December 18, 2000   

This Date's Issues:   4694 • 4695

Johnson's Russia List
#4694
18 December 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Chubais, Putin aide row over Russia energy shakeup.
2. Irish Times: Alina Petric, Bolshoi struggles to avoid collapse - Once the world's leading ballet company, the Bolshoi is in deep trouble. Russia's culture minister says it is a socialist island in a market world and is suffering accordingly.
3. Reuters: Rice shatters barriers with top security posting.
4. Alexander Nechushkin: From the Urals.
5. BBC Monitoring: Defence Minister Sergeyev rules out Russia-US ABM compromise.
6. BBC Monitoring: Russian TV army programme questions strategic forces cuts.
7. BBC Monitoring: Russian party says liberal values under threat.
8. BBC Monitoring: Russian election chief gives details of draft law on political parties.
9. The Washington Post Magazine: Margart Paxson, The Ghosts Of War. Russia's Sons Come Home from Chechnya.]

******

#1
Chubais, Putin aide row over Russia energy shakeup
By Patrick Lannin
 
MOSCOW, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Russian energy boss and leading Yeltsin-era
reformer Anatoly Chubais rowed with an adviser to President Vladimir Putin on
live television on Sunday over the carve up of Russia's giant electricity
firm.

The government approved a plan on Friday to restructure Unified Energy System
(UES), a power monolith which controls the electricity grid, has stakes in
most regional suppliers and is the country's most liquid stock market share.

The plan was approved in the teeth of opposition from some foreign investors
and one of President Vladimir Putin's advisers on economic affairs, liberal
economist Andrei Illarionov.

"Investors are voting, they are voting with their money, they are running
from your company," Illarionov told Chubais on state-owned RTR television,
referring to a slide in UES shares, as their discussion turned into a virtual
shouting match.

"I want to annoy you. I will fully carry out my task despite your personal
opinion, which is different from that of the state. You have to get used to
this idea," responded Chubais, an architect of reforms under former President
Boris Yeltsin.

He said the fall in the share price reflected general market fluctuations. He
said his job was the revival and restructuring of the whole energy market and
attracting huge investments.

UES shares have fallen around 60 percent to $0.0755 since the restructuring
plan was announced in the spring while the main market index has sunk just
over 30 percent in that time.

The key aim of the restructuring is to spin off power generating assets from
the distribution arm to create competition although the state will retain
control of the grid.

Investors have expressed worries that assets will be sold off on the cheap.

Putin has already responded to the men's differences, saying during a visit
to Cuba last week that debates within his team were healthy.

But the heat of the two men's debate was a rare public display of temper
between officials.

Illarionov said the restructure plan was not transparent and would harm the
interests of the state. He said it was not clear what the property or tax
base of the firm would be after the restructure and what price would be set
on the sale of company property.

Illarionov later criticised Chubais for his Yeltsin-era shares-for-loans
deals, which many analysts say resulted in top state-owned companies being
sold on the cheap to the benefit of a small circle of businessmen, dubbed
oligarchs.

"Andrei, my dear friend, if we had not done what we did you would never be
adviser to the president. You should not touch our history, with all its
pluses and minuses. I will answer for it before the nation and not to you,"
Chubais declared.

******

#2
Irish Times
December 16, 2000
Bolshoi struggles to avoid collapse - Once the world's leading
ballet company, the Bolshoi is in deep trouble. Russia's culture minister
says it is a socialist island in a market world and is suffering accordingly
By Alina Petric

The magnificent auditorium is falling down. The once superb performances have
lost their sparkle. And with the government stepping in to sack the director,
ordinary Russians have finally had to admit that the Bolshoi, the greatest
ballet in the world, has hit a crisis.

While Russian dance companies continue to tour the world, wowing audiences
and critics alike, the former template for ballet is in chaos. The history of
the Bolshoi has in fact followed closely the history of the political system
that controls it.

In the 1960s, with Soviet power at its height, the Bolshoi, situated across
the street from the Kremlin, turned out legendary performances under director
Yury Gregorovic. In those days Western audiences flocked to the handful of
excursions the company made across the Iron Curtain.

Then came the fall. With the collapse of communism, the theatre has
floundered. Gregorovic became a tyrant, but refused to budge. Finally, the
dancers went on strike in 1995 and Russia's president kicked him out,
replacing him with former Bolshoi dancer Vladimir Vasilyev. But this worked
no better. Vasilyev made the same mistake with the Bolshoi that the
government made with the economy - he tried to control too much. Insisting on
personally directing ballets and operas, he also tried to sort out the
finances, and control a rebuilding plan for the theatre. The result was chaos
with the finances and a further drop in standards.

Where once foreign audiences had been overwhelmed by the Bolshoi's bold
strokes, there were now complaints that Russian dance was rigid,
unimaginative and out of touch with modern trends. For Russians the final
straw came when Vasilyev tampered with what is regarded as untamperable - he
rearranged the choreography of Swan Lake.

In October the government of new tough-guy president Vladimir Putin stepped
in: Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi was put in charge. His first act was to
sack Vasilyev and 20 of his staff.

'The structure is very conservative and very old fashioned. Practically, we
keep the socialist island in the market world - that is very stupid,'
Shvydkoi told The Irish Times.

'The Bolshoi is a very important institute in Russia generally, it influences
the general situation in Russia.'

He has taken a leaf out of the book of his boss, Putin, who is busy cleaning
up corruption and sending police against the once-untouchable tycoons.

Vasilyev's old job has been split in two, with an art director and financial
manager being appointed to run the theatre. And for the first time, both men
are on fixed three-year contracts, to be renewed only if they get results.

'We must change the system,' says Shvydkoi. 'We must destroy the old Soviet
principle of a contract with a chair, a contract for life.'

But changing the captain won't necessarily save the ship: the Bolshoi is
quite literally falling down, and many Muscovites consider it already a fire
trap. There is, in fact, a rebuilding programme - it was designed after part
of the theatre collapsed in 1902, and has never been finished. Now the plan
has been overtaken by decay.

A new scheme is afoot to close the entire theatre for rebuilding, moving in
the meantime to a temporary venue to be built next door. The problem is the
(pounds) 200 million price tag.

Shvydkoi insists that, with some help from the UN heritage and education
agency UNICEF, Russia can afford it, but with nearly half the population on
the breadline, the country has other priorities.

In fact, for Bolshoi read Russia: the theatre is stuck in a no man's land
between communism and capitalism: cut from the former, but yet to embrace the
latter in the form of sponsorship or marketing.

Ironically, help may come by learning the lessons of its greatest rival - St
Petersburg's Mariinsky - the renamed Kirov. While the fall of communism has
brought only pain to the Bolshoi, it has been a boon for the Mariinsky, which
has seen its fortunes soar and its dancing eclipse that of its 'older
brother'.

The Mariinsky's fiery young director, Valery Gergiev, has poured energy not
just into opera and ballet but into a phenomenal programme of marketing and
world tours that have brought in revenue and critical success.

By opening it up to the world, rather than hiding from it, Gergiev has made
the Mariinsky a world force - and last month he hit the jackpot when a US
billionaire fan sent him a cheque for (pounds) 10 million.

Not everyone is convinced the government can fix things: 'State-owned art is
in a very bad condition. The problem is that there is no clear policy,' says
Yaruslav Sedov, arts critic for the magazine Itogi.

'The government must choose. If it wants control, it must pay the bill. Or
else the system of sponsorship must be made real. Now the Bolshoi is lost
between the two systems.'

But with the economy in crisis, neither government nor private money is
likely to throw the Bolshoi a lifeline any time soon. The one bright spot is
that Russia, for all its woes - or perhaps because of them - continues to
churn out armies of talented ballet stars.

'We have many good dancers coming through,' says Alexander Bondarenko,
professor at the Bolshoi Choreography School, the education arm of the
Bolshoi. 'In this school we have the spirit, and that is the main thing. The
spirit is the base on which we build.'

******

#3
NEWSMAKER-Rice shatters barriers with top security posting
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
 
WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) - It would be hard to overstate the
significance of Condoleezza Rice's selection -- long expected but
officially announced on Sunday as President-elect George W. Bush's national
security adviser.

As a black woman, she is a rarity in the Republican Party and her
appointment shatters the glass ceiling that has for years kept this
powerhouse White House position out of the hands of a major segment of the
U.S. population.

Analysts predict her elevation to the highest echelon of U.S. policymaking
will give her rock-star status as well as a practical clout that is
expected to be wielded with what one admirer called "velvet-gloved
forcefulness."

But there is also an element of daring in the appointment, some say,
because for all her charm, poise and coolly analytical intelligence, her
high-level diplomatic experience is not extensive and her area of expertise
is somewhat limited.

A 46-year-old California-based academic and Russia expert who traces her
roots to segregated Alabama, Rice proved her partisan as well as scholarly
credentials in the struggle to help the Texas governor claim the White House.

After taking a leave last year from her post as provost at Stanford
University, she had the lead in directing formulation of Bush's foreign and
defense policy.

But she did more than just offer private advice and a conservative
intellectual framework for a candidate who is a novice when it comes to
international affairs.

She played a visible public role in his political campaign, explaining his
positions in media interviews, giving a prime-time speech at the Republican
convention and helping Bush's mother and wife mobilize women voters on his
behalf.

To those who questioned why Bush would be a better choice for black women
than Democrat Al Gore -- whom the vast majority of African-Americans backed
for president -- Rice gave assurances that the Texas governor would be
"someone who is good for our issues," including Medicare and Social Security.

In an interview with Essence, a magazine aimed at the black community, she
stressed Bush's reliance on a "diverse" advisory group, including former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, named to be the first
black secretary of state.

"I would not, and I believe Colin Powell would not, serve with someone I
did not believe was inclusive, who didn't believe in one America, who
didn't have the interest of our people at heart," she told Essence.

INTELLECTUAL HEFT

Rice would bring a distinct intellectual heft as well as political impact
to Bush's new administration. While not the first black to be named
national security adviser -- retired Gen. Colin Powell, Bush's choice as
secretary of state, was security adviser under former President Reagan --
she is the first black woman to hold that post.

She articulated her vision of America's post-Cold War role in an essay
written for the January 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

America must have a "disciplined and consistent foreign policy that
separates the important from the trivial" instead of acting crisis by
crisis as President Bill Clinton has, she said.

"It takes courage to set priorities because doing so is an admission that
American policy cannot be all things to all people -- or rather to all
interest groups," she added.

In the heat of the campaign, Rice stirred a firestorm at home and abroad
when she told the New York Times Bush planned to withdraw U.S. peacekeepers
from the Balkans.

Later, the campaign reassured NATO that Bush would not act without first
consulting U.S. allies. But aides still stressed Bush's plans to reorient
the U.S. military to more traditional purposes -- fighting and winning wars
-- and away from peacekeeping tasks that have burgeoned in recent years.

Rice, the only child of two educators, wanted to be a concert pianist. But
studying at the University of Denver, she realized she did not have the
talent for a major music career.

Searching for another goal, she wandered into a lecture by Professor Josef
Korbel, an ex-Czech diplomat who fled Nazism and communism for the United
States. In a supreme historical irony, Korbel was the father of Madeleine
Albright, whom Clinton named the first female secretary of state.

Rice "adored" Korbel and  his influence caused her to become a Soviet
specialist. But Rice and Albright took different lessons from this role
model: Albright has been far more willing to consider military intervention
than Rice.

After earning her bachelors degree with honors at 19, Rice pursued her
doctorate and then taught at Stanford. In 1986, she moved to Washington to
work on nuclear strategic planning.

When Bush's father became president, Rice was drafted by then-National
Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and helped navigate the United States
through the end of the Cold War, the reunification of Germany and the
collapse of the Soviet Union.

It was while vacationing at the Bush summer home in Maine in 1999 that she
developed a close relationship with the president-elect. Both are sports
fans.

Rice, who is single, is a corporate board member for Chevron, the Hewlett
Foundation and Charles Schwab and is also on J.P. Morgan's international
advisory council.

*******

#4
From: "Alexander Nechushkin" <sasha@dialup.mplik.ru>
Subject: From the Urals
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 

I am afraid I was wrong when was saying, that due to the strong position of
the governors and due to a great potential resistance of the opposition, a
full usurpation of power by Putin was impossible. The guy knows what he
wants and he  will get it! People in the West do not worry as they should,
which is not surprising. They start worrying only when it becomes too late
(Hitler, Milosovich etc.). The guy is using tactics and strategy well
tested by Caesar, Napoleon and Stalin. He is winning the majority around
him with his cynic appearance and sweet words. In fact he is going straight
to his goal-full and  unlimited power. The vast majority of people in
Russia and abroad are Lohi in his perseption (Single: 'Loh' - a Russian
slang word which means: an individual who becomes a fraud victim because of
his/her kindness and/or naivete) who were used by regular cheaters in the
Yeltsin's time and are being used now in a shameless manner by the strong
and talented shaman. The intelligent observers understand that something
terribly wrong is going on, but as it has been many times before in the
human history their opinion does not count. 

Let's see what we have. The guy was brought up in the time when human lives
meant nothing and children were dreaming about power as the only means to
become self-sufficient. Satisfaction from suppression and humiliation of
others has always been the highest value in the Russian society. Putin is
recognizable as a  person who would feel completely self-sufficient only
when he and he alone would be the center of the world. I have a right to
say this because I am from the same system and every aspect of Putin's
behavior seems very clear. Please, let us not be deceived by his tricks!
When politicians, including Russians, make their judgments about the guy
based on what they hear from him, it is an  unforgivable stupidly. Words
mean nothing any more! Yeltsin used to say what he thought. KGB had always
thought that they were the smartest, and could make the others believe what
they wanted them to.

We know what kind of politicians are favored by the Russian population. If
we hear tomorrow a call to get back to Gulag, there is no doubt that a new
reality would become possible very soon. Of course there is no need in
Gulag today. We are entering the 21 century with all its new management
technologies. Even in Brezhnev time Gulag had no sense. If the government
controls more than 40% of the minds in Russia it can do anything it
desires. In fact the Russian government today enjoys absolute power and, by
the way, its legitimacy is  acknowledged by the West. 

There is a lot of talk about 'phony democracies' these days, but who does
really care? Some dictators are welcome guests in all the major
democracies. Putin is not much different from Sadam Hussein and
Milisovitch, he just uses  know how. For instance, the West can not say
that he was elected illegally. A lot of observers confirmed that everything
was fair. However, a crime is a crime! Putin was elected due to a powerful
brain washing campaign and in the absence of any competition. He is
responsible for the bloodshed in Chechnya. He  is the Godfather covering
corruption on the highest levels and the guy who gives orders to suppress
the freedom of speech. 

So, the real question today is whether the West will further foster the new
form of dictatorship by buying its oil and gas, and by giving the money
which then go to Belarus and to Cuba, or it will stick to the principle and
will carry the flag of the freedom? 

*******

#5
BBC Monitoring
Defence Minister Sergeyev rules out Russia-US ABM compromise
Source: Krasnaya Zvezda, Moscow, in Russian 15 Dec 00 p 3

Russian Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev, in an interview with the ministry's
official Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper on 15 December, ruled out any compromise
agreement with the USA as a substitute for the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The following is the text of the interview:

[KZ] Comrade Defence Minister, reports have appeared in the Western mass
media lately that Russia allegedly is ready to change its position on
START-ABM defence problems. The possibility of reaching a "compromise" with
the United States based on the introduction of a certain generalized
indicator that includes strategic offensive and defensive arms is pointed out
in particular.

Russia's readiness to undertake a unique exchange where the United States
receives the right to deploy a national missile defence system and Russia
receives the right to ICBMs with multiple re-entry vehicles is also
indicated. The idea is also pursued that a future START-3 Treaty will take
into account tactical nuclear weapons along with warheads of strategic
delivery vehicles. Could you clarify these matters?

[Sergeyev] Indeed, I am familiar with the materials published on that
subject. I can say the following on the substance of the issues you have
touched upon:

Russia holds a consistent, precise position on START-ABM defence problems. We
favour further deep cuts in strategic offensive arms, with retention of the
ABM Treaty in its present form of course. We are convinced that this line
fully meets the interests not only of Russia, but of the entire world
community as well. Strategic offensive arms reductions are impossible without
preserving the ABM Treaty.

Attempts to revise the ABM Treaty under any pretext whatsoever with the
objective of removing its key provision of a ban on deploying an ABM defence
of national territory and on creating the foundation for such a defence not
only are aimed at destroying this treaty, but also threaten all arms control
accords reached over many decades.

A development of the situation in that direction is fraught with extremely
negative consequences for strategic stability and international security.
Therefore, it is not by chance that at the 55th UN General Assembly Session
the overwhelming majority of states voted in support of the resolution "On
the Preservation of and Compliance with the ABM Treaty".

By virtue of what I have said, it should be clear that any talk of
"compromises" based on a generalized indicator or of some kind of exchanges
leading to legalization of the deployment of an ABM defence of national
territory is unfounded.

With respect to tactical nuclear weapons, we have no intention of changing
the position that was registered in the 21 March 1997 Helsinki joint
statement of the Russian and US presidents.

Within the context of START-3 talks, we are prepared to consider - and I
would like to underscore this especially - measures with respect to weapons
of this kind as a separate issue. We see as the top-priority step here an
understanding on stationing tactical nuclear weapons only within our own
national territories.

I hope my answers will remove the confusion which could have arisen in
connection with the materials you mentioned.

******

#6
BBC Monitoring
Russian TV army programme questions strategic forces cuts
Text of commentary broadcast in Russian Public TV's "Army Magazine" programme
on 17 December

Ill-conceived army reforms could lead to nuclear catastrophe, Russian experts
believe. Today the five nuclear states are armed with more than 11,000
nuclear warheads, with which all of mankind can be destroyed 50 times over.
Another five countries are on the verge of developing their own nuclear
weapons.

In line with international accords, Russia has no more than 3,500 warheads,
of which 448 are in the hands of the navy and another 500 at the disposal of
the air force. The greatest number are concentrated in the Strategic Missile
Troops, which are today the basis of the Russian Federation's strategic
nuclear forces. To a large extent thanks to these troops, our country has
lived without wars for 50 years. These troops have 60 per cent of the
delivery vehicles and warheads, and their job is to perform at least half the
tasks of the strategic nuclear forces in a counterstrike [otvetnyy udar] and
at least 90 per cent in a surprise counterstrike [otvetno-vstrechnyy udar].

At the same time, under high command plans, the Strategic Missile Troops are
to be transformed from a separate armed service to an ordinary combat arm by
2005. The share of the Missile Troops in the forthcoming armed forces cuts is
to be about 80,000 personnel. In parallel, work is under way on the
technology of maintaining alert duty with reduced forces and decisions are
being drafted for withdrawing nuclear units from subordination to commanders
of missile divisions.

Aside from that, Russia is pursuing an initiative to reduce the number of
nuclear warheads to 1,500 - an almost twofold cut. At the same time, there is
an intensive build-up under way on the territories of the NATO bloc countries
of high-precision weapon systems, while the USA is seriously considering
abandoning the ABM treaty.

Why are we again in such a hurry to disarm unilaterally? We have already
destroyed a superpower with our own hands, we have disbanded
military-political alliances, given up the world's most powerful army,
destroyed our best missiles and unilaterally pulled out our troops from
Europe. Why is no-one in the world in a hurry to follow our example? And what
will the West do when we disarm for good?

******

#7
BBC Monitoring
Russian party says liberal values under threat
Text of report by Russian news agency Ekho Moskvy on 16th December

[No dateline as received] The Democratic Choice of Russia [headed by former
Prime Minister Yegor Gaydar] has urged all Russian political parties and
public organizations "to coordinate their efforts in order to protect freedom
of speech, democracy, the rule of law and property rights". The party's
political council made this statement over the situation with NTV television
company.

The Democratic Choice of Russia [which forms a part of the Union of Right
Forces] has suggested that the Union of Right Forces coordination council
should discuss "the current threat to democratic freedoms" at the next
session.

The statement says that "a retreat from fundamental constitutional values" is
taking place in Russia. "The main liberal values - freedom, property and the
rule of law - are under threat", it says.

The Democratic Choice of Russia believes that "the new phase of persecution
of NTV by state bureaucracy demonstrates the government's evident intention
of establishing a monopoly on electronic media". "A tendency of curtailing
freedom of speech is clearly seen in the authorities' actions", the party
says.

"The Russian military doctrine and national security doctrine recently
approved by the president [Vladimir Putin] put the interests of the state
above all. This means revision of the article of the Russian constitution
which proclaims human individual a top value and threatens the rule of law,"
the statement says.

"Having in mind that property rights are still not guaranteed and pro-Kremlin
factions in the State Duma vote against private land, we must admit that
another basic liberal value, private property, is under threat as well," the
statement says.

*******

#8
BBC Monitoring
Russian election chief gives details of draft law on political parties
Source: Kommersant, Moscow, in Russian 15 Dec 00

Central Electoral Commission Chairman Aleksandr Veshnyakov has reviewed the
provisions of the draft law on political parties, shortly to be debated by
the State Duma. To make campaign finance more transparent, it is proposed
that the state rather than donations by companies or individuals fund the
parties in proportion to their membership figures. To qualify for the status
of a political party, an organization would have to have a minimum of 10,000
members, not a problem to one with a "normal political idea". The following
is the text of Aleksandr Veshnyakov's interview with Irina Nagornykh of the
Russian newspaper Kommersant on 15 December:

In the near future, the president will introduce the draft law "On Political
Parties" in the State Duma.

Kommersant has already reported what kind of new requirements are being
contemplated for organizations that intend to take part in elections.
Aleksandr Veshnyakov, chairman of the Central Electoral Commission and head
of the working group to prepare the draft law, explained to Kommersant
reporter Irina Nagornykh why the new law is needed.

[Correspondent] On what date will the law on parties be introduced in the
State Duma? The date of 15 December was being mentioned.

[Veshnyakov] I hope that the draft will be introduced in the State Duma
before the new year. According to my information the president will conduct
his final consultations with leaders of the Duma factions after 20 December,
and then the draft will probably be introduced and can be adopted as early as
the first half of 2001.

[Correspondent] Explain the "arithmetic" that is present in the draft. It is
proposed to consider a party to be an organization that has at least 10,000
members, and it must have divisions with at least 100 members apiece in half
of the Russian Federation constituent parts. For example, why isn't it
two-thirds of the constituent parts and 50 party members in each?

[Veshnyakov] For now we stopped on the figure of not less than 100. Of
course, there can be 300 or 500 in a particular constituent part. For those
with a normal political idea it is no problem to gather 10,000 followers. But
if two or three people support this idea and no-one else accepts it, why does
society need such a party?

[Correspondent] All the same, why 10,000, and not 5,000?

[Veshnyakov] Here is the principle. The divisions should exist in a majority
of the Russian Federation constituent parts, and 50 per cent is a majority.
Not less than 100 members because it is not hard for a serious party to
gather 100 persons in a constituent part. If these figures are multiplied,
you get 4,500. In some constituent parts the number may be greater. It was in
view of this that the figure of 10,000 for all Russia was proposed.

[Correspondent] And were the numbers compared with the state of affairs? How
many parties today qualify?

[Veshnyakov] Of course we compared them. We have 189 political associations
today, and a significant number of them will be able, within two years after
the law is adopted, to carry out reorganization so that everything is in
order in time for the elections. That is why we are hurrying with adoption of
the law, to have some safety margin of time before the elections. They have
to figure it out: if they can do everything independently, fine; if not, they
will join together. Especially if you read the programmes of the political
associations, for a majority of them they coincide 90 per cent of the time.

[Correspondent] You are proposing to subsidize the parties from the state
budget, on the basis of 0.01 of the minimum wage, that is to say 13 kopecks,
for each vote the party got in the elections. Why is that?

[Veshnyakov] That is our experience from 1999. We spent about R10m on the
elections, on the basis that each party (26 associations participated in the
ballot) received R220,000 from the state, plus payment for the candidates'
leave time and tickets. The amount was put together roughly on that
proportion.

[Correspondent] But explain to me, as a taxpayer, why I can't transfer money
directly to a party that I like? Why does the state need to be the middleman?

[Veshnyakov] In fact you can transfer contributions to any party, but only by
noncash payment, not by "black box". And the state will appropriate money
annually only to those parties that passed the 2-per-cent barrier in State
Duma elections. It is simply that you will know, when you support your party
in the elections, that part of your tax money will go to that party.

[Correspondent] But trusting the Duma to transfer money to the parties is the
same, if you will excuse me, as putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

[Veshnyakov] But why the fox and the hen house? The people chose the
deputies. And then, this actually works in other countries. Do you know how
much money the candidates in America received from the state? Gore got just
over 80m and Bush 60m dollars. But two other candidates who also participated
in the election did not receive a penny. Is that fair democracy? If we keep
nothing but contributions by citizens and legal persons, the parties may
become criminalized. But when the state takes on these expenses, that makes
it possible to be protected against intergrowth of the political oligarchy
with the financial one, which is pursuing interests that are far from social,
or state interests.

[Correspondent] Why was it decided to go back to the idea of forming
electoral blocs?

[Veshnyakov] We never departed from it. The possibility of increasing the
standard for blocs to enter the State Duma from 5 to 7 per cent is under
discussion, but we are not insisting on this.

[Correspondent] The Central Electoral Commission is proposing to expand the
list of information that a candidate gives about his income and property. Is
that to make it easier to remove people from the elections for incorrect
information?

[Veshnyakov] We already have enough authority. We simply need greater
certitude, not to be based on the choice of "substantial or insubstantial".

For example, we are proposing to remove the requirement that children provide
information. Imagine that a son lives in his own household, has no connection
with his parents, and refuses to provide information. Well, should the
candidate suffer? That was the logic used by the Supreme Court when they
reviewed the undeclared apartment of Zhirinovskiy's son.

With a spouse it is a different matter. We want to make the candidate
transparent before the voters. Of course, it is difficult to check
everything, and there will be a subjective factor. But when a candidate is
forced to give information about himself to the public, that disciplines him.

******

#9
The Washington Post Magazine
December 17, 2000
[for personal use only]
The Ghosts Of War
Russia's Sons Come Home from Chechnya
By Margaret Paxson

Belozersk has never had a war on its territory, which is saying a lot
considering that the town is more than 1,000 years old. Set in the thickly
wooded and boggy lands of the Russian north, it has peacefully made do with
the modest bounties on hand: lakes and rivers filled with fish, adequate
soil, and pine and birch forests offering plenty of what can be hunted and
gathered and felled. Today a town of 12,000, it continues to be tied to its
lands and waters, relying on them to stabilize the economic and political
upheavals that have brought so much confusion to the social world.

But the country to which Belozersk belongs has collected enemies over the
centuries and has sent legions of its men -- largely those without status or
wealth -- to serve and die in distant wars. Neither Peter the Great nor
Catherine the Great, neither Ivan the Terrible nor Joseph Stalin had any
qualms about using towns like Belozersk to supply themselves with soldiers.
And to the pres-ent day, if you sit and listen to the life stories of
provincial people, the narrative milestones are the moments when a horse
comes galloping into the village on a sunny summer day and the rider cries,
"Men! Get your things together! The war has begun! We're off!"

Twice in a decade, Russia has waged war against its Republic of Chechnya,
fighting that continues despite the Kremlin's best efforts to say it is over.
These wars have been devastating at the national level, but their tragedy
doesn't stop there. Simply serving within the Russian army is often
profoundly brutalizing, and this has been so since long before Chechnya.
Belozersk knows well the story of Alyosha Shadrinov, a 19-year-old poet who
was savagely beaten by his own comrades for publicly talking about military
hazing. One day, after repeated pleas for a transfer and an attempt at
escape, he was found hanged. The death was officially ruled suicide;
Belozersk thinks otherwise. Alyosha had been called "singer of nature" and a
"higher mind," and when his body was sent home, his mother laid him out --
with bloodied temples and a crushed jaw -- for all to see.

But even those boys who survive the Russian army physically have emotional
wounds that don't easily heal. If it could be said that the social world is
the world of the living, these boys are between the world of the living and
the world of the dead. They pace the night when others sleep. They are silent
when others speak. They are drunk when others are sober. They languish in
repose when others work. They are still without their full social bodies, and
so they are, in this sense, like ghosts.

In winter Belozersk is enshrouded in white. Its lakes and rivers are frozen
over and they merge with the horizon in one downy, brilliant mass. Children
play on the earthen wall that surrounds the ancient kremlin of the city,
zooming down its slopes on sleds and skis and random pieces of plastic,
whooping with full-throated laughter and screams.

I went to Belozersk last winter to talk to the families of soldiers sent to
Chechnya. Some boys had already been welcomed home. Some were in battle or
missing. Some had been lost for good. Belozersk itself kept careful track of
them. It dedicated whole newspaper editions to these boys (with editorials
and poems and letters from the front). Its mothers huddled in the streets
with scraps of information exchanged in hushed voices about this or that boy.

The boys themselves hardly spoke. It was their mothers who were, mostly, the
mouthpieces for what they had seen and suffered. It was they who desperately
strove to bridge their sons back into a world where they could be safe and
productive and whole again. Here are some of their stories.

Andrei and Oleg

The house is dark inside. The winter white of the street is blocked by heavy
curtains, and the living room is lit only by yellowish lamplight. A young man
flashes by as I walk in the door. He is off to see his girlfriend. No nod, no
goodbye.

Tatiana and Igor Gryaznov have two sons. The ghost who ran out the door was
Oleg. He returned from the army after serving in Daghestan, which neighbors
Chechnya, and won't say a word about his time there. Two months after Oleg
came back, their second son, Andrei, was drafted. He's now in Chechnya.

Tatiana is upset. She is a small woman with earnest eyes and a reedy voice.
She hasn't heard from her Andrei in six weeks and is beyond worry. All of her
inquiries have come to naught. Andrei is not listed among the dead or missing
in action. He can't be found. She has spent three weeks in the hospital with
"nerves."

Tatiana's voice wobbles with every word. "You know, he was lucky when he
arrived in the army. Just by chance, he landed in the exact regiment where
his brother had been serving," she says. "People said, 'Hey! He looks just
like Gryaznov!' It was a kind of euphoria for me. That meant that the other
soldiers wouldn't abuse him. They wouldn't beat him because they already knew
his brother. He would be protected. And it was true. They never beat him."

But they did beat another boy from the area. So badly that they brought him
back to finish out his time close to home. Tatiana says, "That boy is a
redhead. They hate redheads for some reason. It's like a tradition. They beat
them."

"I don't understand why they had to take my Andryusha so far away! They took
his brother, already. And my husband, he did cleanup after Chernobyl. Those
men weren't even given gloves for their hands -- just masks over their faces.
They were told to clean the waste with tractors. And they weren't supposed to
take married men but my husband already had a wife and two children! There
was the roof of one building that was so contaminated that Japanese robots
refused to clean it. So they sent up the Russian men to do the job. And now
Igor's health is spoiled."

I look over at the small, dark-haired man who has been quietly going back and
forth to the kitchen. "One thing you can say about my family," Tatiana adds,
her voice lowering and losing its waver. "My husband and sons. They won't
hide behind other people's backs."

Sasha

They didn't tell Sasha's group that it would be going to Chechnya. They sat
the young boys on a train -- and for a long while as they rocked through
foreign landscapes, no one understood. The train went right to Grozny. And
Sasha stayed there for a year. That was in 1995-96, during the "first"
Chechen war.

Now Sasha lives with his mother and father. The lespromkhoz (lumber company)
recently hired him as a contract laborer and so things are looking up.
Sasha's mother, Nadezhda, is in her forties with soft, sad eyes and long,
reddish hair. Her kitchen is lit brightly as we sit and she serves tea and
strawberry jam. Sasha's father is sick and lying in the living room watching
TV. He doesn't greet his guests.

Nadezhda's voice is even-toned and gently melodic as she speaks: "Sasha never
had to shoot anyone. Never. He was a driver. That was his education, and
that's how they used him. His truck was at the very end of the convoy, so he
was shot at a lot. It was a dangerous job. At one point, half of his group
was killed."

Sasha walks in the door. He is back from work and is carrying a plastic bag
with his lunch leftovers in it. He goes into his room, spends a moment there,
and leaves the house again. His face, in the shadow of the doorway, looks as
though it were halfway sculpted into manliness. But there is a boy that
remains in his afterimage. His mother continues, "There was a terrible story
there." She pauses, deciding whether or not to tell it.

"One day, an officer came to Sasha and said: 'Who is the driver here?' Sasha
told him that he was. 'We've got to go and get the bodies. They need to be
transported.' They were Russian

bodies. Sasha drove there and was shown where the bodies were lying. There
was a pile of them. They had to sort out their numbers. Had to find, by their
numbers, who the soldiers were and where they belonged."

"Among the bodies, he found a number that matched his tent mate's. His
friend. But he couldn't recognize him. The skin had been pulled up off his
face. A knife had been plunged down into his neck."

Sasha told his mother that there were peaceful Chechens, too. Ones who were
kind to him. It was really only the contract soldiers, hired to fight in
Chechnya, that the villagers hated. Not the ones drafted to fight, like him.

"It took a long time for him to come to himself when he got back. Most of the
time, the boys would arrive home from the war and start drinking. They had
some money and would spend it all right away on alcohol or whatever. Before,
when men came home from wars, there was cheering and shouting. They were
heroes. But these boys just come back. And there is nothing here for them.
Nothing."

I ask if there would have been any way for him to have avoided going to
Chechnya. In big cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, mothers can pay
doctors or bureaucrats to make their sons ineligible. The well-connected can
get around the problem without money. The question is nearly incomprehensible
to Nadezhda. She says, "It's not as if he didn't want to serve. He did. When
they gave him a physical, they weren't going to take him because there was
some small problem with his health. They offered him a place where he would
just dig ditches. But he didn't want that. He said, 'I will go and serve in
the army.' All his friends served."

These provincial boys are proud to wear their uniforms and there is an idea
that being a soldier is how you become a man -- one who is self-possessed and
self-controlled. And who wants to forfeit that for ditch-digging?

"But our family suffered," Nadezhda says. "It's terrifying to have sons.
That's all I can say."

Zhenya and Vitya

The fishing village of Maeksa is a few miles from Belozersk. On the way
there, I pass a small port and boats frozen in the ice under thick blankets
of white. It is snowing and the sky is a luminous haze. There is young man
outside cutting wood at the Rukamoinikov house -- a large log cabin, typical
of the kind found in rural Russia. I go to the door and am invited in by
Ludmila, who is tall and strong, as Russian women can be.

We sit down in a large, neat room. There is a huge pair of antlers mounted on
a wall. Behind the glass of a bookcase are three photographs in a row: two
portraits of young soldiers and one of a group of men in a darkened forest,
smiling triumphantly over a sprawling dead elk.

Ludmila has two sons and they both have been to war. The first, Vitya, served
in the first Chechen war, and the second son, Zhenya, just recently got back
from the second. Zhenya, his mother tells me, was in the thick of things. He
had to shoot artillery. At one point, his artillery truck burst into flames,
but he and his companions survived.

Zhenya is back home now, but he has not yet returned to the world of the
living. He is still raw and wavering in and out of the death that surrounded
him. "He has finally slept the night for two nights now," Ludmila says.
"Since he got back, he has been waking up screaming and grabbing at his leg,
to reach his gun."

Vitya, the older boy who no longer lives at home, also came back from the war
on edge. He was full of "nerves" and it was hard for him to readapt. "If you
said one wrong word to him, he would slam the door and leave. He found work
right after he got back, at the prison," -- there is an island prison in the
middle of White Lake where the worst and most dangerous offenders in the
country are sent -- "but they fired him after two years. For his nerves and
his angry, erratic behavior."

"So I will give Zhenya time to find work," his mother says. "Give him some
time to come back to himself."

Zhenya is going hunting shortly with his friends, so Ludmila feeds him a meal
of borscht, made with meat from a freshly slaughtered piglet, and then
potatoes and fresh fish, before he leaves.

When he comes in, I can see his face for the first time. It is a nice, young
face. His eyes look tired to me, but there is some trace of tenderness there.
I ask him some unobtrusive questions; the only ones that open him up a little
are about his hunting today. He clearly doesn't want to talk.

A photographer has come to take his picture, so he obligingly puts on his
uniform and moves outside. His mother fixes the angle of his beret. His eyes
stare like lasers off into some point on the horizon.

Dima

"Ma! I just barely made it home!" A little boy, about 10, with thick glasses
that are fogging up, flops dramatically on the couch still wearing his coat.
"I ran 20 laps in gym. In seven minutes!"

Lyuda, the boy's mother, praises him briefly and launches into the regular
set of motherly instructions: "Get your coat off, say hello to the guests,
we're going to eat, so wash up." He is her third and youngest son. Her middle
son, dark-haired and with the very first hints of a mustache at 14, has been
home from school for a little while already, quietly waiting for lunch. And
Dima, her oldest at 20, is somewhere in the heart of Chechnya.

I've been looking at lots of pictures of Dima. His mother says that he was
always a happy boy -- naughty and fun-loving and close to her -- but I'm not
sure I have ever seen sadder eyes on a child.

Dima drives an armored vehicle that rolls on tank-like wheels, and has been
shelling the Chechen boiviki (rebel fighters), who have gone running into the
mountains for cover. He has not been in hand-to-hand combat, though, and for
that reason his group has been relatively safe. Lyuda watches the news
carefully. She knows the number of his vehicle, 804, and once saw it on TV.
"I couldn't believe it," Lyuda says, "my mouth just hung open!"

Lyuda is small. She seems almost shrunken. In older photographs, she looks
like an entirely different person -- her face is round and robust and quietly
spirited. And now she is all angles.

Lyuda tells me what she can about Dima's combat, about Chechnya. "You know,
Dima wrote me about the mountains." She recites some lines in a letter from
him by heart: "The nature here is beautiful. I love their nature in Chechnya.
I don't like the war, but by now, I am almost used to the shelling. It's
almost as if it's necessary."

Lyuda goes and gets one of his letters and sits down by a window and opens
it: "Hello Mama, I'm not sick. I'm not far from Grozny. Mama, nothing has
happened yet. The war days are still ahead for us. There are 30 people in our
tent. There is a stove. We don't know when we are coming home. They promised
to send us home for the New Year. I'm so sick of it. Every day, we go out to
shoot. There are no dead yet among our company. Don't worry. I love you all.
I kiss you. Hello to relatives and close ones. Dimka."

Lyuda looks up and tells me that she cries every day.

"We sent a package for New Year's," Lyuda says. She goes into another room
and brings out a small brown parcel. "It was returned. I don't know what that
means. I had sent Dima gloves and socks and some candy for the New Year. I
thought that he might eat candy on the holiday. His last letter was on
January 12, but a friend of his from Belozersk who is already back saw him on
the 16th of February. So I know that he was still alive then. We are
expecting him any day now."

Last year, in November, while Dima was already away, the family had a
birthday party for him. They all got dressed up and made a big meal and took
pictures and sent them to the missing boy. "This is silly," Dima wrote. "How
can you have a birthday party for me without me?"

"You are alive, you are healthy," his mother wrote him back. "That is our
party." She grips one of the photos of Dima and stares at the image of her
son. "My little boy," she says to no one but herself. "My little one."

Another Dima

It's 6 o'clock in the evening, and people are milling around after work and
the sky has begun to settle into its twilight shades. Even at this distance,
I can tell by the combat greens and browns and the puffy pants that it's him.

Dima is just back from the hospital. He was wounded in a battle in the
mountains of Chechnya. Like the other Dima, he wasn't really supposed to see
combat. He was firing artillery off into the mountains and sometimes charged
with guarding Chechen towns to prevent the escape of the boiviki who had been
trapped inside. It wasn't his job to go in and "clean them out." The
experienced contract soldiers and militia were supposed to do that.

On December 6, his group surrounded a village where the boiviki had been
hiding among the locals. The militia was supposed to go in and weed out the
rebels. But it started getting dark. And the militiamen simply changed their
minds. So the young, inexperienced soldiers were left alone at nightfall to
face an enemy that was desperate and determined to get out of the village and
into the mountains.

Dima was wounded in his head and hand that night. He didn't know that he was
wounded right away. He saw the blood trickling down and only then did he
understand.

He was sent to an army hospital and he's better now, except that he doesn't
see very well and there is a question of how he will ever find work.

Dima walks slowly up the road toward his mother, Galina, his form still
blurred by distance. Galina, a large woman with sharp blue eyes and aviator
glasses, had been businesslike in talking about her son when we first met,
but as she tells his story her voice becomes warm and animated.

Dima doesn't sleep at night. "Our son's room is above us. I hear him wake up
every night and walk around. He listens to music and paces." In letters from
Chechnya, he had written: "It is bad here. They feed us badly. Send me some
sheets for New Year's. And mittens and socks. It's cold here."

His mother and father went to fetch him in the hospital. "I asked him to tell
me what had happened," Galina said. "Some of the other boys were talking a
little. But he was silent. 'Mama,' he said, 'Don't ask me. I don't want to
remember.' "

Dima's sergeant, though, wrote a letter to the family saying that he wanted
to nominate Dima for a medal for courage: "If not for him, many of our boys
would have been killed." But Galina says, "I don't care if he gets a medal.
It's enough that he's alive."

He's changed since he left, she says. "He is somewhere inside of himself. He
was a mama's boy when he left. And he came back an adult. But Dima has never
been hard or cruel. He has always been calm and controlled. And now he is,
too."

The young man walks up, and his face is nearly expressionless. His mother
starts fussing over him right away -- she takes the collar of his coat and
closes it forcefully. His beret flies off and he cracks a tiny grin, trying
to catch the cap before it falls.

I search his eyes. There is some life there. I ask some questions, nothing
serious. And he talks a little, just a very little bit, with his eyes
constantly returning to the ground. The mountains were beautiful, he says.
And the locals weren't cruel to them. Fed them watermelon sometimes.

Dima's hands are without gloves and are puffy and a little red in the cold.
He is lighting a lighter over and over again inside the palms of his hands. I
ask him about the other boys who have returned from the war. Do they see each
other ever?

Dima looks up, "Well, we're meeting -- seven of us -- tomorrow. Just getting
together to talk. Maybe . . . maybe it will help."

And I think of this boy being fed watermelon by the wives and daughters of
Chechnya and how he was cold and afraid and hungry at night. And how he and
his brothers-in-arms now share a nearly silent ghost language, pacing at
night with visible and invisible war wounds that their own mothers can't
heal. And how they drift, haunted, toward the white warmth of home.

Margaret Paxson is a research scholar at the Kennan Institute for Advanced
Russian Studies; Lucian Perkins is a Post staff photographer.

*******

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