January 3, 2001   

This Date's Issues:   5004 • 5005

Johnson's Russia List
#5505
3 January 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Russia moved nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad-U.S.
2. RIA: Majority of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians favour reunification - poll.
3. Itar-Tass: New social realities expected to complicated Russia's 2002 population census.
4. Jonas Bernstein: re 5004-Sieff/Putin Did Better.
5. Interfax: Western bankers hope for reform of Russia's banking sector in 2001.
6. RFE/RL: Paul Goble, Stalin As Role Model.
7. William Wohlforth: re Holzner/collapse of SU/5004.
8. Michael Herzen: America-Siberia link.
9. Jefferson Highsmith: Re: 4711-Taibbi/Putin's Night of the Long Knives.
10. Trud: 25 RUSSIAN REGIONS EXTRICATE THEMSELVES FROM POVERTY.
(Interview with Professor V. Bobkov, Director of the All-Russian Center of Living Standards)
11. Los Angeles Times: Robyn Dixon, Flights of Fancy From a Harsh Life. Eccentric Russians who found respite from the Soviet era by building outlandish contraptions continue to seek refuge in flying machines and pedal-powered subs. 
12. Chicago Tribune: Dave Montgomery, DREAMS OF BETTER LIFE END IN A NIGHTMARE OF SEXUAL SLAVERY.]

*******

#1
Russia moved nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad-U.S.
By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Russia secretly moved short-range nuclear 
weapons to its Kaliningrad military base on the Baltic Sea in 2000, U.S. 
officials said on Wednesday, tying the move to Moscow's greater need for 
nuclear deterrence because of a decline in its conventional forces. 

"Over the last six months there has been some movement of tactical nuclear 
weapons into Kaliningrad -- we don't know how many, we don't know what type 
and we don't know why," one U.S. official told Reuters. 

However, Russia's defense ministry, quoted by Interfax news agency, dismissed 
as "absolutely untrue" news reports that nuclear weapons had been shifted to 
Kaliningrad, a major Baltic Sea military base located in a Russian enclave 
between Poland and Lithuania. 

U.S. officials said Russia may be transferring the tactical nuclear weapons 
because its conventional forces are weak and Moscow has acknowledged it may 
have to rely more heavily on nuclear forces. 

"Tactical nukes can be a cheaper way of maintaining your deterrence 
capabilities as opposed to the more expensive, larger conventional forces," 
another U.S. official said. 

"If you are worried about deterrence and your forces are deteriorating, nukes 
do wonders for your self-confidence," the U.S. official said. 

Russia has had storage facilities for nuclear weapons at Kaliningrad for some 
time and has probably kept the weapons there for longer than the past six 
months, the official said. 

The Washington Times, which first reported the story on Wednesday, said 
Russia was transferring the weapons to Kaliningrad to exert pressure on the 
West because of the expansion of the NATO alliance, which Russia opposed. 

But U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said 
speculation that the weapons movement came in response to NATO expansion was 
probably not accurate. 

"If that were the case, they wouldn't have done it secretly, presumably they 
would have made a big public announcement, saying 'we're going to respond 
this way to NATO expansion'," one official said. "But they didn't do it 
publicly, they did it secretly, so we don't know why they did this." 

Officials said NATO was briefed about the movement of the weapons over a 
period of months. 

Other speculation that the weapons transfer was intended to test new 
President-elect George W. Bush was probably also inaccurate because they were 
moved long before the results of the U.S. election were known, the official 
said. 

"It's more a puzzlement as to why they're doing this, it's not a militarily 
significant move as far as we can tell," one official said. 

The Washington Times said the type of tactical weapons involved was not 
known, but some defense officials said they were probably for use on a new 
short-range missile known as the Toka which was test-fired on April 18 in 
Kaliningrad and has a range of about 44 miles (70 km). 

*******

#2
Majority of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians favour reunification - poll 
Russian news agency RIA 

Moscow, 3 January: Majority of those polled in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus 
spoke in favour of the unification of the states into one country. 

The poll was carried out by the research centre with the Moscow academy for 
humanities and social studies among the adults (over 18 years old) in 
December 2000. In the course of the study 1,700 were polled in Russia (500 of 
them in Moscow), 1,100 - in Ukraine and 1,000 in Belarus, poll organizers has 
told RIA. 

The idea received the support of 61 per cent of Russians (54 per cent of 
Muscovites), 53 per cent of Ukrainians and 69 per cent of Belarusians. 
Fifteen per cent of Russians (22 per cent of Muscovites), 36 per cent of 
Ukrainians and 19 per cent of Belarusians rejected the unification. 
Twenty-four per cent of those polled in Russia, 11 per cent in Ukraine and 12 
per cent in Belarus found difficult to answer the question. 

*******

#3
New social realities expected to complicated Russia's 2002 population census 
ITAR-TASS 

Moscow, 3 January: Appropriate regulations have been adopted and census 
commissions set up in all constituent parts of the Russian Federation, except 
the Chechen Republic, as part of the preparations for an all-Russia 
population census, the ITAR-TASS correspondent was told at the Population 
Census and Demographic Statistics Department of Russia's State Statistics 
Committee [Goskomstat]. 

"The territorial agencies of Russia's Goskomstat, together with the 
appropriate departments, are taking the first preparatory steps towards 
carrying out the all-Russia population census in 2002," the head of the 
department said. "This means, first of all, checking that the population has 
been fully and correctly registered and accounted for according to place of 
residence, clarifying the existence of and boundaries of districts, 
municipalities, urban communities and rural administrative units and the 
existence of rural population centres, and ensuring that addresses are in 
order." 

At the same time, the Goskomstat department spokesman noted that "the 2002 
census may encounter greater difficulties than censuses conducted in the 
Soviet period". He referred to the "considerable differentiation of society 
according to status and income" that has become particularly noteworthy in 
recent years. 

******

#4
From: JBernstein92@aol.com (Jonas Bernstein)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 
Subject: 5004-Sieff/Putin Did Better

From: Jonas Bernstein
Re: "Putin did better than people think," by Martin Sieff, UPI, Jan. 2 (JRL, 
#5004, 3 January 2001)

While my friend Marty Sieff's article on Putin's first year was, predictably, 
interesting and provocative, I have to take issue with him on at least one 
point. He suggested that the reported 7 percent growth rate in Russia's GDP 
for 2000 was part of "Putin's historic achievement," given that it "finally 
significantly reversed the catastrophic decline of every year since last 
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev launched his disastrous perestroika, or 
'restructuring' initiative, to preserve and reform the Soviet communist 
economy in January 1986." 

In fact, if the official Russian figures are indeed to be believed, they show 
that Russia's economy began to pull out of its descent in 1999 - that is, 
during Boris Yeltsin's final year in office. (Russia's GDP reportedly grew 
3.2 percent in 1999, with industrial output rising 14.7 percent in the third 
quarter of that year.) Although he didn't mention the effect that the 1998 
ruble devaluation had in stimulating domestic industry, Marty himself did 
note that high world oil prices have played a significant role in the Russian 
recovery. Given this, and given the fact that the recovery actually began 
under Yeltsin, its difficult to see how his successor can be given much 
credit for it, particularly since some of Putin's main economic initiatives, 
such as the 13-percent flat tax, are only now going into effect.

*******

#5
Western bankers hope for reform of Russia's banking sector in 2001

MOSCOW. Jan 2 (Interfax) - Foreign bankers have high hopes for
real reforms in Russia's banking sector this year, as is demonstrated
by a poll Interfax conducted among representatives of major foreign
banks operating in Russia.
According to Michel Perhirin, President of the Russian subsidiary
of Raiffeisenbank Austria, the phase of active reform of the Russian
banking sector, i.e., revocation of licenses from insolvent banks, is
nearing its end. Russian banks should take a more active position as
intermediaries between capital and the real sector of the economy,
Perhirin said.
The Russian banking sector has succeeded in weathering the 1998
crisis, and this can be considered one of the main achievements of the
year just past, Perhirin said. Efforts should now be directed at
enlarging banks, making the banking sector more open, and also
introducing the use of international accounting standards at all banks,
he said.
Allan Hirst, president of the Russian Citibank T/O, said he
considers the absence of reforms in the Russian banking sector to be
one of the biggest failures of 2000. The most positive thing for
foreign investors last year was the introduction of the Tax Code, he
said. That can be seen as a good start, but requires further work,
most of all on the section that deals with profit tax and the deduction
of production costs, Hirst said.
Hirst noted, however. that the main negative thing of the past
year was the absence of reforms in the banking sector.
Michael Franz, President of the Bank of Austria Creditinstalt
(Russia), said that if one takes a wider-angle view of the actions of
the Russian government, one gets the impression that in the Russian
economy in general, except for maybe the energy sector, no serious
changes have taken place, and the government has continued to look on
and has not taken any decisive actions.
In this connection, Franz called 2000 a year of unused
possibilities, first of all from the point of view of decisive steps in
the sphere of the revival of other sectors of the economy.

******

#6
Russia: Analysis From Washington: Stalin As Role Model
By Paul Goble

Washington, 3 January 2000 (RFE/RL) -- The Georgian Communist Party has voted 
to rehabilitate former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, a man that group 
describes as "the most gifted politician of the twentieth century" and an 
obvious role model for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at a party conference last week in Tbilisi, Georgian communist 
leader Panteleimon Giorgadze said that this decision, which was adopted 
unanimously, reflected the party's desire to boost the reputation of 
Georgia's most famous native son. But they added that its timing was the 
result of Putin's decision to restore the Soviet national anthem -- albeit 
with new words.

Indeed, Vakhtang Goguadze, a close ally of the Georgian communists, added 
that the Russian leader had inspired them because of his self-evident 
commitment to rebuilding a strong state: "Not genetically, not biologically, 
of course, but politically, because [Putin's] besotted with this brilliant 
man and it shows in what he does." 

Even though they suffered as much or more from Stalin's actions, Georgians 
typically have had their own and more positive view of the late dictator. 
When Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes in 1956 and launched his 
de-Stalinization campaign, some Georgians tried to keep his memory alive by 
maintaining a museum in Stalin's memory in his native village of Gori and 
marking his birthday every December 21.

Because of this national history, many both in the region and elsewhere may 
be tempted to view this latest decision as a uniquely Georgian affair. But in 
fact, it both reflects and raises three larger issues of post-Soviet history. 

First, it calls attention to a new break with the politics of the first 
post-Soviet decade. During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, few leaders, 
except for the communists, were prepared to look back to the Soviet past with 
anything but anger. And most explicitly cast their policies in terms of 
breaking from or overcoming that past. 
Across this region and beyond, most people viewed politics as a struggle 
between democrats and communists, one that they believed time would resolve 
in favor of the former rather than the latter. Throughout his term in office, 
Yeltsin routinely exploited this conviction to gather support for himself. 
But now that has changed. 

As political observers Antonina Lebedeva and Ilya Bulavinov point out in the 
current issue of Moscow's "Kommersant-Vlast," politicians in Russia no longer 
can be "simplistically divided into democrats and communists as they could be 
through almost the entire Yeltsin era." Instead, they argue, the dividing 
line runs between those politicians who are with Putin and those who are 
against him, with the latter being infinitesimally few." 

Second, this Georgian decision, like Putin's promotion of the old-new 
national anthem and of Soviet-era military flag, inevitably opens the way for 
the reconsideration of issues that many had believed were settled. When the 
discussion of Stalin was anathema, few people could consider supporting any 
of his ideas or try to mobilize political support for any return to what he 
represented. Now, at least some will be willing to try to do just that. 
By rehabilitating Stalin in this way, the Georgian communists have thereby 
opened the door to such discussions and such attempts at mobilization. 
Neither they nor others who follow them may succeed in winning that political 
struggle, but their decision last week at least permits them to reenter the 
political fray, a development that inevitably will change the political scene 
not only in Georgia but in other post-Soviet states as well.

And third, this decision highlights just how far some in the region have not 
come over the past decade and how much at least a few want to return to the 
past. Even as the Georgian communists were singing the praises of Stalin as 
Putin's role model, Moscow pollsters were reporting that Russians, Ukrainians 
and Belarusians support the restoration or a single state among them. 
According to a poll taken by the Moscow Humanitarian Academy, 61 percent of 
Russians, 53 percent of Ukrainians, and 69 percent of Belarusians want to 
live in a single state, with 38 percent of the Russians, 43 percent of the 
Ukrainians and 57 percent of the Belarusians saying they favored the 
restoration of a unitary state of the kind which existed in pre-1917 Russia.

Again, even these widespread attitudes are not necessarily going to be 
translated into a new-old political reality, but both they and the 
rehabilitation of Stalin are a reminder that in many post-Soviet countries, 
the politics of the 21st century are likely to be defined by those of the 
20th and the battle between those who want these countries to move toward 
democracy and those who do not seems certain to continue.

******

#7
Date: 03 Jan 2001
From: William.C.Wohlforth@Dartmouth.EDU (William C. Wohlforth)
Subject: Holzner/ collapse of SU/5004

On globalization and the Soviet collapse, Professor Holzner may find David
Lockwood, THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SOVIET UNION: A STUDY IN GLOBALIZATION
(St. Martin's 2000) to be a rewarding read.

In addition, my colleague Stephen G. Brooks and I have an article in the
next issue of the journal INTERNATIONAL SECURITY (Winter 2000/01) entitled
"Power, Globalization and the End of the Cold War" that might contain
material of interest to him.

Best,
William C. Wohlforth
Associate Professor of Government
Dartmouth College
6108 Silsby Hall
Hanover NH 03755
(603) 646-3460

******

#8
Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2001 
From: "Michael Herzen/TechCare Systems, Inc." <sales@techcaresys.com>
Subject: America-Siberia link

Re 5002 and Ilya Vinkovetsky (whose dad's wonderful painting still graces 
the entry hall of our house)

Since no one else has pointed it out yet, then it appears I 
must. Stanislav Govorukhin, in "The Russia We Have Lost", when in the 
archives looking at the original trans-Siberian railway documents, 
discovered a plan drawn up by Imperial engineers for just such a train 
link. Since SG film maker, actor, politician is hardly an historian, it 
seems improbable that this was its first revealing, that it had never been 
discussed before in the literature. In any event, it is clear that this 
absurd monstrosity is as needed now in Russia as it was then (and as the 
current VSM Moscow-St.P is). There is only one thing that could move this 
'project' into some form of activity (the same thing that keeps the VSM 
from withering finally to its well-deserved, natural death): Someone close 
to the government plans to privatize government funds for it. There is 
clearly no chance for its approval, serious funding, and actual 
completion. Just imagine, though, how funding for just a small portion of 
such a mammoth undertaking could make someone (or even a group of someones) 
fabulously wealthy.

When Russia needs as perhaps never before to concentrate on health, 
education, and welfare, there is hardly any excuse for spending any time or 
resources on such an absurdity. Given the national penchant for such 
things, however (witness the building of St. Petersburg, and countless 
smaller scale wastes such as the frivolous and virtually worthless rail 
line in the 1840s from St.P. to Tsarskoe selo [good only for the Tsar's own 
personal use], the engineering and building of the world's biggest plane, 
the Maxim Gorkii, in the 30s by a country in famine, the reconstruction of 
the Christ the Savior cathedral in Moscow at a time of horrendous economic 
crisis), this small spark needs to be extinguished now, with both 
feet. Otherwise, we are likely to see yet further continuation of the 
world's longest running oxymoron: The world's richest country, bar none 
(unequivocally in natural resources and land, and possibly a contender in 
literacy, culture and in education), as one of the world's poorest (as 
measured by the living standard of the average citizen).

******

#9
From: "Jefferson Highsmith" <jhighsmith3@home.com>
Subject: Re: 4711-Taibbi/Putin's Night of the Long Knives
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 

Matt Taibbi's article, "Putin's Night of the Long Knives," cuts to the
heart of what I daresay troubles American Russia-watchers most - not the
fact that russia is slowly becoming a modern feudal/fascist state, but that
the American press refuses to report it. While the naive cling to the
possibility that the American mass media sector simply does not know the
true situation in Russia (i.e., they have never heard of JRL), the rest of
us scratch our heads and wonder aloud what in the hell has happened to
journalistic integrity. Then we think, forget integrity, what ever happened
to journalistic competition? And since self-interest is never and never
will be a lost or forgotten virtue, we begin to imagine what forces must
exist to counteract the media's natural tendency to seek and report the
truth. Is the answer as close at hand as American corporate interest? That
McDonald's wouldn't like their stockholders knowing Russia is a quagmire of
human rights abuse, authoritarianism, and inequity of Dickensian proportion?
Or could it be that a recent eXile press review (I couldn't find the
name on their site) I read was truer than I could imagine? That by the time
the NY Times reporter finishes his treatment of Russia (or any subject of
true interest for that matter), any sense of urgency or outrage has been
sacrificed in favor of banal, urbane, and ultimately jaded reporting, taking
on the tone of a cat in a tree piece?
I know this much with surety: the hacks who cover Russia thank God every
day that Taibbi and Ames are honest about their own opinions. If they
weren't, the eXile couldn't be so easily dismissed as misogynistic, rascist,
debauched, and incoherent. The first three terms apply, and make the last
easy to swallow to the uninformed. But that doesn't change the fact that the
eXile seeks the truth. Maybe if they tried to go the politically correct
route, they'd have more credibility. But then, they wouldn't be credible.

******

#10
Trud
December 23, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
25 RUSSIAN REGIONS EXTRICATE THEMSELVES FROM POVERTY

Where are the highest wages in Russia? The state 
statistics committee provides the following answer: in the 
Khanty-Mansi and the Yamal-Nenets autonomous areas. Here the 
average calculated wage in September was 9,414 and 9,106 
rubles, respectively. This is four times the average figure for 
Russia. In the Tyumen Region as whole, this index is 7,227 
rubles. In the Taimyr Autonomous Area, wages are approximately 
the same. Among the 89 regions, Moscow holds only the 16th 
place, according to this index (3,372 rubles). The lowest 
monthly wage is in Dagestan (a little over a thousand rubles). 
However, if we look at Russians' average per capita monthly 
incomes, including both wages and payments on securities and 
many other family budget revenues, then it will turn out that 
the capital holds the first place, confirming the reputation of 
the richest Russian city. Every resident earned an average of 
8,762 rubles in September. It stands to reason that far from 
every Muscovite earns such amounts. Almost a million Muscovites 
live below the subsistence level. However, there are also 
well-off residents whose annual family budget is estimated at 
tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Average figures 
level out everything - both on the scale of the city and the 
country. As is known, real incomes have been growing this year.
But is the gap between well-off and destitute citizens growing 
or shrinking? How are the living standards in the regions 
changing?
Below Trud's political analyst Vitaly Golovachev interviews 
Professor V. Bobkov, Doctor of Economics and Director of the 
All-Russian Center of Living Standards, on this subject.

Question: Mr. Bobkov, there are regions where average per 
capita incomes are not just low but below the subsistence level.
Those who have not been there can hardly imagine this. How many 
such territories are there in Russia?
Answer: There were 16 such regions (of 88, there are no 
data for Chechnya) in the third quarter. This is quite a lot, 
because even one such region is already an emergency. However, 
everything is relative. I would like to draw your attention to 
the fact that at the beginning of this year 41 Federation 
members lived in dire poverty. As we see it, still, the 
situation has started changing for the better. Twenty five 
regions have extricated themselves from poverty. It's another 
matter that the territories (and there are 50 of them) where 
the majority of the population can afford buying just one or 
one and a half subsistence-level consumer goods basket could 
hardly be called quite well-off. In actual fact, this also 
means living in grinding poverty. On the whole, average per 
capita incomes' buying capacity in the country is 1.7 
subsistence-level consumer goods basket. This is not too much.
Before 1992, this index in Russia exceeded 3.5 
subsistence-level consumer goods baskets. In other words, 
although the standard of living has been growing since the 1998 
August crisis, it is still 50% lower than the one before the 
beginning of radical reforms.

Question: Could you name at least some of the 25 regions 
that lost the status of "the poorest" this year and went over 
to the group of more stable ones?
Answer: These are, say, the Volgograd, Leningrad, Saratov, 
Omsk, Voronezh, Tver, Bryansk, Pskov, Kurgan and some other 
regions. Generally speaking, social changes in regions are 
taking place differently in different regions. Sometimes it 
seems that some territories are still in the grips of the past. 
Below we offer a table, which shows the growth rates of living 
standards in regions, territories and republics. The purchasing 
capacity of the population's monetary incomes in the third 
quarter of this year grew in seven republics by more than 30%, 
in 17 - by 20-30% and in 38 - by 10-20% on the same period last 
year. As we see it, some regions faster (the Komi-Permyak, 
Yamal-Nenets autonomous areas, the Murmansk Region and other) 
and some regions slower, but still, most of them are making 
progress in this respect.
However, almost a quarter of Federation members are 
lagging behind the average Russian rates, with some of them 
marking time, having mothballed the grave situation in the 
social sphere. In the Ingush and Kabardin-Balkar republics, the 
Evenk Autonomous Area, Khakassia, the Krasnodar Territory, the 
Amur and Kostroma regions, the standard of living in the third 
quarter plummeted.
Say, the purchasing capacity in Ingushetia decreased by 30%. 
Per capita monetary incomes were 561 rubles in September, while 
now the subsistence wage is approaching 1,500 rubles. 
The situation is really alarming. If in the current 
relatively favorable economic conditions, many Federation 
members cannot adjust themselves to the general rhythm of 
onward movement, what is in store for them in case of the 
aggravation of the world market situation? The lagging regions 
are bound to worsen the general situation in the country. Sharp 
social contrasts do not contribute to social stability. In this 
way, the task of finding a mechanism of drawing these 
Federation members into the general rhythm is acquiring both 
regional and state importance.

Question: Can our "beacons" serve as an example for "the 
lagging" territories?
Answer: There are seven regions in the group of leaders in 
terms of the standard of living: Moscow (average per capita 
monetary incomes are five times the subsistence wage); the 
Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area (monetary incomes are 4.24 times 
the subsistence wage); the Tyumen Region (3.86); the 
Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area (3.6); the Republic of Komi 
(2.18); the Murmansk Region (2.1); the Krasnoyarsk Territory 
(2.09). However, everyone of the said Federation members has 
its own specifics. What is common for all of them is, perhaps, 
that they pay great attention to a skilful use of market 
mechanisms and encourage small and medium-sized businesses, 
entrepreneurship, creating conditions for attracting 
investments. These general principles could be used everywhere.

Question: What could you say about the stratification of 
society according to the level of incomes - is it decreasing or 
vice versa, growing more and more?
Answer: It has decreased a little, if we compare nine 
months of this year to January-September last year. However, on 
the whole, the stratification level is much higher than in 1997 
or the first six months of 1998. In the past three quarters, 
the incomes of 10% of the richest citizens were 14.3% higher 
than those of 10% of the least well-off citizens. This is a big 
gap.
In the spring of 1997, this index was 12.4, while in many 
developed countries it is less than 10.

Question: How would you explain the following strange 
situation: the subsistence wage in the country as a whole has 
been calculated, as of January 1, by using new methods, while 
in all regions - by using old norms that do not correspond to 
modern realities?
Answer: We will put an end to this mess soon. The thing is 
that under the relevant federal law and government resolution, 
all regional consumer goods baskets calculated by using new 
methods for the main social-demographic groups of the 
population should pass state examination. A special commission 
has been approved. Naturally, conducting examination takes 
time, so Federation members are using old methods for the time 
being...

Question: How many regions have already submitted their 
calculations of the cost of new consumer goods baskets to the 
commission?
Answer: Thirty three. Positive resolutions have been 
passed on six of them. In Komi, the cost of the new consumer 
goods basket has grown by 50%, making 1,393 rubles a month in 
October prices. This is not yet the subsistence level. In order 
to reach it, the cost of the consumer goods basket needs to be 
raised by about 10%, including taxes and duties. In the Rostov 
Region, the new consumer goods basket costs 1,030 rubles (the 
former - 740 rubles). In the Penza Region - 1,005 rubles (the 
basket used until now cost 808 rubles). In the Orenburg Region 
- 1,123 rubles (827). In the Moscow Region - 1,193 (887). In 
the Krasnodar Territory - 1,072 rubles (844). The materials 
sent in from the Tambov and Novosibirsk regions have been 
turned down for the reason of exceeding the cost of consumer 
goods baskets. The calculations have been sent for 
finalization. The rest of materials are being examined. 

Below the Poverty Line

The All-Russian Center of Living Standards has drawn up a 
list of regions whose population lives in extreme poverty. The 
figures below show what share of the subsistence-level consumer 
goods basket the average per capita monthly income could buy in 
the third quarter of 2000. As we see, average incomes in these 
16 regions are below the subsistence level.

Jewish Autonomous Region	0.97
Chuvash Republic	0.93
Republic of Altai	0.90
Penza Region	0.89
Karachai-Circassian Republic	0.88
Republic of Kalmykia	0.86
Chukchi Autonomous Area	0.85
Republic of Tyva	0.84
Republic of Mari El	0.83
Komi-Permyak Autonomous Area	0.82
Republic of Dagestan	0.78
Ivanovo Region	0.74
Chita Region	0.70
Aga Buryat Autonomous Area	0.59
Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous Area	0.48
Republic of Ingushetia	0.37

******

#11
Los Angeles Times
January 3, 2001
Flights of Fancy From a Harsh Life 
Eccentric Russians who found respite from the Soviet era by building 
outlandish contraptions continue to seek refuge in flying machines and 
pedal-powered subs. 
By ROBYN DIXON, Times Staff Writer

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia--For Mikhail Puchkov, the only way to experience 
freedom in Soviet life was to steal it: paddling down a river in the dead of 
night in a homemade pedal-powered submarine. 
Traveling in his illegal craft, with its pedals quieted to avoid 
detection, was an eccentric escape from the crushing reality of Soviet rule 
with his dignity and creativity intact. 
Now, sailing out to sea in this chunky, ungainly vessel is his only 
escape from the disappointment and poverty of the new Russia. 
All over the nation, even in the most remote and primitive villages, 
people like Puchkov tinker with outlandish inventions in their solitary 
workshops, driven by dreams of a better life and a better world. 
At first Puchkov planned a paraglider with flapping wings, but he fell 
back on the idea of a submarine. Viktor Frolov dreamed of making a submarine 
and ended up building homemade planes. Nikolai Kirzhayev scares the local 
cows and annoys the neighbors with his unreliable flying machines. 
Ask 40-year-old Puchkov why he decided to design and build a personal 
submarine in the suffocating era of Leonid I. Brezhnev's rule, and he pauses 
at length before chuckling quietly, recalling the optimistic 20-year-old he 
was then. 
"I was not satisfied with the fate that was laid out for me," he said. "I 
wanted to satisfy myself and to have some respect for myself. If I learned to 
respect myself, I felt it would be easier to find my niche in life." 
Twenty years later, Puchkov has a soul-destroying factory job instead of 
a fulfilling niche. But he has dignity and self-respect because he realized 
his improbable--and illegal--dream. 
Russians call this quaint breed of quixotic inventors kulibins, after 
Ivan Kulibin, an 18th century mechanical engineer who designed dozens of 
devices, both practical and whimsical, few of which were manufactured. He 
died at 83 in deep poverty. 
The Soviet space, weapons and aviation programs were all testament to 
Russians' inventive genius, but there were as many creative misfits as there 
were conformists. These kulibins channeled their talents in eccentric ways. 
Nearly everyone in St. Petersburg has heard of Puchkov and his 
submarine, but almost nobody can say where he is. Search long enough, 
however, and he can be found in a wooden shed amid a clutter of maritime junk 
on the Neva River. 
Puchkov opens the hatch of his submarine, releasing a heady waft of 
gasoline fumes. Five years ago he increased the length of the craft from 10 
to 16 feet and added an engine for surface operation, an electric motor for 
diving and two fuel tanks. In case of an emergency, he still has the pedals 
and carries a paddle. 
He sits inside on a hard steel bench amid the dials, valves, rubber 
tubes and steel pipes. He can sail 100 miles a day and submerge to 30 feet. 
In 1981, when he started building the submarine, he feared that friends 
and neighbors would misunderstand his passion and knew that the authorities 
would have crushed his dream and confiscated the sub. So he built the craft 
secretly in an attic in Ryazan, about 120 miles southeast of Moscow. 
"I started building it even before perestroika," he explained, referring 
to the political reforms of the mid-1980s. "If people had known I had a 
submarine, I wouldn't have been allowed to go out into the sea." 
With no experience and no instruction manuals, he designed and improved 
the sub by trial and error, testing it at night in a river and concealing it 
during the day 10 feet below the surface. 
"I didn't know it would work," he said. "I just hoped." 
The longer the project dragged on, the more caustically his father 
condemned it. During the first test in 1984, it sank like a stone, breaking a 
rudder. The early dives were always tense. 
"I was so distracted watching for leaks, checking all the equipment, 
that I didn't have time to enjoy it," he recalled. "You don't remember a 
thing afterward." 
It took three years before he got the submarine to dive and surface. In 
1988, he put the reinforced plastic sub in a box on a truck and shipped it to 
the Tosna River about 15 miles south of St. Petersburg. There, he continued 
his nocturnal voyages. In 1994, he took to the open sea on a secret cruise to 
the island of Kronshtadt, a closed military base in the Gulf of Finland. 
Puchkov pedaled nine miles to the base, his body covered in sweat, his 
back muscles shrieking with pain. Submerged off Kronshtadt with only an air 
pipe showing, unable to stretch his legs or neck, he grabbed a few hours' 
rest before returning. The voyage took 18 hours and convinced Puchkov that he 
had to get an engine. 
The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 and Russia's economic slump since 
then toppled his ambition to become a designer in a submarine plant. He has 
no passion except his sub. There was once a girlfriend, but "she always 
wanted bigger compromises" and his affection for the submarine won out. 
Without a dream of sailing, flying or standing out from the rest of the 
crowd somehow, any kulibin would suffocate in the constricting provinces of 
Russia. 
Nikolai Kirzhayev, 34, is a rustic genius stranded in the tiny, remote 
settlement of Novotroitsky, about 400 miles southeast of Moscow. 
He has a ramshackle and spartan cottage, typical but for the eccentric 
electric inventions grafted clumsily to the rough wooden walls. The effect, 
like crossing Fred Flintstone with George Jetson, is surreal. 
Approaching through ankle-deep, sole-clenching mud, sidestepping the 
cowpats, visitors reach Kirzhayev's battered wooden front door. With a shriek 
of friction, it slides automatically sideways. 
"It's a little noisy," Kirzhayev conceded. 
The family of seven sleeps in one chaotic room, and there is no sewage 
or septic tank, only an outhouse with no door or seat. 
A huge switchboard with glaring dials that looks like it could have been 
a spare part from a nuclear power station looms over the kitchen sink. It 
controls everything in the house: hot water, the heating and the stove. 
The system, while brutish and inelegant, is a luxury: Everyone else in 
the village has to boil water in a pot and fire their clay stoves with wood 
for heat. 
"I'm one of many Russians trying to make life a little better and a 
little different," said Kirzhayev, washing his hands lustily in the hot water 
but failing to remove the ingrained layer of black. 
His dinky Moskvich car is ancient--circa 1965--but he added automatic 
functions and a comic book dashboard, making it the wonder of the village. 
Instead of ignition keys, there is a big red button on the dash labeled 
"Start" and a complicated "anti-hijacking" system. An old-fashioned telephone 
crouches on the dashboard, connected to a radio system installed at home and 
the local railroad depot, where he works as an electrician. 
Kirzhayev's father, a tractor driver, tried to build a diesel-powered 
helicopter in the mid-1960s but the rotor spun off and the chopper never left 
the ground. He died when Kirzhayev was a baby. 
At 16, Kirzhayev built his first color television from discarded parts; 
it's still the only color set in the village. At 18, he showed unusual 
enthusiasm when drafted, confiding to officers that the military might help 
him to realize a lifelong dream to fly. 
They promptly sent him to an asylum for what they suggested was a 
prerequisite psychiatric exam, and two weeks later he emerged with the report 
disqualifying him from training as a pilot. That spurred him on. 
His real pride is a boxy homemade plane with duct tape over a hole in 
the body. Its design and Kirzhayev's skills were both matters of trial and 
error. He has survived several nasty crashes in his two flying machines. 
Centuries of oppressive rule made it impossible for many people to 
channel their creativity for the popular good, said Rashid Kaplanov, 52, 
professor at the Institute of General History in Moscow. 
"For hundreds of years, the only way for many talented and energetic 
people to express themselves freely, especially those in far-flung provinces, 
was to indulge in eccentricities like trying to shoe a flea, as a famous 
Russian tale has it," he said. 
"These Russian kulibins devote so much energy and talent to their 
eccentric hobbies--which basically became their way of life--because they are 
trying to escape the monotony of a gray, bleak life where little, if 
anything, depends on them and their talents are not required," Kaplanov said. 
Talented people in the West usually could find a niche in business, 
banking, trade or art, he said, enriching society and perhaps themselves. 
"But they are here in Russia, and they still find no better way to 
express themselves but to escape into their childhood dreams of flying planes 
and sailing submarines," he said. 
In Soviet times, kulibins inevitably wound up in trouble. 
When Viktor Frolov, 61, built a plane powered by a motorcycle engine 
between 1971 and 1973, it was a criminal offense. He managed it with just 
four years of primary school education, some advice from an aviation student 
and a 1930s journal on small-plane construction. 
Frolov decided that the best way to evade the attention of the KGB was 
to take no pains to conceal the plane. So he towed it openly to a field near 
his home in Vyalki, 12 miles from Moscow, for his flights. 
"I knew it was illegal, but I really wanted to fly," he said. "I knew 
they wouldn't be happy with me flying, but I wasn't sure what the punishment 
would be." 
He was often stopped by traffic police who scoffed at his statement that 
he had a homemade plane in tow. They would let him drive on, having 
discovered no traffic offense. 
It took the KGB more than 10 years to catch up with him and issue an 
order in 1984 banning him from flight. 
By then, there were hundreds of illegal homemade planes buzzing about 
the Soviet skies like mosquitoes. In 1985, the authorities accepted the 
inevitable and let enthusiasts register, fly and crash their home-built 
planes. 
But they did not legalize personal submarines. In 1988, Puchkov was 
pedaling at night on the Neva River when he became tangled in a steel net put 
in place to snag loose lumber. The KGB seized the submarine, arrested Puchkov 
and interrogated the suspected spy for two days. 
They finished up with enough admiration for Puchkov and his submarine to 
recommend him for a place in the St. Petersburg Shipbuilding Institute, where 
at 29 he became the oldest student. The nation's economic collapse frustrated 
his dream of becoming a designer. 
The border guards, also involved in the investigation, asked him to 
pedal his sub around the Gulf of Finland so that they could test their radar 
equipment, only to discover that--short of a collision--he was impossible to 
track. 
Even today, the submarine would never get legal registration, so his 
plan is to try to register it as a surface vessel but continue his dives. 
"After all, there are no underwater police," he said, with unswerving 
kulibin logic. 
Kulibins learn to skirt the authorities and disobey the rules. But they 
are still captive to the laws of nature. 
On the second flight in his first flying machine, a modified motorized 
paraglider, Kirzhayev tried to turn and plummeted 160 feet to earth. 
"It smashed to smithereens. When I emerged from the ruins of that plane, 
I thought, 'That's it, I'm never flying again.' But I restored it and started 
to go up again." 
Once, when the engine overheated, he crashed into poplar trees. A dozen 
of his friends have died in such accidents. Similarly, Frolov has survived 
two bad crashes and watched his best friend die in a homemade plane. 
Puchkov and his submarine were once tossed like a cork onto shore in a 
violent storm. A short-circuit once created a cloud of poisonous smoke in the 
submarine, and he had to use his emergency oxygen supply, breathing through a 
pipe. 
Even today, the gasoline engine is not safe: "It may explode at any 
time," Puchkov said, but he cannot afford to buy a diesel one. 
Puchkov believes that poverty pushes people to the limits of their 
creativity. 
"We don't have money. If I'd had money I could have installed a good 
engine in the submarine right from the beginning." 
But for the kulibins there are no complicated psychological motives for 
their obsessions; just sheer, exhilarating freedom. 
"It's all about the thrill," Kirzhayev said. "It feels wonderful when 
you rise on wings you made yourself. You feel like you're master of the whole 
world." 
Sergei L. Loiko and Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times' Moscow Bureau 
contributed to this report. 

*******

#12
Chicago Tribune
January 3, 2001
DREAMS OF BETTER LIFE END IN A NIGHTMARE OF SEXUAL SLAVERY 
By Dave Montgomery 
Knight Ridder/Tribune 

DNIPRODZERZHYNSK, Ukraine -- It was the simple dream of working in an honest 
job for a modestly better life that got Yelena into trouble. Like so many 
others, she ended up forced into sex slavery and imprisoned in brothels and 
dreary hotel rooms while her captors stood guard.

"I can't tell you how many patrons I had," said Yelena, who asked that her 
last name not be used. "It was a very long chain of buying and selling and 
reselling."

Interviewed in her hometown of Dniprodzerzhynsk, a mill town of 284,000 on 
the Dnieper River, Yelena said she was trying to leave a life of poverty to 
become a waitress in Yugoslavia. But shortly after she crossed the border 
nine months ago, this single mother's dreams of modest upward mobility 
disintegrated into a nightmare.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine and neighboring Russia have 
emerged as leading exporters of women in bondage. Even homeless children have 
fallen victim to unscrupulous sex traffickers. The rise of the sex trade is a 
direct spin-off of the collapse of austere yet relatively stable Soviet 
society, which has been turned upside down by the chaotic entry of raw 
capitalism.

The ease with which women fall prey to the trade is rooted partly in an 
unfortunate paradox of post-Soviet life: The freedoms and social liberties 
suddenly bestowed on young women such as Yelena over the past decade also 
have left them especially vulnerable to exploitation.

No longer confined inside the predictable if restrictive world of the Iron 
Curtain, women from the former Soviet Union easily succumb to deceptive ads 
and word-of-mouth tales of jobs in other countries, from secretaries to 
nightclub hostesses. And once they fall prey to the false promises of a 
better life, many find it impossible to escape the sordid world of the sex 
trade to return to a normal life.

The push for women to leave the old Soviet areas is powerful, because women 
account for up to 90 percent of the unemployed and are usually the first 
fired. In the depressed industrial cities of eastern Ukraine, hundreds of 
thousands of men and women alike are out of work and barely subsisting. In 
Dniprodzerzhynsk, Yelena was making an average of $15 a month selling 
newspapers on the street to support herself and her 7-year-old daughter. Her 
utility bills had gone unpaid for years, and her monthly income was barely 
enough to buy food for a week.

"If people had a good life here, they wouldn't look for work abroad," said 
Yelena. "In spite of the fact I worked, it was not enough to live on and 
there was no hope for tomorrow."

Under the circumstances, she was an easy target.

At 31, Yelena's age and heavy build made her less marketable than the willowy 
teenagers and 20-year-olds preferred by traffickers tricking or abducting 
women into sexual slavery. But so voracious is the demand, there are many 
women like her in the global sex market.

The misleading solicitation came from someone she knew, a friend of a friend. 
In the spring of 1999, she met a woman named Nadeshda through a mutual 
acquaintance. Nadeshda, whom Yelena described as a charming woman in her 
middle 40s with dyed blond hair, persuaded her and another friend to go to 
Yugoslavia, where she said a restaurant owner was paying waitresses up to 
$200 a month.

"We trusted her," Yelena recalled. "I was a little afraid, but the desire to 
have a good life was much stronger."

Leaving her daughter with her parents, Yelena and her friend Ira joined 
another woman named Marina and headed to Yugoslavia with Nadeshda. Instead of 
winding up in a fashionable restaurant in a big city, as promised, they were 
taken to a seedy, nameless cafe.

The proprietor made it clear immediately that he expected them to work as 
prostitutes, and reprimanded Nadeshda for bringing women in their 30s instead 
of young girls.

Yelena and her companions refused, and later were fired when Marina tried to 
kill herself with an overdose of pills. Without money and unable to return 
home, the women accepted a man's offer to find work in another town in 
Yugoslavia.

"We thought we were lucky," she recalled. "Now we know we were deeply 
mistaken." They were taken to a two-room flat occupied by 10 other women, all 
in their early 20s.

"They were crying and afraid," Yelena recalled. "Before our arrival, nine or 
10 men had come into the flat and had sex with them against their will. We 
started talking to the girls and it appeared we had been sold."

For Yelena, it was the start of what she described as a pattern of "sell, 
sell, sell." Yelena said she was sold and resold at least a dozen times for 
up to $2,000, in a human trafficking network that took her from Yugoslavia 
through Albania and into Italy. Locked in rooms without a telephone, she 
struggled to keep her sanity by writing poetry and drawing on the walls.

Her last owner was a middle-aged Albanian who told Yelena he paid $2,000 for 
her and insisted that she work off the price through prostitution. She 
managed to escape when a sympathetic client took her to a priest, who helped 
arrange her return to the Ukraine through an international anti-trafficking 
organization called La Strada.

Since returning home, she has tried to resume a sense of normality in the 
town from which she once sought escape. "On the one hand, I'm happy to be 
home," she said. "On the other hand, I feel certain difficulties 
psychologically. It's still difficult to find a job; it's still difficult to 
bring up a child. It's the same world I left."

Tragic as it is, Yelena's tale is nothing compared with the sorrow of 
homeless children who are bought and sold like cattle. Most of the children 
in Russia's sex market are runaways, with at least one alcoholic parent, but 
a growing number are orphans, experts say.

In Vyborg, an ancient Northeast Russian city just 20 miles south of the 
Finnish border, male and female prostitutes as young as 12 and 13 serve as an 
added lure to the city's vibrant tourist trade. Finnish tourists often arrive 
in Vyborg with maps in hand, showing the houses where they can purchase sex 
with teenagers for as little as $10 an hour.

Vyborg police recently raided an apartment where a Finnish man was running a 
prostitution ring with 14- and 15-year-old girls.

In St. Petersburg, about 88 miles to the southeast, police recently broke up 
a sex ring operated by a middle-aged man nicknamed "Cobra," who invited 10- 
to 12-year-old boys into an apartment laden with vodka and food and sold 
their services to adult male clients for $100 apiece.

The children's stories are much like that of Julia, a 15-year-old blond with 
a ponytail. One night, after watching her father drink himself into a stupor, 
as he had done night after night throughout most of her life, she poured his 
vodka down the toilet.

After he finished beating her, she fled to a children's shelter in St. 
Petersburg.

There, another girl persuaded her to meet two Azerbaijani men at a cafe near 
a St. Petersburg subway station. Looking downward as she clutched a small 
black and white stuffed dog, Julia recalled the terrifying two weeks that 
followed.

The two men took Julia and her friend to an apartment, where they were forced 
to stay in a room and have sex with strangers. Once, a man ripped her clothes 
off and shoved her to the bed. She ran into the kitchen to escape but was 
confronted by three other men who ordered her back to the room.

When she was able to escape, she ran back to the shelter but said she didn't 
go to police, afraid the men would hunt her down and slash her face.

Like most of the other victims, Julia felt helpless.

"I just want to forget," she said.

Thousands of other women and children have equally tragic stories.

The U.S. government estimates that traffickers abduct 55,000 women from 
Russia and 35,000 from Ukraine each year. Precise statistics are impossible 
to acquire, given the shadowy nature of the business, but analysts think the 
number of reported cases constitutes no more than a third of the actual 
number.

The U.S. government believes that as many as 100,000 women are smuggled 
throughout all 15 former Soviet countries annually and sold into 
international prostitution. The estimates are compiled by U.S. intelligence 
analysts, based on extrapolations from the number of known cases.

Popular destinations include Germany, Albania, Yugoslavia and Turkey, as well 
as distant countries such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates, China and the 
United States.

An estimated 4,000 women from former Soviet countries and Eastern Europe have 
been shipped to American cities. Florida is a popular U.S. destination, with 
women being sent to Miami, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach and the 
Panhandle, according to U.S. intelligence. Most of them are brought from 
Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Central Europe.

Some women knowingly cross the border to become prostitutes, willing to 
accept the social stigma that goes with the profession in exchange for a 
prospective good life.

Prostitutes who work the ring road around the Ukrainian capital of Kiev say 
they are frequently approached by men offering jobs in foreign countries.

Valentina, a 23-year-old prostitute, said two men recently offered her a job 
at a cafe in Germany and agreed to help arrange a passport and a visa. A few 
weeks later, several men offered to escort her and a group of friends to 
Israel for $1,000 a month plus a bonus.

"Sure, there's a risk, but it's a way to make money," she said. But Valentina 
said she rejected the offers because she felt safer in Kiev.

Istanbul, a centuries-old city that links Asia and Europe, is a major 
shipment point in sex trafficking. A 23-year-old woman who identified herself 
as Lada described how she sought refuge abroad three years ago to escape a 
broken marriage in her hometown of Nishny Novgorod, Russia.

A friend recruited her for a job in Istanbul's garment industry but when she 
arrived, she was introduced to a chubby bearded man named Mustafa. He took 
her to a hotel and gave her cheap Turkish perfume and a flowered dress. He 
then introduced her to a 60-year-old client, adding: "I wish you luck. Now go 
to work."

When she refused, she said, Mustafa beat her and locked her in a sixth-story 
apartment from which she was unable to escape. Fearing further beatings, Lada 
said, she eventually complied and was forced to have sex with dozens of men 
over the next three months.

Although she escaped, she said, she was unable to find work and drifted back 
into prostitution.

Another young Russian prostitute working at an outdoor restaurant in a 
red-light district in Istanbul said she was attracted to the profession by 
the popular American film "Pretty Woman." In the movie, Julia Roberts plays a 
prostitute who becomes romantically entangled with a wealthy industrialist 
played by Richard Gere.

For thousands of women their stories hardly have that kind of happy ending.

*******

CDI Russia Weekly:  http://www.cdi.org/russia

Johnson's Russia List Archive (under construction):  http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson