Johnson's Russia List #6168 3 April 2002 davidjohnson@erols.com A CDI Project www.cdi.org ******** JRL RESEARCH AND ANALYTICAL SUPPLEMENT Issue No. 6 April 2002 Editor: Stephen D. Shenfield shenfield@neaccess.net CONTENTS ======== POLITICS 1. Putin's parliament 2. Silent regions 3. Book review. Postcommunism and the theory of democracy 4. Orthodox brotherhoods ECONOMY 5. Geography and Russia's economy 6. Where have all the fish gone? 7. The funding of scientific research SOCIETY 8. Attitudes toward income inequality 9. Time budgets ETHNIC RELATIONS 10. Ethnic categories in the 2002 census ECOLOGY 11. Oil and gas spillage in the Russian Arctic RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS 12. Russo-Japanese territorial dispute: end in sight? 13. Book review. Post-Soviet chaos RECOMMENDED SOURCES -------------------------------------------------------- POLITICS 1. PUTIN'S PARLIAMENT SOURCE. Thomas F. Remington, "Putin and the Duma," Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 17 No. 4, October-December 2001, pp. 285-308. The author, a political scientist at Emory University, examines the internal dynamics of Russia's third Duma, which convened in January 2000, and its relations with the executive branch. He also analyzes the results of 30 key votes which took place in the Duma between June 2000 and February 2001. Russia's parliament remains weak vis-à-vis the presidency and government. In some respects its role has been further constrained under Putin. Thus the Duma used to be able to influence intra-governmental disputes by maintaining direct relations with individual government ministries and agencies, which used these relations to lobby on behalf of their departmental interests. This practice was banned in April 2000, when government departments were ordered to deal with the Duma only through the government's official representative to the Duma. Nevertheless, the role played by the Duma is not totally insignificant. In fact, the importance of its law-making activity has increased. This is because Yeltsin was willing if necessary to bypass the Duma and push his measures through by means of presidential decrees, while Putin considers it essential to provide a firm basis for his reform program in legislation. Professor Remington's data relate to the period before the merger of Fatherland/All Russia (OVR) with Unity in April 2001, when OVR still maintained a stance somewhat independent of the government. At this time the Duma contained the following nine organized factions (numbers of deputies in brackets): -- Unity, the party created to support Putin (83) -- Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) (84) and the allied Agrarian Party group (APG) (42) -- Fatherland/All Russia (OVR) (45) -- Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) (14) -- Yabloko (19) -- Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) (32) -- two new non-ideological factions of deputies elected from single-mandate constituencies: People's Deputy (PD) (53) and Russia's Regions (RR) (41) In addition, there were 15 "independent" deputies. These factions can be divided into three groups with respect to their stance toward the executive branch: -- Unity deputies almost always support the government. -- CPRF and APG deputies usually, but not always, vote against the government. -- Deputies in all other factions (and also the "independent" deputies) are often willing to lend their support to the government, but their support cannot automatically be counted on. Thus informal bargaining is needed to ensure a pro-government majority on each vote, giving deputies in the swing factions a certain leverage. Their votes have to be bought, either for political concessions or for personal favors (or simply for money). On the basis of Professor Remington's data on key votes, I have ordered the factions according to the proportion of their deputies' votes which are supportive of government positions. Here are the results: Unity 96 per cent LDPR 79 per cent SPS 73 per cent PD 72 per cent OVR 71 per cent Yabloko 69 per cent RR 69 per cent Independents 60 per cent APG 19 per cent CPRF 16 per cent Thus we see that all the swing factions vote in accordance with government wishes over two-thirds of the time. SPS is generally regarded as the party most loyal to Putin apart from Unity itself, but the voting record shows that this honor rightly belongs to Zhirinovsky's LDPR, an embarrassing fact which it is convenient to overlook. Analysis of voting patterns also reveals a shifting pattern of factional alignments depending on the type of issue at stake. There seem to be five types of issue in this respect: (1) issues on which the CPRF and APG find themselves in opposition to all other factions (e.g. whether to permit mortgaging of land, whether to index student stipends) (2) issues on which CPRF/APG positions get backing from OVR, PD and RR deputies (e.g. spend more on water projects or on children's programs) (3) issues on which CPRF/APG positions get backing from Yabloko and/or SPS deputies (e.g. increase pensions in the Far North, do not license private firms to handle nuclear waste) (4) issues on which CPRF/APG positions get backing from OVR/PD/RR and Yabloko/SPS deputies (e.g. unilaterally reduce government debt to the Central Bank) (5) issues on which the CPRF and APG factions support the government while Yabloko/SPS deputies oppose the government (e.g. the new system for regulating environmental protection) This pattern suggests that to some extent the swing factions continue to represent specific social and regional interests despite their unwillingness to express strong public opposition to the Putin administration. Such opposition now comes only from the CPRF and APG factions, which have not only been reduced considerably in size but have lost influential positions which they used to hold on important Duma committees. -------------------------------------------------------- POLITICS 2. SILENT REGIONS SOURCE. Robert Coalson, ed. The Silent Regions. Moscow: Sashcko Publishing House for the Glasnost Defense Foundation, 1999. Available online at http://www.gdf.ru/books/books/silence/index.html A good way of assessing the character of political regimes in Russia's regions is to look at the pattern of control over regional media. Between September 1997 and February 1998 Moscow-based journalists visited eight regions of the Russian Federation on behalf of the Glasnost Defense Foundation with a view to investigating this question. Their accounts, together with some updates, are published in this entertaining and depressing booklet with an introduction by Robert Coalson, editor of The Moscow Times. Seven of the eight regions visited were ethnic republics -- Kalmykia, Udmurtia, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, and Ingushetia. The eighth region was the Altai Territory in southern Siberia, which though not an ethnic republic has a multiethnic population. So the focus of attention is not Russia's regions as a whole but regions of a special kind. In four of the eight regions -- Kalmykia, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, and North Ossetia -- all media are effectively under the control of authoritarian republican presidents. Opposition newspapers and radio stations have been suppressed by a variety of means ranging from bribery, police harassment, and trumped-up lawsuits to outright murder. For example, Larisa Yudina, editor of the sole independent newspaper in Kalmykia -- it had to be printed outside the republic in Volgograd and ferried in each week by car -- was killed in June 1998 under highly suspicious circumstances. The media in the Altai Territory are also under strong pressure from the regional authorities, but this pressure does not take forms quite as harsh as in the four ethnic republics already mentioned. A small independent newspaper has continued to come out, and a private radio channel has been able to broadcast intermittently. The media serving the local ethnic German community, assisted by financial support from Germany, have also maintained a degree of independence. The media of another two regions, Udmurtia and Dagestan, do exhibit a measure of pluralism. But this is a limited pluralism reflecting divisions within the local political and business elite, allowing little scope (in the case of Udmurtia) or no scope (in that of Dagestan) to the expression of opinion independent of all elite factions. The pattern of media control shifts in accordance with developments in the regional power game. In Udmurtia the president's power structure and media confront those associated with the mayor of the capital city Izhevsk -- a pattern similar to the governor-mayor bipolarity so common in the "Russian" provinces. One of the mayor's allies is local journalist, entrepreneur, and city councilor Vasily Shatalov, who owns the Alva TV company. Larisa Shamsutdinova, editor of the newspaper Panorama, lays claim to the independent but cautious role of "the polite and intelligent guest at a madhouse." Most deceptive is the apparent diversity of the media in Dagestan, all of which are controlled by criminalized elite groups who do not hesitate to use violence to intimidate any journalist or editor who dares to undermine their interests. Freedom of expression is additionally constrained by powerful local taboos. In particular, everyone takes care to avoid the public airing of issues that might jeopardize the fragile equilibrium of inter-ethnic relations in the republic. The region that comes out best in the comparison is Ingushetia. Though starved of resources, the Ingush media are relatively open and democratic in tenor. It appears that the president of the republic, General Ruslan Aushev, really does welcome constructive criticism of his administration. -------------------------------------------------------- POLITICS 3. BOOK REVIEW. Richard D. Anderson, Jr., M. Steven Fish, Stephen E. Hanson, and Philip G. Roeder, Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2001) The authors of this book, who belong to the rising generation of American scholars of postcommunism, set themselves a dual task. They seek to explain the successes and failures of democratization in postcommunist countries, and at the same time to explore the implications of these countries' experience for existing theories of democracy and democratization. Each author has his own focus and approach. Anderson and Hanson assess alternative theories in the light of Russian developments, while Fish and Roeder start from a comparative statistical analysis of data pertaining to a large number of countries. Nevertheless, their contributions are mutually complementary and they reach common conclusions. Most startling is the authors' rejection of many popular theories which turn out to be unsupported by the evidence. "Progress or regress on the road to democracy appears to be independent of a state's economic development, equality of income distribution, size, ethnic diversity, religious tradition, or historical experience of democratic governance" (p. 154). Democracy has survived even in a desperately poor country like Moldova, and it seems able to function even in the absence of a strong civil society, as in Russia and Ukraine. So what does make a difference? I found three answers in the book. First, as Fish in particular argues, constitutional arrangements matter. Some give leading politicians ample opportunity to undermine democracy and concentrate dictatorial power in their own hands; others constrain them more effectively. But this takes us only so far. It hardly makes sense to treat choice of constitution, as Fish does, as an independent exogenous factor. Quite a few post-Soviet leaders, having entered office under relatively open constitutions, have introduced new "presidential" constitutions as a means of consolidating power which they have already built up by non-constitutional means. Second, democratic legal norms take firmer root in those countries which are situated closer to the West and are under the more pervasive influence of Western societies. It is this factor above all which accounts for the greater success of democratization in Central-Eastern Europe by comparison with the former Soviet Union, rather than the different cultural and historical legacies of the two regions. Third, the chances of democratization depend strongly on the structure of the ruling elite inherited from the communist period. Unified elites got through the postcommunist transition unscathed and maintained the old authoritarian power relations on a new economic basis. Fragmented elites were unable to accomplish this feat, leaving open at least the possibility of democratization. Indeed, it was the split between conservative and reformist wings of the Soviet elite that jumpstarted the whole process of democratization in the late 1980s. As Anderson shows, the democratic breakthrough became possible in the USSR when some elite actors resorted to a more democratic political discourse in order to mobilize popular support against their conservative opponents, thereby transforming themselves from apparatchiks into politicians. That of course leads on to another question which Anderson does not try to answer. How was it possible for such flexible elite actors to arise within the apparently rigid Soviet system? Especially interesting is Roeder's analysis of the political consequences of divergent structures of the communist-era elite in various countries. Outcomes have been more democratic in countries where industrial agencies dominated, as the ministerial structure gave industrial managers an autonomy from strict control by party officials which agricultural managers did not enjoy. Here the analysis closely parallels that carried out by Russian and German political scientists (V. Gel'man, S. Ryzhenkov, M. Brie et al.) mainly at the level of regional political regimes in Russia (see RAS Issue 2 item 4). The authors seem quite unaware of this work. Outcomes have also tended to be more democratic in those post-Soviet republics where party and industrial elites were NOT dominated by members of the titular ethnic group, because this forced indigenous members of the elite to mobilize popular support against their non-titular (mainly Russian) colleagues. Thus outcomes were least democratic in places like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, where the elite was predominantly indigenous and predominantly rural. One recurring theme of the book is that the same conditions which impede the consolidation of democracy in the postcommunist world also impede the consolidation of authoritarian regimes. Thus initial successes of democratization are often reversed (Fish' primary focus is on these "backsliders"), but the more or less authoritarian regimes which emerge as a result are also fragile and unstable. The most typical political environment of postcommunist countries is neither democracy nor dictatorship but the wide gray zone in between the two. -------------------------------------------------------- POLITICS 4. ORTHODOX BROTHERHOODS SOURCE. The researcher on whose work this piece is based wishes to remain anonymous. An Orthodox brotherhood is officially defined by the Russian Orthodox Church as a parish-based community of lay believers, headed by an elder and guided by a spiritual advisor from the clergy, which undertakes efforts to "rebuild the material and spiritual fabric of Orthodox life." In 1990 a Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods (UOB) was created as a formal church body with the blessing of the Patriarch in order to coordinate the efforts of the brotherhoods. In practice, brotherhoods were autonomous groups which pursued divergent goals and rarely limited their membership to a single parish. Some were politically moderate or neutral, while others propagated radical nationalist, monarchist, and fundamentalist views. In 1991-92 radical nationalist brotherhoods, especially the Union "Christian Revival" (UCR)(1) and the Sergiev-Posad Brotherhood of St. Sergei of Radonezh, took control of the UOB, with the result that moderate and non-political brotherhoods gradually left the organization. In 1994 the church hierarchy tried to reassert control over the UOB. A Bishops' Council instituted stricter rules for the registration of brotherhoods and ordered the UOB to revise its own rules. To be registered a brotherhood had to draw its members from a single parish, so most brotherhoods were forced to choose between giving up many of their members and giving up affiliation with the church. Radical nationalist brotherhoods did not disappear and continued their activity outside the church, but all grassroots initiatives inside the church were greatly weakened. The official brotherhood movement is today a faint shadow of its former self. The nationalist brotherhoods are divided into relatively moderate brotherhoods such as the UCR and the Union of Orthodox Citizens, which avoid close ties with fascist movements, and more extreme brotherhoods which do form part of the general fascist milieu. Examples of the latter include the Resurrection Orthodox Brotherhood, the Oprichnina Brotherhood of St. Joseph Volotsky (2) (with branches in Volgograd, St. Petersburg -- and Sacramento!), and the Union of Orthodox Banner-Bearers, a "charismatic military movement" taking its inspiration from the pre-revolutionary Union of the Russian People (Black Hundreds) and Society of Banner-Bearers. Since August 2000 the UOB has been headed by Leonid Simonovich, one of the founders of the Union of Orthodox Banner-Bearers. The UOB's periodical "Holy Rus" continues to fulminate against Jews, Satanists, heretics, ecumenists, and other enemies of the true faith. Notes (1) For an account of the Union "Christian Rebirth" see Stephen D. Shenfield, Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements (M.E. Sharpe, 2001), pp. 244-248. (2) The original oprichnina was the special punitive corps of Ivan the Terrible. -------------------------------------------------------- ECONOMY 5. GEOGRAPHY AND RUSSIA'S ECONOMY SOURCE. Allen C. Lynch, "Roots of Russia's Economic Dilemmas: Liberal Economics and Illiberal Geography," Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 54 No. 1 (January 2002), pp. 31-49. The implications of Russia's difficult geography for its economy have already been touched upon in RAS in relation to agriculture (Issue No. 4, item 3). In this article, Professor Lynch (University of Virginia) demonstrates the enormous impact of geography on the Russian economy as a whole, and arrives at some striking conclusions. The author begins with an assessment of the main problem facing Russia's economy today -- namely, the critical condition of infrastructure after a decade of cumulative capital depreciation. The crisis affects the energy complex (power stations, residential heating, electricity, oil and gas), transportation (rail, roads, ports, domestic aviation), and telecommunications as well as industry and agriculture. We must add a number of spheres which he leaves out of account, such as public health, sewage, and pollution control. (1) The capital requirements of preserving and restoring this infrastructure over the next decade or two are colossal, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. But Professor Lynch points out that the Russian capital expatriated to bank accounts abroad is also enormous (though according to my rough calculations not quite as great as estimated requirements). If capital flight could be rapidly reversed, then at least a good start could be made. But how is more capital, both expatriate and foreign, to be attracted to Russia? The usual answer is that the main barriers to development lie in the political, administrative, and institutional spheres: political uncertainty, red tape, an inadequate legal regime, excessive taxation, poor corporate governance, corruption, etc. The author does not deny the importance of any of these issues, but he questions whether their resolution would in itself suffice to trigger investment on the scale required. Investors, he argues, are deterred not only by political risk and institutional deficiencies, but also by the huge costs of production and distribution which are inherent in Russia's geography. Professor Lynch emphasizes three geographical factors: (1) Russia has the most severe climate in the world (with the exception of Mongolia). Permafrost covers 59 per cent of its territory. Long cold winters and short hot summers limit the potential output of agriculture. (2) Russia's vast size and low average population density, combined with severe climatic conditions, increase the cost of infrastructure. Roads and pipelines are good examples. Moreover, long distances separate natural resources, concentrated in Siberia and the Far North, from the main markets of European Russia. This problem grows worse as the more accessible resources are used up. (3) Owing to the south-north flow of most rivers and the difficulty of access to the world ocean, expensive land and air transport predominate over cheap water transport. [This problem will become less acute as global warming melts the Arctic ice cap. -- SDS] The analogy often drawn between the climate and geography of Russia and those of Canada is untenable. Unlike Russia, Canada has excellent river access to the world ocean, and most of its population lives in areas near the US border which enjoy a relatively moderate climate. Russia may be compared with north-central Canada (e.g. the Edmonton and Winnipeg areas), but certainly not with southern Canada. It is for these reasons that production costs are 2--3 times higher in Russia than they are in the US, Japan, or Western Europe, despite the fact that skilled labor is much less well paid in Russia than in those countries. The initial costs associated with new Siberian resource development are especially forbidding. To quote one Russian economist, many oil and gas reserves are for all practical purposes "no more accessible than methane from Jupiter." Nothing can induce investors to bear such costs so long as more attractive opportunities are available elsewhere in the world. And therefore, the author concludes, liberal economics is incompatible with Russia's illiberal geography. "Russia has never developed under conditions of free movement of capital and possibly cannot do so." Mercantilist controls on the movement of capital and high tariffs on imports are therefore essential to the balanced development of Russia's economy. Professor Lynch ends by posing two disturbing questions. To what extent does a liberal world need Russia at all? And to what extent can historical Russia exist in a predominantly liberal world order? Note (1) Some components of the crisis have been examined in RAS: see Issue No. 1 item 15 on the electricity network, Issue 2 item 8 on water supply, and Issue 4 item 7 on one aspect of public health infrastructure. -------------------------------------------------------- ECONOMY 6. WHERE HAVE ALL THE FISH GONE? SOURCE: Frode Nilssen and Geir Honneland, Institutional Change and the Problems of Restructuring the Russian Fishing Industry, Post-Communist Economies [http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/09668136.html], Vol. 13, No. 3, September 2001, pp. 313-30. The authors analyze the changes which have occurred in the fishing industry in the north-west of Russia during the 1990s as a result of privatization. At the end of the Soviet period, 450 fishing vessels were based in northwestern Russia, mainly at the ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. All belonged to the conglomerate "Sevryba" [Northern Fish], which also controlled onshore processing and other support facilities. "Sevryba" was in turn subordinate to the Ministry of Fisheries in Moscow. Although "Sevryba" has been formally preserved as a private joint-stock umbrella company, the northwestern fishing fleet has been divided up among several medium-sized fishing companies. A few new small companies have also appeared outside the old framework. The early 1990s saw an enormous shift away from fishing for the home market in favor of fish exports, which were previously at quite a low level. The fish that used to go to the Russian consumer are now sold for hard currency -- mostly in Norway and in lesser quantities in Denmark, Britain, Spain, and Portugal. A second shift concerns the species that are fished. In place of the variety of species previously fished (cod, flatfish, herring, sardine, mackerel, etc.), there is now an almost exclusive concentration on cod. Why have Russian fishing companies abandoned the home market? And why do they no longer fish anything but cod? The first reason has to do with the cost of fuel. Following the sudden lifting of state controls on prices in January 1992, the price of fuel rose 50-fold in the space of three months. It became much cheaper to deliver fish caught in the Barents and Norwegian Seas to Norwegian ports than to take them back to Russia. For the same reason vessels stopped venturing into more distant waters in search of non-cod species. Fish could be sold in foreign ports at higher prices and on more favorable terms of payment. Foreign customers paid up straight away, while cash-starved Russian customers usually had to be given credit. Ships' officers and fishermen received a share of the proceeds from sales abroad in the form of an untaxed "currency allotment." Foreign ports also provided a higher level of services for both crew and vessel. By not calling at Russian ports, vessels are able to avoid costly and time-consuming red tape. Companies also avoid paying the heavy tax imposed on vessels which have been purchased or upgraded abroad, equal to 25 per cent of the amount invested. The cut-off of supplies to the home market has led to high unemployment among land-based workers dependent on the fishing industry. Onshore fish-processing facilities now operate at only a small fraction of their capacity. Some countermeasures have been attempted. The fishery authorities have promised several times that companies delivering their catches to Russian ports will be favored in the distribution of cod quotas. But this is far from sufficient to outweigh all the disincentives to supplying the home market. -------------------------------------------------------- ECONOMY 7. THE FUNDING OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH SOURCE. Irina Dezhina and Loren Graham, Russian Basic Science After Ten Years of Transition and Foreign Support. Working Papers No. 24, February 2002. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Full Text in PDF format at http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/ Soviet science was organized in three institutional systems: -- The Academy system (the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences). Most pure research was carried out in institutes belonging to this system. -- The university system, largely devoted to teaching. -- The military-industrial science complex, consisting of closed cities (1) and branch institutes attached to the various industrial and defense ministries. Most applied research is done in this system. All three systems were funded by the state through block grants and contracts. Individual researchers had no direct access to funding. Under the influence of Boris Saltykov, minister of science from November 1991 to August 1996, who took a gradualist approach to change, the institutions of science were preserved basically in forms inherited from the Soviet period. However, state funding fell precipitously, with federal government expenditure on civilian science declining by 80 per cent in the course of the 1990s. Institute directors were forced to resort to such expedients as renting out space in their buildings and encouraging researchers to stay while earning their living from outside activities. In the early 1990s some Western-style foundations were created, allowing individual researchers to compete directly for funds on the basis of peer review. The two main foundations are the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Russian Foundation for the Humanities. Nevertheless, these foundations receive only 7 per cent of government expenditure on civilian research. The Academy system remains in a predominant position. In 1996 a program was initiated by the Ministry of Education and the Russian Academy of Sciences to strengthen links between the universities and Academy institutes. The two systems have cooperated in setting up Education and Research Centers, of which there are now 157. Foreign funding also became increasingly important for Russian scientists. By 1995 about half of Russian basic science was being financed from foreign sources. In 1999 17 per cent of all research and development expenditure came from abroad. Since 1999 there has been a modest recovery in the state funding of science. For the first time since 1991, the government is actually delivering the sums allocated to science in the budget. After years of steady decline, the number of researchers has leveled off and even increased slightly. The recovery has been especially marked in military research. Another new development is the beginning of sponsorship of science education by Russian business. The Russian Credit Bank, the INTERROS foundation (supported by Vladimir Potanin), and the YUKOS oil company are providing stipends to higher education students in specialties of interest to them. At the end of 2000, the physicist Zhores Alferov devoted one third of the Nobel Prize he won that year ($75,000) to create a Foundation for the Support of Education and Science. As the authors note in conclusion, the "death of Russian science" predicted by some has not after all occurred. "Science is not the tender flower it is often thought to be," but "more like a hardy weed." But in order to judge this one has to assess the quality and not just the quantity of Russian scientific work. What exactly happened in those areas of Soviet science that used to be most advanced? Did specific scientific schools which seemed to hold great promise survive? It is not reassuring to learn in passing that Alferov won his Nobel Prize for work he did twenty years ago. Note (1) The funding of the closed cities was discussed in RAS Issue 1 item 1. See also Issue 3 item 5. -------------------------------------------------------- SOCIETY 8. ATTITUDES TOWARD INCOME INEQUALITY SOURCE. Marc Suhrcke, "Preferences for Inequality: East vs. West." Innocenti Working Paper No. 89. Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2001 [www.unicef-icdc.org] "Are income differences in your country too large?" This was one of the questions asked of 29,198 people in 23 countries under the 1999 International Social Survey Programme. The author analyzes the answers in order to test a range of hypotheses concerning the determinants of public attitudes toward income inequality. Included in the survey were 7 postcommunist European countries (Russia, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovenia), 10 other European countries (Britain, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Spain, and Portugal), 4 developed countries outside Europe (Canada, Japan, Israel, and New Zealand), and two Third World countries (Chile and the Philippines). A pity that the United States was not included! In every country surveyed, a clear majority, ranging from 55 per cent in Switzerland up to 96 per cent in Russia and Portugal and 97 per cent in Bulgaria, either "agree" or "strongly agree" that income differences in their country are too large. The proportion of those who "strongly agree" ranges from 16 per cent in the Netherlands up to 79 per cent in Russia, 82 per cent in Portugal, and 84 per cent in Bulgaria. There is a strong tendency for the proportion of people expressing disapproval of existing income differences to be higher in postcommunist countries than elsewhere. After correcting for other factors, the author concludes that this tendency is indeed attributable mainly to the enduring influence on people's attitudes of the socialist legacy. There is, however, an interesting twist. Three Western countries also show a very broad opposition to existing income inequality which is more typical of the postcommunist countries than of other Western countries. One of these countries, as we have seen, is Portugal. The others are Israel and France, with 90 and 87 per cent respectively who "agree" or "strongly agree" that income differences in their country are too large. One wishes that the author had devoted some attention to explaining this curious result. What are the determinants of individuals' attitudes toward income inequality? Women are more likely than men to oppose income inequality. Old people are more likely to oppose it than young people. People who believe that high incomes in their country go to those who are the most capable and work the hardest are more tolerant of inequality than people who do not believe this. People living in countries where income inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) is greater tend to be more opposed to existing inequality than people living in countries where income inequality is not so great. Equally unsurprising is the finding that people who have high incomes, or who expect to earn high incomes in the future, tend to be more favorably disposed toward income inequality than people with low incomes. But this tendency is weaker than might be expected if people were motivated solely by their direct material interests. The author's statistical analysis suggests that many people see a high level of income inequality as a social evil to be opposed irrespective of their own place on the socio-economic ladder. -------------------------------------------------------- SOCIETY 9. TIME BUDGETS SOURCES. Vasilii Patrushev, Zhizn' gorozhanina (1965- 1998) [Life of the City Dweller, 1965-98]. Moscow: Academia, 2000; Biudzhet vremeni i peremeny v zhiznedeiatel'nosti gorodskikh zhitelei v 1965-1998 godakh [The Time Budget and Changes in the Living Activities of City Dwellers Between 1965 and 1998]. Moscow: Izd-vo Instituta sotsiologii RAN, 2001 (pp. 34-44) Time budgets -- the allocation of people's time among various activities -- are an important indicator of the standard and quality of life. The research group headed by Professor Patrushev at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences has carried out time budget surveys in Pskov in 1965, 1986, and most recently in 1997-98. Pskov is taken to be a "typical Russian city" -- not a very clear or useful concept. (In one respect at least Pskov Province is unique, being the only Russian province which has had an LDPR governor, Yevgeny Mikhailov.) The analysis focuses on employed adults of working age (18-65 years), although there are now a substantial number of unemployed in Pskov. Due to shortage of funds, the sample size for this part of the population has fallen from 2,671 in 1965 and 1,853 in 1986 to just 231 (88 men and 143 women) in 1997-98. We are assured that the sample remains representative, but with such small sample sizes sampling errors must be very high. So let us consider only the most striking contrasts. The week of 168 hours is allocated among the following five main types of activity: -- paid work -- other activity connected to work, mainly commuting -- domestic work, subdivided into housework, shopping, childcare, and work on garden plots -- physical needs -- mainly sleeping, also eating, washing, etc. -- free time In 1965, men spent on average 43 hours a week at work, while women spent 40 hours. Men also spent an hour a week more than women traveling to and from work. However, women spent over twice as much time as men doing domestic work (34 hours as against 15), so women's total work time exceeded men's by a wide margin (80 hours compared to 65). As a result, women had 3 hours less than men for their physical needs and 12 hours less free time (21 hours compared to 33). Only one major change in this pattern occurred between 1965 and 1986. Women now spent 7 hours less on domestic work, and as a result had 5 hours more free time and 2 hours more for their physical needs. The reduction in domestic work pertained to housework in the narrow sense, not to shopping, childcare, or gardening. It did not arise from any increase in the time men spent doing housework, but rather reflected the increased availability of time-saving appliances. The main change occurring between 1986 and 1997-98 is that women are now spending 7 hours less in paid work (33 hours instead of 40). The time they spend on their physical needs has increased accordingly, by a further 4 hours, and now significantly exceeds the corresponding figure for men. Women now also have more free time than in the past, only a little less than men have (29 hours compared to 31). The author suggests that the shift in women's time budget may be the result of compulsory short-time working. In other words, it is a beneficial byproduct of hidden unemployment. This reflects the differential impact of industrial contraction on men's and women's employment, which is likely to vary considerably from one city to another. -------------------------------------------------------- ETHNIC RELATIONS 10. ETHNIC CATEGORIES IN THE 2002 CENSUS SOURCE. Talk by Valery Tishkov (head of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences) at Brown University on March 18, 2002 Russia's first post-Soviet population census will finally be conducted by the State Statistics Committee [Goskomstat], three years late, in October 2002. (Postwar practice has been to conduct the census at ten-yearly intervals; the last one was in 1989.) The publicity bills the census as "the main event of the year." One of the most controversial questions on the census form asks: "To which nationality or ethnic group do you regard yourself as belonging?" To make it even clearer to the enumerator that what is wanted is subjective ethnic identity, which may not coincide with what is indicated on the person's internal passport, an explanation is added in brackets: "according to the self-definition of the respondent." Thus anything that the respondent wishes can be entered in the box provided for the answer. But how are answers to be coded for subsequent aggregation? It is impracticable to give every possible answer its own code. Only those ethnonyms (ethnic labels) included in a special list get separate codes, while other answers are lumped together under the residual category of "other nationalities." The list used in the 1989 census contained 128 ethnonyms. The list that we [at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology] are recommending for use this year -- it has not yet been finally approved -- contains about 150 ethnonyms. We are proposing that about 30 ethnonyms on the 1989 list be removed, and that about 50 new ones added. Such an expansion of the list of ethnonyms would be a return to the practice of the last tsarist census of 1896 and the first Soviet census of 1926, which aimed to distinguish all ethnic identities claimed by a substantial number of people, on the basis of the judgment of professional ethnologists. The censuses of the Stalinist and late Soviet periods (from 1937 to 1989) denied recognition to many less numerous ethnic groups on the dubious grounds that they were in the process of being assimilated into the larger groups. In this way it was hoped gradually to reduce ethnic heterogeneity and eventually to form a unified "Soviet people." The policy was strongly backed by the leaders of those union and autonomous republics the demographic -- and therefore also political -- weight of whose titular groups was artificially bolstered by the fiction of the assimilation of small groups. The leaders of some of the ethnic republics of the Russian Federation are exerting pressure to thwart our proposal to expand the list of recognized ethnonyms. The two most important instances are Tatarstan and Dagestan. We propose to recognize as distinct several groups previously subsumed under "Tatars" -- Kryashens (Tatars whose ancestors were converted to Christianity) and such local subgroups as Mishars, Nagaibaks, Astrakhan Tatars, Crimean Tatars, and Siberian Tatars. Many Kryashens in particular, especially those living outside Tatarstan, do not regard themselves as Tatars at all. The leaders of the Republic of Tatarstan regard this proposal as part of a plot to break up the Tatars (as well as other non-Russian ethnic groups) into numerous tiny subgroups which can more easily be assimilated into the Russian ethnic group. Tatarstan president Mintimer Shaimiev has appealed directly to Putin to preserve "Tatar" as an undivided category. Dagestan has a complex system of power-sharing among the leaders of ethnic communities. However, only the 14 largest groups take part in this system. The regional authorities still maintain the fiction that the smaller groups do not need to be represented because they are rapidly being assimilated into two of the largest groups -- most into the Avars, some into the Dargins. We propose to give separate codes to 15 smaller groups which were not counted in 1989. The Russian government recently took a decision to grant the request of the Dagestani authorities that only the 14 officially recognized groups be counted. This may lead to a very serious situation on the ground in Dagestan. The Cossacks present a special problem. Ethnologists do not regard them as a separate ethnic group, but that is how many of them regard themselves. If 100,000 people identify themselves as Cossacks in the census, can we simply reclassify them as Russians? Some Cossacks have threatened to boycott the census if their identity is not recognized, and Goskomstat is afraid that the whole census will be ruined if a boycott movement starts to spread. So Cossacks will be counted, but as a subgroup within the Russian and Ukrainian ethnic groups. In some other cases too dual ethnic identities will be taken into account. For example, the Komi will be subdivided into Komi-Permyak and Komi-Zirian (although there are Komi who do not assign themselves to either subgroup, and there are Zirians who deny being Komi at all). However, dual identities in which neither component is subordinate to the other -- for instance, semi-assimilated people and children of mixed marriages who regard themselves equally as (say) Russians and Jews -- are not (yet) recognized. And there is no provision for people who wish to claim no ethnic affiliation and say only that they are citizens of Russia [rossiyane], in the way that Yugoslav censuses allowed people to identify themselves simply as "Yugoslavs." -------------------------------------------------------- ECOLOGY 11. OIL AND GAS SPILLAGE IN THE RUSSIAN ARCTIC MAIN SOURCE. Rossiiskaia Arktika: na poroge katastrofy [The Russian Arctic: On the Threshold of Catastrophe]. Moscow: Tsentr ekologicheskoi politiki Rossii, 1996. A considerable proportion of the oil and gas extracted in the Russian Arctic never reaches the market. It is ejected into the natural environment either as a result of leakage and other accidents or in the normal course of operations. The worst pollution occurs in the oil and gas fields of northeastern European Russia (the Pechora Basin) and northwestern Siberia (the north of Tyumen Province), where the equipment in use is the most worn-out. Each year the condition of equipment deteriorates further, leading to more frequent accidents at wells and along pipelines. The situation is less acute in Eastern Siberia, for instance on Sakhalin. More than a third of the 45,000 km of oil pipeline in Russia is nearing or past the end of its 33-year service life. In 1998, nearly 7 per cent of all oil extracted was lost during transportation. The oil pipeline company Transneft was responsible for 71 of 312 major industrial accidents reported in the country that year. In Western Siberia oil pipelines leak "up to 35,000 times a year." This includes "up to 300" officially registered leaks. (A leak has to be registered if the amount of oil spilled exceeds 10,000 tons.) The total oil spilled on to land and into water is estimated at between 3 and 10 million tons a year. The oil accumulates in low-lying stretches of land, where it destroys birds and other wildlife as well as ancient tree growth and other less hardy species of vegetation. The best-known oil spillage was the disaster at Usa in 1994, when a main pipeline probably spilled over 200,000 tons, polluting at least 60 square kilometers along the banks of the Rivers Pechora and Kolva. Salmon spawning grounds and drinking water were imperiled. The biggest spillage, however, occurred in 1993 at the Nyagan pumping station in Tyumen Province, not far from the Sosvinsky Nature Preserve. The amount spilled at Nyagan was at least 420,000 tons. Such accidents are bound to become even more frequent. Besides the aging of pipeline and pumping installations, the gradual melting of the permafrost under the impact of global warming causes pipeline laid over the permafrost to buckle, sag, and break. From the rivers oil finds its way into the Arctic seas. Marine ecosystems are endangered not so much by oil products dispersed in the water as by the film of oil that forms on the surface. In recent years 70 per cent of the Pechora Sea and large parts of the Ob estuary and of the Tazov inlet have been covered with a film of oil. Spillage from possible oil tanker accidents would come on top of this. Moreover, the natural process of self-purification of the sea is slowed down under Arctic conditions. Pipeline leakage is, however, by no means the only source of pollution. The oil wells themselves are major polluters. In the course of a year, a single oil well throws into the atmosphere up to 2 tons of carboniferous soot, 8 tons of carbon oxides, over 30 tons of nitrogen oxides, 5 tons of sulfur dioxide, and a large quantity of heavy metals. All of this later settles to earth. It is estimated that each year 2-3 tons of solid particles land in the snow within 500 meters of a well. Additional pollution occurs when there is an accident at an oil well. A particular danger is presented by the several thousand abandoned oil wells which are scattered across the Russian Arctic. There are 177 such abandoned wells in the Nenets Autonomous District alone. Lack of resources has led to a slackening in the monitoring of these objects. Gas extraction is accompanied by specific kinds of pollution. In the gas industry too much equipment is worn-out, though the situation is not as bad as in oil. About 35,000 of the 160,000 km of gas pipeline in Russia (over 20 per cent) needs repair or replacement. Installations at the new gas-fields on the Yamal peninsula and in the Nadym-Pur-Tazov area in the far north of Tyumen Province are at high risk from thawing permafrost. Due to the difficulty of controlling the flow of gas from underground deposits into the pipelines, a large amount of gas escapes into the atmosphere and has to be burned off. Up to 19 billion cubic meters of gas a year are burned off in jets in Western Siberia, polluting the air with combustion products which include hydrocarbons, nitrogen and carbon oxides -- all greenhouse gases -- and heavy metals. The burning also causes a significant increase in the atmospheric temperature. Flocks of migrating birds, attracted by the bright lights of the burning gas, often perish in the flames. -------------------------------------------------------- RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS 12. RUSSO-JAPANESE TERRITORIAL DISPUTE: END IN SIGHT? SOURCE. Gilbert Rozman, "September 11 Fosters Progress in Russo-Japanese Relations," Russian Regional Report, Vol. 7 No. 2, January 16, 2002 [www.iews.org/rrrabout.nsf] Professor Rozman (Princeton University) argues that conditions may finally be emerging for the resolution of the longstanding dispute between Russia (USSR) and Japan over the four Kurile Islands which Japan calls its "Northern Territories." The two countries have been publicly committed to an effort to improve their relations since 1997, when their leaders met in Krasnoyarsk and Japan's foreign minister announced a new "Eurasian diplomacy." But until recently neither side was prepared to make substantive concessions. The gap between the two sides was first narrowed during talks between their foreign ministries in 2000. Putin renewed the offer made by Khrushchev in 1956 to return the two small islands closest to Japan (Shikotan and Habomai) in the context of a peace treaty, while Japan agreed to exclude the other two islands (Kunashiri and Etorofu) from the agenda in the first stage of negotiations. This concession, however, provoked a storm of opposition from Japanese who feared that Japan would never get the other two islands back, and when Koizumi replaced Mori as prime minister in April 2001 he withdrew the concession. September 11 broke the impasse. Japan's position vis-à-vis Russia was weakened after Putin aligned Russia with the US in the "war against terror." As its relations with China and South Korea had also been deteriorating, Japan found itself increasingly isolated on the world scene. A new opening to Russia now had its attractions. By late October the Japanese-Russian talks were back on track. The author points out that both Putin and Koizumi have now established their credentials as strong and popular national leaders, and can therefore afford to make the necessary concessions and defy the ensuing nationalist protest. [This was admittedly before the latest economic crisis hit Japan. -- SDS] A compromise would entail the return of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan, joint development of Kunashiri and Etorofu, and a peace and friendship treaty. The question of sovereignty over Kunashiri and Etorofu would be "blurred" and deferred for later talks. Professor Rozman identifies the following interests which Russia and Japan now share: (1) Both countries have good relations with the US, but are concerned that US power is excessive and wish to reduce their dependency on the US. (2) Both countries are concerned about the growing power of China, and hope to constrain China's behavior by means of regional integration. (3) Both countries are concerned about the future of the Korean peninsula, and think that joint efforts in this area will be more effective. (4) Both countries hope that economic cooperation, especially in regional energy development, will prove mutually advantageous. -------------------------------------------------------- RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS 13. BOOK REVIEW. Joma Nazpary, Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan (Pluto Press, 2002) Joma Nazpary, a Jordanian researcher at the University of London, lived in Almaty -- Kazakhstan's largest city and former capital -- from July 1995 until October 1996, teaching at a local university. His anthropological study of Kazakhstan society is based mainly on his direct observations and on the detailed information he collected about the daily lives of the numerous people he got to know at work and in his neighborhood. The result is an illuminating and often entertaining account of how ordinary people manage to survive in the post-Soviet "bardak" (chaos), of their attitudes and beliefs, and of the social, ethnic, gender, and inter-generational tensions that divide them. Much of the discussion is relevant not only to Kazakhstan but to most or all of the post-Soviet countries. The author achieves a remarkable fusion of the abstract and the concrete. Thus the political economy of commercialized sex comes to life through the mixed feelings of young women who resort to prostitution and the predicament of young men who can no longer afford to have girlfriends. The dynamic of Russian-Kazakh relations emerges from a minute analysis of an incident in a bar where a Russian gets beaten up by Kazakhs after laughing at a rural Kazakh migrant (the type of Kazakh most resentful of Russians) who falls off his chair. Joma Nazpary argues that "bardak" is not just the inevitable confusion of transition, but "the chaotic mode of domination" -- a deliberate violent strategy on the part of the corrupt elite designed to dispossess, disorient, and intimidate the mass of the population. Ordinary people react by forming tight networks for mutual aid, and console themselves by imagining an idealized semi-mythical lost Soviet community which embodies threatened traditional values. But whatever one may think of the author's theories, the book should be valued by anyone seeking a detailed picture of social and economic conditions on the decaying periphery of the former USSR. -------------------------------------------------------- RECOMMENDED SOURCES Religious freedom The Keston Institute monitors religious freedom in post- communist and communist lands. They publish: a quarterly academic journal 'Religion, State & Society'; a free weekly e-mail Keston News Service Summary; the almost daily 'Keston News Service'; and a bimonthly magazine 'Frontier'. More details of their work and subscriptions are available via their website http://www.keston.org/ Human rights The full, Russian language version of the Moscow Helsinki Group's regional reports covering human rights in all 89 regions of the Russian Federation in 2000 is now available online. So far, they only have a few of the reports up, but eventually all 89 will be here: http://www.hro.org/docs/reps/2000/index.htm The five volume report is full of information about prisons, torture, environmental issues, ethnic minorities, extremist groups, violations of economic rights (including in some cases forced labor/slavery), women's and children's rights and other issues. The English language report on their website is a summary of the whole, which is only available in Russian. Military and strategic issues The article by Colonel A. Soloviev, "Philosophy and Sociology of War in Post-Soviet Publications," in Insight Vol. 2 Issue 1 at http://www.psan.org is useful as a survey of recent Russian publications on military and strategic issues. ------- David Johnson home phone: 301-942-9281 work phone: 202-797-5277 email: davidjohnson@erols.com fax: 1-202-478-1701 (Jfax; comes direct to email) home address: 1647 Winding Waye Lane Silver Spring MD 20902 Web page for CDI Russia Weekly: http://www.cdi.org/russia Archive for Johnson's Russia List: http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the MacArthur Foundation A project of the Center for Defense Information (CDI) 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington DC 20036