October 18, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4586 • 4587 • 

Johnson's Russia List
#4587
18 October 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Russia sees no argument against quick missile cut.
2. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Olga Tropkina, FEDERATIVE REFORM REASON 
FOR AMENDING LAW ON THE MEDIA. Political Scientists Cast a Look Into 
Russia's Future in 3rd Millennium.
3. Seattle Times: Colin McMahon, Bad booze kills, so Russia turns 
to taste testers.
4. Bloomberg: UES's Chubais on Natural Gas Supplies, Investment.
5. he Guardian (UK): Jonathan Romney, Russia's answer to Finnegans 
Wake. A movie masterpiece. (My Car!)
6. Anatol Lieven: Reply to Lucas.
7. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: "ALL RESOURCES MUST BE USED TO PAY BACK 
FOREIGN DEBT." Presidential Adviser Andrei ILLARIONOV Does Not Think 
Plan of Distributing Extra Revenues Is Good Enough.
8. Itar-Tass: Russia's former PM admits sending secret messages to 
US vice- president.
9. BBC MONITORING: Families of servicemen block highway in protest 
over living conditions.
10. Washington Times editorial: The world according to Boris.
11. The Globe and Mail (Canada) letter: U.S. buttinskyism.]


******


#1
Russia sees no argument against quick missile cut

MOSCOW, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday it had stuck to its 
proposal of quick cuts to nuclear arsenals during arms control talks with 
U.S. envoys this week. 


The Foreign Ministry also said in a statement Moscow had presented some ideas 
on how arms controls agreements by President Vladimir Putin and President 
Bill Clinton could be achieved without altering the key Anti-Ballistic 
Missile Treaty. 


"There is no objective political reason not to go to a common ceiling of a 
maximum 1,500 warheads for each side," it said after talks between Deputy 
Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov and John Holum, the State Department's under 
secretary for arms control and international security. 


The statement reiterated Moscow's long-held position that such arms cuts 
could only be made if the 1972 ABM Treaty, which it sees as the bedrock of 
stability, was maintained unchanged. 


"In this connection, the American side was presented with several concepts on 
how goals in the arms control sphere set out by Putin and Clinton could be 
achieved without altering ABM," the ministry added, without giving details. 


Some of the heat has gone out of the debate over U.S. proposals to amend ABM 
so it can build a missile defence shield after Clinton left a decision on the 
system to his successor. 


But the United States has not given up on attempts to persuade Moscow to 
agree to some modifications. 


The Clinton administration has said it wants a missile defence shield to stop 
attacks by what it calls rogue states, such as North Korea and Iraq. 


But the statement said Mamedov and Holum had discussed options for a 
so-called theatre defence, placing anti-missile systems near the country from 
where the attack was feared rather than one large shield over the United 
States. 


Mamedov and Holum also discussed an upcoming meeting between Clinton and 
Putin at an Asia-Pacific economic meeting in Brunei. 


******


#2
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
October 17, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
FEDERATIVE REFORM REASON FOR AMENDING LAW ON THE MEDIA
Political Scientists Cast a Look Into Russia's Future in 
3rd Millennium
By Olga TROPKINA

This past weekend, the Bor holiday home near Moscow was 
the venue for a conference entitled Russia At the Turn of 
Centuries staged by the Interregional Foundation of Information 
technologies. 
The conference, which was attended by leading Russian 
political scientists and economists and foreign 
parliamentarians, was expected to cast a look into Russia's 
future in the 3rd millennium in the light of Vladimir Putin's 
reforms intended to reinforce the 'power vertical.' 
The conferees also focused on information security, the 
standing of the military-industrial complex and the Russian 
state's role in the process of globalization. 
The main outstanding problems that Russia is taking into 
the new millennium, were enumerated by Alexei Salmin, president 
of the Russian Public Political Center Foundation who opened 
the conference. He started with the relationship between the 
Russian Orthodox Church and the authorities. The next most 
important outstanding issue, in his opinion, Russia's 
self-determination as far as the state setup is concerned: 
Russia can turn into a unitary state quite constitutionally and 
at any time in today's situation. 
Andrei Fedorov, director of the Political Studies 
Foundation, presented his own, differing vision of the 'power 
vertical' reform. He doubted the expediency of increasing the 
number of bodies of state authority, for they would be harder 
to manage. What he meant was the structure named the State 
Council, what with its legally vague status. The Federation 
Council's future is another matter of concern. 
The most controversial issue was, no doubt, the formation 
of the seven Federal districts. Fedorov compared the federal 
districts' system with the republics of the USSR to suggest 
that Russia just might be in for the Soviet Union's fate. He 
said the districts were synthetic political entities with no 
legislative basis to speak of. Still, things are being changed 
to fir the new system in all regions. One outcome is the 
disintegration of regional associations. 
To prove the point, Fedorov cited the example of 
state-owned media that provide information by federal district, 
rather than by region. 
In Fedorov's opinion, the formation of the institute of 
plenipotentiary envoys is but one more step on the road of 
buttressing the Russian bureaucracy, because their functions 
boil down to control over the compliance of regional laws to 
the federal legislation - for want of realistic powers.
Nevertheless, the conferees concluded that Russia would be 
even worse off if the reforms were stopped halfway. Meanwhile, 
completing what has been started is impossible without a single 
controllable information space. Certain steps in this direction 
are known to have been made: suffice it to remember the 
president's recent decree according to which the heads of all 
regional broadcasting companies are appointed by Moscow without 
the Governor's goahead. 
But the conferees disagreed on whether this kind of 
information 'egalitarianism' would infringe on the freedom of 
speech. To quote Boris Reznik, chairman of the Duma committee 
for information policy, the vision of the information security 
doctrine that makes all media subject to 'state monitoring' is 
very erroneous. He said that all rumors to the contrary 
notwithstanding, the Russian media still enjoy the freedom of 
speech. On the other hand, he noted that the freedom that the 
current law on the media provides to the mass media has 
generated their 'engagement and venality,' as well as reduced 
their responsibility for the materials they carry. 
The law thus must be amended to bring it in line with the 
new realities.


******


#3
Seattle Times
October 16, 2000
Bad booze kills, so Russia turns to taste testers
by Colin McMahon
Chicago Tribune
MOSCOW - Irina Pimkina is a professional drinker. Vodka is the house 
specialty, but Pimkina also imbibes wine, beer, cognac, whiskey and other 
spirits. 


As laboratory chief of the Russian Center for Testing and Certification, she 
has at her disposal test tubes, computers and other equipment to test a 
product's authenticity. But her sense of taste is a formidable tool as well. 


With Russia awash in fake beverages, some of them dangerously inferior, 
Pimkina keeps busy. This year is proving a bad one for alcohol-poisoning 
deaths. More than 16,000 Russians died of alcohol poisoning in the first half 
of this year, according to the National Alcohol Association, up 45 percent 
from last year. 


The United States, which has nearly double Russia's population of 145 
million, sees about 300 deaths from alcohol poisoning in an average year. 
Most such deaths in Russia are from people drinking too much. But many are 
traced to bad-quality spirits. 


"The cases in which people die from a few sips are not so common," said 
Tatyana Savluchinskaya, a colleague of Pimkina's. "Most of the time it is the 
quantity that kills people. But the quality of the ethyl alcohol sometimes 
does matter even in those cases." 


In other words, drink a little of a bad product and you get sick. Drink a lot 
of it and you could die. 


Russia's distillers blame this year's higher death toll on a 40 percent rise 
in taxes on alcohol. 


They say that the taxes, which the alcohol lobby wants the government to cut, 
force drinkers to abandon legitimate products for cheaper imitations or black 
market moonshine. 


Plenty of those options are available, as Pimkina can attest. 


Her laboratory at the government-owned center tests thousands of products 
taken from factories, warehouses and markets. It is crammed with bottles that 
are numbered, cataloged by computer and separated by alcohol type. Pimkina 
has more than 250 brands of vodka alone, and she figures that is only about a 
quarter of what is available. Russians can buy bootleg vodka outside subway 
stations, in sidewalk kiosks, from basement apartments. Sometimes the 
customer knows the stuff's not genuine, sometimes not. 


Wine, especially that purporting to be from the former Soviet republic of 
Georgia, frequently is fake, too. 


Some experts estimate that 70 percent of all Georgian wine sold in Moscow is 
not what the labels claim. Luckily, though, these wines rarely kill anything 
beyond a person's appetite. 


The poisoning deaths offer only a glimpse into Russia's troubles with 
alcohol, abuse of which is a key factor in the country's poor health and high 
death rate. In the first seven months of this year, according to the Interior 
Ministry, authorities uncovered more than 15,000 illegal distilleries and 
levied tens of millions of dollars in fines. 


******


#4
UES's Chubais on Natural Gas Supplies, Investment: Comment

Moscow, Oct. 18 (Bloomberg)
-- The following are comments from Anatoly Chubais, the chief executive 
of RAO Unified Energy Systems, on the fuel and energy industry in Russia and 
the electricity industry's fuel and investment needs. 


Chubais spoke before the lower house of parliament, during hearings on 
energy. 


``The volume of gas deliveries (in) absolute volumes is falling. Talk about 
the fact that in the West there is a fall in the use of gas, isn't correct. 
Can we expect that the share of gas in Russia will grow -- probably not. But 
also to say we are reducing gas and going back to coal, understanding 
enormous problems with technology and investment . . . I wouldn't agree to 
this. The tendency in the world is exactly the opposite. And why --because of 
our natural gas. 


``Where is the problem then -- of course in price. Why should Gazprom be 
blamed in this tendency if on the border of Ukraine and Russia the price is 
$45 or $60, further $80 to $90 and we are buying gas from Gazprom at $14 per 
1,000 cubic meters. It is Gazprom's fault, it is a matter of government's 
policy in this sphere, someone will have to make this their responsibility. 


``Members of this audience understand what it means to increase gas prices, 
increase electricity rates, for the whole industry, agriculture -- but that 
is the decision we have to make and I think the sooner the better. 


``It is OK to discuss the 20-year perspective and how much gas deliveries we 
will have in 20 years, but ask anyone today what will be gas deliveries in 
November from Gazprom to RAO UES. There is not a single person in this 
country who knows the answer to this question. Gazprom doesn't know. 


``We have absolutely different figures. I have an official letter from 
Vyakhirev . . . saying they will reduce deliveries in 2001 95 billion cubic 
meters of gas . . . that means I will have to turn electricity off to a third 
of the country. Is this a joke? I don't know. The Fuel and Energy Ministry 
doesn't know, the government doesn't know, the president doesn't know. 


``That is why we need to take this situation in the next two to three years 
under firm government control. This year, we increased the use of coal by 9 
percent for nine months, because we understand gas is a serious state 
problem. But this is the government's problem.'' 


``Out of all sources existing in the state today, the total volume of 
investments we can make a year is about $1 billion a year. How much do we 
need? At least $5 billion. Can we raise tariffs for consumers? It is not 
possible with today's standard of living, salaries. From the budget? No. The 
conclusion is that if we are able to think clearly we are obliged to give one 
answer --private investor. There is no other way of saving the electricity 
industry. This means not only private investment, but foreign private 
investment.'' 


``At RAO UES there are no non-payments. In our company 100 percent of current 
payments is in cash. We today owe 255 billion rubles ($9.2 billion) . . . 
this is the size of annual revenue. How can we attract investments with such 
level of debt. It is not realistic. Of course, the debts need to be settled. 
Settlement of all debts is our next priority for the term of maximum year and 
a half. The next problem we have is tariffs. They should be set by the 
market. That is why we worked out our reorganization proposal. We are ready 
to listen to suggestions, amendments, other options -but one thing we will 
never agree to -- sit and wait.'' 


******


#5
The Guardian (UK)
18 October 2000
Russia's answer to Finnegans Wake 
A movie masterpiece
By Jonathan Romney 


No sound on the film festival circuit is as haunting as the clatter of seats 
flipping up as person after person walks out of a screening. I've never heard 
it come as thick and fast as in Cannes in 1998, when they showed the Russian 
film Khroustaliov, My Car! 


By all accounts, Alexei Guerman's film didn't fare well in Russia either, but 
the film arrives here this week, via Paris and New York, where it won a 
reputation as a misunderstood masterpiece. Misunderstood, or just 
incomprehensible? There is, apparently, a coherent plot buried beneath the 
manic activity. 


The film is set in Moscow in 1953, against the background of the so-called 
Doctors' Plot - an anti-semitic operation that spread the rumour that Jewish 
doctors were conspiring to poison the Soviet high command. The hulking baldie 
Yuri Glinsky, a Red Army general and brain surgeon whose chaotic household 
shelters two Jewish nieces is caught up in the scandal. He ends up witnessing 
Stalin's gruesome demise, which is where the title is explained (Khroustaliov 
was chauffeur to Beria, chief of the secret police). 


What makes Khroustaliov such a head-spinner is the frenzied style. Guerman 
favours long takes and labyrinthine tracking shots but everything is an 
orchestrated cataclysm, like a hellish circus. Few of the thousands of 
characters stay still long enough to be identified. The film is a succession 
of chases, pratfalls and punch-ups; characters mutter to themselves or burst 
into song or screams; dogs, pigs, lions drown out the dialogue. 


Russian cinema has its tradition of period reconstruction, but nothing quite 
like this. Guerman's previous film My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1982) was set just 
before the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. Its follow-up is a very personal 
project: Guerman has compared General Glinsky to his own father, a prominent 
Soviet writer. He actually began work on the film in the last days of the 
Soviet Union, but the production stretched over seven years, with funds 
continually running out and a year reputedly spent assembling the many 
ominous black cars that drive around Moscow in the film's night scenes. 


It is a wonder the film was ever completed. It has been called impenetrable 
but it has its spaces and silence too - and the very first shot, as a dog 
chases a motorcycle down a snow-covered boulevard at night, is one of the 
most haunting images of recent cinema. Khroustaliov, My Car! resembles 
nothing else in cinema - although if Fellini, Tarkovsky and Tati had pooled 
resources to update a Gogol story, they might have matched it. 


Of Freaks and Men, Alexei Balabanov's black comedy of fin de siècle porn in 
St Petersburg, was recently a cult hit here, which proves that British 
audiences are ready for the darker end of the Russian cinematic imagination. 
Guerman's film, however, may be Russian cinema's answer to Finnegans Wake. 
This month's screenings, courtesy of the micro-distributor Kino Kino!, could 
be the only chance you get to see it. And don't worry about the sound of the 
seats flipping - it all blends in marvellously with the cacophony.


Khoustaliov, My Car! is at the Ciné Lumière, London SW7 (020-7838 2144) , on 
Thursday; at the ICA, London SW1 (020-7930 3647), on Monday; and at the 
Filmhouse, Edinburgh (0131-228 2688), on October 30. 
******


#6
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000
From: Anatol Lieven <alieven@ceip.org>
Subject: Reply to Lucas


Dear David,


I won't reply in full to Ed Lucas’ critique, both because I’m a bit
embarassed to be taking up so much of your space and because Ira
Straus has already made a fine and comprehensive reply concerning its
fundamental historical fallacies and omissions.


I’d just like to say at the start however that like Ira, I appreciate
the civilised tone of Ed’s remarks, which has all too often been
lacking in other exchanges on this miserable subject. For my part, I
regard Ed Lucas as at heart a very fine journalist (as his coverage of
Czechoslovakia in 1989 displayed, among other things), and I’m sure
that if in future he is posted to Indonesia, or Egypt, or the Congo ­
anywhere without significant numbers of Russians ­ he will recover his
natural balance.


Now as to content. Personally, I don’t pretend for one moment that
“with a bit more tweaking, Russia will be just a larger version of
Poland, and is already a reliable international partner, suitable
member of the Council of Europe etc”; just that its record on most
points is not greatly worse than that of Turkey (also a member of the
Council of Europe) and some others of our allies, to whose record
neither Ed Lucas nor a majority of other Western journalists devote
the smallest fraction of the criticism which they direct at Russia.


In fact, as many of you will recall, I have been an early and fierce
critic of the overblown language of democracy, partnership and
successful market reform coming from the Clinton administration.
I don’t think that Russia can ever be a “reliable partner”, if by that
you mean like Ed Lucas that Russia must always bow to US wishes (see
my “Ham Fisted Hegemon” in Current History of October 1999). Nor can
many other states round the world, like India, for example, ever play
such a role, given their national interests. I think that on a good
many points, we shall have to oppose, pressure and/or condemn Russia.
However, I also think that on a number of issues, from the Balkans to
non-proliferation and the supply of weapons to US enemies, limited
Russian co-operation is possible, has often been achieved, is highly
important to the West, and is threatened by the irrational hatreds and
ambitions of Western Russophobes.


Especially given latest developments in the Middle East, to make an
enemy of Russia without really compelling reasons seems to me lunacy,
for which US soldiers could one day weep tears of blood. Living in
Washington, and listening to the fears of islamic radicalism expressed
by many US commentators, it is truly amazing to hear some of the same
commentators, encouraged by reports such as those by Ed Lucas, declare
that Russia is simply making up its own fears. And unlike him, I have
actually spent time with Muslim extremists in Pakistan, Afghanistan
and elsewhere. They are often extremely brave, dedicated, selfless
people, and I understand to the full the historical and contemporary
reasons and even justifications for their beliefs ­ but there is
nothing imaginary about their pathological hatred of both the West and
Russia.


Concerning the argument that western crimes are in the past, and
Russia shouldn’t imitate them, there are three replies. Firstly, as
Ira has indicated, some allowance has to be made for the fact that
Russia only emerged from Communist isolation about ten years ago,
whereas at the time of their crimes the Western colonial powers were
supposedly democracies and longstanding members of the “free world”.


Secondly, there is geography. As I have pointed out again and again,
Western powers escaped involvement in ex-colonial conflicts by putting
the sea between themselves and their former colonies. This is what
Russia thought it was doing in withdrawing from Chechnya in 1996 ­ but
in this case of course there was no ocean between. If France had had a
land border with Algeria, the war there would have gone on for very
much longer ­ perhaps to this very day.


Finally, it is not true that Western crimes are necessarily long in
the past. If you examine French “sphere-of-influence” policies towards
Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide there (as examined by
Gerard Prunier, Philip Gourevitch and others) you will find a record
uglier than anything Russia has done since 1991 beyond its own
borders. So why should Russians listen to French official lectures?
Concerning Russia and Communism, Ed refers to an exchange of mine on
Communism and Nazism with Anne Applebaum in the English journal
Prospect. Since most readers of Johnson’s List probably won’t have
seen it, I’ve sent it to David for him to reproduce in whole or part
if he wishes. However, let me follow Ira in pointing out yet again
that the comparison with German denazification is a morally and
historically absurd one. The German process was NOT VOLUNTARY. We
conquered Germany at a cost of tens of millions of dead, the vast
majority of them Soviet. Would Ed have preferred that the West have
conquered Russia at the probable cost of a nuclear war in order to
impose our version of historical truth?


Nor was Soviet Communism in its roots a purely Russian movement in the
way of Nazism. The Russian revolutionary tradition obviously played
the key part in creating the Leninist form of Marxism, but I assume
that Ed does not share the belief of the US student who wished he
could read Marx and Engels in the original Russian? Members of many
different nationalities took part in the revolutions of Lenin and
Stalin, and initially indeed saw a form of national liberation from
Tsarist Russian rule as lying in Communism. Stalin, Beria, Yagoda,
Dzerzhinsky, were not Russians ­ whereas the greatest number of their
victims were. Today, not just Russia but every former Soviet republic
is ruled by former Communists.


The first victims of mass deportation under Soviet rule were the
Russian Terek Cossacks in 1921, punished for their support for the
Whites. The only ones still not to be allowed to return to their homes
are the Meskhetian Turks ­ and the state rejecting them is Georgia,
not Russia. I have known many Russians who survived Stalin’s camps.
Are they supposed to apologise to Georgia on behalf of Russia for
Stalin’s crimes?


Of course, this is not to echo the Solzhenitsyn line that Communism
was an alien plot against Russia. The chief roots of Leninist
Communism were Russian, and so were most Communist cadres. And I
entirely agree that it would be far healthier for Russia to engage in
a truly searching national debate on Communism’s crimes and the role
of the Russian tradition in them. However, it is wrong and utterly
counter-productive for non-Russians to demand that Russia adopt
national responsibility for all Communism’s crimes while the other
nations of the former Soviet Union reject any historical
responsibility for anything.


For example, take the Latvian and Lithuanian attitude to the
Holocaust. As Ed in particular knows very well, the governments and
political elites of these countries long resisted any recognition of
the role of Baltic national partisans and politicians in anti-semitic
atrocities in 1941 and after, and expressions of acknowledgment and
regret have been extracted only under intense pressure from the West
and the international Jewish community, mixed with the bribe of
promised entry into the EU and NATO.


An odious feature of much Baltic writing on Stalin’s crimes in the
Baltic has been the assumption that the victims were all Latvians,
Lithuanians and Estonians, while the perpetrators were all Russians
and Jews. In fact, the figures suggest that both Russian and Jewish
inhabitants of the Baltic States provided a disproportionate number of
Stalin’s victims, not for ethnic reasons (because they also of course
provided a disproportionate share of the NKVD) but because they were
seen to an even greater degree than the Balts as a political and class
threat to Stalinist communism: The Russians as bourgeois “Whites”,
liberals, conservatives and Russian nationalists, the Jews as
bourgeois capitalists, liberals and still more as ex-Menshevik Social
Democrats. Red Latvians of course had played a key part in Lenin’s
revolution, and returned in large numbers to Latvia to help impose
Stalinist rule on their Latvian compatriots. In these circumstances,
to start from an assumption of collective guilt on the part of any of
the nationalities involved is unhistorical and verges on vicious
chauvinism.


On the specific point of Moscow’s failure in the 1990s formally to
acknowledge the illegality of the Soviet annexation of 1940 (a failure
by the way which I deeply regret ­ don’t get me wrong): Yeltsin
publicly acknowledged this a year and more before the Soviet Union
actually collapsed. He visited the Baltic States during the attempted
Soviet crackdown of January 1991 to give support to the independence
movements, and the Russian government formally recognised full Baltic
independence in the immediate aftermath of the August 1991 coup. The
new Russian Foreign Ministry established the new Baltic desks in its
Northern European, not its Post-Soviet department. There was therefore
no reason in principle why the question of the legality of the 1940
annexation should ever have had to be discussed again between Russia
and the Balts.


This issue re-emerged partly because of the unjustifiable Russian
delay in withdrawing all its troops from the Baltic States, which
naturally set off a new polemical debate about what right they had to
be there in the first place. However, in the course of the 1990s there
were also three moves from the Baltic side, to which no Russian
government could risk giving any legal credence. The first was the
Estonian demand for a return to the borders of 1920-40, a claim
radically out of key with wider contemporary European conventions and
interests, and utterly unacceptable to Moscow; the second was the
Latvian and Estonian citizenship policies, to which Moscow vehemently
objected (in many ways wrongly, but with considerable Western sympathy
in the case of Latvia). These were based on the legal assumption that
those people who “illegally” entered these states during the illegal
Soviet occupation were not therefore legal residents but at best
immigrants, at worst military colonists who (in the view of radical
elements) should be expelled forthwith.


Finally, there is the outgoing Lithuanian parliament’s passage of a
law this year demanding $20 billion in compensation from Russia for
the Soviet occupation. Here, a limited parallel might be drawn with
contemporary British policy towards Zimbabwe. The Mugabe government’s
demand that Britain buy out white farmers in Zimbabwe is based on the
argument that the British colonial authorities in the 1890s and after
confiscated without compensation enormous tracts of Shona and Matebele
land and distributed them to white British settlers ­ which is of
course entirely true. According to the Mugabe government, the United
Kingdom, as the legal heir of the British Empire, therefore has a
clear legal and moral responsibility to buy the lands from the
settlers’ heirs and give them back to the Zimbawean people.


Britain for its part has offered the derisory sum of ­ if I remember
rightly - $36 million (for almost 50 per cent of Zimbawe’s
agricultural land!) as aid for the land reform process. However, this
has been explicitly designated as aid, not compensation. London is
obviously not going to take any step which might imply the slightest
legal recognition of Zimbabwe’s claims, as this could open a flood of
demands for compensation for British imperial crimes from every
quarter of the globe. This does not of course mean that British
politicians approve of the British conquest of Zimbabwe, or are
planning to repeat it, or to impose some new form of neo-colonial
hegemony on the region. Of course, a good many “anti-colonial” African
journalists and politicians profess to think this ­ but when I say
that Ed often resembles such people in his attitudes to Russia, I’m
afraid this is not intended as a compliment.


Finally, concerning the existence of deliberately structured
prejudices in Western media coverage, I have another example from The
Economist, dated September 30th (“Russia and Its Neighbours: Frost and
Friction”) ­ presumably by Ed, since it was datelined Moscow:


“Russia may be using still dodgier tactics elsewhere. Uzbekistan, an
autocratically run and independent-minded country in Central Asia, is
facing a mysterious Islamic insurgency. Its president, Islam Karimov,
said crossly this week that Russia was exaggerating the threat, and
was trying to intimidate his country into accepting Russian bases.”


Now as Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his
own opinion, but not his own facts." Was the author of this piece
seriously trying to insinuate that Russia is behind the revolt of
Namangani and the IMU, as his loaded use of the adjective “mysterious”
seems clearly intended to suggest? I don’t know of a single shred of
evidence for this or a single reputable expert on the region who would
support this view, which is to put it mildly counter-intuitive given
the IMU’s links to Russia’s most bitter enemies. If the author of the
piece does believe this, then let him state his belief clearly and
produce evidence to back it up.


Anyway, what exactly is “mysterious” about the revolt? Can any
serious, balanced account of this issue quote Karimov without also
reporting that Karimov’s own repression of all autonomous Muslim
groups has played a key role in sparking this revolt, and that the
Karimov regime has repeatedly played up the Islamist threat to try to
extract help from Washington? Can such an account fail to mention the
fact that Uzbekistan itself has hegemonic ambitions in the region, and
that as a result, Kirghizstan and Tajikistan actually welcome a
continued Russian presence? None of these points are present in this
piece.


Moreover, Karimov’s present strategy seems to be to cut a deal with
the Taleban in Afghanistan whereby he will recognise their regime if
they withdraw support from the IMU. This is a perfectly sensible
maneouvre, but it in no way implies that Karimov somehow represents a
force of sanity and moderation in his response to islamic radicalism
in the region while Russia is automatically a force for ruthless
suppression. In Tajikistan, in the past at least it has been the other
way round.


In other words, Central Asia today presents a typically politically
and morally messy post-imperial area, in which the former imperial
power, a new local would-be hegemon, and various outside powers
(including the US) vie for influence. Meanwhile states across the
region are above all threatened less from outside than by various
internal forces of upheaval, due to their failure to bring about
stable economic growth and create stable institutions.


But this is too complicated for the journalist in question. Far
easier to cram the region’s politics into a pre-arranged political,
intellectual and moral framework, with wicked neo-colonialist Russia
on one side, the small Central Asian states struggling for
independence on the other, and all other elements ­ notably the IMU ­
excluded as far as possible from the tidy picture. This desire to sit
at a long distance and force inconvenient facts on the ground into
neat geopolitical and ideological analytical patterns follows the
model of too many ideologues on both sides in the Cold War.


What is really funny about it is that in his anti-Russian imperialism,
Ed closely resembles the anti-British imperialism of my Indian
left-wing nationalist friends at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi in
the early 1980s. For them, everything wrong in India, and every
religious, ethnic and territorial dispute in South Asia, was the
direct result of deliberate and wicked actions by the British Empire ­
not, I suspect, a view for which Ed has any great sympathy?
On our side, ignorant, fanatical US ideologues in the early 1960s
sitting 12,000 miles from Vietnam and fitting that country into their
ideological and geopolitical frameworks got the US into a completely
unnecessary disaster. But at least the Cold War did have certain real
elements of a great moral and ideological struggle. To pretend that a
tussle between the US and Russia over the gaseous favours of a
Turkmenbashi involves such elements is not really serious. This
doesn’t mean that in such tussles we should take Russia’s side. We
should pursue our own interests, but with moderation, without hysteria
and self-righteousness, and with a due acknowledgement of our own
moral limitations and of the interests of others.


PS. Concerning Miriam Lanskoy’s attack: Well yes, I would certainly
suspect a non-American who accused President Clinton of being a
“murderer of Serb civilians” of anti-American prejudices UNLESS he or
she in other contexts displayed a much more balanced view of US
external policies and US national traditions. Obviously, there are
many people who have attacked Russia over Chechnya who have displayed
such balance towards Russia in other contexts ­ just as I, doubtless
labelled a Russophile in many quarters, have always balanced any
sympathy for Russian dilemmas in some areas with harsh criticism of
Russian actions and crimes in others.


However, there are a good many other commentators ­ among writers who
have appeared on Johnson’s List, these include Stephen Blank, Paul
Goble, William Safire, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Ed Lucas and
others ­ who as far as I’m aware have never on any occasion balanced
their repeated attacks on Russian external policies with praise for a
positive Russian action, with a serious recognition of the genuine
reasons Russia might have to feel aggrieved and threatened in some
areas, or with any comparisons to past and present Western behaviour.
If they or any other reader can provide concrete published examples of
such praise and recognition from the past (NOT made up on the spot as
a tactic), then I hereby ask their pardon, and in the interests of
international and scholarly reconciliation, I’ll buy them a drink when
they’re next in Washington.


******


#7
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
October 18, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
"ALL RESOURCES MUST BE USED TO PAY BACK FOREIGN DEBT"
Presidential Adviser Andrei ILLARIONOV Does Not Think 
Plan of Distributing Extra Revenues Is Good Enough 
By Marina VOLKOVA

Question: What benefits can Russia derive from the high 
oil prices?
Answer: To start with, the prices of oil in the past ten 
years have fluctuated around the trend that tended to decline.
The realistic oil price trend approximated 17 dollars (per 
barrel - Ed.) in 1990 prices in the early 1990s. By the end of 
the decade, it has dropped to 15 dollars.
Secondly, it is absolutely evident that the relatively 
high oil prices of today will inevitably go down very soon. 
Short-term vacillations of the oil price are explained by 
a number of factors. One - as far as the demand is concerned - 
is the dynamics of economic activity in the world in terms of 
GDP or industrial output. Another - as far as the supply is 
concerned - is the dynamics of putting on line new oil 
production capacities.
The oil prices that stay high over long periods of time 
make the oil production profitable in areas that used to be 
seen as little promising. Investments into oil production is 
growing, new wells are being drilled and completed, and the oil 
production is going up. 
On the other hand, the growth rate in the global economy 
is at a record high for the past decade. The latest forecast of 
the IMF and the World Bank indicates that it will be 4.7% this 
year, or may be even as high as 5.2%. But a slower growth rate 
is expected in the next few years. 
The combination of these two factors will lead to a 
situation when the production of oil would go up, the demand 
for it would go down, and the oil prices would inevitably 
plummet.

Question: But still, the oil prices have been high for 
rather a protracted period of time. What can Russia do in such 
a situation?
Answer: First of all, we have to decide what our bearing 
will be in the medium term - an exceptionally high price, or a 
sensibly conservative price. That the budget incorporates the 
forecasted price of 21 dollars per barrel is, in the opinion of 
some legislators, a super-pessimistic outlook. 
As I see it, the forecast is super-optimistic. What if the 
oil price drops below 17-18 dollars a barrel next year? The 
budget would be in a very precarious situation. 
It would be wiser to draft the consecutive budgets 
proceeding from a super-conservative oil price forecast on the 
level of the lowest price for the previous decade - say, 10 
dollars per barrel. Judging by all, this is the minimum 
guaranteed price. 
All revenues from the sales of oil at prices in excess of 
10 dollars a barrel should be channeled into a special fund 
that can be named the next generation fund, the state debt 
fund, the survival fund, the 2003 problems fighting fund - 
what's in a name? The main thing is that the use of resources 
from this fund should differ from the use of resources built 
into a regular budget.

Question: This is what the government is doing; simply, it 
has not announced the fund's formation, don't you think?
Answer: You are right in a way. But our suggestion is to 
have it institutionalized. In reality, the fund's formation is 
a part of a broader suggestion for the budget's transformation. 
The budget is suggested to consist of two parts: the current 
and the capital. Let's say the bulk of the current taxes - the 
income tax and the VAT - is spent for the current needs. And 
the capital budget includes revenues from the privatization, 
sale of property, debts paid to our country, and the rent 
component of the oil sales. Everything in excess of the 10 
dollars per barrel goes to the capital budget. 

Question: A budget is hard to execute when the oil price 
is low. When the price hovered around 10 dollars per barrel, 
the pay arrears to the public sector workers started piling up. 
Your comment?
Answer: On the contrary, when the oil price was falling in 
September through December 1998, the arrears were being fast 
reduced. 

Question: But it was then that the devaluation effect had 
come into play, hadn't it?
Answer: First, devaluation in this country has never 
stopped in the past decade. Second, devaluation has nothing to 
do with the public sector pay arrears. The arrears are 
generated when a budget is not fully executed, when the 
taxation is inadequate, when the budget's liabilities to the 
public sector are unrealistic. It was not so much the 
devaluation as lower obligations of the budget with respect to 
the public sector, that has come into play. 

Question: Back to reality. What do you think the resources 
of the fund or of the latter budget should be spent on?
Answer: On long-term liabilities: the state debt and, 
primarily, the foreign debt. The latter presents the largest 
impediment to Russia's development in the medium term. The main 
resources should be channeled to tackle this problem. 
The pension commitments are a long-term liability. In the 
conditions of a cumulative pension system, the worst problem is 
that of those who are now 45-50 years old. They would not 
accumulate enough funds for a decent pension in the years until 
they retire. A transfer from the distributive pension system to 
a cumulative one must therefore be financed. This may take as 
long as 10-20 years.

Question: Doesn't the stimulation of production present a 
problem, too?
Answer: Theoretically, some infrastructural projects may 
be financed from the state resources. Personally, I am not a 
fan of state investment projects because they are known to be 
very inefficient. The state should not finance the light 
industry, the cotton and flax production, and aircraft 
building. But there are projects that may in principle be 
financed from the fund. 

Question: Is there a way to monitor the execution of the 
latter budget?
Answer: It can be monitored the way the execution of a 
regular budget is monitored - via parliament. A capital budget 
does not necessarily need to be balanced out. This is not too 
healthy, of course, but it's possible, for long-term 
goal-oriented foreign credit lines may be one source of 
revenues for it. In principle, this system of divided budgets 
should be controllable by the legislative authority and 
understandable for execution. 

Question: Who is to define the objectives the money would 
be spent on?
Answer: The government, naturally. 

Question: The PM does not seem to be too eager to 
distribute the additional revenues, does he?
Answer: If we are talking about longer-term prospects, the 
government should manage the capital budget resources. Now if 
we are talking about additional revenues expected in 2001, it 
is up to an agreement with the Duma. 

Question: The government has suggested a general plan of 
distributing the additional revenues, and the Duma has endorsed 
it. Your opinion?
Answer: I do not think the plan is good enough. 

Question: Why? A half of the additional revenues are 
planned to be spent to pay the foreign debt that you seem to 
think is a priority for Russia. 
Answer: I think all resources must be used to pay back the 
foreign debt. There is no more important priority than that of 
easing the debt burden. There are other objectives, of course, 
but they are of a lower level.


******


#8
Russia's former PM admits sending secret messages to US vice- president 
ITAR-TASS 


Tokyo, 18th October: Russian member of parliament Viktor Chernomyrdin on 
Wednesday [18th October] said that, in his capacity as prime minister, he had 
been sending secret messages to US Vice-President Al Gore. 


"I cannot remember exactly, but this may have taken place," Chernomyrdin told 
ITAR-TASS in Tokyo, where he arrived at the invitation of the Japanese 
Foreign Ministry. 


The issue of secret Russian-American messages, of which Congress was unaware, 
is being used as evidence against Gore, who is the democratic candidate for 
the presidency. 


Chernomyrdin said he thought it fit to send secret messages. "Before we hit 
upon a solution, one should not make it public. There were many things that 
needed work." 


Secret messages did not make anyone in Washington raise eyebrows. "What they 
have produced now is pre-election sleaze, and it is not serious," he said. 


******


#9
BBC MONITORING
Russia: Families of servicemen block highway in protest over living 
conditions 
Source: Centre TV, Moscow, in Russian 0700 gmt 18 Oct 00 


[Presenter] The traffic on one of the federal roads in Nizhniy Novgorod 
Region was stopped yesterday [17th October]. Family members of army 
servicemen blocked the road because hot water and heating was switched off in 
their flats. Anna Dundukova has the details. 


[Correspondent] The residents of the village of Afonino in the region 
picketed Kazan Highway today. The reason is the inhuman living conditions in 
which over 320 families have been living there. There is no heating in their 
flats and for six months they have not had hot water either. 


Families of many Russian army servicemen live in Afonino. For the last few 
years, the [Russian] Defence Ministry has not paid money to various local 
communal services and as a result owes them about R5m. For six months every 
year these families are living without hot water and heating and sometimes 
gas and electricity is switched off as well. 


[Lyudmila Cheban, captioned as a serviceman wife] We had neither hot water 
nor heating, and then the electricity was switched off. We, our children and 
our grandchildren had to cook our meals on campfires. 


[Uncaptioned wife of a serviceman] For six months a year we wash ourselves in 
the following manner: we heat by gas three pails of water and one of us 
washes, then the routine is repeated until midnight so that every family 
member has a bath. 


[Correspondent] Almost every family has somebody who did their military 
service in one of Russia&apos;s trouble spots, and some servicemen died 
there. 


[omitted: another woman complaining] 


[Correspondent] Children sleep in their clothes, people get sick and the gas 
industry workers have cut out 50 metres of the pipeline to Afonino to avoid 
unauthorized use of gas. 


[Uncaptioned woman] During the last seven years we have been everywhere. We 
appealed to President Boris Yeltsin, to the presidential administration, to 
the State Duma and naturally to the local and regional authorities. 


[Correspondent] By now over 500 people have been blocking the highway to 
Kazan for two hours. 


[omitted: details of the action, drivers complaining] 


[Correspondent] However, none of the local administration representatives 
have come out to talk to the people. 


[Another uncaptioned woman] If this does not work, tomorrow [18th October] we 
will block the highway all through the night. 


[Video shows people bearing protest banners reading: "Freeze thy brother" 
"The dead Kursk submarine servicemen will not freeze to death, but we will", 
and "We will send heating to NATO".] 


******


#10
Washington Times
October 18, 2000
Editorial
The world according to Boris

Struggling with a stagnating economy and plummeting popularity, Boris 
Yeltsin said in a recently published memoir that he found "the weight would 
lift after a few shot glasses." Presumably, those glasses were generously 
sized, given some of Mr. Yeltsin's more baffling behavior while in office. 
Despite Mr. Yeltsin's admitted penchant for alcohol, though, the former 
Russian president manages to ascribe coherent, if somewhat Byzantine, 
explanations for some of his more bewildering decisions.
In "Midnight Diaries," Mr. Yeltsin is most revealing when discussing his 
anointed successor, Vladimir Putin. Immediately after Mr. Putin was appointed 
acting president on Dec. 31, he guaranteed Mr. Yeltsin immunity from 
prosecution. Mr. Yeltsin maintains in his book that he didn't trade the 
presidency for any such promise. Yet in describing what he most admired in 
Russia's current president, Mr. Yeltsin makes clear he chose Mr. Putin to 
protect him and his inner circle.
When St. Petersburg's former mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, was under criminal 
investigation in 1998, Mr. Putin made arrangements that allowed him to escape 
the country and prosecution. Mr. Putin launched this rescue of Mr. Sobchak 
without Mr. Yeltsin's knowledge, but when he learned what Mr. Putin had 
managed, Mr. Yeltsin said he felt a "profound sense of respect and gratitude 
toward him." Mr. Putin's willingness to flout a legitimate legal inquiry of a 
government official obviously impressed Mr. Yeltsin and would come to serve 
him quite well. When looking for a successor Mr. Yeltsin mused, "Who will 
realistically stand behind me? Then I understood — Putin." Indeed. 
Mr. Yeltsin also goes on to recount why he arranged such a dizzying 
procession of prime ministers towards the end of his tenure. His explanation 
could have been easily ripped from a Cold War thriller. He appointed Sergei 
V. Stepashin, Mr. Yeltsin explains, as a decoy prime minister for three 
months to prevent Yevgeny M. Primakov, the outgoing prime minister, from 
launching a campaign against him. This scheming was necessary because Mr. 
Primakov wasn't fond of Mr. Putin.
This may well be true, but Mr. Yeltsin fails to recognize Mr. Putin's 
systematic attack on press freedoms and his efforts to centralize federal 
authority. In addition, he fails to confront the carnage in Chechnya and the 
growing complexity of his country's military mission there.
Rather pathetically, the former president seemed to be searching for 
affirmation in his memoir. He said he spotted tears in the eyes of his 
security chiefs and ministers as they watched the speech he gave before 
stepping down. And Mr. Yeltsin does sum up his main accomplishments with 
refreshing humility. "I have something to be proud about as president," he 
recently told the Russian weekly Argumenty I Fakty. "The most important thing 
is that we preserved Russia as a country and a state and the Russian people 
as a nation." 
Certainly, Mr. Yeltsin did manage that, in part by waging a brutal, 
merciless war against the people of Chechnya. As he settles his personal 
accounts with history, perhaps he can find solace in that thought. But he can 
no longer relieve the burden of his reflections with that instant, liquid 
medication he used to take. On doctor's orders, Mr. Yeltsin is limiting 
himself to one glass of wine a day. 


******


#11
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
October 17, 2000
U.S. buttinskyism
Letter
STEVE GOWANS


Nepean, Ont. -- After allowing that Western oil companies have more than
$50-billion (U.S.) invested in Azerbaijan and that the country's oil
reserves are potentially a vital source of supply for the United States,
Geoffrey York (The Dream Merchants -- Oct. 16) goes on to write that the
U.S. interest in Azerbaijan has much to do with the desire to check the
spread of Russian imperial ambitions.


Let's see. Russia is reduced to taking handouts from the IMF, its military
is crumbling and its empire has long ago collapsed. At the same time, the
U.S. has 200,000 troops permanently stationed in 40 countries abroad, a
U.S.-led NATO expands eastward, and the U.S. dominance of the world is the
theme of a series of Globe articles. One wonders about whose imperial
ambitions Mr. York should be writing.


******