word of Russian when he climbed aboard an Aeroflot 
flight to Moscow in 1997. "I had no choice," he said recently. "My life was 
compromised, I had to leave and Russia was the easiest place to get a visa." 
Ewang never expected a Garden of Eden, but Russia didn't even turn out to be 
his hoped-for sanctuary. Almost from the moment his shoes touched the 
pavement, Ewang was harassed and robbed by the police, beaten by racist 
skinheads and shunned by the general public. Since then he is fearful every 
moment he is in public, always trying to hide in the crowd, never making eye 
contact or responding to taunts or insults. He is still struck dumb as he 
walks around this city that boasts of its multi-ethnic character, yet does 
all it can to marginalize those who are not ethnic Russians. He sees how 
bleak his future will be when he gazes at the brightly colored billboards and 
advertisements that portray blacks as savages, their faces painted and 
pierced. 


"As a black man, I must take precautions whenever I am on the street," said 
Ewang, 31, who worked as a lawyer in his homeland. "My movements are 
restricted. I do not look people in the face. I must always avoid the police. 
I have been here three years, I speak Russian now, and I do not have a single 
Russian friend." Born in revolution, the Soviet Union at least paid lip 
service to protecting refugees, especially political ones fighting colonial 
regimes. But like tens of thousands who arrived in Russia since 1991 seeking 
a haven from war, famine or political persecution, Ewang found himself a 
stateless person trapped in a troubled country struggling to create a state. 
These refugees are caught between the noble intentions of the past and the 
harsh realities of the present where an overwhelmed, impoverished government 
is unable to care for its own citizens, let alone extend hospitality to 
non-white foreigners. 


Compounding the frustration for those like Ewang is the classic Catch-22 of a 
government policy that refuses to issue refugees proper Russian documents-but 
also prohibits them from leaving the country because they don't have proper 
documents. Over the past seven years, half of the refugees who registered for 
asylum here have disappeared, presumably slipping illegally across the border 
into a third country, though many are believed to have died. Left behind are 
more than 15,000 asylum seekers, a third of whom are children, hoping for 
official permission to stay or go. There are many days they say when they 
don't care which. 


"The problem in Russia is we are talking about a procedure that doesn't work 
and a system that exists but isn't quite there," said Morgan Wolfe, associate 
resettlement officer of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 
Moscow. The situation became so precarious that the UN agency last year 
stepped in, opened a refugee reception center and contracted with a nonprofit 
group to provide aid. Generally, the UN defers to host countries, for 
political and practical reasons, but in this case it took the extraordinary 
step of handing out identity cards to refugees, while interviewing and 
registering them as well. The documents carry no weight since there is no 
force of law backing them, but they at least provide refugees something to 
show the police. 


Yuri Arkhipov, deputy director of the Russian government's department of 
immigration control, said the problem is that since the collapse of the 
Soviet Union, the country has been overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of 
refugees, the vast majority of whom did not register and are therefore not 
counted by the UN, but with whom Russia must deal. He said that the country's 
first priority was resettling 8 million ethnic Russians fleeing former Soviet 
republics, a costly enterprise, and that many other refugees only apply for 
asylum after realizing that they cannot get to Western Europe from Russia. 


"We keep people here, maybe without documents, but we don't kick them out in 
handcuffs," he said with a sigh, signaling his own discomfort with the 
situation. "We let them stay. We save their lives. Yeah, maybe they are 
starving, but we have many Russians who are starving, too. To blame Russia 
for not wanting to do something is not fair. How much money can we afford to 
spend on this problem?" For sure, Russia's internal chaos is a significant 
factor in the refugee's plight, but its deep xenophobia has compounded the 
situation. Russia has signed the Geneva Convention, the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and many other human rights treaties. 
It has passed its own laws, which say asylum seekers are allowed to legally 
reside here while their cases are under consideration. And it has 
demonstrated its desire to obey those laws when they apply to ethnic Russians 
fleeing former Soviet republics. 


But when it comes to refugees from what it calls the far abroad-mostly 
Afghanistan, Africa and Iraq-Russia has failed, or refused, to accept that 
commitment. Since 1991, more than 38,000 individuals who filed for asylum in 
Russia have been treated as illegal aliens, denied access to work, health 
care, sanitary housing or education. Thousands more have not been counted 
because they did not know to register, or chose not to. They have been forced 
to live like nomads, sleeping in train stations, or moving between 
overcrowded apartments, surviving on the meager allowance they receive from 
the UN, or the few rubles they can earn unloading trucks and other casual 
labor. 


"No black is safe walking alone in the streets, walking around recreational 
facilities, especially parks, riding the metro, the buses or" street cars, 
said Felix N. Mbah, a refugee from the former Zaire, now the Democratic 
Republic of the Congo. "It's very difficult for a black to encounter a group 
of youths and pass by without risking being kicked, punched or just spit at 
while [they are] uttering remarks about the monkeyness of the black. The 
police and the general public pay no attention to these attacks." About 10 
miles from Moscow is a jumble of high-rise, prefabricated apartment blocs, a 
few parks, pitted roadways and a police unit that by Russian standards is 
considered to be understanding. But the small town of Mytichsi, with its 
180,000 people, has become a kind of ghetto for African refugees-mostly 
single men-who crowd into small apartments pooling whatever resources they 
can come up with rents of about $50 a month. For 50 rubles, or about $2, 
refugees say, the police will let them go without a beating. 


On a recent Sunday afternoon, more than a dozen men gathered in a one-room 
apartment and told their life stories, each so similar they could have been 
cut from the same cloth. They all said they chose Russia because it was easy 
to get a student visa, though they never intended to study here. They all 
described a lonely, fearful and humiliating existence, where they are not 
only poor and hungry, but routinely insulted and slapped or beaten. They all 
had scars which they said were inflicted by skinheads or by police. Joseph's 
front teeth are missing. A scar runs up the middle of his top lip and over 
the width of his nose. Rudolph had stitches above his right eye. The scar on 
Zerubbaber's chest is four inches long and raised. Thin white scars stretch 
under Augusto's eyes. 


Frederick is scarred on his lips. 


"I cannot just walk outside," said Frederick Atenchong, 34, a refugee from 
Cameroon. "Anytime a policeman sees me I am stopped. My black skin betrays 
me. 


I cannot hide. It is very normal for us to have scars. Anytime you cannot pay 
the fine, the police beat you." Atenchong's experience is typical not only 
for this small group, but, according to the scenario laid out by UNHCR, 
thousands of others as well. 


Refugees are forced to endure years of delays while their cases are stalled 
by officials' review. While they wait, they are denied proper documents 
because various government agencies cannot agree on which document to issue. 
So they are treated as illegal aliens. 


Before arriving in Russia, Atenchong said he was a political activist in 
Cameroon, a member of the English-speaking minority concerned about being 
oppressed by the French-speaking majority. He was publicity director for a 
youth organization and in 1997, he was arrested after helping lead a protest 
march. He said he was tortured for two weeks and then, to his surprise, 
released on bail. His lawyer urged him to flee. 


"Russian visas were the easiest to get," he recalled. "You didn't even have 
to go to the embassy. You could just send someone and they would pick it up 
for you." He arrived in Moscow on Oct. 2 that year. Officials at passport 
control would only let him in after he paid a $75 fine, for what, he is 
unsure. His flight was arriving from Africa, so there were a handful of 
Cameroonians waiting in the airport when he departed, including a former 
classmate who offered him help and shelter. 


His friend told him to register with the United Nations office and with the 
Federal Migration Service. By Russian law, the FMS is supposed to determine 
within five days if the applicant meets the criteria for refugee status and 
therefore can be considered for asylum. Atenchone was told he would be phoned 
with the decision; two years later he is still waiting. 


And even if he is accepted into the system, he will have to wait a long time 
before a decision is made on his application. President Vladimir Putin 
recently dissolved the Federal Migration Service, transferring all its duties 
to an already overburdened, underfunded ministry. But even when a decision 
comes, it is likely that he will be rejected. Since 1993, just 553 people 
have been granted asylum by the Russian authorities. There is no way to know 
exactly how many were rejected. By comparison, in the same period, Ukraine, 
which is much smaller and in worse economic shape, has granted 3,000 
applicants aslyum. 


"I can't go outside, I can't work, all I can do is stay here and wait," 
Atenchone said, staring across the room at a white rotary telephone sitting 
on shelf. 


Ewang, 34, who was a schoolmate of Atenchone's, sat beside his old friend in 
the tiny apartment on the 12th floor of a rundown building in Russia. Ewang 
listened intently to his friend's experience, much of which mirrors his own. 


Then he spoke about his own experience, trying to survive with the $65 a 
month the UN gives refugees, and the $2 he can earn for a 10-hour shift 
unloading trucks. On Nov. 16, 1998, officials in the Federal Migration 
Service registered him and told him to go home and wait for them to call. 


"They said they would call me, but they have not," he said, neither surprised 
nor angry. "I just don't know how long I will have to wait. 


Abdi Abaile is also hoping for the phone to ring. He fled the civil war in 
Somalia in 1991, arriving in Russia even before it adopted human rights 
legislation, or the UN opened shop. For two years, he said he survived 
because the roughly 2,000 Somalis who sought refuge in this city stuck 
together, pooling their limited resources. But in 1993, when Russia signed 
the Geneva convention and the UN office arrived, he immediately asked for 
help. Abaile was directed to the Moscow Migration Service, a city agency, 
which issued him a document and told him to wait. Five years later, the MMS 
told him it did not have jurisdiction and he would have to start all over 
with the FMS. 


He is still waiting for the FMS to call. 


"I am just so tired," he said. "This is no life. I have to walk through the 
streets like a deaf person, like I hear nothing." During his nine years in 
Russia, Abaile, a trained engineer, has never held a job. He was attacked 
many times, including once by a crowd of skinheads that left a jagged scar 
running from the corner of his mouth to his ear lobe. For the past five years 
he has lived in a roach-infested apartment on the outskirts of Moscow, 
crammed in two rooms with 13 other refugees, including two children. 


Their father was carried out of the apartment and dropped at a hospital where 
he died of tuberculosis. 


"There is no work in this country for a black man," said Arrey Mbi Enou, 24, 
who has been here more than a year, also without proper documents or a call 
from the FMS. "I went to a construction site and said I will do anything, I 
will mix sand. They said they do not hire black men. They say it flat out. . 
. 


. I thought Russia would be good to me. I thought I would have food. I could 
not even feed myself." Arrey finished speaking, stood up and looked out the 
window at the sun setting on the horizon. He never walks on the streets after 
sundown. 


"I will be leaving," he said as he slipped on his jacket. "Soon it will be 
too late, with the police and the hooligans on the street." 
*****