November
30, 2000
This Date's Issues: 4661
• 4662
Johnson's Russia List
#4662
30 November 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com
[Note from David Johnson:
1. Chicago Tribune: Colin McMahon, A PROPHET FORGOTTEN SOON
AFTER HIS
TIME. FUNDS SCARCE, SAKHAROV MUSEUM IS STRUGGLING.
2. Reuters: Russian Church names patron saint of tax police.
3. Moscow Times: Ana Uzelac, Cabinet Pushes New Law on
Privatization.
4. The Guardian (UK): Ian Traynor, Vote gives Putin chance
of life-long
criminal immunity.
5. Vedomosti: RUSSIA SHOULD SHARE PROFITS WITH CREDITORS,
ILLARIONOV.
6. The Wall Street Journal Europe: Sean Kay, EU Beware:
Russia Wants To
Divide the Alliance.
7. Itar-Tass: Russia's electoral watchdog issues warning to
regions.
8. Washington Post: David Hoffman, Putin Faces Split Over
Future of
Russian Military.
9. Moscow Times: Elizabeth LeBras, Illarionov: Growth Not
Sustainable.
10. Andrew Miller: re Top 10 Reasons to Study Russia and
Russian.
11. University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award: Analysis of
misdirected
foreign aid claims Grawemeyer prize.
12. AP: Belarus-Russia Union Pushed Forward.
13. Reuters: Russian greens to fight ruling barring
referendum.
14. Interfax: Russian MPs devise scheme to repatriate
"shadow" funds.]
******
#1
Chicago Tribune
November 30, 2000
A PROPHET FORGOTTEN SOON AFTER HIS TIME
FUNDS SCARCE, SAKHAROV MUSEUM IS STRUGGLING
By Colin McMahon
Tribune Correspondent
MOSCOW -- In praising Andrei Sakharov, a former colleague of his said
recently that the late Nobel Peace Prize winner was the first person to
get
Russia thinking about human rights. "Conscience of a nation,"
Russians
called Sakharov.
Today, however, those working in Sakharov's name to promote human rights
find his legacy means less and less.
The Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center in Moscow, only 4 years old,
already faces hard times. Private Russian donors ignore it. So does the
federal government. Western aid, particularly from the United States, is
shrinking.
The money pinch coincides with a growing apathy toward the work of the
Sakharov Center. The promotion of human rights and democratic ideals has
lost currency in a nation tired of decline and disorder.
Most notable is the Sakharov Center's opposition to the war in Chechnya,
lamenting the countless civilian deaths and human-rights abuses committed
in large part by Russian troops. Most people, though, support the
Kremlin's
military actions in the breakaway southern republic.
"The museum was created in the hopes that our country had
changed," said
director Yuri Samodurov. "But our society and our government, they
have not
figured out yet what they want to be. We need to build a distinct border
between our new government and our old one."
The Sakharov Center works toward that by "educating the next
generation of
Russians about the USSR's totalitarian past."
Its exhibits are powerful: Photos from the labor camps in what Sakharov
once called the "prison-house of nations." Documents from KGB
files.
Personal belongings or mementos from Stalin's victims.
On one wall is a 1930s photo of a group of boys, their arms raised in
defiance, their faces ablaze with adolescent emotion. They carry a banner,
"Death to Traitors."
Next to the photo are documents from Soviet courts. They list the crimes
of
those accused: "counter-revolutionary" or "Trotskyist"
activities.
And then, the sentences: Execute by shooting. Execute by shooting. Execute
by shooting.
The Sakharov Center library contains 7,000 books on Russia's totalitarian
past. Staffers are building databases with the names of thousands of
victims of the Soviet repression. They collect personal histories of gulag
survivors.
All of this is open to researchers, for free.
Historians vary in their estimates of the Soviet death toll. Most start at
20 million people. Yet the Sakharov museum is the only one in Moscow, and
one of few nationwide, that treats this history from a non-communist point
of view.
By standing out from the rest, the Sakharov Center imitates its namesake.
Sakharov was a brilliant physicist, the Soviet Union's "Father of the
Hydrogen Bomb." But disturbed by the arms race and the powerful
weapons he
helped create, Sakharov began to urge Kremlin officials to scale back
their
nuclear buildup. They refused and stripped Sakharov of his power and
prestige, firing him from his job and mounting a smear campaign against
him.
Instead of shutting up, Sakharov became the world's most respected and
well-known dissident. He expanded his protests, calling also for democracy
and human rights in the USSR. He won the Nobel Peace Price in 1975, but
five years later was sent into internal exile in Gorky.
During the perestroika era, Mikhail Gorbachev let Sakharov return to
Moscow. He soon won a seat in the Soviet Union's first freely elected
parliament and became a leading voice of Russia's democratic movement. By
the time Sakharov died in December 1989 at age 68, the Soviet Union was
sliding toward oblivion.
"Sakharov spoke loudly the things I feared to speak," museum
director
Samodurov said. "I thought it and he said it. He was the conscience
of the
people."
Central to Sakharov's philosophy was his faith in the individual, his
insistence on personal liberty. Those themes are important today in
Russia,
human-rights activists say, because the government of President Vladimir
Putin is seeking to rebuild state power that has slipped dramatically over
the last decade.
Many activists fear Putin is curtailing the freedom of expression that
blossomed in Russia under former President Boris Yeltsin. They say all
civil rights have disappeared in Chechnya, where bloody fighting continues
despite military assurances that the war will end soon. They say security
forces are pressuring environmental groups, independent political
movements
and other potential critics of the government.
"It is not just that the human-rights situation is drastically
deteriorating in Russia. I mean all rights without exception," said
Sergei
Grigoryants of the Glasnost Foundation. "War has officially been
declared
on civil society in Russia."
Sakharov's name still inspires deep respect. In a magazine poll last year
on who should be named "Russian of the Century," Sakharov came
in second
place with 13 percent. And responding to a question from Time magazine,
Yeltsin named Sakharov his "Man of the Century."
In both cases, though, the honor was tempered. In the Russian magazine
poll, Sakharov was sandwiched incongruously between Lenin and Stalin.
Yeltsin tapped Sakharov for Time even as he pursued policies that angered
and saddened Sakharov's philosophical heirs. In his last months in office,
Yeltsin began Russia's second war in Chechnya. He also turned to Putin, a
former KGB spy, to succeed him.
Despite the respect at home for Sakharov's name, it brings in little money
for his cause. Pleas to the federal government, to Russian companies and
to
rich, private businessmen routinely go unanswered. The Sakharov Center has
received only $17,500 from domestic sources--about 1 percent of the $1.7
million it has spent since its inception.
The center, which draws about 700 visitors a month including school
groups,
charges no admission fee.
Now its main sponsor, the U.S. Agency for International Development, is
cutting to $130,000 the center's funding for fiscal 2001, Samodurov said.
Samodurov said the center could continue at its current pace for about
eight months. But a planned improvement to the gulag exhibit is in doubt.
He is also debating whether to cut salaries, starting with his own of
about
$335 a month.
******
#2
Russian Church names patron saint of tax police
MOSCOW, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Russia's Orthodox Church has named the apostle
Matthew patron saint of the country's feared tax police, the Sevodnya
newspaper reported on Thursday.
Russian tax police -- known for storming buildings in black ski masks to
conduct an audit -- have had something of a public relations problem, as
did
the widely despised Roman tax collectors, or "publicans," of
biblical times.
St Matthew himself was a publican, before giving up the profession to
follow
Jesus. In Matthew's book of the Bible, Jesus frequently lumps tax
collectors
along with prostitutes as being allowed to enter heaven if they accept
God.
Sevodnya quoted tax police spokesman Yury Tretyakov as saying the agency
had
won the support of the Church in part by helping to renovate a cathedral
located in part on the territory of its headquarters.
"It is not just a fashion statement, and we are not planning to make
our
heavenly protection into a cult," Sevodnya quoted him as saying.
"It simply means that tax police will have another holiday, November
29, St
Matthew's day."
*******
#3
Moscow Times
November 30, 2000
Cabinet Pushes New Law on Privatization
By Ana Uzelac
Staff Writer
With President Vladimir Putin's administration still trying to define its
policy on managing state assets, the Property Ministry is busy trying to
put
its house in order f pushing for a new privatization law and consolidating
its grip on regional property committees.
The bill, drafted by the ministry, will be made public after it is
submitted
to the State Duma sometime within the next month, but the ministry has
disclosed some parts of its proposal.
The bill stipulates that all state companies must be divided into two
groups
f those with fixed assets worth more than 5 million statutory minimal
wages
(around $15 million) and those that are worth less, a ministry official
who
asked not to be named said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
The first group of companies could be privatized via auctions or by
issuing
derivative securities on Western exchanges, the official said.
The smaller companies could be sold through auctions or in six other ways:
tenders; selling shares on stock exchanges; public offerings; transferring
state property to the charter capital of private companies; management in
trust with the option of property eventually being transferred to the
managers; and, for the least attractive companies, selling to the first
bidder in "noncompetitive tenders."
Deputy Property Minister Alexander Braverman has said the ministry's main
goal is to ensure transparency, but too little is known about the bill to
say
whether it will help make privatizations less susceptible to insider deals
and under-the-table arrangements.
But instances of corruption are not always directly dependent on
privatization methods, said Alexander Radygin, an expert with the
Institute
for Economy in Transition.
"As long as there is no judicial practice of punishing corruption in
Russia,
certain risks remain even when selling [assets] via auction," he told
the
Vedomosti business daily.
"There are too many inherent failings in the existing privatization
law,"
said Roland Nash, an analyst with Renaissance Capital.
Currently, privatization allows a company's management to maximize its own
benefits, while regarding the value of a company's shares as secondary, he
said.
Nash said another big problem was that potentially effective managers
often
have their hands tied and can not downsize or make "rational
investments."
Largely, this problem stems from non-monetary conditions with which
investors
are sometimes saddled as part of privatization deals. The ministry
official
said that most of the privatization methods applicable to the smaller
companies, as defined in the bill, include non-monetary conditions f such
as
obligations not to change a company's line of production for a certain
period
of time.
"One problem [with the bill] is it still allows for non-monetary
conditions,"
Christopher Granville, a strategist with the United Financial Group
brokerage, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "And any
non-monetary
condition gives scope for potential abuse."
The ministry official said his agency aims to privatize stakes in around
10,000 companies in the next two years, adding that, since the start of
privatization, the government has sold off some 102,000 state companies.
The official refused to comment on rumors that one salient procedural
change
proposed in the bill is to sideline the State Duma, which has summarily
rejected the government's annual privatization programs.
In addition to the privatization bill, the ministry has announced plans to
tighten its grip on property sales in the provinces by reviewing the work
of
regional property commissions, or KUGI, with which it works on a contract
basis.
The official said as many as 25 percent of the KUGI could be stripped of
their functions because the ministry is not satisfied with their work.
Instead of the KUGI, the ministry plans to open 20 to 25 of its own
regional
property management offices by the end of 2001 and about twice as many in
the
next three to four years, he added.
******
#4
The Guardian (UK)
November 30, 2000
Vote gives Putin chance of life-long criminal immunity
Ian Traynor in Moscow
President Vladimir Putin acted to put himself and future Russian
presidents
above the law yesterday, gaining parliamentary backing for a bill securing
lifelong personal immunity from prosecution for anything he does while in
office.
Despite a raucous debate in the duma (lower house), the bill was given a
first reading by a majority of 282 to 130. It has to be given two more
readings to become law.
Mr Putin and his supporters were keen to push it through. It had many
critics, raising the possibility that Mr Putin might suffer his first
defeat
in parliament since assuming the presidency last year. Last night's vote
was
a measure of his support in the duma.
The first thing Mr Putin did when he became acting president on New Year's
Eve was to sign a decree guaranteeing former president Boris Yeltsin
immunity, just as prosecutors began to examine allegations of corruption
in
his family and entourage.
The haste with which he acted raised suspicion, but the bill debated
yesterday goes further, adding guarantees against prosecution to all
Russian
presidents.
It also guarantees a former head of state and his or her family a pension,
a
government residence, medical cover, bodyguards, a private office and
staff,
and "special communications". The cost to the taxpayer of
looking after the
Yeltsin family is estimated at more than £1m a year.
Mr Putin's critics called the bill unconstitutional, because the Russian
constitution makes all citizens equal before the law.
They also said it contradicted Russia's signed undertaking to the
international criminal court in September that no government officials
would
be immune from criminal liability.
The criticism came from across the political spectrum. The liberal Yabloko
caucus called for the debate to be postponed and said it would abstain on
the
first reading.
The Communists were the loudest in their opposition, claiming the bill
gave
carte blanche to a sitting president to act above the law.
"I've been in the duma for seven years and never witnessed such
cynical
frankness and immorality in draft legislation," a Communist MP,
Viktor
Ilyukhin, said.
Mr Putin's decree giving Mr Yeltsin immunity is still in force, but
opposition MPs have asked the constitutional court to rule on whether it
is
legal. Many MPs said the Kremlin bill should wait until the court had
ruled
on the Putin decree, although that may not happen until next summer.
******
#5
Vedomosti
November 30, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
RUSSIA SHOULD SHARE PROFITS WITH CREDITORS, ILLARIONOV
By Anatoly KHODOROVSKY
On November 29 the Russian President's economic
advisor
Andrei ILLARIONOV up the results of the outgoing year. In his
opinion, the results are the best in the past thirty years.
However, Illarionov says that this has become possible not
thanks to the government's economic activity but sooner despite
it. The economist proposes a radical solution to a package of
radical problems: all the additional profits should be used to
make payments to the Paris Club. It is symbolic that this
proposal was made on the eve of the third reading of the draft
budget in the State Duma.
In Illarionov's opinion, the country has been
unable to
use a unique situation existing in the world, when the prices
of our staple exports rose by 38% and the prices of our imports
fell by 14%. The country's industrial growth indicator for the
nine months, which constituted 9.8%, is a very modest
achievement, compared with 23% in Turkmenistan, 24% in the
Philippines and 38% in Indonesia. At the same time, inflation
at the level of almost 2% per month and the slowing down of
economic growth rates have become the indicators of "incorrect
actions." "The intoxicated air of sudden well-being has played
a mean trick on Russia. Its legislative and executive
authorities started dividing additional profits, which had
nothing to do with economic efficiency," Illarionov says. The
"global rent" which the world economy has shared with Russia in
the form of high prices on raw materials may not be used for
domestic purposes, in his opinion. Indeed, in the nine months
zero-interest budgetary spending grew by 28%, while the GDP
increased only by 7.3%.
Illarionov proposes using all the money, which
the Russian
economy has not earned, in his opinion, to make the due
payments to the country's creditors from the Paris Club. Oleg
Vyugin, Troika Dialog Vice-President who used to be a deputy
finance minister, seconds his opinion. "Such a step will not
only reduce the debt burden in the future but will also be
useful for economic growth, because this may curb inflation,
among other things," Vyugin says. Russia's debt situation is
not unique, in Illarionov's opinion. Even in the peak year of
2003, about the problem of which he has talked more than once,
the proportion of spending for this purpose will constitute 6%
of the country's GDP. This will be the 57th largest indicator
among the countries, which pay their debts.
Spokesmen for the Russian legislators have not
taken
Illarionov's critical remarks seriously. "It is a political
action designed to create a certain background against which
the draft budget is to be discussed in its third reading," Igor
Dines, budget committee member from the Unity faction, told
Vedomosti. "The issue at hand is not any semblance of profits.
It is clear that the price situation may change. But we would
have been unable to solve the problem of the budget without
these additional profits. There is a simulation economy and
there is a real economy."
"I do not regard Illarionov as the
President's voice. The
President has not expressed his opinion on this matter yet. I
suppose it will be less radical," Dines went on. "The
government should preserve the favorable situation, rather than
continue bringing pressure to bear. There is the threat that by
going too far with its reforms it will prove its incompetence
in the eyes of the President."
Illarionov does not expect his plan for the
distribution
of additional profits in the budget for 2001 to be translated
into concrete steps right away. "We should think of a mechanism
of prompt cooperation between law-makers and the government in
making amendments to the budget even if it is adopted," he says.
******
#6
The Wall Street Journal Europe
November 30, 2000
[for personal use only]
EU Beware: Russia Wants To Divide the Alliance
By Sean Kay. Mr. Kay is a politics and government professor at Ohio
Wesleyan
University and was previously a Visiting Fellow at the National Defense
University in Washington, D.C.
Russia's new overtures to the European Union are dangerous to the EU
itself,
to trans-Atlantic relations and to international security. EU leaders
should
have no illusions about this as they listen to Russian Foreign Minister
Igor
Ivanov declare Moscow's intention to establish a "strategic
partnership" with
the European Union, as he did this past weekend during a visit to Berlin.
Behind Mr. Ivanov's declaration lies Russia's continued strong opposition
to
the enlargement of NATO, to U.S. plans for a national missile defense and
a
lingering bruised ego over NATO's action in Kosovo last year. With its
entreaties to the EU, Russia is simply taking another step in its attempt
to
create a rift in the Atlantic alliance.
In Mr. Ivanov's view, "relations with the European Union are now
rising to a
new level, the level of a strategic partnership." The term is an
interesting
one and has a certain pedigree. In fact, Moscow is taking a page out of
Washington's playbook.
The Clinton Administration has made the establishment of "strategic
partnerships" a cornerstone of post-Cold War U.S. strategy. But the
term has
never been given a clear definition in international relations.
Rhetorical Device
The term "strategic partnership" covers both the enhancement of
existing
alliances and the building of bridges to potential peer-competitors. It is
used to describe an array of bilateral contacts ranging from U.S.-Turkish,
U.S.-Egyptian, U.S.-Romanian, U.S.-Ukrainian, U.S.-Russian, and
U.S.-Chinese
relations. "Strategic partnerships" have become a rhetorical
device used
primarily by American diplomats to help them around the rough edges of
shifting global politics.
It is not in this context that both Russia and China have adopted the
term.
The central foreign policy tenet of both use to promote a "multipolar"
world
at the expense of American primacy. For example, the U.S. has negotiated
strategic partnerships with both Russia and China as a way to engage two
countries with which it has no alliances and couldn't for the foreseeable
future. Moscow and Beijing, on the other hand, agreed in July 1998 to have
a
"cooperative, strategic partnership at the helm of the United
Nations" with
no other intent than to turn the U.N. into an ineffective, political
balancing act that aims to frustrate American policy. This is, among other
reasons, why NATO sidelined the world body when it decided to act in
Kosovo.
Russia has sought also to tip the balance in Europe away from its present
Atlantic leanings. For the past year, it has tried to secure "a
strategic
partnership" with the EU. "The partnership of the Russian
Federation and the
European Union could include the organization of a pan-European security
system based on European forces, without isolating the U.S. and NATO, but
without the monopoly of these on the Continent," Russian Prime
Minister
Vladimir Putin officially proposed in October 1999.
The American electoral stalemate has now provides Moscow with a window of
opportunity. The political vacuum has come at the same time that the
European
Union has formalized its plans to move ahead with the creation of a
60,000-man military force by 2003. This new force will complement NATO but
could also be used independently in regional conflicts or humanitarian
crises
in Europe. How the European Union responds to this Russian overture will
be a
significant test of where loyalties lie.
European Union leaders have a difficult issue to resolve with Russia. No
doubt, the EU members have a vital interest in promoting stability in
Russia,
which requires a high level of strategic engagement. But this goal has
already been achieved through a security relationship established between
NATO and Russia. Nonetheless, Russia is laying the groundwork to
circumvent
NATO. Senior EU leaders must make it immediately clear they are interested
in
working with Russia on areas such as trade and investment, energy,
telecommunications issues and human rights. However, if they want to avoid
a
trans-Atlantic estrangement, they should add that the place for military
or
security relationships is in the existing NATO-Russia Permanent Joint
Council
-- and not in a new relationship under the guise of a strategic
partnership.
Strategic Flexibility
In so doing, the European Union must firmly explain to Russia the intent
of
its security policy. The goal, which has recently been endorsed by the
U.S.
Secretary of Defense William Cohen, is to create a functional European
pillar
of the trans-Atlantic alliance. While there are significant ongoing NATO-EU
disputes to be resolved in the years ahead, the basic premise of the
movement
to enhance EU military capabilities is to strengthen NATO. Strengthening
the
European Union's military capabilities will allow the United States to
have
more strategic flexibility around the world, while Europe takes a lead in
managing fires in its own backyard -- an interest shared in both Brussels
and
Washington.
Knowing well that there remain deep trans-Atlantic fissures on issues
ranging
from missile defense to global warming, Russia clearly sees an opportunity
to
insert itself between the U.S. and its allies. This must not be allowed to
happen.
While the United States moves through its protracted political transition,
the weight of leadership rests on the European Union. Though the U.S. and
the
EU must work together to bring about a peaceful and stable Russia, it is
now
time for the EU to say that while it has strategic interests with Moscow,
these will not be pursued with strategic partnership.
******
#7
Russia's electoral watchdog issues warning to regions
ITAR-TASS
Moscow, 30th November: Irked by numerous complaints about violations,
Russia's Central Electoral Committee on Wednesday [29th November] issued a
warning to provinces not to break election laws.
The committee recommended local election officials to use all their powers
when supervising election campaigns, and send reports of violations to
electoral commissions for consideration, as well as to law-enforcement
bodies.
The Central Electoral Committee said the number of complaints was
considerable, citing violations in Udmurtia and Vladimir, Kursk, Kurgan
and
Ryazan Regions. It said many cases involved the so-called "use of
administrative resources".
The warning also applies to regional mass media executives, who were
ordered
to observe election campaign regulations. To this end, Russia's
telecommunications ministry [presumably Ministry of Press, Television and
Radio Broadcasting, and Mass Communications], together with the Central
Electoral Committee and local electoral committees, will have to work out
"a
measure of compliance" with such regulations. A mechanism envisioning
responsibility will be included in the measures, to be carried out in line
with Russia's doctrine of information security.
The Central Electoral Committee requested the Prosecutor-General's Office
and
the Interior Ministry to ensure that regional prosecutors and
law-enforcement
bodies take additional steps to strengthen control over campaigning.
The Central Electoral Committee admitted that the electoral law is
insufficient as regards election campaigns. It ordered its working group
to
use the benefit of the experience in elections held in 1999 and 2000 to
amend
electoral legislation and improve control over electioneering through the
mass media.
******
#8
Washington Post
November 30, 2000
[for personal use only]
Putin Faces Split Over Future of Russian Military
By David Hoffman
MOSCOW, Nov. 29 -- President Vladimir Putin, forced by budget pressures to
shrink Russia's troubled armed forces, is facing a fundamental and
increasingly open split between commanders who favor continued reliance on
nuclear weapons and those arguing for a shift toward modern, conventional
forces.
Putin has so far steered a cautious, middle course, ordering troop cuts in
both strategic nuclear and conventional forces. But he has yet to settle a
far-reaching dispute within the military establishment over how
post-Soviet
Russia should defend itself, and against what threats.
On Nov. 20, Putin strode onto a stage at Defense Ministry headquarters to
address Russia's top generals and admirals in their annual review. Putin
gave
them a dressing down.
"We continue to talk and have meetings," he lamented,
"while the flywheel of
reform runs mostly idle."
Twice in recent months, the Kremlin Security Council has reviewed the
armed
forces, still suffering from financial shortfalls, aging equipment and
ambitious war-fighting goals established before the Soviet Union collapsed
almost a decade ago. Another Kremlin session is set for next month. But it
is
not clear how far Putin intends to go in what has become one of the most
contentious problems of remaking the Russian state out of the Soviet
legacy.
The decline of the Soviet armed forces, which were superpower in size and
imposed a heavy burden on the economy, began under Mikhail Gorbachev. The
problem of how to cope with further deterioration was never really
addressed
under Boris Yeltsin, who suffered a significant military setback in the
first
Chechen war from 1994 to 1996. Yeltsin's time in office was marked by a
tacit
deal with the generals not to interfere in military affairs as long as
they
supported him.
"Putin has shown some good intentions, and the fact that he has
started to
move is positive--Yeltsin failed to do even that," said Alexander
Pikayev, a
defense and arms control specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
"Another
positive thing is, he has shown he is a man of compromise. But here is his
weakness, too, because in the last year he showed he wants to avoid
important
decisions that are absolutely necessary."
After the catastrophic sinking on Aug. 12 of the nuclear-powered submarine
Kursk, one of the most modern in the Russian fleet, Putin did not clean
house
in the top levels of the military, as many had expected.
"Putin had an excellent chance to fire everyone and create a clean
slate for
nominating his own people and starting reform, but he failed to do
so,"
Pikayev said. "He might be as indecisive as Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
His
mandate is strong, but not permanent. His window of opportunity could
close--sooner or later, it will close."
Putin came to power on the strength of a military campaign he launched
against Chechen separatists while he was prime minister, and it was widely
believed that, as a veteran of the KGB secret police, he would be in a
strong
position to influence Russia's military and security establishment.
However, in the year since the second Chechen campaign was launched, Putin
has been buffeted by disagreements among his top military brass. The
military's troubles were further deepened by the Kursk sinking, which was
followed by disinformation from the military and the Kremlin about what
had
happened.
Although the Russian defense budget of about $7.5 billion has been
supplemented recently with revenue from the increase in global oil prices,
the military remains an increasingly hollow and troubled fighting force.
Putin's choices all point toward a smaller military in the years
ahead--the
question is how to get there.
A recent analysis by Dmitri Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie
center,
found that while the Russian armed forces are comparatively large,
"their
hardware is mostly obsolete, their military infrastructure is primitive,
and
their servicemen underskilled."
The army is having trouble mustering the 100,000 to 120,000 men needed for
the campaign in Chechnya, he said, and the composition of the armed forces
is
top-heavy. "It has more officers than privates and as many colonels
as
lieutenants," Trenin said. "Because of a lack of systematic
combat training,
there is an entire generation of commanders who had never taken part in
full-fledged maneuvers."
Trenin found that the military has yet to shed ambitious war-fighting
plans
created in Soviet times, including a possible confrontation with NATO or
potential future threats along its southern rim--China, Central Asia and
the
Near East.
"It would take much more radical and fundamental reform than anything
Russia's leaders are presently contemplating in order to truly overcome
the
crisis instead of merely blunting its edge," Trenin said. "The
principal
problem dogging the Russian armed forces is not the often-mentioned
underfunding, but excessive military requirements."
The leaders of Russia's armed forces have been roiled by increasingly open
debate about how to structure the dwindling military. One group, led by
Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, says that Russia must rely on and support
its
nuclear deterrent because conventional forces are so weak. The other
group,
led by the chief of the general staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, argues that
nuclear
weapons can be radically reduced and that Russia needs a modern, high-tech
conventional force capable of facing a scenario like the NATO attack on
Yugoslavia.
This split was thrust into public view earlier this year when Kvashnin, a
career tank officer, formally proposed deep cuts in nuclear forces to
shift
more resources to conventional weaponry. He ran headlong into a bitter
feud
with Sergeyev, a former chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces, an
independent
service which, under Kvashnin's proposal, would have been radically
downsized
and brought under control of the general staff. The argument led Putin to
call for the current reviews. Kvashnin's original proposal was for
Russia's
nuclear deterrent to be reduced unilaterally to several hundred warheads,
down from 2,500 to 2,000 envisioned in a possible START III accord with
the
United States. Kvashnin proposed even fewer than the 1,000 nuclear
warheads
that some analysts believe to be a plausible Russian arsenal in the years
ahead given continued obsolescence and budget restraints.
Putin appears to be taking a middle ground. He has recently resumed
lobbying
the United States for negotiations toward much lower levels of nuclear
warheads, but apparently did not sign off on Kvashnin's unilateral
reductions. Sergeyev has insisted that such cuts would not produce savings
for conventional weapons, and would complicate arms control.
Putin also appears to have compromised on the future of the rocket forces.
Sergei Ivanov, the Security Council secretary, said recently that a
possible
change in status of the missile troops would be considered only after
2006--which may mean never.
At the same time, Putin ordered personnel reductions in both directions to
construct a smaller, more effective and financially viable fighting force.
In
addition to the regular armed forces, Russia has another 11 branches or
ministries with military and paramilitary forces for a total of 3.1
million
under arms. Ivanov announced that Putin had approved a plan to trim
600,000
men over five years, including 365,000 in the military. But the cuts may
not
be all that dramatic or cost-saving if not accompanied by structural
changes
and more realistic goals for the military, analysts said. Pikayev noted
that
many of the outside branches and ministries--including the Interior
Ministry,
railroad troops, border guards and others--had staunchly and successfully
resisted much sharper cuts in their ranks.
As a result, Pikayev said, the knife may slice most deeply into the
Defense
Ministry's ground troops; manpower may decline to 170,000 men. This is
hardly
enough to provide deterrence against possible threats from a major power
such
as China, and may not even be sufficient to fight two regional wars
simultaneously, Pikayev said. A potential consequence of the cuts, he
said,
is that Russia will rely on its nuclear deterrent umbrella to make up for
its
conventional forces' weakness.
On the nuclear side, Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, head of the strategic rocket
forces, said Putin had sliced 80,000 of his men over the next five years.
Alexei Arbatov, a member of the lower house of parliament, said he was
worried that these cuts in the strategic rocket forces were too deep and
could cost Russia the nuclear "trump card" it needs in arms
control talks
with the United States.
*******
#9
Moscow Times
November 30, 2000
Illarionov: Growth Not Sustainable
By Elizabeth LeBras
Staff Writer
The vital statistics of the nation's economy are the best in 300 years,
but
at the same time this year has been one of missed opportunities, Andrei
Illarionov, economic adviser to President Vladimir Putin, said Wednesday.
"These results are the most impressive indicators of Russia's
development for
the past three centuries," he said at a news conference.
Illarionov forecast the year will end with 7 percent gross domestic
product
growth and 10 percent growth of industrial output. He predicted investment
will be up 20 percent for the year, exports up more than 40 percent and
wages
up 23 percent.
The economist, who is one of the Central Bank's harshest critics, said the
bank's hard-currency and gold reserves will have more than doubled to $30
billion over the year.
However, the tone of most of Illarionov's address was negative. He said
that
the economic growth achieved in 2000 "is not sustainable."
The growth was mainly due to external factors such as high world prices
for
energy exports rather than the government's effective management of the
economy, he said.
Illarionov referred to the positive economic indicators as "unmerited
success" and said that Russia had earned more than $16 billion solely
from
changes in world prices rather than from effective economic policies.
He said still greater economic growth could have been reached.
"The government could not cope with the tasks of managing the
economy,"
Illarionov said.
He blamed the so-called Dutch disease for a fall off in growth in the
third
and fourth quarters of this year after being very high in the first half
of
the year.
Dutch disease refers to the tendency of large influxes of income from the
export of energy resources to raise the exchange rate of a nation's
currency
and damage competitiveness in the non-export sector of the economy.
He also blamed Dutch disease for increasing inflation. He predicted the
rate
for this year will total 21 percent, significantly more than the 12
percent
to 14 percent inflation projected by the government in May.
On the subject of foreign debts, Illarionov said that if Russia does not
pay
off its foreign debts inflation will continue to grow and economic growth
will falter.
"We should pay the debt not only because responsible countries pay
their
debts but because under the current conditions, it is the most effective
method of sterilizing the mass of surplus rubles that cause inflation and
slow down economic growth," he said.
Illarionov's statements did not impress Alexei Kazakov, economy and
politics
analyst for NIKoil brokerage, or Marina Ionova, politics and economics
analyst for Aton brokerage.
Kazakov said that Illarionov has been making very similar statements since
he
became Putin's adviser in 1999.
"He hasn't changed his style since he began working for the
government," he
said.
Ionova said that Illarionov's comments were politically motivated and most
likely indicated his desire to obtain a position in the Cabinet, possibly
as
economics minister.
Illarionov, who is also Russia's envoy to the Group of Seven leading
industrial nations, spoke the same day that a World Bank mission arrived
in
Moscow to discuss how to monitor structural reforms that could be the
basis
for future aid from the World Bank.
******
#10
From: "Andrew Miller" <andcarmil@hotmail.com>
Subject: reply to Bova JRL #4661
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000
In reply to the "Top 10 Reasons to Study Russia and Russian"
which appeared in JRL #4661 I would submit the following:
Top Ten Reasons Not to Study Russia & Russian
10. Russian territory is ridiculously and counterproductively large.
It is
unmanageable and the attempt to manage it is destroying Russia utterly.
Foreign attempts to praise Russia's size only encourage further Russian
imperialism.
9. The number of speakers of Russian gets smaller every day.
8. One doesn't need to understand a thing about Russia or Russian language
to listen to Russian classical music. Russian classical music grows
less
and less popular in Russia every day.
7. Russia is currently engaged in a horrific suicide attempt, reelected
Soviet politburo members and a plurality of communists to its legislature
and a KGB spy as president, who has launched attacks on the legislature,
the
media, and small helpless border states. Little can be learned from
studying this.
6. Americans haven't seen the attractions of Russia because Russian people
don't want Americans in Russia. Not a single word to the contrary
has ever
been written by any Russian in the JRL or elsewhere. Traveling to
Russia,
Americans take serious risks to their health, personal security and
liberty
which are not present in any other European country.
5. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Rasputin, Lenin, Stalin,
Gorbachev,Yeltsin, etc. Can you think of a more intriguing set of
historical characters? Perhaps not, but these are all virulent
criminals
whose activities were focused on the brutal persecution of the Russian
people with no meaningful opposition whatsoever. Most of them were mass
murderers. Studying this is like gaping at a train wreck, it's
morbid,
sorid and disgusting.
4. Russia's economy is smaller than that of Denmark. If Denmark were
to
cease to exist tomorrow, would there be "global repercussions"?
3. The number of people studying Russian and Russia has declined over time
because Russia has become far less signficant and depressingly devoted to
the status quo, which as already been studied at length. Those who
study
Russia for the purpose of career advancement need to have their heads
examined.
2. Russia is abandoning its nuclear arsenal as we speak, because it cannot
afford it. Saying that Russia should be studied because it has nukes
is
very counterproductive, because it encourages Russia, and other nations of
the world, to adopt nuclear weapons for prestige. Nonproliferation
should
be the goal.
1. If the best reason to study Russian and Russia is to read classic works
of Russian fiction in the original language, there is no reason at all to
study. The study necessary to comprehend Dostoevsky in the original
is
Herculean, and has been undertaken by virtually nobody, including the
translators who make it their lives' work. When Maxim Gorky wrote
"the love
of a baba is a selfish love" the translator simply replaced the
Russian word
"baba" with "woman" and the number of like incidents
is legion. Pushkin in
English is a train wreck. Almost nobody wants to undertake such
massive
efforts just to open a literary door for himself. One might study
Russian
to become one of the first actual translators but then, who actually reads
Russian classic literature today? Certainly not Russians or
Americans, and
if only other Russiaphiles then they could just read the Russian, couldn't
they? But granted, it makes a great secret language for a club.
Andrew Miller
Villanova, Pennsylvania
******
#11
University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award
Analysis of misdirected foreign aid claims Grawemeyer prize
EMBARGOED UNTIL NOV. 30, 2000
Contact: Rodger Payne (502) 852-3316, E-mail: r.payne@louisville.edu
LOUISVILLE, Ky. A book analyzing the dangers of ill-planned, poorly
executed and misdirected foreign aid has won the 2001 University of
Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.
Janine Wedel, an anthropologist affiliated with the University of
Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs who has
studied the evolving economic and social order in Eastern Europe for 20
years, will receive a $200,000 cash prize for the ideas set forth in her
book, "Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid
to Eastern
Europe 1989-1998."
A raft of fly-in, fly-out consultants and reforms financed by Western
taxpayers did little to help Russia and other former Soviet bloc nations
build themselves as democratic, free-market states, Wedel says in her 1998
book. The American government helped wreak economic and social disaster in
Russia by providing inappropriate policy advice and aid to corrupt power
brokers.
In September, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Harvard University and
two of its scholars who were under federal contract to provide economic
and
legal advice on Russian privatization during the aid process. The lawsuit
accuses the scholars of profiting from that enterprise.
"This is a book that is bound to have a long-term impact on the
practice
and politics of foreign aid from the West to non-western economies,"
said
the Grawemeyer selection committee.
Wedel's work was chosen for the award from among 51 nominations submitted
this year by individuals and organizations throughout the world.
The late Charles Grawemeyer was an industrialist, entrepreneur and
University of Louisville graduate who had a lifelong passion for music,
education and religious studies. Rather than rewarding personal
achievements, he chose to recognize powerful ideas or creative works in
the
arts and sciences.
The Grawemeyer Foundation at the University of Louisville awards $1
million
each year, $200,000 each for works in music composition, education, ideas
improving world order, religion and psychology. The Louisville Grawemeyer
Award in Religion is given by the university and the Louisville
Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Three Grawemeyer awards were announced earlier this week. On Nov. 28,
French composer Pierre Boulez won in music for "Sur
Incises" and Michael
Posner, Marcus Raichle and Steven Petersen won the first psychology award
for their groundbreaking work in cognitive neuroscience. On Nov. 29,
William G. Bowen and Derek Bok won in education for their study of
results
of race-sensitive college admission policies. The religion winner will be
announced on Dec. 1.
For information on Wedel and other winners, visit: www.grawemeyer.org
[Previous winners of the Grawemeyer award include Mikhail Gorbachev and
Samuel Huntington. Wedel was nominated for the
award by Fouad Ajami, professor at the School of Advanced International
Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, a contributing editor for The New
Republic and U.S. News and World Report, and a member of the editorial
board of Foreign Affairs.]
*******
#12
Belarus-Russia Union Pushed Forward
November 30, 2000
By MARINA BABKINA
MINSK, Belarus (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his
government to sign an agreement on establishing a single currency with
Belarus - the biggest step yet toward adding substance to the two nations'
largely symbolic union.
Russian officials have said the currency treaty would provide for Belarus
to
adopt the Russian ruble as its official currency by 2008. The ruble would
start circulating in Belarus on Jan. 1, 2005.
A Russia-Belarus union treaty signed late last year created a loose union
between the two countries. It calls for the eventual merger of the
currencies, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who wants a
tighter alliance with Russia, has long urged Moscow to move faster toward
that goal.
But Russian officials have been wary, apparently because of Belarus'
soaring
inflation, unreformed Soviet-style economy and deep poverty.
In spite of Russia's nervousness, Putin on Thursday ordered his government
to
move ahead with the currency agreement, the Kremlin press service said.
The
Russian leader denied that Moscow was dragging its heels, but he also said
there was no reason to rush into integration with Belarus.
``We should look at the decisions being adopted 100, even 1,000 times, but
there's no reason to drag them out,'' he was quoted as saying by the
Interfax
news agency.
Putin said it was essential ``to relieve concern'' among the people of the
two countries about losing sovereignty, according to the ITAR-Tass news
agency.
``This is a very subtle process. Any issue in this sphere cannot be passed
unless it's with the public's consent,'' he said.
Also Thursday, Putin met one-on-one with Lukashenko before the two joined
a
wider meeting of the governing Supreme State Council of the Belarus-Russia
Union.
Russia and Belarus - predominantly Slavic, Orthodox nations - share close
cultural and linguistic ties. Belarus' strategic position between Russia
and
Poland and on export routes to Western Europe makes it a valuable economic
partner for Russia.
*******
#13
Russian greens to fight ruling barring referendum
MOSCOW, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Russian environmentalists vowed on Thursday to
fight a decision by election authorities to throw out more than half a
million signatures from a petition calling for a referendum that would bar
imports of nuclear waste.
The Central Election Commission on Wednesday refused the petition, saying
many of the signatures were not authentic.
Campaign group Greenpeace said the decision trampled on the rights of
those
who signed.
Environmental groups, led by Russia's chapter of Greenpeace, said last
month
they had gathered more than two million signatures needed to launch a
referendum on whether to bar nuclear waste imports and maintain an
independent environmental agency.
"Hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens, whose signatures were not
deemed
to be genuine, are gathering to defend their right to express their
will,"
Greenpeace said in a statement.
The statement said signers would appeal to local courts to challenge the
decision and probably also to the Supreme Court.
It said according to Russian legislation, court cases should start no
later
than in 10 days time.
The referendum bid was a response to the Kremlin's plans to merge its
forestry, ecological and mining agencies, and also plans by the Atomic
Energy
Ministry to import nuclear waste to store or treat for other countries for
a
fee.
The referendum would guarantee environmental and forestry agencies
remained
independent and forbid the import of radioactive materials for storage or
treatment.
The environmentalists say they gathered more than 2,490,000 signatures,
but
the Commission only recognised 1,873,216.
"The result did not surprise us because the practice of free
expression of
will is not very common in this country," said Alexander Sidiakin, a
lawyer
for the group organising the referendum bid. "But we are not going to
surrender."
The statement said most of the signatures that were not recognised had
been
rejected on technicalities.
******
#14
Russian MPs devise scheme to repatriate "shadow" funds
Interfax
Moscow, 30th November: The State Duma submitted a draft resolution on
economic amnesty to the Duma Council on Thursday [30th November].
Duma Legislation Committee Chairman Pavel Krasheninnikov of the Union of
Right Forces faction has told Interfax that the document was proposed by
Committee Deputy Chairman Aleksandr Fedulov of the Unity faction and, in
line
with Duma regulations, is to be circulated among the other committees and
factions. Fedulov told Interfax that the draft is urging all people who
have
accounts in foreign banks and "shadow capital" in Russia to
legalize them
within six months following the declaration of economic amnesty. A single
13-per-cent income tax, to be introduced next year, will be levied on this
capital, he said.
All those who agree to legalize their shadow capital will be given
guarantees
that they will not be prosecuted. But those who refuse to do so, and whose
shadow capital is tracked down, will be prosecuted, Fedulov said.
According to different sources, the capital removed from Russia by legal
entities and individuals over the past ten years is estimated at 3,500bn -
4,500bn dollars, he said.
******
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