December 29, 2000   

This Date's Issues:   4712 • 4713

Johnson's Russia List
#4713
29 December 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: Putin's wife says Russians have rediscovered their pride.
2. AP: Russia Mulls Rumsfeld Missile Plan.
3. Interfax: MOST RUSSIANS, UKRAINIANS, BELARUSSIANS FAVOR UNIFICATION - POLL.
4. strana.ru: Russian government sums up 2000 results.
5. International Herald Tribune: Evan A. Feigenbaum, The United States Is Driving Russia And China Together Again.
6. AP: Russian Navy Returning to Atlantic.
7. Interfax: ALEXY II HOPES FOR POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF RELATIONS
BETWEEN RUSSIAN ORTHODOX, ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCHES IN 21ST CENTURY.
8. AP: Russian Pol Criticizes Chechen War. (Nemtsov)
9. Stefan Korshak: Re: Aslund/Ukraine/4711.
10. Segodnya: PUTIN PAYS YELTSIN'S DEBTS. Politicians and Experts Summarize Foreign Policy Results of the Year 2000.
11. New York Times: Michael Wines, For All Russia, Biological Clock Is Running Out.
12. strana.ru: Sergei Markov: First successful year but following years must be better.
13. Washington Post: Sharon LaFraniere, Russian Journalists Targeted In Attacks. Corruption Investigator's Face Slashed.]

******

#1
Putin's wife says Russians have rediscovered their pride

MOSCOW, Dec 29 (AFP) -
Russia's First Lady Lyudmilla Putin said Friday that her fellow-citizens had
rediscovered their national pride since her husband came to power, for the
first time since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

"We used to say: We're proud to be Soviet. This year in Russia and everywhere
else in the world, people are thinking again: It's great to be Russian," she
said in an interview published with Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.

She also said her own life had taken on a "new meaning" since Vladimir
Putin's election as president on March 26 this year.

Asked about her involvement in charity work, Putin's wife replied: "I will
try to help people, not in my name but for the sake of God."

According to the Russian press, Lyudmilla Putin may become the patron of the
country's first union of charities since 1910.

The first lady, a graduate of foreign languages, also said she would work to
defend the Russian language "because it shapes thought, which itself
determines our way of life."

She urged her compatriots to use more "words of love and tenderness."

Lyudmilla Putin, who at first stayed behind the scenes after her husband came
to power, has been venturing more into the limelight in her role as first
lady.

******

#2
Russia Mulls Rumsfeld Missile Plan
December 29, 2000
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
 
MOSCOW (AP) - President-elect Bush's choice of Donald Rumsfeld as the new
secretary of defense is likely to raise pressure on the Kremlin to reach a
compromise with the United States on its plan to deploy anti-missile
defenses, analysts said Friday.

``Rumsfeld is known as a proponent of a tough line, and he is likely to take
a rigid stance on the National Missile Defense,'' said Dmitry Trenin, a
political affairs expert for the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office.

Russia has categorically rejected the Clinton administration's push to modify
the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to allow the deployment of a limited
anti-missile system, saying that the move would upset the strategic balance
and trigger a new arms race.

President Clinton has deferred to his successor a decision on whether to
start activities that would lead to the deployment of a national missile
shield. The shield would aim to counter attacks from so-called ``rogue
states,'' now referred to by the U.S. State Department as ``states of
concern.''

Rumsfeld led a bipartisan commission that concluded two years ago that
potential missile threats either from an accidental launch or a rogue nation
were closer than U.S. intelligence believed, fueling arguments to push ahead
with missile defenses.

``The report by Rumsfeld's commission has stoked the Americans' desire to
have anti-missile defenses, so his appointment isn't going to make life
easier for the Russians,'' said Ivan Safranchuk, an arms control analyst at
PIR-Center, an independent think tank in Moscow.

He and other analysts predicted that Moscow would eventually have to abandon
its staunch resistance to any changes in the ABM Treaty, and would bargain
for concessions from the United States in exchange for an agreement to modify
it.

Russian officials say Moscow remains firmly against any revision of the ABM
treaty and they have threatened to opt out of existing arms control
agreements if the United States proceeds with deploying missile defenses.

``There is no chance that Russia may convince the United States to abandon
its missile defenses, so it will have to reach an agreement,'' Safranchuk
said. ``Despite all the rhetoric, Moscow doesn't want to quarrel with the
United States.''

*******

#3
MOST RUSSIANS, UKRAINIANS, BELARUSSIANS FAVOR UNIFICATION - POLL

     MOSCOW. Dec  29 (Interfax) - The unification of Russia, Belarus and
Ukraine in  a single state--federative or unitarian--is supported by 61%
of Russians, 53% of Ukrainians and 69% of Belarussians.
     The number of opponents is 15%, 36% and 19% respectively, according
to a  report on the results of a December poll obtained by Interfax from
the Moscow  Humanitarian Academy  on Friday.  Academy  sociologists  had
surveyed 1,700 adults in Russia, 1,100 in Ukraine and 1,000 in Belarus.
     Asked about the preferable form of the possible unification, 38% of
the Russians,  43% of  the Ukrainians and 57% of the Belarussians polled
said they favored a single state as existed in pre-revolutionary Russia.
The supporters of a federation were 36%, 16% and 15% respectively.

******

#4
strana.ru
December 29, 2000
Russian government sums up 2000 results
 
Next February the Russian government is going to submit a strategy of the
country's economic development for a period until 2010 to President Vladimir
Putin for signing, said Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov at a cabinet meeting
on December 29, the last one held in the outgoing year.

It would be necessary, Kasyanov said, to work out the details of the 2001
economic program and, if necessary, to correct it, and also to prepare an
economic program for the following two or three years.

According to the Prime Minister, next year the cabinet will concentrate on
supporting positive trends in the economy. Besides, practical actions will
begin to carry out the structural reforms of natural monopolies, whose plans
were approved by the government in 2000.

Summing up the results of the year, Kasyanov pointed out that in 2000 the
economic situation in the country has improved. Economic growth has been
nearly 7%, industrial output has gone up by 10%, and the amount of investment
rose by 17-18%. As much as 82% of taxes has been collected this year, a
figure comparable with European countries.

The Prime Minister said also that the budget revenues have amounted to 17% of
the gross domestic product, barter payments in the economy have reduced by
half and now are 20%.

In 2000 wages and salaries have gone 25% up and the incomes of the population
have increased by 10%.

The last government meeting in 2000 was devoted also to environmental
protection. According to Kasyanov, it is an extremely important problem for
this country, since Russia relies on the raw materials industry in its
economic development.

"This leads to additional environmental risks," Kasyanov noted.

In his view, additional measures are to be planned to control the situation
and ensure a balanced development of the raw materials industry.

*******

#5
International Herald Tribune
December 28, 2000
The United States Is Driving Russia And China Together Again
By Evan A. Feigenbaum
The writer, executive director of the Asia-Pacific Security Initiative at
Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, contributed this
comment to the International Herald Tribune.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- A new poll released this week by the Russian
subsidiary of the American Gallup polling organization reveals that a
majority of Russian politicians, business leaders, and journalists view
China as a more reliable partner than the United States.

These poll results are noteworthy: Just four months ago, General Leonid
Ivashov, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's international cooperation
department, called China Russia's "ideological ally," citing common goals
in rejecting "military diktat in international relations," as well as
American missile defense plans. The two countries' growing partnership is,
of course, in many ways a marriage of convenience. China and Russia so far
remain "strategic partners" in name alone.

Perhaps the most important strategic underpinning of the increasingly close
Chinese-Russian view of international affairs is that both countries share
a deepening conviction that a principled stand against certain core
American strategic concepts will give them the high ground against the
United States.

It is telling that as American foreign policy has discarded the notion that
state sovereignty is inviolable, with interventions in Panama, Haiti, and
Kosovo, both Chinese and Russian diplomacy have responded in similar terms,
opposing NATO efforts to formulate a strategy that is not exclusively
defensive, and other creeping American challenges to the inviolability of
state sovereignty.

China continues to cling to long and often repeated principles of
nonintervention and territorial self-defense, even as the post-Cold War Pax
Americana has rewritten these rules by promoting new rationales for the use
of force. Taiwan, however, remains China's great exception. Indeed, an
unprovoked Chinese use of force against Taiwan, that many Americans,
Asians, Europeans and even some Russians would view as aggressive, would be
justified by Beijing as a strictly defensive action involving territorial
integrity - the one interest that Chinese diplomacy claims as "vital."

The more encompassing American definition of "vital" interests, by
contrast, ranges beyond the mere defense of homeland. Many Chinese argue
that American statements of the national interest tend to enshrine a law of
the jungle in international politics that violates norms of law and is
conceptually distinct from peacekeeping.

In this, China and Russia have some important common goals, rejecting the
use of military "diktat" as a principled response in some key external
contingencies. Such trends are hardly new, and strands of American
strategic analysis have wrestled in recent years with the prospect of a
renewed China Russia "alliance" relationship.

Such a notion is ironic indeed, not least because both countries have
increasingly rejected the very notion of alliances on grounds of principle.
Four months ago, General Ivashov claimed that "military alliances have no
future." His view jibes neatly with a Chinese view of the world that
increasingly sees alliance structures as a threat to peace and
intrinsically aggressive in nature.

NATO strategy in Kosovo reinforced Chinese and Russian perceptions that
America's alliances in Europe and Asia have evolved away from original
concepts of cooperative defense toward more expansive definitions of
alliance roles and missions.

Above all, it was Kosovo that demonstrated to Chinese, Russian, and other
strategists that the United States and its allies were prepared to
circumvent the United Nations and the norms of international law that
China, in particular, views in inflexible terms. All of this supplements
the shared concern about American missile defense plans.

China may yet discover that its Russian partner will abandon its shared
principled stance in favor of a closer working relationship with
Washington, particularly on anti-ballistic missile norms. But Beijing will
continue to reject the NATO notion that defense is always benign in nature,
a form of deterrence plus. Shared Chinese and Russian perspectives on world
affairs, therefore, suggest the possibility of greater coordination. Yet
whatever principles the two countries may share derive from very different
concerns.

For China, all such issues almost entirely derive from the Taiwan problem.
Beijing worries that the US-Japan alliance may take on new roles and
missions in a contingency in the Taiwan Strait. Its opposition to missile
defenses, especially theater systems, reflects a broadly political concern
that the United States is reviving its former military alliance with Taiwan.

What is required is an approach by American and European states that seeks
to delink the big questions of international politics, such as intervention
and alliances, from a view of the world that sees many such questions
through the prism of national problems and national pride. This is
especially true of China, whose foreign policy on nearly every strategic
issue is now inseparable from the Taiwan question.

Without such an effort, Chinese and Russian perspectives will move closer
together.

*******

#6
Russian Navy Returning to Atlantic
December 28, 2000
 
MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian Navy will return to the world stage next year,
sailing to the Atlantic and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean for the first
time in years, a top naval official said Thursday.

``It is time for our ships to move away from the pier,'' Russia's Navy
commander Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news
agency.

The two-month mission will mostly involve surface ships, he said, without
providing other details.

The Russian Navy has deteriorated amid money troubles and legal chaos that
followed the 1991 Soviet collapse. Government financing has dried up,
equipment has been pilfered away or aged beyond repair, and ships are rusting
at their moorings.

The troubles have weakened the Navy to the degree it is unable even to combat
poachers in Russia's waters, government officials have said.

President Vladimir Putin planned to revive the Navy, and Russian ships were
to sail to the Mediterranean following this summer's exercises. But the
exercises ended in a disaster when one of Russia's newest and best nuclear
submarines, the Kursk, sunk on Aug. 12. All 118 sailors aboard were killed.

Kuroyedov said that Russia needs to streamline its Navy with a 20 percent
personnel cut starting next year, getting rid of redundant positions. Many
jobs to be eliminated are those that are currently vacant, he said.

*******

#7
ALEXY II HOPES FOR POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF RELATIONS BETWEEN RUSSIAN ORTHODOX, ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCHES IN 21ST CENTURY

     MOSCOW. Dec  29 (Interfax)  - On  the  eve  of  the  21st  century,
Patriarch of  Moscow and All Russia Alexy II expressed his hope that the
relations between  the Russian  Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches
will improve in the new century.
     "One would  like to  hope  for  a  positive  development  of  these
relations," the  patriarch said in an interview with Interfax, recalling
that "Orthodox  and Catholic believers have many common concerns" caused
by "the increasing secularization of modern society."
     Alexy II  said he  is convinced  that "the  dynamic development  of
world political  and  economic  processes,  informational  and  cultural
globalization are urging Christians to interact."
     The patriarch  said he  regrets the  fact  that  "there  are  still
serious problems  between the  two Churches,  and  these  problems  have
arisen through  no fault of Orthodox Christians." In the first place, it
is "the  situation in  the western part of Ukraine, where three Orthodox
eparchies were  literally smashed  up with  the active support of Greco-
Catholics, and  the proselytical  activities of some Catholic structures
in Russia  and other  CIS countries,  where under the pretext of 'social
work' attempts  are sometimes  made to  convert Orthodox  Christians  to
Catholicism."
     In closing,  the patriarch  re-emphasized that  "the future  of our
relations with  the Catholic  Church, and  particularly the level of our
dialogue, depends on the overcoming of the problems mentioned."

******

#8
Russian Pol Criticizes Chechen War
December 28, 2000
By ANDREW KRAMER
 
MOSCOW (AP) - In rare criticism within Russia of President Vladimir Putin's
policies in Chechnya, a leading liberal politician on Thursday said Russia's
army in the region is falling apart as a fighting force, and afflicted by
alcoholism and drug addiction.

Boris Nemtsov, head of the Union of Right Forces faction in parliament, said
Russia should end the war by opening negotiations with Chechen guerrilla
leaders.

The comments came after Nemtsov met with a rebel envoy in the southern
Russian city of Nazran on Saturday in what some saw as a back door contact
for Russia's government with the rebel forces.

Nemtsov said he later met with Putin and the Russian president approved his
efforts to engage the rebels in dialogue.

Nemtsov's claim contradicted a television interview with Putin this week in
which the Russian leader asserted that the war will go on until all militants
in Chechnya are killed or surrender. He did not mention any problems in
Russia's forces.

But Nemtsov said the army in Chechnya is deteriorating.

``When troops stand still, they are getting increasingly demoralized,'' he
said. ``They are plagued by alcoholism, drug-addiction, prostitution and
looting.''

Military prosecutors have opened 748 cases involving crimes committed by
servicemen in Chechnya and neighboring Caucasus regions since fighting began
in August 1999, Russian news agencies reported the Kremlin's spokesman for
Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, as saying Thursday.

The crimes include murder and illegal arms dealing, the reports said.

Foreign governments and human rights groups have said Russia's ground troops
are too blunt an instrument to solve Chechnya's complex problems.

But few Russian politicians have criticized the war, which remains popular
with most Russians despite mounting casualties.

Six Russian soldiers were killed and 23 wounded in ambushes and mine
explosions in the past 24 hours in the province, an official in Chechnya's
pro-Moscow administration said on condition of anonymity.

In the Shali district in the mountainous southeast, rebels attacked a column
of Russian armored cars, wounding six soldiers and destroying one vehicle,
the official said.

In the capital Grozny, an armored personnel carrier struck a mine, killing
two soldiers and wounding seven others, the official said.

Chechnya won de facto independence after guerrillas defeated Russian forces
in 1996. But Russian troops moved back into the region last year after
militants staged cross-border raids on villages in the neighboring Russian
region of Dagestan and after Russian cities were hit with terrorist bombings
the government blames on the Chechens.

******

#9
From: "Stefan Korshak" <sbkhome@iptelecom.net.ua>
Subject: Re:  Aslund/Ukraine/4711
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000

A few comments regarding the Aslund piece and Gongadze case, if you are
interested.

I believe care should be exercised before we start accepting Grigory
Gongadze's death or murder as established facts. He could be alive.
On Wednesday, one day after the Aslund piece appeared in the Washington
Post, Ukrainian media reported a pair of friends in Lviv had seen Gongadze
and informed police of the sighting. The friends - two women who say they
knew Gongadze well from his student protest days - are speaking freely with
the Ukrainian press.
More morbidly, Gongadze's wife says the body discovered in the forest
outside Kiev is too decomposed to identify. She says a foot shown her by
coroners seemed to be her husband's, and jewelry allegedly found in the
grave is certainly her husband's. The relatively trustworthy people who
found the body (an apparently random mushroom picker and his son) did not
see the jewelry. Rather, Ukrainian government investigators - in my opinion
far less reliable sources - say they found the jewelry in the grave.
DNA testing by Ukrainian police on the remains is not finished. If and when
it is, the results will be tainted: Ukrainians do no trust their law
enforcement agencies.
As Aslund points out, the audio and video tapes supposedly linking Kuchma to
the Gongadze's disappearance were made public by Kuchma's opponents in
parliament, which has a big stake in undermining Kuchma's political power.
That's a lot of open questions.
The Keystone cops-style investigation gives little hope of their being
answered defininatively any time soon. Certainly, Gongadze's death or even
murder seems probable.
But those possibilities are far, at this point in time, from hard facts.

Stefan Korshak
Deutsche Presse Agentur, Kiev/Kyiv/Kiew

******

#10
Segodnya
December 28, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
PUTIN PAYS YELTSIN'S DEBTS
Politicians and Experts Summarize Foreign Policy Results
of the Year 2000
    
     Vyacheslav NIKONOV, Politika Foundation head:
     Putin's foreign policy is pragmatic, economic and
independent. In the international arena, the president can do
more in a week than Yeltsin could do in a year - for purely
physical reasons. But many of the country's positions have been
regrettably lost in the past ten years and are hard to restore,
even in such countries as Cuba. The Russian diplomacy has
largely been affected by domestic troubles - Chechnya, the
Kursk sub sinking, Gusinsky's 'case', etc. Another problem is
that Moscow's reaction to a number of events was somewhat too
slow, where it should be either pre-emptive or instant. Thus,
Russia has been too late getting involved in the Mideast peace
process for which reason it could not play any substantive role
at the peak of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moscow's reaction to
Kostunica's election as the president of Yugoslavia was late by
at least a week.
    
     Sergei MARKOV, director of the Political Studies Institute:
     Russia has taken to the road of forming an independent
foreign policy. Putin has clearly announced that Russia's
national interests are above all. But the announcement
notwithstanding, Russia did not quarrel with the West. The
question: "What are you, Mr. Putin?" is effectively no longer
asked, which is a result of his meetings with the other G-8
leaders. In short, Putin has an image in the international
arena - a largely positive one. Meanwhile, Russia's foreign
policy strategy is yet to be formulated: the country's basic
interests are still vague. The general principles are clear:
independence, accent on the economy, and pragmatism. But these
are mere principles, while a foreign policy strategy is yet to
be defined, especially when it comes to relations with the CIS.
Russia's debt commitments are still outstanding: the continuing
negotiations on their rescheduling are anything but successful.
    
     Alexei MITROFANOV, MP, the Liberal Democratic Party:
     The Kremlin has finally heeded the opinion of patriotic
forces that have been saying all along that Moscow should not
be the West's sidekick in foreign policy, and that it should
develop relations with those countries that have been our
allies for years. Vladimir Putin has done a lot in this respect
in 2000. He went to and resumed cooperation with North Korea,
Mongolia and Cuba. He plans to go to Libya. I am confident he
will make a visit to Iraq sometime next year. Relations with
China are being strengthened and promise to be more substantive
next year. And all of this does no harm to our relations with
the West. The Russian-American relations will be shaping
painfully and on a rather tough basis. But I do not view this
as tragic. The Americans have their own interests, and we have
ours. Therefore, some tough talking is in place and even
necessary. It is quite another matter that we should not step
over the line beyond which starts confrontation.
    
     Sergei BLAGOVOLIN, deputy director of the Russian Academy
of Sciences' Institute of World Economy and International
Relations:
     In the sphere of foreign policy, 2000 was the year of
paying debts for Russia. I mean it has resumed contacts with
those countries about which Moscow has forgotten. Some people
see Vladimir Putin's visit to North Korea as a failure. But the
idea of meeting with Kim Chong-il was then borrowed from Moscow
by many Western countries, the US not excluding. Nor should
other contacts with the leaders of the 'rogue' countries be
over-dramatized. It is a fact that while Russia has been
moralizing in its foreign policy, the West has had quite
beneficial contacts with these regimes of 'questionable' repute.
The resumption of such relationships by Moscow is no mistake;
it is a positive move - on one condition only, that the sense
of measure is preserved. As to prospects for the future, I am
especially concerned with Russia's relations with the United
States and Japan next year. Unfortunately, all Moscow's efforts
notwithstanding, it has failed to settle territorial disputes
with Tokyo. There may be serious disagreements with Washington
on the matters of disarmament. I think that solutions to these
issues will be instrumental for the image of the Russian
foreign policy.
    
     Vladimir LUKIN, Duma deputy speaker, former chairman of
the international relations committee:
     In the past year, foreign policy was active and energetic,
but insufficiently priority-oriented. Russia will continue to
be identified as a European nation. Eurasia and the Far East
are illusionary: four-fifths of Russians live in Europe where
our historical roots are. We should develop relations with
China and Japan, but we should not forget that our priorities
are in Europe, that they are clearly oriented to the domestic
growth and to the promotion of democratic reforms. I think the
Kremlin shares this opinion in theory, but in practice, 'there
are big untapped reserves', to quote a phrase of Brezhnev's
era. We should abstain from jubilation and focus on the key
problems, those of getting access to Western investments and
high technologies. This will only be possible if Moscow manages
to convince the West that political stability in Russia is
attained by democratic means. And we should exercise our
national interests in, say, Iran or Iraq, in a way that would
preclude the rise of national problems.
    
     Alexander YAKOVENKO, director of the Russian foreign
ministry's department of information and the press:
     Russia's voice in the international arena has become more
decisive while its primary efforts have been directed - in line
with the new foreign policy concept - to the solution of
domestic, in particular economic, problems. The results of
Vladimir Putin's foreign trips and talks indicate that the very
first steps to implement this program have produced tangible
results. The millennium summit and other major international
forums have proved that Russia's line to building a democratic,
multi-polar world are consonant with the feelings of the
majority of countries members of the international community.
One example is the broad support in the UN for Russia's line to
preserving the ABM treaty. The line is a result of our own
efforts in the disarmament sphere: the ratification of the
START-2 treaty and the universal nuclear test ban, the
president's initiatives for the further reduction of strategic
nuclear weapons. Progress in relations with our closest
partners in the CIS is an important result of the year. The
results of the Russia-EU summit in Paris enable one to speak of
the beginning of a new stage of strategic partnership with the
European Union. In relations with the US, Russia managed to
preserve and largely enhance the positive outlook: we hope for
continuity in relations with the new Administration. The policy
in the Asian direction has become more dynamic; in particular,
major steps have been made to develop cooperation with China,
India, Japan, and Vietnam. Contacts with the Latin American
countries and Africa have been on the rise.
Russia is playing a prominent role in the effort to settle
regional conflicts, in particular in the Balkans and the Middle
East. On the whole, as [foreign minister] Igor Ivanov has put
it, one can say that the outgoing year is marked by a growing
number of Russia's friends and partners, the many problems and
difficulties notwithstanding.
    
     Mikhail PRUSAK, chairman of the Federation Council's
international affairs committee:
     The president gets straight A's as far as the year's
results in foreign policy are concerned, for he has been
working 'for himself and that other guy', as the saying goes.
He effectively travelled throughout the world. Moscow has made
quite a few bold steps: the president has flown to North Korea
and Cuba. He has placed relations with China and Japan on a
more practical footing. Our foreign policy has become more
open, more principled and more consistent. Judge for yourself:
the Topol missiles were publicly demonstrated recently. The
hint is transparent: if the US were to withdraw from the ABM
treaty, our reaction would be adequate. This is normal;
moreover, this is useful, for we have had more than enough of
the 'uncertainties' of the recent past.
    
     Dmitry ROGOZIN, chairman of the Duma foreign affairs
committee:
     Thanks to the president, foreign policy has become more
active. The most notable failure is the propaganda support.
Under Boris Yeltsin, there has been a well-oiled mechanism of
explaining the meaning of 'baby' and proving it is a brilliant
move. These days, the media are oftentimes treating much better
decisions as failures. Example: the Russian foreign ministry's
stance on the Balkans. Russia's main prospects are in the Far
East. But the main threats are also there: interests there are
not as balanced as they are in Europe. The president's
itinerary - Japan, Mongolia, India, Brunei, North Korea, and
China - proves that the Kremlin shares this view. There is a
promise of good relations with Iran. The Duma thinks highly of
the decision to denounce the Gore-Chernomyrdin deal. The
European direction is disappointingly un-promising. Europe is
in the midst of integration processes and Russia cannot be a
priority for it. In this direction, Russia has had no
separation or rapprochement, but the old disagreements have
exacerbated. The Europeans do not have a serious strategy for
Russia; thus, the OSCE, for one, specializes in all kinds of
conflicts in the CIS, while the Council of Europe has been
charged to scold Russia for violating human rights.

*******

#11
New York Times
December 28, 2000
[for personal use only]
For All Russia, Biological Clock Is Running Out
By Michael Wines

RYAZAN, Russia - If Ina Chaikovskaya does not have it all, she has more than
most women in this ancient military town: brains and pluck, an apartment and
a Zhiguli sedan bought with profits from her own business, a pointed wit.

What she does not have, and would like, are a husband and children. At 37,
she is running out of time.

"There are no normal men," she complained, curled up in jeans and a sweater
on a sofa, her companion - a 7-month-old orange tabby cat - staring out the
balcony window. "They've all got an inferiority complex because they can't
earn enough money to support a family. All of them live with their mothers.
They all earn 1,000, 1,500 rubles a month," $35 to $55, roughly.

"Who would want to bear a child with a man like that?" she asked.

In Ryazan, a struggling industrial city southeast of Moscow, the answer is
clear: hardly anybody. In the last decade, the marriage rate here has
plummeted 30 percent. The divorce rate has leaped 60 percent.

Not surprisingly, the birthrate is down 40 percent, too.

This is the flip side to Russia's decade-long epidemic of rising mortality:
a baby bust of alarming speed and size, winnowing the nation's population by
millions - and likely to continue for years. Europe's highest- fertility
country just a decade ago, Russia today is right down there with Spain and
Italy as the lowest.

New births last year in Russia occurred at the rate of 8.4 per 1,000 people,
compared with 13.4 in 1990. Put another way, Russia's fertility rate - the
average number of babies a woman is expected to bear - was just 1.17, down
from 1.89 in 1990.

The outlook, then, is for a shrinking, aging population when there is a
crucial need for young people to rejuvenate Russia's farms, re-energize
industry and rebuild the economy.

The twin trends - rising deaths and declining births - are both rooted in
the social and public-health upheavals that have swept the nation since the
Soviet Union entered its death throes in 1991. Both trends have confounded
experts, who expected them to be neither as serious nor as prolonged as they
have been.

The country's health care has collapsed in the last decade, along with the
people's health. Public hospitals and clinics are short of money and
medicine; doctors earn near-poverty wages; infectious diseases like
tuberculosis are epidemic.

No one doubts the decay has fed a rise in mortality unparalleled in recent
peacetime history. And no one believes this is merely a medical issue.
Rather, it is a signal that poverty and stress are eroding the government's
ability to care for its own.

Experts, including some at United States intelligence agencies, fear
deteriorating public health could lead to political upheavals at worst, or
aid emergencies at best.

Low fertility is the norm in many Western nations, of course, thanks largely
to women's emancipation and widespread birth control. Even in Russia,
birthrates crept slowly downward for decades before the 1990's.

But the latest plunge is different: driven not by women's broader choices,
but by the fact that many of their options - marital, medical, social,
financial - have been all but obliterated by the earthquake that destroyed
the Soviet Union.

Some turnaround surely will occur, but when, nobody knows. Experts once
believed that Russia's mothers would start bearing children again after the
upheavals of the early 1990's. Instead, Russia's birthrate fell another 10
percent.

By all estimates, the population will continue to shrink. Russia has already
lost 3.3 million people since its population peaked in 1992. It will lose
tens of millions more, experts predict, regardless of whether births pick
up. The only question is how many.

According to projections prepared at the United Nations, Russia will
contract in the next five decades from its current 145 million people to 121
million, the level of 1960.

One Russian demographer, Sergei Yermakov, of the Research Public Health
Institute, says Russia could shrink to as few as 80 million people, 10
million fewer than at the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

"Children are being put off right now," said Sergei V. Zakharov of the
Russian Academy of Sciences, perhaps the leading expert on Russian
fertility. "They are going to end up being born. The question is how many -
two or three. But the answer to that question isn't clear."

The Reasons Why

Ms. Chaikovskaya does not think the birth drought will end soon. After a
decade of social upheaval and poverty, creating a child here seems less an
act of love, lust or even calculation than it is an act of pure will, and
perhaps faith.

"No one wants to have babies," she said. "Even the middle class starts
thinking, Can we afford to have babies? Everybody knows that everything in
Russia is bad right now."

The province of Ryazan, a Maryland-size patch of flat, black earth etched
with S-curves by the Moscow River on its way toward the Volga, ranks 82nd in
fertility among Russia's 89 provinces. The birthrate - seven babies per
1,000 women each year - is one-sixth below the Russian average. In the past
two years, one of Ryazan's four maternity hospitals has closed.

Ask women why, as the Family Planning Center in Ryazan asked 500 women who
sought abortions last year, and one answer dominates: they cannot support a
family. They lack money (97 percent), or space in the matchbox flats they
share with parents (15 percent), or confidence that they can regain their
jobs after childbirth (8 percent).

Valentina Shevachkina, director of the family planning center, says 15,000
of the clinic's clients polled from 1997 to 1999 wanted an average of two
children - "if the government takes some responsibility for their education
and upbringing - if the state gave some form of assistance."

The state can't - or won't. Even the $2-a-month stipend guaranteed everyone
under 18 is almost $1 billion in arrears nationwide, and marked for a budget
cut next year. In parts of this province, it has not been paid since 1998.

If $2 sounds like a pittance, think again. In a region of slender incomes
and phone-booth apartments, it takes very little to derail motherhood.

Olga Marshalko, 23, a hospital intern in Kasimov, on the Oka River east of
Ryazan, and her bricklayer husband have postponed pregnancy until they can
escape their two-room flat in a dormitory.

"Another serious problem is money," she said, "but it wouldn't prevent us
from having a family." Why not is a puzzle: the Marshalkos take home $46 a
month.

In Ryazan, 28-year-old Natasha, who declined to give her last name, is 28
and pregnant with the first of what she hopes will be two children.

She also worries about money, and says her parents will do much of the
child-rearing, for if she takes the maternity leave ostensibly guaranteed by
the government, her employer could replace her quickly.

In Economic Free Fall

For times here are hard.

The Ryazan countryside suffers the same devastating poverty that ravaged
most rural areas after the Soviet system of collective farming fell apart.
Meat production has fallen 85 percent in a decade, the grain harvest by
two-thirds.

In that same period, one-sixth of Ryazan's 500,000 rural residents have died
off or fled to the cities. Only a trickle of migrants from even poorer
places like Ukraine and Kazakhstan has warded off faster shrinkage.

Ryazan, the regal if fraying provincial capital, once grew as the farms
emptied out. But four years ago it began losing people, too, a victim of the
post-Soviet collapse in military production that was the city's financial
linchpin. Only lately have a few industries like power generation and oil
refining begun to pick up some of the slack.

When Vladimir Gornov, an associate professor at Ryazan State Technical
University, surveyed local economic conditions in July, one-fifth of
respondents said bread was the staple of their diet.

"The baby-boom generation has grown up, and the post-baby-boom generation
isn't having any babies," he said. "The working-age population in the
countryside is simply drinking itself to death. I don't know whether it
would be better for them to have babies or not."

A decade ago, there were an average of 55 births for every 1,000 Ryazan
women under age 20. Last year the average was 29. The same sort of drop
occurred among women between 20 and 24, the most productive ages for Russian
motherhood.

When Ryazan entered the 1990's, 4 marriages in 10 were ending in divorce. By
the decade's end, the figure was almost 6 in 10, mirroring the rise
throughout Russia.

The reasons are the same as those for the dramatic drop in new marriages.
Poverty, social upheaval, loosened sexual mores and deteriorating public
health are not the glue of a good relationship. And while women everywhere
say a good man is hard to find, this seems especially true in Ryazan, where
alcohol-related deaths and the murder rate have rocketed upward.

Those are markers of social breakdown among men, though women are complicit
in at least some of that breakdown: one in five Ryazan births last year was
out of wedlock, double the rate in 1990 - a factor that breeds poverty and
instability.

The Issue of Infertility

It was infertility counseling day one recent afternoon and there must have
been 30 women crowding the sofas outside the Family Planning Center in
Ryazan.

"We have 2,000 infertile couples being treated here," said Ms. Shevachkina,
the director, "and some couples don't go for help at all."

Nobody knows how many Russian couples are infertile: maybe one in 10, as the
nation's obstetrician-general says, or one in five, as the Health Ministry
reported in April, or one in six, as some doctors in Ryazan estimate. The
comparable rate in the United States is about one in 12.

One legacy left by Soviet medical planners can be summed up in a word:
abortion. It has had substantial effects on the ability of women to
conceive. Contraception was never a priority under Communism; if anything,
it was viewed as anti-growth. Birth control pills were rare; condoms were
unreliable.

So by the 1980's, the average Russian woman was having nearly four
abortions. Under President Boris N. Yeltsin, the government opened 260
family counseling centers and, by subsidizing interuterine devices and birth
control pills, cut the overall abortion rate by a third. But the
Communist-controlled Parliament wiped out the program's budget.

Seventy-five percent of Russian women still rely on abortion to control
family size, and with subsidies eliminated for contraceptives, that rate may
rise.

Ms. Chaikovskaya said Ryazan women are wary of the pill and IUD's, worried
about side effects. At Maternity House No. 1, the 37-year- old chief doctor,
Andrei Turchyannikov, agreed.

However much doctors may advise about these other methods of birth control,
"many women think, `Well, if I get pregnant, I can just have an abortion,' "
he said. "Our women continue to think abortion is not a frightening thing,
like getting your tooth fixed."

Such a casual attitude has stark consequences, Ms. Shevachkina said. When
the family planning center studied 500 women who were unable to have a
second child, in 1994, they concluded that for half of them, infertility
stemmed from past abortions.

"I think little has changed since then," she said.

But abortions have declined; if infertility is rising, as many seem to
believe, the blame probably lies with the spread of Western sexual mores and
the explosion of venereal diseases that followed. There, too, some doctors
believe, men are most at fault.

Aleksandr B. Tereshenko, the specialist in male infertility at the family
planning center, said half the center's infertility cases now involve men,
compared with 20 percent earlier in the decade. He blames alcohol, a
deteriorating diet and venereal disease, from herpes to chlamydia to
hepatitis, for much of the shift.

Finding Fathers Abroad

This is a nation where bigger has always meant better. And Russian
politicians, including President Vladimir V. Putin, have seized this year on
their nation's dwindling birthrate as evidence that the Russian race is
besieged, and must be reinvigorated.

Mr. Putin even suggested in November that the secret to Russia's population
revival lay in luring back millions of Slavic Russians whose ancestors were
dispatched by Stalin to populate the Soviet empire, and who now live in
independent former Soviet republics.

In fact it is not that simple - and perhaps not quite so dire. Russia has
been beset by fertility declines again and again in the last century -
during the war that followed the 1917 Communist takeover, during the famine
that followed Stalin's collectivization of farmland in the 1930's, during
World War II - and suffered no lasting aftereffects.

Births even swelled a bit in the 1980's, as the Kremlin offered women bigger
apartments and other incentives to mothers. A small part of the decline in
the 1990's reflects the fact that women sped up their pregnancy plans to
reap those benefits, and had fewer babies later on.

Perhaps the best analogy to Russia's current dry spell - a steep drop in
births during the Depression in the United States - also ended in a dramatic
rebound.

"What we saw in the U.S. in the 30's was a very large decline in the total
fertility rate," said Barbara Anderson, an expert on Russian population
trends at the University of Michigan. "But I know from looking at cohorts of
women at the time that it was virtually total postponement. When things got
better, it recovered."

Many of Ms. Chaikovskaya's friends are not prepared to wait. They are
leaving Ryazan.

She can tick them off, rapid-fire: Olya met an American on the Internet and
is happy in the United States. Sveta found a Ukrainian and went to Kiev.
Lena ran off with a Portuguese pipefitter; so did another Olya. Larisa is
living with a man in Yugoslavia.

Ms. Chaikovskaya says she is still betting on success in Ryazan.

"I'd like a daughter," she said, and after making a stable life for herself.
"Now I'm thinking I can do it. But I'm also thinking it's too late."

*******

#12
strana.ru
December 28, 2000
Sergei Markov: First successful year but following years must be better
Sergei Markov
 
It is apparent that this outgoing year, by the majority of parameters, was
the best since the August putsch. But it has also given rise to the most
contradictory assessments. The given list of "problems" and "positive
results" is, of course, an assessment, and that is why it is interesting.

Problems of the year

The technogenic disasters - Kursk and the fire of the Ostankino TV tower -
were a shock. The circumstances of these tragedies reflected the entire depth
of the crisis that present-day Russia is living through.

Chechnya remained a bleeding wound for Russia. Moreover, the ways of treating
this wound continue to trigger fierce disputes and criticism from the world
community.

The snowballing energy crisis in the Maritime territory and several other
regions of the country has left tens of thousands of citizens without heating
in the middle of winter. The sufferings of people and the helplessness of the
authorities at all levels can be seen by the entire nation on morning TV news
programs.

The many months of negotiations on a possible rescheduling of Russia's
foreign debts have been practically fruitless. These debts were built up
thoughtlessly for a whole decade. Part of the debt remains from Soviet times.
And now the time has come to honor these debts.

The transference of control over ORT from Boris Berezovsky to the Kremlin,
and the fierce struggle for control over NTV and other media outlets
belonging to Media-MOST have given rise to a discussion in society about the
country slipping to authoritarianism and about the authority's struggle with
freedom of speech.

The gradual strengthening of the ruble that is substantially ahead of the
rate of increasing the competitiveness of Russia's economy leads to a
worsening of conditions for Russian enterprises. Economic growth has slowed
down, while the strengthening of the ruble in the future could lead to
stagnation. The banking system has not transformed into a source of
investment credits, and in general, remains in the post-crisis state.

Positive results of the year

On the whole, the outgoing year was successful for the country, and according
to opinion polls, this is the predominant mood among the citizens of Russia.

The main result in politics: nothing bad has happened. But it was expected
that Boris Yeltsin's departure would be accompanied by cataclysms, showdowns
between different political and economic groups. Nothing of the kind happened
in the sense that contradictions between groups did not increase in number.
On the contrary, they became fewer in number.

Another important political result - the country received a new president.
During the Yeltsin period of discord and free-for-all anarchy, experts
started speaking about the disintegration of state institutions and that they
would be privatized by various financial and regional groups. Putin and his
team put a stop to that process and set it into reverse.

On the whole, the oligarchs were discharged from politics as a class. Some of
them were subjected to stringent persecution - those who teamed up with the
political opposition (Berezovsky, Gusinsky), some retained their influence
(Abramovich), while the majority meekly agreed with their new names "big
businessmen."

We have witnessed a federative revolution that stopped not the collapse, but
I would say, "the scattering" of the Russian Federation when regions did not
quit Russia but de facto "crawled" out of it. The overall legal environment,
the overall economic environment, the overall information environment
gradually began to crumble, and together with all that and as a result of
that, the overall political environment was being wrecked. The process of
picking up the pieces of the Federation began as a result of reforming the
Federation Council and the work of the seven presidential representatives.

There was a positive change in the situation in Chechnya. For instance,
compare December of last year with December of this year. A year ago a fierce
war was raging in Chechnya with hundreds of air strikes every day, and
correspondingly, civilians were killed and civilian installations were
destroyed. Today there are no intensive armed actions in Chechnya. A year ago
all the power in Chechnya was in the hands of the military. Today we are
witnessing a difficult but forward moving process of establishing local
political bodies of power made up of Chechens themselves. A year ago the
local population suffered from the lack of the bare necessities. Dozens of
hospitals, hundreds of schools, several higher educational establishments are
functioning. Inhabited settlements are receiving electricity and natural gas.
Railroads are working. A year ago the international public was unable to
visit Chechnya and Moscow was being strongly criticized by world public
opinion that demanded, no more and no less, recognition of the terrorist army
as a side in negotiations. Today international delegations are shuttling to
Chechnya on a regular basis. World public opinion is showing less interest
towards the problem, while criticism of Moscow is ritual in nature. Of
course, a war of sabotage is going on. People are being killed every day. The
republic lies in ruins. Russia is being sharply criticized at all
international forums. However, the tendency is obvious - the situation is
gradually improving.

An economic growth was observed throughout the whole of 2000. According to
the final results, this growth promises to be 5-7%. A program for economic
transformations has been published. This is the so-called "Gref program" that
outlines in detail the proposed reforms practically on a monthly basis. And
work on carrying out this program has already been started. The tax reform
has become a most important achievement. At the same time there has been a
sharp growth in the volume of tax collection. Payment of pensions and
salaries for budget employees has become more precise. Moreover, pensions and
salaries increased ahead of the inflation rate. Inflation itself remained,
but it was not very high. This year Russia was very lucky with growing prices
on oil. The Central Bank has built up record-high currency reserves. For the
first time in many years, the economic growth in regions was higher than in
Moscow.

It was possible to observe a significant growth in the people's trust in
practically all political institutions.

On the whole, positive assessments and optimistic expectations are
predominant according to all public opinion polls.

*****

#13
Washington Post
December 28, 2000
[for personal use only]
Russian Journalists Targeted In Attacks
Corruption Investigator's Face Slashed
By Sharon LaFraniere, Washington Post Foreign Service

MOSCOW, Dec. 27 -- Russian journalists are a worried bunch these days.

In the past few months, the owner of the nation's only independent
television network was arrested for the second time. One of Russia's most
popular television commentators was pulled off the air--he says for
criticizing President Vladimir Putin. A Moscow newspaper was raided by the
secret service after it published a satellite photo of the sunken Russian
submarine Kursk.

Yet even in this nail-biting context, the Dec. 16 attack on Moscow reporter
Oleg Luriye attracted notice. This was not because Luriye is so well known;
he is not, although his stories last year about bribe-paying Kremlin
contractors won him a modest reputation as a digger.

The attack caused a stir because there seems to be no explanation for it
aside from Luriye's articles about corruption among government officials,
especially in the Kremlin. It was also noteworthy because Moscow
journalists, though subject to all kinds of pressure, generally are not
attacked with straight razors.

"It was a warning," said Luriye, sipping coffee in a restaurant last week
after his release from a hospital, where doctors stitched up three slashes
across his left cheek. "It was a demonstration of power."

For Luriye's newspaper, the independent twice-weekly Novaya Gazeta, it was
the second assault on one of its journalists this year. In July, a reporter
who covered cultural affairs died after he was beaten in the head with a
hammer. Novaya Gazeta editors said that reporter had apparently been
mistaken for a colleague who lived in the same building who was
investigating allegations of high-level corruption involving oil deals.

The assault on Luriye was another reprisal, said Yuri Schekochikin, who is
a deputy both to the newspaper's editor in chief and to the head of the
security committee in the lower house of parliament. "I think this shows
that the authorities are continuing their policy of intimidating
journalists," he said.

"I believe the attack . . . is typical of President Putin's press policy,
where there is room only for officially sanctioned . . . propaganda." The
Kremlin made no immediate response to Schekochikin's comments.

Attacks on Russian journalists are not unusual. Oleg Panfilov, who runs the
Moscow Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said he has counted 68
this year, including six involving Russian reporters. Most attacks occur in
the provinces, not in the capital, and most are never solved, Panfilov
said. Luriye was slashed, he said, because someone wanted to silence him.
He does not rule out government officials, who he said "are slowly waging
war against journalists."

Luriye, 37, said he had just arrived home from a birthday party for a
friend when he was surrounded by four men. One of them closed the garage
door, shutting Luriye's wife inside. He said he offered them his watch,
wallet and car keys but that they showed not a flicker of interest and said
not a word. Only because his wife backed the car out through the garage
door did he escape greater injury, Luriye said, adding that he suffered a
concussion as well as facial wounds.

Luriye said he suspects the attack was related to articles he recently
published accusing Alexander Voloshin, Putin's chief of staff, of illegally
enriching himself before he went to work in the Kremlin through deals
involving businessman Boris Berezovsky--now the target of a criminal
investigation. Voloshin has not responded to Luriye's articles.

Three days before the attack, Luriye said, police officers came to the
newspaper's office and seized his files on Voloshin and Berezovsky. The
night before the attack, on a news program broadcast by the independent
television network NTV, Luriye accused the Kremlin of singling out Putin's
opponents for criminal prosecution and ignoring allegations about Kremlin
insiders.

Luriye said he does not expect the police to find his assailants. He said
officers busied themselves with forms and phone calls but left the hat of
one of his attackers lying in the snow, never tested his clothes for blood
and never dusted the garage-door handle for fingerprints.

Asked what comes next, he said, "I continue to work." He will also apply
for a green card that would enable him to work in the United States, he
said, "just in case something happens again."

*****

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