August 28, 2001

This Date's Issues:   5413 • 5414

Johnson's Russia List
#5414
28 August 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. David Rowell: We Are Diminished. (re the eXile)
2. Richard Tomas: re: 5413-eXile Farewell,Taibbi/Press Review.
3. Moskovsky Komsomolets: THE LABORATORY OF FEAR. Boris Berezovsky is back in the spotlight - what next?
4. St. Petersburg Times: Galina Stolyarova, Poll Highlights Media's Weakness.
5. Moscow Times: Maxim Ognev, Site Gives a Glimpse Into Russia's Prisons.
6. Moscow Times: Matt Bivens, Congress on a Shoestring.
7. AP: Former Congressman warns about Russian pollution.
8. Trud: Alexander Pikayev, RUSSIAN-U.S. ABM CONSULTATIONS: MORE DOUBTS THAN HOPES.
9. AFP: Kyrgyzstan's radioactive waste poses threat to central Asia.
10. eurasianet.org: Anatol Lieven, THE CAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA TEN YEARS AFTER THE SOVIET COLLAPSE.
11. Vedomosti: Zoya Kaika, BEING ATTRACTIVE DOESN'T HELP. Russian regions should learn to emphasize their strengths. Herman Gref's ministry comes up with a new program and strategy.
12. AFP: Baltics brush aside Visegrad NATO ultimatum.
13. The Electronic Telegraph: Marcus Warren, Email from Russia.]

*******

#1
From: "David M Rowell" <David@Rossia.com>
Subject: We Are Diminished
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001

David (and Matt, Mark, et al)

JRL has always captured a broad cross-section of opinion, but none has ever
been as far into the distant and lonely reaches of your net as the various
eXile pieces you have featured. Controversial - almost always. Cluttered
with ad hominem attacks, the 'F' word and 'cheap shots' - almost without
exception! To many of your readers, the style was offensive, and I suspect,
the discomfort which a careful read no doubt engendered was more offensive
still.

But, through it all, the eXile writers have shared a vision of Russia which
has been starkly at odds with 'conventional wisdom'. They have pricked more
than a few balloons, inflated by pompous nonsense and masquerading as news;
but which the eXile delighted in exposing as the tunnel-vision selective
reporting that it was, with none finer than Matt Taibi's swan-song piece in
JRL 5413.

We are diminished by this passing of an era in the reporting of the complex
and contradictory phenomenon that is Russia today. My thanks to the eXile
team for their efforts over the last four years, and of course my thanks
also to you, too, David, for ensuring their voice had a wider distribution.
Who will now take their place?

*******

#2
Subject: re: 5413-eXile Farewell,Taibbi/Press Review
From: "Richard J. Tomas" <62401@62.fesco.ru>
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001

I'd like to comment on Matt Taibbi's "Press Review" in No.5413. The last
sentence in the piece seems to suggest that, to have even a chance at
"getting it right" in an account of what Russia has "become" during past
decade, you (like he?) have to have been here for most of it. Well... I
moved to Vladivostok in the summer of 1992, have spent just six weeks
outside of Russia since then, have traveled extensively around the
country, have founded and run a small publishing company (that failed),
have been working for a year as a marketing manager for a large Russian
shipping company, and have a wife and young daughter, neither of whom
speak English.

I read many of the articles that Matt lambastes and would not disagree
with his assessments. It was difficult to believe that Andrew Jack was
writing for the Financial Times, as the article revealed an at times
profound ignorance of the actual economics of post-Soviet Russia. And all
the talk of "gallivanting about overseas"... When you see, when you know
from the inside, how so many of those who have plenty of money to throw
around actually came by it... this is nothing to hold up as an example of
"progress made." And there is something more than slightly troubling about
Moscow's rapacious self-indulgence over the past decade (and about any
news article that trumpets the transformation). Then again, the only thing
that's really new about Moscow's willingness to pamper itself at the
expense of the rest of the country are the details, the surface, what you
see this time around. The phenomenon itself is exceedingly old. And there
can be no doubt about what has happened to public health, public
education, public utilities, public transportation, almost anything at
all. We know full well how most of the funds, and there were funds
aplenty, available for these purposes were actually "invested."

I recall the words of a student in a seminar that I gave at a local
university in 1993: "In Russia, this is the time of money." What she said
was true then, true now, I think, and it explains a lot. Like fathers and
sons, among others, being electrocuted while trying to steal cable for its
non-ferrous metal content. And though I would agree with Matt's
implication that ruthlessness and despair are side-by-side now as hard,
seemingly tireless forces in post-Soviet life, I think that in tearing
into the misguided gropings of the "in and out in three days" journalists
(and the accidentally (?) ironic comments of certain re-pats), Matt goes
too far.Those four high school students, in and of themselves, no more
typify or symbolize what Russia has "become" than do Mercedes Benz limos,
mansion-like "cottages," or business men and women lying dead of bullet
wounds in front of hotels or in the stairwells of their apartment
buildings.

Russia is not a savage beast consuming its own young. Russia is a sluggish
beast that treasures its young, but a beast that just doesn't quite know
what to do with itself these days, that doesn't always quite recognize
itself in the mirror these days, that lurches about trying this, having a
bit of that, making a lot of noise and feeling... exceedingly unsure of
itself.

For many, many people, life really hasn't changed very much at all... not
yet. Some are doing rather better, others rather worse... what else is
new? Russian hasn't "become" anything yet... beneath the surface ... It
is what it was. Restraints were stripped away and with them went social
supports, whose absence has so much to do with that certain longing for
(at least the better aspects) of the recent past that you feel and hear
expressed around you every day you live here. The inertia built up during
the decades of Soviet life has yet to play itself out, and it may drag on
for another generation or so.The Party may be shadow of its former self,
but the graduates of Party Higher School are still at the helm... at most
of the helms, great and small, of power, both state and corporate, all
around the country. Some of them are only now closing in on 40. This is
going to take time!

So, it ain't all good and it ain't all bad, and it's the place where I
will live out my days. What matters most to me is how people treat each
other, how people who know each other treat each other, hour after hour,
day after day. Colleagues, neighbors, family, friends. (Sure, there are
exceptions, but they don't change the rule.) That's what I discovered
about this place when I was first here as a university student 30 years
ago, what made me want to live here, and what keeps me here now, makes me
want to stay longer, the longer I stay. The "dour public face," that one
so often reads about... That's true enough, for the most part, but, then
again, who cares? Is there a requirement, perhaps somewhere in that dusty
tome "How One is Meant to Live One's Life" that people smile at strangers
and wish them a nice day? ("But isn't that somehow better?" I don't
know... is it?)

Yes, there are many horror stories that can be told, but there are horror
stories to tell in and about any society. I'm no romantic, nor am I blind.
I just live here... almost every day of my life. My wife and daughter and
I live in the same 48 square-meter apartment that Lena and I shared as
newlyweds. Most of our neighbors are the same, the buildings around us
look about the same... new ones go up, others slowly crumble... The
streets crack and eventually get fixed. My wife's brother and his family
live in a small coal town in Kemerovskaya Oblast... It's pretty much the
same there. They've actually had a bit of a revival the past two years
after scraping along hard in the mid-1990s.

I suggest we all do this: let's wait at least another 30 years or so
before trying again to answer the question: "what has Russia become since
1991?" And when that time finally comes, let's talk about Russia in terms
of Russia and not in terms... of anything or anywhere else. A few words by
Bob Dylan come to mind: "Don't criticize what you can't understand." Not
bad advice.

Richard Thomas
Vladivostok

PS - I'm sorry the eXile is closing down. Always a good read, and Matt, I
think, writes intelligent, powerful prose.

*******

#3
Moskovsky Komsomolets
August 27, 2001
THE LABORATORY OF FEAR
Boris Berezovsky is back in the spotlight - what next?
Author: not indicated
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
BORIS BEREZOVSKY IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE LEAKED RUSSIA'S DEEP DARK
SECRETS TO THE AMERICANS. WASHINGTON IS SAID TO BE CONSIDERING HOW THIS INFORMATION MIGHT BEST BE USED. THREE POLITICAL OBSERVERS ATTEMPT TO PREDICT WHAT BORIS BEREZOVSKY'S NEXT MOVE MIGHT BE.

EXILED OLIGARCH BORIS BEREZOVSKY IS BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT. REPORTS
FROM ABROAD INDICATE THAT BEREZOVSKY IS NOW PROTECTED BY A US WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM AFTER GIVING EVIDENCE TO THE US LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES ABOUT THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT. IN OTHER WORDS, BEREZOVSKY IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE LEAKED RUSSIA'S DEEP DARK SECRETS TO THE AMERICANS. WASHINGTON IS SAID TO BE CONSIDERING HOW THIS INFORMATION MIGHT BEST BE USED. THE UPCOMING RUSSIAN-AMERICAN TALKS ON MISSILE DEFENSE WOULD PROVIDE A PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE USE OF THE INFORMATION. PERHAPS THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT WOULD THEN BE MORE AMENDABLE. SHOULD RUSSIA EXPECT A FLOOD OF INCRIMINATING MATERIALS THIS AUTUMN? SHOULD WE EXPECT TO SEE BEREZOVSKY IN RUSSIA EVER AGAIN?

Aleksei Podberezkin, Director of the Contemporary Socialism
Institute: I don't think Boris Berezovsky has any incriminating
evidence to impart. This is another exaggeration, and another attempt
on his part to launch a political provocation. Berezovsky is true to
his principles: in order to be taken seriously, you should prove every
time that you can have someone appointed or dismissed, or to make
something earth-shattering happen. His influence is limited to his
former proximity to Boris Yeltsin, which was only real for a short
time. I don't think he poses any kind of threat to Putin or his regime
at present. I once raised the issue of Berezovsky in a conversation
with a senior Kremlin official, and he replied: "What can this guy do?
Forget it." I think he was correct.

Ilya Konstantinov, Chairman of the Executive Council of the
Spiritual Heritage movement: I don't rule out the possibility that
Berezovsky may indeed have some incriminating materials. Unfortunately
for him, this is a very unfavorable time to disseminate them. Most
Russian citizens simply wouldn't believe him. The people are not yet
tired of Putin. If Berezovsky is a serious businessman, he will sit on
his information for the time being. He is not a fighter against
tyrants, or a "Brutus versus Caesar" figure. Berezovsky is a gifted
adventurer who is bound to remain in exile until there is a dramatic
turnaround in Russian politics. Politics is a kind of marketplace. It
is a market of ideas, parties, and leaders. Unless Berezovsky is
absolutely certain he can sell whatever he thinks he has for a high
price, he will steer clear of this market.

Konstantin Borovoi, former Duma deputy: To fight the regime,
Berezovsky does not have to come to Russia and disseminate
incriminating materials here. Spreading truthful information in the
West and via the Russian media will suffice. Actually, no new
incriminating evidence is required. All he has to do is tell the
people the truth about what has been happening in Russia. We could be
talking about another wave of emigration from Russia - initiated by
Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky. This is an active wave of emigres,
something the Kremlin will find hard to fight. At a reception
organized by the US State Department, Putin once said that Gusinsky
was a criminal who ought to be extradited. The Americans pretended not
to hear him. This was like a slap in the face - and I don't think
Putin is eager for another. This means that he will not demand
Berezovsky's extradition.

*******

#4
St. Petersburg Times
28 August 2001
Poll Highlights Media's Weakness
By Galina Stolyarova
STAFF WRITER

Twelve percent of St. Petersburg journalists "regularly" produce stories
involving hidden advertising, according to a survey conducted by the
locally based Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Scientists
earlier this year. A further 18 percent said that they produce such stories
"occasionally," and 37 percent said that they had done so "more than once."

Between March and May, the institute surveyed 100 local journalists and 300
of their colleagues across Russia, asking a wide range of questions
concerning journalistic ethics, practices and business.

"These figures indicate how easy it is to manipulate journalists in
Russia," said Tatyana Protasenko, senior researcher at the institute who
conducted the survey. "It is difficult for them to resist financial
temptations because, just like most people, they have rather modest incomes."

However, not everyone blamed the poor state of the Russian economy for the
collapse of Russian journalism. Forty-seven percent of St. Petersburg
journalists and 32 percent of regional journalists considered "material
problems" to be a major obstacle for Russian journalism. Almost exactly the
same percentage in both categories named "the lack of professionalism among
journalists" as a principle problem.

"Journalists themselves are also often to blame. They themselves have
destroyed their image as defenders of liberties. One does not have to be a
very clever reader to tell that an article has been paid for," said Diana
Kachalova, political editor of the local daily Nev skoye Vremya.

According to Nail Bashirov, editor of the newspaper MIG in the southern
city of Astrakhan, regional authorities are often successful in their
efforts to entice journalists to provide favorable coverage with financial
inducements.

The survey also revealed that journalists suffer from the profession's lack
of prestige. Only 5 percent of local journalists and 8 percent of their
regional colleagues believe that the mass media are powerful enough to
force the authorities to respond. Twenty percent of local journalists said
that the profession's influence had declined in recent months, while a
further 15 percent said that the idea that the media has influence is just
a myth created by the media itself.

Vladimir Osinsky, head of the Television and Radio Department of the
Journalism Department at St. Petersburg State University, said one of the
major complaints he hears from his former students is the lack of response
from those involved in decision-making.

"Stories on social issues intended to help people provoke no reaction from
the authorities, thus making reporters feel worthless," Osinsky said. "The
result is that journalists are trying to avoid writing about things they
know should be changed but cannot help in changing."

However, journalists - especially provincial journalists - are lucky if the
authorities merely ignore them. Forty-nine percent of regional journalists
said that they had been personally involved in court cases because of their
articles, with local authorities or their surrogates often filing the
complaint. Only 20 percent of St. Petersburg journalists said that they had
been involved in court cases.

In many cases, a lawsuit is particularly arduous for journalists because
they tend to go through numerous phases and hearings.

"The reason behind [the difference] is that [in the regions] there are
fewer players on the field, usually just a couple of newspapers and a
television station," Protasenko said. "Naturally, local authorities feel
very uncomfortable if they don't have all their potential critics under
their control."

St. Petersburg and Moscow journalists who run up against the authorities
face other problems, notably restricted access to information.

Natalya Bubnova, a reporter for the St. Petersburg bureau of Russian State
Television, RTR, said that authorities punish newspapers and broadcast
outlets by limiting their access to key events.

"Our channel used to be having trouble getting accreditation to some
important city events," Bubnova said. "We were seen as an 'anti-Yakovlev'
channel, too critical of [Governor Vla di mir] Yakovlev."

The survey asked journalists what the primary role of the regional
super-governors that President Vladimir Pu tin appointed last March should
be. More than 50 percent of respondents in both categories said "assisting
journalists to obtain access to information at all levels."

In St. Petersburg, local journalists criticized Northwest Region Governor
General Viktor Cherkesov, with less than 5 percent saying that he
"regularly conducts meetings with the press." Nearly 14 percent of
journalists nationally said this about their super-governors.

Asked about their evaluation of Putin over the first year of his
presidency, 45 percent of local journalists and 61 percent of regional
journalists judged him either "favorably" or "somewhat favorably."
One-quarter of St. Petersburg journalists rated him "negatively," while
just 3 percent of regional journalists did.

Journalists also pointed to the disintegration of the country's
journalistic community as an obstacle.

"Journalists are divided into those serving the state - and this group,
unfortunately, is the majority - and those trying to be independent,"
Bashirov said.

Osinsky said that it is getting harder to train students to have a healthy
corporate spirit.

*******

#5
Moscow Times
28 August 2001
Site Gives a Glimpse Into Russia's Prisons
By Maxim Ognev
Special to The Moscow Times

With 924,000 people in jail, Russia has the second-largest prison
population in the world. Over the years, a prison subculture has developed
with its own language, symbols and rituals — and a web site has arrived to
tell us what it's like inside.

Suitably gloomy, www.ypka.org is decorated in black and gray and bears a
hooded figure that mutates into a police officer and back. Ypka is the
Cyrillic spelling of urka, slang for prisoner. "Hi Guys! Our brigade is
happy to welcome you to our web site," says the homepage, "If you have the
right orientation."

Journalist Grigory Pasko, who spent more than 1 1/2 years in prison on
espionage charges before being released in 1999, discusses life on the
inside in "Pryanik," posted in the Stories section of the site. Pryanik
means a simple peasant bakery, but in prison slang it is a first-time inmate.

"In a cell designed for 6 to 12, they normally keep from 25 to 40. It is
cramped and stinky, and there is a chronic deficit of water," writes Pasko.
"Enter the cell, say hello, call your name and the number of the article
[in the Criminal Code] you are charged with," Pasko writes, describing the
prison initiation ceremony. "The cell should have a chief [of prisoners].
He will ask you a lot of questions to find out who you really are."

The Advice page gives a few helpful words before heading to jail, ranging
from the obvious — "never get caught" — to the more useful — "count only on
yourself" and "don't lie unless necessary, especially if you know that what
you say can be checked out."

"Trust nobody including police; inmates — they may be set up by police,"
the Advice page continues. "[Police] will try to persuade you, beat you up,
persuade you and beat you up again. And this cycle continues over and over.
They [police] have plenty of time and nothing to do but entertain themselves."

The tattoo gallery could be the most insightful reflection into criminal
culture. Every tattoo has a meaning: a rank in the criminal system, life
experience or a criminal profile.

The site gives some 100 tattoos along with explanations. A young woman
sitting on a coin is described as meaning "Don't love money — it will kill.
Don't love women — they will deceive. Love God." An eagle sitting on a rock
is not for everyone — only someone who has spent many years in prison and
is respected by the criminal hierarchy is allowed to carry it.

Prisoners even have their own language to keep outsiders in the dark. But
the site clues us in with a dictionary of some 500 words, where you can
find such entries as "academy," which means a prison, "doctor," which means
lawyer and "hemorrhoid," which means bad luck. The dictionary will soon be
available in English.

******

#6
Moscow Times
28 August 2001
Congress on a Shoestring
By Matt Bivens
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a Washington-based
fellow of The Nation Institute [www.thenation.com].

WASHINGTON — American politics these days has a distinctly New
Russian-oligarchic feel. Legislators gut a movement to exile corporate
money from politics and then keynote $10,000-a-plate dinners; the president
demands more arsenic in our drinking water, an odd enthusiasm shared solely
by a few checkbooks.

All of which makes a guy like Dennis Kucinich that much more intriguing.
Kucinich, a 54-year-old Democrat from the mid-Western state of Ohio, has
repeatedly been elected to the U.S. Congress — without advertising.

"My first election, in 1996, I had a good grass-roots organization,"
Kucinich recalled in an interview. "We did a limited amount of TV
[advertising]. In '98 we did no TV, no radio, no newspapers, no pollsters —
just signs and literature. And we did it again in 2000."

In 1996, Kucinich won 49 percent of his district's vote. In 1998 he won 67
percent. Last year — 75 percent.

Well, it's not quite that simple. The AFL-CIO, America's largest union, ran
its own 1996 ads supporting Kucinich. But still, to get to Congress without
going hat-in-hand to America's corporations is a remarkable feat.

A Croatian-American, Kucinich represents a working class chunk of the city
of Cleveland that is home to Poles, Russians and Romanians. And he knows
how to play to his Slavic brothers: Check out his web site,
www.house.gov/kucinich/info/info_index.htm, and you'll see surprisingly
prominent links to manufacturers and sellers of kielbasa, and a pledge to
bring polka and bowling to Washington D.C. You'll also see a fat plug for
Sherrill's Restaurant and Bakery — Capitol Hill's answer to Moscow's
Starlite Diner — where Kucinich eats breakfast every morning.

Kucinich also wins because he's seen to be fighting for his constituency.
He has secured government funding to route trains around, not through, the
Cleveland suburbs, for example, and has fought the phone company's plan to
divide an Ohio town into two area codes.

But one of his biggest trump cards is a decision he made in 1977 — back
when, at 31, he was the in-your-face "boy mayor" of Cleveland. Mayor
Kucinich dug in his heels to prevent a banks-demanded privatization of the
city's power company, Muny Light. The banks had nothing to do with the
company, and for years they'd been routinely extending $15 million in
municipal debt. But the banks really wanted to see that privatization — and
they punished Kucinich for his obstinacy by taking the city into default.

"Bankrupt" Cleveland was derided as "the mistake by the lake," and Kucinich
was finished. Even one of his most ardent supporters, Cleveland Press
columnist Don Robertson described him as a "brutal, vain, yappy little
demagogue" and "an obnoxious little twerp."

But two decades later, while Californians fret over energy costs, Cleveland
residents don't. Cleveland magazine calculated a few years ago that not
privatizing Muny Light has saved its ratepayers $195 million over 10 years.
Not surprisingly, they've suddenly rediscovered the boy mayor.

Kucinich's latest project: A bill to establish a U.S. Department of Peace,
whose secretary would sit in Cabinet meetings side-by-side with the State
and Defense secretaries.

Kucinich says the idea in part came to him when he and other members of
Congress and of the Russian State Duma met in 1999 to talk about the NATO
bombing of Yugoslavia. He recalls an exchange with Vladimir Lukin, the
Yabloko party co-founder, who had been quoted worrying the war might lead
to "nuclear escalation." "I sat across from [Lukin] at a table and I said,
'You know, we don't have to go back to those days of threatening to blow
each other up!'"

George Washington himself once suggested setting up a Peace Department, but
the idea is probably dead-on-arrival in the Republican-controlled House.

Still, Kucinich is having fun with it. He proposes spending 1 percent of
the Defense Department's budget on the Peace Department — which confronts
us with the astounding sums routinely handed the Pentagon. About 50 percent
of discretionary U.S. spending goes to defense, or $343 billion in 2002.
(Discretionary spending is the amount Congress gets to play with;
non-discretionary spending means fixed payments for things like Social
Security pensions.)

Taking 1 percent from the Pentagon would mean $3.43 billion for peace — or
nearly half of the $8.35-billion Russian budget for war.

*******

#7
Former Congressman warns about Russian pollution
August 27, 2001

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Russian oil companies pay little attention to the
fragile Arctic environment, continuing to pollute the same area that has
seen one of the world's largest oil spills, a former U.S. Congressman said
Monday.

Thomas B. Evans, a Republican who served six years as a member of the House
of Representatives from Delaware, has visited the area around the town of
Usinsk which in 1994 saw a ruptured pipeline spewing oil into rivers and
around pristine tundra.

The spill north of Usinsk, some 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) northeast of
Moscow, was estimated at between 30 million and 80 million gallons -- about
three to eight times of the tanker Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

The World Bank has designated $100 million to finance the Usinsk cleanup.

Evans, who has been active in environmental protection issues, says the
1994 spill has been largely cleaned, but voiced concern about Russian oil
companies in the area continuing to disregard environmental safety in the
run for profits.

Speaking at a news conference, Evans said he saw multiple minor spills
during his trip to the region which ended Monday.

"They were relatively small, ... but if you have enough of them the
cumulative impact is pretty great and very damaging," Evans said.

*******

#8
Trud
August 28, 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
RUSSIAN-U.S. ABM CONSULTATIONS: MORE DOUBTS THAN HOPES
Alexander PIKAYEV, Moscow's Carnegie Center

Russian-US contacts at a high level became unprecedentedly
intensive over the entire July-August 2001 period. As a matter
of fact, the delegations of our two countries keep visiting
Moscow or Washington virtually every week. Four leading members
of the US cabinet have visited the Russian capital during the
last three weeks; by the way, Moscow was visited by fewer US
officials last year.

The Republican Administration's representatives continue
to praise the Russian leadership, also hailing those apparently
successful Russian reforms. The President of the United States
has, at long last, noted 10 years after the end of the Cold War
that Russia is no longer perceived as an enemy. Moreover, quite
a few influential statesmen keep saying that Moscow can join
various Western organizations some time from now. Incidentally,
Russia can even hope to join NATO, they claim.

Have Russian-US relations received a new lease of life?
Besides, can such relations be elevated to the level of allied
relations? Alas, there are still more doubts than hopes at this
stage.

High-ranking US emissaries continue to arrive in Russia
empty-handed. The US side has so far failed to completely
analyze the relevant nuclear-weapons policy and that in the
field of ABM programs. By all looks, this process, which is
being delayed considerably because of domestic differences,
won't be completed before October 2001.

Washington is obviously unable to say whether it can
reduce its strategic nuclear forces down to 1,500 first-line
warheads (or even less), as is suggested by Russia, or whether
it's willing to prune such arsenals down to 2,000 warheads (as
the US top brass suggests). Moreover, specific methods for
scaling down such arsenals remain largely unclear. Will
redundant weapons be destroyed? Or will surplus warheads be
removed from ICBMs, bombers and SSBNs and stored at nearby
depots? Well, these are really good questions. If necessary,
such warheads and missiles can be re-deployed on their
respective carriers in no time at all. To cut a long story
short, it's still unclear whether the United States will agree
to real-life, rather than purely tentative, cuts.

The situation with anti-missile technologies is even more
vague. The most advanced technologies have reached experimental
stage to date. Such R&D projects can still be implemented
within the framework of the ABM Treaty, which doesn't ban
strategic ABM systems. On the contrary, that document, which
limits their scale, doesn't deal with non-strategic ballistic
missiles.
However, "rogue" Third World regimes can adopt such missiles,
in the first place.

Even the Alaskan ABM system, which caused quite a stir not
so long ago, can be deployed in line with the afore-mentioned
ABM Treaty, provided that no more than 15 missile interceptors
are deployed. Consequently, that area can be regarded as an
authorized testing site in accordance with the ABM treaty's
provisions. Then why should that document be scrapped within
several months and not years, as Washington says? Wouldn't it
be better to put off all these dubious decisions and to gain
time for serious dialogue, after the US side finally clarifies
its own intentions?

So, what can be discussed in the course of current
consultations at a time when the United States is still unable
to elaborate its position? Don't such consultations amount to a
mere propaganda trick, which is called on to calm down the
Democrat-controlled Senate and Western European allies, who are
worried as a result of the new US Administration's "cavalry
charges" against several highly important international
agreements? Any other opinion seems unlikely at a time when
high-placed US officials arriving in Moscow confine themselves
to preaching the useful nature of the NMD (National Missile
Defense). For its own part, the Russian military delegation in
Washington is being lectured on America's ABM programs for many
consecutive hours.

One gets the impression that quite a few US officials
considered such bilateral consultations to be a fail-safe
scenario. Their unsuccessful outcome would make it possible to
accuse Moscow of being intractable and to blame the Russian
side for that fiasco. Consequently, Washington would find it
easier to unilaterally withdraw from the ABM Treaty. At the
same time, such consultations enable the United States to talk
Russia into making unilateral concessions. You see, Moscow's
possible approval of the Republican Administration's NMD plans
would make it possible to more effectively fight critics both
in the United States and elsewhere at a time when Washington
has been "outnumbered" on this issue. Such approval would also
cause a Russian-Chinese split, all the more so as the US side
is really worried about the Moscow-Beijing relationship. The
latest praises and approving gestures can apparently be
explained by such considerations.

Frankly speaking, one can understand the US position
perfectly well. Why should Washington conduct serious dialogue
with Moscow, all the more so as such dialogue calls for certain
reciprocal concessions? Many Americans believe that Russia has
been unprecedentedly weakened; in fact, its GDP is smaller than
the entire US defense budget. Russia annually produces just six
new ICBMs. Therefore Russia's nuclear-deterrence forces would
eventually shrink a great deal, in case such trends persist,
and after this country scraps obsolete nuclear weapons.
Consequently, the remainder would be effectively intercepted by
that far from perfect NMD system (that would be deployed by
that time). US nuclear plans should not apparently be modified
at a time when Russian nuclear forces will dwindle to
unprecedentedly low levels in any case. Therefore the United
States would find it senseless to abide by existing agreements,
which can be discarded with impunity.

Nevertheless, Russia's agreement to hold consultations on
strategic offensive arms and ABM issues seems to be only
possible option because those Americans advocating a fast-paced
withdrawal from the ABM Treaty would otherwise find it easier
to accuse Moscow of intractability and to toe their own line.
Apart from that, Washington's interest in a possible Russian
consent provides the latter with a number of trump cards,
which, in turn, make it possible to ensure a reciprocal US
response. And, finally, it would be expedient to try and catch
Washington red-handed and to explain in the course of the
incipient intensive dialogue that the Cold War would finally
recede into the past together with NATO (that continues to
expand in the direction of Russia), the Jackson-Vanick
amendment (that bans the importation of state-of-the-art
technologies by Russia) and Western markets (that are off
limits to Russian products), rather than together with the ABM
Treaty. Should Moscow fail to explain this, then it would still
be able to prove that any possible unilateral Russian
concessions are now history.

******

#9
Kyrgyzstan's radioactive waste poses threat to central Asia

MAILI SUU, Kyrgyzstan, Aug 28 (AFP) -
The rolling slopes which loom over this Kyrgyz town, on the banks of a
swift-flowing river, harbour a hidden threat to the livelihood of millions
of residents of the central Asian region.

The mounds that surround Maili Suu, a town of 23,000 people in southern
Kyrgyzstan, house no fewer than 23 radioactive waste sites, each
susceptible to natural disasters which could wash toxic material into the
region's water supply.

A catastrophe of this kind would not only devastate Maili Suu, where
children bathe and men fish in the river on hot summer days, but also sweep
waste through neighbouring Uzbekistan, said Nematulla Mambetov, the area's
chief doctor.

Some 50 waste sites were inherited by this impoverished central Asian state
of five million people that once formed one of the Soviet Union's most
isolated outposts, experts say.

Better known for its nomadic traditions and sheep-herding, Kyrgyzstan also
produced weapons-grade uranium at a processing plant on the banks of the
Maili Suu River from 1946 to 1968.

Now Maili Suu -- the name translates as greasy water -- is home to 13
mining dumps and some of the country's most dangerous radioactive waste
sites, which are around 50 years old and contain some 1.9 million cubic
meters of waste.

Covered with a layer of gravel and sand, the sites have been subject to
frequent landslides since 1992 in an area prone to flooding and high
seismic activity.

"One fine day the site might break up and be washed away. It will poison
everything... but most of the damage would be to Uzbekistan," said Mykola
Melenevsky, ecology officer with the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) office in Osh.

The waste could be swept into the Syr Darya river, which feeds the Ferghana
Valley, straddling Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and one of Central
Asia's most overcrowded and intensively farmed areas.

Residents have thwarted efforts to seal off the sites for their own safety
by stealing the metal fencing and allowing their cattle to graze on
territory where radioactivity levels are far above the norm.

According to OSCE monitors, surface radioactivity levels at one of the
sites was 450 microrentgen per hour compared with a norm of 60, while the
emergency ministry recorded from 60 to 300 microrentgen per hour at
different sites.

Since the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse, Maili Suu has been practically left
to itself to deal with the potential environmental hazard, with little cash
or access to the documentation about the sites held by Moscow.

As a result, little is known about what is now in the waste stores, the
level of the population's exposure to radioactivity and possible water,
fish and livestock contamination, Mambetov said.

A two-year project funded by TACIS (the European Union programme that funds
know-how transfers to the former Soviet Union), worth 500,000 euros
(dollars), has begun to investigate what to do with the waste, taking water
readings and monitoring the stability of the sites, the impact of
landslides and the affect on the population.

Preliminary drilling results suggest that rain and underground water have
seeped into the stores, said TACIS team leader Holger Quarch.

"This makes everything more difficult. It makes it more difficult to
remove, it also places a more serious burden on the environment," he said.

The question also remains whether Kyrgyzstan could attract enough funds to
undertake the necessary remedial work, which could involve removing the
waste to a safer site at a cost of millions of dollars.

Financial aid from Uzbekistan has not been forthcoming, while Kyrgyzstan is
struggling with a 60 percent poverty level and burdened by foreign debt
equivalent to 120 percent of its gross domestic product.

*******

#10
eurasianet.org
August 21, 2001
THE CAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA TEN YEARS AFTER
THE SOVIET COLLAPSE
By Anatol Lieven
Editor’s Note: Anatol Lieven is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. He is currently writing
a book on post-Soviet Georgia.

When the then colonies of European powers gained their independence in the
decades after World War II, hopes were high that freed from the imperial
yoke, they would rapidly achieve impressive social, economic and political
progress and "modernization." These hopes were high not only in the former
colonies themselves, but among sympathetic intellectuals in the "First
World." They were especially high in the United States, which had
encouraged decolonization, and stood ready to help the newly independent
states with plentiful advice and rather less plentiful – though still
significant – material aid.

This belief in the former colonies’ progress was partly rooted in the
natural belief that "because the existing system is bad, something better
must take its place." In other words, so many aspects of colonial rule had
been so dreadful. European colonial rule was usually both ruthlessly
authoritarian and racist, with a brutal and ugly contempt for the cultures,
traditions and languages of the colonized peoples. It often led to
improvements in health, in education, and in standards of administration,
but because the latter were imposed from above, from outside and according
to alien traditions, they failed to take root or even developed strangely
warped local forms. Most of the colonial economies were subordinated to the
interests and plans of the imperial states – which did admittedly lead in
many areas to greatly improved transport and other infrastructure.

However, not only were the interests and wishes of the colonial populations
utterly disregarded, but in many cases the economies were transformed into
monocultures. Sometimes this led to a short-term increase in prosperity;
but these economies ultimately proved dreadfully vulnerable to fluctuations
in world commodity prices. In many areas, the creation or maintenance of
these monocultures (whether agricultural or mineral) required the
transplantation of huge numbers of workers of different ethnic groups,
sometimes from the opposite side of the world. This inevitably created a
legacy of ethnic problems, sometimes of appalling magnitude.

Forty years on, the development records of these former colonies is
decidedly mixed. Some former colonies (above all, those of imperial Japan,
plus a few city states and small islands) have prospered and advanced
magnificently as part of the global market economy. A large majority have
experienced both success and failure, with economic progress co-existing
with continued deep poverty, and advances in state building co-existing
with massive corruption, state weakness, and the temporary or permanent
failure of democracy. Meanwhile a considerable minority, mainly, but not
exclusively in Africa, have experienced not progress and modernization but
catastrophic decline compared to their condition towards the end of
colonial rule. In several areas, this was already apparent a decade or so
after the end of colonial rule. Nonetheless, to draw attention to it in
Western progressive circles was to draw counter-accusations of colonial
nostalgia or worse.

In fact, as post-colonial governments have never ceased to point out, the
colonial institutional, economic, ethnic and cultural legacy itself very
often contributed critically to post-colonial failings. However, this
cannot be used as an exclusive explanation, still less as an excuse for the
frequently disastrous and unsavory behavior of the post-colonial elites.
Post-colonial stagnation or decline has been usually the product of a
symbiosis between the colonial legacy and certain pre-colonial local
traditions. Together, these have worked to weaken the independent states
and to undermine "modernization."

We should not need to wait another 20 years to start noticing and analyzing
the similarities between this pattern and developments in the former Soviet
Union, especially in the Caucasus and Central Asia. There too, while some
countries, areas and groups have progressed greatly since the Soviet
collapse, for a large majority the picture has been far more mixed; and in
a number of cases, the decade since the end of the Soviet empire has seen
severe and sometimes catastrophic decline and radical demodernization.

The modern sectors of the economy have decayed or collapsed. A large
proportion – in several countries, a large majority – of the working
population has been pushed out of the formal economy into the informal,
gray or black economies. Partly as a consequence, the states’ capacity to
raise revenue from the economy has declined drastically. Modern public
services have decayed, or collapsed altogether, from what was often a very
high level by the standards of the developing world; state servants,
instead of being paid regularly by the state, have taken to preying on the
population; and states have lost the fundamental characteristic of a modern
state, effective control of their territory and a monopoly of armed force.

That the populations of the Caucasus and Central Asia have not suffered
even worse from the effects of economic decline has been due chiefly not to
any action by the state, not indeed to any modern feature at all, but to
the power and strength of the extended family, particularly when it comes
to supporting old people and children. The way in which these family links
work economically is often patronizingly dubbed a "survival mechanism" by
Western economists, as if it were a temporary response to contingent
circumstances. This is in fact an institution which predates not merely
modernity but Christianity or Islam, and is supported by a tremendously
ancient and deep ethic of loyalty and solidarity.

For where an effective extended family does exist, its members would feel
it as an utter disgrace to see one of their old people starve or beg. If
only one member of such a family group has a good job, even distant
relatives will benefit to some degree. But of course, as everywhere else in
the world where such ethics apply, they have a colossal downside as far as
the interests of the state and of modernization are concerned. For they
also mean that anyone with access to state funds will feel morally obliged
to share them among his relatives, and give those relatives precedence in
gaining state jobs. In any case where the interests of the state and those
of the family clash, there is not much doubt which will win.

This clash of official state ethic and social ethic – or between the pays
legale and the pays reel – is of course characteristic of much of the
"developing world." In large parts of Latin America, for example, Guillermo
O’Donnell has described how official laws and rules (to which everyone of
course publicly pays lip service) co-exist with – and are often subservient
to – a whole range of other "informal" laws centered on family, ethnicity,
religion, criminal group or personal allegiance.

Of course, this is not to say that even the most currently decayed former
Soviet republics will never achieve Western-style "modernization" and
stable economic and political progress. That would indeed be an absurdly
historicist or even racist position. What we must recognize however is that
in many areas the obstacles to progress are at least as powerful, as
deep-rooted and as complex as those in the former European colonies, and
that they will therefore take as long to overcome. After all, the
Philippines before independence were ruled not by an economically lunatic
Communist totalitarianism, but by the United States; just as Pakistan and
Nigeria were ruled by Britain, the first modern capitalist state with one
of the oldest parliamentary systems in the world. Why on earth did we
expect ex-Soviet Central Asia to do so much better?

******

#11
Vedomosti
August 27, 2001
BEING ATTRACTIVE DOESN'T HELP
Russian regions should learn to emphasize their strengths
Herman Gref's ministry comes up with a new program and strategy
Author: Zoya Kaika
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
ONLY 20 RUSSIAN REGIONS ARE EFFECTIVELY ATTRACTING INVESTORS AND
INVESTMENT. A HIGH CONCENTRATION OF INVESTMENT DOES NOT ALWAYS HAVE AN IMPACT ON LIVING STANDARDS. IN 2002, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WILL LAUNCH A NEW PROGRAM AIMED AT EQUALIZING THE LEVEL OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.

THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TRADE MINISTRY RECENTLY SUBMITTED ITS SURVEY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIAN REGIONS IN 2000 TO THE CABINET. IT CONTAINS TWO CONCLUSIONS: ONLY 20 REGIONS ARE EFFECTIVELY ATTRACTING INVESTORS AND INVESTMENT; AND A HIGH CONCENTRATION OF INVESTMENT DOES NOT ALWAYS HAVE AN IMPACT ON LIVING STANDARDS. IN ORDER TO HELP THE REGIONS, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT MINISTER HERMAN GREF AND CO. ARE WORKING ON A NEW PROGRAM AND A NEW STRATEGY.

Total investments in principal funds amounted to 1.17 trillion
rubles in 2000. Almost half of this sum was invested in just 20
regions - those the Economic Development and Trade Ministry says have
used their investment potential properly. The list includes Moscow and
St. Petersburg, as well as regions with natural resources such as the
Yamal-Nenetsk and Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous districts and Sakhalin.

Gref's specialists paid particular attention to regions which
exceeded the average investment level in 2000. This category includes
the Krasnodar territory, where several agricultural and food industry
projects were implemented, and where the local authorities have
finally established proper contacts with investors. There are also
Karelia and the Arkhangelsk region (they attracted investment in the
timber industry); Novgorod and Smolensk, famous for their easy
taxation policies. The list also includes the Leningrad, Bryansk, and
Astrakhan regions, the Taimyr Autonomous District, and the Chukotka
Peninsula.

At the same time, Economic Development and Trade Ministry
specialists say that successful realization of a region's investment
potential is not always correlated with its level of economic
development. Taimyr is a vivid example of this: new oil and gas fields
are now being exploited there, along with the investment projects of
Norilsk Nickel.

According to the official who drafted the report (he is with the
department of economic policy and programs), the gap between the level
of economic development of a region and the inflow of investment is
not confined to Taimyr alone. To a certain extant, this situation is
due to the fact that some investment projects may make the given
region attractive to investors, yet not yield sufficient returns to
enrich the regional economy immediately. At the same time, investors
and regional governments themselves are not always prepared to spend
money on improving living standards. "It's like the Wild West. Huge
profits are being made, but everything around them remains wild," says
the official.

For regional authorities, asking the federal government for
subsidies remains the most popular method of improving living
standards in their respective regions. In 2002, the federal government
will launch a new program aimed at more or less equalizing the level
of socio-economic development. The program will cost the federal
government 66 billion rubles. The Economic Development and Trade
Ministry has already received requests and applications for over 90
billion rubles. Sources say the regions usually assume that private
investors will more readily come to those regions where the federal
government is investing.

However, regions with reasonable living standards don't always
succeed in remaining attractive for investors. The Economic
Development and Trade Ministry has certain plans for these regions as
well. The ministry has drafted a separate strategy for the
implementation of state investment policy for the regions. Apart from
the usual prescriptions - bringing local laws into compliance with
federal law, and abolishing certain exemptions - the Economic
Development and Trade Ministry is promising to help the regions
develop investment risk insurance systems, and some other measures.

*******

#12
Baltics brush aside Visegrad NATO ultimatum

RIGA, Aug 27 (AFP) -
The Baltic states brushed aside Monday a threat by central European countries
to hold their NATO membership ambitions hostage in 2002 in a bid to ensure
Slovakia and Slovenia receive invitations to join as well.

Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Giedrius Cekoulis said the precondition
set at a meeting of the so-called Visegrad Group of countries this weekend
that Slovakia and Slovenia receivie NATO invitations reflects the "natural
interests" of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland "to ensure their own
natural security."

On Saturday Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that the Visegrad
group -- Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia "fully supports the
accession of the Baltic states in the next round of NATO expansion but there
is a precondition to that."

He said the precondition is that Slovakia and Slovenia become NATO members
"at the latest" by the time of the accession of the Baltic states.

The precondition was set at a weekend meeting in Hungary of the prime
ministers of the so-called Visegrad four.

Baltic leaders were initially surprised at the "precondition" expressed by
the Visegrad leaders, as NATO members Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland had
previously been unequivocal supporters.

Latvian Foreign Minister Indulis Berzins said he doubted the statements from
the summit were accurate.

"This may be a misinterpretation. No one should fear the Baltic states
advancing into NATO," he told journalists.

Polish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Grzegorz Dziemidowicz tried to downplay the
incident.

"There has been no change in Poland's position," he told AFP in Warsaw.
"Enlargement of NATO to include the Baltic states plus Slovenia and Slovakia."

There is "no question" of a veto of the Baltic states' bids to join NATO, he
added.

NATO and candidate countries have tried to avoid the outbreak of a poisonous
rivalry between the nine NATO hopefuls ahead of the Prague summit late in
2002 when the security alliance is expected to consider further enlargement.

NATO member countries have generally limited their statements to support for
enlargement in general, or certain countries while not explicitly ruling out
candidates.

"I don't know why they have to say this when everyone is saying Slovakia and
Slovenia will get in to NATO," said Latvian foreign policy analyst Atis
Lejins.

"It only indicates that they are unsure of themselves," he told AFP.

The Estonian foreign ministry's undersecratary for NATO affairs, Harri Tiido,
said the scenario which the Visegrad countries put forward has been touted as
one model of NATO enlargement, but that it's too early for NATO to say which
model it will use.

Some analysts have urged against inviting the Baltic states into NATO to
avoid displeasing Moscow, which has objected to the entry of the three
countries which it occupied from the end of World War II until the collapse
of the Soviet Union.

"I don't think there is any major danger for Baltic membership" in the
Visegrad statement, as they would likely revise their position if something
went badly wrong in Slovakia or Slovenia.

Lithuania's Cekoulis said the statement reflects the progress the Baltic
states have made in being accepted as serious candidates for membership, he
said.

"The statement means that the Hungarian prime minister considers Lithuania
and the Baltic states among the best-prepared candidates for NATO," he was
quoted as saying by the Baltic News Service.

******

#13
The Electronic Telegraph
28 August 2001
Email from Russia
From Marcus Warren, in Moscow, exclusively for news.telegraph

COUPLES fall in love. Couples separate. But until the soap opera saga of
the Mordashovs, a powerful steel baron and his former spouse, hit the
nation's screens this summer, never had man and ex-wife bickered so
publicly in Russia before.

The country's most compelling real life melodrama recorded a new twist last
week when Alexei rejected Yelena's demands for a share of his fortune and
denounced her as a puppet of his enemies.

He, the baby-faced head of Russia's largest steelworks and a frequent guest
of the Kremlin's on top industrialists' lobbying trips, now accuses her of
harming their teenage son and trying to damage his business.

The plot may sound incredible. The dialogue creaks. But no one is disputing
the passion gripping the main characters.

"I want him to know that he is my son," Mr Mordashov said of the couple's
15 year-old boy, Ilya. "I love him and will do everything to ensure he
stands on his own feet, whatever happens in the future."

Stung by his ex-wife's claims that he had not "found a path to his son's
heart" and that "it would be cheaper for him to hire a contract killer than
sort this problem out", Mr Mordashov hit back with accusations of his own.

Breaking his silence on the dispute, Mr Mordashov complained that "all this
could destroy the boy". "The aim of my former wife and the people behind
her is not to reach a compromise," he said.

Already the row between the thirty-something ex-couple has been hailed "as
the social event of the summer" and even, somewhat improbably, as a portent
of a new era of political chaos in Russia.

Mrs Mordashova has found herself at the forefront of what one Duma deputy
has called "the tough beginning of a completely new national movement",
with hundreds of other aggrieved first wives reportedly rallying to the cause.

An estranged first wife intervened with devastating effect to scupper her
ex-husband's chances in elections in the city of Nizhny Novgorod in June.
But the Mordashovs' problems have aroused even more interest because of the
sums of money involved.

Having married as students, the couple divorced in 1996 at the start of Mr
Mordashov's rapid rise to power to the position of head of Severstal, the
steel giant in their hometown of Cherepovets.

Back then Mrs Mordashov accepted a financial settlement worth 1,070 pounds
a month, plus the boy's education, health and holiday bills - a respectable
sum for Cherepovets, his supporters claim.

In the meantime Mr Mordashov has married again and had two more sons.
Severstal has turned into one of the stars of Russia's booming economy,
returning profits last year of 430 million pounds.

Now, claiming that his personal income last year alone reached 57 million
pounds, his first wife has demanded 14 million pounds in unpaid alimony.
Lawyers acting on her and her son's behalf have secured the freezing of 32
percent of the company's shares.

The conflict has struck fear into the hearts of a generation of Russian
businessmen who made their fortune in the Yeltsin era and swiftly abandoned
the wives who shared the poverty of their early years together.

In the Mordashovs' marriage she it was who had got up at four in the
morning to make his breakfast and see him off to work, Yelena has said. She
worked as a cleaner to boost the couple's earnings. When they separated, "I
felt like a squashed, discarded orange".

Mr Mordashov may have been especially vulnerable to attack by this, the
founding member of Russia's "First Wives Club".

In the words of Yulia Latynina, one of Russia's most astute business
commentators, he "paid his wife and son much less than an average oligarch
pays an estranged mistress without kids".

And there is also widespread suspicion that Mrs Mordashov has not been
acting alone in her campaign, but in concert with some of her ex-husband's
many business rivals.

Whatever the real agenda at work in the dispute, the airing of Mrs
Mordashov's grievances has shocked a country used to family secrets staying
just that, secret.

At the same time it has also struck a common chord among the millions of
Russian women of all income brackets abandoned by their husbands.

"I am convinced that my ex-husband cannot fulfil his duties as a proper
father," she said recently. "And I have grasped that my child does not have
the future he would have if he lived in a fully fledged family."

She accepted the original settlement after he threatened to "destroy" her
life if she tried to secure more generous terms, she alleged.

In an interview in Russia's top people's paper, Vedomosti, Mr Mordashov
proposed increasing payments to his son. He even offered a mea culpa for
his neglect of Ilya when the boy was growing up.

All the same, his ex-wife was more interested in "women's rights" and "the
moral face of an oligarch", he complained.

Russian tycoons nowadays display a certain touchiness about their "moral
face", as the steel baron put it, and western PR firms are pocketing
millions of pounds to help sanitise the image of Russia's business elite.

But don't ask our captains of industry to stick up for women's rights. They
would rather Save the Whale.

*****

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