December 19, 2000   

This Date's Issues:  4696 • 4697 • 4698

Johnson's Russia List
#4698
19 December 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: Despite economic bonanza, Russia still faces painful economic reforms.
2. Bloomberg: Top Russian Official Says Wrong UES Plan Endorsed, Paper Says.
3. Itar-Tass: Russian commander: Nunn-Lugar programme needs adjustment.
4. Interfax: Russian Church dismisses US fears of lack of religious freedom in Russia.
5. AP: Rice Back in White House at Top Job.
6. Moscow Times editorial: Legal Reform Is Off on the Right Foot.
7. MSNBC/NEWSWEEK-ITOGI: Anton Prishvin, In Russia, making up for lost time. Putin’s ambitious economic plan fails to move forward.
8. strana.ru: Chubais wants to remove Lenin's body from Red Square mausoleum, while he supports his ideas.
9. RUSSIA WATCH (Harvard's SDI): Alexey A. Kara-Murza, Russian Democracy versus Russian Barbarism. Why authoritarian liberalization won't work for Russia.
10. Lianne van der Kruk: New part of TheMoscowTimes.com website - Guide to Russia.
11. David Filipov: exile - preemptive strike/ query on civility.
12. Nature: Quirin Schiermeier, Russia's prize fighter. (Zhores Alferov)
13. Itar-Tass: Russian TB cases up 12 per cent in a year.] 

******

#1
Despite economic bonanza, Russia still faces painful economic reforms

MOSCOW, Dec 19 (AFP) - 
Russia has won investors' admiration after this year's unexpectedly bright
economic performance, but the government must turn its attention to painful
economic reforms to cement growth, analysts say.

President Vladimir Putin, who replaced Boris Yeltsin at the Kremlin nearly
a year ago, has been blessed with an amazing bonanza, in part because of
high world prices for Russian oil and natural gas exports.

Russia in the year 2000 silenced critics who after the disastrous financial
crisis of August 1998 said the country would take years to rebuild its
shattered economy.

It has posted a near seven-percent growth of gross domestic product this
year, almost 10-percent jump in industrial production, 17-percent rise in
investment and a record trade surplus of 60 billion dollars.

The most succesful year since Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it has far
outshone what analysts and international organisations were forecasting in
early 2000.

The economy is showing signs of better health: salary arrears have fallen,
the use of barter trade in commerce has plunged from 43 percent at the
start of the year to 20 percent, and Russian firms are investing once again.

This benign situation "is not only the simple effect of a rise in raw
material prices," commented Jacques Sapir, a professor at France's School
of Higher Studies in Social Sciences.

The sharp devaluation of the ruble in the August crash, the resulting drop
in salary costs, the state's move to control energy prices which boosted
company profit levels, the disappearance of the lucrative GKO treasury bill
market which was producing excess liquidity: all these elements played a part.

But the success has been fragile.

Industry's recovery has taken place at the cost of an intensified use of
machinery, of which a large part has passed its sell-by date.

Big investments will be required if Russian manufacturers want to survice
the ruble's appreciation against the dollar.

Putin himself warned that "the current indicators only generate optimism in
comparison with those of yesterday."

Even if real household income levels have finally begun to bounce back,
they are still some 20 percent below where they stood in 1997 before the
financial crisis.

And while personal consumption is back on the rise, it still represents
only 89 percent of its level in late 1997.

Meanwhile, nearly 35 percent of Russians still live below the poverty line.

You can now find fruit-juices or toothpastes on shop shelves 'made in
Russia'. A small victory after years of decline, when factories folded up
one after another.

"But why can a country capable of building the MIR-space station not also
build a decent air-conditioner," lamented Eric Kraus, analyst with
investment house Nikoil.

"We are now setting the barrier considerably higher," he added.

The Kremlin must attack "the litany of post-Soviet ills": extreme
bureaucratisation, corruption, the disastrous weakness of courts and the
dilapidated condition of the banking system...

The Russian economy must move from "a logic of recovery" to a phase of
development, Sapir pointed out.

A task which will mean confronting various vested interest groups and
regional bosses.

As long as these reforms are not tackled, capital flight will continue and
foreign investors will remain sceptical about the attraction of the "Wild
Wild East" that faraway Russia still represents, a Western businessman said.

*******

#2
Top Russian Official Says Wrong UES Plan Endorsed, Paper Says

Moscow, Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The Russian president's Chief of Staff,
Alexander Voloshin, said the government on Friday endorsed the wrong
proposal for reorganizing RAO Unified Energy Systems, the nation's power
monopoly, Vedomosti reported. 

The plan approved in principle by the government didn't include amendments
the presidential administration made after President Vladimir Putin
criticized the original plan at a meeting earlier this month, Voloshin
said, the paper reported, citing the Interfax news agency. The amendments
made concerned UES' ownership structure, Vedomosti said, citing unnamed
government sources. 

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said all Putin's comments about the plan
were taken into account, the paper reported. 

Voloshin also serves as chairman of the board at UES, in which the
government owns 52 percent. 

The government on Friday gave preliminary backing to a plan to split UES
into a state-run transmission company, distribution and generating
companies, and sell generators. Putin's Economic Adviser Andrei Illarionov
said at the meeting the plan was flawed. He later said the plan was the
main reason for a 60 percent decline in UES shares since March. Shares
plunged 13.1 percent Friday to 7.6 cents, the biggest one-day drop since
May 1999. 

*******

#3
Russian commander: Nunn-Lugar programme needs adjustment 
Itar-Tass

Moscow, 18 December: The US Nunn-Lugar programme of joint reduction of 
nuclear risks needs correction, the commander of Russian Strategic Missile 
Troops, Vladimir Yakovlev, has said. 

He told ITAR-TASS on Monday [18 December] that the "Russian side proposes to 
adjust the programme in terms of solving social needs of military servicemen, 
in the first place providing them with housing." 

"The programme cannot wrap itself up in the technical framework only. It 
should be solved broader, in particular to provide the military servicemen 
who know nuclear weapons and can use missile weapons with the possibility to 
upgrade their intellectual level," Yakovlev said. 

"This will be a certain guarantee that our specialists will not end up in 
third countries and will not develop nuclear weapons for them," he explained 
in a comment on his recent meeting with Senator Richard Lugar, who had 
visited several nuclear sites in Russia. 

Yakovlev said the "programme, which is aimed at assisting Russia in abolition 
and safe storage of nuclear, chemical and bacteriological weapons has played 
a certain role in the area of technical measures for weapons reduction over 
the past eight years"... 

*******

#4
Russian Church dismisses US fears of lack of religious freedom in Russia 
Interfax 

Moscow, 18 December: The Russian Orthodox Church has dismissed on Monday [18 
December] a statement by US senator Richard Lugar that there are limitations 
to religious freedom in Russia and that the administration of President-elect 
George W Bush will take a hard line over the alleged restrictions. 

"Religious freedoms are not being restricted in Russia and all those who wish 
to practice their religious doctrines enjoy the complete right to do this on 
a lawful basis," church spokesman Viktor Malukhin has told Interfax 
commenting on a statement by Republican Senator Richard Lugar. 

"Although the preamble to the law on the freedom of conscience speaks about 
the special role of Orthodoxy, the Muslim religion, Judaism and Buddhism in 
Russian history, under the law itself all religious associations in our 
country enjoy the same rights; on the condition that they are not antisocial 
or destructive and do not destroy public morality or the physical or moral 
health of Russians." 

The Russian freedom of conscience law "is much more liberal than the 
legislation of many Western countries, where there exists a state church, 
something that Russia does not have, as is well known," Malukhin said. 

He said restrictions to be put on religious organizations that have not 
registered by 31 December 2000, mean "no disaster because no-one is banned in 
Russia from praying or preaching their religious beliefs to their followers, 
for example, by setting up communities". 

"If an association is not able to re-register, this only means that its right 
to become a legal entity will be delayed until later, before which it will 
not receive access to educational institutions or to the army and will not be 
able to preach its doctrine widely through the mass media," the spokesman 
said. 

In 1997, while it was still going through parliament, the freedom of 
conscience law evoked a "sharply negative reaction on the part of the leaders 
of Western countries and the Vatican, which the Russian Orthodox Church 
qualified as a response by the liberal circles of the West to the desire of 
the new Russia to live in accordance with its own traditions and religious 
and moral standards rooted in the history of our country", Malukhin said. 

"There are few in the world today who can dispute the right of each nation to 
build their future in accordance with their own cultural and historical 
ideas. I don't think that the new Republican administration of the United 
States will question this." 

Malukhin expressed the hope that "this statement of the American senator 
reflects his personal point of view because none of the close advisers of 
President-elect George W. Bush have so far commented on the issue of 
religious freedom in Russia". 

*******

#5
Rice Back in White House at Top Job
December 18, 2000
By LAURA MECKLER

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Moscow News wasn't sure what to make of Condoleezza
Rice when the 34-year-old Stanford University professor came to town in
1988 to inaugurate a series of seminars at the U.S. ambassador's residence. 

She spoke of arms control policy and of a coming summit with the United
States, but the writer could not quite get past the notion of a young black
woman as an expert on Soviet affairs. 

``The men ... couldn't help wondering: `She should be busy cooking and
driving her admirers mad. But instead she aptly juggles numbers of missiles
and tanks, names of marshals and dates of summits,''' the paper wrote. 

It would be neither the first nor the last time that Rice, President-elect
Bush's choice to head the National Security Council, would exceed
expectations. 

``I've seen it happen time and time again,'' said Michael McFaul, a
Democrat who advised Al Gore's campaign but is close to Rice. ``Foreign
policy is dominated by bald, graying white men and they're not used to
someone like Condi Rice.'' 

Indeed, Rice, 46, bears little outward resemblance to Henry Kissinger, the
quintessential national security adviser, but friends and colleagues say
she is among of the smartest, most articulate and charming people they know. 

A steely manager, she also is a concert pianist and maniacal sports fan,
half-joking that the only job she would rather have is commissioner of the
National Football League. 

Philosophically, she is quite conservative. Rice argues against
humanitarian missions and international treaties and for a hard line on
Russia and putting U.S. strategic interests at the center of all decisions. 

``American foreign policy in a Republican administration should refocus the
United States on the national interest,'' Rice wrote this year in Foreign
Affairs magazine. ``There is nothing wrong with doing something that
benefits all humanity, but that is, in a sense, a second-order effect.'' 

An expert on the Soviet Union, Rice was plucked from academia in 1989 by
Brent Scowcroft to serve on the National Security Council of former
President Bush, where she helped shape U.S. policy during the tumultuous
time of the Soviet Union's collapse. 

She was responsible for a part of the world that was exploding, giving her
unusual access to the president. They would develop a friendship that,
nearly a decade later, would lead Rice to his son. 

She first met George W. Bush in 1995 when she happened to be in Texas
visiting his father. They talked mostly about their shared passion -
sports. Bush, in his first year as Texas governor, had neither foreign
policy nor the presidency on his mind. 

But by August 1998, when they were together again at the Bush family house
in Kennebunkport, Maine, that had changed. 

``In between tennis games and going out on the boat and sitting out on the
back porch we would have conversations about what foreign policy challenges
would face the next president,'' Rice said last week in an interview. 

As Rice ran on the treadmill and Bush worked out on a glider, the college
professor began a two-year tutorial of her most important student yet. 

Bush has said that he likes Rice because she explains issues in a way he
can understand. 

Condoleezza Rice, called Condi by nearly all who know her, was born into
segregated Birmingham, Ala., in the autumn of 1954. She was 9 years old
when a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four black
girls, including a friend from kindergarten. Rice was at Sunday School,
just a couple of blocks away. 

They were scary times, she said. 

``The men in the community, my father among them, would go to the head of
the cul-de-sac at night and sit there armed to keep night riders from
coming through,'' she wrote in an essay for Time magazine. 

By the time she reached junior high, her family had moved to Colorado. She
skipped two grades, beginning the University of Denver at age 15, planning
to study music. 

Soon she concluded that she had neither the single-minded focus nor the
natural talent to become a top pianist and went shopping for a new major.
She was turned onto international studies by Joseph Korbel, who would
become her first mentor. (Korbel died before his daughter - Madeleine
Albright - would become secretary of state.) 

By 1981, she was on the faculty of Stanford University, and by 1986, she
was considered an expert on Soviet military and arms control. That year she
attended a lecture by Scowcroft, asking a question she considers ``slightly
rude,'' but which impressed the retired general. She had challenged the
very premise of a commission of which he was chairman, and he approached
her after the lecture. 

``I don't think anybody's ever asked me that,'' he said, impressed by both
her boldness and her analysis. 

When George Bush was elected president in 1988, Scowcroft became national
security adviser and recruited Rice. 

She was never a top tier policy aide in the White House, but her timing was
perfect. The Berlin Wall collapsed, the Soviet Union was crumbling, and she
was part of the team that developed U.S. policy. 

Burned out after two years in Washington, she returned to Stanford. Within
a year, she was elevated to provost - the No. 2 job at Stanford although
she never been a department head or dean. 

Now, as Rice prepares to become the first woman to head the National
Security Council, there's some concern that she was too far removed from
international affairs as she was focused on university affairs. 

``One critique you'll hear is that the Russia she knows is the Soviet Union
of 10 or 12 years ago,'' said Andrew Kuchins, who worked with Rice at
Stanford and is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

And even if she is an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe, what about the
Middle East, China and Latin America? Rice responds that every scholar has
to specialize in something. 

Another challenge: Making her voice heard above Colin Powell, nominated to
be secretary of state, and Vice President-elect Cheney, strong
personalities who might wind up battling one another. 

Kuchins is betting she will exceed expectations again. 

``She's a strong personality and she should never be underestimated,'' he
said. ``Whether she's sitting in a room with Dick Cheney or Colin Powell,
Condi will hold her own.'' 

*******

#6
Moscow Times
December 19, 2000
Editorial
Legal Reform Is Off on the Right Foot

The State Duma took a small but important step Friday toward improving
Russia’s judicial system and establishing the rule of law here. 

In a unanimous vote, deputies gave preliminary approval to a draft law that
would ease prison overcrowding primarily by reducing the amount of time
that suspects can spend in pre-trial detention. Although the new law allows
the authorities to hold people for up to a year without trial — which is
still far too long — it is a significant improvement over the 18 months
allowed under the existing law. 

Russia’s pre-trial detention facilities have long been singled out for
criticism. It is simply inhumane and uncivilized to hold suspects — who
have been neither tried nor convicted — in these overcrowded,
tuberculosis-infested jails. 

When the UN high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, visited one
Moscow detention center in 1999, she commented starkly: "This amounts to
torture." Conditions are so bad that suspects sometimes plead guilty to
crimes they did not commit in order to "reduce their sentence."

The Duma was right to begin its assault on Russia’s deplorable legal system
by an attack on these torture chambers. However, this is far from the end
of the fight. 

One of the reasons why suspects spend so long in pre-trial detention is
because there are simply not enough judges to cope with the caseload. In
fact, experts estimate that Russia needs more than twice as many judges as
it currently has. However, present salaries are far too low to make this
dangerous and thankless work attractive.

Further, deputies should reconsider the widespread practice by which
appellate courts return cases to lower courts for retrial rather than
sustaining or overturning their verdicts. This practice amounts to little
more than double or triple jeopardy while the suspect sits for years in
prison. 

In the infamous case — repeatedly sent back for retrial — of environmental
activist Alexander Nikitin, prosecutors in their final appeal actually
argued that he should be tried yet again because they had violated his
civil rights in the original investigation. Only when the matter reached
this level of absurdity did the presidium of the Supreme Court say enough
is enough.

Finally, if the Duma wants a no-cost way of showing the world that Russia’s
legal system has emerged from the Middle Ages, we have a suggestion. Stop
forcing defendants — not convicted of any crime — to sit in court in cages
like dangerous animals. After all, as the Duma unanimously acknowledged
Friday, most defendants have already spent too much time behind bars.

*******

#7
MSNBC
In Russia, making up for lost time 
Putin’s ambitious economic plan fails to move forward 
By Anton Prishvin
NEWSWEEK-ITOGI 

MOSCOW, Dec. 18 — When Vladimir Putin took over Russia’s presidency ,
he immediately established a think tank to draw up a new Kremlin economic
plan. A large group of economists toiled for months, drawing up a master
recovery plan grounded in liberal economic theory. It was hailed as the
most ambitious economic proposal endorsed by a post-perestroika Russian
government. Yet a year after its approval, Putin’s grand plans for reform
have stalled. 
PUTIN’S think tank, the Center for Strategic Programs, is headed up by
German Gref, an up-and-coming economist and now Russia’s minister of
economic development and trade.
Gref’s program proposed to create a genuine market-based on a private
initiative that is free from meddling by officials. The plan was to rebuild
the vertical power structure from scratch, carry out judicial reform, do
away with the convergence of big business and the government, free the
economy of excessive and unjustified intervention by the state, even out
the conditions of competition and cut taxes and state expenditures.
A large block of reforms was slated in the social sector-housing and
municipal services, pension payments, health care, education, labor
relations and other areas. The government even approved a schedule for
preparation of the relevant draft laws for 2000.
The most favorable conditions took shape this year for implementation
of the announced reforms — and one might say the Putin government lucked
out. Growth continued in the economy, and Russia received additional
revenues from high world oil prices. As Michael Carter, the World Bank’s
director for Russia, remarked, the continuation of a stable macroeconomic
situation in the country “depends in large measure on whether the
government will seize this moment to continue the reforms and consolidate
the economic growth.”
But the government was unable to take advantage of the propitious
conditions to accelerate the reforms. To be sure, a year for an economy is
too short a time frame to feel the results of what has been done and not
done. The principal and virtually only achievement by the government was
tax reform. But Russia will not be able to evaluate its results until next
year. The government did not consider a large portion of the draft laws
from the schedule it approved itself; the Gref program, in effect, is no
longer being implemented. 

‘OFFICIAL’ ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT
Officials are proudly reporting the macroeconomic successes of 2000:
Russia achieved 7 percent growth in GDP, curbed inflation, doubled the
reserves of gold and foreign currency and achieved an increase of 8 percent
in consumer demand and 19 percent in direct investments in the economy.
According to the State Statistical Committee, as of October 2000 real
personal cash income had risen by 9.4 percent, while the number of
unemployed dropped 17.7 percent from the same period last year.
The Putin team, however, doesn’t deserve any particular credit for this
economic prosperity. Russia owes its thanks to Sergei Kiriyenko, the former
prime minister who was reviled time and again for the ruble devaluation in
1998, and to the government of Kiriyenko’s successor, Yevgeny Primakov,
which was the first to adopt a deficit-free budget.
The prosperity also comes from the unprecedented rise in world prices
for oil and energy resources. From these sources alone the Russia had
already received more than $16 billion by mid-2000, and by the end of the
year, according to an estimate by Andrei Illarionov, an economic adviser to
the president, it will receive another $30 billion, or 12 percent of GDP. 
But even these successes are highly relative. Illarionov also contends
that “the authorities failed to cope with managing the economy in the
unique conditions that prevailed in 2000.” In his opinion, the current
situation isn’t stable, and the economic growth rate is slowing.
One reason is the large revenues from the export of raw materials. They
are making the dollar cheaper and the ruble more expensive, which in turn
is making Russian industry less competitive. Another is the acceleration of
inflation.
“In April and May the forecast was still for 12-14 percent inflation a
year, but today it is perfectly clear that inflation for the whole year
will amount to about 22 percent,” says Illarionov. But instead of taking
measures, the executive and legislative branches, in his words, “have begun
with pleasure to divide the additional revenues that came not from
increases in productivity but from changes in oil prices.”
The effect of devaluation, which spurred the growth of the economy
after the 1998 financial crisis, is fading. In Illarionov’s view, about
half of this effect was “eaten up” this year. “Another 10-12 months of this
policy, and the Russian economy will reach the level of relative prices
that prevailed in July 1998,” he warns. In his words, this will mean, in
effect, an end to economic growth. 
In December, there has been an outpouring of declarations about the
authorities’ further plans for reforms. Government officials, like college
students who have cut classes the whole semester, have suddenly come to
their senses right before the exam period and have feverishly rushed to
make up for lost time.

PRESIDENTIAL ORDER
The president has issued an order to accelerate the adoption of draft
laws on the debureaucratization of the economy, which in part for provide
for the audit of a managing entity by state agencies no more than once
every two years (currently the number of audits is unrestricted).
Yet proposals for simplifying the procedure for getting into the
market were contained already in the Gref program. It’s unclear what kept
government reformers from starting work in this direction earlier. 
However, the prolonged depression in the Russian economy, which lasted
right up until the August 1998 financial crisis, has been firmly associated
in the minds of average citizens with the liberal reforms of former prime
ministers Yegor Gaidar and Kiriyenko, even though the government was headed
for the longest period by Viktor Chernomyrdin. Be that as it may, for
various reasons not a single Russian government pursued reforms
consistently and purposefully.
Over the last decade since the fall of the Soviet Union, the government
has provided only fragmentary, uncoordinated economic reforms, which in
turn have not brought about any palpable improvement in the living
standards of the bulk of the population. That has discredited the reformers
in the eyes of most of the public.
Thus the question arises, What are the prospects for liberal reforms
in the Russian economy? Some liberal-minded economists who cooperate
closely with the government believe that the reforms will definitely
continue. Some are more skeptical.
“Russia concluded the first phase of market reforms with an impressive
finish — the 1998 crisis... . The reforms, for the most part, have switched
the country to the tracks to a market economy ... but objectively have
produced a upsurge in crisis-type occurrences, and subjectively have taken
it into a national depression,” the well-known economist Yevgeny Yasin
points out.
Itogi, Russia’s leading weekly news magazine, is published in
partnership with Newsweek. Steven Shabad translated this report.

******

#8
strana.ru
December 18, 2000
Chubais wants to remove Lenin's body from Red Square mausoleum, while he 
supports his ideas
By Vladimir Yegorov, Strana.ru observer

The current reform in Russia's power engineering is comparable in scope and 
importance with the implementation of the plan for ensuring electricity 
supply in the whole of Russia, known as GOELRO, proposed by Lenin in 1920.

Such a statement was made by Anatoly Chubais, chairman of the board of 
Russia's biggest electric company - the Unified Energy Systems (UES) - and 
the informal leader of the Union of Right Forces, on December 18 as he opened 
an exhibition at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow devoted to the 80th 
anniversary of GOELRO. 

According to Chubais, who demands that Lenin's body be removed from the 
Mausoleum in Red Square, Russia would not exist unless the GOELRO plan was 
carried out. Precisely at that time "the basis was built for the main section 
of Russia's industry, which forms the backbone of the country's economy 
today," Chubais stated.

According to unofficial sources, by opening the exhibition at the Polytechnic 
Museum Chubais launched a PR campaign in support of his plan of reforming the 
Russian power engineering system submitted to the government by the Ministry 
of Economic Development and Trade.

The authors of the plan consider that Russia's power engineering is in a 
critical state and will require at least $19 billion of investment in the 
coming five years. To that end, it is planned to sell its subsidiaries and 
dependable companies to private owners.

Chubais' plan was approved, on the whole, at a government meeting on December 
15, but it evoked sharp criticism on the part of Andrei Illarionov, economic 
adviser of President Vladimir Putin. According to Illarionov, after Chubais 
announced his plans of the reform, the capitalization of the UES, the stock 
of which has been "enormously underestimated," has gone down from $10 billion 
to $4 billion. The economic adviser believes that a 70% growth may be 
attained in electricity production through increasing labor efficiency, and 
no additional investment will be necessary.

Illarionov said further that the planners of the reform had submitted for the 
government's discussion a version, from which important amendments had been 
removed. If the plan is adopted finally the way it is, the UES leadership 
will have an opportunity to do with the controlling blocks of shares 
"anything it likes." So, the stakes in the struggle for Russian power 
engineering are fantastically high.

Many independent experts also confirm this. In their view, the plan of the 
reform envisages speculating for decline, after which profitable facilities 
will be sold at knock-down prices, also to insiders. They consider that 
Chubais already made such a privatization maneuver, when he headed the State 
Privatization Committee, and he did it later as well, during the mortgage 
auctions that followed. As a result of the auctions, the state-owned stock of 
most profitable industrial facilities was offered at law prices. But, as it 
had been supposed by many, the government had no intention to buy out those 
facilities. At that time Chubais was Deputy Prime Minister in the cabinet of 
Viktor Chernomyrdin. 

President Putin spoke in favor of a very cautious attitude to reforming the 
UES. However, as it was stated by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, the President is 
inclined to support the stance of his adviser Andrei Illarionov but not that 
of Anatoly Chubais.

Possibly Chubais made an allusion to Lenin in the hope of winning the 
communists' support. But, as communist leader Gennady Zyuganov has already 
said, the communist faction in the State Duma will come out against reforming 
the UES in a manner wanted by Chubais. This view will most likely be shared 
by others as well, though for economic, and not ideological, reasons. It is 
not ruled out that the Yabloko faction, too, which up till now voted with the 
right-wingers practically on all issues, will join the opponents. Meanwhile, 
a reform of the monopolist UES company is impossible without prior approval 
by the parliament. 

*******

#9
RUSSIA WATCH 
Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project 
Harvard University
No. 4, December 2000
Russian Democracy versus Russian Barbarism
Why authoritarian liberalization won't work for Russia
by Alexey A. Kara-Murza
Alexey Kara-Murza is a Professor of Political Studies at Moscow University
and Director of the Department of
Political Philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy
of Sciences.

The current situation with the protection of indi-vidual rights in Russia
is conditioned by the peculi-arities of the "democratic revolution" of the
1980s and 1990s. By understanding this dependence, one can guard against
both unnecessary illusions and un-necessary disappointments. To be
objective in this question is to guarantee the principle of political
analysis which has remained since the time of Ma-chiavelli and Spinoza:
"Understand, don't moralize."

Even in the late communist period (which is re-ferred to in the literature
as the "period of stagna-tion"), Soviet citizens possessed certain rights
in re-lation to the Soviet state. A specific type of "social contract"
existed between the party elite and the masses. It expressed itself, on one
hand, in citizens' ritual support for communist power, and in a certain
freedom in non-political private life, on the other. This "social
contract," which developed in the USSR in the late communist period, was
actually based not upon real obligations, but upon their imitation. The
contract was described as such in folk anecdotes of the time: "You (the
'bosses') pretend to pay us, and we (the 'workers') pretend to work for
you;" or "You (the party elite) pretend to lead us, and we (the peo-ple)
pretend to follow," and so forth. This imitation "consensus" between the
top and bottom, which at its core was deeply degrading, could only exist,
of course, due to a successful economic state of af-fairs-high prices for
the USSR's traditional fuel resources.

The widespread nostalgia for the commu-nist era in Russia today is not at
all a longing for communist dictatorship, but rather for the elements of
social freedom and irresponsibility that had a place in the late Soviet
period.

In connection with this I am absolutely certain that the fairly widespread
nostalgia for the commu-nist era in Russia today is not at all a longing
for communist dictatorship, but rather for the elements of social freedom,
protectedness and irresponsibility which had a place in the late Soviet
period. Contem-porary sociology, incidentally, proves this convinc-ingly.
In answer to the question "In which era did 'average people' live best
(under Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev or Yeltsin)?", the majority
of people, especially in the provinces, name the "Brezhnev era."

It wasn't liberal politics per se that under-went a total collapse in
Russia after the early Yeltsin years, but "liberal populism," which could
not continue for long and which, having failed, led to mass disenchantment.

I would add that the extremely high popularity that Boris Yeltsin initially
enjoyed with the people was based on his "charisma" (in the exact sense in
which Max Weber used the term), that is, on "the belief in a miracle."
Thus, in 1990-1992 Yeltsin promised to give the masses that which the
communists had promised but had not delivered-"a quick bright future." He
promised that average people would enjoy even more prosperity after the
"privileges of the party nomenclature" were abol-ished and after "the
Communist Party's hidden funds" were located. In 1991-1992, during the
shift to liberal politics under the government of Burbulis-Gaidar, Yeltsin
declared that he knew "ten ways to move to a market economy without raising
the price of goods" and so forth. Therefore, it wasn't liberal politics per
se that underwent a total collapse in Russia later in the 1990s, but
"liberal populism," which could not continue for long and which, having
failed, led to massive disenchantment with the very idea of liberal reform.
It's also necessary to recognize the well-known contradiction that exists
in today's Russia between "political democracy" (which is stressed by both
Soviet dissidents and the current proponents of a 'Western way of life' who
are concentrated in the big urban centers), and "social democracy" (linked
not so much with political guarantees as with social ones), which is
important for the majority of Russia's provincial inhabitants. Freedom of
speech, freedom of movement, and freedom of political activity are
exceptionally important achievements of Russian democracy, but they cannot
fully manifest their advantages in the regions where economic degradation
has reduced to nothing even those social freedoms and guarantees which
people previously held.

I would point out that Russia has found itself in a unique position in this
respect. History shows that the classic model for the transition to
democratic rights has been economic liberalization followed by politi-cal
democratization. In other words, the extension of room for individual
economic freedom (first for a few, then for an ever greater number of
citizens) pre-ceded the provision of popular electoral rights. Or put
differently still, voting rights were granted to people who already were
feeling the advantages of economic liberalization-a move from qualified
voting rights to universal ones.

In contemporary Russia things have turned out differently. Here-since the
time of Mikhail Gor-bachev-democratic rights (the right of all citizens to
choose among multiple candidates) were attained before economic freedom
demonstrated its advan-tages for certain key segments of the population. In
this situation, historical paradoxes arise that are char-acteristic not
only for Russia, but also for other countries undergoing delayed
modernization (for example, Germany before Hitler). Having received
electoral rights according to the principle of "one person-one vote,"
people are sometimes inclined to yield to populism and, in such a way,
democratic rights are used against a reformist course.

This explains why over the course of several electoral cycles for
parliament (Duma) in Russia, victories have been won by either aggressive
nation-alistic demagogues (Zhirinovsky's party in 1993), communist 'revenge
seekers' (in 1995), or 'virtual parties' installed as a result of the
activities of politi-cal operatives ("Unity" in 1999).

I am not, however, an advocate of limiting uni-versal voting rights as are
some Russian "authoritar-ian reformers" who propose temporarily introducing
qualified voting rights for the cultured and the rich, carrying out
economic reform, and then restoring universal electoral rights. Having
carefully studied Russian history for a long time, I know that restricting
the democratic rights of the majority in Russia will lead to a situation in
which there will be neither political democracy nor economic freedom. In my
view, it is impossible to have authoritarian liberalization (a market
economy under the conditions of limited political freedom) in Russia.
Either economic modernization proceeds on the basis of and with the help of
political democracy, or neither will exist in Russia.

The restriction of democratic rights in to-day's Russia will lead not to
authoritarian dictatorship, but to irreversible social deg-radation-or to
what I call the "new 
barbarism"-which will be dangerous for the whole world community. 

I will go even further: political freedom and demo-cratic rights are today
an imperative for the survival of Russia as a civilized society. The
restriction of democratic rights in today's Russia will lead not to
authoritarian dictatorship, but to irreversible social degradation - or to
what I call the "new barbarism"-which will be dangerous for the whole world
community. Therefore I regard the catch phrase "preservation of democratic
rights in Russia" not as an empty declaration or as a sign of political
progressiveness, but rather as an imperative for the survival of Russian
civilization. I have written much on this theme and can only once more
confirm my solidarity with the words of the 19th century Russian
philosopher Vladimir Soloviev: "It is not the duty of the law to turn the
world, embraced by evil, into the Kingdom of God, but rather to keep it
from turning into hell." 

******

#10
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 
From: "Lianne van der Kruk" <lianne@imedia.ru>
Subject: New part of TheMoscowTimes.com website - Guide to Russia

I would like to inform you as one of the first about a new part on
TheMoscowTimes.com's website: our Guide to Russia!

The Guide to Russia gives practical advice and tips for travellers to Russia.
It is divided in three parts: Essential Facts, Getting to Russia and While you
are here. The Guide is Put together by expats living in Moscow, and maintained
on a daily basis - together with TheMoscowTimes.com, thus guaranteeing up to
date information at all times. The Guide to Russia is accessible for free and
constantly developing. Visitors are encouraged to write their comments and
wishes down and to communicate with our editors. 

The central target group for the Guide to Russia consists of travellers who
have already made the decision to go to Russia, mainly for Business trips.
Other important reader groups are expatriates moving to Russia, Students that
go to Russia to study and Tourists. 

If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact
me anytime!

Sincerely,
Lianne van der Kruk
Web Publisher
TheMoscowTimes.com
tel: +7 (095) 2323200
fax: +7 (095) 2321761
fax (NL): +31 20 8790109
read the current issue online! www.themoscowtimes.com/doc/current.html
Travelling to Russia? Let us help you prepare: TheMoscowTimes.com
GUIDE TO RUSSIA: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/travel/index.html

******

#11
From: "David Filipov" <dmf@cityline.ru>
Subject: exile - preemptive strike/ query on civility
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 

Stepping out ahead of the inevitable landslide of criticism that is likely
to follow Bernie Sucher's comment (jrl#4697) about the eXile:

1) The exile is a Russian publication. This is not some USAID-funded
project. If Russians decide they don't want the eXile around, we all know
what will happen. Same goes for Mssrs. Ames and Taibbi. There is nothing
foreigners can, or should want to do to shut that publication down, much as
they might disagree with some of the contents. Last I checked, an American
citizen named David Duke can come to Russia and publish whatever he wants,
and have it go on sale at the State Duma, and he really means it (and by the
way, where's the outcry about that?)

2) Johnson's List is free to pick and choose what it publishes. I have not
seen the contents of my paper's classifieds section or lingerie ads
reprinted here, nor do I expect to see reprints of the eXile's more heinous
jokes. David has picked up items from Zavtra and other publications whose
fascist pronouncements are based on convictions, and not an attempt to
shock. (By the way, my two cents on David's query about attacks on this
list: If David wanted the environment on Johnson's list to be more civil, he
could refrain from publishing the more vicious comments, or send a note to
offensive posters gently asking them to tone it down a bit.)

3) As with shock radio in the US, the eXile feeds off the indignation of its
victims. This may not make it any easier for the people who have been
attacked -- at the time of this posting, my worst brush with the eXile's
poison pen was relatively mild, a "Death Porn" item depicting myself in a
fatal love embrace with a dachshund -- but the best way to avoid the
paper's wrath is to ignore it.

David Filipov
The Boston Globe
Moscow

*******

#12
Nature
23 November 2000 
Russia's prize fighter
By QUIRIN SCHIERMEIER 
Quirin Schiermeier is Nature's German correspondent.

When Zhores Alferov won a share of this year's Nobel Prize for Physics, he
restored pride to Russian science. But can he exploit his celebrity status
to move research up the political agenda? Quirin Schiermeier investigates.

On 10 October this year, Zhores Alferov received a phone call from Stockholm
that propelled him out of the lab and into the headlines. But it was the
phone call that followed which could prove the key to boosting the prospects
of Russian science.

The first call made Alferov a Nobel physics laureate, in recognition of his
pioneering work in developing semiconductor heterostructures, now widely
used in the microelectronics industry. The other came from the Russian
president, Vladimir Putin, offering his congratulations and paving the way
for Alferov's increasing influence on Russian science policy.

A few days after the announcement, at a confidential meeting, Putin accepted
Alferov's suggestion to set up an advisory council of science and technology
experts. Although the full significance of this move remains unclear,
Russian researchers are monitoring keenly Alferov's emerging status as
Putin's unofficial science adviser.

Could it be that a Nobel prize ‹ Russia's first in science since 1978, when
Pyotr Kapitsa won for his work on low-temperature physics ‹ will help
restore science and technology to the centre of political thinking in
Moscow? If so, it will be fitting that Alferov was at the centre of events.
For his story, and that of the centre he directs, the Ioffe
Physico-Technical Institute in St Petersburg, exemplifies the roller-coaster
ride that Russian science has experienced.

Scientists of status

Researchers such as Alferov became a privileged élite after the Second World
War, only to see their empires crash when the Soviet Union collapsed. Today,
his is just one of many Russian labs that depend largely on western agencies
and companies for their financial survival.

A proud and eloquent man who is still loyal to Soviet traditions ‹ he is a
Communist member of the Duma, or state parliament ‹ Alferov's western
contacts and his reputation for scientific excellence have ensured the Ioffe
institute's survival. "I hope the Nobel prize will help us further to
recover before it is too late," he says.

The institute was founded in 1918 by Abram Ioffe, a student of Nobel
laureate Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen ‹ who won the first physics Nobel in 1901
for his discovery of X-rays. It quickly became a premier centre for physics.
But the strongest growth came during the postwar competition with the United
States for global superpower status.

Alferov chooses not to emphasize the Cold War factor. "The Soviet leadership
was clever enough to support science and scientific education in general as
an important branch of human activity," he says. But much of this investment
was designed to underpin the powerful military­industrial complex. Alferov's
prizewinning work, conducted at the Ioffe institute in the 1960s and 1970s,
benefited from the largesse. And by the time he took over as director in
1987, the institute's annual budget had grown to US$80 million.

But the days of plenty ended abruptly with the collapse of the Soviet Union
in 1991. As power passed to Boris Yeltsin's Russian Federation, science
spending went into free fall. By 1992, the Ioffe institute's state funding
had plummeted to around $4 million per year. Survival-level salaries ate up
this budget ‹ buying new equipment was out of the question.

Survival skills

So what kept the institute going? "We would not have made it alone," says
Andrei Zabrodskii, a solid-state physicist and vice-director of the
institute. Foreign help was very important, with Hungarian-born billionaire
and currency speculator George Soros leading the way. Between 1994 and 1996,
scientists at the Ioffe institute received 80 research grants worth a total
of $2 million from his International Science Foundation.

Sources of foreign funding have since diversified. Today, about a third of
the institute's annual budget of around $8 million comes from abroad. Here,
Alferov's international reputation was invaluable. At the height of the Cold
War, he was one of the trusted élite of young scientists who were given
permission to visit the West. In 1970, Alferov spent six months in the lab
of Nick Holonyak at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There he
carried out groundbreaking work on the structure and properties of
semiconductor lasers.

Indeed, Alferov's first major award, the 1971 Stuart Ballantine Gold Medal
of the Franklin Institute, came from the United States. Already a world
leader in his field, Alferov was in hot demand to speak at international
conferences. But unrestricted travel was impossible, even for someone of
Alferov's growing status, and so the Ballantine medal had to be sent to him
by mail.

Nevertheless, Alferov prospered within the Soviet system ‹ the spaces
between the bookcases in his vast, wood-panelled office are adorned with
awards and certificates, and a conspicuous red flag. Visiting his institute,
it is clear that junior colleagues regard him with a respect that approaches
awe. He is engaging and charismatic, expansive in his gestures and quick to
laugh. And although the Ioffe institute's current diminished circumstances
must be an immense source of frustration, Alferov does not let it show.
"Despite all our difficulties," he says, "the Ioffe institute is still home
to some high-quality research, particularly in plasma physics, astrophysics
and semiconductor physics."

Much of this research is financed by foreign grants. Projects in
nanotechnology, for example, are supported by INTAS, an independent body
formed by the European Union to promote East­West scientific cooperation.
Similar support comes from the NATO Science Programme, and the Civilian
Research and Development Foundation ‹ a charity based in Arlington,
Virginia, partly funded by the US government.

Another important source of funds is the International Science and
Technology Center (ISTC), established in 1992 by the European
Union, Japan, Russia and the United States. The ISTC redirects activities
formerly related to weapons research into civilian projects. The Ioffe
institute's spherical Tokamak was completed in 1998 thanks to a $1 million
grant from the ISTC. It is used to investigate the physical properties of
spherical plasmas ‹ aimed at decreasing the costs of fusion reactors.

But Germany is the Ioffe institute's most important international partner.
At any one time, more than 25 Ioffe staff are working in Germany, many of
them supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Other
support comes from the private Volkswagen Foundation, which, since 1993, has
backed Alferov's research with a total of $250,000. Furthermore, the Ioffe
institute is the only non-German institution affiliated to the German
science ministry's NanOptics programme, which investigates the use of
nanostructures in lasers and other optical devices.

Such grants ‹ and support from foreign companies ‹ have ensured that
Alferov's own research area has remained buoyant. The institute's division
of nanoheterostructure physics has contracts with companies in South Korea,
Germany and China. For Alferov, the great disappointment is that his work is
not benefiting a home-grown microelectronics industry. "The inability to
transfer our results is the country's main problem," he says.

In 1985, Russia's electronics industry was the world's third largest, after
those of the United States and Japan. But with little emphasis on consumer
electronics, the industry was decimated by the collapse of the
military­industrial complex. "It was destroyed," says Alferov, who hopes to
use his influence to reverse the damage. On his initiative, the Duma earlier
this month made a start by voting an extra $16 million into the 2001 budget
to develop electronic technologies.

Faith in the future

Alferov believes Putin and the new science minister, Alexander Dondukov,
will put more emphasis on research. They have already promised a 10%
increase in funding, and deploying research to help rebuild Russian industry
seems to be a high priority.

But in the long run, the future of Russian science might depend on its
ability to exploit its human potential. In that regard, the Ioffe
institute's educational centre, established in the 1930s, could provide a
model. Ioffe's kindergarten, as it is known, takes talented secondary school
students and tries to turn them into the researchers of tomorrow. Around a
quarter of its intake stay in science, and the best graduates join the
institute's staff. Thanks to this, the Ioffe institute still boasts a
scientific staff of some 1,300. The school has already benefited from
Alferov's previous political connections: in 1998, it moved into a new
building near the institute, financed in large part by an $8 million
donation from former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

In Russia, which has long suffered from a separation between the educational
system and research ‹ most of which is conducted in the institutes of the
Academy of Sciences ‹ the centre is highly unusual. Alferov believes such
initiatives are vitally important, and he intends to spend a significant
proportion of his Nobel prize money on the centre. "We may have an abundance
of problems," he says, "but we certainly have no lack of scientific
talents."

******

#13
Russian TB cases up 12 per cent in a year 
ITAR-TASS 

Moscow, 18 December, ITAR-TASS correspondent Anna Bazhenova: Cases of 
tuberculosis continue to rise in Russia. In the past year they have gone up 
by 12 per cent and the mortality rate by 30 per cent. 

These figures were given at a conference of the heads of TB prevention 
services in Russia's constituent regions, which opened today. The rise can be 
partially attributed to better registration, but another cause is late 
diagnosis. In the past 10 years, the reasons for TB reoccurring in patients 
have changed. The main one used to be alcohol abuse, but now it is 
"concomitant" diseases. 

The fight against tuberculosis across Russia is being funded under a federal 
programme and also by the regions themselves. The director of the Russian 
Health Ministry's Urals Research Institute for Phthisiopulmonary Diseases, 
Vladislav Sokolov, told ITAR-TASS that his region was fairly well supplied 
with TB medicines this year. The TB rate in Siberia and the Urals is higher 
than the average in Russia, at 70 per 100,000 head of population. 

A topic of special interest at the conference was the TB rate among medical 
personnel working in specialized establishments. They are 25 times more 
likely to contract it than the general public. 

******

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