June 1, 2001 

This Date's Issues:   5278 • 5279

Johnson's Russia List
#5279
1 June 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AP: Russia Hails Missile Elimination.
2. strana.ru: Russia makes one step back on children's rights.
3. Los Angeles Times: Maura Reynolds, Move to Restore Soviet-Style Controls on Science Feared.
4. Vremya MN: Anastasiya Askochenskaya, REVIVAL OF THE "FIRST DEPARTMENTS." Russian researchers will soon encounter problems with grants from abroad.
5. Washington Post: Herman J. Obermayer, Russia's Un-Free Press.
6. Trud: Alexander Danilkin, PUTIN SIGNS NEW EMERGENCY SITUATION LAW.
7. Financial Times (UK): Robert Cottrell and Charles Clover, Ukraine welcomes closer ties with Russia: Moves to support the reintegration of the two economies are growing.
8. The Times (UK): Giles Whittell, Hope for the abandoned. The World Bank is to spend millions of dollars resettling the victims of Stalin's labour camps. But many former detainees have not seen the outside world for decades.
9. BBC Monitoring: NTV, Russian tycoon says Russia's Putin will not make it till end of his presidency. (Berezovsky)
10. Novaya Gazeta: Boris Kagarlitsky, THE WAR CAN BE STOPPED ONLY IF IT IS NOT CONTINUED. Withdrawal of federal troops from Chechnya is only a matter of time.
11. Neue Zürcher Zeitung: Andreas Rüesch, A New Wave of Reform in Russia? President Putin Faces Political Tests.]

*******

#1
Russia Hails Missile Elimination
1 June 2001

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's Foreign Ministry on Friday hailed the successful 
elimination of nearly 2,700 Russian and American nuclear missiles and the end 
of 13 years of inspections under a landmark U.S.-Soviet disarmament treaty. 

Then-President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the 
Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty in December 1987, ordering the 
destruction of an entire class of missiles and an unprecedented monitoring 
program. 

The inspection regime ended Thursday, though the treaty has unlimited 
duration. U.S. and Russian officials carried out the final checks last month. 

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said Russia had dismantled 1,846 
missiles around the former Soviet Union and the United States had dismantled 
846, in addition to missile silos and training equipment. The rockets 
destroyed had ranges of 300 miles to 3,000 miles. 

The ministry also used the statement to indirectly criticize U.S. plans for a 
missile defense system, which would require amending or scrapping the 1972 
Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. 

``The work on the INF treaty and its successful implementation has served as 
unprecedented, valuable experience, which is widely used in preparing many 
other international agreements,'' the statement said. 

``From the very beginning, this treaty was agreed upon and carried out as an 
integral, fundamental part of the 'architecture of strategic stability,' 
based on cornerstone agreements on nuclear arms and anti-missile defenses,'' 
it said. 

Russia says the U.S. plans could prompt a new arms race. Washington insists 
the defense system is not aimed at Russia's large arsenal, but at threats 
from smaller states such as North Korea and Iran. 

In West Jordan, Utah, where Russian inspectors had monitored a missile plant 
under the treaty to make sure banned weapons weren't built, Russian 
dignitaries presented books and flowers Thursday to mark their departure. 

*******

#2
strana.ru
1 June 2001
Russia makes one step back on children's rights

June 1 is the International Children's Day. It was first marked by 51 
countries, Russia included, on June 1, 1950, at the initiative of the Women's 
International Democratic Federation.

Many international organizations declare today that they are ready to protect 
the rising generations from dangers. Specifically, the United Nations has 
announced protection of children's rights one of its priorities and put 
forward an initiative to hold in New York in September 2001 a special session 
of the UN General Assembly devoted to children's problems.

In accordance with a UNICEF poll, more than a half of children live in 
families, where physical or psychological violence is a commonplace affair, 
and one in every ten children becomes victim of adult aggression.

Children number 35 million in Russia's 144.7-million population, which means 
that one in every four inhabitants of this country is a child. Hundreds of 
thousands are orphans, most of them exposed to daily violence, humiliation 
and hunger. Like in the early 1920s, when Russia's civil war ground to a 
stop, there is widespread child vagabondage, even though ten years ago Russia 
joined the Convention on the Rights of the Child and passed the federal law 
"On the Main Guarantees of the Rights of the Child in the Russian Federation" 
in 1998.

In Russia, birth rates are down and infant mortality rates are up to 15.6 per 
one thousand in 2001.

Really healthy children make up not more than 12% among elementary school 
students and about 5% among high school seniors. More than a half of them 
have chronic afflictions. The number of young age invalids is on the rise. 
The number of young drug addicts has grown 17.5 times over seven years, and 
about a half of teens use alcohol. 760 children per each 100,000 of the 
population are on the books of addiction treatment centers.

According to the Russian Health Ministry's statistics, the number of children 
suffering from various mental disorders has grown by a quarter in the last 
ten years, with greater incidence of aggression, vandalism and suicide.

The ambulance service counts three or four suicide attempts a day in Moscow 
alone, about a third of them committed by teens.

*******

#3
Los Angeles Times
June 1, 2001 
Move to Restore Soviet-Style Controls on Science Feared 
Russia: Researchers say they were ordered to report foreign contacts, 
including grants and visits. Kremlin downplays allegations. 
By MAURA REYNOLDS, Times Staff Writer

MOSCOW--Russian scientists have been ordered to report all professional 
contacts with foreigners in a move apparently aimed at reimposing 
Soviet-style controls on science, a prominent human rights campaigner said 
Thursday. 

Sergei Kovalyov, a parliament deputy and chairman of the human rights 
group Memorial, released copies of a document from an institute of the 
Russian Academy of Sciences ordering researchers to provide information on a 
wide range of foreign contacts, including grants and laboratory visits by 
foreigners. 

Kovalyov described the regulations as further restrictions on freedom of 
speech and part of a state effort to discourage international cooperation 
with Russian scientists. In the last year, security agencies have pursued 
espionage cases against a number of Russian scholars for what critics say is 
ordinary academic cooperation. 

Kovalyov said that under President Vladimir V. Putin, Russia is heading 
toward what he called a "controlled democracy." 

"China not so long ago completed the first trial which sentenced a 
citizen to jail for . . . improper use of the Internet," Kovalyov said. 
"Perhaps we are moving in the same direction." 

Kremlin officials and some scientists downplayed Kovalyov's allegation. 
Deputy Prime Minister Valentina I. Matviyenko suggested the former dissident 
scientist was using "unreliable sources." 

"I rule out the assumption that such an instruction could have been 
issued," Matviyenko said, according to the Interfax news agency. 

The Academy of Sciences is composed of dozens of high-powered research 
institutes led by a governing board, or presidium. Kovalyov released a copy 
of a memorandum from the Institute of General Genetics dated May 24 that 
refers to a board document entitled "A Plan of Measures by the Academy of 
Sciences to Prevent Damage to the Russian Federation." 

In connection with the plan, the memo says, members of the institute are 
"urgently requested to provide information on international agreements," 
including contracts, grant applications, upcoming visits by foreigners and 
results of trips abroad. Attached to the memo is a list of specific measures, 
which appears to have been issued to the academy as a whole, that includes 
tightening controls on openly published information and ensuring the security 
of using "international information systems including the Internet." The list 
also includes a timetable for implementation. 

Kovalyov said it is not clear whether the instructions were coming from 
the Kremlin or the Federal Security Service, of FSB, the security agency that 
took over most of the responsibilities of the Soviet KGB. 

"It may well be an initiative coming from below, that is, from old men 
sitting on the presidium of the Academy of Sciences," Kovalyov said in an 
interview on Echo Moskvy radio. "They remember Soviet times very well, when 
such controls were in force." 

Natalya Zhukovskaya, a scholar at the Institute of Anthropology and 
Ethnology, said that about two weeks ago she received a request for 
information about international projects and grants. She said she does not 
know whether that instruction was part of a larger effort to impose more 
control. 

"Despite the absence of official confirmation, all my colleagues agree 
on one thing: We do not like what is happening," she said in a telephone 
interview. "Over the past years since the beginning of perestroika [in the 
mid-1980s], the practice of informing the authorities about our contacts with 
foreigners has not existed. All scholars felt absolutely free to travel, 
speak and research to our hearts' content. . . . The implementation of this 
plan will obviously mean an attempt to tighten the screws and take us back to 
where we came from a little more than a decade ago." 

But Pavel D. Sarkisov, rector of the D.I. Mendeleyev University of 
Chemical Technology of Russia, insists that he has received no new 
instructions from the Academy of Sciences concerning foreigners. 

"As a scientist, I have constant contacts with my foreign colleagues, 
including those in the United States. The same applies to most of the 
professors working at our university. But none of us has heard anything of 
the kind," he said. He suggested that the new instructions may be the 
personal initiative of officials at the genetics institute. 

In the last year, Russian security agencies have taken measures against 
several scholars for contacts with foreigners. 

Arms control expert Igor V. Sutyagin, with the prestigious USA-Canada 
Institute in Moscow, is on trial for espionage. In closed testimony Thursday, 
Sutyagin said he took information only from mass circulation newspapers and 
journals and provided the data to a British business consulting firm, 
according to a report by Echo Moskvy. The FSB has accused Sutyagin of spying 
for an unnamed member nation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

In December, U.S. businessman Edmond D. Pope was convicted of espionage 
and sentenced to 20 years in prison as a result of contacts with a Russian 
scientist, who provided him technical information on a high-tech torpedo, 
though the American was later pardoned by Putin. Pope's contact, a researcher 
at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, was arrested along with the 
American, but charges against him were dropped, apparently in return for his 
cooperation. 

In the United States, restrictions on foreign contacts apply only to a 
select group of scientists based on the nature of their work and the nature 
of their contacts. According to a senior U.S. official, those affected 
include in particular scholars who have security clearances or work in fields 
that are especially sensitive. 

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington and Alexei V. Kuznetsov 
of The Times' Moscow Bureau contributed to this report. 

*******

#4
Vremya MN
1 June 2001
REVIVAL OF THE "FIRST DEPARTMENTS"
Russian researchers will soon encounter problems with grants from abroad
Author: Anastasiya Askochenskaya
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HAS RELEASED A DIRECTIVE WHICH MAY BE DESCRIBED AS A THROWBACK TO THE SOVIET ERA. IT REQUIRES REGULAR REPORTS TO THE GOVERNMENT ON JOINT PROJECTS WITH FOREIGNERS. THE NEW DIRECTIVE IS SUPPOSED TO SAFEGUARD STATE SECRETS - BUT IT WILL ACTUALLY BE AN OBSTACLE TO RESEARCH.

THE PRESIDIUM OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HAS RELEASED A 
DIRECTIVE ON MEASURES TO BE TAKEN BY THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES TO PREVENT HARM TO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION. THIS REQUIRES REGULAR REPORTS TO THE GOVERNMENT ON JOINT PROJECTS WITH FOREIGNERS, PUBLICATIONS IN THE MEDIA ABROAD, ACCEPTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL GRANTS, AND VISITS TO LABORATORIES BY FOREIGNERS.

Comments on Echo of Moscow radio by human rights activist Sergei 
Kovalev stirred up the public. American financier George Soros told 
Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matvienko that he was shocked. 
Matvienko replied that with all due respect, Kovalev did not always 
use "thoroughly verified information".

The Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences doesn't deny 
that the directive exists - but disagrees with Kovalev's 
interpretation, and promises a press conference to explain its 
utility. For the time being, a single argument is offered as 
explanation. Joint projects with foreigners always have to be reported 
to the authorities, and the time has come to bring order into this 
sphere. Meanwhile, this directive is associated in the public mind 
with the latest spy scandals - the case of Edmond Pope, and trials of 
environmentalists Nikitin and Pasko. The haste with which the 
directive is to come into effect is surprising too. All high 
technology programs are to be inventoried in June.

Needless to say, the directive will have a negative effect on 
contacts between Russian researchers and foreigners. For a number of 
reasons, some of them will certainly disagree to work under the "First 
Departments"; and contacts with some others will be banned by the 
secret services themselves.

The new directive is supposed to safeguard state secrets. 
Unfortunately, Russian legislation in this sphere is somewhat unclear. 
The major problem created by the law on state secrets, drafted in 
1993, is who decides what counts as a state secret. Ministries and 
departments, not individuals, are supposed to make these decisions. As 
a result, the list includes innumerable state and ministerial secrets 
- with the option to continue. Soon there will be no unclassified 
topics left.

At the same time, Russian researchers will soon encounter 
problems with grants from abroad. In order for a research program 
which may receive foreign funding to be cleared by the "First 
Department", it will have to include representatives of management and 
other people who are not directly involved.

As for publications in foreign media - needless to say, the old 
rules are being re-imposed.

From the financial point of view, the directive is an obstacle. 
Russian scientists have barely been given a chance to earn some money 
- and now it's been decided to ban everything. Given their meager 
salaries, it is reasonable to expect a mass exodus from science.

*******

#5
Washington Post
1 June 2001
Russia's Un-Free Press 
By Herman J. Obermayer
The writer is a former daily newspaper publisher. This article was adapted 
from a longer one published by the Heritage Foundation in Policy Review. 

The Kremlin has been cracking down lately on Russian journalists who refuse 
to spout what one deputy editor calls "officially sanctioned propaganda." 
Some have been subjected to raids and arrests.

But should we be surprised? In the nine years since the Soviet Union 
dissolved, all efforts to create a free press have failed. 

During the past decade, my wife and I advised newspapers on business 
practices in 10 former Communist bloc countries. We consulted with editors, 
journalists and executives in more than 100 newspaper offices and observed 
printing production in more than three dozen press and mailing operations. We 
found that many newspapers in Warsaw Pact countries and former Yugoslav 
republics have become independent, both editorially and financially.

But that's where the good news stops. Of the 2,700 regional and rural 
newspapers in Russia, more than 95 percent are government mouthpieces owned 
by municipalities, counties or small republics. They are part of the power 
structure by which mayors and governors maintain their autocratic power. 
Virtually none is economically independent.

To Americans, who recognize a free press as indispensable to democracy, this 
state of affairs would be intolerable. But most Russians don't know what 
they're missing. Print media problems at the national level are bad enough, 
but in the hinterland, where more than 90 percent of Russians live, 
newspapers disregard basic journalistic standards -- ethical and otherwise.

For example, most Russian journalists think it proper to accept payment from 
an outside source for a news story. Aside from making up quotes or facts, 
this is perhaps the biggest taboo among U.S. journalists. But Russian 
journalists consider it fair compensation for value received.

A regional editor explained why he disagreed with the notion that nothing on 
the front page should be sold. When Ford opened a parts distribution center 
in his city, the newspaper's lead story was about the dedication of the 
building. It included a picture of the mayor cutting a ribbon. The same day, 
a Taurus ad with a picture of the car, logo and descriptive copy appeared on 
Page 5. Both were perceived as commercial promotions by the editor, but the 
front-page story was of more use to Ford, so the newspaper charged more for 
the story than for the ad.

The absence of Western reporting standards also colors the Russian media's 
coverage of elections. The candidate endorsed by a local newspaper almost 
always wins, because his opponent is virtually ignored. Favored candidates 
have a free ride, because bureaucrat-journalists under the employ of local 
governments never question the mayor or governor's favorites about character, 
finances, voting records or corruption.

What little international news gets to the provinces is edited and distorted 
by state-owned wire services. Since no regional newspaper subscribes to an 
international wire service, Russians outside Moscow and St. Petersburg are 
ignorant of the larger world -- and often afraid of it.

Meanwhile, government involvement in news coverage is not challenged; it is 
often welcomed. Front pages usually consist of partisan commentary, staged 
pictures of politicians cutting ribbons or greeting foreign dignitaries, and 
government press releases. News about roads, schools, art museums and 
industrial policy is considered insignificant.

One of the main reasons Russia lacks a free press is that Russians have no 
institutional memory of independent, objective newspapers. The grandparents 
and great-grandparents of today's journalists never read a newspaper that was 
not a party propaganda sheet.

What can be done to fix this media mess? I believe the U.S. government's 
approach to media aid in Russia is wrongheaded. The U.S.-funded National 
Press Institute, for example, has trained 130,000 Russian journalists and 
news executives since 1992. But what came out was the same thing that went 
in: bureaucrats and propagandists. To continue the current U.S. programs is 
to throw good money after bad.

Here's a better approach: expense-paid trips for students and journalism 
academics -- not apparatchik "journalists" and "editors" -- to the United 
States to observe our media. Even the most skeptical observer would return 
with a new understanding of America's free press. And bringing all of 
Russia's college journalism teachers to America for a few weeks would 
probably cost less than is being spent on in-country training.

Western-style newspapers and broadcast outlets will not succeed in 
post-communist Russia if young journalists don't know what a "free press" 
really means. As long as it's a foreign concept in Russia, democracy will be 
also.

*******

#6
Trud
1 June 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
PUTIN SIGNS NEW EMERGENCY SITUATION LAW
By Alexander DANILKIN

Until the new law on the emergency situation has been 
adopted, Russia lived in accordance with the 1991 law, which, 
according to Pavel Krasheninnikov who heads the Duma 
legislative committee, contradicted the Constitution of the 
Russian Federation.

The new law, which is regarded as one of the harshest laws 
in the country, has been adopted in connection with the need to 
impose a number of restrictions on constitutional rights and 
liberties, which may arise under certain circumstances. The 
issue at hand is the imposition of a curfew, cancellation of 
elections, referendums and all mass happenings, including 
demonstrations and strikes.

If a state of emergency is declared, freedom of speech and 
of the press can be restricted and the activities of political 
parties and associations suspended.

Other possible bans include restriction on the movement of 
commodities and finances. In such cases food and prime 
necessities will be sold or distributed under a special 
procedure. The work of hazardous shops and whole enterprises 
can also be suspended. A special procedure for the sales and 
distribution of alcoholic beverages will be introduced.

The President of Russia has the right to introduce a state 
of emergency. According to Krasheninnikov, a state of emergency 
can be imposed on the entire territory of the country and in 
any territory, which no necessarily coincides with 
administrative borders inside the country. A state of emergency 
on a countrywide scale can be introduced for a period of up to 
thirty days and on the scale of a certain territory for sixty 
days. The President has the right to decree the extension of a 
state of emergency after its term expires.

Under the new law, a state of emergency can be introduced 
if there is a threat to the security of the country's 
population and constitutional system and in the event of 
man-made and natural catastrophes. According to Krasheninnikov, 
the new law can be soon put into effect in Chechnya or Yakutia. 
However, the putting of the law into action does not mean, in 
his opinion, the immediate imposition of a state of emergency, 
as this requires a special presidential decree.

*******

#7
Financial Times (UK)
1 June 2001
Ukraine welcomes closer ties with Russia: Moves to support the reintegration 
of the two economies are growing
By Robert Cottrell and Charles Clover

Whatever President Leonid Kuchma may say to western audiences about his 
country's foreign policy, his message to Russian audiences is clear enough. 
Ukraine's main priority now is closer ties with Russia. The west can wait. 

Interviewed this week on Russian television, Mr Kuchma ducked a question 
about whether his increasingly pro-Russian line was tied to his own political 
fortunes. Russia has stood by him throughout a recent scandal that has 
weakened him at home and tarnished his reputation in the west. 

The scandal turns on allegations, which Mr Kuchma denies, that he ordered a 
journalist's murder last year. 

Mr Kuchma insists on a different explanation for his eastward tilt. "My 
priorities changed after Vladimir Putin became president, after relations 
between our countries became absolutely pragmatic and constructive," he said 
this week. 

"The new policy of the new Russian leadership has changed my vision and 
actions." 

Russia is returning the compliment. This week its powerful new ambassador, 
Victor Chernomyrdin, flew into Kiev like "a governor-general straight out of 
19th century imperial Russia" in the words of Viktor Zamyatin, a Ukrainian 
journalist. He says Mr Chernomyrdin is likely to pull more weight even than 
Ukraine's newly confirmed prime minister, Anatoly Kinakh. 

Mr Chernomyrdin and Mr Kuchma go back a long way. Both are former "red 
directors" of Soviet industry who made a successful transition into 
post-Soviet politics. Mr Chernomyrdin was Russian prime minister from 
1992-98, and before that the head of Gazprom, the state gas monopoly. 
According to Mr Zamyatin, Mr Chernomyrdin and Mr Kuchma still call one 
another "ti", the informal address - a sign of intimacy the president permits 
very few others. 

One view of Mr Chernomyrdin's mission, put forward by Taras Chornovil, a 
Ukrainian opposition leader, is that Russia has sent him to engineer a smooth 
succession to the tottering Mr Kuchma. 

Mr Chernomyrdin himself says his main priority will be economic and trade 
relations. He will, in effect, be encouraging the economic reintegration of 
Ukraine with Russia, 10 years after the two countries' shared command economy 
was severed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

And here Mr Chernomyrdin's years at Gazprom will come in useful. Ukraine 
still depends on Russia for almost all its energy. 

A main irritant in Russian-Ukrainian relations for the past decade has been 
Ukraine's failure to pay in full for its gas supplies, and its persistent 
pilfering of gas piped across its territory in transit to third countries. 
The debt is commonly estimated at about Dollars 1.4bn to Dollars 2bn. 

Asked about the gas issue on Monday, Mr Chernomyrdin replied: "Naturally 
there should be fewer debts, that's the way I see it . . . Asfor all the 
unsanctioned tapping into the pipeline, that is too bad, that's all I can say 
. . . These complex issues can be solved in a civilised way and we will do 
everything in the end." 

The "civilised" solution Russia seems to have in mind for Ukraine would 
include Russian companies acquiring or controlling more of Ukraine's 
industry, especially its energy infrastructure, in settlement for debt. 

Through Gazprom, Russia is manoeuvring for ownership of Ukraine's greatest 
prize, the nine trunk pipelines that cross Ukraine carrying Russian gas to 
Europe. If these pipelines are privatised, Gazprom may have to outwit or 
outbid competition from western companies including Shell. Mr Chernomyrdin's 
clout may help. So may Russia's threat to build a rival pipeline through 
Poland to Slovakia, which would cost Ukraine up to Dollars 1bn a year in lost 
tariff revenues. 

In other industries too, such as power supply, defence and heavy engineering, 
Ukraine has assets attractive to Russian investors. Since last year Russian 
investors have bought into the Mykolayiv alumina refinery, the Lysechansk oil 
refinery and the Zaporizhia aluminium smelter. They are said to covet 
Kryvorozhstal, Ukraine's largest and most profitable steel mill. 

Mr Kuchma is certainly signalling encouragement. "A Russian businessman is 
not really a foreigner," he said this week. "The conditions are exactly the 
same as in Russia and the legislation is more or less the same." 

That is not a line Mr Kuchma could easily use if it was western investment he 
was seeking. 

Power privatisation suspended 

Leonid Kuchma, Ukrainian president, yesterday ordered his new government to 
suspend the planned sell-offs of electricity generating and distribution 
companies, Reuters reports from Kiev. 

Privatisation of electricity companies was one of the key terms laid down by 
the IMF to secure lending. 

The presidential press service said the decision was taken due to the 
importance of power companies for the country's economy and national 
security. Viktor Yushchenko, the former premier dismissed by parliament a 
month ago, had pressed ahead with the sell-offs without Mr Kuchma's support. 
This week Anatoly Kinakh, an ally of the president, was installed as prime 
minister. 

Kiev has already sold controlling stakes in six power distribution companies 
this year. It is not clear whether it will seek to regain the assets. 

*******

#8
The Times (UK)
JUNE 01 2001 
Hope for the abandoned 
The World Bank is to spend millions of dollars resettling the victims of 
Stalin's labour camps. But many former detainees have not seen the outside
world for decades 
BY GILES WHITTELL 

For a glimpse of the truth that Russia still cannot handle, go to Magadan.
The flight from Moscow takes eight hours, crosses eight time zones and ends
in what looks like a vast wilderness of forests and white mountains. 

Then drive north for 12 hours along a serpentine dirt road to Susuman, a
half-deserted gold-mining town where entire neighbourhoods have splintered
into firewood and newer buildings stand on stilts above the permafrost. Go
to the first entrance in the last block of flats on Sovietskaya Street and
ask for Valentina Fedotova. 

By Fedotova’s standards, it is no great hardship to have made the trip this
way. Her own journey to Susuman began in 1946, when she was a 21-year-old
student nurse in Kiev. A neighbour betrayed her to the NKVD (secret police)
and, after a “trial” lasting a few minutes, she was convicted of “betraying
the Motherland” — an umbrella term that carried a range of (usually
trumped-up) charges and with which nearly all political prisoners were
charged. A military tribunal sentenced her to ten years of forced labour
and ten more of exile. 

More than half a century later she is broken, but still alive. For the
first time in decades, thanks to unimaginable sums of money promised by an
organisation that she has little reason to believe exists, she has allowed
herself to hope she may get out of Susuman and go to live near a daughter
in central Russia before she dies. She is one of hundreds of Gulag
survivors — perhaps thousands; their exact number is not known — who are
eligible for voluntary resettlement under an $80 million (£56 million)
World Bank programme that was due to have been approved in Washington next
week. In the meantime, her miserable existence testifies to a lingering
nightmare that Russians have, with few exceptions, still failed to confront. 

After her conviction Fedotova spent seven months being shunted east with
tens of thousands of others to the headwaters of the Kolyma river, the
remotest and, by many accounts, harshest outpost in the Gulag archipelago.
She passed through a transit camp in Kharkov and along the Trans-Siberian
Railway, reaching Magadan aboard a steamer from Vanino in the bitter cold
of February 1947. From there she went by open lorry up the Susuman road,
called the Road of Bones because so many prisoners had died building it. In
temperatures down to minus 40C she was lowered by steel bucket into 30ft
pits to mine gold on her knees at Zhelanyi (“Beloved”). 

She survived a stint at Maldyak, the deadliest of all the mines
administered from Susuman, and later, at gunpoint, walked 300 miles into
Yakutia to serve out her time on a collective farm. She was freed early for
good behaviour, but freedom was relative. The NKVD flew her back to
Susuman, where she would not receive a passport or win back her citizenship
until 1966. She made one trip home to see her mother before she died, but
has not left Susuman since. 

Fedotova is now toothless, frightened and unwell. Her skin is pitted and
her one-room flat reeks of despair. When asked to tell her story her first
reaction is to cry. Three months ago she received £25 from the Solzhenitsyn
Fund, set up by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on his return to Moscow in 1994 to
help former victims of the Gulag. 

The Government had also paid her a lump sum as the Soviet Union fell apart
but it was rendered worthless by inflation by the time it reached her.
Otherwise she has received nothing by way of compensation or apology except
a faded piece of paper confirming her “rehabilitation”. 

“Have it,” she says. “It’s worth nothing.” The rehabilitation is dated
1991, but ten years on — and 55 since her arrest — her name is on another
piece of paper that could finally make a difference. The World Bank
programme comes none too soon, but “better late than never”, as Fedotova
notes. It is also the first systematic effort to dismantle the legacy of
one of the greatest evils of the past century. 

On one level this is a story of mining towns becoming ghost towns. The
World Bank money is directed not just at Susuman, but also at Norilsk, the
Arctic nickel capital that is one of the most polluted places on earth, and
Vorkuta, the centre of a northern coal-mining complex that offered perhaps
the quickest death in the Gulag system since it was on a mainline railway
from Moscow and the Lubianka. 

All three cities warrant the spending, officials say, because the collapse
of Soviet power and its subsidies left them with generations of wives,
children and pensioners that their local administrations can no longer
support. The plan now is to switch to Canadian-style seasonal mining, with
fewer miners flying in for short periods of intensive work and decent pay.
“Some 18,000 people lived in this district in the early 1990s,” Susuman’s
Deputy Mayor said last week. “If this works, there will be 6,000 left, but
they will be better off.” But such timid optimism glosses over two decades
of unspeakable suffering and five more of state-sanctioned amnaesia, for
the original idea of building permanent settlements in such hostile
locations — the settlements that the World Bank is now paying to shrink —
was at the heart of Stalinist economics. Having been condemned to work
until they dropped, the thinking went, the zeks might as well keep working
year-round, even in the coldest places on the planet. 

“They died in miners’ tunnels from falling rocks and snapped lift cables,”
Colin Thubron writes in his book In Siberia. They died “from ammonal fumes
and silicosis, scurvy and high blood pressure, spitting up blood and lung
tissue. In winter, when steam-hoses melted the gold-bearing sand, they
wheeled its slag from hot panning sheds into temperatures as low as minus
60F, and were dead of pneumonia or meningitis within a month.” 

They were also shot en masse: in what numbers no one knows, but skulls are
still emerging from the gravel along the Kolyma’s tributaries. Two million
may have perished here by the time Stalin died in his sleep in 1953. 

For the next 38 years the region was closed to most Russians as well as
foreigners. Since the Soviet break-up there have been efforts to look
history in the eye, but only isolated ones: a lonely cross on the road two
hours east of Susuman; a floor of the Magadan museum with a watchtower from
the Butugychag uranium mine; and the tireless work of Memorial, the Russian
human rights group that is still compiling lists of the missing because no
one else has bothered. 

The Gulag writings of Solzhenitsyn, Osip Mandelstam and Yevgenia Ginzburg
are of course widely available in Russia now, but are not widely read. 

Meanwhile, Susuman’s Mayor has published a coffee-table book about his
region that contains barely a mention of how it was populated, and
President Putin has unveiled a monument in the Kremlin to 17 heroes of the
Great Patriotic War, among them Joseph Stalin. 

It is hard to convey how heavily Stalin’s shadow still hangs over Susuman,
but Yevgenia Ivanova’s story helps. Like Fedotova, she came here in the
late 1940s as a “political” prisoner with no interest in politics. Unlike
her, she keeps a portrait of Stalin over her bed and calls him “my god and
tsar”. 

At first it is not clear why. One morning in the winter of 1942, during the
siege of Leningrad, she woke up there to find that her father, mother and
two siblings had died of cold and hunger overnight in the bed next to her.
“I woke up and felt my sister’s cold shoulder on my face, and my parents
were silent,” she says. “Let me tell you, comrades, death by starvation is
the worst sort. When my parents died I have to say I was glad because it
meant there would be potatoes for me.” Ivanova was 11 at the time. An uncle
and aunt took care of her until they were shot in 1943 as “German spies”,
leaving her to shuttle between relatives, then prisons, until the Felix
Dzherzhinsky steamship brought her to Magadan to start a ten-year sentence
in 1949. She broke both legs and an arm when the truck taking her north to
the mines rolled over, but “at least I was alive,” she says. She recalls an
almost comical attempt to escape, much later, disguised as a Yakut
aboriginal with black hair and rotten teeth. (She was caught and turned
back on the steps of an airliner in Magadan.) And then she describes life
in the camps: “There was nothing bad about it,” she says in a loud
monotone, louder than her own hearing aid requires. “Everyone lies about
the suffering. I was in the berry-picking brigade and had quite a fun time.
They gave us new clothes every year and fed us like soldiers in the Red
Army.” What about the deaths? She knew of no one who had died, she says.
Even among the men? Even among them. 

I had been brought to see Ivanova by a pair of local bureaucrats and for a
moment thought they had wheeled her out to try persuading me that
everything I thought I knew about the Gulag was untrue. This was not the
case: they later explained that Ivanova was simply too scared, still, to
let her guard down. 

For most of those who live among the ruins of the Soviet death camps,
denying their history is impossible. Indeed, history can seldom have been
so present anywhere. Two years ago, three miles upriver from the old
Maldyak mine north-east of Susuman where Fedotova worked, a group of
freelance gold-diggers found the bodies of 38 prisoners, each executed with
a single bullet to the head. The bodies had been washed out of a shallow
grave next to the Maldyak river by the spring thaw and heavy rains, and
were found strewn along the river bank in varying degrees of decay. Some
were skeletons turned orange by gold and iron in the water. Others, fully
clad in cotton quilt jackets and thin-soled boots, had been mummified by
the frozen mud and still seemed to be screaming. Holes in the top of every
skull suggested they had been shot upwards from under the chin. 

The year of death was cautiously established as 1938 and the bodies were
reburied with full Orthodox ceremony. But their names remain unknown and
dozens, perhaps hundreds, more are unearthed each summer. 

“There’s no question that bodies are found all the time,” says Nikolai
Smirnoff, whose father and grandfather were both exiled to Kolyma and who
filmed the Maldyak bodies for local television. “But prospectors don’t
report them because one body means an investigation that will cost them a
week of work and 5kg of gold. The season is short.” 

Galina Belichenko, the local liaison officer for the World Bank scheme,
says: “The trouble is that gold was always more valuable than human life up
here. We know many bodies have simply been pushed aside by bulldozers. We
just don’t know how many.” 

As I walked Susuman’s silent streets, and saw its stolen lives, it seemed
to be the saddest place on earth. At the bus terminal Viktor Dorokhov
smiled wryly at my mention of the resettlement programme. A child of camp
survivors, born in 1957, he is too young to qualify for aid — and doubts
that it will materialise. “The chinovniki (Magadan’s top regional
administrators) will take it all,” he says. “The World Bank’s involvement
makes no difference; once the money gets here, who will control it?” 

The question is a crucial one. The Magadan region bears many of the
features of a personal fiefdom run by its Governor, Valentin Tsvetkov. His
critics say he has enriched himself and cronies by, amongst other things,
putting ownership of the city’s largest gold-smelting plant in his wife’s
name. There are also fears that civil servants have managed to hijack up to
80 per cent of the region’s federal grants for child support payments. As a
Susuman police detective wished to remain anonymous says: “The prospect of
millions of dollars pouring in from the World Bank will prove irresistible.” 

In the end, though, the greatest obstacle to helping Gulag survivors to
leave may be their own fear. “They are afraid of readapting,” says
Belichenko. “They dream of leaving, but are terrified.” Fedotova, for
example, has not seen the outside world since 1966. She has no idea what
democracy or civilisation there means. 

The odds are still against a happy ending to her story, but this is Kolyma
— she has beaten far worse odds just to stay alive.

******

#9
BBC Monitoring
Russian tycoon says Russia's Putin will not make it till end of his presidency 
Source: NTV International, Moscow, in Russian 1530 gmt 31 May 01 

"I really do think that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will not survive 
beyond his one term in office and now I think that Putin will not even make 
it through the very next stage of his term", Russian tycoon Boris Berezovskiy 
has said. 

In a 12-minute live interview from Paris with Russian NTV's Hero of the Day 
programme presenter Savik Shuster, Berezovskiy said that this was because 
"the path chosen by Putin, the eclectic one, combining a liberal economy and 
an authoritarian political system is not for Russia and the example of China 
is of no use here, as Russia thinks in altogether different categories". 

"Russia will only be a prosperous country if it becomes an extremely liberal 
country, because we have already experienced an extremely authoritarian 
system and we know how that ended," Berezovskiy said. 

Berezovskiy said that "what [Russia's first president Boris] Yeltsin did was 
absolutely right to build a liberal Russia and at present this policy must 
simply be continued". 

Recalling his relationship with Putin, Berezovskiy said: "I really did 
support him. I thought Putin would continue Yeltsin's reform course. Our 
fundamental difference with Putin consists in the fact that Putin talks about 
my personal relations with him, whereas I talk about the ideas we used to 
discuss together and which he intended to implement. These are two different 
dimensions, my personal relationship with Putin and what Putin is doing in 
reality and I think the two should never have been mixed." 

"We must follow a well-trodden path which dozens of countries have done 
before us and it is crucially important to understand that an effective 
market economy can not really exist alongside an authoritarian political 
regime," he said. 

"Putin's view is that Russia can not be ruled other than by authoritarian 
methods, whereas I am deeply convinced - and the past 10 years have shown as 
much - that Russia can develop for real as a liberal country, that is to say 
to organize itself, where there is primacy of the individual over the state 
and not the primacy of the state over the individual," Berezovskiy said. 

"I am simply doing everything in my power to continue the reform course 
implemented by the previous president and that is why I think that real, as 
opposed to puppet opposition is absolutely indispensable in Russia for this 
course to be implemented. It so happens at present that the opposition ought 
to be liberal, without fail, because the path chosen by the authorities is 
undoubtedly an authoritarian one," Berezovskiy said. 

Asked about "Godfather of the Kremlin", a book which makes the allegation 
that Berezovskiy was an all-powerful godfather during the Yeltsin era, 
Berezovskiy replied that the book's author, Pavel Khlebnikov "has a brilliant 
opportunity to prove his point". 

"I took the Forbes journal to court, the case has already been going on for 
four years, everything is being scrupulously studied, each and every episode 
described by Khlebnikov...and he has a brilliant opportunity to prove in an 
English court that he is right. 

I have a few questions to Pavel Khlebnikov and the Forbes magazine. Why did 
they insist so much for the court case to be heard in Moscow, rather than 
London, particularly at a time when Yeltsin was at the helm of state? They 
had but one goal, to show that if Berezovskiy does win in Moscow, we will be 
able to say that the court was biased. However, I insisted for the court case 
to be heard in London and Forbes has already lost the first round of this 
dispute, having lost a no mean sum, 1m pounds, an altogether tidy sum. I am 
confident that both Khlebnikov and the Forbes magazine have a brilliant 
opportunity to prove they are in the right. That is why I have no intention 
at all to enter into polemics with Mr Khlebnikov. 

From my point of view the British legal system is just and will undoubtedly 
resolve this dispute," Berezovskiy said. 

******

#10
Novaya Gazeta
No. 37
May 31-June 3, 2001
THE WAR CAN BE STOPPED ONLY IF IT IS NOT CONTINUED
Withdrawal of federal troops from Chechnya is only a matter of time
Author: Boris Kagarlitsky
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
RUSSIA CANNOT WIN THE WAR IN CHECHNYA: IT LACKS THE STRENGTH, THE 
RESOURCES, THE MORALE. PUTTING AN END TO THE WAR REQUIRES NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE OTHER SIDE. PEACE PROCESSES ARE IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT THE PARTICIPATION OF THE GUERRILLAS; BUT THE KREMLIN REFUSES TO ACCEPT THIS SIMPLE TRUTH.

The war in Chechnya made Vladimir Putin president. The same war 
could eventually bring about the collapse of Putin's regime.

The Russian regime sees no way out of this cul de sac. As a 
Western journalist once noted, Chechnya for Russia is what Algeria was 
for France in the 1950s. On the one hand, official circles show their 
determination to hold on to the territory in question. On the other, 
they don't appear to know why they need this territory, or what they 
will do with it. The main argument for continuing the war is as 
follows: as soon as the Russian forces have withdrawn, the power 
vacuum in Chechnya would immediately be filled by a restoration of the 
regime of field commanders and outlaws.

All these arguments would have sounded convincing, save for the 
fact that Russia cannot win the war. It lacks the strength, the 
resources, the proper morale.

The public is already gradually coming to terms with the truth. 
Of course, published opinion poll results should be taken with a grain 
of salt - but the trend is clearly visible. Polling agencies which 
reported nationwide support for the war in Chechnya only six months 
ago are now using the same polls to report that support for ending the 
war is growing with each passing day - while support for "war to the 
end" is already in the minority. More importantly, these attitudes are 
taking hold in the army as well. The military lacks a solution for 
Chechnya. All it can do is keep on manning checkpoints and remain 
sitting ducks for guerrilla bullets. Nothing more can be demanded from 
the military.

In such a situation, withdrawal of the troops is only a matter of 
time. The longer the federal government delays, the longer it remains 
unprepared to face the truth and start negotiations, the worse it will 
be for Russia, the more risk there will be that Moscow will end up 
precisely with what it fears: a power vacuum, tyranny of field 
commanders in Chechnya, and destabilization in Russia itself.

In theory, another solution to the Chechnya problem is possible 
as well. Past experience shows that such conflicts can be effectively 
ended only by negotiation. The pattern is well known - a cease-fire, 
internationally monitored free and fair elections, and a final 
agreement on the status of Chechnya with the elected authorities. This 
solution is acceptable for the separatist leaders as well. Aslan 
Maskhadov's presidential term will soon end; formation of a new 
administration is in line with the laws of independent Ichkeria and 
Russia, and international standards. There is only one detail here - 
under Chechen laws, Maskhadov's term in office is automatically 
extended as long as the war continues. If a new legitimate government 
is required in Chechnya, the war must first be halted.

And by the way, the new Chechen administration doesn't 
necessarily have to be radical and nationalist. While the war 
continues, the people remain caught between the guerrillas and the 
federal troops. Given what the federal army has been doing in 
Chechnya, it is hardly surprising that the people of Chechnya 
eventually take the side of the guerrillas. The guerrillas are 
Chechens, at least. But this doesn't mean that the guerrillas as such 
automatically have public support. Moreover, the guerrillas themselves 
are split over the future of Chechnya. They will only remain united as 
long as the Russian army continues the war. The Kremlin's attempts to 
split the guerrillas are bound to fail. But the correlation of forces 
will certainly be different once the war is over. The people will 
start uniting on the basis of their opinions and interests, not 
against a "common enemy".

There is the Third Force movement, which is gaining prominence in 
Chechnya and among the Chechen diaspora these days. The Movement for 
Civil Rights of Residents of the Caucasus is close to it. Its members 
no longer doubt that no matter what eventually becomes of Chechnya as 
such, a great many Chechens will be living in Russia. That is why 
sovereignty in itself will not solve anything (the way it wouldn't 
solve the problem of the Kurds in Turkey). In the long run, everything 
depends on democratization and establishment of civil equality in 
Russia itself. Another thing is clear as well - a democratic solution 
to the ethnic problem is impossible while the war rages on.

Putting an end to the war requires negotiations with the other 
side. Peace processes are impossible without the participation of the 
guerrillas; but the Kremlin refuses to accept this simple truth.

On the other hand, rational arguments are unlikely to persuade 
racists and fascists - who are essentially the only consistent 
advocates of the policy the Russian authorities have been pursuing in 
Chechnya.

*****

#11
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
31 May 2001
A New Wave of Reform in Russia?
President Putin Faces Political Tests
By Andreas Rüesch

Russia's parliament is about to engage in debates on reforms of the 
judiciary, real estate law, taxation and other crucial matters. The fate of 
these legislative undertakings will provide strong indications of how serious 
President Putin is about his promises of reform and whether he can carry the 
day against conservative forces.

In the fourteen months since his election, Russia's President Putin has 
radically changed the system of competing power centers which arose under his 
predecessor Yeltsin and has persistently reinforced the central position of 
the Kremlin as laid down in Russia's federal constitution. He has cut back 
the power of provincial bosses by having their authority, financial means and 
immunity from criminal prosecution reduced or eliminated. He has reined in 
the financial oligarchs and insisted that they stick to business and keep out 
of politics; two of these tycoons, Berezovsky and Gusinski, who did not get 
the message and failed to bring their media groups into line, Putin destroyed 
financially and drove into exile. He has also transformed the parliament into 
a loyal institution, helped by the fact that the years-long dominance of the 
Communists in the lower house has been broken since the Duma elections of 
1999. At the same time, the Kremlin leader enjoys unbroken support among the 
populace. 

Palpable Elan

So far, President Putin has used his power only sparingly, as if he were 
unsure just where to begin cleaning out the political and economic Augean 
stables. Aside from two problematic undertakings - reform of Russian 
federalism and a return to the Soviet national anthem - he has hardly ever 
used his full political weight to push legislation through the parliament. He 
avoids political risks, and in doing so he accepts that his intended reforms 
will be only hesitantly implemented. This would seem to indicate that various 
interest groups continue to operate in the background and are able to block 
innovations. Does the Kremlin have the prudence and tactical skill to 
outmaneuver these interest groups and fulfill Putin's election campaign 
promises? Obviously, the president's team intends to prove that it does in 
the weeks ahead.

Reform efforts in the areas of the economy, the military and the bureaucracy 
clearly bogged down during this past winter. But now a renewed elan is 
palpable. A host of new legislative projects have been sent to the parliament 
recently and are now to be dealt with in rapid succession. To be on the safe 
side, the government requested that the Duma extend the current spring 
session into mid-July. Prominent among the proposed reforms is that of the 
judiciary. This involves a packet of twelve laws, the first four of which 
were submitted to the lower house on 25 May. The reform proposals were worked 
out under the leadership of the Kremlin's deputy chief of staff, Dmitri 
Kozak. Their details have not yet been made public, but Kozak's statements 
indicate that the president wants to strengthen the nation's courts, partly 
by increasing the wages of many judges. Beginning in the year 2004, arrests 
and house searches are to be carried out only with a judge's approval, 
instead of on the say-so of the attorney general, as has been the case until 
now.

Liberal politicians praise the new proposals as progress on the road to the 
rule of law. But the judicial reform promises to be a particularly tough test 
for Putin, who was constrained to cancel a previous reform attempt in January 
under pressure from the police and the attorney general's office. Even now, 
Attorney General Ustinov is raging against the proposals and has already had 
success on one point: Kozak's suggestion for the creation of a central 
investigative agency - tantamount to a major undercutting of the attorney 
general's powers - is being dropped for the present. 

Sending a Signal

The planned new law on land ownership promises to trigger equally bitter 
debate. In a clever tactical move, Putin left the ticklish issue of commerce 
in agricultural land out of his draft proposal. On this ideologically loaded 
question, the Communists and left-wing agrarians have been successfully 
insisting for years that all such commerce be banned. But even the remaining 
proposals, which include the liberalization of the real estate market in 
urban areas, are explosive enough here. If the president is serious about his 
promised improvement of the investment climate, he cannot afford to back down 
in the debate on land ownership. For years, foreign investors have been upset 
over the fact that, in acquiring a factory, they can only lease but cannot 
buy the land on which it stands.

Other legislation in the realms of economic and social policy will also send 
strong signals. In the pipeline are a pension reform, innovations in the 
taxing of profits, and a modernized labor law. The Duma has already passed a 
packet of laws proposed by the International Monetary Fund, designed to make 
it easier to liquidate insolvent banks. And on 24 May, in the first of the 
three required readings, legislators approved a draft law with which the 
government wants to protect companies from excessively frequent checks by the 
bureaucracy. The control mania of no fewer than three dozen agencies makes 
life especially difficult for small companies and serves only to encourage 
corruption. On the same day, the Duma also voted for a law against 
money-laundering - but the detailed debate on that one is still to come. 

A Vision of a "Different Country"

Prime Minister Kasyanov recently declared that, should the Duma approve the 
proposed reforms, Russia will become a different country - more progressive, 
more market-oriented and more democratic. Kasyanov was partly right, even 
though in Russia the real hurdle is not so much in passing laws as in 
implementing them. But it will be fascinating to see whether the opponents of 
modernization will be victorious even at the parliamentary stage. There are 
some indications that they will not. In April, the pro-government Unity Party 
and the former opposition alliance "Fatherland - All Russia" began moving 
toward a merger, and two other parliamentary factions are showing interest in 
joining them. At least on paper, that would give the Kremlin a clear majority 
in the lower house, which liberal groups could join on a case-by-case basis. 
But the Duma has not yet become merely a presidential rubber stamp. Even 
though the Russian media treat the Kremlin chief almost like a little Sun 
King, Putin is not an absolutist ruler but a leader repeatedly forced to 
compromise. It will take great negotiating skill to get his proposals through 
the parliament without significant alterations.

President Putin also faces other tests on other fronts. For weeks there have 
been rumors of a reorganization of the government, but so far the cabinet has 
apparently managed to repeatedly put off the streamlining that Putin is 
calling for. Observers are also waiting to see whether the Kremlin boss is 
willing to permit the mismanagement of the country's largest company, the 
quasi-state-owned Gazprom, to continue. For years, Gazprom has acted like a 
state within the state and successfully fended off all reform efforts. But on 
31 May the contract of CEO Rem Vyakhirev expires. Anything but a discharge of 
Vyakhirev would inevitably be seen as a sign of Putin's weakness and would 
damage his credibility, since the extent to which the heads of Gazprom's 
management have enriched themselves at the country's expense has now been 
clearly proven. So far, Putin has been silent on the subject, once again 
betraying how selective is the "dictatorship of the law" which he advocates. 
Pessimists fear that Putin will leave Vyakhirev in place because the Gazprom 
executive was very helpful to the president in pursuing the recent campaign 
against the anti-government media group Media-Most.

*******

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