July 9, 2001 

This Date's Issues:   5343 • 5344

Johnson's Russia List
#5343
9 July 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Chicago Tribune: Colin McMahon, Russia amber trade a dirty business in more than one way. Everyone profits, except Moscow.
2. The Times (UK): Alice Lagnado, Moscow declares war against the Salvation Army.
3. Washington Post Book World: Martin Walker, Russian Roulette. (review of CASINO MOSCOW A Tale of Greed and Adventure On Capitalism's Wildest Frontier by Matthew Brzezinski)
4. The Russia Journal: Michael Lockshin, Lucrative sequel for Russia’s cinema. Movie theaters make a comeback after their Soviet heyday.
5. AP: Russian Troops Accused of Abuses.
6. Chicago Tribune: Elizabeth Taylor, `What I saw . . . is beyond words' An author discusses the war in Chechnya. (interview with Anne Nivat)
7. HANDELSBLATT (Germany): Gazprom Opening Up to Foreign Investors.
8. Wall Street Journal: Hugh Pope, Armenia, After a Decade of Statehood, Suffers Rapid Loss of Human Capital.
9. Financial Times (UK): Valleys of death. Robin Buss reads a story of the Eastern Front that does not go as far as it might. review of RUSSIA'S HEROES 1941-45 by Albert Axell)
10. Newsweek International: Anna Kuchment, Inside Stalin’s Secret Trials. A riveting new account of Soviet anti-Semitism.]

*******

#1
Chicago Tribune
July 6, 2001
Russia amber trade a dirty business in more than one way
Everyone profits, except Moscow
By Colin McMahon
Tribune foreign correspondent

KALININGRAD, Russia -- On a good day, Andrei and his crew digging amber
from muddy pits in Kaliningrad will take home $40. The middlemen who buy
their haul will make more. So will the Europeans who turn the raw amber
into refined jewelry, figurines or just some nice looking rocks.

Profits will be enjoyed all around, except by the Russian government.

Even in a nation whose richness in natural resources is exceeded only by
the theft, corruption and mismanagement that surround them, the dirtiness
of Kaliningrad's amber trade is shocking.

The Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea sits atop an estimated 90 percent of
the world's amber. Yet trade in the so-called northern gold provides almost
nothing to Russia's federal budget.

A pit of crime

Not only does the Russian state get cheated by poachers like Andrei, who
understandably declined to give his last name, but the state-owned
Kaliningrad Amber Factory is itself a pit of criminal activity.

A government study concluded in March that about $70 million worth of
amber, or 60 percent of annual output, was pilfered from the factory last
year.

"Everyone steals, including workers and especially guards," Nikolai
Petukhov, a factory official, told the Moscow Times. "Amber has been stolen
at all stages of the output process.

"But $70 million, that sounds like nonsense," Petukhov said. "We don't even
put out that much amber."

It's clear, though, that someone is turning out the stuff in bulk.

Amber is a mineral and a semiprecious stone. It began forming in the
Kaliningrad region as long as 50 million years ago when tree sap flowed
into rivers that in turn flowed into the Baltic Sea. Today the amber trade
is estimated at $250 million a year.

Supplier of raw material

Kaliningrad amber finds its way into markets in neighboring Poland and
Lithuania often illegally, experts say. A local legislator in Kaliningrad
described his region, and the state-run factory in particular, as "a
raw-material appendix to the Polish and Lithuanian amber industry."

Thousands of Kaliningrad residents dig, scour or scavenge for amber outside
the law.

Some work the Baltic Sea shorelines of the Kaliningrad region, which has
about 1 million people sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

Others work the quarries of the state-run enterprise, sometimes bribing
security guards to turn their backs for an hour while poachers collect what
they can.

Then there are people like the blithe and jovial Andrei.

His brigade of four men and two women roams the countryside north of
Kaliningrad city. They root through unused farmland, usually after a deal
has been struck between whoever controls the land and the brokers who buy
Andrei's amber.

Choosing a spot to dig is more hunch than science.

"We're here today because we liked this place," said Andrei, 40, who
started prospecting during Soviet times, when laws were enforced and the
penalty could be severe. "The system is simple. You just pick a spot, pick
up a shovel, and you dig.

"It's like the lottery," Andrei said. "You either hit or you don't."

On a recent evening, as a persistent rain filled the crew's fresh pit and
they huddled by a fire against the chill, no one had hit the jackpot.

Worth a few rubles

Dmitry showed off a piece of amber about the size of a half-dollar. It was
black and cloudy, worth a few rubles maybe. It was not the kind of rock
that would put food on Dmitry's table or one day end up as a chiseled chess
piece, a luminous necklace or expensive paperweight.

"I like working for myself," Dmitry said. "Besides, the factory does not
pay enough. And there are no other jobs that do."

Amber poaching or outright theft is so prevalent because Kaliningrad's
economy is so bad.

Poverty is worse here than it is on the Russian mainland, according to
official statistics; more than a third of the population lives below the
subsistence level.

The real unemployment rate approaches 20 percent. Smuggling and the black
market trade account for at least a quarter of the economy and perhaps even
half.

This plays a role in the state's inability to get the amber trade under
control.

With wages so low at the state-run factory, workers feel not only that they
need to steal but that they have the right to do so. The government,
meanwhile, cannot afford to shut down the factory, restructure it and
overhaul the security system, the measures proposed by the federal
commission studying the issue.

*******

#2
The Times (UK)
July 9, 2001
Moscow declares war against the Salvation Army
FROM ALICE LAGNADO IN MOSCOW

THE Salvation Army, champion of Russia’s poor since Tsarist times, faces
closure today when the Moscow city government takes it to court.
Critics suspect that the Russian Orthodox Church, which enjoys a
conspicuously close relationship with Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, is
behind the campaign to shut it down.

The charity is one of only a handful providing emergency aid to the
elderly, sick and homeless, but the Church is bitterly opposed to the
flowering of non-orthodox religions in post-communist Russia and regards
the Salvation Army as a cultish religious group. It is desperate to retain
what it perceives as its rightful dominance of Russia’s religious landscape
and to maintain its influence on the State.

Colonel Kenneth Baillie, head of the charity in Russia, said that he had
heard speculation about the Orthodox Church and had wondered whether the
affair was an indirect appeal for money. “But we will not simply fold up
our tents and walk away — we will battle this and win.”

The Salvation Army opened its doors to Russia’s destitute in 1913, was
liquidated by Lenin’s secret police force in 1923 and returned in 1992 to
feed, clothe and give moral support to millions of Russians suddenly
rendered poor, homeless and confused by the collapse of communism and of
its relatively generous state benefits.

Last November Mr Luzhkov refused to grant it a permit to work in Moscow,
even though other Russian cities had registered it. The Moscow authorities
did not say why, but the Salvation Army said after those hearings that the
court had been told that it was a militarised group intent on violent
overthrow of the Russian Government.

Clues to the reasons behind the attempts to close down the charity lie in a
controversial law introduced four years ago. It stipulated that all but
four mainstream religions must re-register with the authorities.
Legislators were thought to have been heavily influenced by the Orthodox
Church.

Mr Luzhkov does not hide his relationship with the Church, most notably by
building an ugly, £360 million cathedral in the centre of Moscow in the
early 1990s, the most economically unstable period after perestroika.

Today Gordon Lewis, 53, and his wife, Pauline, 67, senior Salvation Army
officers from Croydon, are wondering whether they will have to book their
flights home. “It’s difficult to read their minds. When we worked in
Volgograd, we were classed as a new cult,” Mr Lewis, who used to work with
London’s homeless, said.

As he and his Russian assistants handed out lunches to a group of mentally
handicapped adults, Irina Pustashnova, 37, a former dry cleaner and one of
450 Russians working for the Army in Moscow, said: “They get about 1,200
roubles a month disability benefit and a third of that goes on bills.”

Vladislav is 25, severely schizophrenic and unable to get around Moscow
alone. The Salvation Army is his only outing from the cramped apartment
where he lives with his ageing parents. After his lunch of bread, ham, tea
and biscuits, he constructs brown paper bags.

The Army also hands out soup to the homeless, visits prison inmates and
holds social evenings for lonely Russian pensioners.

*******

#3
Washington Post Book World
July 8, 2001
Russian Roulette
By Martin Walker
Martin Walker, formerly Moscow and Washington bureau chief for the Guardian,
is the author of "America Reborn: A Twentieth-Century Narrative in Twenty-Six
Lives."

CASINO MOSCOW
A Tale of Greed and Adventure On Capitalism's Wildest Frontier
By Matthew Brzezinski
Free Press. 317 pp. $25

This breezy and breathless account of Russia's robber-baron phase seeks to do
for post-Soviet capitalism what Liar's Poker did for Wall Street's decade of
greed. It almost comes off, but the real charm of this memoir by the young
journalist nephew of former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski is
the way it finally uncovers one of the great secrets of modern journalism.

There have, after all, been any number of tales of Russia's Wild East by
adventurous Western reporters who were there. But the outside world seldom
penetrates the mysteries of that other sprawling and secretive empire, the
Wall Street Journal. Readers who are not in the financial or corporate worlds
have long pondered its character, and, rather like Western observers trying
to make sense of the old Soviet Union and modern Russia, have wondered
whether its oddities are generic and even genetic, or simply reflect a
different culture.

Just as Soviet citizens had to keep two truths and languages in their heads
at once, WSJ admirers understand that a certain schizophrenia is built into
the very structure of the newspaper. The news pages are stylish and
thoughtful and sound, whereas the editorial pages tend to be written by and
for natives of a universe where the laws of physics operate on subtly
different principles. They are distinguished not simply by ideology but by
attitude. While the iron laws of capitalism dictate that the financial world
wants its news plain and unsullied, the WSJ's editors apprehend that in
matters of commentary the readers want their prejudices reinforced.

And yet those unvarnished news pages have their own distinctions, not simply
between the worlds of politics and of business, but between the long and
often entertaining articles that grace the front pages and the curt,
businesslike and useful paragraphs within. It is to this world that
Brzezinski hands us the key, as a young hopeful sent off to Kiev -- and then
Moscow -- with one sensible piece of advice: "Always remind the readers that
Ukraine is a nation with a population and territory the size of France."

As he explains in a prologue, when he was mugged in his Kiev apartment,
trussed like a chicken with the wire from his own fax machine and with a
Makarov pistol pressed against his ear, he understood his paper's needs like
a true professional. The eventual WSJ report of his demise would state:
"Journalist murdered in a country with population and territory the size of
France. . . . New government bond issue not affected by death, analysts say."

His brain and education untroubled by much in the way of the higher
economics, young Brzezinski decided to study for the fray. He rented a video
of "Wall Street," and was later charmed to discover that Moscow's financiers
sport big braces and slicked-back hair. He read Liar's Poker and American
Psycho (more useful in Moscow than the innocent WSJ subscriber might think).
And with that combination of luck and concern for domestic comforts that
marks the true foreign correspondent, he equipped himself with an attractive
and intelligent girlfriend who worked for the investment arm of the World
Bank and could afford to sublet the plush Moscow apartment of a Bolshoi
ballerina.

Brzezinski arrived in time for the privatization boom, much fueled by readers
of the WSJ, which left seven politically connected oligarchs owning half the
country's assets. He attended their press conferences and various rigged
shareholders' meetings at which Western investors were ruthlessly fleeced,
and he reported the constant contract killings. He forayed out to the dismal
Third World regions where he saw not the slightest sign of the emergent
capitalist vigor on which the WSJ's editors and readers had confidently
counted. No matter. The United States was booming with investment funds to
spare, and the Clinton administration was strongly backing Boris Yeltsin and
the privatization program. And as one of the American financiers of Boris
Jordan's Renaissance Fund assured him, "The IMF will never let Russia fail.
Russia is too nuclear for that to happen."

Brzezinski provides both an entertaining and a sobering account of a
financial bubble that came with real bullets but that in other ways
paralleled the American dotcom bubble. Each lost investors a lot of money,
and brought about dramatic and possibly useful changes in the real economy of
the country in which it occurred. Each was hailed in the WSJ's editorial
pages as heralding a new economy.

At least Brzezinski can console himself with the thought that he issued the
proper warnings. One of his memorable dispatches from the front lines of Wild
East capitalism, retold in his book, describes a Russian version of a Boy
Scout camp at which the youngsters are taught free market capitalism under
the rubric "Just like in New York; if you didn't work, you didn't eat." By
the second day counterfeit money floods the camp. By day three, rich bankers
have emerged who shun paper money, take only real chocolate, hire guards, and
are demanding rent for dorm space. On day four, the adult chief scout tries
to fire the corrupted "police," who stage a coup d'etat and try to hold her
for ransom. The experiment ends. And in words WSJ readers and editors might
ponder, the chief scout concludes, "If this is how people act in capitalism,
then I fear for the future of Russia."

*******

#4
The Russia Journal
July 6-12, 2001
Lucrative sequel for Russia’s cinema
Movie theaters make a comeback after their Soviet heyday
By MICHAEL LOCKSHIN

The Soviet Union's extensive movie-theater system, which nearly collapsed
following the country's rapid economic transformation, is flickering back
to life. That is, if dozens of new movie theaters and anecdotal evidence
about growing box-office receipts are any indication.

Buckets of popcorn, Dolby Digital Surround and flexible and cozy seats are
now commonplace for today's Moscow moviegoers — a contrast to just five
years ago. Optimism is flourishing in the industry, especially in the
capital, the focus of worldwide attention during the 23rd Moscow
International Film Festival, which ended on Saturday.

"The prognosis for the next five years in Moscow is good," said Lydia
Uryupkova, head of the cinema department at Moscow's Cultural Committee.
"Moscow has around 95 movie theaters all told, two dozen of which have
already been upgraded to modern standards. This compares with less than 10
renovated movie theaters in 1999."

Moreover, Anton Mazurov, an industry analyst with Cosmopol Film
Distribution, added: "Even though new movie theaters are popping up all
over, the market is nowhere near saturation point. Box-office figures are
rising with each new theater."

Statistics on the sector are not easy to come by in Russia, and most
industry people and officials are unable to give concrete numbers.
Uryupkova, for instance, refused to release any statistics for Moscow. "We
have that kind of data, but I have no interest in sharing it with the
press," she said, adding that "cinemas are government business."

Another problem with gathering figures is that many cinemas still operate
in a state of quasi-legality, according to film-industry analyst Sergei
Kudryavzev. "Russia doesn’t have an electronic ticket-selling system that
would allow for general statistics," he said. "Currently, each movie
theater considers its box office receipts confidential information, and
this policy allows theaters to artificially lower ticket sales, so as to
pay less taxes."

The most specific information anyone could give was that Russia’s all-time
weekend gross around a year ago was $350,000 with the debut of "End of
Days," while this year’s "Mummy Returns" grossed around $550,000 in its
first weekend, according to Mazurov.

Another fact, according to the online Encyclopedia of Film at www.km.ru,
was that James Cameron's "Titanic," was Russia’s box-office leader, taking
in around $5.5 million from some 250,000 customers in Moscow and St.
Petersburg.

The sector is ready to expand, Mazurov said. "The potential is definitely
there." For Russians, growth in the industry marks something of a
re-emergence. In its heyday, the Soviet Union could claim one of the
largest movie-going publics in the world.

A Soviet-era joke that satirized laziness alleged that movie theaters were
the second most important item in the state budget after vodka. This joke
might have been closer to reality than many thought, as movie revenues at
that time accounted for a good part of the gross national product,
according to experts.

Statistics from that period show Russian cinemas contending with those in
India, home to one of the largest movie industries. In the 1960s, when
movie-going was at its most popular, the average Soviet citizen went more
than 20 times a year, suggesting annual ticket sales of nearly 4.5 billion.

Even when movie popularity declined by the end of the 1980s, with Soviet
citizens going to the movies only 12-13 times a year, figures show the
number of people flocking to the big screen as still one of the largest
worldwide. In 1987, national ticket sales were roughly 3.8 billion. In
comparison, ticket sales in the United States in 1998 were roughly 1.48
billion.

In the years of economic turmoil following the collapse of communism, the
old-style movie theaters, most of which were built in the 1960s, either
became vacant or were utilized as stores or office buildings, experts say.
In Moscow, many theaters were transformed into the first nightclubs and
discos, and by 1991-92, no less than a third of all the city’s movie venues
had closed down, especially in the outer residential neighborhoods.

From 1985-95, the number of movie projectors throughout Russia’s big cities
fell from 85,000 to 34,000, according to the State Statistics Committee.
Meanwhile, those movie theaters that continued to function showed mostly
reruns a couple of times a week. By 1993, the number of tickets sold across
Russia had sunk to 600 million, reflecting a deep crisis in the business.

Industry insiders say the resurgence of movie theaters throughout Russia
began in Moscow, with the opening of Kodak Kinomir in 1996 in the former
Izvestia conference building. Although this was not the first Western-style
theater to hit the city, it was the first modern venue geared toward
Russians.

With its bright lights, neon billboards and buckets of popcorn – then a
novelty in post-Soviet Russia – along with Dolby Digital Surround, experts
say Kodak Kinomir set out to woo the Russian middle class with the latest
Hollywood blockbusters in a flashy setting.

However, the first Western-style movie theater in Moscow was the American
House of Cinema, now America Cinema, run out of the Radisson Slavyanskaya
hotel, according to its marketing director, Dmitry Denisenkov.

America Cinema, which screens movies exclusively in English, opened in
1993. "At first, our audience consisted of nearly 80 percent foreigners,"
he said. "After the August 1998 crisis, our policy changed. So now, our
audience is about 50/50 Russians and foreigners." He added that today,
America Cinema fills generally 30-35 percent capacity, enough for a
profitable turnover.

According to analysts, these first venues demonstrated the growing demand
for upscale facilities, and over the next few years, nearly all the old
theaters in central Moscow underwent renovations. Soon after, the market
began to consolidate as franchises lead by Imperia Kino, Karo and Vladimir
Gusinsky’s MOST Group broadened their theater holdings and began to attract
investors.

These larger franchises, experts say, in turn have paved the way for growth
in the size of venues. Karo, which owns the Pushkinsky, Pobeda and Udarnik
theaters, unveiled the first Russian multiplex a year ago – a theater with
four screens attached to a Ramstore supermarket on Sheremetyevskaya Ulitsa.

"A multiplex [like the one at Ramstore-2] can take four to five years
before turning a profit," said Irina Prokovieva, Karo’s marketing manager.
But that hasn’t stopped the company from building more, she added; Karo
opened its second multiplex this April in the new Ramstore at
Orehovo-Zuevo. "Right now, we have reached European levels of attendance,"
she said. "Our showings are 40 percent filled for good movies and 25
percent for bad ones."

Karo says it has been vigorously pursuing a buildup of its network in
Russia’s regions as well. Its most recent addition, the Electron movie
theater in Zelenograd, can seat up to 600 people. The company also owns a
two-screen cinema in Nizhny Novgorod and plans for another one in St.
Petersburg are in the works.

But not all the big players have been following this strategy. In contrast
to Karo, experts note, Imperia Kino, owner of eight Moscow movie theaters –
including Gorizont, Strela and Praga – has been keeping away from the
multiplex market and concentrating on renovating older cinemas in the
city’s outer residential neighborhoods.

Imperia Kino recently revamped the Vityaz, Mechta and Tbilisi theaters,
located near the Belyaevo, Kashirskaya and Profsoyuznaya metro stations,
respectively. Experts say this strategy’s strongpoint is that it
capitalizes on existing infrastructure, keeps costs down and consequently
allows for lower ticket pricing. Moreover, in many cases the targeted
theaters for revamps are in areas where the competition is slack.

Small, independently run operators are using a similar approach. Pyramida,
a video rental company, recently renovated the Varshava theater in
northwest Moscow, and began selling tickets for films from 40-250 rubles.
"The district still has little competition [in the cinema market], in
contrast to the city’s southwest district," said Anna Yegorova, Varshava’s
marketing director. "Thirty-thousand customers came to our theater in the
first month, and the number is growing."

Varshava’s main draw is its modern facilities, Yegorova added. But
according to Urupkova of the Cultural Committee, theaters that boast
luxurious viewing are often exaggerating. Referring to another
independently run theater, Urupkova said: "The Vityaz cinema installed a
new Dolby Digital Surround system and new seats, but the rest of the
building is a mess."

However, even if small theaters find that revamping old movie houses is a
successful strategy, that won’t necessarily help them ward off a buyout,
experts say.

Cinema Museum, for instance, is a state-owned theater specializing in
classic and independent films, where the four aging viewing halls (only one
is equipped with Dolby stereo) belie an average capacity rate of more than
70 percent, according to its operators.

The theater’s big audience and cut-rate ticket price of 70 rubles may mean
it is able to turn a profit, but it has brought it to the attention of
bigger players, particularly Kinocenter, located around the corner.
"Kinocenter wants to buy us out, because we have such low prices and it
seems that they have the money and contacts to do this," a Cinema Museum
official said.

But, as in other countries, Hollywood blockbusters are still the biggest
draw. According to Film magazine, in 1998 the top 30 blockbusters showed in
theaters across Russia grossed $16 million, with 50 percent of the revenues
going to the movie theaters. And operators are hoping those revenues will
keep coming.

*******

#5
Russian Troops Accused of Abuses
July 8, 2001
By MUSA SADULAYEV

ALLEROI, Russia (AP) - As villagers claimed more abuses at the hands of
Russian authorities, a top Russian minister pledged Sunday that federal
troops would be held responsible if they commit crimes in the Chechnya war.

``If servicemen violate the law, they will be punished,'' Alexander Blokhin,
minister for nationalities and migration policy, was quoted by the ITAR-Tass
news agency as saying at an assembly of Russian minority groups.

He said several criminal probes had been launched against servicemen, without
giving figures.

Human rights groups say abuses are widespread and accuse authorities of
reluctance to prosecute servicemen.

Russian officials deny rampant violations but say investigations have begun
into alleged military abuses. Only one has come to trial, that of a tank
commander accused of raping and strangling an 18-year-old Chechen woman.

Two brothers from the town of Alleroi, 40 miles east of the capital Grozny,
returned home Sunday after being detained by Russian troops, and they claimed
they had been badly beaten.

The men said they had been harvesting hay when they heard an explosion
Thursday. As they headed home later, a group of soldiers seized them.

``They demanded that we confess that we were responsible for the land mine,''
said 42-year-old Magomed Dzhamalkhadzhiyev. ``We have always been farmers,
not rebels. We showed them the hay but they ignored it.''

He said he and his brother were detained but were released after relatives
intervened. His face was covered in bruises he said he received from beatings
by soldiers, and he said his ribs were broken.

Zelimkhan Muskhanov, a 21-year-old villager from Voikovo, south of Grozny,
said he was seized from his house Friday at dawn by soldiers sweeping his
town for rebels. He claimed he was repeatedly beaten during his detention at
the Russian military headquarters in Khankala.

``If they use such methods they should not say that they are fighting the
rebels. In reality they are fighting the Chechen people,'' he said.

The Russian military headquarters could not be reached for comment on the
attacks Sunday night.

The sweeps and detentions are a response to the daily raids and mine blasts
by small bands of rebels that continue to kill Russian soldiers around the
republic daily, despite Moscow's claims to control most of Chechnya.

Russian troops are trying to restore Moscow's control over the breakaway
region, which achieved de facto independence in a 1994-96 war. Federal forces
went back into Chechnya in September 1999 after rebels based there attacked a
neighboring region, and after apartment bombings blamed on Chechen terrorists
killed some 300 people.

*******

#6
Chicago Tribune
July 8, 2001
`What I saw . . . is beyond words'
An author discusses the war in Chechnya
Elizabeth Taylor
Tribune literary editor

As she sat neatly composed for tea in a Chicago hotel recently, it was hard
to believe that Anne Nivat was the same person who had dressed like a
Chechen peasant and sneaked in to cover the war in Chechnya as a newspaper
reporter. A French native raised in Switzerland, Nivat is based in Moscow,
but she was in Chicago to talk about her book, "Chienne de Guerre: A Woman
Reporter Behind the Lines of the War in Chechnya" (Public Affairs, $25).
Nivat, accompanied by a young guide, traveled illegally throughout the war
zone, interviewing everyone from rebel leaders and government officials to
widows and children. She talked about her experiences with Tribune literary
editor Elizabeth Taylor:

Q: When did you leave Chechnya and begin working on the book?

A: I started working on the book right after I was deported from Chechnya
by the Russians [in February 2000]. I was deported to Moscow, where I live.

I had no idea I would be writing a book. A friend of mine told me, "Well,
Anne, of course, you're writing a book."

Q: How did the war affect your life?

A: This war is disturbing, and what's happening in Chechnya is powerful in
my real life. But it became my life for the time I was there. And it
changed my life also. When you are caught in the war like that, you forget
about being a journalist. You are just another individual with other
individuals. Who cares who you are? Who cares if you are French or Canadian
or American or a journalist? You're just someone with them and sharing
their daily life. But of course my only reason to be there was the fact
that I'm a journalist.People ask me, "Why? What made you continue doing
it?" The only thing that made me continue my work was that I felt useful,
even though I didn't really know the impact of the reporting. When I was
calling friends with my [satellite] phone and dictating my articles, I was
not--you know after dictating the article--I was not asking them, "Well, so
how are we covering it? Are we doing well or what? Is it really in the
news?" I had no time to do that. I was just dictating and then hanging up.
And that's it.

Q: You traveled as an ordinary woman, not as a journalist, right?

A: Absolutely. I think the success--if you can call it success--of this
coverage of the war is because I was the most discreet I could be. If I had
not been discreet, if I would have not been dressed as another Chechen
woman, I would have never been able to do what I did.

There are many [reasons] for [my success]. The first was that I speak
Russian. Secondly, that I know the region. Also, the fact that I'm a woman.
Being a woman helped me to be unnoticed.

Q: So this is a case where being an invisible woman was a benefit?

A: Exactly. Usually it would irritate me that women don't count, women are
not that important. Of course, it's a Muslim country, and women do their
part. It's a very divided society between men and women. But it played in
my favor.

Q: Can you talk about your traveling companion, Islam?

A: This guy is someone, I stress, I never paid. So what he was bringing was
not a relationship as is usual between a journalist and a local fixer or
something. This guy just made this decision--which is the amazing, amazing
decision, but again it played in my favor--to help me. He is a 26-year-old
Chechen guy who was a fighter during [an early stage of] the war. He was
fighting against the Russians. He killed some Russians. And I ended up
asking him: "Well, why aren't you fighting today? Why are you with me, not
fighting?" Well, he said: "I'm fighting. It's just another way of fighting.
Helping you, to me, means also fighting them."

Now I have people asking me, "Weren't you scared about being kidnapped?"
No, I wasn't, because of him. I would have been alone without him. I would
have been scared of being alone without him. With him, no way, I could not
be kidnapped. Because he's a Chechen, he was with me, and he knows the
customs there and everything. And there is a moment, if you remember in the
book, where we met with some people who wanted to sort of kidnap me. They
ask him in sort of an odd way. They can never pronounce the word kidnap,
but they said, "Well, can we keep her?" And he had a very good answer: He
said, "Well, you better not keep her because she's unable to cook."

Well, I was not present when he was saying that to the Chechens. I was just
interviewing some other young rebels when he was having this conversation.
He just told me afterwards.

Q: You said that when you're some distance from the West, you feel
strangely safe and in touch with yourself. How is that?

A: Isn't that strange? That's what makes my own lines ambivalent,
ambiguous, but that's my life. That's what makes me a journalist, I think.
Because after all, you know, I am French, so I'm from the West, but I don't
live in France. I live in Russia, which is a wild place. I don't only live
in Russia like an expert. I really feel completely, deeply involved in
everything that happens in Russia.

I went to cover this war because I love Russia and not because I'm against
Russia. I still love Russia even after what I saw in Chechnya. What I saw
in Chechnya is awful. It is beyond words. I cannot even tell you the
atrocities of what I saw in Chechnya done by Russian soldiers, and also by
the Chechens, on both sides, you know. There are always both sides in a
war, important thing.

Q: How did you, raised in Geneva, become so interested in Russia?

A: I grew up near Geneva, but on the French side of the border. Both of my
parents are professors of Russian language and Russian literature, so they
would speak Russian to each other when I was a child when they didn't want
me and my brother to understand what they were saying. And there were
always Russian people visiting and dissidents coming, and they would speak
Russian with my parents. And they would have dinners. So I was just
fascinated by them.

Q: How many languages do you speak?

A: I speak French, Russian, English and German. I find it fascinating to be
able to talk to someone in his own language directly without the
interpreter, especially in Russia, because people don't tell me the same
things if I am with the translator. You can imagine how the Chechens,
seeing a young woman like me alone in Chechnya, doing what I was doing,
were amazed.

Q: Did you look to other books by war correspondents to help you structure
your book?

A: I must say there is an Italian journalist, Curzio Malaparte. He was a
war correspondent during World War II on the Italian side. After that, he
bought a house in Capria, on the island of Capri, in Italy, which is where
I wrote this book, completely by coincidence. And his reporting of World
War II is so vivid, so scenic.

He did exactly what I did, because he filed for his paper and then he wrote
books. But at that time, being a war correspondent was not what it is
today. He had no other choice than being with the Italian army. He was
accredited with the Italian army, covering a war in which his country was
taking part. I was covering this war in which my country was not playing a
role at all.

I cannot hide the fact that many times I was, of course, scared to death
and I would have preferred not to be there. But I was just doing my job. I
could not have not done it. I could not have remained sitting in Moscow and
waiting for the news, because basically, unfortunately, that's what the
other journalists were doing. But I don't blame them. It was a difficult
war to cover, very difficult. And very dangerous, much more dangerous than
any other kind of war. It's a war without a front line. You can be bombed
at any time. There were no rules at all.

Q: Will you return?

A: I was in Chechnya three weeks ago. I cannot not continue. After they
deported me to Moscow, I went back three times.

The situation's not improving at all. So the issue is not me covering or
not covering the war. The issue is when will this war stop?

*******

#7
HANDELSBLATT (Germany)
July 8, 2001
Gazprom Opening Up to Foreign Investors

HB MOSCOW. In an interview with Handelsblatt, the new chairman of Russian
energy giant OAO Gazprom outlined plans to make his company more open to
foreign investors and cooperation partners.

Alexei Miller told Handelsblatt that the company plans to raise the
proportion of share capital available to foreign investors to 20%, from the
current 11%.

Miller said Gazprom needs funds for its new investment program. "We'll have
huge investment needs in the coming years. We have to improve our capital
base," he said.

He stressed that the Russian government, which currently holds a 38.4%
stake in Gazprom, would continue to exert considerable influence over the
company.

After all, he pointed out, Gazprom is Russia's most important company.
Gazprom is the world's largest gas producer measured in terms of production
and export volume, producing 20% of the world's gas production and a third
of global gas exports. It generates annual sales revenue of $17 billion,
and accounts for 8% of Russian GDP and 25% of the budget.

With a 5% stake, Germany's Ruhrgas is the leading foreign shareholder in
Gazprom. Ruhrgas chief executive Burckhardt Bergmann said his company
intends to retain this position, and will boost its stake to 8% once more
capital has been opened up.

Gazprom is also active on the German market via Wingas GmbH, its natural
gas joint venture with Wintershall AG, a unit of chemicals giant BASF AG.
There have been reports that it's planned to extend the venture to take in
multi-utility giant RWE AG. When asked about these reports, Miller said:
"We do not comment on market rumors."

The 39-year-old Mr. Miller was appointed to the company's top post at the
end of May by Russian president Vladimir Putin to replace Rem Vyakhirev,
who was ousted amid a series of corruption accusations.

In an attempt to win back the "trust of investors and capital markets,"Mr.
Miller said he promises "greater transparency and efficiency."

At the Gazprom annual general meeting on June 29, the company's management
board caused a stir by refusing to answer unscheduled questions from
minority investors. Mr. Miller said he is now planning a meeting to answer
the questions.

He also said his trust-building measures will include corporate-governance
guidelines, to be completed by the end of this year.

Gazprom, which has 309,000 employees, swung to a net profit of 286.1
billion rubles (11.55 billion euros) last year on sales of 539 billion
rubles as gas prices caught up to the oil price rally that began in 1999.

Mr. Miller said the company's goal now is to "make Gazprom more attractive
for the capital markets and bring it closer to a fair market value,"which
he puts at over $100 billion. The company's current market capitalization
is just $15 billion.

******

#8
Wall Street Journal
July 6, 2001
Armenia, After a Decade of Statehood, Suffers Rapid Loss of Human Capital
By HUGH POPE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

YEREVAN, Armenia -- Armenians suffered massacres, earthquakes, wars and
invasions before their status as a people without a state ended in 1991. But
at the end of its first decade of independent nationhood, Armenia is fast
becoming a state without people.

"They're spread all over the world. Mine are in America," says Heran
Keshishian, a 65-year-old retired plumber, as he limps up the stairs of his
apartment building in the city of Charentsevan counting off locked-up and
abandoned homes.

Eight of the building's 50 apartments are empty. Nearly all the remaining
families have seen members leave the country. Mr. Keshishian's brother,
sister, daughter and daughter-in law have departed. Patriotism keeps him in
Armenia, he boasts. His wife explains they came back after eight months in
the U.S. in 1999, lacking the visas or resources to stay.

Armenia is suffering through one of the most rapid population declines on
Earth, the result of a funk of uncertainty, depression and poverty that has
settled over the population.

Several former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia also have
seen troubling population declines, one factor frustrating U.S. efforts to
create a corridor of vibrant nations south of Russia. Armenia's is the worst.

At least 800,000 Armenians have left in the past decade, almost a quarter of
the country's population of 3.4 million, figures Gagik Yeganyan, head of a
new department of migration, established a year ago to help deal with the
problem. One Western diplomat estimates the real figure is 1.5 million,
meaning almost half the nation's population would have left. Nobody will know
for sure until a long-delayed census is conducted with U.S. assistance in
October.

In the half-empty offices and echoing corridors of a government building in
the capital, Stepan Mnatsakanyan piles the table with statistical leaflets
containing a litany of his country's woes: Industrial production has sunk to
levels last seen in the 1970s. Inhabited residential space is back to where
it was in the 1940s. The number of babies born in 1999 fell to 36,000, less
than half the 80,000 born in 1990.

The impoverished government has cut early classes from schools. Subway trains
in Yerevan run with two cars now, instead of three. Women are visibly in the
majority as working-age men leave to seek work elsewhere. Only one worker is
left now to support each pensioner, a far more onerous burden than the 3-to-1
ratio in most Western societies.

Armenia's situation isn't unremittingly bleak. Signs of growth are creeping
back into the economy, thanks to migrant-worker remittances and some
investment by the now four million-strong Armenian diaspora. Armenian
politics appear calmer after a decade of desperate volatility.

But Armenia's history makes its plight all the more poignant. An ancient
people who this year celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of becoming the first
country to adopt Christianity as a state religion, Armenians have been
scattered repeatedly over that time by armies sweeping through the crossroads
of the Caucasus and the Middle East. By the 19th century, they were a
majority barely anywhere.

The worst was yet to come. Although historical accounts differ, during the
first World War somewhere between 300,000 and 1.5 million Armenians died from
disease and outright massacres as Ottoman Turks forcibly deported or killed
them. Armenians call it the modern world's first genocide. An earthquake
killed 25,000 people in 1988. Nearly as many died in the Nagorno-Karabagh
fighting between 1988 and 1994. Then came the economic collapse within
Armenia.

"It's a tragedy, the loss of our most important asset, our human capital. The
Armenians and the government have nobody to blame but themselves," says Raffi
Hovanissian, chief of an Armenian think tank.

A trickle of arrivals like Mr. Hovanissian -- including about 200 Americans,
according to the U.S. Embassy -- represent one of Armenia's best chances to
eventually reverse the exodus.

Zabel Artinian still remembers how her grandmother urged her as a child in
Boston to someday rebuild the family's crushed homeland. But when the
25-year-old artist took up that challenge, she found that Armenians thought
she was crazy. "People here don't think about what they can do for
themselves. They just want to leave," says Ms. Artinian, who cashed in her
savings as an animator and painter in New York two years ago.

She helped restore thousand-year-old stone churches in remote mountain
valleys. She fell in love with fellow volunteer Raffi Kojian, 29, a business
major who built a Web site to communicate their passion for the country. Both
now work for another Armenian-American in one of the new companies that are
bringing a measure of economic hope -- a few glossy shops, some restaurants
and disposable income -- to the center of the capital.

Some Armenians hold out hope. Karekin II, head of the Armenian Orthodox
church, radiates optimism. He stands in a cathedral near Yerevan surrounded
by golden treasures and buildings restored with money collected from the
Armenian diaspora.

"It is a pain for us that Armenians are leaving the country. We preach that
they should stay, but we can't order them not to go," Karekin II says. "We
have to rebuild the country so they can live and satisfy their needs."

Such words haven't shortened visa queues at the few embassies left in
Yerevan. So few Armenians return from "tourist" trips that the refusal rate
for applicants has reached 80% at some missions. "I tried to go to the U.S.
But I couldn't get a visa. I'd go anywhere," says Adelina Gevorkian, 38,
weeping softly at her open-air clothing store in a Yerevan market. "My son
left university early and is working in Russia. I'm only staying because my
other son has to do his military service. What's there to stay for?"

*****

#9
Financial Times (UK)
July 6, 2001
Valleys of death
Robin Buss reads a story of the Eastern Front that does not go
as far as it might

There has been a revival of interest recently in the history of the eastern
front during the second world war, not only because the fall of Communism
gave access to archive materials that had not previously been available, but
more because the end of the cold war largely removed present politics from
the history of the Allied struggle against fascism. It is now possible to
look more dispassionately at the Soviet Union's contribution to the German
defeat. Albert Axell's book, though lightweight by comparison with Richard
Overy's Russia's War or Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, is part of a trend; it is
explicitly presented as "a modest attempt to restore a few missing pages to
the history books".

Russia's Heroes is based partly on Axell's meetings and interviews with
veterans, including some 30 generals, dating back to his first visit to
Moscow as an American journalist in the mid-1960s; some of this long
acquaintance with the country has already been drawn on for his earlier books
on Soviet Dissent and Stalin's War. Russia's Heroes, as its title suggests,
is an upbeat account of the Great Patriotic War, from the defence of the
fortress at Brest to the fall of Berlin, in more or less self-contained
chapters. The approach is anecdotal, whether Axell is dealing with the great
battles or with individual acts of heroism, such as the capture and execution
of the partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, and the survival of the pilot Alexei
Maresyev, the Russian Douglas Bader. On Stalingrad, he adopts the approach of
the film Enemy at the Gates, telling the story of the battle mainly through
the exploits of Russian snipers such as Vasily Zaitsev, who engaged in duels
with their German counterparts. The book tells us quite a lot about Zaitsev's
theory of the sniper's craft, while Operation Uranus, the great pin cer
movement that surrounded the German forces in November 1942, is summed up in
a couple of sentences.

Axell is much better at telling off-beat, individual stories than at evoking
the movements of forces or the issues involved in the war. His accounts of
Zoya's torture and death, of the grim lives of Russian submariners in the
Barents Sea and of the indomitable Georgi Gubkin are engrossing and at times
quite moving. One chapter, "Waltzing With the Queen", gives an authentic feel
of the time as it describes how a group of Russian sailors on an Atlantic
convoy docked in Newcastle, where they were greeted with a civic reception.
There was a lot of flag- waving and playing of national anthems. A lady in
grey stepped out of a Rolls Royce and came over to speak to the sailors on
the pier. It was Queen Elizabeth. Then the band struck up and she asked one
of the men, Konstantin Lyubimov, if he would like to dance. As they waltzed
round, his mates shouted at him: "Do you know who you're dancing with? You'll
never get the chance again! Hug her a bit closer!"

Of course, they were not all fit to dance with the Queen Mother. Axell's
brief does not extend to the "Hiwis", Russians who for one reason or another
had chosen to fight for the Germans; they may have numbered as many as 70,000
on the Stalingrad front and Anthony Beevor pays tribute to the heroism that
many of them displayed, albeit on the wrong side. Axell is only interested in
the right kind of heroes. But even the heroism of Soviet soldiers may be more
problematic than it seems. Given that they were caught between an implacable
enemy and the officers of the NKVD, who at Stalingrad alone executed some
13,500 of their own men for "desertion", cowardice was not much of an option.
The intransigence of both sides - and, in particular, of their leaders -
helps to account for the astonishingly high death toll on the eastern front.

When Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941, he was welcomed as a liberator by
some, particularly in the Ukraine and Belorussia. Never content to be seen as
the lesser evil, he ignored the opportunity to ally himself with nationalist,
anti-Communist forces in these countries and set out on a war of rabid, total
destruction. Leningrad, he announced, was to be razed to the ground; as for
Moscow, he had plans to submerge it entirely under a great lake. The
allegedly sub-human population of the country was to be exploited as slave
labour and its natural resources would provide for the needs of the Reich.
Not surprisingly, the Russian response was a hatred that found expression in
Ilya Ehrenburg's appeal to the Soviet soldier: "Kill the German: this is your
mother's prayer, this is the cry of your Russian earth!"

Looking ahead with venom and over his shoulder with fear, the Russian had
every incentive to become a hero (and around a one-in-three chance of
becoming a dead one). But Axell is more interested in a good story than in
motivation or politics: the genre is closer to Young Pioneer history,
somewhat along the lines of Soviet war stories such as Vera Karasyova's
"Malenkiye Leningradtsy" ("Young Leningraders"), a touching account of
children during the siege which, for the sake of its young readers, manages
to avoid mentioning such unpleasant realities as death by starvation,
unburied corpses or cannibalism.

In Russia's Heroes, one often has a suspicion that, while the story may be
accurate as far as it goes, it does not go as far as it might. This is
especially the case with the chapter "A Hundred Jewish Generals", where Axell
admits that the question of Soviet treatment of Jews is a "slippery" one, and
skirts around Stalin's notorious anti-Semitism to conclude that, although
some of those executed during the purges were Jews, "anybody at any time was
liable to be exiled or receive a bullet". There was more to it than that.

Perhaps Axell's attempt to set the record straight is too modest: he could
have put the interesting material here to better use if he had been more
ambitious and more ready to view these individual acts of heroism in a wider
perspective. On the other hand, if it is true that American audiences of
Enemy at the Gates were sometimes unaware that Russia and the US fought as
allies during the war, then the Boys' Own or Young Pioneer approach may be
what is needed. After all, there are times, reading this rather simplistic
account of courage in the face of atrocity, when one just wants to cheer.

RUSSIA'S HEROES 1941-45 by Albert Axell, Constable £18.99/Carroll & Graf $26
264 pages FT Bookshop £16.99

******

#10
Newsweek International
July 16, 2001
Inside Stalin’s Secret Trials
A riveting new account of Soviet anti-Semitism
By Anna Kuchment

Just when glossy blockbusters like “Pearl Harbor” threaten to dull the
horrors of World War II, along comes a haunting new book that reminds us
why Hollywood fiction is no substitute for reality. In “Stalin’s Secret
Pogrom” (527 pages. Yale University Press), editors Joshua Rubenstein and
Vladimir Naumov present the fullest account to date of one of the most
vicious episodes of anti-Semitism in Russian history: the arrest, torture
and secret trial of 15 Jews, many of them prominent writers, scientists and
political figures. In the end, 13 were executed, one was sent into exile
and one died in jail.

This is hardly another dry tome on Soviet anti-Semitism. At the
volume’s core is the grimly fascinating transcript of the secret trials,
brought to life in Rubenstein’s introduction through chilling interviews
with relatives of the accused. The trials, which took place between 1948
and 1952, were precipitated by Stalin’s growing paranoia about Soviet Jews.
All the victims were members of the so-called Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee, set up with Stalin’s approval during World War II to rally
financial support, mainly from wealthy Americans, for the Soviet war
effort. The group successfully accomplished its mission, raising millions
of dollars and giving Americans a positive view of the Soviet Union.

But the changing political landscape of the late 1940s made Stalin
turn against the committee his own regime had created. With the birth of
the state of Israel and the start of the cold war, he felt he could no
longer rely on Jews as loyal citizens. So the committee’s accomplishments
came to be regarded as a crime. A state-sanctioned trip by committee
members to the United States in 1943 was presented during the trial as
espionage; sending propaganda materials to the West was deemed divulging
classified information and a request to resettle displaced Holocaust
survivors in the Crimea was labeled a sinister plot to declare the region
independent from the Soviet Union.

Among the most gripping stories is that of Vladimir Shamberg, grandson
of the trial’s lead defendant, Solomon Lozovsky. In the 1940s Shamberg was
married to the daughter of top Stalin aide Georgy Malenkov, who was put in
charge of the trial. Only days before Lozovsky’s arrest, Malenkov
orchestrated his daughter’s hasty divorce from Shamberg, a man he had been
close to for years, because he did not want “a relative of the enemy of the
people” in his house. Today Shamberg, who never resumed contact with his
ex-wife or with Malenkov, says: “As a human being I cannot approve it, but
as a political scientist I understand what he had to do.”

The action against the Jews posed a startling contrast to the show
trials of the 1930s. The earlier proceedings, which lasted several months,
were marked by painful self-abasement on the part of the defendants—all of
whom gave up their dignity in an effort save their own lives and the lives
of their relatives. But the later trials dragged on for nearly four years,
in part because of the resistance of the victims. Though most had broken
down and signed confessions under brutal interrogation—one woman had stated
that “under Lozovsky, the [Soviet information bureau] had been turned into
a synagogue”—many retracted their statements during the trial.

Lozovsky emerges as the hero. During the trial, held before a tribunal
with no defense lawyers or prosecutors, he tries to reason with the judges.
“You took note of the fact that all of the accused testify using one and
the same phrasing,” he argues. “So this means that someone conspired to
come up with this language. Who—those under arrest? I don’t think so. That
means that it was the investigators who conspired.” At another point he
compares the chief judge, Gen. Aleksandr Cheptsov, to a Spanish inquisitor.

In the trial’s final dramatic twist, Cheptsov makes an appeal on the
defendants’ behalf. Rubenstein writes there is evidence that the judge, far
from being offended by Lozovsky’s comments, was moved by his eloquence. He
takes the unprecedented step of asking party leaders to reopen the
investigation. Had the request been granted, it could have saved the lives
of the defendants. Ironically, it fell to Malenkov, Lozovsky’s onetime
relative, to deliver the regime’s final orders. “Do you want us to kneel
before these criminals?” Malenkov said. “Carry out the Politburo’s
resolution.” Sadly, the verdict had been reached months before the judges
ever entered the court.

*******

Johnson's Russia List Archive (under construction):  http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson

CDI Russia Weekly:  http://www.cdi.org/russia

CDI Headlines:  http://www.cdi.org/

Defense Monitor:  http://www.cdi.org/dm/2001

Weekly Defense Monitor:  http://www.cdi.org/weekly/