August 28, 2001

This Date's Issues:   5413 • 5414

Johnson's Russia List
#5413
28 August 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Moscow Times: Yevgenia Borisova, Book Accuses FSB of Killings. (DJ: More can be found at www.novayagazeta.ru)
2. Jamestown Foundation Monitor ...BUT DROPS GERMAN GREF'S NAME FROM ALLEGATIONS. (re Newsweek allegations about Putin)
3. the eXile: Matt Taibbi, Farewell, eXile.
4. the eXile: Matt Taibbi, Press Review. Time Didn't Tell. Hacks agree: The Coup Happened.
5. Luba Schwartzman: ORT Review. (DJ: Luba has returned to Boston University following her summer in Washington at the Center for Defense Information. Fortunately, she will be able to continue her valuable ORT Reviews. Many thanks Luba!)
6. AFP: Russia to privatize 365 companies next year.
7. AFP: 60 years on, Russia's Germans reclaim rights lost to Stalin.
8. AP: Russia Seeks Plutonium Deal Delay.
9. time.com: 'Kursk Salvage is an Adventurist Scam.' Vice Admiral Yevgeny Chernov believes Moscow is covering up the cause of the submarine disaster. TIME's Yuri Zarakhovich asked him why.
10. Moscow Times: Yevgenia Albats, No Longer Fitting Into the Picture.]

*******

#1
Moscow Times
August 28, 2001
Book Accuses FSB of Killings
By Yevgenia Borisova
Staff Writer

The Federal Security Service has used organized crime gangs and war
criminals to carry out contract killings in Russia and abroad, according to
excerpts of a book co-authored by a renegade former FSB officer and
published Monday in a special issue of Novaya Gazeta.

The book, which has not been published, was written by former FSB
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky, a historian
and writer who emigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1978.

Litvinenko fled Russia last year saying he feared for his life, and in May
of this year obtained political asylum in Britain. His troubles began after
he called a news conference in late 1998 to accuse his FSB superiors of
ordering the killing of Boris Berezovsky, who was then secretary of the
Security Council. Litvinenko was arrested and later released on the
condition he not leave Russia, but he managed to flee the country. In
recent years he has been closely associated with Berezovsky, who lives in
self-proclaimed exile abroad.

Litvinenko joined the KGB in 1988. Beginning in 1991, he had worked in FSB
units responsible for investigating organized crime groups. Some of the
strongest allegations published Monday concern the FSB's use of organized
crime.

The validity of Litvinenko's accusations, however, is all but impossible to
judge. In the excerpts published Monday, which fill 22 full pages in the
tabloid-size newspaper, no source is given for many of the stated facts,
and many of the allegations are not supported by evidence.

Even Novaya Gazeta, which is sharply critical of President Vladimir Putin,
questions whether the authors can be believed. In an accompanying
editorial, the weekly newspaper appeals to the State Duma to create an
independent parliamentary commission to look into Litvinenko's allegations.

Litvinenko did not respond Monday to a request made through his London
lawyer for an interview.

An officer on duty at the FSB on Monday said the agency would not comment
on the report.

A retired KGB officer, however, said Litvinenko's allegations were entirely
plausible.

The planned book, titled "FSB Blows Up Russia," also accuses top Russian
officials of taking million-dollar payments from Chechen leaders beginning
as early as 1992.

The money was paid for weapons and ammunition left in Chechnya by Russian
troops and in exchange for Russian commanders agreeing to halt certain
military operations, the excerpts said.

Alexander Korzhakov, who was then-President Boris Yeltsin's top bodyguard
and is now a deputy in the State Duma, is among those accused of taking
money. His assistant, Nikolai Moiseyenko, said Monday by telephone that the
allegations were groundless and he said Litvinenko was too low placed to
have access to such information anyway.

The excerpts describe the raid on Budyonnovsk in June 1995, in which about
1,000 people were held hostage in a hospital by rebels led by Shamil
Basayev, as revenge for Moscow reneging on a deal to stop the fighting.
Chechen separatist leader Dzhokar Dudayev had paid "a bribe of several
million dollars," but the war continued.

Then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who carried out negotiations with
Basayev, knew about the deal and realized the Chechens had been deceived,
the excerpts said. And that is why Chernomyrdin allowed Basayev's men to
retreat safely back to Chechnya.

Most of the excerpts deal more directly with FSB operations. They describe
a secret department specializing in locating and liquidating people
considered a danger to the state.

The department created a special security firm, Stelth, which used
organized crime groups, including the Izmailovskaya group, to carry out
contract killings, the excerpts said. The department was responsible for
the "fairly well known contract killings of criminal leaders, businessmen
and bankers," the planned book said. It gave no names of the victims.

The FSB has been quick to hide evidence and kill anyone who might link it
to crimes or criminals, the excerpts said.

For instance, the excerpts said, FSB control over a famous gang led by the
Larionov brothers in the Primorye region was impossible to prove because
after one brother was killed in a criminal shootout, the remaining one told
investigators he would tell the court about the gang's relationship with
special services and was killed in jail.

Litvinenko's planned book describes the operations of one of the special
groups he said was created by the FSB.

Andrei Morev was a Russian soldier serving in Chechnya who in 1996
destroyed the tiny village of Svobodny and was arrested as a war criminal.
According to the published excerpts, Morev was told by FSB investigators
that he had two options — work for the FSB or go to jail.

In 1998, a group led by Morev — 12 people, all accused of war crimes in
Chechnya — began on the FSB's orders to liquidate people in various
countries, including Ukraine, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Moldova, the excerpts said.

In August 2000, members of the group started to disappear. Morev made
several video copies of his confession and went into hiding, Litvinenko wrote.

Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst with INDEM, said he does not believe
the FSB created special departments to carry out murder.

"I am sure that discipline in the FSB is poor and officers are poorly paid.
If they received such orders, they would simply go out and tell the first
journalist they met about it," Korgunyuk said. "Such departments could
exist in a totalitarian society, but not in this country."

Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a retired KGB lieutenant colonel, said you have
to be from the secret services to know that what Litvinenko wrote is true.

"It is 100 percent true," Preobrazhensky said. "He did a good job. Such
groups of murderers existed there long ago and it was not necessarily FSB
officers who did the killing but their agents who officially had no
connection to the FSB."

Preobrazhensky said Litvinenko does not have the documents to properly
source his information because he fled the country. "But all he says is right.

"Look, [Alexander] Solzhenitsyn also did not refer to any documents, but he
showed the bare truth about the gulag and opened the whole world's eyes to
what was going on in this country," Preobrazhensky said.

The former KGB officer said he doubted the book would create any trouble
for the FSB. "I think even if the State Duma creates the commission to
investigate the facts, it will be filled with FSB-controlled people who
will ultimately sabotage its work. There will be no results whatsoever."

The excerpts go into detail only in one case — the well-reported incident
in Ryazan on Sept. 22, 1999, when residents prevented a possible explosion
of their apartment block after seeing three people carrying several big
sacks from their car into the basement of their building.

The country was on alert. Shocked by several apartment bombings in
Buinaksk, Volgodonsk and Moscow in which about 300 were killed, people were
closely watching their homes.

Ryazan experts said the explosive hexogen was found in the sacks, and a
timer set for early the next morning was neutralized.

For two days, the whole country was looking for the terrorists and, as in
the other bombings, Chechens were blamed. Finally, on Sept. 24, FSB
director Nikolai Patrushev said it had been a training exercise. The sacks
were said to contain sugar and not hexagen, even though residents and
others who looked in the sacks described a yellow vermicelli-like substance
and not a white powder.

The results of the investigation by local law-enforcement officers were
confiscated, the case was classified and Patrushev offered his apologies to
the people of Ryazan.

Litvinenko's report, however, contained little that had not already been
published in Novaya Gazeta and other newspapers last year.

Novaya Gazeta is an independent publication popular with the
intelligentsia. It is best known for its investigations of corruption and
coverage of human rights issues, including reports from Chechnya by Anna
Politkovskaya.

*******

#2
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
August 27, 2001

...BUT DROPS GERMAN GREF'S NAME FROM ALLEGATIONS. 
The current Newsweek story [see JRL#5411] 
essentially moves forward reports that first appeared last year in the
French daily Le Monde and the Russian tabloid Sovershenno Sekretno. However,
Le Monde--unlike Newsweek in its current article--claimed in its May 2000
item that German Gref, Russia's minister of economic development and trade,
who throughout the 1990s served in the St. Petersburg city government, as
(among other positions) head of its privatization agency, also served as a
SPAG advisor. The French paper quoted Markus Rese, SPAG's director, as
saying that both Putin and Gref served as unpaid advisors to SPAG until
March 2000, and that their relationship with the company was "some kind of a
patronage." Rese, however, has now told Newsweek that while Putin was a
"contact," his presence on SPAG's unpaid advisory board was largely an
"honor" and the president-to-be had nothing to do with the activities SPAG
is alleged to have engaged in.

However, Newsweek cites an unnamed former top U.S official as saying that
Washington last year successfully lobbied to have Russia placed on an
international moneylaundering blacklist, thanks in large measure to "a sheaf
of intelligence reports linking Putin to SPAG." Newsweek speculates that the
allegations concerning SPAG and Putin could affect the international
community's decision on whether to take Russia off that list. The Financial
Action Task Force (FATF), which was set up by the Group of Seven
industrialized countries in 1989 to combat money laundering, will soon meet
to decide which countries are in violation of international norms and
standards for financial activity. Guatemala, Burma, Egypt and a number of
Pacific Ocean island nations are among those expected to be on the blacklist
and may be targeted for tough sanctions, including limitations on
international credits. While Russia was put on the FATF blacklist last year,
the State Duma passed an anti-moneylaundering law in July of this, leading
some media to predict that Western governments will now opt to take Russia
off (Moscow Times, May 30, 2000; Newsweek, September 3; see also the
Monitor, July 16, August 6).

Whatever the case, the SPAG scandal is not the only St. Petersburg
corruption scandal in which Putin is alleged to have played a role. Last
year, Marina Salye, a St. Petersburg democratic activist, claimed that in
1991-1992, when she headed a working group of the St. Petersburg city
council, she came across documents concerning the involvement of the St.
Petersburg mayor's office, and Putin himself, in various financial
machinations. These included skimming money from the sale of Russian natural
resources, the proceeds from which were supposed to be used for the purchase
abroad of food supplies for the city (see the Monitor, March 16, 2000). In
addition, other members of Putin's government have allegedly maintained ties
with organized crime figures. Segodnya, the now-defunct newspaper of
Vladimir Gusinsky's nearly liquidated Media-Most group, reported earlier
this year that Viktor Cherkesov, a long-time Putin associate and fellow KGB
veteran who is currently the presidential representative in the Northwest
federal district, was using a former associate of two reputed St. Petersburg
crime bosses, Kumarin-Barsukov and Aleksandr Malyshev, as one of his
personal bodyguards (see the Monitor, January 10).

*******

#3
the eXile
www.exile.ru
Farewell, eXile
By Matt Taibbi (taibbi@exile.ru)

Well, folks, the day many of you have been waiting for has finally arrived.
The eXile is about to close up shop.

For some time now, the eXile’s publisher, Ne Spat!, has been in sale
negotiations with, believe it or not, a Dutch media company with interests
in Russia. The two sides reached an agreement earlier this week that will
spell the end of the eXile in its current format.

Ne Spat!, frustrated over the eXile’s continual legal problems and its
stagnating revenue stream, has long been seeking a buyer for its
controlling stake in our newspaper. The company’s original plan for the
eXile when it first entered into a partnership with the current editorial
staff was to make it into a pure nightlife and entertainment guide, similar
to Time Out or Ne Spat! itself. The company waited patiently for four years
while we took the paper in a starkly different direction, assuring them
that a giant commercial payoff was forthcoming.

It never came. The paper made a lot of noise and gained a lot of notoriety,
but was never an overwhelming financial success, although it remained
solidly in the black throughout its existence. The paper’s penchant for
offending readers and potential advertisers was tolerated by its owners for
a surprisingly long time, but a series of particularly offensive and
unfortunate issues finally exhausted our investors’ patience. From what
I’ve been told, our decision to do an entire issue in French—an issue which
outraged our regular advertisers—accelerated the company’s search for a
buyer, causing it to significantly lower the asking price for its stake.

That buyer was finally found this past Monday, the day after Kevin and I
returned from the grueling eXile Zaporozhets Rally. Imagine my surprise
when I learned that one of the terms of the sale was the removal of all
original editorial eXile staff members from the company rolls. Our new
investors, whose name I am withholding in anticipation of a more
advantageous opportunity for vengeance, apparently felt that the original
staff would make fruitful change impossible, and also spoil any chance the
publication might have in the future to court disillusioned advertisers.
And so, as a result, the eXile’s three remaining original writers—myself,
Mark Ames, and Kevin McElwee—have effectively been forced to resign from a
company in which we still hold a minority stake.

The company is retaining Jake Rudnitsky as an interim editor until it can
find a suitable replacement. Content for the rest of the paper will be
accounted for by material translated from Ne Spat!, and by freelance
contributors.

The new newspaper, which will still be called the eXile, will be a sports
and entertainment biweekly, with plans to go weekly before the new year.
The paper will be devoid of political commentary, pornography, crime
reporting, and humor. The paper’s feature content will mostly consist of
celebrity profiles, casino and sporting news, and club reviews. The
celebrated eXile nightlife guide, which was put together over the course of
four painstaking years that almost certainly shaved a decade off of our
collective lives, will officially be the property of the new company,
beginning the next issue. Amazingly, under the terms of the sale, Mark,
Kevin, and I are prohibited from even using the format in any publications
we might be part of in the future.

Our readers have doubtless been aware for some time that the eXile’s
original staff was tiring of its stated creative task, i.e., covering
Russia. Hell, Mark isn’t even in Russia right now, and hasn’t been for some
time. We have all long been seeking an opportunity to take our format to
another venue, and I suppose we now have our chance. Nonetheless, I don’t
feel very good about any of this. I will miss the paper. And it will pain
me to no end to see it transformed into the lifeless, phony, transparently
commercial “hip nightlife guide” that it will doubtless become under the
new management. It has always been my position that a newspaper of our
small stature should not expend a lot of energy trying to make a lot of
money, because the natural limits on the amount of money we can make as an
expat newspaper in Moscow are so great. I am therefore baffled by the
management’s decision to interfere with the structure of a much-read
publication that is not and has never been a money-loser, in the petty hope
of squeezing a slightly larger amount of money out of Moscow’s extremely
limited advertiser pool.

On the plus side, the eXile website, www.exile.ru, which has roughly four
times as many readers as the print publication, will remain under our
editorial control. Kevin, Mark, and I will doubtless relocate to another
venue, probably in the United States, and continue to maintain and update
the site from our new base of operations.

But as far as the print publication goes, this appears to be the end. I’m
not much for long goodbyes, and our new Dutch masters didn’t leave me with
much time for one in any case. But on behalf of Kevin, Mark, and myself, as
well as on behalf those members of the sales and design staff who are
resigning along with us, we would like to say farewell, and express our
sincere hope that we will be seeing you all again soon. We’ll see you in
hell in any case, that’s for sure, but we hope it will be sooner. Until
then, take care, watch your back, and guard your children. The Man has come
for us—you might be next.

********

#4
the eXile
www.exile.ru
Press Review
Time Didn't Tell
Hacks agree: The Coup Happened
By Matt Taibbi (taibbi@exile.ru)

Nothing brings out the pseudo-intellectual in a mainstream journalist like a
retrospective. A giant commemorative news story like the recent passing of
the 10th anniversary of the August coup offers the average hack a rare
chance to put on his tweed elbow patches and, pipe in hand, wax poetic about
the Great Meaning of Things. It is an amazing thing to watch.

You can always tell an inexperienced pipe smoker at first glance. A man who
smokes a pipe regularly goes through a thousand elegant rituals before he
brings his pipe to his lips, and he never chokes on his smoke. A teenager
who sneaks into his Dad's study to raid his Borkum Riff stash, on the other
hand, will hurriedly gag on the first puff, his eyes will water, and he will
be seized with the uncontrollable cough of an emphysema patient. Sometimes,
he will even throw up.

It's the same with these journalists. They are not really essayists or
thinkers in any real sense. Their jobs most crucially involve the mere
recording of facts. So when they sit down to put their thinking caps on,
they almost always forget the first rule of analysis, which is this: TELL US
SOMETHING WE DON'T ALREADY KNOW.

I've spent an enormous amount of time in the last few days reading the waves
of coup retrospectives put out in the major Western papers. I've been able
to discern three major themes present in almost all of these articles. They
are:

1) Ten years after the coup, Russians take a lot of vacations;

2) Defying the expectation that the entire country would be of one
monolithic opinion about its past, Russians, in fact, have mixed feelings
about the many changes that have occurred here in the last ten years;

3) Mikhail Gorbachev must be offering free mochaccino and complimentary Ikea
napkin-holders at his press conferences.

The latter conclusion I drew after observing, with surprise, the vast number
of "Ten Years Later, Mikhail Gorbachev Experiences a Revival" stories that
came out in Western papers. This phenomenon confirmed a longstanding
suspicion that there are more than just three dimensions, and that an
alternate universe must exist all around us at all times. That universe must
be where all of the "Ten Years Later, No One Gives a Shit About Gorbachev"
stories are being published, because I sure haven't seen them on this
planet.

Since the 1998 crisis, it has been more or less impossible for foreign
journalists to argue that Russia's experiment with democracy has been an
unqualified success. There was simply too much material out there
passionately arguing the contrary point of view. In some cases the arguments
even came from Westerners, from academics like Janine Wedel and Stephen
Cohen and Murray Feschback, among others, and also from us here at the eXile
and assorted other malcontents. After 1998 it became acceptable-and
fashionable-for mainstream Western reporters to focus on themes like Russian
corruption (symbolized by the Bank of New York scandal, which was fairly
heavily covered, and by the FIMACO business), the growing demographic
disaster, and the rise of "dangerous nationalism" in the country, both at
the grass-roots level and in government, expressed most dishearteningly in
Russia's absolutely logical opposition to the Kosovo bombing.

In other words, when Russia's problems suddenly became our problems-when
instability led to a default on Western loans, when corruption smeared the
name of a major American bank, when political defiance led to a fractured
coalition that spoiled the mood of one of our insane military
adventures-Russia's problems suddenly became fair game for public
discussion.

The result was a Moscow-based press corps whose mission was increasingly
schizophrenic. On the one hand, it remained boosterish and bullish about
Russia's developing market economy, and continued to hammer home the
encouraging themes of a "nascent middle class", the hope for political and
economic "reform", and the benefits to Russia of cooperation with the U.S.
and the international lending institutions.

On the other hand, the press corps was now also engaged in the examination
of bad news, and for an acceptable source of blame for the "bad" results
that had sullied Russia's democratic experiment. Outgoing oligarchs like
Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky were pilloried in the press as having
been the root of all gangland evil during the Yeltsin years, and the ones
who remained-like Roman Abramovich, Vladi-mir Potanin and Mikhail
Khodorkovsky-were recast as lucky survivors who were being forced to change
their ways under the new take-no-shit Pinochet-style government of Vladimir
Putin.

It became acceptable to talk about the vast material difference between life
in Moscow and life in the regions, but the subject was never treated either
thoughtfully or with any sense of outrage-the tone of the reports was always
a wistful, "What a shame!" kind of approach. The demographic problems also
became a popular theme, but while the facts were laid out openly enough,
many of the underlying causes, like the collapse of the state health care
system, the erosion of social guarantees, and the general existential
despair brought on by life in a country devoid of meaningful national
ideology, were never really explored.

In other words, the reporters went after what little good news there was
like junkyard dogs. The bad news they went after on tiptoe, blind and with
their arms extended in front of them, like kids playing pin the tail on the
page 5 donkey.

All of which resulted in the insanity of these Coup retrospectives, in which
the popularity of the Moscow Ikea store and the rise in the number of
charter flights to Cyprus was balanced, with equal attention, against the
abject misery and violence of life almost anywhere outside the Moscow ring
road.

In some cases, the reporters went beyond insanity. The worst of the worst
was Andrew Jack of the Financial Times. His August 20 piece about the state
of the nation was entitled, "Fast cars, fancy food: Muscovites let good
times roll." In it, he argues quite seriously that increased spending in
luxury items is evidence that Russia, unlike the rest of the world, is
"booming":

The unexpected appetite for the luxury cars-which have a minimum price-tag
of $70,000 in Moscow-is only one sign among many that while much of the
world goes into a downturn, Russia's economy is still booming.

Jack, whose name is a cheese, then goes on to bolster his argument with one
of the most ridiculous passages I've ever seen in a major newspaper-citing
the presence of an overpriced restaurant whose interior is decorated to look
like a piece of cheese as further evidence of the boom:

After sitting empty and half-renovated for three years on the city's inner
ring-road, Cheese opened at the start of the summer. Its Italian chef offers
pizzas for a minimum of Rbs400 ($13.60), but its parking lots are filled
with the latest Mercedes models.

Russia must really be doing well if a place that sells pizzas for a minimum
of $13.60 can exist in the very center of the capital. For what it's worth,
the cheapest pizza at Jack's-the pizza delivery service that's been in town
since the beginning of the decade-goes for $17.95.

A great many reporters, in their coup retrospectives, opted for the "Africa
at a crossroads, facing tough choices" approach. In this type of article,
the reporter interviews two Russians who have had opposite experiences since
the coup and whose opinions about the democratic experiment vary
accordingly. Chief among these were the Washington Post's Susan Glasser, who
wrote the Aug. 19 "10 Years On, Gulf Within a Family Reflects Nation's
Divide", and Maura Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times, who actually used the
word "Crossroads" in the headline for her Aug. 19 piece, "Two Sentries at a
Crossroads for Russia Military: The men recall how, as young soldiers during
the abortive coup, one stuck by the old guard and the other stood up for the
new."

Then there was old friend Kathy Lally of the Baltimore Sun, whose own Aug.
19 piece read like the trailer for a buddy movie starring Angelina Jolie and
Mario Van Peebles: "Decade of hardship steals Russians' joy. Anniversary: He
saved lives; she created one. An officer and a worker reflect on a failed
coup, and how the result failed them."

The problem with most of these pieces, and Glasser's most of all, was the
curious mathematics that, again, presented Russia's pros and cons in the 1:1
ratio of "On the one hand...on the other hand." Glasser, like Jack (who
noted with glee that "Sheremetyevo 2, Moscow's main international airport,
was this month forced to impose restrictions on the number of charter
flights of Russian holiday makers, because its terminal was reaching
capacity"), was one of about six or seven reporters to belabor the vacation
theme. She actually brings it up twice in the course of her article, as she
describes the "pro" experiences of her Moscow success story, Tatiana. The
first passage reads as follows:

Ten years ago, she had never been outside the country. Now she is fluent in
world capitals-most recently Paris and London-and a connoisseur of beaches
from Spain to Egypt.

The second passage is more rapturous:

Foreign travel remains the one big-ticket item. She and her friends are
eager jet-setters, their passport stamps freedom's most visible trophy.

Tatyana first left the country in 1995 for a vacation in Spain. The moment
she landed, she was "overwhelmed. I wish I had that feeling again-that
feeling happens only once in your life. After that, you get used to it."
Since then, she has fallen in love in Tunisia and in Egypt, and gone skiing
in Slovakia and scuba diving in the Mediterranean.

If you are beginning to notice a theme-between Jack's Italian chef, the
Mercedes parked outside Cheese, the "overwhelming" trip to Spain, the visits
to Paris and London, and the travel to Western bourgeois vacation
destinations on "beaches" in Egypt and the Mediterranean-you might be on to
something. A crucial thread in all of the "good news" sections of these
retrospectives seems to be exposure to the West and the opportunity to spend
money. CNN online went even further in its retrospective piece, the Aug. 21
offering by Maria Antonenko, "After a decade of adventures abroad, young
generation choosing to stay home."

Antonenko, obviously a re-pat herself, appears not to see the irony in her
celebration of the new Russia as the home of choice for the young Russians
of her generation. In the piece, her interview subjects talk endlessly about
how Russia is actually a cheaper and freer place to live-if you happen to
speak English and work for a Western company:

Leonova is now a Nestle's sales manager for the Moscow region and Belarus,
but in 1991, she was an engineering student at the Moscow-based Institute of
Steel and Alloys. With a knowledge of English and little formal business
training, Leonova has become one of the leading young businesswomen in
Russia.

In other words, Leonova is living better as a totally unqualified,
Western-imported parasite off the consumer economy than she would have as a
trained home-grown specialist in the kind of hard industry that has
completely collapsed in the country in the last ten years. This Antonenko
seems to see as good news.

Antonenko's piece recalled another passage from the Jack article, which laid
out good macroeconomic news alongside an incidental mention of a shortage of
skilled labor:

Alexei Zabotkine, chief economist at United Financial Group, a Moscow-based
brokerage, and traditionally a bear on the Russian economy, has recently
more than doubled his projections of GDP growth for this year to 4.6 per
cent. Other analysts give higher figures still.

"One of the principal challenges for the economy in the coming months is a
growing shortage of skilled labor," he argues, stressing the decline of the
education system over the past decade and the trend for a growing number of
companies in the Moscow region to hire employees from neighboring countries.

The high number of skilled, educated workers used to be an asset in Russia.
Now the lack of the same has become a liability. And yet the economic
prognosis is good. But good for whom?

All of the people who appear as "success stories" in these Western articles
about the "nascent middle class" are almost always salespeople,
internationally-funded aid workers (Glasser's Tatiana earns her salary "from
a U.S. government-funded project to assist reform of Russia's judiciary"),
accountants, restauranteurs, car salesmen, and other creatures of the
service sector.

They are never teachers, doctors, artists, scientists, or any of the other
products of the higher educational system whose existence is critically
necessary for a healthy society. Glasser compared her Tatiana to a relative
in the impoverished provinces who earned $70 a month; she might as well have
compared her to a public school teacher living just down the street.

Two years ago I wrote a story about a high school in southern Moscow. I
spent a week following around four ordinary high school kids. They were all
good kids, much less cynical, self-important, and world-weary than the
typical American high school student-they were bright, positive, funny, even
respectful of their teachers.

One of them, Kostiya Pankratov, was voted most likely to succeed in his
class. He was a quiet type who took karate, did not drink, and was a
straight A student, mainly because he worked hard to finish his homework on
time. After he graduated, he tried to enter an automotive engineering
school, and that was the last anyone heard from him, until a few weeks ago.

It turns out Kostiya's in jail, in Butirka. He couldn't get into school
because he didn't have the money, and ended up hanging around, unemployed,
and drinking a lot. One night he and some friends were stopped by the
police. They beat up the cop and threw him in the trunk of their car. They
were caught on their way out of the city with the cop still in the trunk. He
got five years.

Another one of the four, a girl, was forced out of her home by her alcoholic
stepfather shortly after graduation. She went to live with her boyfriend, a
Chechen war vet in his early twenties, who claimed to have killed 19 people
on his tour and was intermittently violent; he developed a heroin problem
and was thrown out of his house by his parents, and tried to take the girl
to live in a communal apartment in which they would have had to share a room
with five other male junkies. She ended up sleeping on a bench on the
Manezhnaya ploschad, right outside all those fancy stores, for days.
Eventually she got a job as a stripper at a club which, I'm embarrassed to
say, advertises in the eXile. But that didn't work out either. Now she works
at an all-night store as a sales girl, selling vodka to drunks in a slum
near Tekstillshiki. She's been robbed three times and was nearly forced into
a car by three men once. Her boyfriend keeps sending messages to her through
friends that he intends to kill her and himself the next time he sees her.

Another of the four, also a girl, had a problem with fighting in high school
and ended up in the hospital recently when three girls locked her in a
bathroom stall at a club and beat her within an inch of her life. Her old
boyfriend, the fourth subject in the article, joined the navy and is still
there, but doesn't talk about what his life is like.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like there could be a hundred IKEAs in this
country, and they wouldn't outweigh even a few stories like this. And there
are a hell of a lot more than a few. Ten years after the coup, Russia is an
indescribably savage country that eats its own young. It takes more than the
simple recital of a $70 monthly salary figure to convey what this means. You
have to have seen it for all ten years to get it right on the last day.

********

#5
ORT Review
www.ortv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba7@bu.edu)
Research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy
at Boston University

HEADLINES,
Monday, August 27, 2001

- King Abdullah II of Jordan is visiting Russia. Today he visited the
Tula paratroopers division and familiarized himself with samples of the
division's weapons and equipment. This is not pure curiosity -- the
Jordanian monarch may be interested in purchasing Russian weapons,
although American pressure has prevented arms deals in the past.

- Federal troops have completed the month-long special operation in the
Chechen settlement of Alleroi (Kurchaloevo region). Twenty fighters were
destroyed and 14 arrested.

- Tension has not eased in the western regions of Georgia. Russian
peacekeepers have been on high alert for five days; Abkhaz and Georgian
security forces regularly exchange information. A special phone-line has
been established connecting Georgian President Edvard Shevarnadze with
Abkhaz Prime Minister Anri Jergenia.

- Georgian President Edvard Shevarnadze announced today that an attempt of
a large armed force to enter Abkhazia from the territory of Georgia has
been thwarted. He said that the militia group included persons from the
North Caucasus.

- Vladimir Putin expressed his appreciation to the government for the
development of the 2002 budget. The draft of the budget will be reviewed
by the State Duma no later than on 26 September.

- A new development has come about in the investigation of the death of
Moskovsky Komsomolets journalist Dmitry Kholodov. The explosive in his
briefcase may have been only an imitation of the trotil-hexogen used by
the Russian military. This may undermine the case against members of the
45th paratrooper division of the interior ministry's special forces
currently on trial; they were accused of stealing the explosive during
training exercises and murdering the reporter.

- One member of the St. Petersburg OMON police was killed, and twelve were
wounded, when a bus was fired upon near Groznyy.

- Special service officers in Chechnya presented journalists with a
videotape of Chechen field commander Khattab instructing his fighters to
disguise themselves as Russian soldiers and speak Russian when attacking
local settlements. The tape was made on 10 August.

- A Kemerovo resident, armed with a Makarov gun, hi-jacked a taxicab and
held the driver and passenger hostage demanding a helicopter, money, and
drugs. Fortunately, Kemerovo oblast governor Aman Tuleev was able to talk
the terrorist into giving himself up. Twenty-three year-old Andrei Pangin
has spent two and a half years in jail for theft. He was intoxicated at
the time of the hi-jacking. The body of a man who died of gunshot wounds
was discovered in the area. Pangin may be a suspect in that case.

- A memorial service was held at the Ostankino television tower today to
honor the victims of last year's fire.

- Murmansk residents celebrated the 60th anniversary of the first polar
convoy of British ships that carried 15 bombers, 4,000 bombs, and 1.5 tons
of army boots to the city. Seventy-two British veterans came to join
their Russian comrades in greeting the HMS Campbelltown which, together
with the Russian coastguard ship Zadornyi, re-traced the original route.

- A congress of Russian Germans will be held in Moscow. Questions of
rehabilitating the victims of the 28 August 1941 order of the Supreme
Soviet of the USSR -- which liquidated the Autonomous Republic of the
Volga Germans and sent more than a million of Germans to Sibiria and
Kazakhstan -- will be discussed.

- The general prosecutor of the Yakutia oblast has reopened the case
against the officials of the Lensk housing commission. They are accused
of criminal negligence in the handing out of government housing
certificates.

- Divers in the Barents Sea have finished cutting the 23 openings in the
hull of the nuclear submarine.

- President Putin met with experts to discuss the Russian school system
today.

- An All-Russian Teachers Congress began today. Teachers councils occur
at the end of August every year, but now, teachers are able to communicate
with colleagues not only in the local schools, but also from around the
nation. For the second year, an "All-Russian Teachers Congress" is being
held on-line at http://www.pedsovet.alledu.ru.

- Russian "National Film Day" has been reborn - this holiday will now be
celebrated annually on 27 August. Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoi
noted that a good present for the Russian film industry will be the
doubling of state allowances. Many cinematographers predict that the
recent period of decline in the Russian film industry is over.

*******

#6
Russia to privatize 365 companies next year

MOSCOW, Aug 27 (AFP) -
The Russian government has earmarked 365 joint stock companies for full or
partial privatization next year, according to a program submitted to the
State Duma (lower house of parliament) and quoted by the Interfax news agency
Monday.

Three hundred and forty companies will be fully sold off, with the state
keeping a stake in the remaining 25, the agency said.

A wide variety of sectors are to see state holdings pass into private hands,
including energy, railways, steel production, telecommunications, precious
metals and even the military-industrial complex.

In the energy sector, the government plans to sell stakes in 110 companies,
including 19.68 percent in Slavneft oil company, 59.63 percent in
Surgutnefteprodukt oil company, 25.5 percent in the Tyumengazstroy gas
company and 38.41 percent in Vorkutaugol coal company.

In the rail sector the state intends to privatize stakes in several
production units, including 20 percent in Krasnodarpromzheldortrans.

Shares in several steel plants factories and regional telecommunications
companies are also to be sold off.

The military industrial complex will also see the state shed some of its
assets, with plans to privatize 20 percent of the Aviation instruments and
components group and 49 percent of Chelyabinsk technological equipment plant.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin said last week that surplus privatization
revenues were expected to bring the federal budget between 28 and 35 billion
rubles (960 million to 1.2 billion dollars) next year, instead of an initial
estimate of 18 billion rubles.

*******

#7
60 years on, Russia's Germans reclaim rights lost to Stalin

MOSCOW, Aug 27 (AFP) -
Russia's ethnic Germans gathered on Monday to reclaim rights stripped away 60
years ago when Stalin ordered their deportation to the east following Nazi
Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union.

"We are the last of Russia's peoples yet to be fully rehabilitated following
Stalinist repression," the Russian-German Association's president Vladimir
Bauer told a congress called to represent the country's million-strong German
population.

Invited to settle in Russian in the 18th century by empress Catherine II,
known as Catherine the Great -- herself a German by birth -- ethnic German
farmers moved into the Volga region where they preserved their identity and
were given their own autonomous republic after the 1917 Russian revolution.

But on August 28, 1941, two months after Nazi Germany's surprise attack on
the Soviet Union, Stalin ordered the German Volga Republic to be wound up and
deported ethnic Germans living in European Russia to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

They were not allowed to return to their native region until 1956.

Although the situation of ethnic Germans has improved to some extent since
then, a lot remains to be done, Bauer said.

"We doubt we can get our autonomous republic back in the coming years, but we
want to be granted cultural autonomy, meaning a federal status which would
allow us to preserve and develop our particular way of life and have our
schools where German would be taught," Bauer said.

The congress was also keen to obtain an official apology from the Russian
state, as well as full rehabilitation.

"Individual ethnic Germans who were wrongly accused of sabotage or treason
during the war have been rehabilitated, but our people as a whole has not,"
Bauer said.

He said he would like to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin -- a fluent
German-speaker -- to discuss the issue.

Ethnic Minorities Minister Alexander Blokhin, whose ministry in Moscow hosted
the congress, backed the ethnic Germans' cultural autonomy claim but was less
enthusiastic about the idea of an official apology.

"The idea is for Russian Germans to have cultural institutions with elected
representatives and a federal status, although these institutions would not
correspond to a specific territory," Blokhin said.

"Russian authorities want their Germans to feel comfortable in Russia," he
added.

Bauer noted that the issue was of major importance to Russia, since some two
million ethnic Germans have emigrated to Germany over the past 10 years, with
as few as one million estimated to remain.

Of those who do remain, only 10 to 15 percent are German-speakers, Bauer
noted, admitting that he himself did not speak the language fluently.

The German ambassador to Russia, Ernst-Joerg von Studnitz, a guest speaker at
the congress, addressed the delegates in Russian.

In 1997 Russia and Germany set up a joint program to support Russian Germans.

Russia has provided 76 million rubles (2.6 million dollars, 2.9 million
euros) to the program this year, Blokhin said, with Germany providing 35
million marks (16.3 million dollars, 17.9 million euros), according to von
Studnitz.

Despite some anti-German feeling in the territories where the community used
to live before being deported, most Russian political parties have expressed
sympathy for ethnic Germans' demands.

Even the Communists, Stalin's remote heirs, sent a telegram of support
Monday, and ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky drew applause when
he told delegates, in German: "Russians and Germans have always been
together."

*******

#8
Russia Seeks Plutonium Deal Delay
August 27, 2001
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

MOSCOW (AP) - A long-discussed U.S.-Russian plan to stop production of
weapons-grade plutonium in Russia has been stalled by funding shortages,
and the government said Monday that it wants the United States to agree to
postpone its implementation.

The agreement, signed in September 1997 by Vice President Al Gore and
Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, was hailed at the time as a
historic event and a big step in U.S. efforts to ensure that Moscow
safeguards and reduces its vast nuclear stockpile.

But it has already been delayed by disagreements over audits meant to
ensure U.S. money would be spent properly. Now Russia wants to push back
the schedule of the project to convert three plutonium-making reactors to
production of uranium for civilian power plants.

As it stands, the plan calls for two nuclear reactors in the Siberian city
of Seversk, once a closed city known as Tomsk-7, to stop producing
plutonium in 2002 and 2003, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

A third reactor in Zheleznogorsk - another formerly top-secret Siberian
city, called Krasnoyarsk-26 in Soviet times - was to stop in 2004.

But amid persistent funding problems, Russian Cabinet's information
department said Monday that Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has ordered the
Nuclear Power Ministry to negotiate an amendment to the deal with U.S.
officials.

It said the Seversk reactors would keep working through 2005, and the one
in Zheleznogorsk until the end of 2006.

In addition to producing plutonium, the reactors also provide electricity
and heat for residents of the cities, and the U.S.-Russian deal called for
the two countries to share the costs of building replacement power
facilities.

The proposed amendment, authorized by Kasyanov, also included a stipulation
that the United States would help modify reactors or build alternative
power facilities if funds are available. The government statement didn't
say when the amendment is expected to be signed.

Officials at the U.S. embassy in Moscow declined to comment.

Also Monday, Sen. Richard Lugar - a chief architect of deals to reduce and
safeguard nuclear stockpiles following the 1991 Soviet collapse - was
visiting Severodvinsk, a naval port on Russia's northern coast that is the
focus of efforts to dismantle scores of aging nuclear submarines with the
help of U.S. funding.

The Indiana Republican, who arrived in Russia on Sunday, has complained of
massive cuts in the programs designed to help Russia secure its vast cache
of nuclear weapons and material, which environmental groups have said pose
a major threat to the surrounding area.

He was inspecting a maintenance plant, U.S.-financed disposal projects and
a shipyard before heading back to Moscow. He planned to visit the Volga
River cities of Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan before leaving for neighboring
Ukraine later this week, the U.S. Embassy said.

*******

#9
time.com
August 27, 2001
'Kursk Salvage is an Adventurist Scam'
Vice Admiral Yevgeny Chernov believes Moscow is covering up the cause of the
submarine disaster. TIME's Yuri Zarakhovich asked him why
BY YURI ZARAKHOVICH

Vice-Admiral Yevgeni Chernov knows the pain and anguish of losing a nuclear
submarine. Once, as commander of the 1st Nuclear Submarine Flotilla of the
Soviet Union's Northern Fleet, Chernov kept his flag on the Komsomolets. In
April 1989, when Chernov was a professor at the Naval College, his former
flagship sank in the Norwegian Sea. For the last nine years, the 71-year-old
Hero of the Soviet Union who spent 33 years in nuclear submarines has been
heading the Charity Foundation in Memory of the Komsomolets
(echernov@online.ru). But Chernov today is focused on the fate of a more
recent Northern Fleet casualty, the Kursk, which he believes is being covered
up by the Russian authorities. He talked with TIME's Yuri Zarakhovich at his
modest office in St. Petersburg.

TIME: You have referred to the Kursk raising operation as "mystification and
profanation". Why?

Chernov: We expected an expert professional investigation as the basis for
decision-making. Instead, incompetent conmen came up with hasty decisions. We
said outright that it was an adventurist sham. They can't even have their
equipment moved to the place on time. But the weather in the area will get
prohibitive within a couple of weeks. The whole thing is doomed to fail. I
can't find decent words to describe all this. I can only suspect that they
never intended to raise the Kursk at all.

Why?

Those involved don't want the truth disclosed.

What is there to hide?

We were astonished that such a giant submarine found itself in shallow
waters. Charting the exercises zone was (Northern Fleet Chief of Staff
Vice-Admiral Mikhail) Motsak's responsibility. Himself a submariner, he
should have known better than that. Now, he is in charge of the raising
operation. Motsak and (Northern Fleet Commander Admiral Vyacheslav) Popov
were supposed to know where all their ships were. The ships' positions can be
easily restored, all the data is on the record.

But it has not been done?

Had it been done, we would have known what happened to the Kursk. Now, there
are three versions. A floating mine, which is nonsense. A collision with a
submarine, but there were no other submarines there. Or a collision with a
surface ship. Had they shown that there were no surface ships in the area,
this version could have been ruled out for good. But their failure to have
done so makes doubts linger.

The Norwegians registered two powerful explosions during the Kursk
disaster…

Not exactly the explosions. They registered two major seismic tremors. Such a
tremor could be caused by a heavy surface ship hitting the Kursk hull. The
brass hastened to show that the Petr Veliki heavy cruiser was in full order.
But The Petr Veliki was not even close to the place. The Admiral Kuznetsov
cruiser was.

Did they also inspect the Admiral Kuznetsov?

They claim so, but I don't know. There was no expert conclusion.

They have nine more subs of the Kursk type. Rear-Admiral Yuri Senatski, once
the Soviet Navy's chief rescue specialist says it's criminal to let them sail
if they don't know what happened to the Kursk.

Well, what if they do know?

Do they?

One may easily suppose so. There have been plenty of cases like this. They
knew damn well that the Komsomolets died, because they sent it out with an
untrained crew. But they have been concealing it for eleven years now.

Who handles the Kursk raising operation?

The Rubin Design Bureau. They design fine subs, but have no experience in
raising them. They tried once to raise the Komsomolets rescue capsule from
1650 meters, using a steel cable. As the cable was shortening, it lost its
resiliency and broke. They lost the capsule. Now, (Rubin's head, Academician
Igor) Spasski shows his magic tricks with cables and ship models in a test
pool to prove how swell his Kursk project is. It is as ridiculous to watch as
it is painful.

Why was the job assigned to the Rubin, then?

The President ordered the Kursk raised. But the President is not professional
in this field. He has to trust his advisers. But neither (Deputy Premier
Ilya) Klebanov, or (Russian Navy's C-in-C Vladimir) Kuroyedov are
professionals in this field either.

Did they consider bringing in someone like yourself?

I offered my services as a consultant, but was turned down. I asked Kuroyedov
to bring in (rescue specialist) Senatski. Kuroyedov was not even aware of his
existence. But they did not want us there.

You objected to their plan of cutting off the bow section?

We don't believe that it is necessary. The hole couldn't weaken the hull
badly enough to pose a risk to raising the whole submarine. Also, this hole
is the only "silent witness" of what happened. Making the cut through it will
destroy whatever forensic evidence there is. Anyway, trying to cut the eight
meter wide hull with a chain is ridiculous nonsense.

The Novye Izvestiya daily quoted a British diver last week as saying that the
diving team had been already told that the operation would be postponed until
May, 2002…

I'm sure that'll be the case. They'll claim the weather as an excuse. But in
fact, this is what ought to be done: Put the operation on hold until next
May. Do a serious professional expert brainstorming to assess the situation.
Use the winter to prepare, and then raise the Kursk and try to give honest
answers to all the painful questions. Instead, they're going ahead with this
rigmarole, wasting so much money.

Speaking of the money, how is your Komsomolets Charity Foundation doing?

In all the nine years of our existence we have been able to dole out only
850,000 rubles ($29,000) to help our 120 charges. That's less than one Kursk
family was assigned on the President's orders. Of course, the Kursk sailors
deserved that, but the Komsomolets sailors did not go to the sea fishing,
either. They went where their country sent them to do their duty. Now, we
have only 180,00 rubles ($6,120) left. Neither the state, nor any other
sources of support are available to us. I think we'll pay out whatever we
have left to the most needy children, and then we'll be forced to disband.

*******

#10
Moscow Times
August 28, 2001
No Longer Fitting Into the Picture
By Yevgenia Albats

August has become an ominous season for Russian politics. This year — even
though the month has thankfully so far been free of crises and catastrophes
— is no exception. Two major events happened, which were closely connected
to one another.

The first was President Vladimir Putin's denunciation of the country over
which he presides. By not saying a single word on the occasion of the 10th
anniversary of the August 1991 coup that spelled the dissolution of the
Soviet empire and the creation of the sovereign Russian Federation, Putin
has made it perfectly clear that he does not acknowledge those key events
in Russian and global history. By extension, then, he also does not
recognize the country that emerged from these events and has aligned
himself with those who dream of restoring the Soviet Union. Instead of
participating in the commemoration, Putin met with Russian Orthodox
clerics, sending another telling message: He has found an ideology to
replace Communism. Russian Orthodoxy — traditionally an official church and
a pillar of support for the tzars since the mid-17th century — has long
been fighting to secure the spot vacated by the Propaganda Department of
the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. Now, it seems to have it.

A second event happened a week earlier, but sends a no less important
signal. The president signed a decree establishing a powerful new monopoly
— a state-owned Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network.
Previously, the system had been split between two ministries. This new
state monopoly, by virtue of its control over the delivery of national
television signals, has the power to manage the perception of reality for
the entire country. De facto, the Soviet Gosteleradio, which once
controlled all national networks and broadcasting facilities, has been reborn.

The Kremlin's motivations are clear enough, in view of the upcoming
parliamentary and presidential elections. Putin wants to make sure that
there is no way for an unsanctioned alternative party or presidential
candidate to emerge. The Kremlin remembers perfectly well that the virtual
reality of the media made Putin president and created his Unity party,
which is the second-largest faction in the State Duma.

However, Putin's decree, which has long been lobbied by Press Minister
Mikhail Lesin — co-founder of the company Video International, which holds
a near monopoly on the sale of advertising on the major channels, including
state television — conceals several other layers of significance as well.
It signals primarily that Putin's promises — such as the commitments to
distance himself from the oligarchs, to divorce the state from business, to
establish equal rights and opportunities for all players on the market and
to root out the corruptive aspects of the previous regime — were nothing
but populist rhetoric.

Lesin, as the new CEO of this strange Russian version of a "free press," is
a pure symbol of these false promises. I first crossed paths with Lesin
back in 1996 when I learned that he — the former advertising manager of
Boris Yeltsin's 1996 presidential campaign who, immediately after Yeltsin's
victory, was appointed deputy chief of the presidential administration —
had opened a thriving private business right out of the administration's
offices. He was selling videotapes containing an exclusive interview with
Yeltsin in which the president first publicly announced that he would have
to undergo heart bypass surgery and asked the country to prepare itself.

Soon after I wrote this story, Lesin was fired. But he didn't sink away
into oblivion. Several months later, he was appointed one of the top
managers at the state television and radio company, which runs the RTR
channel. Lesin's company, Video International, held — and still holds — the
exclusive rights to sell RTR's advertising time. Lesin denies that he still
holds a stake in Video International and generally prefers to refer to
himself as its "co-founder." Since that time, Lesin has become a powerful
and indispensable member of what has come to be referred to in the press as
"The Family."

Earlier this year, the Audit Chamber uncovered numerous indications of the
misappropriation of state funds related to RTR, including tax evasion,
under the table payments and the like. As a former employee of RTR, I can
add a couple of other charges, including falsified contracts, cheating,
violation of contractual obligation, funneling money via affiliated
companies and that sort of thing.

However, this investigation was quickly swept under the rug. Lesin, who by
then was already press minister, came through it untainted. On the
contrary, he has emerged as the leader of an ongoing project that is called
"Improving Russia's Image." Clearly, Putin has his own views of Lesin.

The next time that Lesin emerged into the spotlight was when he signed his
name to the infamous "freedom for shares" deal, in which Media-MOST owner
Vladimir Gusinsky agreed to relinquish his control of NTV in exchange for
his personal freedom. By orchestrating the successful campaign against NTV
and by eliminating two powerful competitors in Gusinsky and Boris
Berezovsky, Lesin became Russia's exclusive information oligarch.

Lesin's next target was German Gref, economic development and trade
minister and the main proponent of reforming and streamlining the
bureaucracy. In violation of the concept of the law on licensing that was
aimed to prevent bureaucrats from regulating businesses, Lesin has managed
to preserve for his Press Ministry the rights to constrain competitors and
to prevent newcomers from entering the fields where his interests lie. In
August, Putin signed an abridged version of the licensing law, which is a
far cry from what had originally been planned.

Combining the roles of aggressive businessman and high-ranking state
official, Lesin is the embodiment of what went wrong with Russia's
post-Soviet reforms. It is evident that Putin has no will or desire to put
these things right. To paraphrase George Orwell, the state motto continues
to be that "All oligarchs are equal, but some are more equal than others."

That is why Russia has lost its chance to become a civilized, democratic
country — at least, anytime soon. You don't have to be Nostradamus to
foresee what will happen over the next year in Russian politics. It will be
laden with imperialistic rhetoric. A new state ideology will be
institutionalized. Nationalism will flourish. A more skillful version of
Soviet propaganda will dominate the airwaves and the major national
newspapers. Transaction costs for small and medium-sized businesses will
creep up.

I should confess. I do not fit into this picture. My self-exile to the
English-speaking press has finally reached its limits as well. I have been
writing this column now for nearly two years, and I loved it. But I need to
take a break now in order to distance myself from the everyday of Russian
politics, to think about what happened and why. I need to think about what
happened to people like me, people who 10 years ago were willing to lay
down their lives for democracy. I need to think about what happened to
Russian journalism, to which I no longer belong.

Everyone is entitled, at least once in their lives, to retreat into
monastic seclusion. I will be there until I find some other place. Or a way
out.

Yevgenia Albats is an independent, Moscow-based journalist. This is her
last column for The Moscow Times.

*******

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