December 10, 2000   

This Date's Issues:   4678 • 4679

Johnson's Russia List
#4679
10 December 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. The Russia Journal: Natalya Grishina, Anti-Americanism winning over Russia's elite.
2. Stanislav Menshikov: HOW TO USE MANNA FROM THE HEAVEN. After the
IMF Gentlemanly Sequestration.
3. Interfax: RUSSIAN MEDIC FAVORS BURIAL OF LENIN'S BODY.
4. Interfax: PASKO SAYS HIS LIFE IS THREATENED.
5. The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontkovsky, Was there any Putin?
6. Heritage Foundation meeting: MANDATE 2000: REFOCUSING RUSSIAN AND
EURASIAN POLICY ON AMERICAN INTERESTS.
7. Boston Globe: David E. Powell and Heidi A. Holzfaster, As orphans
multiply and languish, Russia 'decrees'
8. The Observer (UK): Amelia Gentleman, Scandal of children poisoned by Russian space junk. The debris from rocket launches is causing sickness and birth defects deep in Siberia.
9.  Boris Kagarlitsky: The Communist Party of the Russian Federation: Life after the Congress.]

*******

#1
The Russia Journal
December 9-15, 2000
Anti-Americanism winning over Russia's elite
By NATALYA GRISHINA / Independent sociologist 
 
In its billboards around Moscow, cigarette brand Zolotaya Yava "strikes
back" at America, covering its cherished Statue of Liberty in a traditional
Russian fur hat. The slogan openly plays on the idea of Russian revenge
against the United States. Never mind that Zolotaya Yava cigarettes are
actually produced by British-American Tobacco. The dollar-burning protests
and embassy-attacking excesses of the Yugoslavia air-strike episode are
over, but Muscovites still get a kick out of putting down America.

This streak of anti-Americanism can do wonders on the market - witness the
triumphant success of the recent film "Brat-2" in cinemas and on video
throughout Russia. The film's plot boils down to methodical extermination
of Americans, portrayed as emotionless and idiotic automatons. "You've got
money and power, and where has it got you? Has it helped you? You don't
have truth," the film's hero, a dim-witted Russian hitman says to an
American gangster.

One of the latest hits on the country's dance floors is a song eloquently
entitled "Kill the Yankee." Puffing away on a Marlboro cigarette, the
song's author, A. Nyepomnyashchy, confesses to journalists that he'd
happily sing something else, but the fans demand "Kill the Yankee." Trying
to be politically correct, he explains that it's not physical violence he
has in mind. "You first have to kill the Yankee in yourself," clarifies one
of his listeners.

Decidedly, there's not much to laugh about here. The generation that has
rejected communism and has chosen Pepsi and the dollar, the one that mocks
the authorities with their pitiful trappings of state patriotism, does not
hate or fear America. But it holds it in arrogant contempt.

"You have weapons and water, you have gold and women, but you don't have
truth." French author Antoine de Saint-Exupery put these words in the mouth
of an Arab some 70 years ago. Now, across Russia, millions of people are
repeating these words along with the "Brat-2" hero. This is that very same
national idea that President Boris Yeltsin failed to find, and that
President Vladimir Putin has been so desperately searching for.

This anti-Americanism is not just a reaction against losing the Cold War.
It's not just nostalgia or ignorance. Nor is it just the disappointment of
Ivan the fool, who can't find a place for himself and his familiar little
world in the market economy. It is rooted in an intense feeling of cultural
alienation from the United States, feelings that distort the image of
Americans until they seem more monster than human.

Not so long ago, it seemed that only irreversibly communist pensioners and
rebellious marginal youth were prey to these primitive views, but "Brat-2"
has struck a chord in a much wider audience, proving a hit with young
Russian businessmen, for example, including those working in the United
States.

But this is all the common man's anti-Americanism. What is more unexpected
is a new, refined and scientific anti-Americanism such as that which comes
through in a book by well-known Russian economist Mikhail Delyagin,
"Practice of Globalization."

It is one thing to hear a drunken tramp raving away about the Jews who sold
Christ and privatized Russia, but it is quite another to hear essentially
the same message from a modest, bespectacled intellectual sitting in a
book-lined office and throwing in some quotes from the Declaration of Human
Rights and 18th century French poets.

This is the impression given by Delyagin's book. It argues logically and
convincingly that Russia's survival is incompatible with U.S. leadership in
the world. The book provides a comprehensive theory for globalization,
bringing together financial, economic, technological and even cultural
processes.

Delyagin analyzes thoroughly the "aggression of the U.S. and its NATO
allies against Yugoslavia," which he sees as the final stage of the "first
crisis of the global economy of 1997-99." But he doesn't take an accusatory
tone, and comes up with the demeaning term "rocket-kvas patriotism" to
describe the Russian reaction.

But it is precisely this seeming scientific objectivity and self-restraint
that produces such a chilling impression. Delyagin sees world competition
as zealous Muslims see the Jihad. The fundamental message of his book is
the same as that of "Kill the Yankee" or "Brat-2" - that if Russia is to
live, it must fight the United States, and if it is to survive, it must
beat the United States.

That Delyagin wrote this book is significant. In 1990, he was the youngest
liberal economist in Yeltsin's team. In his own words, he viewed the
Americans in the post-Soviet world the "same way that people in Europe in
1945 saw the Red Army as people who had come to free them." But by 1994,
while working for "grandfather of Russian liberalism" Yevgeny Yasin,
Delyagin wrote a sharply anti-American work, the "Bible of Russian
Revanchism" in which he said that Russia had lost the "Third World War,"
and now had to prepare for the fourth - on the world markets.

Delyagin's latest book is a sign that it is not only the poor, the ignorant
or the mad who are at odds with America, but also successful
representatives of the Russian elite. Any political idea is not so
terrifying when it has won the minds only of the mass at the bottom of the
heap. Ideas become terrifying when they win over the elite.
 
*******

#2
From: "stanislav menshikov" <menschivok@globalxs.nl>
Subject: HOW TO USE MANNA FROM THE HEAVEN After the IMF Gentlemanly
Sequestration
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000

"MOSCOW TRIBUNE", 8-9 December  2000
HOW TO USE MANNA FROM THE HEAVEN
After the  IMF Gentlemanly Sequestration
By Stanislav Menshikov

The Russian financial situation is paradoxical. The '2000 federal budget is
enjoying an unprecedented record surplus. Even under very cautious
assumptions federal revenues in 2001 are expected to exceed those
officially approved. But, at the same time, regions, municipalities,
government agencies are complaining of underfinancing, schoolteachers and
doctors go on strike, electric power and heating are being switched off for
non-payment, requests for support to the federal authorities go unheeded
for "lack of money". How come?

The simplest explanation is that the government is intentionally keeping
the economy and regions on a hunger diet so that it can use the extra-plan
moneys more or less as it wishes. That motivation is certainly present but
matters are not that simple. Extra money can be spent on domestic needs,
such as defence, investment, the social sphere, or it can be used to patch
external holes. So far, the government insisted on spending 70 percent or
more to repay foreign debts. The Duma forced a compromise under which at
least half of the first extra 70 billion roubles are to be spent on
domestic needs. That is a reasonable decision based on a pragmatic approach
to harsh Russian realities.

An extreme and opposite position is taken by Andrei Illarionov, the
president's economic adviser. According to him, extra federal revenues are
not a result of the government's efforts but due to favourable external
factors, including higher prices for exported fuel and raw materials and
lower world prices for imported goods. This "global rent" that the world
economy has allegedly "shared" with Russia cannot be used for domestic
purposes but should be fully allocated for settling debts with Paris Club
creditors.

For a professed neoliberal this is strange logic, indeed. It follows that
if some seller in a market is lucky to earn an extra buck he should not
spend it for his own purposes but should share it with his customers. Well,
markets do not work according to laws of fairness. If that were so, the
Soviet Union which in its time accumulated large foreign debts due to
unfavourable terms of trade should be entitled to a return of that "global
rent" from the world economy. The Paris Club would laugh us off if we asked
for a settlement on that basis.

To use a Biblical analogy, Russia has benefited from something similar to
manna from the heaven in the form of extra petrodollars. How would Moses'
compatriots react had he forbidden him to eat the manna because they had
not earned it? Under misplaced reforms, Russia has suffered no less than
the Chosen People while wandering in the desert and has all the right to,
at least temporarily, feed on manna from the heaven.

Mr. Illarionov's statement is even stranger in view of his official duties
which, among others, are to represent Russia in international financial
institutions and defend its position there. The recent IMF mission in
Moscow claimed that Russia was too rich to be entitled to new credits or to
reducing the former USSR debt. Because such credits (formerly promised by
the Fund) were included in the approved 2001 federal budget, the new IMF
position was tantamount to cutting down revenues in that budget by some 100
billion roubles, a considerable part of the petrodollar manna. Instead of
supporting Russia's objections to this "gentlemanly sequestration", Mr.
Illarionov is suggesting theoretical foundations for the Fund's behaviour.
A more logical attitude for him would be to either keep his disagreements
to himself or resign in protest against the government's position.

A more serious argument in favour of repaying debts while the wherewithal
is there is that any new delay is increasing the burden on the economy.
This is because when the debt is extended in time it grows by the amount of
interest that is added to the principal. It is therefore wise to repay as
much as the nation can afford at every given time. But there are at least a
few serious counter-arguments. 

All debts present a burden but when additional income earned on invested
loaned money exceeds repayments the gross burden becomes a net benefit. By
the same token, debts become excessively burdensome in stagnant economies
but growing economies can afford them up to a point. The Russian economy
today is growing at a rate that is probably reducing the debt ratio to GDP.
For that reason invested in economic growth might work better for the
future than petrodollars used to reduce nominal debt.

There may also be a chance of reducing the nominal sum of foreign
indebtedness by various means including a possible swap of debt for shares
in Russian companies. The Russian government has started to discuss this
possibility with its largest creditor, Germany. It is not an easy route,
but it looks more promising than simply giving money away, as suggested by
Mr. Larionov. 

Every dollar saved for domestic use could bring back two or three dollars
later on. In a world where decisions have to integrate complexities of real
life, primitive logic is not productive.

******

#3
RUSSIAN MEDIC FAVORS BURIAL OF LENIN'S BODY

     MOSCOW. Dec  8 (Interfax)  -  Ilya Zbarsky, a member of the Russian
Academy of  Medical Sciences,  has said he believes the body of Vladimir
Lenin should be removed from the mausoleum in Red Square and buried.
     Zbarsky, 87,  is the son of Professor Boris Zbarsky, one of the two
Russian scientists who embalmed Lenin 56 days after his death in 1924.
     "The time  for that  has come. Lenin's body - one of the symbols of
the Soviet  epoch - should finally be laid to rest," he told Interfax on
Friday. "Better to do that sooner than later," he said.
     Zbarsky worked  with his father at the laboratory affiliated to the
mausoleum for  18 years  and remains  its advisor.  During World  War II
between July 1941 and March 1945 the father and son accompanied the body
of the  founder of  the Soviet  Union during  its evacuation  to Tyumen,
Siberia and monitored its condition there for 1,360 days.
     Zbarsky said the technique developed by Professor Vladimir Vorobyov
and his  father was  used by Soviet experts for mummifying the bodies of
several foreign  politicians, including  Vietnamese leader  Ho Chi Minh,
who died in 1979, and North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994.
Zbarsky said  he did  not know  what happened  to the  body of Mongolian
leader Choybalsan, whose body was embalmed by Soviet experts in 1952.
     He said he does not doubt that Lenin's body "will finally be buried
in a Christian manner."
     On June  6, 1997,  then Russian  President Boris Yeltsin officially
raised the question of burying Lenin and suggested holding a nation-wide
referendum for  a final  decision  on  the  matter.  However,  the  Duma
immediately passed  a special statement demanding "the prevention an act
of political revenge against Lenin."

******

#4
PASKO SAYS HIS LIFE IS THREATENED

     MOSCOW. Dec  8 (Interfax)  - Journalist Grigory Pasko, whom special
services want  to put  on trial  again for  alleged spying  on behalf of
Japan, made  a statement  in Moscow  on Friday,  saying that his life is
being threatened.
     He has  been told  in no uncertain terms that he must cease working
for his acquittal and protesting his innocence if he wants to stay alive
and healthy, Pasko says in his statement. As he is healthy enough at the
moment, the fast development of a deadly or dangerous disease could only
be the  work of special services, he says. He would never commit suicide
and no  fatal accident could occur unless the special services that keep
him under constant surveillance engineer it, he says.
     Meanwhile, the  Public Committee in Defense of Pasko has decided to
resume its  activities, Alexei  Yablokov, a  co-chairman of  the Social-
Ecological Union, told a news conference in Moscow on Friday.
     Pasko's defense attorney Anna Panicheva has told the press that she
would appeal  in the  Supreme Court  the ruling of its military panel to
send Pasko's  case back  to the  Pacific Fleet's  court.  Pasko  himself
described that ruling as a death sentence because his relations with the
territorial Federal Security Service Office, the prosecution service and
the court have degenerated into personal vendetta.
     Capt. 2nd degree Pasko, head of the military training department in
the Pacific  Fleet's newspaper,  was arrested  in Vladivostok airport on
November 20,  1997 by  Federal Security  Service officers  on his return
from a  business trip  to Japan. His closed trial started on January 21,
1999 and  lasted five  months. According  to the charges, which had been
made top  secret, Pasko  gave Japanese citizens 10 secret documents. His
defense attorneys  have been  saying that  he  only  made  data  on  the
condition of  numerous ecologically  unfriendly assets  of  the  Pacific
Fleet available to the Japanese press.
     On July  20, 1999  Pasko was  found  guilty  of  abuse  of  office,
sentenced to three years behind bars and released in the courtroom under
an amnesty.  In November  2000 the  military panel  of the Supreme Court
ruled that his case be sent back to the Pacific Fleet's court.

*******

#5
The Russia Journal
December 9-15, 2000
Was there any Putin?
By Andrei Piontkovsky

To all appearances, Russia has settled into tranquil days of total social
apathy among the public, a complete lack of any clearly formed political
opposition and a self-censoring, servile media. But this idyllic picture
hides a deep political crisis brewing on the horizon.

As so often in Russian history, this crisis is all the making of the people
at the top. Three sources, three component parts of Putinism that trace
their origins back to the Family, the Lubyanka and Sobchak, have entered
into a decisive battle in their efforts to claw from each other the
choicest morsels of power and assets.

Without even having had time yet to wear out the boots in which they
trotted off to Putin's inauguration, the losers in this fight already face
an unenviable fate. There's no place here for sentiment and gratitude for
past services. "Yes, I stole; I stole money from Aeroflot, but I spent it
on Putin's election campaign," cries, in soul-bearing sincerity and
desperation, Russia's latest political emigre, Boris Berezovsky, from his
refuge in distant America. New-born fighter of tyranny and defender of
freedom Berezovsky can sense acutely above his head the same
truncheon-icepick which, as the president so neatly expressed, "deals only
one blow, but to the head."

It was inevitable that the three groups that united in the bloody autumn of
1999 around the "Inheritor" project would eventually come to blows. The
aims pursued by these temporary allies in their joint operation were just
too different.

"The Family" had to stop at any price the rival Primakov-Luzhkov clan from
coming to power, or it risked losing not just its property but also its
personal freedom. The Chekists nurtured dreams of restoring the secret
services to their former power, while the "liberals" had visions of the
iron hand that would at last guide Russia toward market reforms.

Putin wasn't a core member of any these clans. At various points in his
career he had been on their periphery, first as a lieutenant colonel in the
KGB, then as a second-rank official in Sobchak's St. Petersburg
administration and then in President Boris Yelstin's administration.

With such a career, Putin couldn't become a leader or ideologue in any of
these groups. Instead, he became something like the lowest common
denominator of their various aims. Each group looks at him purely as an
instrument, seeing in him a tool with which to achieve their corporate aims.

But, hampered as he is by a lack of experience in politics and power, Putin
is having a tough time playing the role of referee trying to keep a balance
between the rival clans in his entourage. It's likely he'll end up a more
or less passive observer as the rival clans enter a bitter battle, where
any unity they once had will disappear fast.

The Chekists will, of course, emerge victorious in this battle. For a
start, they have a more developed notion of corporate solidarity and sense
of purpose. Second, as they were less widely represented in power during
the Yeltsin period, they are less compromised by privatization and
corruption scandals than their rivals. Third, they possess a vast amount of
information in these areas and control the law enforcement agencies that
can put this information to use.

Finally, we shouldn't forget the president's own capabilities. Putin's
personal preferences are clear enough. In the rather dull book of his
interviews, "Conversations with Putin," there are two moments when real
warmth and the author's swelling feelings break through the stilted
official text.

The first is when he speaks about the organization in which he made his
career; the second, when he discovers German beer - an event that came as
something of a "future shock" for the young officer finding himself abroad
for the first time.

Powerful secret services, good German beer for all - such is Putin's
simple-minded ideal for building Russia.

Coming as it does at the end of a ruthless and bloody century, this could
be the most humane ideal the rulers of Russia have ever proposed their
people.

(Andrei Piontkovsky is director of the Center of Strategic Research.)
 
******

#6
From: "Ariel Cohen" <ariel.cohen@heritage.org>
Subject:  Heritage Russia Policy Event
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000

The Heritage Foundation
YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO A DISCUSSION ON
MANDATE 2000:
REFOCUSING RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN POLICY ON AMERICAN INTERESTS

FEATURING
STEPHEN  BLANK
U.S. Army War College
ARIEL  COHEN
The Heritage Foundation
FRITZ ERMARTH
Former Chairman, National Intelligence Council
BEN SLAY
PlanEcon

U.S.-Russian relations are yet at another low point. Russia abrogated its
1995 Memorandum of Understanding to curb arms sales to Iran. A Russian court
sentenced an American, Edmond Pope, to 20 years hard labor on trumped-up
espionage charges.

Moscow adamantly opposes the U.S. deployment of a National Missile Defense
System, even if it will not counter Russia's nuclear deterrent.
Anti-Americanism is on the rise in the media and among the political elites.
What should the new Administration do?

THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 2000
12:00 noon
REFRESHMENTS SERVED
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION'S LEHRMAN AUDITORIUM
214 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, NE
RESERVATIONS  REQUESTED
PLEASE CALL  (202) 675-1752
OR  SEND YOUR E-MAIL TO: lectures.seminars@heritage.org
VIEW LIVE ON THE INTERNET AT WWW.HERITAGE.ORG

******

#7
Boston Globe
December 10, 2000
As orphans multiply and languish, Russia 'decrees'
By David E. Powell and Heidi A. Holzfaster
David E. Powell is the Shelby Collum Davis Professor of Russian Studies at
Wheaton College and an associate of the Davis Center for Russian Studies at
Harvard University. Heidi A. Holzfaster is a senior at Wheaton who has
written on Russian orphanages.

With Christmas and Hanukkah just around the corner, it is natural to think of
ways to pamper our children, or at least to do our best to make them happy
and healthy. But what is ''natural'' in a comfortable, middle-class American
existence is all but impossible in many parts of the world - Russia
increasingly among them.

Except for the offspring of the richest or most corrupt segment of the
population, the children of Russia have fallen on hard times. With the
nation's Gross Domestic Product having declined by roughly 50 percent and
rising unemployment having weakened family bonds, it has become increasingly
difficult for adults to care for their children.

Obtaining food, clothing, and shelter have become so arduous that some
parents have given up hope: The number of abandoned children has doubled over
the past three years and is now more than 650,000.

Even those who are not abandoned pay a price for the country's withering
nutritional standards and poorly financed public health system; more than
half of all newborns who leave maternity clinics suffer from some sort of
chronic illness or disease. Indeed, a mere 10 percent of babies are deemed
healthy - a figure that sounds impossibly low, but that is affirmed by the
most authoritative government and medical bodies in the country.

In early October, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences announced that the
number of ''normal'' births in the Russian Federation had declined from 45.3
percent in 1992 to only 30 percent in 1999. The Academy blamed this situation
on the spread of alcoholism, the growing use of drugs, sexually transmitted
diseases, and a more general decline in the health of adults - especially
among women of child-bearing age.

But the poor health of Russia's babies has another consequence: When an
infant is born with any type of mental or physical defect, doctors often try
to dissuade parents from caring for the child. Indeed, stories of physicians
telling parents that they will be perceived as socially inferior if they
choose to care for an impaired child are a staple of Russian newspapers.

The end result is a growing number of ''social orphans'' - or ''sotsialnye
siroty''- who are abandoned or put up for adoption by their parents. They
are, as their name implies, made orphans by social factors; only 5 percent
are actually without living mothers and fathers.

Once institutionalized, these social orphans - whose defects may be as minor
as a skin abrasion, bronchitis, or pneumonia - are provided with little or no
care by poorly trained and indifferent personnel. A lack of nutritionally
balanced meals and a shortage of pharmaceuticals have given rise to further
medical problems among these youngsters; in fact, pervasive neglect leads to
thousands of deaths every year.

A visit to an orphanage, whether in Moscow or in a provincial city, is
heartbreaking. The premises generally are crowded and dirty, most children
sit or lie listlessly, there are few toys for them to play with, and nurses
rarely, if ever, hold the boys and girls, or interact with them in anything
but the most perfunctory way.

The wages of orphanage personnel average less than $15 a month; as a result,
they seldom offer their charges anything more than custodial care. Earlier
this year, one journalist described the children he saw as, ''straitjacketed,
lying naked on linoleum floors, cowering miserably in corners, or penned up
in outdoor wooden shelters.'' Approximately 20 percent of the children, he
was told, never get out of bed.

According to Boris Altshuler, a Russian who heads the nongovernmental
organization Children's Rights, the cost of keeping even one social orphan is
roughly $300 a month - an enormous sum in a country where 36.7 percent of the
population live below the official poverty level of $42 a month. (The average
monthly wage for someone in the private sector is $82, while those who work
for the government earn about 20 percent less.)

By law, the Russian Federation is required to pay a monthly stipend to all
sotsialnye siroty. This money is supposed to go directly to the orphanages to
cover costs of food, clothing, and medicine. But the government routinely
fails to distribute the stipends, due to its own financial difficulties, and
the little that is actually given out rarely reaches its intended recipients.
Orphanage staff often appropriate the money for their own personal use;
currently, more than a billion dollars in payments authorized for
welfare-dependent families still has not reached them.

Despite this grim picture, orphanages are absorbing an increasing number of
Russia's children. ''I can tell how bad things are by the way families are
starting to ask us to take their children,'' said the head of one agency.
''Families in Russia are falling apart.''

''Abandoned children in Russia are condemned to a life without a future,
especially if they suffer from a disability, no matter how minor,'' says the
head of the Down's Syndrome Association. ''The problem lies not just in the
appalling state of these orphanages. It also lies in Russian society and in
its prejudice. These kids are looked down upon as second-class citizens.''

Indeed, in a cruel, self-fulfilling prophesy, second-class citizens is what
many Russian orphanages all but guarantee. For children who survive to age 18
and are released, the odds are better than 1 in 2 that they will commit a
crime, become alcohol or drug addicts, or join the ranks of the homeless -
who number in the hundreds of thousands.

Many might be saved from such a fate if they were made available to
foreigners who are willing to adopt them. Russia has long been the country of
choice for Westerners, especially Americans, wishing to adopt. The number of
Russian children adopted by foreigners rose from 3,251 in 1996 to 5,604 in
1998. Altogether, some 15,000 Russian children were brought to the United
States between 1992 and 1999.

According to the US State Department, last year Americans adopted 16,400
foreign children, almost a third of whom were from Russia.

But in April, Vladimir Putin, only a month after having been elected
president, promulgated a series of decrees aimed at tightening controls over
foreign adoption. The decrees were, in part, a demonstration of his
nationalist credentials - although their stated purpose was to put an end to
bribery, the sale of babies, and other illegal activities that have long been
an inevitable concomitant of placing Russian orphans in foreign homes.

As Western commentators have pointed out, the process of acquiring a child
necessitates that thousands of dollars be paid to judges, lawyers, orphanage
employees, interpreters, ''consultants'' and others who could expedite -
indeed, make possible - the adoption process.

Whether President Putin's changes are short term or permanent remains to be
seen. For the moment, he has banned intermediaries (including more than 160
US adoption agencies), permitting only nonprofit and accredited organizations
to function, requiring each to open an office in Russia, and demanding
regular reports on their work.

While awaiting government publication of the requisite guidelines
implementing the law, agency activity has virtually ceased. Adoption efforts
that had begun before the new policy was instituted are proceeding, although
individual judges seem to have discretionary authority to permit or prohibit
the process.

>From the few references that have appeared in the Russian press, it seems
that the new regulations, when promulgated, will permit foreigners to adopt
children only after their country's government has concluded a bilateral
agreement with the federal authorities in Moscow, and only through adoption
agencies that have been accredited in both countries. To date, however,
foreign agencies have been unable to ascertain what they must do to become
accredited.

While the new policy takes shape, most individuals wishing to adopt have no
choice but to wait, while potential adoptees remain institutionalized, where
they do little more than vegetate. Virtually all Russian and American
specialists agree that children who remain in these tragic conditions
experience emotional trauma and fall behind their peers who have been placed
with a family.

It is just one more way in which Russia's children are being emotionally
scarred - but rather than be the inevitable consequence of the country's
poverty, it is a situation that can be remedied. That is a reminder that
Western governments, as well as private adoption agencies, should send to the
Putin administration. They can think of it as a holiday gift to Russia's
children.

*******

#8
The Observer (UK)
December 10, 2000
Scandal of children poisoned by Russian space junk
The debris from rocket launches is causing sickness and birth defects deep in
Siberia. Amelia Gentleman reports from Moscow

Every time a Russian rocket lifts off from its launch pad at Baikonur,
residents in the tiny Siberian village of Ploskoye, more than 1,000 miles
away, are shaken nine minutes later by a terrible explosion.
If it is dark, firework flashes are visible in the sky above their homes,
with streaking flames burning through the air as fuel falls to Earth. During
the day a misty yellowish cloud sometimes hangs over the region. Villagers
say the noise of the blast sets dogs howling for hours.

In the days after each launch, rocket fragments from the shuttles ferrying
astronauts and equipment to Mir, or to the International Space Station, can
be found in the hills and forests nearby.

>From time to time, local farmers discover massive, shining metal cylinders -
up to seven metres long and three metres wide - which have in the past been
seized with delight and converted into chicken coops, hunting huts or grain
storage tanks.

Recently, however, as more information emerges about the poisonous fuels
lining the wreckage, locals have started to regard the debris with mounting
alarm. Village doctors have charted a growth in illnesses among their
patients - from cancer to bronchial spasms to defects in new-born children -
and concluded they are connected to the scattering of cosmic litter on the
region. Teachers report that in the days following each launch, children
complain of stomach pains, dizziness and headaches and find it hard to
concentrate.

After decades of concealing the problem, the Russian space agency,
Rosaviakosmos, has conceded the regular jettisoning of sections of rocket
engine on this region of Siberia and up to 20 other areas in Russia may have
a harmful effect on the local population and has agreed to fund preliminary
research. Villagers demand compensation for the harmful effects of living for
the past 40 years in what they see as a huge dustbin for Russia's space
programme.

The problem lies in the design of the Soyuz and Proton rockets, built to
discard the engines that power their lift-off and passage through the
atmosphere. The Soyuz's first four side-blocks - each of which contains four
engines - drop from its hull around a minute after lift-off over Kazakhstan.
The second stage of the rocket, which contains another four engines, drops
eight minutes later, while a third is meant to burn up in the sky.

According to maps held at Rosaviakosmos's headquarters in Moscow, the second
section should fall somewhere within an area in an uninhabited part of the
mountains of Gorno-Altai, classified Dropping Region 306. In reality, say the
villagers of Ploskoye and nearby Novoaleiskoye, several miles outside the
allocated space, the rocket pieces rain down on them.

The danger of anyone being hurt by a falling fragment is extremely slim, and
Rosaviakosmos officials point out that since Russia's space programme began
in 1960, the only casualties have been cattle. But the real danger lies in
the unburnt rocket fuel that falls with the metal.

While Soyuz rockets are powered by a relatively innocuous combination of
kerosene and liquid oxygen, Proton rockets run on a highly noxious fuel
called heptyl which can cause severe blood and liver problems. Viktor
Pakhomov, 55, head of the Ploskoye administration, is seeking to discover
why, in his village of 1,000, people are becoming more and more unwell. For
40 years, little official research has been done into the connections between
illness and the space programme; so Pakhomov has tried to catalogue its
effects himself.

As a result of his attempts to collect and identify toxic fuel remnants, he
has burnt his retinas to the point of near-blindness, suffered from temporary
paralysis in his hands and scorched his lungs by breathing in poisonous
fluids. 'We have never been sent any protective equipment to help us handle
the material, because the local authorities have never admitted there is a
problem,' he said.

The space agency warns him of most launches, and he broadcasts a radio
warning telling locals to stay inside and avoid drawing water from rivers in
the days following.

He has recorded all cases of sickness after launches. Villagers have become
ill from eating cucumbers from their gardens after rocket debris was found
nearby, men have come out in blisters from swimming in the river, and
farmers' arms have been covered in sores harvesting hay.

Ploskoye doctor Olga Varova is besieged by new patients every time a rocket
is launched. 'We have people complaining of nausea, vomiting, headaches and
finding it hard to breathe,' she said. 'But more worrying are what appear to
be the cumulative effects of the pollution. In the last five years, not one
child in the village has been born completely fit - each baby has been
diagnosed with blood problems or nervous system complaints.'

Emma Ladoga, acting head doctor at the regional hospital, said: 'People here
aren't ill because they're poor; we think their illnesses are connected to
the environmental situation.' A study showed people from the affected
villages were twice as likely to suffer from thyroid cancers as those in a
control village.

Mikhail Shashin, head of the Siberian environmental group, Katun, said
pollution from space activity was a serious international problem - only
American citizens did not suffer in the same way, because rockets launched in
the US drop their debris over the ocean. 'If the situation is to improve, we
need to have a global agreement restricting the number of rocket launches,'
he said.

Under a new agreement signed between Rosaviakosmos and the local authorities,
the region surrounding Ploskoye will get 90,000 roubles (£2,250) every time a
commercial launch takes place. The money does not represent compensation, but
is allocated as rent on the land for the six hours during which lift-off
occurs.

'We don't believe there is any case for compensation yet. Rocket launches,
like industrial activity, aeroplane or car travel, naturally have some effect
on the environment, but there is nothing to prove people are suffering,'
Alexander Bolysov of Rosaviakosmos commented. 'These environmental issues
have become very fashionable recently. Nobody ever suggests that we should
stop air travel because people occasionally die on aeroplanes.'

But the allocation of new money to fund research into environmental and
health problems in the region indicates the organisation has become
uncomfortable about inhabitants' complaints.

So far the only money villagers in Ploskoye have seen was a nine rouble
(22.5p) handout from the local administration to each inhabitant earlier this
year.

Nikolai Shtifinov, head of the local environment committee, said: 'In any
civilised country, the government would admit the problem and would pay us
compensation. What do we get? Nine roubles - it's not even enough to buy a
jar of coffee.'

*******

#9
From: "Renfrey Clarke" <renfreyclarke@hotmail.com>
Subject: Kagarlitsky on KPRF after congress
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000

#The Communist Party of the Russian Federation: Life after the Congress
#By Boris Kagarlitsky

#The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the child of Zyuganov,
might to almost the same degree be called the child of Yeltsin. Throughout
the entire period from 1993 to 1999 the party had a clearly scripted role
in Russia's political life. The wise Yeltsin knew perfectly well that the
surest way for his to retain his dictatorial powers was to create the
appearance of democracy. There was, indeed, democracy in Russia, only it
did not extend to the Kremlin. The opposition could speak, the press could
criticise, the citizens could vote, and everything was wonderful - except
that none of this had the slightest bearing on the question of power.

#For the system to work properly, it required an opposition that was
incapable in principle of taking office. Zyuganov's party coped with this
role to perfection. In this sense it has always been one of the system's
fundamental political elements. The KPRF has also been assigned another
task, no less important and perhaps even more so: to struggle against any
attempts at founding a political alternative to the regime. Zyuganov and
his associates have fought consistently and with determination against
anyone who has tried to attack the regime from the left. The Communist
leaders have denounced such people as extremists, as "traitors", or simply
as "unserious individuals". This struggle has been a complete success. It
is enough to recall that within the Communist movement itself, Zyuganov's
party was at first neither the sole organisation, nor the largest. Bit by
bit, however, all other communist organisations were forced out of
political life. This occurred not because the organisations in question
were weak, but because it was the KPRF that had received the Kremlin's
official approval as the sole recognised opposition. Of all the left
parties, only the KPRF took part in the elections after the shelling of the
parliament in 1993. All the others were either denied permission to run, or
themselves boycotted the elections as illegal. If the Communists and
Yabloko had called for a boycott in 1993, the only party taking part in the
elections apart from the pro-government Russia's Choice bloc would have
been Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats. In essence, this would have meant
both the failure of the elections and of Yeltsin's constitutional
referendum - and hence the failure of the entire coup. Yabloko and the
KPRF, however, preferred to play by the Kremlin's rules. In return, they
received regular consolation prizes in the form of Duma committee positions
and television time. The only thing not permitted them was to rise to
power. It seems, however, that they did not want this very much.

#The other organisations of the Russian left were in any case too weak to
score successes independently. The KPRF firmly rejected collaboration with
any and all opposition groups, except of course for its own satellites.
No-one attempted to build a broad opposition bloc, either on a class
foundation or on the basis of general democratic principles. Both variants
would have amounted to a breach of the rules set down by the Kremlin. In
sum, a paradoxical situation arose: throughout the period from 1995 to 1999
opposition moods were growing in society, but the political opposition grew
steadily weaker because it could not give expression to these moods, and
had no wish to express them.

#Society was moving leftward, but the KPRF was shifting ever further to the
right. The party bureaucrats had received their training in Soviet times,
and during the Yeltsin years as well, these habits stood them in good
stead. On trips abroad, KPRF representatives spoke as leftists. Depending
on the audience, they were resolute Leninists or moderate social-democrats.
Talking to people in the provinces, they came across as fighters for social
rights, as populists. In the State Duma they were apolitical and
exceedingly deideologised pragmatists, regional and sectoral lobbyists.
With business entrepreneurs, they spoke as colleagues. Within their own
circle, meanwhile, the Communist Party elite were more reminiscent of white
guards, monarchists, and members of the black hundreds; they made no
particular effort to conceal their dislike for Bolsheviks, for Lenin,
Trotsky and other "rebels". Zyuganov in his theoretical works defended the
achievements of far right-wing anticommunist ideologues from Pobedonostsev,
Purishkevich and K. Leontyev to Huntington and Fukuyama. In the language of
the party elite, all this went by the name of  "state patriotism". 

#One after another, "anti-social budgets" were passed on the votes of the
Communists. As a reward, the party elite received confirmation of its
status, while the sectoral lobbyists got to introduce a few beneficial
amendments. Naturally, the Communist deputies also received consolation
prizes, in the form of packets of green notes. The honest deputies put the
money into their re-election funds, and the less honest ones, straight into
their pockets.

#The only problem with politics such as these was that the party's real
goals could never be admitted to the masses of party supporters. The
promised "struggle against the anti-popular regime" could never be carried
out in practice without the KPRF ceasing to be one of the main props of
this very regime. So long as the situation remained stable, the party
leaders were not much troubled by such contradictions. As the crisis of
Yeltsin's system grew, however, the difficulties for the KPRF increased as
well.

#The first challenge was the 1998 default. For a time, the Kremlin actually
lost control of the situation. Even if the Duma politicians could not have
taken power at this point, they could at least have had a real influence on
the government's actions. The outcome of the crisis was the installing of
the government of Yevgeny Primakov and Yury Maslyukov. Primakov, as is well
known, was nominated by none other than Grigory Yavlinsky, and the
Communists gleefully backed the candidacy of their fraction comrade
Maslyukov for the post of vice-premier. The striking thing is, however,
that from the very first days of Primakov's cabinet, Yavlinsky's "Yabloko"
bloc became its most implacable parliamentary enemy. Meanwhile the KPRF
fraction, which had pledged to support the government, left it to the whims
of fate. Once Primakov had done his work, Yeltsin decided: "The moor has
done his work; let the moor depart." The moors, Primakov and Maslyukov,
dutifully made their exit. Zyuganov and his comrades then declared
cheerfully that the change of government altered nothing.

#Alas, a great deal was to change, above all the rules of the game. Unlike
Yeltsin, the new people who have come to the Kremlin since 1999 are no
longer capable of playing delicate political games. President Putin does
not understand that the Duma was planned as an enticing political
side-show, a sort of free circus to be presented to the population when
there was no bread. Putin and his team see the parliament solely as a
voting machine; they have no need of a simulated opposition, since they
cannot see why they need an opposition at all. Accordingly, they do not
demand that the KPRF play particular roles in an elegantly conceived farce,
but simply that it carry out orders. This, on the whole, the KPRF does,
especially since the orders do not in the least contradict the political
predilections of "state patriots".

#The story of the national anthem is instructive. The liberal
intelligentsia protested when they heard the Soviet-era melody of the
composer Aleksandrov. In one way or another, everyone accepted that this
had been the hymn of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is as
though people had forgotten that the hymn of the Communist Party was the
Internationale. Until 1942, this was also the anthem of the Soviet Union.
In the middle of the war, however, Stalin took a series of decisions aimed
at breaking with revolutionary symbols and traditions. Epaulettes made a
return to the army, ministries replaced people's commissariats, a deal was
struck with the Orthodox Church, people with non-Russian surnames began to
be moved out of key posts, and the Communist International was dissolved.
History was rewritten once again, this time laying stress on the exploits
of the tsars. Stalin personally decreed that less should be written about
rebels such as Stenka Razin and Yemelyan Pugachev. The Soviet anthem was
composed in order, without admitting as much, to resurrect the style of the
old monarchic regime. The work is nothing more than a "party" variant of
"Glod Save the Tsar". By uniting the two-headed eagle with the Soviet
anthem, Putin is completing what Stalin began. There is no contradiction
here, and Zyuganov in his theoretical works calls for precisely such a
synthesis.

#The trouble is, however, that the "backward" masses do not understand what
is going on! They cling to the memory of the USSR not because dissidents
were thrown in prison or because there was a large army, not because we had
military advisers in Africa or the world's best political police, but
because we had a free education system that was arguably the world's best,
because medical care was accessible to all, and because the children of
workers had the chance to make careers for themselves. Such trifles are
alien to "state patriots"; what the latter need is a "strong regime", "firm
authority", and discipline. The only things of value for them in Soviet
history are those that link it with tsarist times, not those that
differentiate it, and the only things of value in "Stalinist
totalitarianism" are those that link it with the Hitlerite variety, not the
factors that allowed the Communist Parties to wage a successful struggle
against fascism. The bloc between Zyuganov and Putin is intended to be the
culmination of what the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact began. Unfortunately,
acknowledging this openly would mean arousing the fury of the most loyal,
hitherto uncritical supporters of the party. The party elite is forced to
lie, to contradict itself, to sink into confusion, and as a result, to lose
influence.

#The fact that the party is losing authority among workers is of little
concern to the party leaders, firstly because this authority has never been
particularly high, and secondly, because workers have "nowhere else to go";
there is no-one else they could vote for. The trouble is that the party
leadership is losing influence over its own local organisations, and this
is already something more serious. At the December congress of the KPRF,
the formerly very cautious and loyal head of the party's Moscow
organisation, Aleksandr Kuvaev, came out with a criticism of the
leadership. There was now a quite obvious conflict between what "left"
ideologue Aleksandr Kravets was saying, and the declarations of the Duma
fraction leaders.

#The "leftists" maintained openly that an "opposition party" ought to be in
opposition to the regime. This was not a particularly original thought, to
say the least, but at the KPRF congress it sounded like an epochal
discovery. Meanwhile, Gennady Seleznev called openly on the party "not to
get above itself," and to give its open support to the Kremlin. No
conditions were urged, and nothing was requested; if the KPRF deserved
encouragement, the Kremlin leaders would see this, and encouragement would
be given. Then Viktor Ilyukhin astounded the liberal viewers of NTV with a
"sudden and total change of image". He began speaking like Sergey Adamovich
Kovalev, transforming himself into a leading defender of civil rights,
dissident thinking and pluralism. At the same time, he hinted quite openly
that all these democratic values needed defending not only from the Kremlin
and the liberals, but also from the Communists. Again, this was not very
original, but on the whole it was true. Most importantly, it sounded very
timely in conditions when the "democrats" were approving genocide in
Chechnya, and the "communists" were ready to support an anti-worker
government.

#Until recently, a division of labour existed in the KPRF. The "left"
figures, with their more radical declarations, provided cover for the
"pragmatists", working hand in glove with the Kremlin. Now, however,
everything is collapsing. Radicalism and loyalty are becoming incompatible.
Does this mean the impending disintegration of the KPRF? It is still too
early to draw this conclusion. The collapse of the party has been predicted
time and time again, but nothing has come of these forecasts. Going from
failure to failure, from one humiliation to the next, the party leadership
has held firm to its positions, since it knows a rule discovered by Stalin:
whoever controls the apparatus, also chooses the leading cadres. And
cadres, as we all know, decide everything.

#The problem, however, lies elsewhere. Zyuganov will somehow cope with the
criticism and put down the mutiny, especially since the mutineers are,
after all, on their knees. None of the protesters has had the courage to
say outright that the leaders are pursuing criminal policies, especially in
relation to the members of their own party. But what will Zyuganov's
services be worth to the new regime? Why is such a party needed at all, if
the rules of the game are changing? Zyuganov and his team are merely part
of the Yeltsin heritage that has been bequeathed to the new Kremlin rulers.
What Putin and his associates should do with all this, they have no idea.
Of course, the Duma Communists do not do the regime any harm, but neither
are they of any use to it. In the Kremlin, consequently, the KPRF's share
price is falling. This ought to be disturbing Zyuganov far more than the
protests from his own comrades. 

*******

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