November 20, 2000   

This Date's Issues:   4643 • 4644

Johnson's Russia List
#4644
20 November 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. The Times (UK) editorial: Time well spent. Blair's Russia trip is an attempt to influence Putin's reforms.
2. The Times (UK): Michael Binyon, Putin's point of order for Blair.
3. AFP: Russian-US deal on reducing their nuclear arsenals possible: Clinton.
4. Reuters: Russia aims to improve taxes for investors.
5. The Guardian (UK): Jonathan Steele, Serbia is just the first of the postcommunist states to fall. Belarus, Azerbaijan and Georgia could all follow in Belgrade's steps.
6. The Russia Journal: Otto Latsis, The memory that mustn’t die.
7. Itar-Tass: Exodus continues from Russian Far North.
8. BBC Monitoring: Russian president critical of armed forces' failure to reform.
9. RIA: Putin says Cold War attitudes prevail in the West. 
10. BBC Monitoring: Ex-governor's aide says his torturer blamed Jews for everything.
11. The Independent (UK): The secret of a spy trial is not having to worry about the verdict.
12. BBC Monitoring: Putin aide gives interview on regional elections, Kremlin plans.] 

*******

#1
The Times (UK)
November 20, 2000
Editorial
Time well spent 
Blair's Russia trip is an attempt to influence Putin's reforms 

Abandoning a busy domestic agenda and setting aside preparations for the Nice 
summit, Tony Blair arrives in Moscow this evening for his fifth meeting with 
Vladimir Putin. There is no obvious reason for the visit, no quarrel to 
settle or foreign threat preoccupying both countries. The two men will 
discuss the confused American election and the likely fallout for Europe. 
They will look at the Balkans and ways of bolstering the new Government in 
Yugoslavia. And they will range over the state of Russia — its economy,
need 
for investment, fight against criminality and proposed military reform. None 
of this is urgent or demands the personal attention of a British Prime 
Minister. Mr Blair has rescheduled his already postponed trip because he 
believes there is a far more pressing question than “Who lost Russia?”, 
cynically circulating in Western capitals along with talk of chaos, 
corruption and crackdowns. It is “Who will win Russia?” He believes
that he 
can. 

Mr Blair and Mr Putin look like the international odd couple. One is a 
committed liberal, an internationalist and Atlanticist, impatient with the 
old ways but fearful of public opinion and eager to explain and justify; the 
other is a dour nationalist, suspicious of the liberal intelligentsia, 
longing for a return to old ways and preferring secrecy to openness. But with 
Thatcherite eyes Mr Blair has seen in Mr Putin the early Gorbachev — a
man he 
can do business with. He sees a realisation that Russia must change and 
decisiveness to change it, and he sees a man determined to raise his country 
from its current political and economic humiliation, seeking Western help in 
this risky venture. 

Russia has always been a country where personal relations counted for more 
than the rules of government. Mr Blair knows that, and knows the value of 
rapport and support when needed. Foreign policy interests him little. But 
apart from relations with America and the European Union, Russia is one of 
the few issues to engage his enthusiasm. He understands the challenges — 
overcoming inertia, promoting the rule of law, enforcing the authority of 
government, adjusting to a traumatic loss of empire, finding a new political 
and military role and changing a mentality almost impervious to change. On 
all these, Mr Blair believes he can offer his own experience. 

In cementing a special relationship there would be a long-term payoff for 
Britain: a new transcontinental role that is not subordinate to the 
Franco-German directorship of the EU; a potentially vast boost in trade; and 
a chance for Britain to capitalise on the assets of its language, culture and 
network of global communications. But in the short term there is a risk. 

Mr Blair is tying himself to a man seen by many in the West as a liability, 
the embodiment of the worst features of the old Soviet Union — the KGB,
press 
controls, centralised government, nationalist posturing and a readiness to 
use force against rebels and opponents. And even if all this is conceded as 
the price of holding Russia together, Mr Putin may still fail to modernise 
and democratise his country. Is he a Pinochet or an Ataturk? Is either model 
nowadays acceptable? Mr Blair, however, believes that international, and 
especially European, stability depends crucially on a stable Russia. Mr Putin 
chose him to help to find that stability as much as he chose to respond. If 
this visit is part of a wider process of general Western influence on the way 
Mr Putin sets about his reforms, then it is time well spent.

******

#2
The Times (UK)
November 20, 2000
Putin's point of order for Blair 
BY MICHAEL BINYON 

In the Kremlin tomorrow the Prime Minister will see Russia’s President
reaping the benefits of recent reforms 

WHEN Tony Blair sweeps into the Kremlin tomorrow morning he will find a
slight, determined man who is icily confident that after eight months in
office he is beginning to put his stamp on the country. 
Vladimir Putin has already begun to dismantle the wilder legacy of the
Yeltsin years, imposing authority where there was licence, reform where
there was drift and government control where there was freedom of
expression. Most Russians are pleased with the result. 

A survey published at the weekend showed that 66 per cent approve of what
he is doing, and an even higher figure, 68 per cent, trust him. This is an
extraordinary turnaround in the Kremlin’s fortunes: in Mr Yeltsin’s final
year of office, barely 8 per cent in repeated surveys approved of him. 

Whether or not Mr Putin is doing well, however, depends almost entirely on
whom one asks. Beneath the general popularity ratings, there is sharp
disagreement over a leader who, to most Russians, is still enigmatic,
unknown and unpredictable. 

Part of his popularity is undoubtedly due to the general sense of stability
and order that is slowly returning to Russia. Part is due to the easing of
Russia’s chronic economic crisis, alleviated by the rise in global oil
prices that has brought a bonanza into the Kremlin’s coffers. 

Those most obviously content with the way things appear to be going are the
old Soviet generation. Most people aged 45 or more have had great
difficulty adjusting to the collapse of communism. They have begun, more or
less, to understand the working of the market, to rely less on the
Government for directives and answers and to buckle down to a full day’s
work, which is increasingly necessary to earn the money to survive. 

Bureaucrats, government officials, civil servants and all those who had
steady jobs were increasingly bewildered by the stop-go capriciousness of
Mr Yeltsin’s reforms, by the sense of drift and by the unscrupulousness of
the new rich who merged business with politics to create an oligarchy from
which most Russians felt excluded. Mr Putin, they believe, will restore
poryadok — order. 

They do not see a return to communism — almost every Russian now believes
that impossible — but to a style of administration where orders come from
the top, authority is unquestioned and the pyramid of government is not
challenged by racketeers and corruption. Equally satisfied are the economic
liberals — those who have plunged into the new world of business but feel
stifled by red tape, bureaucracy and the malign jealousy of rivals and
petty officials. 

Russia’s market development is now very patchy. Some towns and regions,
such as Novgorod and Nizhni Novgorod, are doing well, have encouraged local
enterprise and have reformist governors or local administrations that
reward enterprise. 

Mr Putin has clearly signalled that he wants economic take-off. He has
started to tackle the bottlenecks — the rapacious and unfair tax system,
the lack of investment regulation and the inefficient state monopolies —
and is pushing hard for Western investment and knowhow. He has attempted,
rather clumsily, to sack or curb the worst regional governors. He has
confronted the most notorious oligarchs, setting up what are intended as
the “show trials” of Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, to warn other
powerful magnates not to abuse their dominant economic position. 

It is a message that the young and the middle class heartily endorse. Mr
Putin also earns high ratings from average Russians humiliated by their
country’s loss of empire, influence and confidence. His talk of a strong
state and of Russia remaining a great power goes down well. 

The more observant have noticed that such popular patriotic posturing has
been underpinned by some tough decisions, however — the huge and sensitive
issue of military reform, cutting the Armed Forces by a proposed 600,000
men, slashing nuclear arsenals and forcing Russia to live within its means,
as well as the pragmatism in foreign policy that has stepped back from
expensive confrontation in areas such as the Balkans. 

But there is one influential class that is far from happy. The liberal
intelligentsia is appalled by what it sneeringly calls the triumph of the
old KGB. It is alarmed at attempts to control the press, censor criticism
and restore the President and his Government to the untouchable positions
they enjoyed under communism. The liberals care passionately about human
rights, religious freedom, police accountability and local liberties — and
see them all being curtailed in the name of order. 

Many oppose the war in Chechnya and believe that both the Duma and the
public have now been cowed into accepting the government version of the
conflict. The liberals’ anguish has focused on the row over press freedom.
Mr Putin, they say, will never overcome his KGB background, his dislike of
criticism or his obsession with what television says of him. Indeed, he
rarely begins any meeting on the hour, to leave himself time to watch the
television news. 

Culture, too, is feeling again the pressure for conformity. Archives are
closing, the experimental in art is being discouraged, the new Minister of
Culture is recolonising the State’s old cultural territory. 

The liberals have a loud voice. Anglophone, sophisticated, well-travelled
and well-connected, they are the people who most influence overseas opinion
and who fear or sneer at the Putin ascendancy. 

But an hour from Moscow, few people care about what the press can say. They
want meat to be available, schools to have the roofs fixed, pensions to be
paid, petty local tyrants to be tamed and the established order of life to
be restored. 

This is what Mr Putin appears to offer many, what gives him confidence to
outline to Mr Blair all the other priorities he must tackle simultaneously.
The polls are on his side, and, so far, so is time. 

*****

#3
Russian-US deal on reducing their nuclear arsenals possible: Clinton

WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (AFP) - 
US President Bill Clinton said Sunday a US-Russian deal on cutting the two 
countries' respective strategic nuclear arsenals was "possible" but noted 
that more time was needed to convince Moscow of the merits of a missile 
defense system.

In an interview with CNN from Ho Chi Minh City where he was wrapping up a 
historic visit to Vietnam, the US leader commented on a proposal by Russian 
President Vladimir Putin to slash the number of warheads held by both sides 
to below 1,500.

The two men discussed the issue on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic 
Cooperation (APEC) summit in Brunei four days ago.

Cautioning that he did not want to say anything that "would compromise my 
successor's options," Clinton however said: "I think its quite possible that 
we could agree to go down to fewer missiles in our nuclear arsenal and 
theirs."

"I think that it's important that there also be fewer warheads ... There's a 
difference between missiles and warheads. I don't think we ought to go back 
to highly dangerous richly-armed MIRV missiles, multiple warhead missiles, " 
he noted.

The key to a deal was to have a "target design that we believe is adequate to 
protect the United States and that our missile component will serve," the US 
leader said. 

"If we do that, then we could agree with them to reduce the number of 
missiles. And I'd hoped that we could get that done even beforehand. So I'm 
encouraged by that."

He also commented on a US proposal for a National Missile Defense system 
(NMD) to guard against attacks by states like Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

"I think the trick will be somehow having the Russians and others with equity 
interests here believe that we all have a vested interest in trying to 
develop enough missile defense to stop the rogue states and terrorists from 
piercing the barriers not only of the United States, but of Russia, China, of 
any other country that might want to participate," Clinton said.

The United States wants to amend the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty, the 
cornerstone of Cold War nuclear deterrence, to clear the way for the NMD.

Moscow believes the move could spark a new arms race and has threatened to 
tear up existing weapons accords and halt disarmament talks if the United 
States takes unilateral action.

"What I tried to do was buy some time so my successor could sit down with the 
Russians, with any others who are parties and interests -- and our European 
allies of course -- and tried to plot out a future that would leave us safer 
than we are today," the US president pointed out.

But he stressed the need to take into account the impact of these moves on 
the Indian subcontinent, where India and Pakistan are locked in a tense 
nuclear standoff, and "on the Chinese who might decide to build -- acquire a 
lot more missiles or develop them or not."

******

#4
INTERVIEW-Russia aims to improve taxes for investors
By Anatoly Vereshchagin

MOSCOW, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Russia's government, struggling to carry out 
much-needed structural reforms, aims to streamline the tax system to lure 
more investment, a senior finance ministry official told Reuters. 

Sergei Shatalov, first deputy minister in charge of tax reform, said the next 
stage of tax reforms would focus on stamping out tax breaks, cutting taxes on 
use of natural resources and encouraging firms to pay profit taxes. 

"These measures will lift many barriers to doing business in Russia...We are 
creating additional investment prospects," Shatalov told Reuters in an 
interview late on Friday. 

"Our strategic aim is to ease the overall tax burden and establish fair and 
equal rules for everybody," he said. 

Russia launched radical tax reforms this summer with the aim of dismantling a 
system which investors have long described as one of the main impediments to 
doing business legally in the country. 

Parliament has already approved slashing the multi-tier income tax rate, 
replacing it with a flat 13 percent rate. Payroll and pension fund deductions 
have also been simplified and reduced, along with a much-vilified turnover 
tax. 

These changes will cut the overall tax burden by 1.5-2.0 percent of gross 
domestic product next year and a further reduction is expected later. 

CARROT-AND-STICK POLICY FOR OIL COMPANIES 

Shatalov said the government would crack down on rampant tax evasion among 
businesses. One aim is to tighten control over deals between inter-dependent 
entities, including within holding companies, that allow them to manipulate 
prices and evade taxes. 

Improvement of tax administration in the fishing industry alone would give 
the federal budget additional $700-800 million annually in a few years, 
Shatalov said. 

At the same time, he said the government would offer some incentives to oil 
and gas producers such as lower royalty payments. "As we expect them to pay 
taxes in full, we are ready to lower the tax burden considerably," he said. 

"We want to consider all these issues together to demonstrate to oil 
companies that we do not want to scalp them, but want to find reasonable 
business conditions," Shatalov said, referring to various tax changes 
affecting the companies. 

He said the government did not plan to reduce a 30 percent profit tax as its 
share in total tax collection had gradually increased, rising to an estimated 
40 percent or more in 2000 from 20-25 percent previously. 

There would also be more possibilities to reduce the tax burden by deducting 
such items as loan interest payments, advertising spending, personnel 
training and insurance. 

On the other hand, the government plans to eliminate certain tax breaks, 
which have helped to keep afloat loss-making enterprises and prevented fair 
competition. 

"The current tax breaks have existed since 1993 but they have failed to stop 
a fall in investment," Shatalov said. 

He said the government planned to abolish a one percent tax on hard currency 
purchases in 2004, if not earlier, depending on tax collection performance 
and the overall economic situation. 

The government aims to get parliamentary approval of new proposals by July 
2001 to use them in the draft 2002 budget. 

"It will be a good signal for the markets and for business on the whole that 
tax reform is under way and has a good future," Shatalov said. 

******

#5
The Guardian (UK)
November 20, 2000
Serbia is just the first of the postcommunist states to fall 
Belarus, Azerbaijan and Georgia could all follow in Belgrade's steps
By Jonathan Steele (jonathan.steele@guardian.co.uk) 

Yugoslavia is gradually coming back in from the cold and restoring relations 
with Britain and the Nato states which bombed it last year. But, as normality 
resumes, a strange myth still hovers around the popular uprising which 
overthrew Slobodan Milosevic. 

It was "the last of eastern Europe's great anti-communist revolutions", 
according to Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post, a seasoned reporter of 
European communism. "If the Solidarity revolution in Poland was the beginning 
of the end of communism, this was the end of the end of communism," writes 
the academic Timothy Garton Ash. 

Wait a minute. Wasn't the distinguishing mark of the Stalinist systems which 
collapsed in the late 1980s in eastern Europe the fact that they were 
one-party states? Independent media were banned. Freedoms of assembly and 
speech were tightly constrained. And of course there were no contested 
elections. 

So where's the similarity with Serbia in the year 2000? Didn't Milosevic call 
an election and lose? Wasn't his victorious opponent, Vojislav Kostunica, the 
head of an 18-party coalition? Didn't opposition parties run local government 
in a dozen Serbian cities, backed by scores of independent radio stations and 
newspapers? 

Long after communism in Europe has gone, it is as though the anti-communist 
triumphalism which reached its peak at the end of the cold war blindly 
carries on. People hoped Milosevic, who was once a communist, would be forced 
out of power a decade ago. It did not happen. Too bad. But he has gone now, 
so this was just a triumph delayed. 

It is a good try but it will not wash. Ten years is a long time in politics 
and Serbia has changed enormously since the late 1980s. It became a typical 
example of a postcommunist state. 

By 1987, when he seized the leadership of the Socialist Party of Serbia, 
Milosevic was already more of an opportunist than a communist. He became a 
nationalist and co-opted the Greater Serbian agenda of the country's second 
world war monarchists and anti-communists. 

Economically the system Milosevic created was a hybrid, similar to the flawed 
privatisations well-known elsewhere. Cronies of the political leadership ran 
state companies or held lucrative posts in businesses whose exact ownership 
was obscure. 

Serbia had a multiparty system, but with elections that were "free but 
unfair", because of the influence of Milosevic's monopoly control of state 
television. People could march and rally against him. Only when they seemed 
to be gaining sufficient strength to challenge him did he call out the 
police. By Stalinist standards his approach to dissidents was mild. His 
favourite weapon of repression - contract killing - was borrowed from the 
mafia rather than eastern Europe in the 1980s. The parallel is with the 
authoritarian postcommunist former Soviet states, including Yeltsin's and 
Putin's Russia, with their mysterious murders and unfair elections. 

The crowds who swarmed into Belgrade last month were not shouting slogans 
against communism. They were angry about corruption and a collapsed economy. 
The freedom they wanted was not freedom from one-party rule but freedom from 
one-man rule, or, more accurately, from one-family rule. Milosevic's wife, 
Mira Markovic, is as hated as he was. 

We have to look to Asia rather than Europe for similarities to this aspect of 
Serbia's revolution. The Belgrade Autumn's antecedents can be found in the 
Philippines in 1986 when crowds rose up against Ferdinand Marcos and his wife 
Imelda after they, like Milosevic, tried to fiddle election results. Serbia 
also had echoes of Tehran in 1979, when mass demonstrations and a mutinous 
army forced the Shah and his wife to leave. Most recently it recalls Jakarta 
in 1998 when another corrupt dictator at the head of a flawed multi party 
system, President Suharto, had to resign. 

What happened this autumn in Serbia was not the last anti-communist 
revolution in Europe. It was Europe's first postcommunist revolution. We may 
see the next ones in Belarus or more probably in Azerbaijan, where there is a 
similar mixture of disappointed nationalism, thousands of refugees, 
catastrophically declining living standards and rising anger over corruption 
amongst the elite. 

In Serbia, the main issue which prompted the uprising was betrayal. After 13 
years Milosevic had broken all his promises. His claim to defend Serbs 
throughout the former Yugoslavia had ended with more than a million Serbs as 
refugees from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. His defiance of the world led to 
sanctions and a ruined economy, from which only the big-time smugglers and 
their friends in the regime grew rich. 

Most revolutions contain an element of restoration. They are not only about 
creating a better future but restoring the best aspects of the past. 
Nostalgia for the stability of communist times is common throughout the 
former Soviet Union as well as eastern Europe. So it is not surprising that 
in this first postcommunist revolution in Europe many middle-aged Serbs 
remembered the days when Yugoslavs could travel freely throughout western 
Europe as a golden age. Yugoslavia was the most liberal communist country in 
Europe, and some had worked in their youth as guestworkers in Germany, 
Austria and Switzerland when Poles, Hungarians and Czechs were still locked 
behind the iron curtain. 

In the hours after Milosevic's defeat it was fascinating to see how dozens of 
Serbian companies were taken over by their staff. Within the bigger political 
uprising, a series of economic uprisings was going on as employees forced 
their way into managers' officers, prevented them from taking away the 
companies' financial documents, and ordered them to leave. Tito's system of 
workers' self-management briefly revived. 

The states of central Europe have managed the transition to a market economy 
more or less smoothly and even though inequalities have widened the fallout 
has been contained by a general upsurge in growth. Their political systems 
offer a genuine opportunity for removing the government, and there has been 
regular alternation of parties in power without electoral fraud. 

The same is not true in Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan or Georgia, or indeed 
Russia. Serbia's revolution was prompted by special factors, in particular 10 
years of pointless and lost wars. That may make Serbia a unique exception 
which will not be repeated elsewhere. But the higher probability is that 
Europe's first postcommunist revolution against corruption, crony capitalism 
and flawed democracy will not be its last. 

******

#6
The Russia Journal
November 18-24, 2000
The memory that mustn’t die
By Otto Latsis

A book has just been published in memory of the victims of political
repression. Called "Execution lists. Moscow, 1937-1941, Kommunarka,
Butovo," the book was prepared by the Moscow government commission for
restoring the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression,
along with the FSB Central Archive and the Memorial society.

Books like this have appeared in various Russian towns over recent years,
and this new book isn’t the first of its kind in Moscow. A list of people
shot and buried at the Donsky cemetery was published in 1993. 

This was followed by a list of victims of repression buried at Vagankovsky
cemetery. Then came four volumes with the names of those buried at the
Butovo shooting ground, one of the most terrifying places of execution in
Moscow and the surrounding region during the Stalin years. 

More than 20,000 people were killed at Butovo over 11 months in 1937-1938
alone. As is now clear from newly published documents, these were planned
killings. The repressive organs had a "plan" for the number of "enemies of
the people" to be shot, and it didn’t matter who exactly ended up on the
list. 

But though the new book is not unique, it does deserve particular
attention. The list of victims contains the names of 4,527 people shot in
Moscow between Sept. 2, 1937 and Oct. 16, 1941 under false political
accusations. The book’s compilers indicate the two main burial sites of the
victims – Butovo and the Kommunarka state farm. 

There are more than a dozen such burial sites around Moscow, but Kommunarka
stands out among them. Unlike elsewhere in Russia, Moscow had two execution
conveyor belts – run by the Moscow regional NKVD (Stalin-era secret police)
and the national NKVD. Victims of the regional NKVD were shot and buried in
Butovo. Victims whose cases were handled by the national NKVD are buried at
Kommunarka. 

In the eyes of victims’ families, and of human memory in general, all these
murdered innocent people are equal. But some well-known names crop up among
the victims at Kommunarka.

Take for example, a man whose address at the time of his arrest was very
simple – Moscow, the Kremlin. This man was Nikolai Bukharin, a leading
Bolshevik theoretician, whom Vladimir Lenin had once called the favorite of
the party. 

With the exception of Lev Trotsky, killed by NKVD agents abroad, Bukharin
was probably the biggest figure to fall victim to Stalin’s purges. The
rightist opposition headed by Bukharin provided the most serious
alternative to Stalin’s policy of robbing and destroying the peasantry in
the name of forced industrialization and militarization of the country. 

Also buried at Kommunarka is Alexei Rykov, who headed the Soviet government
after Lenin’s death and was another major figure in the rightist opposition.

In the 1930s, where Kommunarka stands today, was a patch of land belonging
to the NKVD, and the dacha of NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda, one of the men
closest to Stalin. Yagoda organized the main political show trials of the
1930s before joining the accused in the trial of the "rightist-Trotskyist
bloc" thought up by Stalin. 

The large-scale repression of the 1930s began with the mass arrest of
secret police employees themselves – most of Soviet secret police founder
Felix Dzerzhinsky’s people weren’t trusted by Stalin. The Kommunarka list
contains the names of dozens if not hundreds of secret police employees.
These included not just counter-intelligence officers and prison officials,
but also intelligence officers including Red Army intelligence head Jan
Berzin. 

It was typical of Stalin’s diabolical mind to have the Chekists shot at the
chief Chekist’s dacha and to send to their deaths there many people he
considered his personal enemies, though most of them weren’t. 

Stalin personally knew many of the people on the list and knew they were
innocent. But he condemned them to death. This is important for the
historians. Stalin condemned these people personally, even though the
sentence was formally passed in most cases by a military collegium of the
Supreme Court. 

In the book’s prologue, Arseny Roginsky, one of its editors, gives a
detailed explanation based on documented evidence of how the sentences were
passed. 

First, the NKVD prepared lists of people it proposed having shot or
sentenced to long prison terms. Then, NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov (Yagoda’s
successor) showed the lists to Stalin, who read them and made corrections.
The lists were signed by Stalin and then by the other Politburo members
before the trials took place. The trials were obviously just a formality.
It’s no wonder that the courts could pass hundreds of sentences a day. 

A book of memory – it’s harder to think of a more exact name. It is the
memory of people who had a heart, historical memory and political memory.
It doesn’t matter how much evidence is uncovered proving Stalin’s personal
guilt in these crimes, his supporters still call for his rehabilitation,
and Stalinist enthusiasts still praise him. 

Some would even rehabilitate the bloodiest of Stalin’s NKVD chiefs –
Lavrenty Beria – and try portraying him as having opposed the mass
repression organized by Yezhov. But the Kommunarka list contains hundreds
of names of people shot at Beria’s initiative, years after Yezhov himself
was executed.

********

#7
Exodus continues from Russian Far North 
ITAR-TASS 

Moscow, 20th November, ITAR-TASS correspondent Olga Fronina: The population
of Russia's northern regions is "steadily decreasing" and has shrunk by
1,052,000 in the past 10 years. According to the latest information, about
11.7m people now live in the Far North and equivalent regions, ITAR-TASS
was told by Nikita Mkrtan, head of statistics and analysis at the migration
policy department of the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Nationalities and
Migration Policy. 

The biggest exodus from the North was seen in 1992 after the collapse of
the USSR, when about 244,400 people left. The areas hardest hit were
Chukotka and Kamchatka, and Magadan, Murmansk and Sakhalin Regions. The
population fell by 1.2 per cent last year, mainly because of young people
going elsewhere. 

In the Soviet Union, the strategy for developing the Far North rested on
creation of large towns such as Norilsk and Murmansk, Mkrtan said. People
moving there enjoyed perks from the state: all sorts of bonuses and
allowances and enhanced pensions and wages. "But the cost of living in the
North is too high now and the system of perks has collapsed," he went on. 

People displaced from other parts of Russia are unwilling to move to the
North, he said. Instead, they go to the northwest, central-European, upper
and lower Volga, central Black Earth areas, or the North Caucasus, southern
Urals or western Siberia. 

Migrant workers from other CIS countries head for Murmansk Region and the
Khanty-Mansy and Yamal-Nenets autonomous areas for the money. Last year
about 3,000 went to Murmansk Region. The Yamal-Nenets area got nearly
4,000, half of them from Ukraine, and over 7,000 went to Khanty-Mansy. 

"The state has to decide whether it wants to encourage migrant workers from
the CIS or to review ways of encouraging them," Mkrtan said. 

*******

#8
BBC Monitoring
Russian president critical of armed forces' failure to reform 
Text of report by Russian Public TV on 20th November 

[Presenter] A conference of Russia's top military and political leadership
is taking place at the Ministry of Defence today to discuss the results of
the armed forces' work in the past year and plans for 2001. Just over half
an hour ago the country's president, Vladimir Putin, addressed the
conference. We have just made contact with our correspondent Valeriy Kiosa. 

[Kiosa] The president's address did indeed end just over half an hour ago,
and he is now meeting commanders of the military districts. The Russian
president's address at the top armed forces command conference could well
be counted as a keynote speech. First of all the president spoke, of
course, about military reform. He described everything done up to now in
this area as extremely ineffective. The president said that this year the
state had only one choice: either to carry on as before and let the
situation go, as the president put it, to the limit or to try to change the
situation. The president said the state found the funds and did that. This
is what the Russian president said about it. 

[Putin] I would assess this year as the year of making the change to a
long-term, extended process of reform in the army, but that is only one
aspect of the situation. On the other hand, the present condition of the
troops and their leadership - moral, discipline and technical military
leadership - is not at the moment in line with the aims or the scope of the
tasks we face. 

[Correspondent] Speaking about this, the president stressed in particular
that all the appointments, an absolute majority of the appointments this
year, for example, in the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff have
been of people appointed to top posts without having any experience of
commanding troops. They have never held army or district commands. They
have moved around in their service careers mainly within Moscow city
limits. The president stressed that the state would no longer tolerate this
situation. 

Another, quite different, issue was that of financing the armed forces.
According to the president, from now on the state would be honest with the
military, in other words, it would deliver everything it promised, even if
this was not as much as would be desired. In this respect he was very
sharply critical of the finance ministry. Incidentally, Deputy Prime
Minister Aleksey Kudrin, who heads this ministry, is attending the
conference. The president that he was not at all pleased with the stance of
finance ministry officials, who say that they will adjust their stance on
financing in the course of the reforms. As Vladimir Putin put it, and I
quote, if you are going to change the mechanics in the course of the
reforms, the state is going to have to change you, he said, addressing the
deputy prime minister. 

[Presenter] Valeriy, did the president mention the situation in Chechnya? 

[Correspondent] Certainly. A very big section of Vladimir Putin's speech
dealt with this. He stressed that everything the armed forces had done in
Chechnya merited all possible respect, primarily because they were trying
to counter actions directed at destroying Russia. This is what Vladimir
Putin said. 

[Putin] Some people are now trying to present our actions in the North
Caucasus as a return to the old imperial policy. I will say directly that
we all must categorically sweep aside that view of things, because this is
a continuation of the theory that says that Russia will be forced to pursue
that policy, it must once again be isolated, must be pushed into line and
into the bloody mire of continual regional internal conflicts. 

[Correspondent] Concluding this part of his speech, Vladimir Putin stressed
that the state was still faced with a great deal of work to decide the
status and the role of the North Caucasus in Russian life. This work would
mostly be done in the political realm, of course, but the president
particularly stressed that nobody would be allowed to deal with Russia from
a position of force. 

******

#9
Putin says Cold War attitudes prevail in the West 
Russian news agency RIA 

Moscow, 20th November: There are people in the West who continue to live by
Cold War principles and still regard our country as a geopolitical
adversary, President Putin said in his final address to the meeting of the
country's top military. Putin said the same opinion can be found in some
western government circles. 

Recalling the events of 10 years ago when the USSR fell apart, the Russian
president said that the country at the time was in a state of Selfimposed
iso-lation as a result of the imperial policy pursued by its leadership,
the desire to solidify the outcome of World War II and consolidate its
positions in Europe and the East. All this, Putin said, led to the
overstretching of resources and created the basis for the disintegration of
the state. 

The head of state said the West regards today's federal actions in Chechnya
as a relapse of the imperial policy. "We should reject this interpretation
categori-cally," Putin said. According to him, the purpose of this
interpretation is to iso-late Russia from the rest of the world and cast it
into a quagmire of constant internal and regional conflicts. 

"To us, it is not the formal status of the Chechen republic that's
important. What important is that this territory should never be used as a
launch pad for an attack against Russia," the president said. 

******

#10
BBC Monitoring
Russia: Ex-governor's aide says his torturer blamed Jews for everything 
Source: NTV, Moscow, in Russian 0700 gmt 20 Nov 00 

[Presenter] It looks like a new scandal is brewing in Kursk Region.
Ex-governor Aleksandr Rutskoy's aide, Sergey Maksachev, has been attacked
in the regional administration's office building. Our correspondent Pavel
Selin met the victim at the hospital. That is what he said: 

[Maksachev, lying on the bed] Oleynikov came in and ordered to shut the
door. Two more people came with him. When I asked what was going on there,
a blow was delivered into my face as a reply. Then another guy jumped at me
and started to strangle me. The third kicked me on the head. Thus I was off
my feet and they started to beat me. This is not a right word to describe -
they just started to kill me. 

At first I did not understand why they are doing it. I realised it only
later, when they were through with their torture. The first questions posed
by them related only to Rutskoy, his economic activities and his
connections and contacts. This Oleynikov told me: "So what, Yids, I did not
manage to finish you and your boss off. But now I'll teach you". 

This is a permanent subject: Jews, the criminals, have plundered and looted
everything. It was mentioned all the time they were beating me. [omitted:
interview with the surgeon previously reported] 

******

#11
The Independent (UK)
November 20, 2000
City Life - Moscow: The secret of a spy trial is not having to worry about
the verdict 

ESPIONAGE IN Moscow is not what it used to be. During the Cold War the
Soviet Union and its enemies tried to steal each other's secrets. But the
trial of an American businessman in Moscow this month is making it clear
that nobody in Russia today is sure what a secret is. 

In the dock is Edmond Pope, an American businessman and former naval
intelligence officer, accused of trying to buy the secrets of a super-
high-speed torpedo, designed in Soviet times, called the Shkval. The
prosecution says Mr Pope was trying to pay a measly Dollars 14,000 for a
weapon that cost the Soviet state hundreds of millions of dollars. 

The defence counters that Mr Pope was negotiating through official channels
and most of the information about the Shkval has already been published.
Russia is trying to sell an export version of the weapon and its chief
designer wrote a magazine article stressing its virtues. 

Bizarrely Anatoly Babkin, the professor who supposedly handed over the
secret plansto Mr Pope, is not on trial. The prosecution says the case
against him was dropped on humanitarian grounds after he suffered a heart
attack. 

In the Soviet Union the prosecutors would have had no problem. Almost
everything was a secret, however obsolete the information or well known in
the world at large. Today it is much more complicated. During his
negotiations over the Shkval, Mr Pope had to get a letter from a special
Russian committee saying the blueprints were not classified. He now says
that one such letter has disappeared and been replaced by one saying the
designs were top secret. 

Mr Pope, who is allowed to sit down in court because he has a rare form of
bone cancer, is mordantly pessimistic. "I see two possible outcomes, a
better one and a worse one," he said. The worse one would be that we are
all thrown in jail, including the lawyers. The better one would be that I
am imprisoned alone." 

>From the beginning of the trial there have been skirmishes between Judge
Irina Barkina and the defence. Mr Pope objected to using a translator from
the FSB security service, as it is the FSB which is trying to send him to
jail for up to 20 years. Ms Barkina refused to replace him. 

If the purpose of the trial is to show that the Russian security services
are on the ball, then it is not going well. In a letter to the court
Professor Babkin retracted his original statement implicating Mr Pope,
saying he made it under pressure just before his heart attack. "Please
consider my testimony against Pope a lie," the letter says. Russia's NTV
television network showed a video of what it claims is Professor Babkin
being threatened by two men who warn him against changing his evidence. 

All this has caused a frisson in Russian relations with the United States.
President Bill Clinton has asked for Mr Pope's release. The US State
Department sent a circular to US travellers saying "normal business
activities in the United States and other countries are still illegal under
the Russian legal code or are considered suspect by the FSB". 

Mr Pope may not be getting an entirely fair trial. But neither is he being
railroaded into jail. The case illustrates the split personality of the
Russian state. It is autocratic enough to ensure maximum bad publicity in
the Western media, but not so authoritarian that it can carry out its aims
efficiently. The Soviet Union seldom put alleged foreign spies on trial,
but when it did there was no question of what was or was not a secret, or
of vital witnesses changing their evidence. 

******

#12
BBC Monitoring
Russia: Putin aide gives interview on regional elections, Kremlin plans 
Source: 'Obshchaya Gazeta', Moscow, in Russian 16 Nov 00 

The Kremlin is surprised that four governors of Russia's regions have
refused to run for a second term in office and surprised also that some
oligarchs have been aspiring to governor posts, according to Sergey
Samoylov, chief of the main territorial administration of the Russian
Federation president. Samoylov said it would be good if administrators and
managers with fresh ideas were to take up governor posts rather than
politicians. He confirmed that there were plans to expand the powers of
Putin's plenipotentiary representatives in the regions, something that
governors currently feared. The following are excerpts from an interview
given by Samoylov to the Russian newspaper `Obshchaya Gazeta', published on
16th November: 

[Interviewer Yelena Dikun] ...In general, is the Kremlin pleased with the
way the regional elections are going? Have there been any surprises? 

[Samoylov] If you don't count what happened with [Aleksandr] Rutskoy [now
ex-governor of Kursk Region], the biggest surprise was the refusal on the
part of a number of governors to run for a second term. There are already
four "refuseniks": the heads of Krasnodar Territory - Kondratenko,
Kamchatka Region - Biryukov, Kaluga Region - Sudarenkov, and Ivanovo Region
- Tikhomirov. Another surprise was the oligarchs' campaigns to become
governors. You can consider that a sign. They used to prefer to participate
in the elections indirectly by sponsoring candidates who were sympathetic
to them. 

[Q] Is that a good sign or an alarming one? 

[A] In any event it is not causing anyone in the Kremlin to fall into a
faint, and nobody is throwing a wrench into the works. Perhaps it would be
good for the leadership of the regions to be taken over not by politicians,
but by administrators, managers with fresh ideas, with a professional team,
and with a well-arranged system of relations in the sphere of business and
politics. At least these people know how to earn and spend money instead of
asking Moscow for it. However, what Gen Shamanov can offer Ulyanov Region -
that I do not know. Of course he is a brave warrior, but he is not exactly
an administrator. 

[Q] Have I understood correctly that the regional elections will take place
just as the Kremlin would like them to? 

[A] I would not say that. In certain cases the people elected to high
positions have clearly not grown to the point of being ready for them. As a
rule their elections result from mistakes in local legislation and the
other candidates' inability to unite their efforts. That is what happened
in both Pskov and Kursk Regions. True, in Voronezh Region the local elite
was able to consolidate, and now the same thing is happening in Bryansk
Region. There is the hope that there will be stronger competition for votes
here and the victory will go to someone who really deserves it. 

[Q] In a number of regions the local election laws allow for the holding of
governor elections with one round of voting, which creates advantages for
the incumbents. Is it not time for the centre to intervene and ask that
these laws be corrected? 

[A] That is quite a fair remark. Local legislation is sometimes so craftily
constructed that it makes it very easy for a candidate to win elections.
For example, Pskov governor Yevgeniy Mikhaylov needed only 28.5 per cent of
the votes to outstrip his three opponents, who gathered a total of 50 per
cent. We don't know who would have won if there had been two rounds to the
voting. Unfortunately the Kremlin cannot order all regions to conduct their
elections according to a standard procedure. We don't have the legal
grounds for that. All we can do is try to persuade the leaders of the
legislative assemblies and the governors that single-round elections amount
to a lottery in which the prize can go to a completely random player... 

[Q] There is discussion about the possibility that the rights of the
president's plenipotentiary representatives will be significantly expanded.
The Far Eastern plenipotentiary representative Pulikovskiy, for example, is
saying that the presidential deputies will soon be permitted to control the
movement of money from transfers. We have learnt from other sources that a
decree is expected from the president giving the plenipotentiary
representatives the right to give orders to leaders of the components of
the federation. 

[A] These discussions are not groundless. A number of proposals like these
are now being prepared for the president... 

[Q] The governors are very much afraid that once the plenipotentiary
representatives get their hands on financial and administrative controls
they will deprive the governors of any real power. 

[A] The president's representatives will not encroach on the governors'
rights and responsibilities. They will take over only those functions that
by definition do not belong in the sphere of jurisdiction of regional
agencies. This means federal services and the authority that rightfully
belongs to the federation as opposed to individual governors. Yes, the
state is now concentrating its management functions. This is not an attempt
to create seven mini-states, but the federal authorities will undoubtedly
try to establish control of not only the legal, but also the economic
space. That is why we are now trying to figure out which economic rights
the president's plenipotentiary representatives should have. 

*******

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