January 19, 2001   

This Date's Issues:   5035 • 5036 • 5037

Johnsons's Russia List
#5037
19 January 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: Ex-Kremlin aide's arrest hands Putin first test of diplomacy with US.
2. The Electric Telegraph (UK): Marcus Warren, Court jester who regarded Russia as his own empire.
3. strana.ru: Pavel Borodin and Russia's presidential management department.
4. The Guardian (UK): Ian Traynor, Patten urges nuclear cleanup. Russia's 300 dumped reactors linked to Kursk aid.
5. Krasnaya Zvezda: RUSSIAN-US DIALOGUE: HEEDING CURRENT REALITIES. (Interview with Genrikh TROFIMENKO of the Institute of US and Canadian Studies)
6. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Mikhail Khodarenok, THE MILITARY REFORM IS ON. But only in the army and navy so far.
7. Reuters: Russia makes new move against Russian media boss.
8. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace meeting report: Is There a Separation of Powers in Russia? (Thomas Remington)
9. Christian Science Monitor: Daniel Schorr, Russia and the US, cooling off.
10. PRESS CONFERENCE WITH SERGEI MARKOV, POLITICAL STUDIES INSTITUTE DIRECTOR, on the agenda for 2001]

*******

#1
Ex-Kremlin aide's arrest hands Putin first test of diplomacy with US

MOSCOW, Jan 19 (AFP) -
President Vladimir Putin faced his first diplomatic challenge Friday in
dealing with the new US administration as he weighed a response to the New
York arrest of a corruption-tainted former Kremlin aid.

Putin remained silent for a second day following the arrest Wednesday of
former Kremlin property manager Pavel Borodin on Swiss money-laundering
charges despite a furious reaction from Russian politicians of all stripes.

The Russian leader is clearly keen to start off his relationship with
incoming US President George W. Bush on the right foot and avoid adding new
quarrels to an already long list of military and economic disputes.

Yet for his domestic audience, he must also defend the jailed Borodin, who
plucked Putin from Saint-Petersburg in 1996 and brought him into the Kremlin
fold, launching a meteoric Moscow career.

"Putin finds himself in a tight spot," said Carnegie Moscow Center political
analyst Andrei Ryabov.

"On the one hand, he cannot defend a man who has problems with justice in the
eyes of the world community. On the other, if he pretends this arrest does
not concern him, he will have problems at home," Ryabov said.

"Russians hate to see one of their own given up like that."

With Putin laboriously mulling his option, foreign investors in Russia agreed
that Borodin's arrest "may be seen as a personal blow to Putin.

"The detainment of Borodin may bring about a cooling of Russian relations
with the new Bush administration, although a sharp overall deterioration of
relations between Russia and the West is rather unlikely," Renaissance
Capital cautioned in a research note.

A prime target in a two-year-old Kremlin corruption affair, prosecutors
accuse Borodin of taking a least 25 million dollars in bribes from two
Lugano-based construction firms involved in Kremlin renovation work and then
laundering the cash in Swiss bank accounts.

His arrest -- Borodin was flying to attend a Bush inauguration dinner, his
first trip abroad since Swiss prosecutors issued an international arrest
warrant last January -- prompted many to question why the wily Moscow insider
simply walked into Western police hands.

Some suggested that Borodin, used to his nearly untouchable status at home,
simply became too arrogant, forgetting Russian cronyism does little to save
corruption-tainted bureaucrats when they venture abroad.

"The Borodin case could help alter the psychology of the Russian ruling
class," the Vedomosti business daily remarked.

"Nothing in Russia will change until the authorities learn to at least fear
the law, if not respect it," said the daily.

Others noted that the new US administration already appears less willing to
turn a blind eye to Russia's murky business practices than the White House of
outgoing President Bill Clinton.

"Whichever way this case ends, the US is once again letting Russia know that
a new era has opened in the two sides' relations, and that we must fight
corruption at home," the Sevodnya daily said.

The remark echoed a warning from Bush last weekend that Washington could cut
off all but the most essential economic assistance to Russia should Putin
fail to follow through on his vows to clean up government and business
corruption.

But whatever the fate of his former mentor, analysts agreed that Putin could
hardly have wished for a more unpleasant surprise on the eve of Bush's
inauguration.

"Perhaps it is reasonable for Putin to keep quiet," said Andrei Piontkovsky
of Moscow's Center for Strategic Studies.

"After all, it was under Putin that (Russian) prosecutors closed all their
investigation into (Borodin's corruption) affairs," he said.

*******

#2
The Electric Telegraph (UK)
19 January 2001
Court jester who regarded Russia as his own empire
By Marcus Warren

IT was one of the proudest moments of Pavel Borodin's career. Open-mouthed
with amazement, President Clinton and Chancellor Kohl were admiring the
results of his lavish reconstruction of the Kremlin.

"And these people are asking us for money?" he overheard the chancellor
remarking as they gazed in wonder at the gold and marble decorating its
Catherine Hall.

In public, Mr Borodin gave all the credit for the transformation of the
Kremlin palaces, a project costing at least £570 million, to his boss and
patron, Boris Yeltsin. In practice, the former Siberian mayor regarded the
Kremlin, its contents and the property he controlled on its behalf across
Russia as his private empire. He once valued the assets at his command at a
modest £410 billion.

His formal position until President Putin moved him sideways into the
sinecure of State Secretary of the Union of Russia and Belarus a year ago was
head of the Kremlin property department. In fact he was not just the
department's master, he set it up in the first place. Even more important, he
was major-domo, toastmaster and jester supreme at Mr Yeltsin's Kremlin court.

That and the extraordinary influence he wielded as the official who decided
which apparatchik received which limousine, car or holiday made him one of
the most powerful men in the land. If anyone knows where the bodies from Mr
Yeltsin's nine-year rule over Russia are buried, it is the 54-year-old Mr
Borodin.

The charges levelled against him by Geneva prosecutors involve accusations
that he used Swiss banks to launder kickbacks paid in return for Kremlin
reconstruction contracts. Mr Borodin always denied the accusations. But then
he also denied that the Swiss were seeking to arrest him, a piece of
complacency that has now proved highly flawed.

More intriguingly, Mr Borodin is seen as the main link between the Yeltsin
family and the Swiss firms accused of paying bribes in the form of credit
cards to Mr Yeltsin's daughters, allegations once again strongly denied by
the Kremlin.

Even Mr Putin's swift dismissal of Mr Borodin from his old post when he
became master of the Kremlin does not protect him from being linked with Pal
Palych, as he likes to be known. Mr Borodin was Mr Putin's first boss when
the then jobless St Petersburg bureaucrat moved to Moscow in 1996.

Now Mr Putin's pledge to fight corruption and establish a "dictatorship of
the law" is sounding decidedly hollow amidst the howls of rage from Moscow at
Mr Borodin's arrest. And yet, whatever the truth of the criminal accusations
against him, the hard drinking, hard swearing Mr Borodin is just the sort of
bureaucrat who thrived in the Nineties but has no place in the more puritan
atmosphere prevailing in Mr Putin's Kremlin.

No longer do senior officials first come to the attention of Russia's leader
thanks to their skill at making Siberian dumplings, the way Mr Borodin
supposedly won the heart of Mr Yeltsin.

One thing Mr Borodin and Mr Putin do have in common is a faith in Russia's
status. "Everyone says that the country is in poverty but here you have all
these mansions," he said in defence of the millions spent on redecorating the
Kremlin. "But this is Russia, a great power." He said of his handiwork:
"People will walk past and believe that the country can pull through."

*******

#3
strana.ru
January 18, 2001
Pavel Borodin and Russia's presidential management department
 
Russia's presidential management department was established in July 1991as
a property management division of the Russian presidential administration.
In November 1993 the presidential management department was separated from
the Russian presidential administration.

After the abortive armed coup in Moscow in 1993, the presidential
management department acquired the functions of managing the properties of
all branches of Federal authority, including payment of salaries to
parliament members and court justices.

By signing Decree No. 797 on August 2, 1995, the Russian president included
the management department in the list of Federal bodies of the executive
and endorsed a new Statute for it.

On April 1, 1993 when Pavel Borodin took the office of acting chief of the
main property department of Russia's presidential administration, he had a
staff of 350 employees directly subordinate to him. Five years later his
staff had the same number of employees. But the properties that Borodin was
in charge of had increased tenfold.

By the volume of properties (valued at no less than $600 billion), the
structures that Borodin was in charge of were second only to those
belonging to the Gazprom monopoly in Russia. The presidential property
management department is responsible for the upkeep of 3 million square
meters of floor space in office buildings in Moscow, including the Kremlin,
the government's White House, the buildings of the State Duma and the
Federation Council. It services 12,000 top Russian officials. Besides that,
the property management department owns settlements of country houses,
workshops, medical establishments, motor vehicle pools, hotels and the
Rossiya Air Line that carries top officials of the Russian state. The
Russian Federation's properties in 78 countries that are worth $600 million
according to very modest estimates are also on the balance sheet of the
property management department.

Borodin personally supervised the reconstruction of the government's White
House, half of which was destroyed by tank shelling in October 1993, as
well as the Senate building in the Moscow Kremlin, where President Putin's
apartments are located. Borodin also personally supervised the restoration
of the Grand Kremlin Palace.

*******

#4
The Guardian (UK)
19 January 2001
Patten urges nuclear cleanup
Russia's 300 dumped reactors linked to Kursk aid
Ian Traynor in Moscow

Around 300 nuclear reactors and thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods dumped
in the Russian Arctic are an immediate danger to Russians and Europeans
alike, and require urgent action, Chris Patten, the European Union's external
relations commissioner, warned yesterday.

Speaking to Russian officials and diplomats in Moscow, Mr Patten called on
the western European nuclear engineering industry to start cleaning up the
world's biggest nuclear graveyard in Russia's far north. But he also feared
that Brussels' bid to persuade Moscow to allow in outside remedial teams had
run into opposition, not least because of Russian military secrecy.

Russian admirals, in particular, are against external assistance with
problems that involve military resources.

The risk of wide-scale radioactive contamination from the reactors in dozens
of abandoned submarines, formerly part of Russia's northern and Baltic
fleets, were highlighted by Moscow's laboured response to the Kursk tragedy
last summer. But Mr Patten, the EU's foreign policy supremo, pointed to a
problem that could dwarf the Kursk disaster in its scale.

"In the seas and the shores surrounding the Kola peninsula, there are some
300 nuclear reactors - about 20% of the world's total - and thousands of
spent nuclear fuel elements," he said. "The lack of adequate storage or
disposal facilities for spent fuel and radioactive waste from the reactors of
nuclear vessels is a sword of Damocles hanging over all our futures."

The fjords of the peninsula are littered with scores of inoperable nuclear
submarines, abandoned like beached whales. Their hulks lie as testimony to
the disastrous decline of the once mighty Soviet navy. The navy dockyards are
crumbling, the sailors go hungry and unpaid.

Mr Patten said the problem of nuclear safety in the far north was the most
"dramatic" of all the issues on which Brussels and Moscow should seek
enhanced cooperation during Sweden's term in the EU presidency.

EU countries are being asked to make a hefty contribution towards the
estimated £47m needed to raise the stricken Kursk and its two nuclear
reactors next summer. Mr Patten was expected to discuss the Kursk with
Russian officials during his two-day trip.

It appeared that Sweden, in particular, was pushing for more ambitious
nuclear safety programmes and cleanup operations in the Arctic in return for
agreeing to fund the Kursk salvage operation.

Mr Patten's speech, Sweden's emphasis on nuclear safety in the Arctic, and
the incoming Bush administration's declaration that American aid to Russia
will be sharply cut back and focused on stabilising Russia's nuclear arsenal,
all suggest that areas such as the Kola peninsula are moving up in priority
on the international agenda.
 
*******

#5
Krasnaya Zvezda
January 19, 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
RUSSIAN-US DIALOGUE: HEEDING CURRENT REALITIES
Following below is an interview with professor Genrikh
TROFIMENKO, D. Sc. (History), who is a merited researcher of
the Russian Federation, and who has worked for more than 30
years at the Institute of US and Canadian Studies of the Soviet
and Russian Academy of Sciences. Professor Trofimenko, who
ranks among the most authoritative experts on US affairs,
specializes in US military-political strategy. We asked him to
analyze the results of the latest US presidential elections
because this event far transcends the boundaries of domestic US
policies; quite possibly, it will mark a turning point in
modern global history, as well.
    
     Question: Mr. Trofimenko, quite a few analysts keep
mentioning a veritable all-out US political crisis, which is
bound to hit America pretty soon, as they comment on the pace
of the US election race and US presidential elections
themselves.
     Answer: To my mind, a political-system crisis is still a
long way off there. At the same time, it's crystal clear that
the US political system contains many drawbacks. Such drawbacks
were displayed during the latest presidential elections, with a
possible Democrat victory depending on just 400-500 votes. At
the same time, more than 2 million votes were discounted all
over the United States.
     True, the struggle between George Bush Jr. and Al Gore is
not the only thing that matters. Various business groups, e.g.
domestic and more conservative Republican capital, as well as
Democrat "fat cats", who aspire for global Americanization,
waged the main struggle of them all. However, the latter are
backed by all kinds of expansionist and cosmopolitan circles;
therefore Bush and Lieberman, who kept clutching at legal
straws for quite a while, still threaten a vote recount.
    
     Question: Most ethnic and other minorities supported
Democrat candidate Gore during the latest elections, with WASPs
(White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant), the military-industrial
sector and disgruntled companies (that were pushed around by
Clinton) backing Republican candidate Bush Jr. The latter has
won the election race. So, what does this signify for the US
domestic political situation?
     Answer: This means that the Republican Administration will
be relying on a somewhat different social base just because
America is now suffering from moral lawlessness and absolute
permissiveness. By the way, everyone, including sexual
minorities, perverts, drug addicts and the like, liked Bill
Clinton for precisely such permissiveness, constituting the
Democratic Party's pillar, albeit not the only one.
     Meanwhile the rather wide-ranging Bush Administration
comprises Mexicans and Afro Americans, who occupy key
positions. I'm talking about Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
Nevertheless, the people of America and the rest of the world
have apparently become convinced that democracy and freedom,
which existed under Clinton and Gore, will be lacking under
Bush Jr. This can apparently be explained by the fact that Bush
Jr. represents conservative America, i.e. people, who cherish
traditional values, decency, integrity, law and order. The
current situation therefore amounts to a certain split.
     In this sense, the Republicans represent a more decent,
albeit smaller, part of US society. At the same time, most
Americans preach permissiveness as the sublime manifestation of
democracy.
    
     Question: Will the globalization process stop under Bush
Jr.?
     Answer: We should clearly discern between specific
concepts here. As I see it, there exist two globalization
concepts. One such concept implies the world's natural
integration into a more close-knit and global community. This
trend is facilitated by the development of communications
networks, transportation, the banking sector, as well as by
more substantial trans-border operations. This normal and
natural process is linked with worldwide technological progress.
     And the second process is as follows -- Washington is
trying to subordinate all independent countries to US dictate,
to grab key industries and financial systems of the concerned
countries and to control their policies. This amounts to
Americanization and the assertion of US domination. However,
the United States camouflages this process by the
"globalization" concept.
     It's an open secret that the new US Administration is
interested in strengthening the United States and in tackling
its domestic problems. The United States perceives the
expansion of its military potential as a top-priority task.
    
     Question: Should we fear the latter factor?
     Answer: In fact, this is already happening. First of all,
Bush Jr. has voiced his desire to give the US defense industry
a new lease of life and to develop advanced weapons systems
(that would supersede current weaponry by a generation).
Second, the NMD (National Missile Defense) system should not be
overlooked either. The United States explains the need for
deploying such a system by those alleged North Korean and Iraqi
threats. However, a nationwide ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile)
system is thus being virtually created. The Bush Administration
will have to decide on the possible construction of a new NMD
radar on the Aleutian archipelago within the next two weeks.
    
     Question: The projected deployment of a nationwide ABM
(Anti-Ballistic Missile) system, as well as the development of
hi-tech weaponry, seem to be the most tangible dangers now
confronting Russia. How else will the election of Bush Jr.
affect US-Russian relations?
     Answer: The Republican Administration will have to deal
with NATO's subsequent expansion. Quite a few Eastern European
countries would like to join NATO; and the solution of this
issue has been postponed till the next NATO summit. It goes
without saying that Russia and the United States are seriously
divided on this score. Much will depend on US policies with
regard to the Baltics.
     Bush Jr. also has some misgivings about his subsequent
Russian policy. We loaned money to Russia, Bush Jr. said not so
long ago. The US side believes that Russia obtained a total of
$32.5 billion; the United States allocated $2.5 billion, what
with international financial institutions contributing the
rest. However, the United States doesn't discern between these
two sums. Where did the money go? This question is also being
asked by Bush Jr. Congressman Cokes, who prepared a report on
Russian corruption in the course of the election campaign, also
asked the same question. Well, the answer is obvious - such
monies went back to the United States. However, this means that
they were not spent on Russian economic development. According
to the Republicans, Russia should receive money in line with
just one aspect, e.g. ensuring the safety of the Russian
nuclear arsenal and implementing the Nunn-Lugar program.
    
     Question: Does the election of Bush Jr. have any positive
implications for Russia?
     Answer: Yes, it does. First of all, as I have already
said, the United States will now attach more priority to its
domestic affairs, imposing its standards on the world less
actively.
     Second, despite the fact that Bush Jr. voiced a somewhat
negative position on Chechnya, those realistic-minded
Republicans will be dealing with Russia in a business-like
manner; excessive ideological considerations will also be
discarded.
     Nevertheless, we can deal with the Republicans, striking a
deal with them all the same. Meanwhile Russia should be well
aware of the fact that the Republican Administration is going
to implement its national interests, which, in its opinion,
imply greater US military might, no matter what.
    
     Transcript by Krasnaya Zvezda's Igor YADYKIN.

******    

#6
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
January 19, 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
THE MILITARY REFORM IS ON
But only in the army and navy so far
By Mikhail KHODARENOK
    
     President Vladimir Putin met with senior officers in the
Kremlin on January 18 on the occasion of their promotion. He
said that 2000 was a year of key decisions, such as the
approval of the military doctrine and an inspection of the
military organisation of the country. He believes, however,
that the reform of the armed forces is taking too long.
     Informed sources say that before that the president issued
a decree approving a plan of development of the armed forces.
Drafted by the Defence Ministry on the basis of decisions
approved by the Security Council in August 2000, the document
says that the leading staff of the Defence Ministry and the
General Staff managed to overcome, on the whole, the acute
differences between them and to forward a coordinated document
to the head of state.
     The development plan provides figures and sets deadlines
for the reform of the armed forces, related first and foremost
with the continued large-scale reductions in the army and navy.
In the near future, nearly 370,000 troops and over 100,000
civilian personnel are to be slashed in the armed forces.
     The presidential decree concerns only the armed forces and
does not touch upon the interests of other troops, formations
and agencies, the decision on which was made at the November
2000 session of the Security Council. Much smaller reductions
and institutional functions are stipulated for these eleven
departments than for the army and navy. This is logical,
because other troops (the Interior Troops of the Interior
Ministry, the Federal Frontier Service, and the like) fulfil
their tasks mostly in peacetime. Major reductions would provide
for a review of the concept of their use or for moving a part
of their tasks to other agencies. This would be hardly possible
in the current internal political conditions.
     Under the approved development plan of the armed forces,
there will be three services, to be used in their spheres of
operation (land, air and sea). These will be the Land Force,
the Air Force and the Navy. In addition, there will be three
independent arms: the Airborne Force, the Space Force (to
incorporate the formations and units of the Missile Space
Defence Force and the Military Space Command, which had been a
part of the Strategic Missile Force), and the Strategic Missile
Force, which is to be subsequently integrated into the Air
Force.
     The planned reductions and major institutional changes
will largely depend on the economic possibilities of the state,
because the situation in the army and navy is paradoxical. The
bulk of budgetary allocations to the armed forces are spent on
troop maintenance (meaning that they are used unprofitably),
with hardly any funds allocated for the provision of
prospective and modern weapons and hardware to the army and
navy and R&D.
     Like all previous ones, the new development plan is not
revolutionary and provides only for "forming, reforming and
redeploying." Russia will not have fundamentally new armed
forces even in case of the successful fulfilment of this new
plan.

*******

#7
Russia makes new move against Russian media boss
By Denis Dyomkin
 
MOSCOW, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Prosecutors ordered the seizure on Friday of
Vladimir Gusinsky's suburban Moscow villa, stepping up pressure by the
Kremlin and creditors on the embattled Russian media magnate.

A spokesman for the prosecutor-general's office said an order to seize the
property had been issued but gave no details.

Gusinsky is now under house arrest in Spain pending a decision on Russia's
extradition request on fraud charges, which he denies.

Most Russian liberals and Western politicians have denounced the proceedings
against Gusinsky and his nationwide Media-Most empire as an attack on freeom
of the press.

Interfax news agency quoted prosecutors as saying the move was to back
creditors' claims and ensure the possible confiscation of the property if the
fraud case succeeds.

The seizure of Gusinsky's villa followed a lawsuit filed earlier this week by
a branch of Media-Most's key creditor, gas giant Gazprom to take over 19
percent of the shares of NTV television, Gusinsky's most valuable asset.

Gazprom-Media, which already has 46 percent of NTV, Russia's only independent
nationwide television station, undertook the action a day after the apparent
collapse of talks in the Kremlin aimed at enabling CNN founder Ted Turner to
buy a stake in NTV.

The Wall Street Journal, quoting sources close to the talks, has said Kremlin
officials refused to provide guarantees that there would be no interference
in the channel's operations. The Kremlin declined all comment on the report.

CLOSELY WATCHED BATTLE

The battle to secure control over NTV, which has been critical of President
Vladimir Putin and his administration, is seen by liberals and many
journalists as critical for the survival of the post-Soviet free press.

The director-general of United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, expressed his
concern on Tuesday and urged Putin to uphold press freedoms. Putin last week
repeated his belief that a free press was thriving in Russia.

The disputed 19 percent of NTV shares had already been turned over to the gas
giant as part of a deal to eliminate Media-Most's large debts to Gazprom.

They were being held as collateral pending efforts to find a Western investor
for NTV, but talks between Gazprom and Media-Most on the matter were broken
off this month.

Turner was known to be interested in acquiring a stake of up to 25 percent in
NTV. Media-Most currently holds 49.5 percent.

As part of their probe into dealings between Media-Most and Gazprom,
prosecutors on Tuesday detained Media-Most finance chief Anton Titov on
suspicion of conspiracy to embezzle.

Gusinsky, who built his empire during Russia's helter-skelter dash towards
market reforms in the 1990s, says the fraud charges he is fighting are
politically motivated.

The former theatre director has had a string of run-ins with legal
authorities ever since Putin was sworn in last May.

Within days, armed tax office police raided Media-Most's headquarters and the
following month Gusinsky spent three days in jail on fraud charges that were
later dropped.

The media magnate says a government minister promised him freedom if he
agreed to sell his empire to state-linked gas behemoth Gazprom. Gusinsky
later reneged on the deal, which he said had been signed under duress.

*******

#8
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
www.ceip.org
Is There a Separation of Powers in Russia?
Meeting Report, Vol. 3, No. 1, January 9, 2001

On January 9, 2001, Thomas Remington, Professor of Political Science at Emory
University, spoke at the Endowment about the relationship between the
executive and legislative branches of the Russian government. Remington
discussed in detail how the Russian Duma negotiates with the president, who
is given wide-ranging powers by the constitution. We provide below a summary
of his remarks and the discussion period.

"Separation of powers is considered to be a cornerstone of the Russian
Constitution of 1993," said Remington. While similar in some ways to the US
Constitution, the Russian Constitution allows the president an even more
dominant role in the political system, giving him the right to issue decrees.
"Given the asymmetry in the constitution, many observers have dismissed other
political institutions in this framework as irrelevant," Remington stated.
"Obviously, a constitution is never a full guide to political relations," he
added, "particularly in Russia, given its tradition of personalized power
relations."

The Russian President: Constitutional Power vs. Actual Power

Remington gave an overview of the wide range of presidential powers. The
Russian president can introduce legislation, issue decrees if the Duma does
not pass his legislation, use a continuation budget if his budget is not
passed, veto legislation that is passed by the Duma, and threaten the Duma
with dissolution. Given this system, what limitations exist on the
president's authority? Is he sometimes forced to negotiate with the Duma to
get what he wants?

Remington argued that political limits that restrain the president's power do
indeed exist in the Russian system. Noting the myriad of decrees Yeltsin
issued while in office, Remington explained that the excessive use of decrees
reduces their credibility-many of Yeltsin's were simply ignored. The
Constitutional Court ultimately decides whether a law is in accordance with
the constitution. In addition, while the president may benefit from
threatening the Duma with dissolution, the political cost of such an action
and the prospect of facing a new Duma perhaps more hostile than the old
usually prevent such a drastic measure from being taken. Remington cited the
example of Yeltsin in 1996, who, faced with poor showing in the polls,
considered dissolving the Duma and canceling the presidential election.
Anatoly Chubais, his close advisor, persuaded Yeltsin that the political
consequences of such an action would be disastrous. Thus, while the president
is given great power by the constitution, he in practice limits his power
based on calculations of the political consequences of his actions. Finally,
the Duma has enacted several laws to legally complicate its dissolution, if
the president were to try to do so.

The Duma and the President

No political party or movement has ever enjoyed an absolute majority in the
Russian Duma, Remington observed. Instead a "power sharing arrangement" is
orchestrated in which the "median factions swing the vote," he explained.
Currently, the group enjoying the median role is Unity, which is strongly
pro-Kremlin. On most issues, political factions are able to negotiate to pass
a given bill. The median faction can deadlock the Duma by strongly opposing a
bill, as long as there is internal cohesion within the political party
(Remington noted that Unity's members vote alike 92% of the time).

If the president and the Duma are on the same side of an issue, they will
cooperate. Remington listed the Tax Code, Criminal Code, judicial reform, and
the budget as areas where the current president and Duma have worked together
to produce legislation that represents a compromise between the various
political factions in the Duma. If the president and the Duma are in
agreement, the president will sometimes issue a decree to set in motion a
bill that the Duma will eventually pass, as has been the case with Putin's
decisions on Chechnya.

On issues where the Duma and the president are in opposition, a compromise
will generally result between the Duma and the president (usually in favor of
the president). Remington observed that if the president issues a decree on
an issue on which the Duma disagrees with him, the Duma will eventually move
closer to the president's position to maintain influence. Remington offered
the example of privatization, which went ahead despite protests from
Communists. Today, some Communists in the Duma have accepted that
privatization will take place, and have instead negotiated successfully to
win greater oversight powers over the privatization process.

"In Russia we see evidence for a separation of powers agreement," concluded
Remington. While the president is granted a wide range of powers, the Duma
and the Constitutional Court do limit the extent to which the president can
exercise these powers.

Discussion Period

When questioned on the extent to which the political negotiations within the
Duma represented bargaining between different groups in society, Remington
pointed out that although political parties still remain fragmented and are
largely unable to draw on consistent public support, interest groups ensure
that their needs are represented in the Duma. Interest groups participate at
all levels of the Duma's political activity, including working groups, and
sustain a constant lobbying effort. Remington emphasized that the Duma was a
site for bargaining on more than just social issues, and characterized the
newly created Audit Chamber as a potentially powerful "creature of
Parliament" that the Duma could use to gain leverage.

Explaining why liberals in the Duma supported Putin's administrative reforms,
which created a more centralized political structure, Remington argued that
both conservatives and liberals considered the reforms to be necessary. In
addition, he noted that liberals understood the probability for the abuse of
federal power to be much less than the likelihood of abuse of power on the
regional level. When asked if these administrative reforms were in line with
the Russian Constitution, Remington said that in his opinion the reforms to
this point were "not necessarily incompatible with the constitution." Many
proposals for further reform are still being debated, including the reform of
the Federation Council, and these will have to be examined.

Asked about possible areas of contention that the Duma may soon face,
Remington said that clashes over the Land Code and the Labor Code are likely.
It also remains to be seen how viable Unity will be as a political faction in
the face of a controversial issue like land reform, since Unity has "no
distinct political view besides opportunism," Remington added.

Summary by Erik Scott, Junior Fellow with the Russian and Eurasian Program

*******

#9
Christian Science Monitor
January 19, 2001
Russia and the US, cooling off
By Daniel Schorr

The gestating Bush administration is signaling a new, more arm's-length
relationship with Russia. And Russia is signaling back that it will look
elsewhere for friends.

The president-elect has made clear that he doesn't plan the warm, personal
relationship with President Vladimir Putin that his father and President
Reagan enjoyed with Mikhail Gorbachev and President Clinton with Boris
Yeltsin.

George W. Bush told The New York Times he would concentrate on cooperating
with Russia on nuclear safety and checking the spread of weapons technology,
but otherwise would reduce financial assistance and leave Russia to find its
own way out of its economic troubles, corruption, and lack of a legal system
that would encourage foreign investment.

"Neither partner nor enemy" was the way Secretary of State-designate Colin
Powell put it the other day. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
emphasized amending or scrapping the Antiballistic Missile Treaty if it
stands in the way of a missile-defense system.

Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov says his government is ready for a "direct
dialogue" with the Bush administration. But Russia gives signs of hunkering
down for a more unstable relationship with the United States. It is courting
the European Union. Putin recently visited Cuba and Canada, skipping the US.
He has also been to North Korea.

Russia and China have announced they are working on a friendship treaty that
will establish a strategic relationship. China is already an important
customer for Russian destroyers, fighter planes, and other high-tech weapons.

It is a far cry from the day when President Nixon could boast of driving a
wedge between China and the Soviet Union.

Putin has shown some signs of rolling back Russia's democracy, such as
cracking down on the press and reintroducing the bombastic Soviet anthem with
new words.

Mr. Bush says he is concerned about the "stifling" of the press in Russia,
but does not indicate that America has any role to play in supporting Russian
democracy.

"The point I'm trying to make," he told The New York Times, "is that it's
hard for America to fashion Russia."

That fits the unilateralist mood of the new administration. Whether the
"neither partner nor enemy" approach will work remains to be seen.

******

#10
Excerpt
TITLE:  PRESS CONFERENCE WITH SERGEI MARKOV, POLITICAL STUDIES
        INSTITUTE DIRECTOR
        [PRESS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE, 12:00, JANUARY 17, 2001]
SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE

     Moderator: Welcome to the Press Development Institute and let
us welcome our guest, Sergei Alexandrovich Markov, director of the
Political Studies Institute and managing director of the Political
Advisory Center Association who will share his thoughts on the
agenda for 2001.

     Markov: Good afternoon. I think the year 2001 will be much
more difficult than the year 2000. Because the following important
components will be lacking.

     First, the effect from the devaluation will be much less and
oil prices will be lower in any case. Thus the value of the
economic bonus will be diminished.

     Second, President Vladimir Putin will have less trust from the
population because  people will be waiting for him to deliver on
his promises.

     The government will face several important tasks. These tasks
are closely connected with the problems that the country will be
facing.

     The first and the main problem is that a development strategy
for the country has not been produced. The Gref program is not a
development strategy, but an economic development tactic. It is
geared to purely economic problems and pays little attention to
social aspects. By social aspects I mean not just pensions, but I
mean it in a broader sense. And I think the government and the
administration will have to make up their minds about strategy.

     There are some individual challenges I would like to discuss.
The first challenge stems from the inherent contradictions of the
President's thesis on the dictatorship of law -- (audio break) --

     For several years Duma deputies have been copying very good
European laws, and we have some good laws. But life has moved its
own way. Electoral legislation provides a good example. We can see
that under the law practically all elections can be canceled
because all the winners had had break electoral law en masse.

     First, regarding the -- (inaudible) -- and second, the methods
of financing, and partly the methods of campaigning. Such a
fundamental contradiction exists in all spheres of life. If one
proceeds strictly under the law, practically all elections can be
declared invalid, except, perhaps, the election of the President,
because he had a large credibility margin. At the same time,
practically the whole of business can be brought to a halt.

     That fundamental contradiction will have to be resolved. How
it will be resolved is anybody's guess. There are several
consequences of that contradiction and these create serious
problems. The first is what I call the effect of the awakened
investigator. For several years investigators had their wrists
slapped and they were not allowed to react to large-scale
violations of the law, the stealing of national wealth, most of
which happened contrary to the law.

     Now, in 2000, they haven't yet been given the order to act,
but they are no longer slapped on the hands. So, they woke up and
are acting spontaneously, which shocked the business community. So,
something will have to be done to the awakened investigator...
Because, after all, these people are acting under the law. They
have been urged to proceed according to the law and they have
started to act.

     But on the other hand, if they fully abide by the law, all the
political institutions will be liquidated and the economy will
grind to a half.

     Another consequence of the fundamental contradiction between
our antiquated and primitive life that we have in Russia and highly
civilized European laws is that as a result most of the agents in
economic and even in political life have a vague idea of the degree
of freedom they have under the new regime and they say, "we are
prepared to pay according to the new rules. But tell us what these
rules are."

     The authorities are pretending that these rules of the game
exist and are understood by all. That the rules of the game are the
law. But there remains the fundamental contradiction between
excellent laws and primitive and archaic forms of social relations
in present-day Russia.

     So, working out rules of the game and, setting limits to the
behavior of agents in political and economic life is a challenge
facing the political leadership.

     And meeting of this challenge is connected with a very
important challenge this year. These tasks must be formulated and
the subject of reforming the country must be created. Such a
subject does not yet exist. In effect, there are three governments
in the country today:

     First, the political government headed by Alexander Voloshin
which is forming the political regime and which has succeeded in
forming the political regime.

     Second, the economic government led de facto not so much by
Mikhail Kasyanov, as by Alexei Kudrin and German Gref which seeks
to reform the economy.

     And third is the security government led by Sergei Ivanov
which, on the one hand, is restoring the institutions of state and,
on the other hand, is a kind of stand-by government.

     There is a fairly clear division of powers between them, and
in general some kind of struggle and squabble among all of them is
inevitable because it is all about distribution, and each of these
governments has strong roots in President Putin's past. They are
not accidental.

     The political government is rooted in Vladimir Putin's Kremlin
period. The economic government of economic liberals is rooted in
Vladimir Putin's period in St. Petersburg when he was a prominent
functionary in Anatoly Sobchak's administration, one of the leaders
of the democratic movement, one of the most prominent liberals. And
of course the security government is rooted in the KGB past of
Vladimir Putin.

     Vladimir Putin is a conservative man in no hurry to do away
with his past. He prefers to draw energy from his past. But the
entire world experience shows that a ruling democracy, no matter
how progressive and oriented at Europe, that this ruling
bureaucracy is not capable of becoming a subject of the country's
development.

     The forming of a subject of modernization, a subject of the
country's development is one of the key tasks for this year. This
subject must consist of four components.

     First -- the part of the ruling bureaucracy which is aware of
the problems facing the country, which has some moral values and at
least some ideology. In this case we can clearly speak about the
orientation at Europe of this part of the Russian bureaucracy.

     Second -- the part of business, not the whole of business
because the greater part of business behaved during these years in
Russia as if it was an occupied country, behaved according to the
principle of how to steal quickly and run away. For this reason
this subject of the country's development may include only the
socially responsible part of business which is aware of its
responsibility to the country, to the people living in it and
working in it.

     Third -- the part of the intellectuals who are capable of
working out various models, projects and are capable of influencing
public opinion. Again, not all intellectuals but only a part of
them, those who are not engaged in smearing the state, those who
are not denying the state its moral right to existence.

     We have a long and tragic history of relations between the
state and the intelligentsia. There is the intelligentsia that
continues the Soviet tradition of state phobia. There is the
intelligentsia that denies the state the moral right to existence.
There is the intelligentsia for which any state is something bad.
This part of the intelligentsia, no doubt, cannot become part of
this subject of modernization.

     Fourth -- the part of the civil society... I regret to say
that our civil society is still quite weak. But the country's
development is impossible without the participation of civil
society.

     This big block for the forming of the country's strategy is a
challenge to the present political leadership. I have no doubt at
all that the theme of strategy will become one of the dominant ones
this year.

     Democracy will become the second dominant theme. It is clear
already now what type of an opposition to Vladimir Putin is taking
shape. This opposition first of all accuses him of tightening
screws and disregarding civil rights and freedoms. This opposition
will consolidate and the theme of democracy will become one of the
leading ones. It is not yet clear what type of an answer will be
given to this challenge by the ruling grouping. Two variants are
possible.

     The first variant. This theme will be ignored by the political
leadership, as it happened in 2000. You all must have heard the
president's question: "What else can I do for everybody to
understand that no threat to freedom of speech exists?" As though
he does not know what he should do. And he was told in reply:
"Solve the problem with NTV". Unfortunately, this is not a really
positive growth.

     The second possible variant -- to set the task of developing
and strengthening democratic institutes. For Vladimir Putin
democracy means first of all the rule of law. He has clearly said
that freedom in Russia should be shored up by law. And this is
democracy. We should add to this that civil freedoms should also be
retained in full volume. Besides, democracy is not simply something
demanded by the citizens. Democracy is something that is also
demanded by the world community. There is pressure on Russia by the
world community and this pressure will continue.

     At the same time, there are what I regard as two fundamental
contradictions in the development of democracy in Russia. The first
is in the shortage of law and order and the shortage of rules of
the game. The second is connected with the very small capability of
people in Russia for spontaneous collective action.

     Democracy, generally, means the ability of people to organize
themselves for the purpose of resolving some problems. There exists
such a term as controlled democracy. I always refer to one and the
same image -- the image of our apartment entrances. As you know,
they are extremely dirty as is everything around them. Well,
democracy is when citizens get together, organize themselves and
see to it that all the entrances and the territory around them are
always clean.

     As to controlled democracy, it is when everybody waits the
housing authority to come and help them organize this. As to
dictatorship, that is when everybody is cut off from this process
and everything is done by the housing authority itself.

     At present nobody is doing anything in our country. But it
will be necessary to do something because we are marking time while
all the other countries are advancing. And it is not clear what
organization of societal life we are going to have. All the ten
years of freedom have demonstrated that we have a culture of
mistrust, that is, when people are not capable of spontaneously
organizing themselves  and act. They are waiting all the time for
some uncle to come and do something for them, be it the state or an
oligarch.

     Personally, I do not understand how a democracy of the Western
type is going to develop in these conditions. It is an intellectual
challenge to try and understand the possible development of
democracy in conditions when the citizens refuse to organize into
a civil society and wait for the state to come and organize them.

     Here again there are two variants: either the state is really
going to come and do this or, best of all, the country is going to
have a program of developing democracy. Democracy is an imperative
of the contemporary world. Russia will not be able to enter the
surrounding world with its very rapidly developing technologies if
it is going to have an archaic political system in which citizens
will have little say in political decisions on key problems. And,
oddly enough, democratization remains one of the main challenges
and reemerges as one of the main tasks for present-day society.

     Before we pass on to questions, I would like to sum up and to
present you with two theses. The first thesis is that the year 2001
will determine the shape of Russia under Putin. At the end of 2001
we will be able to draw a line and say: this is the way things will
be. Even if some issues remain unresolved, issues I have tried to
list. This is going to be the second year of Vladimir Putin's rule,
the year when the obvious tasks were resolved, but when they
reemerged. It was very easy to proceed in 2000. When Vladimir Putin
was asked during the election campaign (at around January 2000):
"Why isn't there any debate on your program?" He said, I think
quite rightly: "What is there to debate? All the discussions have
taken place during the last 2-3 years. The program of what is to be
done? has been formulated: to cut taxes, to stop the disintegration
of the country, to solve the problem of Chechnya, and we are
prepared to implement the program. It was a very sound thesis. It
reminded me -- and I will just say it off the record -- that in his
time Mussolini was asked during his first speech in parliament,
"Where is your program?" He replied: "Italy has seen tens of
programs. What it has not seen is a government which has the
political will to implement some kind of program."

     Those were very apt words. By the way, in the first three
years Mussolini was implementing an economic program which today
might well have been a program of the International Monetary Fund.
You can read it. It's very interesting.

     So, the Putin administration in 2000 was above all an
administration which had the political will to address the main
problems challenging the very foundations of Russian statehood. The
first was the emergence of a fascist regime on the territory of
Chechnya with an aggressive program of seizing the North Caucasus,
and the second was the disintegration of the Russian Federation. He
has solved these problems entirely.

     At present, instead of these extraordinary, emergency
problems, the challenge is normal management of the country. The
way Vladimir Putin and his team attack these problems in 2001 will
determine the character of Vladimir Putin's rule.

     And the second thesis I want to formulate is that in 2000 an
effective political regime has been created for implementing the
political decisions of the leadership and its policy. The trouble
is, such a policy does not exist.

     And the Kremlin may become a hostage to the mechanism which
has no substance. The place is not a vacuum, but it is a hostage to
the mechanisms that will run idle.

     You know the image of a retired motorist who, instead of
driving his car, polishes and repairs it, takes it out of its
garage from time to time, takes it into pieces and oils it and rubs
it and then makes a circle and puts the car back into the garage.

     The Putin administration is clearly in danger of becoming such
a motorist.

*******

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