November 6, 2000   

This Date's Issues:   4623 • 4624

Johnson's Russia List
#4624
6 November 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: Russia's Middle Class emerges from the wreckage.
2. New York Times letter: Impoverished Russians.
3. AP: From Russia, a surprise marathon winner.
4. Itar-Tass: Communist wins governor election in Russia's Kursk region.
5. Itar-Tass: Russia's Communist leader says ties with USA will develop whoever wins election.
6. BBC Monitoring: NTV, Communist leader marks Russia revolution anniversary.
7. St. Peterburg Times EDITORIAL: Have Pity on the Tourists (if They Don't Visit Izborsk)
8. Itar-Tass: Law on mass media to be reviewed.
9. Maurizio Massari: forget Russia.
10. Ludmila Foster: KGB Defector Litvinenko.
11. Washington Post: Masha Lipman, My Russia, 'Tis of Thee. Putin revives the quest for a suitable national anthem.
12. Reuters: Russia's Entrepreneurs Keep Gulag Memory Alive.
13. UPI: Report: Russian merchant ships used in spying on U.S. bases.
14. Reuters: Latvia Says Russia Nostalgic for Soviet Empire.
15. Moscow Times: Sergei Roy, Brodsky's Great Adventure.
16. Financial Times (UK): Andrew Jack, Smirnoff finds Russian rival hard to swallow: Row over vodka label exposes wider issue of intellectual property.]

******

#1
Russia's Middle Class emerges from the wreckage

MOSCOW, Nov 6 (AFP) -
Russia's middle class, one of the main casualties of the 1998 economic
crisis, is quietly making a comeback, to the great relief of the country's
marketing executives.

Former president Boris Yeltsin was a fierce champion of the credit card and
portable phone wielding class, allowing bank employees and entrepreneurs to
scheme and dream of better things. However the fledgling sector was hit hard
by the economic downturn.

Two years on, with revenues recovering and the employment market stable, the
middle classes are coming back out to play.

"Leisure spending is higher than before the crisis," trumpeted a headine in
the daily Vedomosti, citing a study by the Komkon polling institute.

More and more people are going to cinemas and theatres. Bowling is a new fad
and top executives are redistributing their wealth at the country's casinos,
according to the report.

Another encouraging sign is the property boom which Moscow is enjoying. New
apartments are increasingly sought after and increasingly expensive.
currently selling for 500 dollars per square metre (yard).

Consumer spending rose by 8.3 percent from January to September.

A major study carried out by Komkon in the summer built up an interesting
profile of this emerging middle class.

These secretaries, bodyguards, entrepreneurs and business consultants are
aged between 25 and 45, with a minimum income of 88 dollars per month in
Moscow and 450 dollars in the provinces.

In the provinces they are mad about clothes and shoes, in the capital they
are forking out for cars, interior decoration and leisure pursuits.

Unlike most Russians they take holidays away; on the Black Sea coast for the
"lower-middle class", in Cyprus and Turkey for the "middle-middle class" and
in Majorca or Europe's winter slopes for the biggest wallets.

Most run a car -- the latest Lada or a foreign model -- and are thinking of
going up another rung of the housing market.

The fledgling middle class is concentrated in Moscow and the other major
cities in "rich" regions (the 18 of Russia's 89 regions which make a net
contribution to the federal budget). Its members are still far from
representing a major sector in Russian society.

Small- and medium-sized companies are still in short supply, personal loans
and mortgages practically unheard of.

A sizeable majority of Russians -- 69 percent -- have no budget whatever for
leisure pursuits. Though that figure is high it is still lower than the
pre-crisis 77 percent.

"Estimates for the size of the middle class vary between 15 and 25 percent of
the working population. Personally I don't think it is any more than 15
percent," said Ludmila Khokhulina, vice-president of the Centre for Public
Opinion.

Their common trait is a more optimistic view of the future plus a positive
take on the reforms and democratic values, according to Natalia Laidinen, a
sociologist at the Romir institute.

The development of a middle class is both fuel and ballast for the economic
normalisation process.

The political classes are also sitting up and taking notice.

"As the middle class grows, society becomes more stable," said Khokhulina.

"It supports the regime which allows it to flourish. And it helps plug the
gap between the rich and the poor".

******

#2
New York Times
November 6, 2000
Letter
Impoverished Russians

To the Editor:

The United States government cannot pass the buck by asserting that Russia's
post-Communist economic debacle is due mostly to that country's "failure to
embrace change" (news article, Nov. 2).

If this charge is applied to the ordinary citizens of Russia, why should one
expect them to embrace a system of shock therapy that has resulted in
hyperinflation and virtually wiped out the life savings of millions? Why
should they embrace a system that took economic power and control out of the
hands of their government and gave it to a small handful of private
individuals — many of them with strong ties to the old government?

Had Boris N. Yeltsin allowed a truly democratic system to emerge — and had
Washington insisted that he do so — the story might have been different for
Russia's now impoverished people.

CRAIG BUTLER
Executive Director, Fund for New Priorities in America
New York, Nov. 2, 2000

******

#3
>From Russia, a surprise marathon winner
By HAL BOCK
AP Sports Writer
November 5, 2000

NEW YORK (AP) -- When Ludmila Petrova became the first Russian to win the New
York City Marathon, there was a message in the victory for her husband.

See what a little help at home can mean?

Petrova chopped more than three minutes off her best marathon time Sunday,
winning the run through New York City's five boroughs in 2 hours, 25 minutes,
45 seconds.

``I changed my training a lot,'' she said through an interpreter. ``It
obviously helped. I used to run too fast in training. By the time of the
races, I didn't have any energy left. Now, I chilled out in training so there
is more energy left for racing.''

That was not the only change for Petrova. Just as important, she said, was
the way things are now done in her home in Cheboksary, Russia.

She has two daughters, age 7 and 12, and is accustomed to the three C's --
cooking, cleaning and caring for them and her husband.

``My husband was not much help before,'' she said. ``Recently, he realized he
must help me. Now, there is no cooking. My husband takes care of me. He will
take care even more after this. Part of this victory belongs to him.''

The win was worth $65,000 plus a $25,000 bonus for finishing in under 2:26,
an automobile and a scooter.

Her husband's part of the loot?

``If he behaves well, he'll get the car,'' she said.

Petrova confronted a major challenge in New York, facing a field full of
former winners like two-time winner Tegla Loroupe of Kenya, the women's
record holder, former champion Franca Fiacconi of Italy, and elite
challengers like Adriana Fernandez of Mexico and Yuko Arimori of Japan.

The quality of the field was reflected in the times. The top five finishers
were all at 2:27 or below, the first time that's happened in the women's
division of this race.

Fiacconi was second in 2:26:03, followed by three Kenyans. Margaret Okayo in
2:26:36 was third. Kiumtai finished fourth in 2:26:42, Florence Barsosio was
fifth in 2:27:00 and Loroupe was sixth in 2:29:35.

Petrova's previous best marathon time was 2:29:13 when she finished seventh
in Boston in 1998. That same year, she was fourth in New York in 2:31:09 and
second in Moscow in 2:30:54.

Her warmup for the marathon included the New Haven Road Race in September,
where she did 20 kilometers in 1:08:37, beating a strong international field.
She also finished first in the Chris Thater Memorial 5-kilometer.

``I did a half-marathon in 1:09 and I was excited by that time,'' she said.
``After that race, I was pretty confident.''

Certainly, she knew what she was up against in this field.

``Of course, I was concerned with the other champions and the world-record
holder,'' she said, referring to Loroupe.

But Petrova, after taking the lead at 23 miles, never looked back at them.
And they never caught up to her.

******

#4
Communist wins governor election in Russia's Kursk region
Itar-Tass
November 5, 2000

Communist candidate Aleksandr Mikhaylov won Sunday's gubernatorial election
in the south Russian region of Kursk, the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS
reported, quoting preliminary results.

Quoting the regional electoral commission, the agency said Mikhaylov got
55.56 per cent of votes cast.

A second candidate, Viktor Surzhikov, won 37.96 per cent.

Over 47 per cent of the electorate took part in the voting on Sunday, the
agency added.

The incumbent governor, Aleksandr Rutskoy, was not allowed to stand for
re-election on grounds of abuse of office and other infringements.

******

#5
Russia's Communist leader says ties with USA will develop whoever wins
election
ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 6th November: Russian Communist leader Gennadiy Zyuganov said today
Russian-US relations will develop no matter who wins the US presidential
election.

Zyuganov told reporters he sees no particular difference between the
Democrats and Republicans, as "both parties defend interests of the powers
that be".

According to him, the United States is likely to reduce intervention in
Russia's domestic affairs if Republican George W. Bush wins. "This country
has frequently concluded treaties with them (the Republicans), despite
their relatively tough foreign policy," Zyuganov said.

He denounced the outgoing Clinton administration, saying that it "meddled
constantly in this country's affairs".

Asked about the results of the gubernatorial elections in the central
Russian Kursk Region, Zyuganov said he was satisfied with the victory of
Communist nominee Aleksandr Mikhaylov. The new governor is a native of the
Kursk Region and "underwent good training there", he said.

Zyuganov said he was sure that Mikhaylov's team would accomplish its tasks
successfully and succeed in unifying "all the people who are working
honestly". The Communist Party leadership will send its specialists to the
region to help the new governor draft the enlarged programme, he stressed.

******

#6
BBC Monitoring
Communist leader marks Russia revolution anniversary
Text of report by Russian NTV International television on 6th November

[Presenter] Preparations for the next anniversary of the October 1917
Revolution are drawing to an end. Those Russian citizens who will celebrate
7th November as the 83rd anniversary of the Great October are preparing for
traditional events, some of which took place today. For instance, leader of
the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennadiy Zyuganov visited the
Red Square and laid wreaths at Vladimir Lenin's Mausoleum today.

[Video shows Zyuganov laying wreaths to the mausoleum]

[Zyuganov] I would like to greet you all on the occasion of Great October
and wish everyone success, health, wisdom and the same freshness of
thoughts and feelings as in October 1917. We believe in the ideals of the
October. There are no holier ideals of peace, goodness, justice and labour
in the world. Therefore, we have paid tribute to all who created the Soviet
epoch, all of them: heroes who fought for the Soviet power, leaders who
defended it, military leaders who won the Great Patriotic War and later
strengthened our army, great scientists and designers, [cosmonaut Yuriy]
Gagarin, [nuclear scientist Igor] Kurchatov, [Aleksey] Kosygin, who was one
of the best prime ministers of the Soviet era. We do not discriminate in
this respect as some opportunists who yesterday paid tribute to ones, today
to others and tomorrow will betray the whole lot.

******

#7
St. Peterburg Times
November 3, 2000
EDITORIAL
Have Pity on the Tourists (if They Don't Visit Izborsk)

SOMETIMES it is so frustrating and nerve-wracking trying simply to obey
Russia's laws that we lose sight of how difficult it must be to enforce them
honestly. In this light, the conflict brewing between the Culture Ministry
and customs officials at Pulkovo Airport should be viewed as the bureaucratic
equivalent of a desperate cry for help.

The root of the problem is an incompetently written federal law that mandates
that all exported art and cultural items are subject to a duty, but which
fails to state how much that duty should be. The law also does a poor job of
defining what a "cultural item" is, except to say that anything that is more
than 100 years old automatically qualifies.

Therefore, customs officials - apparently following the bureaucratic creed
"better safe than sorry" - taxed virtually any item that could possibly be
construed as having cultural worth at 100 percent of its value, based on
assessments provided by the Culture Ministry.

In St. Petersburg, this practice has meant that the Culture Ministry's
assessment board has been inundated with a flood of virtually worthless
trinkets and household items to be assessed. Everything, from sugar bowls to
posters to rusty nails, apparently has been kept from crossing the border,
with hyper-vigilant customs officials sending the board anything that looked
either old or handmade.

Now the Culture Ministry has struck back. It has begun refusing to issue any
assessments at all in order to force the State Duma and the State Customs
Committee to clarify the law. As a result, customs authorities at Pulkovo are
refusing to permit the export of any potentially culturally significant
items. A spokeswoman for the airport said bluntly: "I anticipate the
consequences will be nightmarish, but we have used all other means to get
[our point of view] heard."

When bureaucracies collide, ordinary people get caught in the middle. The
customs standoff will hit tourists immediately - and probably at random - and
could do real long-term damage to the already troubled tourism industry if it
drags out or spreads to Moscow and other cities. Authorities warn that it
will take months, perhaps as much as a year, for the existing legislation to
be amended or new laws to be written.

Obviously this situation is intolerable and must be resolved. Russia is
already a daunting enough place to visit, with visa procedures that seem
purposely designed to keep people away. It seems especially cruel now to deny
those who successfully run that gauntlet the right to take home a hard-earned
wooden doll or a lacquer box as a trophy.

One can't help being just a little sorry for Vladimir Putin. We're not sure
what the president feels about having a walking tour in the Pskov Oblast in
his honor, or what his reaction was to having a book on children's rights
annotated with such revealing autobiographical details as the fact that Putin
doesn't smoke, or what his schoolmates thought of him as a child.

But we're willing to believe that he's perhaps a tiny bit embarrassed by the
out-and-out hero worship displayed by both Leonid Panov, head of the Museum
of Regional Studies in Izborsk, and the St. Petersburg branch of the Unity
faction, who sponsored the publication of the children's book.

What's next, we ask ourselves? Are more "Putin Was Here" tours on the way?
Roll up, roll up, see the place where the president paused for thought in
Arkhangelsk! Gaze in reverence at the plate Putin had breakfast off in
Novgorod!

Or will the next round of devotion be something more in the spirit of a cult
of personality, such as a statue - probably astride a horse, if it is crafted
in St. Petersburg?

The "love thy president" manifestations to date hardly constitute a cult of
personality, of course: The Kursk disaster didn't make much of a dent in
Putin's approval ratings, but the flak the president had to endure for a week
or so would never have happened had he been considered flawless.

Nonetheless, if the president is a little uneasy at the kind of publicity
he's getting in Izborsk, he has only himself and his PR gurus to blame for
the kind of publicity they themselves put out before the elections in May.

Putin in a fighter jet; Putin in a judo costume; Putin whizzing down the
piste; Putin "wiping out the bandits in the outhouse." The whole idea behind
this publicity campaign was to dispel his gray, faceless image - as a former
secret agent and unknown bureaucrat - and project him onto the people's
consciousness with wall-to-wall coverage of his manly exploits beamed into
100 million homes for around nine months non-stop.

This, you may remember, got his opinion poll ratings from single digits to a
first-round victory at the polls. So it is hardly surprising that one or two
people have swallowed the message just a little too hard.

What would be really worrying would be if Izborsk experienced mass
pilgrimages of acolytes desperate to drink at "Putin's well." Although there
weren't many on a cloudy day this week. (Mind you, they spent millions on
EuroDisney, and nobody went there, either. ...)

******

#8
Russia: Law on mass media to be reviewed
ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 4th November: The law on the mass media will be reviewed,
commission chairman on human rights at the Russian presidency Vladimir
Kartashkin said with confidence here on Saturday [4th November].

"The process of specification, changes and streamlining of legislation is
inevitable," he told ITAR-TASS, referring to comments by several state
structures.

These comments were already taken into account by the commission while
working out the draft of a federal concept on ensuring and protecting human
rights and freedoms.

The document was made public last Wednesday [1st November] and circulated
among most ministries and departments, including the Russian Security
Council, for finalization. "It is necessary to look for compromises to make
the concept normal," Kartashkin claimed.

The need for making changes in mass media legislation was prompted not so
much by a new doctrine of information security, as by the interests of
ensuring constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens, Kartashkin
emphasized.

In the commission chairman's opinion, it is high time now to formulate
clearly, in the federal law, the notion of "a state secret", a commercial
and corporate secret as well as the very notion of information, pertaining
to a state secret.

Kartashkin noted at the same time that citizens should be guaranteed a free
access to information, affecting their rights and freedoms or having public
interest.

Secretary of the Russian Security Council Sergei Ivanov, speaking in an
interview with the `Vek' newspaper on Friday, said that the doctrine of
information security is aimed also at establishing equal rights of the game
for Russian and foreign reporters.

"I agree with Sergei Ivanov that restrictions should be for sure,"
Kartashkin said, referring to the international covenant on civil and
political rights. According to the chairman, even this document permits
"some restrictions in the interests of self-same rights and freedoms of
citizens and states".

The human rights commission holds that a special law on inadmissibility of
monopolizing the media should be adopted, Kartashkin stated. "While
finalizing the concept, it is necessary to take into account all points of
view, but it is already crystal-clear now that monopolization of the media
leads to serious distortions of information," Kartashkin claimed.

"The fourth power should not turn into an absolute and dictate its will to
society," he underlined.

******

#9
From: Massari20@aol.com (Maurizio Massari)
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000
Subject: forget Russia

I just want to add few thoughts on the debate on "forget Russia". In
principle, I agree with what has been said about the two different aspects
of forgetting Russia(forget Russia internally but not internationally).
Celeste Wallander is 100% right when she focusses on the impossibility, for
practical reasons, of forgetting Russia "internationally".
However, it is also true that it is difficult nowadays to draw too neat
demarcation lines between internal developments and external behaviour. If
our objective is to have Russia behaving as a responsible and cooperative
power on the international scene we cannot ignore what happens within Russia.
In an increasingly interdependent world, an internationally cooperative
Russia also means a Russia that is more closely integrated with
international institutions, ranging from the European Union to the WTO.
All these institutions, however, require certain political and economic
standards
that Russia has to meet. So what happens within Russia eventually matters
because it will eventually determine to what extent Russia can cooperate with
the European and international institutions as a normal power. Furthermore,
it seems to me that the more Europe expands toward East(with the EU and NATO)
the more the way Russia develops internally matters. A larger Europe would
inevitably be more exposed to Russia's internal predicaments. So, let's not
forget domestic Russia . It can be healthy today for us to moderate our
expectations about Russia. At the same time we should not overreact and lose
sight of our long -term interests and goals : to help Russia to become a
democratic and normal power, closely integrated into the European space and
behaving responsably on the international scene.

Maurizio Massari/ Political Counselor at the Embassy of Italy in washington
D.C.

******

#10
Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000
From: Ludmila Foster <ludmila@erols.com>
Subject: KGB Defector Litvinenko

David:
In the "Daily Telegraph" article (JRL 4623) a previous defector, Oleg
Gordievsky, asserts that the recent defector ALEXANDER LITVINENKKO
accuses President Putin of arranging the apartment houses blasts for
political gains.
Two things are to be considered here:
1) According to Russian Internet news, Litvinenko's escape and his
arrival in England must have been pre-arranged by someone with very good
connections. Boris Berezovsky (BAB) is suspected of doing it.
It sounds quite plausible, because Litvinenko's original TV
"confessions" of a KGB assignment to assasinate Berezovsky was such an
obvious put-on job, intended to portray the poor, little, dear BAB as a
victim of the big, bad state.
2) Litvinenko's new "confessions" in England seem a part of the same
play: big, bad Putin is ordering all these awful bombings. Doves in with
what BAB himself has been saying about "big, bad Putin!"
Conclusion: is Litvinenko still on BAB's payroll?

******

#11
Washington Post
November 6, 2000
[for personal use only]
My Russia, 'Tis of Thee
Putin revives the quest for a suitable national anthem.
By Masha Lipman
The writer is deputy editor of Itogi magazine.

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin, having moved to bring Russia's regional
leaders back under control, crack down on some of its business tycoons and
increase military spending, really is getting down to business now: He has
assigned his recently formed State Council the job of coming up with a new
national anthem.

Here we go again. After the imperial Russian anthem, "God Save the Czar," was
abolished in 1917, revolutionary zealots--believing Communist Russia was but
a brief stopover on the way to world revolution--picked as the first Soviet
anthem the "Internationale," the proletarian song that called upon "the whole
world of the hungry and the slaves" to rebel against their masters.

This anthem lasted until World War II, when Stalin brought back Russian
imperial nationalism and ordered an updated national song. The one that was
chosen had a slow and heavy tune with a markedly oppressive rhythm. The music
was by A. V. Alexandrov, the lyrics by G. G. El-Registan and Sergei
Mikhalkov, a favorite of Stalin. The new words glorified both "Great Russia,
which forever brought together an unbroken union of free republics" and, of
course, Stalin, "who raised us and gave us inspiration for . . . labor and
feats." The tune survived Stalin's death in 1953, but the lyrics had to go
after the condemnation of Stalin's crimes by Khrushchev. Thus the national
anthem became what the liberal intelligentsia liked to call a "song without
words."

Leonid Brezhnev, who steered the Soviet Union into cozy stagnation after the
uncertainty of the Khrushchev years, set about to come up with acceptable
lyrics for the anthem. As it turned out, Mikhalkov was available for the job.
He looked at his old work and liked it. Deciding there was no need for major
changes, Mikhalkov, like a skilled tailor, took in here, let out there and
came up with a song fit for a mature empire entering detente. He removed all
mentions of Stalin, of course, as well as some of the most militant lines. (A
stanza extolling the Red Army was deleted.) He added a four-liner about "the
victory of immortal Communist ideas" that lay ahead for "our country." The
anthem once again became a song with words.

But when communism collapsed and the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991,
President Boris Yeltsin and his reform government felt the need for grand
symbolic gestures. From climbing atop a tank as he headed up resistance to
the Communist coup to having his defeated rival, Mikhail Gorbachev, read
aloud the decree banning the Communist Party, to dismantling the statue of
Felix Dzerzhinsky (founder of the terrifying Soviet security system), Yeltsin
made his gestures on a grand scale. He established a tricolor Russian flag
and put a double-headed eagle in place of the hammer and sickle for the
national emblem.

Then he turned to the national anthem. At first his choice seemed perfect. It
was a song by a 19th-century Russian composer, Glinka, who has been labeled
"the first Russian musical classic." A slow and solemn tune, it sounded
unmistakably Russian. Unfortunately,it had no words of its own.

The post-Communist Russian authorities, firmly adhering to the new democratic
values, decided to let the people write their own national lyrics. A contest
was proclaimed, and soon hundreds, even thousands, of citizens were
contributing their rhymed visions of Russia to the Ministry of Culture, where
a few tired officials were appointed to evaluate them.

In the end, none of the entries made the grade, a fact that seemed to please
the octogenarian Mikhalkov, who gloated that sooner or later, authorities
would have to come to him again. After the financial crisis of 1998 led to
the fall of the reform cabinet, the Communists in the Duma voted to bring
back the Communist song (a poll taken after the vote showed that 60 percent
of Russians favored its return) but put off until later the tricky matter of
lyrics. Yeltsin, however, vetoed the Duma's action. The Glinka song remains,
although it has never caught on, perhaps because of the lack of words.

Now Putin has called for a revision of the state anthem to fit the new
Russian political reality. The public has eagerly joined the discussion. The
new anthem variants have been the subject of TV talk shows and discussed in
newspapers of all political leanings. One comedy program has come up with a
mock anthemic vision of Russia as a dream country in which cows produce
petroleum instead of milk and men never lose their virility.

Putin, who does not share Yeltsin's strong anticommunist sentiments, has made
it clear he wouldn't mind if Stalin's wartime tune were brought back. But
then another possibility is that the old czarist music will be revived.
Whatever the tune, though, political leaders seem incapable of coming up with
words to express their vision of Russia. The lyrics problem shows no signs of
being solved. Rumor has it that Sergei Mikhalkov is being consulted.

******

#12
Feature-Russia's Entrepreneurs Keep Gulag Memory Alive

CANYON VALLEY, Russia, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Josef Stalin sent millions of Soviet
citizens down Siberia's so-called Road of Bones to the misery and death of
the gulag labour camps.

Now tourists are being invited to the remote Kolyma Track to Canyon Valley, a
labour camp crumbling into the tundra nearly 50 years after its last inmate
was released.

Forty six year-old Alexei Alabushev, born the year the labour camp closed,
swapped a teaching career for an unlikely tourist dream amid the taiga and
tumbling rivers of Russia's far northeast.

"I wanted to come up with a project that would embrace all sides of tourism
-- nature, history, ethnic themes, extreme tourism, sport," Alabushev said.

"Canyon Valley fits ideally into this idea. This place is unique; it has
mountains, lakes, cascade waterfalls, glaciers, rare animals. Here you can
satisfy the most demanding tourist."

Snow-capped mountains overlook Canyon Valley and the expanse of Siberian
taiga, whose autumnal red, yellow and greens fan out around the crystal clear
Verina river.

But some 2,000 Canyon Valley inmates saw a different picture half a century
ago.

Vladimir Svertelov, prisoner number M-1247, recalls climbing the camp's
wooden stairs every morning to work, whipped by a piercing wind and gnawed by
temperatures plummeting to minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit).

"Nature itself served as a guard here," said Svertelov.

Since the camp closed in 1954, rivers have washed away the wooden bridges
built by prisoners on the road that led to it. But Canyon Valley's isolation
and forbidding elements have helped it remain one of the best preserved of
Kolyma's 500 or so camps.

Barbed wire still twists around the camp and metal bars criss-cross the tiny
square windows of the prison barracks. Quilted jackets, numbered caps,
tarpaulin boots, and tins litter the floor of the barracks and workshops.

JAILED BY NAZIS AND STALIN

At the top of a steep slope looms a huge refinery surrounded by heaps of
cobalt ore, which the Cold War-era Soviet military needed to make armour.

Svertelov was banished to Canyon Valley for the "crime" of having been
captured by Nazis while a soldier during World War Two.

German prison was harsh. Being treated as a traitor after your return was
worse.

"There, we were in the hands of the enemy, so that was how it was supposed to
be," he said. "But here it was hard, above all morally. In Canyon I worked as
hard as I could trying to forget it all."

The only survivor of Canyon Valley left in the regional centre, Magadan,
Svertelov is wholeheartedly in favour of Alabushev's tourism idea.

"People must go there and see how we lived," Svertelov said. "It doesn't
matter if someone also wants to make money on this."

The Magadan region suffers from the economic woes which grip much of Siberia.

Infrastructure built by prisoners in the 1930s to the 1950s was developed by
workers from across the Soviet Union, drawn by special wages and powerful
propaganda.

But much of region's transport and industry became too inefficient to
maintain after the economic reforms of the 1990s.

GULAG ONLINE

Ivan Panikarov, a former plumber from the southern Russian town of Rostov,
has set up a gulag museum in Yagodnoye, a town of 8,000 that once housed the
regional gulag administration headquarters.

Panikarov came to Kolyma in the 1970s, where he learned the grim history of
the camps and began visiting their remains, collecting prisoners' clothes,
tools and tableware.

In 1994, after many failed attempts to get support from the local
administration, he bought a two-room apartment in Yagodnoye and put the
exhibits on display.

"May be it does not all make sense to people, but when time passes may be it
will be useful. I think I am only doing rough work and later there will be
somebody who will sum up and analyse what I have gathered," he said.

Today Panikarov's museum is Yagodnoye's key attraction and the local
administration has offered to exhibit his artefacts at a former cinema.

The Kolyma track is littered with abandoned villages standing next to the
ruins of labour camps, but Yagodnoye, "the town of berries" in Russian, is
prosperous by local standards.

The local administration is trying to lure entrepreneurs and gold
prospectors. There's even a town Internet server.

"The wives of the gold prospectors look at the websites of Moscow shops so
they know where to go when they get there. The prospectors themselves look up
the world prices for gold," said Vladimir Alexeyev, director of the town's
communications centre.

One computer is available for public use at Yagodnoye's post office, but
Alexeyev dreams of installing a web camera to let residents stay in touch
over the Internet with children studying in Magadan, which would save money
on telephones and travel.

The server also hosts Ivan Panikrov's gulag history website
(http:/ya.msi.ru/museums/main.htm). But Panikrov's ambition is to take
tourists to see the real thing.

When they met, Alabushev asked Panikirov if, with all of his knowledge about
the gulag, he would take people to places like Canyon Valley to show them a
real camp and explain what happened there.

"Yes, I am ready," he said. I know lot of places like this."

******

#13
Report: Russian merchant ships used in spying on U.S. bases

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6, (UPI) - Russian merchant ships are being used to
gather military intelligence on U.S. nuclear submarines and bases in the
Pacific Northwest, The Washington Times reported in its Monday edition.

The Times based its report on a classified July 2000 CIA document it says
"provides the first solid evidence of long-suspected Russian merchant ship
intelligence collections efforts." Some Pentagon officials fear the data
could be sold or leaked to international terrorists, according to the
newspaper.

The report said the Russian ship Kapitan Konev informed intelligence
officials in Vladivostok about a "visual contact" with a U.S. submarine
while transiting the Strait of Juan de Fuca, north of Seattle. The strait
is a major transit point for U.S. nuclear submarines heading out to sea from
Submarine Group Nine based in Bremerton, Wash.

The CIA stated the Kapitan Konev identified the submarine as a ballistic
missile sub. But other intelligence reports obtained by The Times said a
Russian national notified Vladivostok that he had spotted the USS Parche, an
attack submarine used in U.S. covert operations.

A separate report by the National Security Agency said the Kapitan Konev
twice contacted Russian intelligence with reports in July on the activities
of the U.S. vessel. A more detailed message was sent later containing data
on the Parche and on the movement of other U.S. and Canadian military
vessels.

"This ship [Kapitan Konev] is among a larger list of special interest
vessels that have engaged in suspicious or anomalous activities on one or
more occasions," the NSA report said.

A report by the Pentagon said that between February 1999 and May 2000
there were nearly three dozen cases in which Russian merchant ships spied on
non-Russian vessels.

The reports included identification of many U.S. Navy warships, as well as
British, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian ships and an Algerian
submarine.

The Pentagon report said numerous "anomalous events" supported the belief
that Russian commercial ships are spying for Moscow. "However, in all cases,
no evidence that conclusively implicates Russian vessels in intelligence
activities in North American waters has been discerned," the report said.

******

#14
Latvia Says Russia Nostalgic for Soviet Empire

RIGA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said on Monday
Russian nostalgia for the Soviet empire was still troubling its relations
with Moscow nine year's after the Baltic state regained its independence.

Freiberga also told the BBC in an interview that Latvia would expect help
from NATO if Russia threatened her country, even though it is not a member.

"I think Kosovo is not a member of the NATO alliance and yet the alliance was
able to take action when it felt that, according to the principles on which
it is founded, action and intervention was necessary," she said.

"I would expect it to do no less anywhere else in Europe."

Latvia's post-Soviet relations with Russia have been icy due to Moscow's
accusations that the Baltic state discriminates against its Russian minority.
Moscow also opposes Latvia's bid to join NATO, which Riga hopes to be ready
to do by the alliance's next summit in 2002.

Russia also accused Latvia of rehabilitating Nazism earlier this year in its
prosecution of elderly former Red Partisan Vasili Kononov, whom Russia sees
as a hero of the Soviet Union's struggle against Nazi Germans, for war
crimes.

The case is still under appeals review and Kononov accepted Moscow's offer of
Russian citizenship following his prosecution.

Latvia has defended its right to try Kononov and suspects accused of similar
crimes against civilians, but Russia says the country is punishing Russians
for fighting against fascism.

"I think the Kremlin is trying to create a problem where there isn't one in
the faint hope that they can still recover the empire that collapsed because
it was unable to survive," Vike-Freiberga said.

Latvia has been criticised for pursuing Communist-era suspects while not
trying a single suspect in Nazi-era crimes, even though 95 percent of its
70,000 pre-war Jewish population died at the hands of Germans and their local
collaborators.

Vike-Freiberga said the Soviets executed or exiled many Nazi collaborators
after it pushed the Germans out in 1944.

Prosecutors in September announced Nazi crimes charges against Latvian-born
Konrads Kalejs, now an Australian citizen. They are now preparing extradition
papers.

******

#15
Moscow Times
November 4, 2000
Brodsky's Great Adventure
By Sergei Roy
Sergei Roy is editor in chief of Moscow News. He welcomes e-mail at
moseng@co.ru

When the Soviet regime began persecuting Joseph Brodsky, eventually packing
him off into internal, and then external exile, Anna Akhmatova let drop one
of her famous bon mots: "What a biography they [the KGB] are writing for the
red-headed one!" As I was reading Joseph Brodsky: Collected Poems in English,
I was inclined to think that Anna Andreyevna's comment might be acute but not
quite relevant. The jail, the exile, even the Nobel Prize could be the work
of social-political circumstances f but they had little impact on the poet's
oeuvre. The salient trait of Brodsky as man and poet, his nonconformism, was
existential rather than social or political: His prime concern was not the
times but Time and Self, and what Time did to Self f a fact that Brodsky
formulated quite clearly and explicitly in his interviews (recently collected
in Russian by Zakharov press).

Interviewers often pestered Brodsky with questions about the way his work was
affected by his brushes with the Soviet system, his exile and his emigration.
He would patiently, and at times impatiently, explain that the 18 months he
spent in exile were the best in his life; that the focus of his life were
strophes, not catastrophes; and that movement through space was nothing while
movement through time, everything.

There was, however, one kind of spatial adventure that affected Brodsky
profoundly f the movement from the Russian linguistic space to the English
one illustrated in the volume under review. I must say outright that this
adventure ended in failure, though not a very tragic one. Putting it
succinctly, Brodsky in Russian is a great poet f practically all his work has
that halo of greatness, which not even his detractors or people who plain
hate his guts can deny. Brodsky in English is, well, patchy and not often
recognizable. It's all quite unlike the uniformly superb texture of his
Russian verse, which by now has permeated the work of countless mini-Brodskys
in Russia.

Despite his frequent denials, Brodsky apparently wished to out-Nabokov
Nabokov and see his work as part (maybe an important part) of the
American-English poetic landscape. Thus in publishing "So Forth," Brodsky
identified the translators separately from the poems, which Ann Kjellberg,
the editor of the present volume, "understood as an invitation to the reader
to consider the poems as if they were original texts in English," and
followed the same principle here. Now, those of us who know the originals
cannot help comparing them with the translations, and those who don't
probably cannot help wondering about the disparity between the stature of a
Nobel Prize winner and Poet Laureate and the quality of some of the poetry.

The factors responsible for the disparity are easiest to find in the case of
the 33 poems written by Brodsky in English. These fall under two headings:
vers libre and classically structured poems complete with rhyme and meter.

In Russian, Brodsky avoided vers libre, for a very good reason that he
himself carefully explained to an interviewer: When you pour modern content
into classical form, a powerful tension arises, which gives proper scope to
the novel things you have to say. I couldn't agree more f only it didn't work
out that way in Brodsky's English poems. It was all right as long as Brodsky
wrote light verse. Trouble arose, though, when Brodsky tried to squeeze
serious content into the rhymed iambic tetrameter of "Reveille," where he got
a rather unwanted jingling, dancing effect.

One wonders whether Brodsky felt the jarring effect of the discrepancy
between the weighty content and the lightweight medium, for as often as not
he retreats into vers libre f and you know what? The "tension" is gone! As
Brodsky himself put it, "Hence these somewhat wooden lines in our common
language."

As you read, say, "At a Lecture," you get the impression that Brodsky could
go on stringing those "somewhat wooden lines" indefinitely, at no particular
danger or profit to himself or the reader, except of course for the brilliant
line and a half at the end: "As the swan confessed/ to the lake: I don't like
myself. But you are welcome to my reflection." Only he had expressed that
disgust with himself and indifference to humanity with greater power and at
greater length in many of his Russian poems, including his magnum opus,
"Gorbunov and Gorchakov."

Now for the translations that form the bulk of this volume f authorial
translations, first of all. Brodsky said in an interview that a poetic
translation, at best, conveys about 75 percent of the original. In this
business, though, that 25 percent gap is crucial. You might comb Brodsky's
entire Russian oeuvre in search of stopgaps f words put into gaping slots to
cover up absence of thought or emotion or just sense f and you'd be lucky to
collect a handful. In his English translations, stopgaps occur with
irritating regularity.

The bane of anyone who has ever done poetic translation from Russian into
English is the disparity in the length of words. English words are much
shorter, so if you wish to translate equisyllabically, that is, keeping the
same number of syllables as in the original, you have to do some padding,
introducing ideas that are not there in the original. When the author does
the translating, he is under no obligation to be true to the original f and
the padding sometimes produces a striking thematic development, as in one of
Brodsky's more optimistic poems, "May 24, 1980," where, toward the end, the
rather anemic Russian line, tolko s gorem ya chuvstvuyu solidarnost ("I feel
solidarity only with grief") erupts into this striking English one: "Broken
eggs make me grieve; the omelet, though, makes me vomit."

This, however, is a felicitous exception rather than the rule; the padding
often becomes disastrous when the translation is not done by the poet
himself. Take Richard Wilbur's rendition of one of Brodsky's finest, "The
Funeral of Bobo." I doubt Brodsky authorized or even read that one. Here, the
line v nepovtorimoi perspektive Rossi ( "in Rossi's matchless perspective")
becomes "in Rossi's matchless, long, and tapering street." Now, St.
Petersburg's Ulitsa Zodchego Rossi, the fairest in Russia, is exactly 220
meters long (I'd say that's short for a street) and 22 meters wide, and it
has this magic effect that things, as Brodsky says, "do not dwindle but quite
the reverse."

For Brodsky, the poet is an instrument wielded by language, not the other way
round, as common sense would imply. Brodsky was superb, he was great, as long
as Russian wielded him. English was not his native tongue, and it refused to
wield him to the best advantage. With time it might become his life blood f
there were clear signs of that. Joseph Brodsky really should have lived
longer.

"Joseph Brodsky: Collected Poems in English," ed. Ann Kjellberg. 540 pages.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $30.

******

#16
Financial Times (UK)
6 November 2000
Smirnoff finds Russian rival hard to swallow: Row over vodka label exposes
wider issue of intellectual property
By ANDREW JACK

Drinkers who stick to vodka claim never to suffer from hangovers, but when
Jack Keenan ordered a bottle of his company's product in a Moscow
restaurant a few years ago, a tiny difference in the label gave him a big
headache.

In vodka's historical and spiritual home country, the waiter did not bring
the deputy chief executive of UDV a sample of "Smirnoff", one of its
best-known brands. Instead he produced a bottle of "Smirnov", a cheeky
local competitor with a design that differs by little more than two letters.

For nearly a decade, the company, which is now part of Diageo, has been
locked in a fierce legal dispute with its Russian rival which says much
about one of the most pressing issues for those doing business in
contemporary Russia: the protection of intellectual property rights.

"This is an important intellectual property issue," says Mr Keenan.
"Smirnoff should be protected if Russia wants to join the World Trade
Organisation. This brand is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to us,
and the fight has taken up a huge amount of management time."

According to UDV lore, Piotr Smirnov revolutionised vodka production in
Russia with a continuous distillation process in the 1860s.

He became purveyor to the Imperial Tsarist court, but family feuds damaged
the business even before the Bolshevik Revolution closed it down.

Vladimir, one of the sons, fled the country, and sold the US rights to
Rudolph Kunett in 1933. They were bought by Heublein, UDV's predecessor, in
1939, which went on to acquire worldwide rights during the 1950s.

But Boris Smirnov, a former KGB employee who says he is a descendant of
Alexei, another of Piotr's sons, dismisses this version of history,
claiming to be the true inheritor of the business, registered as "Trading
house of the descendants of the supplier to the court of the Tsar, P
Smirnov".

While refusing to show any written proof, he adds that his grandmother left
the secret recipes to him.

"You go to the French for champagne, the Scottish for whisky, and to
Russians for vodka," he says. "Smirnoff has a lot of trouble persuading
people that their vodka is Russian."

Mr Smirnov has managed to build a significant business for his brands in
Russia, albeit partly on the back of international image-building paid for
by UDV. He has also managed to win or delay most of the legal battles in
Russia, while losing most of them brought by or against him abroad.

He apparently managed to register his brand with Rospatent, the Russian
state trademark agency, in 1991 just ahead of Heublein's similar attempt.
Tactics in the regional court of Krymsk included notifying the company of a
hearing earlier this year only after the case had taken place.

Eugene Arievich, a partner with Baker & McKenzie, the lawyer acting for
UDV, stresses that whatever the ancient history of the Smirnov family, the
central legal argument in his client's favour today should be
"well-knownness". "We believe that in any other country this conflict would
already have been settled," he says.

When it applied for registration in Russia, the Smirnoff brand was already
famous around the world and is now registered in 144 countries.

Even in Russia, and even in Soviet times, when its vodka was available only
in duty-free stores in the USSR, it had some name recognition.

Mr Smirnov remains unrepentant, and says he is in discussions for
production of his own vodka in some of Russia's neighbouring states. "We
are ready to work with anyone if the conditions are reasonable," he says.
"But the trading house is sacred to me. I won't give it away."

Nonetheless, an unexpected second front has recently opened against him.
Alfa Eko, a trading company linked to the Alfa Group, a Moscow-based
financial and industrial conglomerate, acquired 50 per cent of the shares
in his business from Andrei, another Smirnov descendant, in August.

In a newspaper advertisement in the Russian press last week, it warned that
Boris had lost a legal battle to dispute its purchase of shares, held no
official post in the business, and had no right to make statements or sign
contracts on its behalf.

Sergei Ilin, head of Alfa Eko's alcohol division, says that the Trading
House was poorly positioned in the past and made a number of strategic
mistakes.

He says he has also launched discussions with UDV that could lead to an
amicable settlement.

But Alfa has a reputation for taking on western as well as Russian
investors, and playing tough. Its advertisement concludes that it intends
to revive "the oldest trademark of Russia, which is recognised not only in
Russia but also far beyond its borders".

UDV may hope for a change in tactics. But it may yet find that it has a
battle ahead for the Russian market.

Moscow vodka magnate besieged in HQ by police

Police yesterday continued to besiege the Moscow headquarters of the
Smirnov trading house, where Boris Smirnov, the chairman, refused to leave
his office after a raid over the weekend, writes Andew Jack.

Masked police entered the building on Saturday to enforce a court order
which Alfa Eko, part of the Alfa Group conglomerate, said had confirmed its
right to appoint Sergei Yuzefov as general director.

Alfa Eko said it purchased 50 per cent of the company's shares in August
and has criticised Mr Smirnov, who accuses Alfa of falsifying documents and
having no right to take control. The dispute follows a similar stand-off
over the Kristall vodka plant.

******

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