July 29, 1997  
This Date's Issues: 1094 •1095  •1096  1098

Johnson's Russia List [list two]
#1095
29 July 1997
djohnson@cdi.org

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Literaturnaya Gazeta: Oleg Poptsov Ponders Freedom of 
Press.
2. Novoye Vremya: Dmitriy Trenin, "The Karelian Start. 
The President Seems To Have Decided Finally To Tackle 
Military Reform."
3. Trud: MUCH ADO ABOUT THE FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE.
(Interview with Vladimir Lukin).]

**********

Oleg Poptsov Ponders Freedom of Press 

Literaturnaya Gazeta, No. 28
July 9, 1997
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Oleg Poptsov: "Optimism Has Wearied"

Relations between the authorities and the press are an amazing
novel, which has had everything in these years—love and
separation, fear of loss and jealousy. And even partition of property.

Freedom and Nonfreedom of the Press

Now we have the right to say that in the area of the relations
between the authorities and the media, the country is turning, or
rather, has turned, back.
The diktat of the Central Committee has ceded its place to
the diktat of the owner of the newspaper, the television channel,
the radio station. It has become fashionable to say that there are
no independent media, since there is no independence itself, in
its true form. This is rhetoric and guile, and it makes no sense.
It is precisely the concept that independence in pure form
does not exist that compels a civilized society to guarantee legislatively
such concepts as freedom of speech, freedom of religion...
Our main domestic misfortune lies not in the presence of the
financial groupings that today control the majority of the media,
but in the fact that the financial structures are profoundly convinced
that to them personally the law on the media, which guarantees journalists
freedom of activity and upholds their right to independent judgment,
bears no relation to them. The law"s norms extend to the
state-owned media.
In acquiring the controlling block of shares in a closed-type
joint-stock company, a commercial bank or financial group, as it
seems to it (and it really is so) is purchasing a commodity, which
from that moment becomes part of its property. And from that minute
it lives not by the laws of the media within the parameters of their
day-to-day, minute-to-minute, week-to-week public obligation, but
by the laws of property, and, moreover, of that variety that is
called private property. Earlier, before the abolition of serfdom,
this also happened in Russia—land was purchased along with
peasants. In this case, in publications that have replaced their
owner, freedom of speech is deprived of its democratic essence and
is simply expunged from the public register as a concept having
any significance at all.
Freedom, judgments independent of anyone, and creative work
not subject to anyone"s authority lose their sense from
that moment. Other concepts are introduced: V. Potanin freedom of
the speech, or B. Berezovskiy freedom of speech, or A. Smolenskiy
freedom of speech, but as public freedom of speech, it seems as
of that moment not to exist. Because state-owned newspapers, television,
and radio are just as unfree as the controlling-interest ones. And
there is a fair degree of name correspondence here. A. Chubays freedom
of speech or Yu. Luzhkov freedom of speech. True, it is slightly
more complicated for the latter two freedoms—they, like
it or not, are after all public. And for them the law has been written.
Although the possibility of a mutiny of the exiles within these
publications exists only theoretically.
It is not surprising that the mechanism of influence over
the media on the part of a patron in the event of the intractability
of the general director or the editor in chief, with all the difference
in the character of ownership, is one and the same—money.
A newspaper that has taken liberties very soon begins to experience
budget difficulties, since general difficulties with the budget
always allow a bureaucrat carrying out the supreme will, or by virtue
of his own lack of predisposition toward the given publication or
television channel, to pronounce a reproachful and didactic monologue:
"In our country, physicians and teachers have not received their
salaries, and pensioners their pensions, for half a year now. You
yourselves remind us of this every day. So get used to living with
the general difficulties."
Needless to say, the old surgical method as well—removing
the chief from his position—is also in use today, but it
is attended by scandals, and authorities who insist on the removal
of this or that famous figure suffer moral, and sometimes also political,
losses.
An appropriate question: What has happened?! Have freedoms
become more or fewer?! And how fair are assertions that we are free
today as we were never free before? And it is not important to whom
these revelations belong: the leader of a Duma faction, a member
of the government, the leader of one of the democratic or nondemocratic
movements, or maybe a crime boss. There is nothing unnatural in
this. If democracy exists, then everyone enjoys it: both those who
are for and those who are against. Some need it in order to keep
themselves in power; others, in order to take power by using its
mechanism, and then to put an end to this democracy. Incidentally,
it will be no revelation that the "excesses" of democracy annoy
even the democrats themselves.
One detail of our discussion is extremely significant. All
of the laws on the media were written in the years 1989-1991, and
at that time there also existed both the CPSU Central Committee
and the party as dictatorship and political monopolist, owning and
controlling all of the media from the top down.
Hence, the energy of the authors of the laws was concentrated
on the bridgehead of the main danger—to push the party
back, to put an end to its diktat, to abolish censorship, to protect
the press from interference.
At that moment, the concept of nonstate ownership of the media
was so unclarified, power so inwardly conflicted, and a Communist
revanche so realistic that the authors of the laws concentrated
their energies on the direction of their main thrust: the authorities
in their customary summation—government, parliament, president.
It was precisely this eternal danger on the part of the authorities
that engendered in the vocabulary, when talk was of the press and
television, a counterbalancing formula—the fourth estate.
It was naturally assumed that any authority could be opposed only
by authority. For a short period, in the years 1991-1993, this term
was entirely acceptable, but subsequently a cruel cash shortage
sorted everything out.
What have we gained? Well, maybe we ought to join with the
implacable opposition and agree with it: "Today we are unfree to
an extent that we have never before been unfree." These Anpilovite
demarches are so absurd that they could have gone unmentioned. I
glanced back to 1980 and tried to imagine a legal CPSU opposition
movement like today"s Anpilovite one and its fate. My imagination
painted a fairly sinister picture. And after all, the 1980s were
not the same as 1954, or even 1965. And I immediately stopped wanting
to think about this subject. Therefore, in this wording, unfreedom
is not accepted.
So does that mean we are free?! One would like to answer:
Yes. And to specify: The character, the image, of freedom has changed.
Even if one is to represent the case (as journalists like to opine
on this score) that earlier everything was controlled by the CPSU
Central Committee—a single will, a single reason, a single
attitude, what was to be read, listened to, watched—then
now, if even a publication is owned by the company LUKoil, it controls
the newspaper, or Berezovskiy, for example, owns a television station,
and he himself frequently talks about the practice of his control,
and in general, any control in one form or another is the owner"s
censorial encroachment. Incidentally, if the owner is the state,
its control over the media is also not abstract: Chubays, having
exchanged the official suites of the chief of the President"s
Administration for the office of first vice premier, in accordance
with the formal distribution of duties, retained control over the
activity of the media. So, then, if one is to acknowledge—and
not to acknowledge this is impossible—that all owners of
the media control them with a greater or lesser extent of interference,
guarding their own interest from criticism, and, on the contrary,
using their own media for the organization of economic and political
attacks on their opponents, even so, this is better than the single-willed
censorship of the CPSU Central Committee. Perhaps it is with costs
for freedom of speech, but we have a press that expresses a variety
of views. This assertion is outwardly entirely logical, but is in
essence debatable. The owners of the media are the banks, which
profess the very same political views. And the activity of these
commercial banks can be productive only in the presence of fairly
benevolent treatment of them on the part of the government. The
prosperity of any major bank hangs on service and use of the federal
budget. In this instance, the authorities reasoned fairly wisely:
"There is no sense in maintaining all of the newspapers, all of
the television channels and radio stations, and bearing an impossible
burden of expenditures. The vast majority of the media lose money.
Would it not be simpler to resell these media to the banks and financial
groupings dependent on the government? In protecting the political
interests of the authorities, they will protect themselves, their
business, and the authorities" disposition toward them.
"The bankers want to feel themselves to be a weighty political
force. It is in our interests to help them. Needless to say, if
these are our bankers, professing our economic philosophy. Having
opened the access for them to the media market, we give them the
use of the political springboard. Of course, in using it, they could
fly beyond the borders of our influence. Such a danger does exist.
But there are many ways to truncate the springboard. Authority should
know them."
This, if you will, is a sketch of the authorities'
strategy as of today on the media front.
Every seller has his commodity. The authorities have
theirs—political influence.
Can the media be independent?! An essentially rhetorical question.
There are several variant answers.
The first answer. It can never be entirely independent, but
it is necessary to strive for this.
The second answer. Freedom of speech is one of the most widespread
democratic myths. What cannot be, cannot be.
The third answer. Any commodity is significant if there is
a demand for it.
We are being given to understand that there is no demand for
independent opinions.
But why do the media so easily lose their independence? Why
does freedom of speech remain a category of the declarative type?
It is only a matter of a lack of funds?
It would be absurd to deny the destroying power of a lack
of funds. In this instance, we have an instance of the unity of
opposites. Money can force one to talk, and equally to fabricate
a lie. A lack of money can force one to keep silent and thereby
conceal the truth. Both the one and the other are the deliberate
destruction of freedom of speech.
Everything that has been said is from the category of objective
factors. And still, why is the principal gain of democracy, which
we considered to be freedom of speech, being surrendered without
a fight? Someone will object: You are not correct. And again I hear
the importunate refrain: "We have never been as free as today. There
are no forbidden topics for us. A minister is caught in the baths
with a representative of the oldest profession, and all the world
is immediately notified of it. And you say that there is no freedom
of speech. There is freedom, it is simply that the character of
freedom has become different."
And now on a fact of a subjective character. Two journalistic
cadre streams have run into each other in time.
Those who were before and counted themselves liberals, resistors,
who had gone through the school of the diktat of censorship, who
had learned to adapt themselves to it and to continue to fight it
on their own independent barricades. To fight alone. Victory was
achieved not by widely broadcast reason, but rather by guile.
So, then, it was for them that freedom of speech of the model
from the end of the 1980s to the mid-1990s, which they had made,
by the premonition of which they had lived, was a shock, like the
invasion of the Huns, a stream of bad manners and license. The triumph
of reason and truth in this avalanchelike freedom turned into faraway
concepts.
While next to them and because of that free-for-all, a completely
different stream gushed into journalism. Of those who came after.
Who had not experienced ethical pangs or moral torments from their
own predestination to be commodities on the media market. They,
like the others, like the bygone ones, are also the tribute of a
time, but of a completely different time. For these people, dependence
of opinion is not a vice. World-view, opinions, views,
assessments—are
commodities just like apples, stockings, chicken giblets, and OB
tampons. They declare with ease: My profession is Kalistratov or
Forpostov. I am a commodity, and not a cheap one. Not a swayer of
minds, but a commodity. It remains to note with sadness that the
prophetic words "A poet in Russia is more than a poet" are losing
all meaning today.
There are more of the second group, for the first is already
a relic generation. If the first revolt, throw hysterics, refuting
the very idea of a lack of alternative as a kind of violation of
the norms of freedom of expression, without which there is no democracy,
the only thing that is of value to the second is that which is in
demand and sells well. If they buy a lack of alternative, we sing
its praises. If they do not buy it, we condemn it. Carried away
by our polemics on democratic transformations and economic reforms,
we do not notice how we all are becoming more comparable not with
the Gorbachevite but with the pre-Gorbachevite epoch. In the struggle
for freedom of speech, for the primacy of public opinion, we have
achieved incomparably less than we asked for and expected. Thus
far, we have only acquired a new character of that unfreedom, its
market image.

The Power and Powerlessness of Authority

That authority is powerful that is not heard. Ours never leaves
the television screen. This occasions both gladness and anxiety.
On the one hand, the country needs to know its heroes. On the other
hand, an explanation of the absence of positive results has never
yet been a substitute for results themselves.
There exists such a belief on the part of the authorities:
"The people are dissatisfied because it has not been explained to
them."
An almost idealistic perception by the authorities of their
own people. Patient, understanding, and, of course, in sympathy
with the authorities. Oh, if only...
It seems as though the authorities are speaking about some
other people, living on some other continent.
Since 1992, the authorities have not stopped speaking about
the unpopular measures that are the only thing capable of stopping
the collapse, of giving an impetus to development and prosperity.
In purely psychological terms, this is a risky argument, because
reforms based only on unpopular measures are in their essence doomed.
There begins a fairly questionable competition of the political
bravery of the branches of power. It is not dilettantes and specialists
that cannot find a common language, but professionals with professionals.
We seem to forget that for all the evident separation, authority,
in the consciousness of our fellow citizens, is indivisible—all
of them there are besmirched by the same world.
However, the mechanism for keeping himself in power is completely
different for the minister and the deputy. For the one, it is the
mood of the President that is fateful; for the other, it is the
mood of the voters.
Whether we wish it or not, in its interaction with its fellow
citizens the government is always behind the back of the deputies,
and not the other way around.
And it is not a matter of the willingness to take upon itself
responsibility for unpopular decisions or not to take it. The essence
lies elsewhere. In the unwillingness of the deputies to cede power.
Let us be fair: In this, strangely enough, they are in unity with
the government.
The more active the government, the greater the annoyance
of the deputies on the subject of its activity. This is not commonplace
illogicality, it is the depravity of our way of life. The resolute,
directed man, convinced of the rightness of his steps, has evoked
the greatest suspicion and irritation in Russia from ancient days.
It would seem that the democrats have drained this bitter
cup (let us recall the Gogolesque scene at the congress of deputies).
Yeltsin, proposing Gaydar"s candidacy for the post of prime
minister, put forward as his grounds what seemed to him to be the
main argument—he is smart.
One had to see that hall, choking with spiteful laughter.
"He found a virtue—he is smart," howled the deputies.
"A stroke of the brush, a trifling point," you will say.
"Nothing of the kind," I will retort, "the attitude of the
uneducated throng in power. And the congress of deputies was its
classic summation."
The imperfection of smart people is well known—they
are smart.
It would seem that the problem lies on the surface—the
reformers have no second-string bench. The President is shuffling
one and the same deck. Possibly, if things do not work out with
these, it will be Yavlinskiy"s turn. The President does
not have any other reserves left.
And here is the question—are there enough of these
Chubays-Nemsovites to last long?!
They are confident of themselves—that is great. They
are self-confident—that arouses alarm.
They are impatient—that is an adult condition. They
are intolerant—now this is a condition of power, and our
alarm is redoubled.
They have ideas, but no ideology. By virtue of this they are
free.
But any ideology is the biography of development, and a disinclination
to have it is not always unfounded.
It seemed to the President that he had freshened up the situation
when he issued the call to advance young people. He himself resolved
on a step extreme for any president, completely replacing his team,
but...
Now the newly arrived have no other alternative than to try
and prove that their arrival has justified itself with interest—they
are working more effectively.
The President also has no alternative than to speak of his
satisfaction with the choice that he made. To speak for the time
being. Here we observe complete alliance. For the time being we
observe it.
But if one is to believe Gaydar's assertion, the
reformers are experiencing extreme cadre hunger, and Gaydar, for
whom these same cadres are in no way a theory, but exhausting practice,
understands that there are practically none of the necessary like-minded
people in this specific refraction of the reforms according to Gaydar
and Chubays. Or almost none.
The appearance of Nemtsov in the government, in the rank of
first deputy, is in its essence symptomatic. The reaction of the
three apexes should be remembered.
The President presented Nemtsov"s appointment as
his own initiative. And that is true. Since the beginning of the
1990s, several presidential favorites have appeared, whom Yeltsin
has considered to be his own personal discoveries. Nemtsov is one
of them. Nemtsov was sent by the President to Nizhniy Novgorod and
was not crushed. That is already an appreciable dividend.
Chubays immediately, at a meeting with the President, called
his decision far-sighted and correct, thereby giving one to understand
that the share of his efforts in Nemtsov"s appointment
was entirely obvious.
Chernomyrdin also demonstrated his own super-loyalty to the
appointment, as if he himself had proposed Nemtsov.
Time will tell to what degree this super-loyalty was compelled
or, on the contrary, whether Nemtsov"s advent suited the
premier as a significant counterbalance to Chubays, who was quickly
gaining power.
But we recall that Nemtsov"s reformist outlook was
modeled to a greater extent by Yavlinskiy"s group than
by the Gaydar-Chubays political wing. Although we will note that
in 1996 it was precisely Yegor Gaydar who tossed out the remark
in the hall that it made sense for the democrats to name a single
candidate for president and that this candidate could be Boris Nemtsov.
All of this took place during the time that the Russia's
Democratic Choice movement was correctly quarreling with the President.
In this sense, it would be fair to say that Nemtsov is not
entirely his own, but that was what the President decided.
In purely psychological terms, the President made a successful
move. Perhaps it will work out, and perhaps not. But the little
bridge was in any case thrown over onto the bank of the democratic
diaspora by the name of Yabloko. Yavlinskiy, not a member of the
government, seems to have found himself a "worn-away shadow of himself"
there.
Nemtsov—Sysuyev—that is not yet a regiment
that has taken a ridge, but rather a small landing party that is
faced with the task of catching hold of this ridge and to infuse
within the government a neoreformist space.
But if the necessary personnel reserves are lacking, and they
truly are, the age collisions and the segregation of age-mates in
the corridors of power could turn out to be ruinous. In that event,
the cutting off of intellectual energies by year of birth is fraught
with the danger of long conflicts, exhausting to authority.
The road of the reforms is rather a cursed road. Not to every
reformer has fallen the joy of being witness to the triumph of the
reforms.
That is why the relay-race balancing act is necessary, in
order not to lose faith, to overcome a sea of negative emotions.
The field of reforms cannot be allowed to turn into a cemetery of
the democratic forces of Russia, where among the meager graves a
God's fool rushes about, calling to the heavens:
"Help, Lord, make them listen to reason!! To whom is there
no alternative today—Lukashenka or Starodubstev?! It is
completely unbearable without a leader, Lord!"

***********

Novoye Vremya in Russian No. 29 Jul 97 (Signed to press 22 Jul
97) pp 6-7
[Report by Dmitriy Trenin: "The Karelian Start. The President 
Seems To Have Decided Finally To Tackle Military Reform"]

The package of President Yeltsin's "Karelian" edicts on military
matters is the real evidence of the fact that the much touted
but constantly delayed military reform in Russia has apparently
gotten off the ground. This shift has called for the
elimination of one of the most severe shortages of all
post-Soviet years, namely, the deficit of the political will of
the head of state in reforming the national defense system.

"Let's Go!" Where to? [subhead]

Generally speaking, politicians show such will when continued
inaction begins to threaten really important values -- for instance,
the stability of power or their place in future history books. In
effect Boris Yeltsin -- both individual and "collective" -- saw no
pressing need to reform the Russian military machine either in
November-December 1991, when he enlisted the generals' support in
exchange for "noninterference" in military affairs; or in October
1993, when the military was given a "poor" mark for its slowness in
defending the regime, and when the president gave the "go-ahead" to
an accelerated growth of the Interior Troops of the Internal Affairs
Ministry and the Kremlin Security Service; or in the course of the
unsuccessful war in Chechnya. The political and military defeat in
Chechnya with Yeltsin's reelection to a second term created a
situation favorable for launching reform, but the president's illness
and the acute struggle that emerged at the time between the defense
minister and the Security Council secretary again stalled the reform.
This delay, however, proved inadmissible amid the general political
onslaught launched by the revamped cabinet under the banners of the
reinvigorated president. A way out of the deadlock was found in a
rather crude form of a public dressing-down of and a scandalous
resignation by Igor Rodionov and chief of the General Staff Viktor
Samsonov. After 22 May the crisis within the executive branch was
overcome, and the "Baturin" option of military reform ended up firmly
on the cabinet's agenda. This is of major importance. Until now
problems of the Russian military little worried the Russian
Government. Strictly speaking, this situation has not changed. 
Today, however, Chubays and Nemtsov probably thought that it is
simply impossible to bypass military reform. A non-reforming and
rapidly disintegrating military can become a huge political problem. 
Not, of course, in the sense of possible military coups in the
capital or revolts in the garrisons. What is far more dangerous is
the "democratic" scenario of the military slipping out of control --
for instance, through the spontaneous convocation of officers
assemblies at the local level and the delegation of deputies to
congresses all the way up to an all-army assembly -- a kind of a
military parliament. In 1992, such an assembly discharged Marshal
Shaposhnikov, commander in chief at the time. In the future, should
the situation hypothetically aggravate the demands can be even more
decisive and consequences, hard to predict. So, the reformers, who
"could not be further removed" [reference to V. Lenin's description
of the Decembrists] from military problems, wound up in a situation
when they simply have to push ahead with military reform. Otherwise
they will not only fail to achieve their political goals, but will
also fail effectively to respond to a most serious political
challenge to the ruling authority. 
So, "let's go!" The only
question is where to. Many critics of President Yeltsin's edicts note
that these documents appeared before a blueprint for military reform
was presented or officially approved by the head of state. In the
absence of a "master plan" for reform some regard separate steps to
translate it into practice as premature and ill-considered: It is
like putting the cart before the horse. Such criticism is in
principle fair, but it proceeds from the piety toward the "guideline
document," traditional for Soviet Russia. The Defense Council and the
military department have a detailed and sufficiently well coordinated
concept of reform.
A Kremlin blueprint, formally synthesizing the
existing plans, is bound to appear soon, but will this satisfy the
critics? Reality is such that no matter how some would like it, no
"paper" of this kind in present-day Russia can serve as an analog of
a detailed road map: There is too much in the country that has not
settled down or acquired its final shape, and this includes the
perception of national interests. Reform has to be started and
pursued amid great uncertainty -- this is a fact.
As concerns the
general guidelines, perhaps the most complete and sufficiently
authoritative reflection not only of security philosophy and military
doctrine, but also of the reformers' concrete plans are the theses of
the influential Foreign and Defense Policy Council that were
published in Nezavisimoye Voennoye Obozreniye 12 July. Despite the
non- governmental character of this organizations, the material
prepared under its auspices deserves a most close attention -- at any
rate more attention than it has attracted thus far.

Macroeconomists Vs. Generals [subhead] 

Concepts are especially good when they can be
translated into practice. Despite the generally recognized
administrative talent of Anatoliy Chubays and the indisputable energy
of Boris Nemtsov, the bureaucratic implementation of military-reform
plans will probably be rather chaotic. Military reform is an
unaccustomed and challenging endeavor. By Russian tradition, the
military has a poor understanding of the intricacies of domestic and
international policy, let alone economic matters. Unfortunately, the
same is true of civilian politicians -- with respect to force
development. 
Moreover, in the current situation both groups --
generals and politicians -- are eying each other with distrust and
sometimes with thinly veiled contempt. The struggle continues over
most fundamental matters, and it is still a big question whether the
macroeconomists will manage to keep military reform expenditures
within 3.5 percent of GDP in overall military expenditures, contrary
to the generals' wishes. Under such conditions the reformers
concrete steps will be meeting with resistance not only on the part
of highly placed "reactionaries," but -- more often -- with
misunderstanding and indifference among the officers.
The latter
have a simple way of reasoning: If there is no money for wages,
there will it come from for reform? Indeed, the most vulnerable
aspect of reform plans is their funding. The previous defense
minister, Igor Rodionov, by his own admission in a recent interview,
did not agree to accept the post in the summer of 1996 until after
the assurance by Gen. Lebed, who at the time seemed omnipotent, to
raise the necessary funds. Rodionov was in for a bad surprise when
Lebed's "resources" turned out to be a list of commercial banks with
which it was proposed to negotiate on rendering assistance to the
military. The subsequent Rodionov-Baturin plot developed around the
subject of the volume of money for the conduct of reform. Baturin
won: He did not ask the impossible, but it still remains unclear
where the funds to implement the proposed transformations will come
from. 
Economic growth in the next three years promises to be rather
modest. The effect from downsizing and streamlining the structure of
the Defense Ministry, the Internal Affairs Ministry, and other
departments will not make itself felt until in four to five years,
until which time this sphere will be demanding more, not less, inputs
than before. To be sure, budgetary appropriations will need to be
straightened out, restoring control that has been lost in the turmoil
of nonpayments and arrears, but optimization of costs will not
address most of the outstanding problems. A way out will apparently
have to be sought also along such an untraditional line as the search
for hidden reserves in the military sphere itself. This involves not
only the system of military retail trade and military collective
farms that can be struck off the Defense Ministry's books and
privatized.
A part of land resources not used by the military
department can be directed to provide land plots to officers who are
transferred to the reserves. Other resources that can be tapped
include the sale of surplus military property and weapons, the broad
leasing of premises, property, equipment, and so forth. The problem
is that these really substantial resources are not embezzled but come
to a special reform account. This calls for a thorough independent
inventorying of the entire military economy.

Rokhlin, Who Is Breathing Down the Neck [subhead] 

With all the remaining ambiguities
and doubts the main conclusion today is evident: Military reform has
gotten off the ground. Having started moving with such difficulty,
this reform will move further not along the tracks that have not as
yet been laid, but across the notorious pot-holes of the Russian
land. This business promises to be extremely difficult, but should
it be a success Russia will end up with a military organization that
will at least be worthy of its name and which the country will be in
a position to maintain. Furthermore, the emerging competition --
roughly, between government reformers and their disgraced opponents
-- can even play a positive role: Figuratively speaking, Rokhlin and
Rodionov will be "breathing down" Baturin's and Sergeyev's neck,
possibly pointing, in a timely way, to the weak aspects of their
strategy, thus warning about imminent dangers. This "cooperation"
will require strong nerves, but if political will does not let down
the top leadership, things can advance quite far until the 2000
elections. Meanwhile, it is advisable to pay attention to a few
problems that the reformers are thus far possibly overlooking. It is
not enough to muffle protests or even not to give cause to them in
the future. It is not enough to change the top of the Defense
Ministry and the General Staff, thus ensuring "reformist
likemindedness." 
It is necessary to identify and enlist for the
active support of reform the most energetic and talented officers who
have not as yet left the military. This refers to forward-looking,
thinking lieutenant colonels and majors. By a quirk, this category
of military servicemen are potential leaders of the opposition "from
the bottom." These people have invested too much in the army and the
navy to abandon leave everything and leave for "civilian life,"
where, incidentally, they have worse opportunities for starting a new
life than young lieutenants or generals who have developed extensive
connections.
The middle ranking officers segment, interested in
building a modern professional military, is an objective ally of
government reformers. Building a bridge to these people and
enlisting their support is an important prerequisite for the success
of reform. Military reform also requires support on the part of the
entire society. One of the most important nationwide tasks is the
formation of a civilian Defense Ministry in Russia. Thus far the
country lacks sufficiently qualified people even to constitute the
core of such a department. Moreover, the majority of these people
are currently concentrated in the staffs of the Security Council and
the Defense Council. 
It is clear, however, that the normal progress
of reform will require financial experts, economists, managers,
sociologists, and psychologists of a very high -- by international
standards -- level. This will call for a plan to attract highly
qualified specialists and to provide effective incentives for their
work. Retirees who have just taken off their uniforms will hardly be
of much help here. It is probably expedient to include the officers
of a future civilian ministry into the category of managers who,
under the recent presidential initiative, are to be sent to study
abroad.
At the same time an opposite danger cannot be ignored: If,
for instance, the Defense Ministry is led by "pure" financial experts
and economists, who are absolutely not acquainted with Russian
military specifics. First reform steps have thus far affected only
the core of the state military organization: the armed forces.
For reform to be successful it should not least affect the Internal
Affairs Ministry (especially its Interior Troops), the Federal Border
Service (Border Troops), the FAPSI, [Federal Government
Communications and Information Agency] and other departments. To
date the downsizing of the army and the navy has been accompanied by
a parallel growth in other armed state formations, which prevented
the cutting of the country's excessive level of militarization.
Finally, external conditions of Russian military reform.
Most experts believe that these conditions are favorable for fundamental
transformations: Now and in the foreseeable future there is no
direct threat of a large-scale conflict to Russia. Nevertheless, it
seems that this does not exhaust the external factor. Russian
military reform could be more closely linked with the formation of a
security area in Europe, where the most important factor is the
gradual demilitarization of Russia's relations with the West. It
would be more advantageous to use partnership with NATO not for
old-fashioned geopolitical maneuvers in the cramped east-European
space but, for instance, for modernizing the Russian military
education system or -- more globally -- for achieving
interoperability of Russian and U.S. (NATO) weapons, communication,
and command and control systems. It is not ruled out that in the
future Russia itself could above all benefit from this "linkage." All
the aforementioned is significant. Even so, the most important thing
-- now and in the future -- is that "there be the will." The will to
reform.

**********

>From RIA Novosti
Trud
July 26, 1997
MUCH ADO ABOUT THE FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE

It has been reported that on July 16 the US Congress
approved an amendment to the law on assistance to foreign
states, which provides for freezing American government
programmes of economic assistance to Russia if the latter 
enforces the law "On the Freedom of Conscience and
Religious Associations." The Senators believe that this 
law sets unjustifiably harsh limitations on the operation 
of religious organisations in Russia and infringes on 
civil rights and freedoms. 
Later a spokesman of the US Department of State
explained the administration's attitude to the problem. He
also criticised the law but expressed the hope that the
Senate's amendment would be cancelled during further work
on the document in the Congress' conciliation commission 
and that US assistance to Russia would be resumed. 
As we know, the law was rejected the other day by the
Russian President, for similar reasons. He has the right 
to do so. And yet the strong reaction of the US Senators 
made many Russians think about the recurrence of the times
of the Curzon ultimatum. Are we openly told by which laws 
we should live? 
Vladimir LUKIN, chairman of the Duma committee on
international affairs, shares his view of this situation 
and talks of specific features of Russo-American relations
in an interview he granted to Alexander KOROLEV.

Question: Is the US legislation on religion so good that
Russia should copy it?
Answer: I regard the decision of the US Senate as hasty
and ridiculous. Many of my foreign colleagues, including in the
Europarliament, are critical of this US decision. It strikes
one as unceremonious and what I see as a naive belief of the US
Senators that their religious legislation is faultless. This is
not true.
Like Russia, the USA is a multiconfessional state, but its
laws regulating the operation of religious organisations are
far from ideal. The US legislators should do better to improve
their own religious legislation. For example, there is the
problem of aggressive totalitarian sects which have claimed
hundreds of human lives. So, the US legislators should pass
laws to regulate the sometimes deadly operation of such sects.
There are also other "fallow lands" in US religious
legislation. 
But there is another side to the decision of the US
Senate. The thing is that the law "On the Freedom of Conscience
and Religious Associations," which engendered heated debates in
this country and abroad, is really very bad. By the way, the
Yabloko faction voted against it. Why is it bad? Because its
authors tackled problems of our multiconfessional society
incompetently. I would say that the law resolves these problems
dangerously badly. 

Question: Will you speak in greater detail about the main
drawbacks of the law?
Answer: The law enumerates dozens of "good" religions and
mentions "some other" religions which are not described as good
or traditional. I cannot understand, for example, why Old
Believers are less traditional and national than, say,
Buddhists in Russia? In general, I am against dividing
religions into classes, against any hierarchy in this sphere. I
think this alone is an infringement on the freedom of
conscience. 
On the other hand, I am critical of the pharisaical
position of the Catholic figures who have joined the debates.
There are many countries in the world where Catholicism was
proclaimed the basic religion and Catholics have nothing
against this. I cannot accept a situation where Catholicism is
proclaimed a special religion in a secular state. Likewise, I
am against any religion occupying such privileged position in
Russia, too. 
It goes without saying that some religions have more, and
will have more followers than other religions in Russia. For
example, for Russians, the way to morality and spirituality has
been and will always be linked with the Orthodox Church. 
The question is, How should we regulate the operation of
the so-called destructive cults? How can we limit, in case of
need, their negative influence of the people? This is a serious
problem. How to do something without violating the principle of
the freedom of conscience, by keeping within the framework of
international legal acts? This problem can hardly be resolved
by one law. We most probably need several other regulatory
acts. But they must not violate the principle of confessional
equality.

Question: Let's get back to the decision of the US Senate.
What should Russia do now?
Answer: The simplest thing would be, like in the case of
the NATO enlargement, to turn our backs on the Americans and
refuse to play ball. But this action will not lead to anything
positive. Moreover, it will be a big present for the opponents
of normal Russo-American relations.
We should wait. If the decision of the US Senate is
enforced, we should refuse American assistance and look for
ways to make up for this loss. But this is not a question which
can be settled quickly. It should be allowed to mature. So far,
the decision of the US Senate is a storm in the Senate. The
more so that the US administration agrees with the Senators in
that the Russian draft law is discriminating with regard to
religious minorities, but does not tend to link this law with
the US programmes of assistance to Russia. 
I think that the decision of the US Senate greatly
complicated the life of our President and helped our
communists.

Question: You mentioned the NATO enlargement. Would it be
correct to say that the USA is demonstrating its
high-and-mighty ways with regard to Russia by demanding that
its solution to the problem is accepted and by threatening to
withdraw its economic assistance to Russia now? Some letters to
this newspaper say that Russia is carrying out reforms,
becoming more democratic and trying to become a civilised
state, yet the USA does not want to regard it as a serious
partner. Will you comment, please?
Answer: To begin with, I am against a one-dimensional view
of the US attitude to Russia. Indeed, it was the USA who made 
NATO enlargement a fact of life, and we should take this into
account. The USA did this disregarding Russia's position. This
is a fact. But there are other facts. The Americans seek our
advice on other matters, for example on the issue of the
admission of Russia to the World Trade Organisation. 
What was done with regard to the religious law was done by
the Senate. And I repeat, this Senate decision evoked a
negative reaction in the US government. This is the situation.
In general, there are two lines in US foreign policy. One
is to develop international cooperation, provided the US
leadership is recognised. (In fact, this is really so.) 
The other line is a policy of stubborn and primitive
enforcement of US domination, including in the sphere of
legislation, on Russia and the rest of the world. The infamous
decision of the US Senate is not the first legislative demarche
of this kind. 
For example, the USA "punishes" those foreign companies
which do business on Cuba. This is a gross violation of
legislative norms. Europe, Latin America, Mexico and Canada
denounced this diktat. The US president halted the operation of
this law twice. But the law has been approved and enforced. So,
there is this dark side to the US policy. But I repeat, we
should not engage in one-dimensional demagogy. There is a very
strong wing in the US Congress which is much more constructive.

Question: There are signs showing that Russia is losing
vital positions in global politics. Will it regain them?
Answer: It is true that the global situation is not
favouring Russia now. Russia is being pressurised much more
heavily now than in 1991-92, when it was popular and regarded
with great attention and respect. But it would be wrong to
think that the USA and the rest of the world think only of how
to do damage to Russia. Some people wrongly believe that there
is a "worldwide collusion" against Russia.
A change in the attitude to Russia shows that it has
become weaker, that it lives in a contradictory world. In this
situation, we should be both harsh and flexible. And we should
not be open to blows. If we cannot deliver blows (and we do not
seem to have any fist other than the nuclear one), we should
learn to dodge blows. I repeat, we should combine hardness with
flexibility. We must revive the country, move on and gradually
grow stronger. So as to be able to pursue a more active policy
on the international scene in the future, rather than dream of
maniacal grandeur.

**********


---
David Johnson
[Information for identification purposes only.]
Research Director
Center for Defense Information
Washington DC 20005
phone: 202-862-0700
fax: 202-862-0708
email: djohnson@cdi.org
home address:
1647 Winding Waye Lane
Silver Spring MD 20902 
USA