August 17, 2001

This Date's Issues:   5395 • 5396

Johnson's Russia List
#5396
17 August 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
DJ: With the new college semester coming up soon I would encourage
teachers to consider using JRL--or the CDI Russia Weekly--in their
courses if appropriate. I am happy to add any students who may wish
to subscribe.

1. AFP: Disillusioned democrats weigh pains, gains of putsch fallout.
2. Los Angeles Times: E. Wayne Merry, Maybe There Just Weren't Enough Good Russians.
3. The Spectator (UK): Vodka and sympathy. Bruce Anderson talks to a physicist and part-time taxi-driver whose story mirrors the triumph and tragedy of post-communist Russia.
4. AFP: Life goes on for unrepenting 1991 coup leaders.
5. Albert Weeks: Yeltsin's contributions.
6. Boston Globe: David Filipov, Russia's Echo radio struggles to avoid a Kremlin muzzle.
7. Obshchaya Gazeta: Dmitry Furman, THE WILD FRUITS OF AUGUST. Analysis of the development of Russia over the last decade.
8. Washington Post: Peter Baker, Coup That Wasn't Stirs Russians' Mixed Emotions. Decade Later, Soviet Times Cast Shadow.
9. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Mikhail Delyagin, BIG BUSINESS IS LEADING RUSSIA INTO ANOTHER CRISIS. Russia is more than a group of oligarchs and their monopolies.
10. UPI: Putin's vacation shrouded in secrecy.]

******

#1
Disillusioned democrats weigh pains, gains of putsch fallout

MOSCOW, Aug 17 (AFP) -
Far from celebrating the fall of the Soviet Union following a hardline coup
bid launched 10 years ago Sunday, Russia's first-wave democrats who fought
for perestroika and manned the barricades have been mourning a decade of lost
opportunities.

Many are angry at what they see as the betrayal of the democratic ideals they
believe Boris Yeltsin was defending when he defied the coup plotters in those
heady August days and by the widening gulf between rich and poor that
resulted from his economic policies.

Alexander Lavot, a veteran grass-roots Soviet dissident and later a militant
opponent of the wars in Chechnya, was briskly dismissive of the claim that
the Yeltsin era marked a breakthrough for democracy.

"The new rights obtained after the Soviet Union collapsed were not properly
used for progress," he said.

The defeat of the putsch "enabled democratic forces to come together and
consolidate. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the regime established by Boris
Yeltsin cannot be considered as democratic."

Yury Afanasyev, the historian and former president of the human rights group
Memorial, was even more downbeat.

The only people who had benefited from the turmoil of the past decade, he
told a press conference this week, were the middle-ranking members of the
nomenklatura, or state bureaucracy, who had held sway during the Soviet era.

The same bureaucrats who backed Yeltsin to allow them to satisfy their
appetite for wealth through private enterprise in 1991 were now backing his
successor Vladimir Putin, he said.

Even former close colleagues of the Russian president who fought alongside
him at Moscow's White House to defend the Russian parliament from the
encircling tanks have long since turned against him.

"There is only one definition for the past 10 years: it is a gradual
transition from political menopause (from the last years of the Soviet Union)
to political egoism and cynicism," Alexander Rutskoi, Yeltsin's
vice-president, told the same press conference.

Rutskoi was in the White House again two years later when, in an armed
standoff between the presidency and the parliament, Yeltsin ordered tanks to
fire on the building he had previously defended.

He said his disaffection had grown only when, during a four-year term as
governor of the Kursk region from 1996 to 2000, he had witnessed the
widespread poverty and entrenched economic problems facing the regions.

Popular reaction to the anniversary of the 1991 putsch attempt has been muted
as Russians survey the events of the intervening decade, in which the turmoil
of wars, devaluations and financial crashes appears to many to outweigh the
less tangible benefits provided by periodic elections and the right to buy
goods priced beyond their reach.

The Russian economy has shrunk by around a half since Yeltsin gave the
go-ahead for Western-approved shock therapy measures, and a population
accustomed to full employment, low housing costs and easy access to health
and social provision found itself exposed to the tooth-and-claw rigours of
the free market.

As a result, substantial majorities of Russians regularly tell opinion
pollsters that they regret the passing of the Soviet Union.

Reasoned critics of the Yeltsin era point to time wasted when the pressing
need was for Russia to resolve the land ownership issue, create a civil
society and secure the transition to democracy.

The one gain for which the Yeltsin years can be credited, in the view of
Sergei Avdeyenko, a political analyst who supported the perestroika reforms,
is that the passing of time "has made it impossible for anyone to take us
back to communism."

But the dissident movement is "well and truly dead," he noted.

And the dreams inspired by the defeat of the August coup have long been
replaced by a dour "realism", exemplified by former White House defender
Andrei Rakhmelovich, now a lawyer.

"It certainly hasn't turned out how we would have liked, and the civil
society we hoped we were building is still a long way off. ... The
romanticism is over, and the danger now, in reaction, is that our enforced
realism shades into cynicism," Rakhmelovich said.

******

#2
Los Angeles Times
August 17, 2001
Maybe There Just Weren't Enough Good Russians
By E. WAYNE MERRY (wmerry@earthlink.net)
E. Wayne Merry, a senior associate at the American Foreign
Policy Council in Washington, was chief domestic political analyst at the
U.S. Embassy in Moscow 1991-94

Ten years ago this Sunday the Soviet Communist leadership stopped shooting
itself in the foot and aimed for the heart. To the world's amazement, "people
power" faced down state terror in the most unlikely of places, Moscow.

The United States was caught completely off guard. Before leaving for duty in
Moscow, I had been told in Washington to expect a fairly boring tour. All the
really important changes had already occurred: Mikhail Gorbachev had pushed
the system as far as it could go; there would be years of consolidation and
drift.

It wasn't boring early on Aug. 19, 1991, when a Moscow policeman stopped me
near the embassy gate to relay what he had just heard on the radio: Gorbachev
overthrown by an "extraordinary committee" of the Soviet leader's closest
associates. The policeman added, "I am afraid. Very." That fear permeated the
forces deployed by the coup plotters during the next three days--police, KGB
and military--reflecting the timidity and guilt at the apex of this desperate
effort to preserve the crumbling edifice of Soviet power. Within hours, we
told Washington that the navy and air force were standing aside, while the
ground units sent into Moscow were confused and deeply troubled that they
might be ordered to fire on their countrymen. We assessed the coup as very
uncertain.

Then-President Bush used an impromptu press conference in Maine to condemn
the putsch, saying, "Coups can fail." Those words sent the right message to
the conspirators and to Gorbachev. Boris Yeltsin and his supporters then knew
the United States was not a party to the coup and not prepared to be. Bush
also put the brakes on some allied governments prepared to welcome a return
of Cold War "stability."

It was just as well that the West sat on its hands, for the conspirators
quickly showed themselves as inept as they were shallow. Unable to
effectively command the forces they had deployed, the drama ended as farce.

The next days were unalloyed triumph for Russians who had fought, not for a
Soviet restoration, but for the resurrection of Russia from a system they
also considered to be an evil empire. As the Soviet statues came down and the
tricolor flags replaced the hammer and sickle, most Russians hoped to live at
last in a "normal" country. Their admiration and friendship for the U.S. were
sky-high.

A decade later, the hopes have turned to ashes. Most of the fault is Russian:
failures of leadership plus a lack of understanding of the rule of law and
basic economics and of the need for compromise. Perhaps, as one leading
reformer told me at the time, there simply were not enough good people for
all the pressing tasks of transformation.

The Russian side was not short of vision but after decades of Soviet
mismanagement, nobody knew what to do.

Sadly, many Western "experts" were quite certain they did know and relished a
vast social laboratory for their theories. Like Soviet central planners
before them, there were no qualms about experimenting on human beings, though
one might have thought U.S. policymakers would have asked whether a country
not yet familiar with double-entry bookkeeping was a good candidate for
post-Keynesian economics.

There was much Western rhetoric about a post-Cold War partnership with
Russia, but the United States just could not resist achieving its maximum
Cold War agenda--and expanding it--while Russia was weak.

In this respect, America proved quite unexceptional as a great power as it
carved out traditional spheres of influence to Russia's west and south and
then professed outrage when Moscow found common purpose with the likes of
China and Iran.

The "Cold Peace" that Yeltsin warned of is now reality, while Russia is led
by a man who believes restoring great power status is more important than
dealing with the health and demographic crises threatening the integrity of
the Russian nation.

Ten years after those optimistic summer days, the irony is bitter. Then,
Russia was largely cut off from the outside world, but Russians sensed
sympathy and solidarity from the West. Now, Russia is more open and engaged
with the world than at any time in its history but feels increasingly
isolated and under siege.

The saddest refrain is always "what might have been."

********

#3
The Spectator (UK)
August 18, 2001
Vodka and sympathy
Bruce Anderson talks to a physicist and part-time taxi-driver whose story
mirrors the triumph and tragedy of post-communist Russia
Moscow

Moscow is full of people who are selling and buying. On convenient pieces
of waste ground, impromptu markets are springing up: the local equivalent
of car boot sales. Pedestrian underpasses beneath main roads are full of
kiosks. This informal sector is helping Russians to realise that their
living standards now depend upon their ability to compete in the labour
market. Such a movement from status to contract is essential if Russia is
to make the transition from a command economy to a free society.

The buying and selling also applies to public transport. In Moscow every
private car can become a part-time taxi. Muscovites and foreigners will
stand on the kerbside, flag a car down and negotiate the fare; foreigners
pay more.

There are casualties. Some Russians who have no nostalgia for communism
still cannot get used to the free market. One afternoon, as I was trying to
flag down a taxi, I met one Russian who was finding it hard to move from
status to contract. Arkady immediately insisted that he would not accept a
fare. He had stopped in the hope that I was British or American because he
wanted to practise his English. It quickly became clear that he was not
just interested in language practice, which he hardly needed. This was a
man who was bursting to talk, and who seemed to find it easier to unburden
himself to a transient stranger.

Arkady had a wry, eager, intellectual face. He had been trained as a
physicist, and had graduated with high honours. The old Soviet system was
good at education, especially in the sciences. When Arkady started work in
the mid-Eighties, he had expected to spend his entire career in a research
establishment. ‘A military one?’ I enquired, and he seemed embarrassed,
which probably answered my question. But he had clearly been much more
interested in pure research than in its practical applications. By
temperament, Arkady was a laboratory worker. He was certainly no politician.

A liberal by inclination, he had disliked the old Soviet system, but he was
not the stuff of which heroic dissidents were made. This was a man who
enjoyed a quiet life: scientific research, his viola, chess, his family. He
had not been a Communist party member, but if the Soviet Union had not
collapsed, he probably would have joined, to help his professional
advancement.

During the Soviet era, that would have been a straightforward matter. As he
was good at his job and got on well with his colleagues, he could have
predicted his promotion path. He would have known roughly when he would
have been entitled to a larger dacha, a bigger car, access to the special
shops which had Western goods. It was a system in which status was far more
important than salary, and in which pay differentials were far less
important than privileges. The General Secretary of the Communist party was
paid only five times as much as a manual labourer; his standard of living
was immeasurably greater. The rouble’s official exchange rate and the
average Russian’s pay-cheque had one thing in common. Neither was a guide
to purchasing power.

We had now arrived at the Pushkin Gallery, my intended destination, but
Arkady had only begun his tale. So I suggested a drink at a nearby pavement
café — another sign of the new Russia. By then Arkady seemed impervious to
newness. He had been comfortable under the old dispensation, because he had
known who he was and where he was. Then, with brutal suddenness, the
previous system had disintegrated, leaving him to be torn by the process of
adjustment. In the early days, he had been a devotee of Mr Gorbachev, and
had been delighted by perestroika and glasnost. ‘Yes,’ he admitted
ruefully. ‘I thought that Russia could become more like the West, that we
would all be able to enjoy political freedom, and that the Soviet
inefficiencies would just disappear. And I thought it would be easy.’

He had quickly discovered that freedom brings confusion in its wake. Even
while Mr Gorbachev was still in power, Russians were made aware of the
rouble’s weakness. Goods began to appear, but dollars were needed to buy
them. This led to chaos in the labour market, as Russians scrambled to find
jobs that paid in dollars. Young Russians with three degrees threw up
university lectureships to work in bars, and promptly earned several times
more than their professors. Some Russian females, as well endowed
academically as in other respects, became whores. Boys would play truant
from school to do odd jobs around the first Moscow branch of McDonald’s. It
was not easy for high-official fathers to convince them of the error of
their ways when they could retort that their takings from McDonald’s were
already higher than dad’s salary.

In the early Yeltsin era there was a move back to stability. The rouble’s
exchange rate began to reflect its real value, and there were attempts to
create realistic rouble salary levels. But the public sector always lagged
behind. Sometimes, indeed, the government ran out of funds, so that
pay-cheques would not arrive. Arkady had gone through several phases of
mounting salary arrears. He also began to realise that the Soviet-style
privileges which his predecessors had enjoyed would no longer exist. He was
going to have to depend on his earnings, in a world where there were too
many research institutes, working for a government which had too little
money.

Some of his colleagues who were quicker on the economic uptake had already
privatised themselves. I enquired whether any of them had gone to the
Middle East. He understood me, and smiled, ‘No, no; we were not involved in
that sort of research.’ But there had been rumours in scientific circles
about lavish offers from dubious regimes.

Arkady began to realise that he, too, would have to move. He had a young
family, an overcrowded flat, an overworked wife, dependent elderly
relatives and an inadequate pay-cheque — plus no prospects. ‘No sort of
life,’ he said emphatically. He was not even able to find the same
consolation in his work; home troubles began to overshadow his lab-life. So
he went to the private sector, became a technical consultant to a
construction firm, and everything seemed set fair. At first, it was a
wrench to leave his laboratory, and he did not find his new work anything
like as stimulating. But his salary had quadrupled, with every hope of more
to come. He had his eye on a large flat in a 19th-century house. Though it
would have needed a lot of refurbishment, he was hoping to exploit his new
contacts in the construction world to have the work done well and cheaply.

Then came catastrophe. In August 1998 the rouble collapsed, and with it the
nascent Russian stock market. Several banks closed their doors, including
the one in which Arkady had deposited his savings. ‘There wasn’t much,’ he
said stoically, ‘but it would have been useful.’

Needless to say, his construction firm also went bust. Arkady had no money,
no job and, apparently, no way back; his country seemed to be falling
apart. Most Russians have a streak of peasant, make-do cunning which
enables them to hunker down and slog through adversity. Not Arkady. In hard
times he was a prisoner of his sensitivity and his high expectations. He
spent some months looking for work and finding only menial odd jobs. This
was not a menial man.

It was a black period. ‘Sometimes, I almost decided that there was no point
in going on, but I thought that it would be even worse for my family if I
wasn’t there.’ He paused, ‘Though there were days when I felt so useless
that I even wondered about that.’ There was a further long pause. ‘But that
wasn’t the worst moment. It came when I had to sell my viola. It was not
especially valuable, but it had been my father’s and my grandfather’s, and
I could make it sing. I’ve got another one now which is supposed to be as
good, but it’ll never be the same. The man who bought mine; God, he got a
bargain, I was so desperate. Anyway, he’s moved to Petersburg, and I’ve
lost touch with him. I’d give him five times what he paid to get my little
violuschka back.’

I thought he was about to start crying, so I tried to cheer him up by
pointing out that he had been able to rejoin the viola-owning classes. He
agreed. The recovery had started within a few months of the crash.
Construction was an early beneficiary, for the mayor of Moscow, Yuri
Luzhkov, had grandiose ambitions to transform the city, and always managed
to find the money to implement them. Some of Arkady’s former colleagues
started their own firm and brought him aboard. His financial worries were
over.

Eighteen months ago, he had moved to a bigger flat. He was earning more
than ever. But I sensed that there had been a huge psychological price.
Russia is the only country outside Africa in which life expectancy is
falling. Much of this decline is due to bad food, chain-smoking and
excessive vodka, but there are other causes. Arkady was a gentle man, who
would have been suited to a predictable life, and who had found it almost
impossible to cope with the anarchic changes which had overtaken Russia.
Whatever confidence he had possessed, he had lost. This was probably a man
who always had a layer of skin too few for his own good. But he would have
been happier in a society based on status, not on contract.

Despite the rewards, he still found it demeaning to sell his services in
the labour market. I tried to rally his spirits. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve been
coming here around once a year over the past decade, and if you’ll forgive
an outsider’s naivety, I think that things are coming right. I’m sure that
the transition would always have been appallingly difficult, but the first
ten years will have been the worst. You’re earning a decent salary, and
you’re helping to build a Russia which your children should be able to
enjoy. Doesn’t that make it all worthwhile?’ Arkady was now slightly drunk;
this was one Russian who seemed unused to vodka. There was the longest
pause yet, before he fixed me with a haunted stare. ‘It’s all right for you
Westerners. You come here, eat caviare, see the good side. And maybe you’re
right; maybe things will improve. But I feel used up. I was born in a bad
world which has gone, but I cannot find pleasure in this new world that’s
replaced it, which you tell me is good. Perhaps it will be okay for my
children. I don’t think it’ll ever be okay for me.’

I then went for a pee, and when I came back Arkady had gone, to my intense
vexation. I did not even know his surname, let alone his telephone number.
I have met a lot of fascinating people in Russia, but he was the most
interesting, and — if this does not sound too cynically anthropological — I
would like to have been able to monitor his progress, or lack of it.

He made me aware of one point. Russia has often eaten its young. Much of
its history is a cry of anguish. From serfdom to Stalinism, we know about
the casualties of previous eras, and Arkady might seem to be a citizen of
post-atrocity Russia; part of the new middle class who are the key to the
future. But there are other, less obvious casualties. The inevitable and
indeed desirable process of change and progress condemns a lot of decent
Russians to lives of quiet desperation.

********

#4
Life goes on for unrepenting 1991 coup leaders

MOSCOW, Aug 17 (AFP) -
They stand by what they did, have no regrets and often agree with President
Vladimir Putin: after brief jail terms, the main plotters of the failed 1991
Soviet coup have made a fresh start in life.

The one exception is former Soviet interior minister Boris Pugo, who
committed suicide three days after the August 19 coup collapsed and the
curtain fell on the old Communist order.

All amnestied in 1994, the others still vociferously agree with former
marshal and defense minister Dmitry Yazov, who ordered tanks into Moscow in a
desparate bid to save the Soviet regime and insists he would "do it all over
again" if he could.

Yazov, 78, was set free in 1993 and five years later became senior adviser to
Russia's main arms exporter.

Today Yazov says that the putschists' program had a lot in common with what
Putin is doing today.

Vladimir Kryuchkov, 76, was head of the feared Soviet secret services (KGB).
After spending 17 months in jail, he returned to civilian life and wrote his
memoirs.

He now co-heads a think-tank close to Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, who, after
opposing Putin, recently turned into a Kremlin supporter.

Gennady Yanayev, 62, was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's vice-president and
briefly became acting president during the coup. He is now a consultant for
the pension fund.

Valentin Pavlov, 62, then prime minister, went on to become a banker and
later president of a company incorporated in the United States. However, that
did not stop him from harshly criticizing liberal economic reforms in his
book titled "Did we miss the opportunity?"

Vasili Starodubtsev, 69, was head of the Soviet Agrarian Union. After being
freed from jail, he resumed his position as director of a kolkhoz (collective
farm) and was elected Communist governor of the Tula region, south of Moscow,
as well as a member of the Federation Council upper house of parliament.

Like all his fellow coup leaders, Starodubtsev rejects any accusation of high
treason and demands that they be officially rehabilitated.

"What we were doing was defending our country against Gorbachev, Yeltsin and
all their lot," he said.

A supporter of Putin, he thinks the Russian president "has already done many
good things, like visiting Cuba, North Korea, China and India."

Oleg Baklanov, 69, was a secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's central
committee. Today, he heads a Russian-Ukrainian friendship association and
thinks that "the state should recognize that the putschists were historically
and politically right."

Anatoly Lukyanov, 71, chaired the Soviet parliament, or Supreme Soviet.
Although not officially one of the coup leaders, he was nonetheless arrested
and sat in jail until December 1992. Former Gorbachev adviser Alexander
Yakovlev describes him as one of the main instigators of the putsch, together
with Kryuchkov.

He is now a Communist deputy in the State Duma lower house of parliament, and
chairs the construction commission there.

He wrote several poetry books, including "Poems from Jail."

*******

#5
From: "Albert L. Weeks" <AWeeks1@compuserve.com>
Subject: Yeltsin's contributions
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001

The recent Russian-media retrospectives on Yeltsin, including two in
JRL 5395 together with Gorbachev's own dour appraisal of Yeltsin
as Russian president, oddly made no mention of the
"Yeltsin constitution" adopted in his first term. Along with
this major development was the institutionalization of the
various trappings and ceremonies connected with founding
a new, democratically-oriented, post-Soviet Russia: viz.,
the new flag, state seal, presidential inauguration with the
Patriarch's participation--all novel and important.
Perhaps these are worth singling out as substantial
Yeltsin achievements.

********

#6
Boston Globe
August 17, 2001
Russia's Echo radio struggles to avoid a Kremlin muzzle
By David Filipov, Globe Staff

MOSCOW - The Echo of Moscow radio station, the last voice on Russian airwaves
that the government does not control, is under siege.

While the station's fate is not yet settled, the Kremlin, intent on cleansing
the broadcast media of dissent as President Vladimir Putin consolidates his
power, has steadily tightened a financial noose around it.

The state-owned gas monopoly, Gazprom, is trying to establish control over
Russia's premier independent news radio outlet, as it did earlier with the
NTV television network, the flagship station of what was once Russia's
largest privately owned media empire.

In cluttered studios in a skyscraper that towers over central Moscow, Echo's
journalists anxiously await the outcome of a succession of court battles,
backroom maneuvers, and intimidation tactics.

Echo's struggle to remain free of government control is a poignant contrast
to the heady days, 10 years ago this weekend, when the station's broadcasters
holed up in the Russian Parliament and used the airwaves to rally public
support against a coup attempt by the Soviet old guard against prodemocracy
leaders.

Back then, Echo of Moscow was on the winning side with Boris Yeltsin and
Mikhail Gorbachev, as popular support for democracy carried the day. But
Russia has changed since August 1991.

Today, Yeltsin's promised reforms have given way to a bureaucratic system
that often gives the Russian state more control than the Soviet one had 10
years ago. Corruption has thrived as living standards have plunged. Russia's
drive to end decades of Soviet-era isolation and join the rest of Europe has
been stunted by new waves of chauvinism.

Many frustrated Russians now see the events of August 1991 not as the dawn of
a new era, based on Western liberal values, but as the beginning of a
decade-long nightmare. And in Putin they see someone who ''after 10 years of
lawlessness, is finally trying to act in the interests of Russian people,''
said political analyst Sergei Markov.

Putin has become popular, especially among conservatives, by pledging to
restore Russia's economic and military might. Liberals say his moves have
been aimed at reestablishing Soviet-style central control over regional
governors, business leaders, nongovernmental organizations, and the press.

''Putin's team would like there to be no press, just official news,'' said
Moscow political analyst Boris Kagarlitsky. ''They are against the press
saying anything the authorities do not want to hear. This plays into Putin's
plan for consolidating power. The state will be strong because there will be
no bad news.''

The men who tried to fight Yeltsin's reforms a decade ago praise Putin for
working to achieve many of their original goals. The plotters now say the
last decade of economic collapse and political turmoil proved that they were
right all along.

''The current leadership is making efforts to restore control,'' said
Valentin Pavlov, a former Soviet prime minister. ''Today, they are trying to
do what we attempted to do in the Soviet Union in 1991.''

Alexei Venediktov, Echo's editor in chief, agreed that Putin has accomplished
many of the things the coup plotters wanted. But he sees the government's
renewed control over the media as a big setback for Russia.

''Putin sees the press as an instrument, not an institution,'' Venediktov
said. ''When Putin tells the media, `Help me build a strong Russia,' he
understands the press as an organ of propaganda, in service of the
authorities.''

Back in 1991, Venediktov was an Echo reporter in Russia's Parliament building
when the coup plotters sent tanks and troops to surround the place on Aug.
19. Venediktov kept broadcasting live from the besieged building after
engineers fashioned a direct hook-up to the station on a phone line.

Thousands of protesters, many responding to the broadcast, turned out to
support Yeltsin. The coup plotters stopped short of using force. The coup was
defeated three days later. Its organizers were arrested, and Gorbachev was
restored to the Kremlin. Four months later, Yeltsin took over as Russia's
first independent president.

Created by journalists from Moscow State University, Echo earned a reputation
for accuracy and fairness that gave it widespread respect despite its
relatively small audience - 800,000 listeners in a country of 145 million
people. The station was acquired seven years ago by Vladimir Gusinsky, the
tycoon behind Media-Most, which was once Russia's largest group of privately
owned broadcast and print outlets.

Today, in an era when most Russian media serve the interests of their
financial backers, Echo provides no-nonsense stories and airs live interviews
with newsmakers of all political stripes.

But over the past year, Gazprom has gradually taken control of Media-Most,
starting with the NTV network. Journalists have accused the Kremlin of using
the state-run company to eliminate disloyal media, although Gazprom's top
media executives insist they took over NTV merely because Gusinsky owed
Gazprom money he could not pay back.

The struggle for control of Media-Most is not a clear-cut battle between
Soviet-style communism and the forces of democracy. It has been a murky
affair that pits pro-Kremlin business interests against Gusinsky, whom the
Putin administration views as an enemy.

Echo of Moscow is the last Media-Most holding still operating under its
original editors. Many of the editors and journalists from other Media-Most
outlets - NTV, Itogi magazine, and Segodnya newspaper - have either quit or
been fired.

NTV continues to broadcast, although some Russians believe the station is now
slower to criticize the Kremlin.

Last month, Gazprom won a decision giving it a 52.5 percent controlling
interest in Echo, causing several editors and journalists to quit. On July
16, Gazprom appeared ready to accept a deal to sell part of its share to a
former Cabinet minister who hosts a show on Echo of Moscow.

But the conglomerate has balked at the proposed sale, leaving some to wonder
whether the initial announcement was made to deflect international criticism
of the Echo takeover during last month's summit of the seven leading
industrial nations and Russia. At the moment, Gazprom and Echo of Moscow are
vying for control of the disputed shares.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin has tried to intimidate the station and its
high-profile guests. Agents of the Federal Security Service, the former KGB,
raided the station a day before President Jacques Chirac of France was
scheduled to give an interview.

But the radio station has one advantage that Venediktov believes is keeping
it alive: Putin listens to it. The Russian president has often invited
Venediktov to the Kremlin for frank conversations, the editor said.

Venediktov does not believe Putin's indulgence will last forever, or that
Gazprom can be stopped indefinitely. But neither does he think that free
speech in Russia will die.

''This country has a generation of young people who are completely free,'' he
said. ''These are people who believe power is not the state, but the ability
for listeners to ask questions of leaders, like they do on Echo of Moscow,''
he said.

*******

#7
Obshchaya Gazeta
No. 33
August 16, 2001
THE WILD FRUITS OF AUGUST
Analysis of the development of Russia over the last decade
Author: Dmitry Furman
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
OUR REVOLUTIONARY CALENDAR NOW SHOWS THE EQUIVALENT OF 1927 - TEN YEARS AFTER THE REVOLUTION. THIS IS A PERIOD WHEN THE LEADER OF THE REVOLUTION HAS ALREADY STEPPED DOWN IN FAVOR OF A SUCCESSOR, AND THE SUCCESSOR IS CLEARLY OUT TO DO AWAY WITH THE REMNANTS OF REVOLUTIONARY CHAOS.

The August coup evolved into the August revolution ten years ago.
This revolution was just one of the many that swept through the Soviet
Union and the socialist camp. All of them took place under virtually
identical slogans: anti-communism, democracy, human rights, "a return
to Europe", and so on. Now we can see that the political systems
generated by these revolutions are different, and that our system in
particular differs considerably from those formed in the post-
communist states of Europe. Moreover, the political system in Russia
is replicating the traits and features of the previous Soviet
regime... Has there been anything unusual about the democratic
revolution in Russia?

In virtually all these nations, apart from Russia, democrats
could take the view that communism (simplifying it somewhat, of
course) was a system imposed by their Russian conquerors; and
democracy and free-market relations were seen as restoring what had
been lost in the conquest. Anti-communist ideologues in these nations
easily assumed "national liberation" colors. But that was impossible
in Russia. The communism we used to have was our own, not brought in
from elsewhere. The communist regime ruled Russia longer than the
other nations. It was under the flag of communism that a great empire
was built, an empire where Russians were "elder brothers", if not
masters. In its final stages of development, the pre-communist regime
in Russia had been considerably more liberal than the subsequent
communist regime. All the same, it was too unlike democracy to enable
Russians to pretend that the August revolution was a return to the
"national norm". Anti-communist ideology in Russia could not and did
not include a "national liberation" component.

Needless to say, most Russian citizens could not be expected to
close ranks around an anti-communist revolutionary ideology. Unlike
the ideologies of revolutions in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic,
and the Baltic states - which spread throughout their societies - the
revolutionary ideology of August 1991 in Russia was the ideology of a
minority. This minority was active, better educated, and concentrated
in Russia's strategic centers. Moreover, it had powerful allies
abroad. All the same, it became the leading force for the majority
only for the short period of revolutionary processes. This happened
when Boris Yeltsin was elected president. But even so, most Russians
had only vague ideas at best about what Yeltsin wanted (in the other
nations, everyone knew what Walesa, Havel, or Landsbergis wanted - and
everyone wanted the same things). Democrats in Russia did not come to
power through elections. They did so as a result of the August
revolution, and later the Byelovezhskaya Puscha accords which directly
conflicted with the wishes of the majority. Yeltsin must have intuited
this, because even after the fact he never dared try to legitimize
those accords by any nationwide referendum....

From then on, the deviation of Russia's political development
from the corresponding processes in Europe became even more marked. In
all European post-communist states, the groups leading the revolutions
had the support of the majority, and always promoted the interests of
that majority. In these states, the leaders could resign without fear
of reprisal. But when a minority comes to power, it has only one
option open to it: the regime must become the only one possible - no
alternatives are allowed - and democracy must become "controllable".
In Russia, the August events were followed by the Byelovezhskaya
Puscha accords, then by privatization, the dispersal of the congress
of people's deputies, and the adoption of an authoritarian
Constitution through a fraudulent referendum with the documentation
prudently destroyed afterwards. Each step indicated that the August
winners had become that much stronger, and that one more bridge behind
them had been burned. The more such bridges were burned, the less
possible it became for the democrats to step down, because resignation
would have meant imprisonment and impoverishment. The winners could
only move forward, toward more and more control over society.

Any revolution, even if it has the support of absolutely all
social groups, always causes a reaction sooner or later. The people
get fed up with all the noise and enthusiasm, and with the leaders who
might have been great in the hour of need and in the time of trouble
but who turn out to be poor administrators. It dawns on the people
that perhaps expectations were too high; that there were some positive
aspects to communism as well. That is why, in all European post-
communist states, the parties which initiated the revolutions have
inevitably been defeated at a later date and lost power to the
opposition. This opposition also promotes the major objectives of the
revolution, but it is more moderate than its radical predecessors in
the corridors of power. It is precisely this first rotation of
government which marks the final transformation of the power of
democrats into democracy.

Some sort of reaction is also taking place in Russia. But the
European form of the reaction - in which "democrats" step down to give
way to the opposition - is impossible in Russia. It has been made
impossible by the way the democrats themselves assumed power in the
first place. In such a situation, the powers-that-be promote anti-
democratic features in the state and society.

In this country, all social groups, the winners and the losers in
the revolution, are eager to leave the "spirit of 1991" behind. The
losers, because the revolution brought them only poverty and
suffering. The winners, because the revolution gave them everything
they wanted, and they now need time to consolidate their positions. As
a result, the regime relies more and more on Russian authoritarian
traditions.

Our revolutionary calendar now shows the equivalent of 1927 - ten
years after the revolution. This is a period when the leader of the
revolution has already stepped down in favor of a successor, and the
successor is clearly out to do away with the remnants of revolutionary
chaos. It is a year when the regime no longer has any serious rivals -
really dangerous opponents have been destroyed, and communists are no
more of a threat to the present regime than the Orthodox Church once
was to the Bolsheviks. This is a year of conformism, when every
administrator and official with any standing pledges allegiance to the
president and his policies. When the cult of personality seems to be
reviving. What next? Sooner or later, 1937 should follow. It will not
be all that terrible (everything is milder and more subtle in the
second round), but the movement in the direction of "better and better
controllability" is not over yet, and spies are multiplying all around
us...

This regime without alternatives - like all regimes of this kind
- will strive to tighten its grip on society. Public politics may die
out altogether, reduced to behind-the-scenes intrigues in the Kremlin
and battles over "access to the president's ear". Afterwards, the
regime will be doomed to stagnation. But society will continue to
develop as it did in the Soviet Union...

*******

#8
Washington Post
August 17, 2001
Coup That Wasn't Stirs Russians' Mixed Emotions
Decade Later, Soviet Times Cast Shadow
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service

MOSCOW, Aug. 16 --

The hands that helped doom the Soviet Union no longer tremble. They grope for
another pack of Yavas, as Gennady Yanayev lights up his seventh or eighth
cigarette of the hour. But the hands are firm. So is the voice and the mind.
And the convictions.

Ten years ago this weekend, Yanayev, then the vice president of the Soviet
Union, seized the Kremlin from Mikhail Gorbachev, only to fumble away power
with a hand-trembling performance on international television. It was the
nervousness, not the alcohol, that made his hands shake like that, he says
now. But he remains convinced that he did the right thing. And Russian
society is not so sure he is wrong.

The men behind the failed hard-line coup of August 1991 that accelerated the
collapse of the Soviet empire and ended the Cold War are not sitting in jail.
They are not in exile or seclusion. They do not live a life of shame. They
occupy well-appointed offices like Yanayev's, in a red-brick building in
northern Moscow where he heads a foundation. One of the conspirators today
leads a small political party. Another chairs a committee in parliament.
Still another serves as his home region's governor.

"I haven't heard a single insult over the 10 years from ordinary people,"
Yanayev said in an interview this week. "Sometimes in the metro, or at the
bus stop, people come up to me and we talk for an hour and they say, 'Why
didn't you crush [Boris] Yeltsin? Why didn't you arrest Gorbachev? Look at
what they've done to the country.' "

That the last of the Communist commissars would still play a role in public
life here suggests the depth of Russia's ambivalence about where it has been
and where it is going since it threw off Soviet dictatorship. Just as Russia
has not completely rejected the coup plotters, neither has it fully come to
terms with its totalitarian past.

President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB secret police colonel, last year
restored the Soviet national anthem, albeit with different lyrics, and
invited one of the coup plotters, former KGB director Vladimir Kryuchkov, to
his inauguration. Just last month, Putin rejected removing Vladimir Lenin's
embalmed corpse from his granite tomb on Red Square on the grounds that it
would upset Russians by implying "they had worshiped false values." Last
week, the governor of Volgograd proposed reviving its Soviet-era name,
Stalingrad.

In this atmosphere, the coup plotters feel no need to proffer regrets. "I'm
not ashamed of a single day of my life," Yanayev said, more serenely than
defiantly. "Maybe I feel certain guilt" for the coup -- but only because it
failed. "We never accepted the fact that we were guilty. We were acting in
the interests of the country."

Anniversaries typically evoke a certain amount of historical revisionism, but
recent days here have been filled with public symposiums, television
documentaries and newspaper interviews that have highlighted the mixed
feelings of many Russians. While most do not want to return to communism, the
privations of Yeltsin's transition to an imperfect democracy and free market
have lessened their ardor for the new order and generated nostalgia for the
old.

The events over those three momentous days still play a powerful role in the
national psyche. With Kryuchkov pulling the strings, Yanayev and other
stalwart Communists tried to overthrow Gorbachev to prevent his perestroika
reform program from breaking up the Soviet Union. Instead, they precipitated
a revolution, led by Yeltsin, that ended seven decades of Communist rule.

At the time, only 4 percent of Muscovites expressed support for Yanayev's
group, while 62 percent described themselves as supporters of Yeltsin's
democrats. A poll released this week by the All Russian Center for the Study
of Public Opinion found that 14 percent of those surveyed now believe the
coup plotters were right, while just 24 percent said they were wrong; the
rest were not certain. Moreover, only 10 percent today consider the coup's
defeat a victory for democracy.

"We do feel support and this support is growing bigger and bigger," said Oleg
Shenin, another putsch organizer, pounding his desk for emphasis. Shenin, who
was a Politburo member in 1991 and part of the delegation sent to inform
Gorbachev about the putsch, now heads a splinter Communist group and
predicted the Soviet Union will rise again. "We consider it a temporary
defeat," he said.

The measure of public acceptance enjoyed by the coup plotters has frustrated
the democrats who stood up to them. "They're state criminals," said Yuri
Chernichenko, who headed a peasants' party at the time. And yet they act as
if "they're all superstars. They're all in the limelight. After 10 years,
they're given all these rights. Can you imagine that?"

"What would have happened if the coup happened in 1960? They would have been
put in front of a firing squad," said Andrei Kosyakov, who served as one of
Yeltsin's bodyguards during the '91 drama. While he says he does not think
the plotters should have been put to death, Kosyakov said the leaders at
least should have been banned from public life. "Since we didn't do it, they
failed to understand their guilt," he said.

Gorbachev himself weighed in today, mocking the conspirators for trying to
rewrite history by blaming him. "True, their hands do not tremble today any
longer, so accustomed are they to telling lies," the former Soviet president
said at a news conference. "Now they hide their hands; now they put on gloves
when speaking."

"Don't believe them," he said. "They are liars, dyed-in-the-wool liars."

An Unlikely Ending

The world woke up to the coup on Aug. 19, 1991, when a cabal that included
the vice president, prime minister, defense minister, KGB director and
Gorbachev's chief of staff announced they had formed a State of Emergency
Committee to restore order. While they lied and said Gorbachev had fallen
ill, in fact they had cut off his telephones, stripped his nuclear command
codes and isolated him at his summer home in Crimea. But they failed to
arrest Yeltsin, then president of the Russian republic, which was part of the
Soviet Union.

Racing to the Russian White House, then the home of parliament, Yeltsin
clambered on top of a tank and rallied the nation to his side. Eventually,
more than 50,000 people surrounded the White House, some of them armed,
determined to stand against an anticipated assault. Three men died in a
skirmish with armored personnel carriers in front of the U.S. Embassy nearby.

One of the indelible images of that period was the ill-fated news conference
at which Yanayev's shaking hands convinced Russians and Westerners alike that
the coup plotters did not have the will or ability to succeed. After their
misadventure collapsed on Aug. 21, Gorbachev returned to Moscow, but Yeltsin
was the hero of the hour. Within four months he forced the dissolution of the
Soviet Union and the resignation of its president.

The gekechepists -- the nickname for the conspirators taken from the Cyrillic
acronym of their committee -- were arrested and spent a year in jail awaiting
trial. But they were eventually freed, and parliament gave them amnesty. Only
one, Gen. Valentin Varennikov, refused and insisted on a trial, and he was
acquitted.

It was a different ending than in many countries that have toppled tyranny.
There was no truth-and-reconciliation committee as there was in South Africa
after the end of apartheid. There were no real trials, as there were in other
parts of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Indeed, Russia has never fully repudiated its Communist past. Soviet
symbolism remains omnipresent, from the red stars that still light up at
night over the Kremlin to the hammer-and-sickle decorations on the curtain at
the Bolshoi Theater and the statues of Lenin in virtually every town square.
Merchants on the Old Arbat, central Moscow's lively pedestrian street, sell
vases emblazoned with the likeness of Joseph Stalin's face. Officials in the
provinces often keep volumes of Marx and Lenin on their government bookcases.

"You can't help thinking that something has gone awry, something has gone
wrong," said Sergei Yevdokimov, one of the heroes of the White House defense.
"What was lacking? Why did it happen this way? It's hard to say whether there
wasn't enough courage to bring things to the end."

Yevdokimov certainly demonstrated courage. He was commander of the 1st tank
battalion ordered to the White House by the coup committee. When he arrived,
he switched sides, and ordered his tanks to turn their guns around to protect
the demonstrators from assault.

To Yevdokimov, the disappointments of the succeeding years have obscured the
clarity of that moment. "We wanted more and envisioned more, especially in
the economic field," he said. It turns out it was not enough to get rid of
the conspirators at the top. "The main thing is that the same people remained
in power -- the people who used to work in the party apparatus."

What They Imagined

Yanayev and his comrades look at the intervening decade and see a different
message, one of vindication. "We foresaw that the country was going to
disintegrate, that nationalists would separate it, that the country would
turn into a mafia-type state," he said. "We envisioned that the people would
grow poor and we envisioned that the nouveau riche would appear [and] steal
natural wealth. Unfortunately, everything we warned the people about was
implemented by the democrats 150 percent."

The most successful of the plotters in current-day politics is Vasily
Starodubtsev, a former fighter pilot who was elected last spring to a second
term as governor of the Tula region (defeating, among others, Leonid
Brezhnev's grandson). Tula, 120 miles south of Moscow, is not the Soviet
Union reborn under Starodubtsev; though his office faces Lenin Square just
off Soviet Avenue, large, American-style suburban houses are emerging from
the mud outside of town.

Like other conspirators, Starodubtsev has his own thoughts on the tactical
mistakes his team made. While others now believe they should have arrested
Yeltsin, Starodubtsev said the key was the media. "That was our grave
mistake. Instead of broadcasting 'Swan Lake,' we should have been explaining
what we were doing."

That's a mistake he hopes to rectify. Along with other plotters, he appeared
at a news conference a month ago to announce that he was starting a committee
to rehabilitate their reputations. "We wanted to protect the constitution and
uphold the opinion of the people, to defend our people from monstrous
experiments conducted on them," he said in an interview in his office today.
"We cannot be condemned for that."

********

#9
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
August 17, 2001
BIG BUSINESS IS LEADING RUSSIA INTO ANOTHER CRISIS
Russia is more than a group of oligarchs and their monopolies
Author: Mikhail Delyagin
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
SADLY, IN ORDER TO SAVE OURSELVES FROM DEVALUATION AND ENSURE THAT ECONOMIC GROWTH BECOMES STEADY, WE MUST DO NOTHING LESS THAN CHANGE THE EXISTING POLITICAL SYSTEM: TRANSFORM THE STATE INTO AN INSTITUTION WHICH IS ACCOUNTABLE TO ALL ITS CITIZENS, NOT JUST TO A GROUP OF BUSINESS LEADERS.

Restoration of Russia after the default of August 1998 has to a
great extent been enabled by a rapid increase in exports, and reduced
imports. However, in the fourth quarter of 2000 imports grew more than
exports (23.5% and 21.9% respectively).

In the first quarter of 2001, imports increased at double the
rate of exports (11% versus 5%); in the second quarter, growth of
imports was four times as high as growth of exports (28.9% versus
6.7%). At the same time, the rate of increase for imports in April
(27.5%) as well as in May (32.1%) and in June (27.3%) was the highest
over the last five years.

Thus, the export growth trend typical of the restoration period
has been broken, and replaced by a tendency for imports to grow more
rapidly. At the same time, an increase in the domestic market's
capacity, an improvement in living standards and business finances,
are no longer enough for the economy to be restored. A greater
proportion of consumer demand is being met through exports, and our
society is working more in the interests of foreign competitors than
its own members.

Imports are steadily outpacing exports; and this is not only due
to a natural decrease of the positive effect of devaluation, or any
deterioration in the external situation (which hasn't yet taken
place). Exports are slowed and imports are stimulated by a rise in the
real exchange rate of the ruble; this is due to the stable official
exchange rate (with the widely-accepted fallacy that "a strong ruble
makes for a strong economy") combined with evident inflation.
Inflation for 2001 will be around 18%, or 50% higher than the 12% the
Cabinet had promised; slightly under last year's rate of 20.2%.

Inflation is more a factor of the political situation than the
economic situation, because once again, as in 1996-98, the liberal
reformers have subordinated the state's economic policy to big
business. They have deprived themselves of an opportunity to limit
abuse of power by both natural and common monopolies (big business is
based on monopolies), with overpricing as the most common case.

Another factor contributing to the growth of imports is that
property rights are unprotected. Under current political
circumstances, this is unavoidable, since the large monopolies need
this to be so in order to expand. It's no coincidence that the
liberals, defending the interests of big business, have been fighting
for property rights only in word, not in deed; for example, they have
done nothing to decriminalize the bankruptcy process, which is in fact
a legally established denial of property rights as such.

A side-effect of unprotected property rights is a bad investment
climate. Until the problem of protecting property rights is resolved,
the investment climate won't be improved by reducing inflation or tax
rates, nor by propaganda; it is pushing Russian revenues out of
Russia. Apart from direct capital flight, money is also leaving the
country in a more complex way: unprotected property rights in industry
send money out of industry and into consumption, primarily by the
rich, which means strong demand for imported goods.

The political basis of the growth of the real exchange rate
(which increased by 15.2% in 2000 and by 8.8% in January-July 2001)
also supports its consequences: a decrease in the positive foreign
trade balance.

According to an official forecast from the Economic Development
Ministry, the positive trade balance will decrease from $60.7 billion
in 2000 to $50.8 billion in 2001, and to $39.4 billion in 2002: i.e. a
35% drop within two years. This is sure to have a negative impact on
the medium-term stability of not only the currency market, but also
Russia's entire monetary system.

So the Cabinet's economic policies, in keeping with the interests
of big business (which is a driving force for the nation's
development, but quite incapable of replacing the state) instead of
the politically powerless citizenry, results in less currency coming
into Russia, or at least a steady level of capital flight.

The draft budget for 2002, by directing any additional revenues
into foreign debt payments, sets a different priority for liberal
reformers - to uphold the interests of foreign creditors, even if
these are clearly contrary to the interests of the Russian economy.
The Cabinet's flat rejection of any attempt to restructure unfeasible
foreign debt payments (even the over-optimistic draft budget for 2002
falls short of meeting them by at least $3 billion) dooms Russia to an
increase in capital flight.

Against the background of capital flight, less currency coming
into Russia will make a destructive devaluation inevitable by the end
of 2004. If things go on as they are, Russia will enter the currency
risk zone early in 2003; alternatively, if suicidal reforms are pushed
through, especially currency deregulation, Russia will enter the
currency risk zone by August 2002 (a bill prepared under the
supervision of Herman Gref would permit virtually any sum to be taken
out of Russia, with virtually no restrictions).

Sadly, in order to save ourselves from devaluation and ensure
that economic growth becomes steady, we must do nothing less than
change the existing political system: transform the state into an
institution which is accountable to all its citizens, not just to a
group of business leaders.
(Translated by Andrei Ryabochkin)

*******

#10
Putin's vacation shrouded in secrecy

MOSCOW, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin may have retired
from the spy game, but his background as a Soviet operative has come in
handy so far at the start of a short vacation, Moscow's Kommersant daily
newspaper said Thursday.

Putin started his weeklong vacation Thursday in an atmosphere of utmost
secrecy. Kremlin spokesmen and other officials on Wednesday refused to
release any information related to the president's holiday plans.

Kommersant's report, headlined "Vladimir Putin played a spy game," gave a
detailed account of events that preceded Putin's decision to spend his
vacation in Russia's northwest.

On Tuesday, Putin visited an air show outside Moscow. Within several hours
Russian news agencies reported that the president would spend his vacation
at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in southern Russia. But tight security
measures were in place the same day in Putin's native St. Petersburg as
police increased their numbers in the city center.

Despite earlier expectations, Putin stayed in Moscow Tuesday and attended
an exhibition hockey game featuring Russia's NHL superstar Pavel Bure and
the Pittsburgh Penguins -- and soon to be Washington Capital -- top gun
Jaromir Jagr.

On Wednesday, St. Petersburg security services emptied the parking lot
near the Mariinsky Palace, the seat of the city parliament, and ordered all
employees to leave the building no later than 6 p.m., Kommersant reported.

According to the paper, the spokesmen for St. Petersburg Gov. Vladimir
Yakovlev and Putin's regional envoy Viktor Cherkesov kept silent about
Putin's potential homecoming.

The silence was broken Wednesday evening when Cherkesov's spokesman
Alexander Butsailo told Kommersant: "At any rate, the visit is private, so
there will be no details."

Finally, Putin's plane landed at Pulkovo Airport right before 9 p.m.
Wednesday. The president then went by car to the Mariinsky Palace where he
was scheduled to meet with Yakovlev, Cherkesov and Leningrad region Gov.
Valery Serdyukov.

On Thursday, Putin toured one of the most picturesque sights in the
northwest part of Russia -- the Valaam monastery located on the isle of the
same name on the Ladozhskoye Lake. In 2000, Russian Patriarch Alexiy II
invited Putin to visit the monastery after his May 7 presidential
inauguration, said Kommersant. Putin's busy schedule prevented him from
making the trip then. This time the president was accompanied by the
monastery's head, Father Pankraty, instead of the patriarch.

The paper reported Putin had also planned a Thursday visit to the nearby
town of Sortavala where he would spend time talking to residents of a
60-apartment building erected to house dwellers evicted from their
dilapidated homes at Valaam.

After Sortavala, the last leg of Putin's journey will take him to the
presidential villa at Shuiskaya Chupa where he will spend the remainder of
his holiday. Shuiskaya Chupa, located in the autonomous republic of Karelia,
became famous as Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin invariably spent his
vacations there.

*******

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