May 18, 1998  
This Date's Issues: 2182 •2183• 

Johnson's Russia List
#2182
18 May 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. The Guardian (UK): James Meek, Lebed wind from Siberia 
strikes chill in Kremlin.
2. USIA: CLINTON, YELTSIN DISCUSS RUSSIA'S DEEPENING ROLE IN
THE G-8.
3. The Sunday Times (UK): Dark Age doom of Russia's lepers.
4. Los Angeles Times: Vanora Bennett, Trouble Is Looming for 
a Centuries-Old Trade. Caucasus: Regional stability, mass production 
and modern life are ruining business for merchants of hand-woven carpets. 
5. Chicago Tribune: Colin McMahon, PROTECTING NATASHA WITH AMERICAN 
DOLLARS.
6. RIA Novosti: THE TURNING OF "G-7" INTO "G-8" IS A NATURAL RESULT 
OF MARKET PROCESSES UNDER WAY IN RUSSIA, INCLUDING ITS REGIONS,
RUSSIAN GOVERNORS STATED IN BIRMINGHAM.
7. Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Labor Minister Oksana Dmitriyeva Outlines 
Social Priorities.
8. The Economist: Ukraine. Breadbasket or basket-case? 
9. NTV: 'Big Money' Examines Chubays Role as YeES Rossii Chairman.]

*******

#1
The Guardian (UK)
18 May 1998
[for personal use only]
Lebed wind from Siberia strikes chill in Kremlin 
By James Meek in Moscow 

Alexander Lebed, the former general who believes destiny has chosen him 
to save Russia, looked like taking his first big step towards the 
Kremlin yesterday as early reports predicted a landslide for him in 
elections for governor of the rich, strategic Siberian region of 
Krasnoyarsk. 

It was one of the most bizarre, expensive and hard-fought campaigns in 
Russia's short democratic history, pitting the 48-year-old airborne 
forces veteran over the establishment-backed incumbent, Valery Zubov.

A Lebed victory would severely alarm that establishment and provide a 
secure rear base from which the general could launch an assault on the 
Kremlin in presidential elections in 2000. And it would confirm a 
cardinal shift in the disaffected, anti-establishment vote away from 
extreme nationalists and traditional communists towards the neo-Gaullist 
solutions of patriots such as General Lebed and the mayor of Moscow, 
Yuri Luzhkov.

Gen Lebed - a southern Russian who has never lived in Siberia - 
campaigned the length and breadth of Krasnoyarsk territory to overcome 
the suspicions of the tough, cynical electorate. On Friday he even 
denied planning to enter the 2000 presidential race.

>From the Arctic to the Mongolian marches, Gen Lebed worked the stump in 
countless Palaces of Culture and dusty public squares.

Often stiff and awkward, sometimes aggressive with hecklers, he was more 
earnest than inspirational, relying on a glib stream of rhetorical 
one-liners to carry him through long town meetings.

"I'm made in such a way that when I take a decision to get involved in a 
fight, I don't think about defeat," he told the Guardian at one stop.

Behind the general's homely style was a group of powerful backers, 
leading many to question just what commitments he made in exchange for 
support.

Among them was the outspoken tycoon - and now secretary of the 
Commonwealth of Independent States - Boris Berezovsky; Vladimir 
Gusinsky, a media magnate; and Anatoly "The Ox" Bykov, a banker said to 
be one of the largest shareholders in Krasnoyarsk's scandal-plagued 
aluminium plant.

At one point the former star of Zorro, the wrinkled French hearthrob 
Alain Delon - huge in Russia - flew to Krasnoyarsk in a private jet to 
support his "friend" Gen Lebed.

Mr Zubov, a quiet, apolitical academic who counted heavily on the 
assumed support of a far-off President Boris Yeltsin, struggled to fight 
back.

Last week the ageing diva of Russia's campy Europop scene, Alla 
Pugachova, flounced grumpily into Siberia with a brief to give the 
incumbent some showbiz credibility. Unfortunately, she revealed that she 
simply adored Gen Lebed.

"Lebed is a bright star, just a wonderful person," she said. "There is 
too little space here for a man like him."

The general's reputation as an authoritarian, who values obedience 
rather than intelligence in subordinates, is both his strength and his 
weakness. He has yet to persuade the country's liberals that he is 
anything more than an ignorant, chauvinist martinet with an alarming 
choice of friends. The darkest cloud over him remains his alliance with 
Mr Yeltsin's disgraced former bodyguard, the unashamedly anti-democratic 
intriguer Alexander Korzhakov.

Among his supporters he is seen as a patriotic man of action, who did 
something to try to save the Soviet Union and Russia rather than crying 
over it. An army officer for 26 years, he has managed to define his 
Soviet tours in Afghanistan, the Caucasus and the Baltics as paradigms 
of selfless service to the motherland by an honest soldier angrily but 
dutifully carrying out the orders of Politburo fools.

He won national gratitude in 1996 when, as the president's security 
council secretary, he extracted Russia from the unwinnable war in 
Chechenia. But during his time in uniform he never took on the sort of 
political task involving backroom wheeler-dealing, alliance-forming, 
persuasion and playing groups off against each other of which Mr Yeltsin 
remains the master.
 
*******

#2
USIA
17 May 1998 
CLINTON, YELTSIN DISCUSS RUSSIA'S DEEPENING ROLE IN THE G-8 
(Bilateral meeting focuses on START II, Indian tests) (800)
By Wendy S. Ross
USIA White House Correspondent

Birmingham, England -- President Clinton took his G-8 lapel pin off
his jacket and pinned it on the jacket of Russia's President Boris
Yeltsin as the two sat down for one-on-one talks May 17 at the
conclusion of the May 15-17 Summit of the Eight (G-8) meeting here.

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott briefed reporters on their
45-minute meeting. The symbolism of President Clinton's gesture was
clearly understood by Yeltsin and those who saw it, he said.

Russia initially attended the annual summits as an observer, but in
the last few years it has become more and more integrated into the
process, and this year, for the first time, the summit's name was
changed to represent this.

The other seven summit leaders are from the world's most
industrialized nations -- the United States, the United Kingdom,
France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan.

Among the subjects Clinton discussed with Yeltsin was "the future of
the deepening of the Eight," said Deputy National Security Advisor Jim
Steinberg.

"It's clear that President Yeltsin is very pleased with the fact ...
that they were able to discuss so many issues at Eight and talked
about how to deepen Russia's integration in the future," Steinberg
said.

Clinton congratulated Yeltsin on putting in place a new government
team made up very prominently of young, vigorous reformers, Talbott
said. The two Presidents, he noted, agreed that Russia and the United
States will now "be able to move forward on a number of issues in the
bilateral arena, particularly in the area of economic cooperation."

Clinton and Yeltsin then turned the conversation to the subject of a
summit meeting "that they both want to have in the relatively near
future," Talbott said.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said reports that Clinton had
accepted an invitation from Yeltsin to visit Moscow in July are not
true.

"They did not make any decisions on when they would" meet, McCurry
said. "And, obviously, we would repeat what we've said the in the
past, that our next summit with President Yeltsin will focus on many
things, but especially arms control, and the importance of
ratification of START II (by Russia's Duma) is well understood by the
Russian Federation."

>From discussing START II and the prospects for START III, the two
leaders moved to the subject of India's nuclear testing, Talbott said.

"Both agreed that this latest episode underscores the special
responsibility that the United States and Russia, as custodians of
significant nuclear arsenals, have to continue the task of reducing
those nuclear arsenals, which they have every intention of doing in a
very ambitious way under START III," Talbott said.

The two leaders also discussed the Balkans and agreed that they and
their foreign ministers in particular would continue to work very
closely to synchronize U.S. and Russian policies in the Balkans, both
in their bilateral contacts and also through the Contact Group, in
order to build upon the progress that has been made in Bosnia, as well
as the recent somewhat hopeful developments in Kosovo, Talbott said.

Summit meetings have been going on since 1975. Initially the leaders
discussions focused heavily on the world's economy, but in recent
years the leaders have also focused on pressing political problems.

India's detonation of five underground nuclear devices, in the same
week that the summit took place, turned the attention of the leaders
to the nuclear proliferation question.

The summit leaders in a joint statement condemned the Indian tests and
called upon Pakistan "to exercise maximum restraint in the face of
these tests and to adhere to international non-proliferation norms."

They also "deplored the killings in Indonesia" and urged "the
authorities to show maximum restraint, to refrain from the use of
lethal force and to respect individual rights" in dealing with riots
there.

"The current social unrest indicates that, to resolve the crisis,
political as well as economic reform is necessary," the leaders said
in a joint statement said.

And they said they were "deeply concerned by the continuing stalemate"
in the Middle East peace process, and "strongly support the efforts to
gain the agreement of the parties to a package of constructive and
realistic ideas which have already been presented by the United
States, including a second Israeli redeployment."

The leaders also said the continuing violence in Kosovo has revived
fears of a new Balkans war and said a political situation to the
problem of Kosovo is vital for the peace and well being of all people
of the region. They welcomed the progress that has recently been made
on peace implementation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

*******

#3
The Sunday Times (UK)
May 17, 1998
[for personal use only]
Dark Age doom of Russia's lepers 

MORE THAN 30 years have passed since Lubov Sadovskaya was cured of 
leprosy. A crippled hand is the only visible sign that she ever had the 
disease. Yet she still lives in a remote leper colony where sufferers 
are separated from their families under a system described by British 
experts as medieval. 
Doctors disinfect their hands after coming into contact with Sadovskaya. 
Her letters to the outside are pressed with a hot iron to kill any 
bacteria. She is not allowed to touch money in case she contaminates it. 

Her world is a tiny settlement of 18 barracks shared by 100 lepers 
outside Krasnodar in the northern Caucasus, more than 800 miles south of 
Moscow. The village is isolated by thick forest and a rusty fence. A 
twisted sign warns outsiders to keep out. Few people know of the 
colony's existence. 

It is one of four leper colonies left in Russia, where a dwindling 
number of patients are interned and where most will end their days. 
Sadovskaya has lived here for 49 years. 

"The main aim is isolation. No contact with the outside," said Boris 
Semenenko, the director of the colony at Sinegorsk. "The patient is 
taken away to be cured but few are told what they are suffering from. We 
examine the leper's relatives to detect early signs of contagion. It's 
all done discreetly to avoid hysteria among the neighbours. They are 
terrified of the disease. They are just told that he or she moved to 
another town. That way there is no fuss." 

Russia is one of the last countries in the world to lock up its lepers. 
Diana, Princess of Wales showed the modern way when, as patron of the 
Leprosy Mission, a British charity, she repeatedly shook hands with 
sufferers and embraced them. Her actions did much to dispel the myth 
that the disease is highly contagious. More than 90% of people are 
naturally immune to leprosy, which causes discoloration and lumps on the 
skin and, in severe cases, disfigurement and deformities. The remaining 
10% are at risk only if they come into close contact with carriers over 
a prolonged period. 

Once fatal, the disease is now easily cured within six months by 
antibiotics. Even the most acutely affected cease to be contagious after 
two months of treatment. Lepers are no longer isolated in the West or in 
India, where 60% of the world's cases are recorded. 

In Russia, however, old fears die hard. Although the country's doctors 
use the same course of treatment as their colleagues in the West, 
anybody diagnosed with the disease in Russia is deemed "sociably 
dangerous" and forcibly interned under a 1923 law. 

An average of five to seven years go by before lepers are formally 
recognised as being no longer contagious; even then they cannot leave 
their colonies without an official permit. In the meantime, the sick are 
not only separated from their spouses but are not allowed to see their 
children. 

In Sinegorsk, 12 children born into the families of leprosy sufferers 
live in a state kindergarten outside the colony's perimeter. Their 
parents are reunited with them only when they are officially deemed 
safe, and even then for no more than two days at a time. 

"Such treatment is absolutely cruel and completely unnecessary. I am 
shocked," said Nigel Slater, Leprosy Mission's director of fundraising. 

"It is unbelievable that it should still be happening in Russia. It 
keeps alive the old prejudice that lepers are cursed by God. It is 
medieval and I know of no other country whose health organisations 
behave in this way." Russian sufferers are unaware of the methods used 
in other countries. They accept separation and isolation, believing the 
measures are in their interests and those of their loved ones. 

It can take up to 20 years before lepers are allowed to leave a colony, 
and even then they remain under observation for life because Russian 
doctors believe there is always a risk of relapse. By the time the 
lepers are free to go, few have a home to return to. Shunned, disabled 
and accustomed to seclusion, most decide to remain within the walls of 
their settlements, supervised by carers and supported by the state. 

So confident are the authorities that nobody will abscond that in 
Sinegorsk, which was built in 1905, the gate is closed only at night. 
The lepers know their place and, for most, the colony is the only place 
they know. Its oldest resident died at the age of 96; she had lived 
there since she was 15. 

"Where was I supposed to go?" said Klavdia Pushkova, who has spent 50 
years there and who lost a leg and a foot to the disease. "My husband 
did not want me any more and remarried shortly after I was interned. I 
have no home and nobody to go back to. I've been here too long to move." 

There are 2m leprosy sufferers worldwide. A further 4m have been cured 
but permanently disabled by the disease. Officially, there was no 
leprosy in the former Soviet Union. In reality, thousands caught the 
disease after the second world war as a result of malnutrition and 
poverty. 

In the late 1950s more than 500 new cases were being registered every 
year and a dozen leper colonies were in operation across Russia. During 
the past decade, however, the problem has been brought under control. 
There are few new cases each year, and fewer than 4,000 sufferers in 
all. 

Russian doctors believe their success can be attributed to the drastic 
measures enforced by the state and are critical of other ways of doing 
things. "I am shocked to hear that British charities do not isolate 
lepers - that is why the disease is still growing worldwide," said 
Girgori Beron, Sinegorsk's head doctor. 

"Five per cent of the population could catch the disease but it is still 
impossible to know who is potentially at risk. So we think that 
long-term isolation is justified. The British are being too liberal." 

Some of Beron's patients married and had children with other lepers from 
the colony. Their future shattered by the disease and by the Russian 
state's primitive therapy, others have tried to introduce an air of 
normality to their village, bleak though it is. 

The settlement, sprawling over 2,000 hectares, has its own hospital and 
small "culture house" where films are occasionally shown. The lepers 
live no more than two to a room. Some spend their days cultivating tiny 
plots of land while others are allowed to stroll in the surrounding 
woods, as long as they do not go beyond the perimeter. 

The cluster of decaying houses has a minuscule main square, dominated by 
a statute of Lenin. Once in a while, a barber visits the colony. He is 
forbidden by doctors to take any of his instruments outside the grounds. 

The sick can buy food from the shop, but they are not allowed to handle 
money in case coins or notes should carry infection to the outside. 
Instead their state benefits are paid into an account from which any sum 
spent is deducted. 

The old lady on the other side of the counter never touches her 
customers. The lepers have long become inured to the rules. They display 
a sad resignation to the consequences of the disease and the ignorance 
surrounding it. 

"Of course I should be isolated. I am dangerous," said Faina 
Levatchenko, a crippled pensioner who lost her eyesight to leprosy and 
who has been incarcerated since 1949. 

"It is a terrible disease. It terrifies people. They move away from you 
the moment they find out that you are a leper. You lose your friends, 
your relatives. It took my life away but I must be isolated. I can't 
live among the healthy. Nobody needs me there." 

*******

#4
Los Angeles Times
May 17, 1998 
[for personal use only]
Trouble Is Looming for a Centuries-Old Trade 
Caucasus: Regional stability, mass production and modern life are 
ruining business for merchants of hand-woven carpets. 
By VANORA BENNETT, Times Staff Writer
 
TERBENT, Russia--Under the fortress walls, the merchants of this 
honey-colored stone city at the crossroads of three empires are doing 
what their ancestors have done for 800 years: laying out hand-woven 
carpets for sale. 
     During centuries of conflict under Persian, Turkish and Russian 
empires, rug salesmen here traditionally have done lucrative business by 
buying family carpets from refugees on the run from warfare across the 
Caucasus Mountains and along the shores of the Caspian Sea. 
     No more. 
     Something disastrous has started to happen to the region's 
hand-made carpet trade in the last two years: Peace keeps breaking out. 
     "Look at it now," says woebegone trader Magomed Magomedov, 
forlornly gesturing around. Just a dozen carpets are pinned up outside 
the north side of the long defensive wall that Derbent's onetime Persian 
masters built in the 6th century. Half a dozen men, all as small and 
hunched in their flapping black clothes as Magomedov, all with the same 
mournful expression, are waiting for buyers. 
     "There's almost nothing left of our trade," Magomedov says. "Modern 
life is killing off the hand-made carpet business." 
     The region's carpet-making legacy from the great carpet cultures of 
Persia and Turkey was institutionalized under Soviet rule. Factories 
mass-produced carpets with approximately traditional designs, although 
village women went on weaving their own--and also continued the 
practice, frowned on by Communist Party bosses, of giving dowries of 
carpets at marriage. The huge Derbent market spread across town every 
weekend. 
    But the bonanza years for carpet dealers were right after the Soviet 
Union collapsed. The lands around Russia's southern border, a tinderbox 
of Christian and Muslim ethnic groups with long memories for old feuds, 
went up in flames. In the five years after the 1991 Soviet collapse, 
there were conflicts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Georgians and 
Abkhazian separatists, and Russians and Chechen separatists. 
     In the early 1990s, more than a million people fled shattered 
villages and towns, taking with them only their bedding and carpets. 
With no money and no homes, the dispossessed were desperate to sell even 
such treasured symbols of stability and collective history as the 
carpets to buy food. 
     But now stability is returning to the region. The wars have stopped 
or been suspended. The refugees have sold their rugs, and many have 
found new homes and jobs; so have many of the traders from those days. 
     The only carpets being made by hand and sold in Derbent are those 
of women here in the multiethnic republic of Dagestan. But this domestic 
weaving was never intended as a money-making business and is done more 
for private, family purposes. 
     Magomedov's wife, Asli, is one of the weavers. She has just 
dismantled the huge loom that stood all winter in front of the family 
television set. She, her 22-year-old daughter, Zulekha, and her two 
20-year-old daughters-in-law, Gyulhara and Vilayad, worked for six 
months on the huge blue-and-red oblong carpet that now lies on the 
floor. She's planning to start weaving again in the fall. 
   Some of the Magomedovs' carpets are dowry offerings from the family's 
two new daughters-in-law. A betrothed woman's family still must provide 
at least one big carpet, a flat-weave rug, a runner and half a dozen 
cushions. Her mother and sisters can help her weave them, but the 
designs should be her own. 
     Traditional Caucasus carpets differ in design from region to 
region, village to village. They include both Persian motifs--intricate 
floral patterns--and wilder, brighter, coarser Turkish-influenced 
designs, with jagged flame-like shapes. 
     But some of the modern carpets, cushions, runners and wall hangings 
that decorate houses here have designs that draw as much from Western 
pop culture as Eastern tradition. Snoopys and Snow Whites crop up, along 
with compositions of pink-faced children and baskets of puppies. 
     Asli, who was laid off from her job at the near-bankrupt Soviet-era 
carpet factory a few years ago, loves weaving. She collects 
templates--patterns of tiny crosses on squared paper--just as some 
Western women collect knitting patterns. She studies them in her free 
moments, contemplating her next adventure in quiet creativity. 
     But, she complains, her work doesn't bring in much money. The most 
she can expect her husband to get for this winter's rug, measuring 6 
feet by 10 feet, is $600. 
     "Four of us worked on it for six months," she laments. "And that 
means we only earned $25 a month each. A pittance." 
     The worst blow of all to the trade is the flippancy with which 
post-Soviet Dagestanis have begun to treat their traditions. 
    Although it's still considered crucial to transfer carpets from 
family to family at marriage, her husband says, it's no longer a matter 
of pride to give the most beautiful and costly weaving possible. 
     And Russia's opening of its borders means that there's new 
competition in the rug business from an unexpected quarter: the West. 
     Inside Derbent's city walls, just yards from the deserted handmade 
carpet market, an altogether more flourishing trade is now going on in 
cheap Belgian or Belarussian carpets made with synthetic fibers. 
     These crackling, brownish rugs, with large swirly patterns, stand 
rolled up against walls, or are displayed on clotheslines or cars. Surly 
traders with none of the traditional carpet salesman's patter say they 
buy them from four or five big warehouses in Moscow and bring them down 
to the south for sale. They cost only one-fifth as much as hand-woven 
rugs. 
     "So what do people do before a wedding?" Magomedov asks with a 
mixture of indignation and resignation. "They know they've got to give 
carpets. But they couldn't care less what kind. So they get the cheapest 
possible Belgian thing and palm it off on their new family. For people 
like that, respect for tradition is becoming no more than a formality." 

*******

#5
Chicago Tribune
May 17, 1998
[for personal use only]
PROTECTING NATASHA WITH AMERICAN DOLLARS 
By Colin McMahon, Tribune Staff Writer. 

MOSCOW 
So familiar is Natasha's story that were it not so painful, it would be
trite. A marriage turned ugly, then violent. A husband who belted her around
and then blamed her. Shame, guilt, despair.
Natasha got help, first from some pioneering women who run a crisis center
for victims of domestic violence. Then from the Russian courts. But many
Russian women in Natasha's place never take that step. They hope for the best
and, far too frequently, suffer the worst.
The same trap of domestic violence that has only recently become well
understood in the United States is barely recognized as a serious problem in
Russia. Thousands of women may die each year at the hands of their husbands
and lovers, but an ancient lie remains common currency here: Domestic violence
is a family affair, a matter of the heart rather than the law.
If he beats you, the Russian saying roughly goes, it means he loves you.
Earlier this year, the No to Violence Association kicked off a nationwide
public-awareness campaign to combat domestic violence. Armed with about
$80,000 from the Ford Foundation and help from the U.S. Family Violence
Prevention Fund, the association hopes to challenge average Russians to
question their attitudes and accept that violence against women is society's
problem.
At the same time, the campaign hopes to prompt victims to reach out for
help. Even more than in the United States, Russian women suffer their beatings
in shame and silence. Underreporting is a critical issue.
Public-service announcements will run on radio and perhaps on television.
Posters and bumper stickers are being plastered in Metro stations, police
precinct houses, doctor's offices and hospitals. The campaign is based on one
crafted by the Family Violence Prevention Fund but modified to fit better with
Russian culture and to acknowledge that Russian awareness of the problem
severely lags behind that in the United States or Western Europe.
One powerful poster, for example, pairs the aforementioned saying, "If he
beats, that means he loves," with a picture of a woman whose face is purpled
by nasty bruises.
"We're aiming not only at ordinary people in the streets, but the campaign
will also target those in authority," said Marina Pisklakova, who directs one
of the association's crisis centers. "We are targeting the myths about
provocation and the feeling that women like to be beaten."
Such attitudes date back a long way, even beyond a 16th Century Russian
how-to book that recommended wife-beating as an important part of raising a
family. During communist times, when much of the Western world was waking up
to the problem of domestic violence, it was heresy to suggest that such a
thing occurred in a nation where men and women were officially equal.
"We never had domestic violence in Soviet times," Pisklakova said with a
smirk. "Never."
The problem today is hard to quantify, partly because of underreporting,
partly because the Russian government does not track domestic-violence cases
separately.
The most widely quoted estimate of deaths comes from the Presidential
Commission on Women, Children and Demographics. Its chief suggests, in an
estimate that strikes law-enforcement officials as high but not impossible,
that 14,000 women die each year at the hands of their husbands or other family
members.
Human Rights Watch, in a report timed to coincide with International
Women's Day on March 8, criticized the Russian government's treatment of the
issue. Not only do the police and courts keep woeful records, the report said,
individual officers, prosecutors and judges are hostile to the victims.
"Because law-enforcement officials resist even recognizing that domestic
violence is a crime, many police officers refuse to respond to women's calls
for help," Human Rights Watch said. "When the police do respond, they often
will hold the batterer, if at all, for only a brief time and release him
unattended; after the release, the battering usually resumes."
That scenario played out time and again through Natasha's marriage.
She suffered her beatings in silence, accepting her husband's excuse that
they were her fault because she made him angry.
"I felt responsible for it all and guilty about not doing anything to stop
it," she said in an interview at a Moscow courthouse. "I was beaten down."
Natasha, a 42-year-old math teacher, is not a shy woman. She speaks clearly
and confidently, but when discussing the abuse she suffered, she looked down
at the floor and lowered her voice. She avoided making eye contact.
It was finally when her husband started on the children, the danger to them
moved Natasha to break the cycle of beatings. She summoned the will to call an
abuse hot line in Moscow. With the help of the No to Violence Association,
which supplied counseling and legal help, Natasha took the matter to court.
A judge ordered her husband to stop the abuse, but he did not. Natasha got
a divorce, but her husband, in a scenario played out across Moscow largely
because of Soviet-era housing policies, remained in the apartment. Still the
violence did not end.
Then, finally, he was gone, to another place and another woman. Now Natasha
struggles to raise her three children, ages 8, 11 and 15. She fears her
husband will try to move back in one day, but she is determined that the
chapter of violence in her life is closed.
Just recently, Natasha's hope that things may be changing for Russian women
got an unexpected boost. For more than a year she had been trying to get the
court to force her husband to help her financially with the children.
He kept skipping court dates with impunity. She kept pressing on.
Then a judge ordered him to pay Natasha a lump sum of $1,000. It was a
fifth of what she asked for, but a fifth she never expected to get.
Now the association can use the case as an example of what the law, and
perseverance, has the potential to do.
"It's very difficult for women to go to court because the system is not
working," said Elena Potapova, deputy director of the association's crisis
center. "They don't believe in it."
Changing the legal process, and then using it, is part of the association's
plan. The information campaign is, in some ways, only the first step.
"Our long-term goal is to develop a model on how to deal with domestic
violence," Pisklakova said.
The women envision training police and prosecutors, doctors and nurses,
teachers and school counselors.
"We say, `Don't confuse domestic violence with family quarreling,' "
Pisklakova said. "We also need to give them skills to do this. We want to
break the cycle of violence."

********

#6
THE TURNING OF "G-7" INTO "G-8" IS A NATURAL RESULT OF
MARKET PROCESSES UNDER WAY IN RUSSIA, INCLUDING ITS REGIONS,
RUSSIAN GOVERNORS STATED IN BIRMINGHAM
BIRMINGHAM, May 16. /RIA Novosti correspondent Vladimir
Simonov/. The turning of the "Group of Seven" into the "Group of
Eight" is a natural result of market processes under way in

Russia, including its regions, three Russian governors stated at
a news conference in Birmingham. According to Dmitry Ayatskov,
of Saratov, Yuri Yevdokimov, from Murmansk, and Arkhangelsk's
Anatoly Yefremov, Russian regions with their mineral resources,
the favourable geographic location and a developed industrial
base may interest many foreign investors, primarily in "G-8"
countries. 
Ayatskov said, in particular, that laws on the protection
of foreign investment and the private ownership of land, which
permits leasing land to foreigners for 99 years, were passed in
Saratov Region. An agreement has just been signed with the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on its
participation in the development and processing of oil in the
region. During the "G-8" summit in Birmingham, the Saratov
governor said, talks with the British Delcam company began on
the computer modelling of "flying wing" apparatus. 
The governors of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk told about the
investment potential of their regions at the news conference.

********

#7
Labor Minister Outlines Social Priorities 

Rossiyskaya Gazeta
8 may 1998
[translation for personal use only]
Interview with Oksana Dmitriyeva, Russian Federation minister of
labor and social development, by Lyubov Volkova; date, place not
stated: "Let Us Meet in a Year"

Oksana Genrikhovna Dmitriyeva, the new Russian Federation minister of
labor and social development, started work a few days ago. Ever since, the
line of journalists wanting to interview her has been a constant presence
in her waiting room. Oksana Dmitriyeva left her work as a deputy in the
State Duma Yabloko faction to take up this post and, as we know, the
faction stated that it did not agree to the appointment of Sergey Kiriyenko
to the post of prime minister. And that is why everyone has naturally been
asking the following question, including your Rossiyskaya Gazeta
correspondent:
[Volkova] Oksana Genrikhovna, why did you agree?
[Dmitriyeva] I agreed because I hope that I can achieve something in
this post.
[Volkova] Were there any behind-the-scenes games here, any bargaining
with the faction, as people kept saying?
[Dmitriyeva] There was no bargaining. It was offered to me on
Friday, three hours after the final vote in the State Duma on Kiriyenko's
candidacy. I took a time-out and went to St. Petersburg, consulted my
family, my team, my assistants, and numerous organizations which have
worked with me, and on the basis of those consultations I made the
decision.
Of course Yabloko did not give me its blessing. Grigoriy Alekseyevich
Yavlinskiy believes (and in many respects this is right) that you should
join a government with a team of like-minded people, which has been working
together for many years and has a coordinated plan of action. But that is
the ideal option.
The sphere of social problems which I will have to deal with is not
new to me. In particular, I was always generally responsible for the main
amendments in terms of increasing expenditure on the social sphere; I was a
well-known lobbyist for the social sphere, so to speak. All programs, both
federal and targeted, used to go through me. All laws on raising the
minimum wage and the indexation of pensions also went through me as
chairman of the budget subcommittee. Plus, I was the author of the Budget
Code, which is reforming the budget sphere, indeed in three days' work as a
minister I have referred to it several times.
[Volkova] You are a financier by training and disposition. You know
what budget difficulties mean. In crisis situations many states, not only
ours, prefer to economize on people. Are you, as a specialist in the
budget sphere, prepared to support a "belt- tightening" policy?
[Dmitriyeva] It is precisely a financier who is required now. Maybe
in a different situation, when there is no budget crisis, the Ministry of
Labor will need a different person, someone specializing more in legal
issues, the regulation of labor relations, and relations with trade unions.
These are key tasks today too, but at the moment it is more important to
achieve stabilization in the social sphere, secure at least some kind of
funding for it, and mobilize resources for resolving social problems. This
means non- budget funds and the rationalization of the concessions system
to ensure that it is made available to the poor. You have to be a
financier to defend social expenditure, mobilize it, and distribute it
correctly.
I think that we have to increase expenditure on social needs. And not
because I have become the minister. I have always tried to achieve this
through numerous amendments to the federal budget. But the main social
payments -- pensions, subsidies, medical services -- go into non-budget
funds, and that is why most of the resources are there, why they constitute
70 percent of federal budget income. They have to be used to resolve
subsidy and pension problems.
[Volkova] What will you start off with?
[Dmitriyeva] The rationalization of non-budget funds and expenditure
on providing pensions. We must look more attentively at the turnover of
funds, because big losses are occurring there, purely technological losses.
I think that we can obtain resources here to stabilize payments and make
at least minimum indexation possible.
[Volkova] Do you think that the so-called third sector -- non-
government organizations -- could assume some of the tasks? Will you
support them?
[Dmitriyeva] I think that this is a large, untapped sphere.
Charitable institutions have always existed. There are boarding schools,
old people's homes, orphanages, and families living in critical situations.
A common approach is impossible here; what is needed is an individual
approach, and assistance from voluntary organizations in these cases is
invaluable. As a deputy I came up against this every day. I think that
the public's attention must be drawn to these issues. In Russia 1,600
rubles a month is spent on every child in children's homes. This is quite
a lot. Boards of trustees and philanthropic organizations are needed. I
know that the Duma has a law on the State Social Order, and I think that it
should be coordinated with the Budget and Civil Codes.
[Volkova] Your job is called "a suicide mission" with good reason. 
Are you not afraid of a rapid changeover of ministers in this cabinet?
[Dmitriyeva] Well, I have seen five finance ministers come and go. 
There have also been five ministers here in the Ministry of Labor. Of
course everyone expects rapid results from ministers. I am not counting on
first results any sooner than a year from now.
[Volkova] We wish you success.

********

#8
The Economist
May 16
FINANCE AND ECONOMICS 
Ukraine 
Breadbasket or basket-case? 

DESPITE the presence last week in Kiev of 2,000 bankers and businessmen 
at the annual get-together of the European Bank for Reconstruction and 
Development (EBRD), Ukraine may be about to miss its last real chance of 
economic reform for half a decade. For the moment, a deceptive calm 
prevails. Inflation has been slashed from 1993, when prices doubled 
monthly, to around 10% last year, and the currency, the hryvna, is 
relatively stable. After seven straight years of contraction the economy 
may stop shrinking this year. All would seem well—except that Ukraine is 
lurching towards bankruptcy. 
“In the next few months, the volumes we need to finance state 
debt . . . will exceed planned budget revenues,” the deputy prime 
minister, Sergei Tigipko, gently puts it. “Even if we do not spend a 
kopek on wages, pensions and financing the domestic economy, we will not 
get out of this unless we restore faith among investors at home and 
abroad . . . and get extra finance from international lending 
organisations.” 
Time is short. Ukraine’s new parliament, which met for the first time on 
May 12th, is dominated by communists. It falls largely to the 
International Monetary Fund to focus attention on the need for economic 
reform. In theory, that should not be hard. Without more credit this 
year from the IMF and the World Bank, Ukraine faces a 
balance-of-payments crisis that will shake the currency, stoke inflation 
and wreck its economic stability. But the IMF must tread carefully. A 
crisis is likely to boost anti-reform presidential aspirants, like 
Oleksandr Moroz, the America-bashing head of the Socialist and Peasant 
Party. 
So the Fund is promising reward or punishment. But can it plausibly do 
both, at the same time? In March, just before the election, it quietly 
suspended a standby loan worth $542m when the government ran up twice 
its agreed budget deficit. In April, however, it started talks on a 
separate $2.5 billion-2.7 billion credit. It will make a final decision 
early this summer. 
Ukraine’s president, Leonid Kuchma, seems to realise his country’s 
plight. In his speech opening the new parliament he strongly backed the 
new loan—and the conditions attached to it. And for once the IMF is 
insisting that the agreement should have parliament’s backing as well. 
In the past, when Ukraine has broken its economic promises, Mr Kuchma 
has been able to blame left-wingers. 
Waiting for investors Will parliament swallow the IMF’s conditions? They 
come in two parts. The more important is a package of reforms, without 
which Ukraine’s cash-strapped economy has no chance of flourishing. The 
proposed reforms include a new tax code, liberalisation of agriculture 
and the gas market, bank regulation and faster privatisation of big 
companies. Parliament will have few good excuses for rejecting a package 
that will widen the tax base, spur investment and make it harder for 
state officials to take bribes. The second part of the deal is a drastic 
reduction in the budget deficit this year to 2.5% of GDP. Since the 
government ran a deficit nearly three times that size last year and 
still failed to pay nearly $1 billion in pensions and public-sector 
wages, the IMF’s target looks unrealistic. And that could give the 
reform-wary parliament an excuse for turning the whole deal down. 
Even if parliament goes along, lenders cannot relax. With the EBRD’s 
spotlight on it, the government could not hide its ambivalence about 
reform. A plan for the EBRD to take a minority stake in Bank Ukraina, a 
big state-owned commercial bank which is stuffed with dud loans made to 
collective farms at the government’s request, fell through a week before 
the EBRD meeting because the government refused to give the Bank seats 
on Ukraina’s board. Rather than take the EBRD’s money and advice, Mr 
Kuchma promised still more subsidies and credits for the country’s 
beleaguered farmers. If he treats the IMF with the same disdain, expect 
Ukraine’s economy to slump even further. 

*******

#9
'Big Money' Examines Chubays Role as YeES Rossii Chairman 

NTV
14 May 1998
[translation for personal use only]

Opening the 14 May edition of the "Big Money" program, its regular
presenter, Igor Pototskiy, said that "a scandal seems to be brewing. The
chairman of the Audit Chamber has sent a letter to the speaker of the State
Duma which says that the board of directors of the Unified Energy System of
Russia company [YeES Rossi] and the collegium representing the state in the
company committed gross violations of the law, as a result of which
Anatoliy Chubays was elected to the board of directors at the general
meeting of the company's shareholders on 4 April. According to [Duma
speaker] Gennadiy Seleznev, the elections of the chairman of the board may
be deemed invalid, and another scandal will break out."
Continuing the program, two Moscow journalists, Aleksandr Bekker from
Moskovskiye Novosti and Andrey Kolesnikov from Novoye Vremya, offered
speculation and conjecture as to whether Chubays was keen to get this post
and what, if anything, the Duma could do to remove Chubays from the post. 
The position carries enormous political influence and can perform "in a
sense, the role of chairman of the future presidential campaign because
this person will be able to have direct links with the regions and use the
lever of electric power for political purposes," Kolesnikov said.

*******