May 6, 2001 

This Date's Issues:   5239

Johnson's Russia List
#5239
6 May 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AP: Judith Ingram, Russia Scientists Await Nuke Decision.
2. Itar-Tass: Russia rejects US report on early warning system.
3. Washington Post: Yo'av Karny, Ignore the Chechens at Your Peril.
4. Reuters: One year on, Russia Communists wary of Putin.
5. strana.ru: Gorbachev may join organizing committee of United Socialist Party of Russia.
6. The Providence Journal: Nicolai Petro, Western media out of touch with Russia.
7. BBC Monitoring: St Petersburg demonstrators stage mock funeral for freedom of speech in Russia.
8. Newsweek Web Exclusive: Christian Caryl, Russian Road Trip. Why did President Putin go to remote Kirillov to work the crowd? Christian Caryl went along to find out.
9. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: The Future of the Free Media in Russia. (with Masha Lipman and Igor Malashenko)
10. BBC Monitoring: NTV, TV alleges nuclear waste import without parliamentary approval.
11. Newsweek International: Eve Conant, Moldova's Red Revival; A miserable former soviet republic decides that maybe the old days weren't as bad as it thought they were.]

*******

#1
Russia Scientists Await Nuke Decision
May 5, 2001
By JUDITH INGRAM

MOSCOW (AP) - A thief or terrorist trying to get at the seven nuclear 
reactors at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute will have to break through a 
sophisticated, $3 million set of safeguards financed by American taxpayers. 

The research center's security system is just one result of a 10-year-old 
U.S.-Russian program to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The 
joint effort has also brought much more dramatic achievements, including 
eliminating nuclear weapons stockpiles in the former Soviet republics of 
Kazakstan, Belarus and Ukraine, and deep cuts in Russia's own vast nuclear 
arsenal. 

But some U.S. Congress members are questioning the cost and value of the 
Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. President Bush has ordered a review - 
and that's making Russian nuclear scientists nervous. 

On a broader front, trust has been undermined over such issues as NATO 
expansion, Moscow's ties with Iraq and North Korea, and the Bush 
administration's missile defense plans. Also, some U.S. officials involved in 
the arms reduction program are being expelled from Russia as part of a wider, 
tit-for-tat spy scandal between Washington and Moscow. 

``We've achieved very important results, which are visible not just on paper 
but in the physical (security) systems,'' said Nikolai Ponomaryov-Stepnoi, 
the vice president of the Kurchatov Institute, named for the father of the 
Soviet atomic bomb. 

Over the past five years, the institute has won contracts to develop security 
systems for the Russian Navy, one of the institutions that Russian and U.S. 
officials had considered most vulnerable to theft and potential leaks of 
weapons-grade nuclear materials. 

``The risk of proliferation of nuclear materials is lessening 
significantly,'' Ponomaryov-Stepnoi said. 

The joint threat reduction program was launched in December 1991 in the final 
days of the Soviet Union with a law authored by U.S. Sens. Sam Nunn and 
Richard Lugar that sought to seize a rare opportunity to cut strategic 
weapons arsenals. 

The program is aimed broadly at cutting Russia's nuclear arsenal, preventing 
the leakage of nuclear and biological weapons technology to terrorists or 
other countries, and destroying stockpiles of chemical weapons. 

Those aims are being promoted through more than two dozen separate projects 
that have cost the United States some $4.7 billion so far. 

``It's a very effective defense by other means: Spending relatively little 
money, you seriously decrease the military potential of your probable enemy 
or rival,'' said Ivan Safranchuk, the nuclear arms control project director 
at the independent PIR institute in Moscow. 

According to the Pentagon program's director, Jim Reid, the United States has 
helped to junk 300 of Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles, 2,000 
nuclear warheads, 52 ICBM silos, 308 submarine launchers, 18 submarines and 
42 bombers. 

The program helped accelerate Russian disarmament and put Russia on track to 
meet the Dec. 5, 2001 deadline for arms cuts under the 1991 Start I treaty, 
which should bring each side down to 1,600 strategic missiles and bombers and 
6,000 warheads. 

Considering Russia's economic difficulties, ``it would have taxed them 
significantly to try to use those funds to meet the treaty themselves,'' Reid 
said. 

Other goals have been partially met. Sensored fences, the first step in 
comprehensive security systems, have been built around more than half of 
Russia's nuclear weapons storage places, Reid said. The rest haven't been 
secured, and the Soviet-era protection systems have broken down, leaving 
potentially serious security breaches. 

Two of the highest-profile projects - to build a fissile materials storage 
plant in the town of Mayak and a pilot plant for destroying nerve agents 
stored at Shchuchiye - have been stalled by U.S.-Russian differences over how 
they should be run. 

The spy scandal hardly helps. An analyst who has seen the list of 50 U.S. 
diplomats to be sent home by July said about a dozen are involved with the 
Pentagon's threat-reduction program. He spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Scientists at the Kurchatov Institute said they were already feeling the 
effects, with American partners introducing new financing procedures that 
could set back some projects. 

``I don't know who's pulling the strings, but we already feel that the work 
is facing difficulties,'' Ponomaryov-Stepnoi said morosely. ``It seems they 
feel they have to introduce a tougher line.'' 

The harshest U.S. critics question whether the program should be continued at 
all, especially in light of Russia's increasing cooperation with such 
potential nuclear proliferators as Iran. 

In general, U.S. aid programs to Russia face increasing American criticism 
for inefficiency and vulnerability to corruption, and Russians complain that 
much of the money ended up in U.S. contractors' pockets. 

In the arms reduction field, the Russian security service may feel the U.S. 
monitors are getting too intrusive. 

The program gives the monitors ``unique access,'' said Alexander Pikayev, an 
arms control expert at the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment. ``If 
political relations deteriorate, Russia will be less interested in 
transparency.'' 

Gennady Khromov, a Russian negotiator, said the Americans demanded only 
plutonium from weapons be stored at Mayak. ``But to prove that, we're being 
asked to strip naked and show everything we have,'' he said. 

Reid rejected the criticism, saying there were demonstrated ways of providing 
those guarantees without revealing Russian secrets. 

The National Security Council is supposed to wind up its review of the 
program in mid-May, according to Reid. 

On the Net: 

Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council: http://www.ransac.org

*********

#2
Russia rejects US report on early warning system 
Itar-Tass
May 5, 2001

Russia's Defence Ministry rejected on Saturday the findings of a US report 
that Russia's ballistic missile early warning system was no longer reliable, 
ITAR-TASS news agency reported. 

An unnamed "competent source at the Defence Ministry" said the conclusion by 
researcher Geoffrey Forden in the report published by the Washington-based 
CATO institute was wrong. 

Forden had said Russia's early warning missile attack system provided wrong 
information about possible US nuclear strikes and the probabilities of 
Russian retaliatory attacks against the US and of a nuclear war, the agency 
reported. 

"US experts do not have authentic information about the operation of the 
Russian early warning system," the source said. 

One of the chief requirements for any early warning missile attack system was 
to provide authentic data, the source said. Therefore, Russia's early warning 
missile attack system had been constructed on a multi-layered principle. For 
several decades the equipment had been successfully performing its assigned 
tasks, and not a single false warning had been issued over that period. 

"Though the Russian system has an extended life service, it is still 
reliable," the source said, and claims that the technical state of the 
Russian ballistic missile early warning system was posing a threat to US 
security were groundless. 

*********

#3
Washington Post
May 6, 2001
Ignore the Chechens at Your Peril 
By Yo'av Karny (karny@bellatlantic.net)
Yo'av Karny is the author of the recently published "Highlanders: A Journey 
to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). 

Small nations in despair aren't that pleasant to look at, and even less so to 
be around. If they have nothing to lose, they may well shed all inhibitions 
in pursuit of an audience, and making themselves heard becomes their only 
recourse.

Look at those 13 armed ethnic Chechens who raided a five-star hotel in 
Istanbul last month, risking so much in the process (including the lives of 
120 hostages, 40 Americans among them) to gain virtually nothing. We have 
seen their likes before -- from the Macedonians of the early 1900s, to the 
Palestinians of the 1970s and the 1980s, the Armenians, the Kurds and quite a 
few others. Victimized, dispossessed and ignored, they have resorted at one 
point or another to indiscriminate terrorism. Each broadened the definition 
of "enemy" well beyond the immediate battlefield, as if they were telling the 
world that security should be enjoyed by none if it can't be enjoyed by all.

Now with Chechnya, we may be witnessing the birth of another victim gone 
berserk, a victim so small as to make some of yesteryear's madmen look like 
giants in comparison. The raid in Istanbul (coming a few weeks after the 
Chechen hijacking of a Russian airliner to Saudi Arabia) may have been a 
warning sign. Its senselessness was evident from the start. What is the 
point, after all, in punishing Turkey, so sympathetic to the Chechens, by 
threatening its thriving tourism industry? But that is where our logic parts 
with theirs: Defeated nations turned mad are no longer interested in the 
balance sheet of their conduct. Defeated peoples proclaim to the world, "Love 
us or hate us, so long as you notice us."

Chechnya, that obscure speck of a territory at the very end of Europe, is 
disappearing into a black hole. Two brutal wars with Russia have been fought 
on its territory since 1994. To all intents and purposes, it has ceased to be 
humanly habitable. Its economy has been destroyed by a decade of upheaval. 
About one-tenth of its pre-1994 population has perished, more than a third of 
its citizens have become refugees. And a bloody "low intensity" war is raging 
as we speak. Not a day passes without Russians killing Chechens, Chechens 
killing Russians, and Chechens killing Chechens. The world gets used to such 
constantly bleeding wounds, and Chechnya no longer merits much attention 
beyond those newspaper columns charmingly titled "In Brief." But we ignore 
the steady stream of horrors in Chechnya at our peril.

The Chechens are relative newcomers to the international scene. Until the 
present cycle of resistance to Russia, they have always fought it alone, or 
at most with some local allies among the indigenous nations of the North 
Caucasus. This time some Chechens may well be tempted by the rules of easy 
notoriety, the ones that seemed to have drawn the world's attention to other 
nations in despair. 

Wreaking havoc and spreading horror has never required large armies, merely a 
hard core of dedicated individuals. A handful of Palestinians and Armenians 
have managed quite well for years in taking aim at, respectively, Israeli and 
Turkish targets the world over. Their practices may have generated Western 
contempt, and cost the assailants precious PR points, but they helped 
concentrate attention on their hitherto barely heard grievances.

Beyond attacking Russiantargets, the Chechensmay also be tempted to join a 
broader front against the West. They might believe thatdoing so would serve a 
cause greater than theirs, that of Islam in general; indeed, quite a few of 
them have come to the conclusion that freedom for Chechnyacan be obtained 
only in the context of a cosmic struggle against the enemies of Islam. Local 
conflicts of this nature, pitting a small and relatively backward people 
against a mighty power, often require the resisters to seek meaning and 
purpose in the bosom of a radical, messianic ideology.

The Russians should know such things better than others. After all, it was 
their brutal and futile pacification of Afghanistan in the 1980s that laid 
the foundations for the emergence of the Taliban, for the academies of 
terrorism along the Afghan border in Pakistan, and, finally, for the Osama 
bin Laden network. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel could also tell us 
how his bloody attempt to pacify and recreate Lebanon in the early 1980s 
gaverise to the Middle East's most effective terrorist group, Hezbollah. 
There is no better breeding ground for networks of terrorism than despair 
brought about by the heavy hand of an occupying power.

To the extent that the outside world even notices Chechnya, it shows a great 
ambivalence: On the one hand it is difficult to ignore the appalling 
statistics (the Chechens have, since 1994, suffered proportionately greater 
casualties than any European people since World War II, indeed more than most 
Europeans suffered during World War II). On the other hand the behavioral 
traits of this unfamiliar, insular people have earned them few friends. They 
have been faulted for unrealism, for nearly narcissistic infatuation with 
acts of heroic futility, for factionalism and lack of national discipline. 
And yet, for the past 220 years, since their first bloody encounter with the 
Russians, their resistance has been unequaled. Not one among the many ethnic 
groups that have fallen under Russia's yoke in the past five centuries has 
risen up in arms -- and been defeated -- so often, nor come back from the 
dead time and again. There are quite a few Chechens who frown on this 
practice, who perceive it as a throwback to primitivism; others, more 
enamored of romantic notions of freedom, may view it simply as patriotism. 
But however a Western onlooker might characterize the Chechens, it is hard to 
misunderstand their message: They want out.

It is ironic that two of the former Soviet republics whose independence is 
internationally recognizedare now volunteering to be reabsorbed into a 
Russia-centered union, while the independence-craving Chechens are kept in 
against their will. Consider Moldova. That sliver of a territory, squeezed 
between Ukraine and Romania, has just become the first post-Soviet state to 
elect an unreformed, unrepentant communist government. One of the new 
legislature's first acts was to ratify a treaty turning Moldova into 
something of a Russian military satellite. The new communist president has 
announced he would love to join Russia and Belarus in a new union. As for 
Belarus, it indicated long ago how little it cares for its own independence.

Moldova and Belarus were set free in 1991 because of a whim dating to 
Stalin's rule: Ethnic provinces located along the international borders of 
the Soviet Union had been accorded the status of a full "Union republic" -- a 
formula generated by expediency and cynicism, often with little deference to 
history and common sense. Yet in 1991 those "Union republics" successfully 
claimed independence and were instantly recognized -- while lesser republics, 
such as Chechnya (only an "autonomous republic" under the Soviet 
designation), remained prisoners of the old empire.

The absurdity of this is patent: Artificial entities were preferred to 
historical ones, and people quite comfortable in the Russian realm were shown 
the door while those with ancient grievances were refused exit. The excuse 
for maintaining this arrangement has been the inviolability of 
internationally recognized borders -- a principle that in this case no longer 
makes sense. With a redrawing of the European map since 1991 on a scale not 
seen since the days of Napoleon, why maintain the inviolability of borders 
only in little Chechnya?

An independent Chechen state -- the stated aim of the rebels -- might well be 
economically unviable; it could indeed become the destabilizing factor that 
Russia fears. One way to address legitimate Russian concerns, and to 
alleviate Chechen suffering, would be to develop a variant of the arrangement 
that exists in East Timor: Chechnya would cease to be Russian without 
immediately becoming independent. It could be placed under an international 
regime and be helped gradually into statehood. The considerable Chechen 
diaspora in the Middle East, blessed with technical expertise and scientific 
know-how and driven by an exceptional sense of loyalty to the old country, 
should take a leading role in preparing for a genuine Chechen independence 10 
or 20 years from now.

There are no easy solutions, but for Chechnya to be ignored, or to be 
relegated to the category of inevitable tragedy or eventually dismissed as a 
"terrorist nation," would be an act of supreme folly. It would also be an 
immoral act toward a colonized people whose suffering is yet to be recognized.

********

#4
One year on, Russia Communists wary of Putin
By Nikolai Pavlov 

MOSCOW, May 4 (Reuters) - A year after Russian President Vladimir Putin came 
to power, the Communists who did battle with his predecessor Boris Yeltsin 
for a decade remain in opposition, but choose their words more carefully. 

In an interview with Reuters Television marking the May 6 anniversary of 
Putin's inauguration, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said the Kremlin 
leader had failed to live up to expectations. 

But Zyuganov, Putin's main challenger for the presidency in last year's vote, 
was careful to put the blame on the president's team and his own 
inexperience. He said the popular Putin had the right intentions. 

The remarks were a sign of the difficulties opponents have had in targeting 
Putin, whose strong state rhetoric has stolen some of their nationalist 
thunder while the economy has been buoyed out of crisis by high oil prices. 

"The last year was a year of lost opportunities," Zyuganov said. Putin "wants 
to do good for the country," Zyuganov said, adding that that marked an 
improvement on Yeltsin, whom he called "a destroyer by nature." 

"But there is a difference between identifying the problem and knowing what 
should be done about it," Zyuganov said. 

He denounced Putin's young, pro-market economic team and said he hoped the 
president would soon ditch his cabinet. 

"Alas, they are continuing to lead us down the Yeltsin rut, which is lethal 
for Russia." 

Zyuganov's Communists called a parliamentary no-confidence vote in Putin's 
cabinet in March, but fell far short of success. 

Since then, the Kremlin has encouraged centrist parties to consolidate around 
Unity, a hastily assembled parliamentary faction set up to support Putin, 
forming a four-party bloc that now has enough votes to control the State Duma 
(lower house). 

But Zyuganov said Putin's political support was not nearly as deep as it was 
wide. 

"There is no ideology that unites them," he said. "They form a party around 
that great sack of money, the budget, and around the seat of power. But they 
do not understand that as soon they lose that seat, there will be no party." 

********

#5
strana.ru
May 6, 2001
Gorbachev may join organizing committee of United Socialist Party of Russia

Ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who heads the Russian United 
Social-Democratic Party, may join the Organizing Committee of the United 
Socialist Party of Russia (USP).

The Organizing Committee will hold its first meeting in late May or early 
June, and Gorbachev intends to attend it, according to Alexei Podberyozkin, 
Director of the Institute of Contemporary Socialism.

Podberyozkin, who is also leader of the Spiritual Heritage nationwide 
movement, is among a group of activists working to establish USP together 
with Ivan Rybkin of the Socialist Party, Sergei Baburin of the Russian 
People's Union and Stanislav Terekhov of the Officers' Union. 

Podberyozkin says the group has held consultations with representatives of 
several leftist associations. His impression is that "the need for their 
unification is being felt more and more acutely."

He maintains that Gennady Zyuganov's Communist Party is "increasingly 
slumping into radicalism and orthodoxy." It "can reflect the interests of 
only extreme leftists" and there is "nobody on the political platform" 
between the Communist Party and the center. He is confident that "a normal 
socialist party," i.e. USP, should occupy that niche. 

In his opinion, "there will be at least 30-40% of leftist electorate" in 
Russia in the next 15 to 20 years but the Communist Party "can at best count 
on half of it." However, "for all of their radicalism and orthodoxy the 
Communists will simply privatize the other half of the leftist electorate" if 
USP is not established. 

"This is very dangerous for the country," he stresses. Communist leader 
Zyuganov has "already done his best to oust his opponents and rivals from the 
left flank."

He sees the threat of a Communist monopoly in the leftwing spectrum of 
Russia's political forces in that "the Communists seek power in order to 
establish their party leadership as the dominant force."

"The Communist Party has learned nothing in the past decade. It has come up 
with nothing better than the idea of installing a Politburo in power although 
Politburos have long since been a thing of the past in Russia."

Podberyozkin is confident that "the Communists will never have a controlling 
stake in the leftwing electorate" if an alternative in the form of the United 
Socialist Party of Russia takes hold in Russia. 

********

#6
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001
From: "Nicolai N. Petro" <kolya@uri.edu>
Subject: Western Media out of touch with Russia

The Providence Journal (Providence, RI), May 4, 2001
Western media out of touch with Russia
by Nicolai N. Petro
Nicolai N. Petro is a professor of political science at the University of 
Rhode Island. He was a State Department policy adviser on Soviet affairs 
during the first Bush administration, and travels to Russia frequently.

THE RECENT TRANSFER of ownership of the Russian independent television 
network NTV has unleashed a firestorm of criticism in the West. But while 
the Western media view the issue as an assault on free speech, in Russia, 
where the issues are seen as more complex, media reaction have been more 
muted. The difference highlights how out-of-touch the Western media have 
become with post-Yeltsin Russia.

For sheer hyperbole, Western press coverage of the NTV-Gazprom dispute has 
few equals. "Soviet-style terror has the media at bay," screams a headline 
in the British Daily Telegraph. "Piece by piece" Putin and "his cronies 
have crushed the most prestigious television, newspaper and magazine 
organizations in the country" opines The Washington Post. "If this trend is 
not quickly reversed," The New York Times warns ominously, "President 
Vladimir Putin could regain some of the power his Soviet-era predecessors 
had to suppress or manipulate unfavorable news."

But while rushing to the defense of the rights of journalists, the Western 
media have seemed unconcerned with the rights of NTV's shareholders not to 
have their investments squandered and assets stripped to the tune of nearly 
$300 million. Only recently has the true extent of NTV's mismanagement 
under Vladimir Gusinsky come to light. According to an in-depth report by 
the Russian news magazine Ekspert, an audit of NTV conducted by 
PriceWaterhouseCoopers shows network losses swelling over the past three 
years, with total capital losses reaching $57 million by the end of 2000. 
At the same time, poor programming decisions caused the network's ratings 
to fall well behind those of its rivals, ORT and RTR, last year.

Yet so unconcerned was the old NTV management with the business side of 
their venture that it did not even bother to secure the rights to most of 
its major programs. This at a time when the station's own accountants were 
showing that the company would never be able to get out of debt with its 
current revenue stream. The old NTV management was so slipshod that when 
the new management team took over, it found original founder Oleg 
Dobrodeyev still listed as the network's general director, even though 
Dobrodeyev had left to manage competitor RTR more than a year ago!

Why did Gusinsky allow the country's "most prestigious television company" 
to be run so poorly? The straightforward answer is because Gusinsky was 
building an empire of personal influence by borrowing money that he had no 
intention of repaying. More than any other oligarch, with the possible 
exception of Boris Berezovsky, he exemplifies the "new Russian" penchant 
for wielding political and economic influence through the media. By the 
time the bills came due, Gusinsky reckoned that his influence would be 
great enough to shield him, perhaps indefinitely, from attempts to make him 
repay. A classic pyramid scheme, only this time using the power of the news 
media as a weapon against creditors.

As many analysts at the time pointed out, Gusinsky built his media empire 
into a national player by trading media influence for Kremlin support, and 
Kremlin support for investments. This practice reached its peak during 
Yeltsin's 1996 presidential campaign, but ended abruptly with Putin, says 
Dobrodeyev. And that is when the company's problems began. No longer able 
to parlay political clout into collateral, bill collectors came knocking 
and found that Gusinsky had foolishly made himself legally vulnerable by 
transferring 80 percent of his assets to safe havens in Gibraltar (hence 
the state prosecutor's indictment of Gusinksy for fraud involving the 
intentional transfer of assets overseas to shield them from creditors).

By and large, however, the Western press has chosen to treat Gusinsky's 
sordid financial dealings ("a flamboyant entrepreneur," says The New York 
Times) as nothing but a fig leaf for Putin's efforts to squash freedom of 
the press, and Gazprom as his pliant tool. Never mind that it was Gazprom 
that first sought an agreement last November to let a foreign investor buy 
the debt, and that brought in Deutsche Bank to serve as an experienced 
intermediary.

Never mind that Gusinsky himself, just a month later, torpedoed a tentative 
agreement by starting separate negotiations with Ted Turner. Never mind 
that, after winning six court judgments in its favor, in a final attempt to 
reach a settlement Gazprom was still willing to support a board of 
directors that included five out of eleven members of the old board, 
including top journalist Evgeny Kiselyov.

Equally misleading and unsubstantiated is the blithe assertion that Putin 
is seeking total control over the media. Not only is there not a shred of 
evidence linking him to these events, but twice already this year, Putin's 
government championed media freedom where it matters most -- in the 
legislative arena. First, by opposing new legislation that would place 
limits on advertising revenue. Second, by arguing against the limits that 
the legislature is seeking to place on foreign ownership of the media.

Western reporters attribute the gap between Western and Russian reporting 
to the Russian press being less free and less balanced. But such smugness 
hardly seems appropriate when nearly half of Russia's 90 officially 
registered television companies, 25,000 newspapers, 1,500 radio programs 
and 400 news agencies are independently owned and operated. Moreover, in 
both quantity and diversity of reporting on controversial topics like 
Chechnya, and the NTV-Gazprom dispute, the Russian media far outdoes its 
Western counterparts.

A visit to www.smi.ru, just one of more than 8,000 Russian media Websites, 
shows that there have been more than 2,100 Russian articles published about 
the NTV flap over the past eight months. That's four times the number 
published in the 50 largest U.K. and U.S. newspapers during the same 
period, according to a search of the Lexis-Nexis media database. As for 
balance, Lexis-Nexis shows 313 articles mentioning Vladimir Gusinsky but 
only 22 that mention Gazprom rival Alfred Kokh during the same period.

Such coverage of the NTV flap has led to Kremlin complaints that the 
Western press is biased. While almost no one in the West takes such claims 
seriously, in Russia they have become conventional wisdom. Moreover, the 
Russian government is not the only one complaining about the quality of 
Western media coverage. Back in 1996, New York University Prof. Stephen 
Cohen accused the Western press corps of "professional malpractice" for its 
overly optimistic coverage of Russia.

Since then, what Princeton's Stephen Kotkin terms "the collective hysteria 
that passes for reporting and commentary on Russian affairs" seems to have 
gotten worse. Patricia E. Dowden, former World Bank financial institutions 
development project manager, decries "the pattern of press bias that 
continues to concern many of us regarding reporting about Russia."

Leonid Bershidsky, editor of Vedomosti, the Russian joint project of The 
Wall Street Journal and London's Financial Times, complains about the 
sensationalism among Western reporters in their "appalling coverage of 
Russian business." And last year Anatol Lieven, a senior associate at the 
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,in Washington, D.C., accused 
much Western journalistic and academic commentary of bigotry and 
"Russophobia" for its coverage of Russia, and the Chechen war in particular

Is it any wonder that in recent years the reputation of the Western media 
as an impartial source of information has plummeted faster than the ruble 
did in 1998?

The Western press can do better. Reporters need to recognize that coverage 
of what is wrong with Russia, to the exclusion of almost everything else, 
far from being objective, seriously distorts reality, and is tantamount to 
promoting advocacy for a single, negative point of view. Editorial boards 
should stop treating Russian politics as if it were a morality play in 
which they get to choose which characters represent good and evil. Not only 
is it unseemly, but more often than not, the key characters eventually wind 
up switching roles. Today's Russia is far more complex than its media 
portrayal. We deserve equally sophisticated reporting about it.

*******

#7
BBC Monitoring
St Petersburg demonstrators stage mock funeral for freedom of speech in Russia 
Source: Ekho Moskvy news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1020 gmt 06 May 01 

An unusual demonstration in support of freedom of speech took place today [6 
May] in St Petersburg. 

As Ekho Moskvy's radio correspondent reports, a column of mourners proceeded 
along Kamenno-Ostrovskiy Prospekt. About 50 people marched behind a cardboard 
coffin labelled "Freedom of Speech", in front of which marchers carried 
scarlet pillows bearing the labels "NTV", "Segodnya", "Itogi" and "Regional 
and Independent Media". The procession was headed by a marcher bearing the 
Russian flag. 

St Petersburg artist and theatrical author Kirill Miller, dressed from head 
to toe in red, bore a brass trumpet, which emitted a recording of the melody 
of the Russian national anthem together with a rhyming slogan, saying "While 
the KGB rules and [Russian Press and Information Minister Mikhail] Lesin 
dictates the truth, [Gazprom-Media director Alfred] Kokh will play us lots of 
songs on his gas pipe". 

The march concluded at 0900 gmt on Petrovskaya embankment outside the 
building occupied by the staff of presidential envoy to the North West 
Federal District Viktor Cherkesov. 

The demonstration in support of free speech marked the beginning of a new 
civil opposition movement in St Petersburg. 

********

#8
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Russian Road Trip 
Why did President Putin go to remote Kirillov to work the crowd?
Christian Caryl went along to find out 
By Christian Caryl

May 4 — Vladimir Putin is about to press the flesh. And he doesn’t
exactly look like he’s enjoying it. 

THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT’S FACE has the expression of a man forced to
accompany his wife on a shopping excursion: affectionate, dutiful and a bit
weary. He steps up to the rope that divides him from the enthusiastic
throngs. Local residents are wearing their holiday best on this final
Friday of April, pushing forward hands to be shaken and sheets of paper to
be autographed. “Vladimir Vladimirovich!” barks an older man with a flushed
face and tousled gray hair. “Just keep doing what you’re doing! We’re for
you!” Putin takes the proffered hand, smiles shyly, thanks him and moves on
down the line.

For me, too, this is an occasion—if not for the same reasons. Foreign
correspondents in modern Russia do not often get the chance to walk with
Putin as he works a crowd—and certainly not in a place like this one.
Kirillov, population 8,800, is tucked away in a remote corner of the
country’s northwest. 

“This is a big event for a little provincial town like ours,” says
Marina Travnikova, 45, who works in the local museum visited by Putin
during his recent four-hour visit.

In fact, the last time a Russian head of state came through Kirillov
was Peter the Great’s visit some 300 years ago. At the end of the day,
Putin himself cites another precedent. As a child, the future tsar Ivan the
Terrible visited the town’s impressive monastery in the company of his
parents in the 16th century. 

Putin doesn’t say whether Ivan the Terrible is an example he wants to
follow. Peter the Great, on the other hand, is one of Putin’s declared
political models—perhaps because Peter was an authoritarian modernizer who
understood that Russia could be reformed only through forceful, and
sometimes cruel, rule from above.

None of which answers the question: why Kirillov? The other
journalists on the trip—mostly Russians working in the official Kremlin
press corps—agree that the only aspect that distinguishes this part of
Russia is its ordinariness.

Ask Kirillovites their opinion of Putin, for example, and the answers
mirror the sentiments usually used to explain Putin’s sky-high approval
ratings. “Young,” “energetic,” and “businesslike” are the first words that
crop up. 

If anything, Putin’s diffidence toward his fans—so unlike that of
predecessor Boris Yeltsin—only reinforces the impression. As the crowd
disperses at the end of the visit, four women are chatting among themselves
about “what a man” Putin is. They won’t give me their names, but they’re
happy to tell me what they thought of him. “He’s so restrained,” says one.
“And that makes him attractive. He’s so tactful.” A friend immediately
corrects her: “He’s so sexy.” Everyone titters.

Perhaps none of that should come as a surprise. As the state-run
media point out during the run-up to Putin’s visit, Kirillov is typical of
the midsize rural communities in which the majority of Russians live.
Economically, Vologda Province, of which Kirillov is a part, sprawls along
the median. 

No one is starving, but no one is doing particularly well, either. As
elsewhere in Russia, except for a few big cities, political parties are
virtually nonexistent. The only one with a high profile around here is the
Unity Party, whose local chapter is headed by the governor of the province,
Vyacheslav Pozgalyov. 

But Unity is little more than a pro-Putin booster club, and local
journalists say Pozgalyov’s primary allegiance is to the big provincial
steel plant, which exports most of its production to the outside world.
With the factory having the cash to finance a powerful political machine—as
well as most of the local media—there is little room for competing voices.

That may explain why we kept hearing one of those old Russian
proverbs repeated during our trip: “The tsar is good, the boyars are bad.”
The boyars were the senior aristocracy, the only force in the country
capable of competing with the tsar—often with catastrophic results.

Boyars tended to be enmeshed in the complexities of court influence
peddling and regional intrigue. The tsar, by contrast, was invariably
viewed as a godlike authority who stood above the messy confusion of
everyday politics. The bad tsars were the ones who allowed the boyars to
get away with a lot; good tsars courted popular opinion by cutting the
boyars down to size. (Both Ivan and Peter tried the latter.)

In present-day Russia, Tsar Vladimir has already done his share of
cutting. He has curtailed many of the powers of the country’s 89 governors,
but rumors suggest that he may do more. It’s now conventional wisdom among
Moscow’s political elite that the election of regional officials like the
governors, introduced under Yeltsin, has helped to make the country
ungovernable by creating local power blocs that don’t always toe the
Kremlin line. 

Kirillov, as it happens, may have a solution to this problem. During
a conference with local officials in the town, Putin gives a long and
sympathetic hearing to the town’s mayor, who claims to have solved many
problems by appointing local officials rather than allowing them to be
elected. The governor, sitting at Putin’s right, looks distinctly unhappy. 

Afterwards, the press corps confesses that we all wondered whether
Putin wants to do the same in Vologda. Later, when a village elder
complains that her community still doesn’t have a paved road, Putin
smilingly prods the governor: “Come on, won’t you build them a road?”
Pozgalyov sputters and squirms. Still smiling, Putin twists the knife:
“What a greedy governor.”

Needless to say, Putin isn’t really joking. Signs abound that the
economic resurgence Russia has been enjoying over the past year is grinding
to a halt, and Putin has promised a big reform push to jump-start the
economy. 

The bureaucrats and regional powerbrokers who have the most to lose
are already mounting the barricades. Two weeks ago, for example, the
Russian general prosecutor publicly denounced Putin’s plans for judicial
reform in dramatic terms. The only solution, in Putin’s eyes, may be to
tighten the reins—including eradicating what’s left of Russia’s fragile
democratic reforms. 

But Putin will only be able to do it if he can make it look as if
ordinary Russians approve. Perhaps that’s why a pro-Kremlin Web site
expressed the hope that Putin’s visit to Kirillov would mark an overdue
attempt to transform his personal popularity into a “political resource.”

What a sad irony it would be if the proverbs came true—and
dismantling democracy turned out to be a hit with the public.

*******

#9
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
www.ceip.org
Russian and Eurasian Program
May 1, 2001
The Future of the Free Media in Russia

On Tuesday, May 1, 2001, Masha Lipman and Igor Malashenko discussed the
recent attacks on free media in Russia, and its implications for Russia's
political development. In addition to Gazprom's take-over of NTV, the only
independent national television network, the daily Segodnya has been shut
down and the entire staff of the weekly Itogi fired. Masha Lipman is the
former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Itogi; Igor Malashenko is the First Deputy
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Media-Most. The discussion was
moderated by Carnegie Endowment Senior Associate Michael McFaul. 

Malashenko: Putin's KGB Regime

Malashenko placed the responsibility of the NTV take-over on President
Putin, and contended that the affair demonstrates exactly what kind of a
regime Russia has today. The President passed "a point of no return" -- if
NTV was a "fork in the road" for Russia, and the choice stood between
building a functioning democracy and reverting back to the Russian and
Soviet pathological political culture, then Putin has chosen the latter. 

The past year there has been a preoccupation with the question "Who is Mr.
Putin?" Now we know the answer, Malashenko claimed -- Mr. Putin and his
regime are the KGB. 
Putin's regime is obsessed with traditional KGB goal of control. The Putin
team really believes that if they acquire control over the country, they
will be able to accomplish something important. Yet, Malashenko noted, the
government has not been able to provide any viable solutions to any of
Russia's pressing problems thus far, and it is highly improbable that they
will be able to do so having built a consensus around Putin. 

Building a consensus and acquiring control - even if it is not exactly
Soviet-style control -- involves an elimination of all systems of checks
and balances. In that respect, the attacks on the mass media is not a
singular case, but just one instance of this trend. The same is happening
with political parties, as more and more parties join ranks with the
pro-Putin Unity, creating essentially a one-party system. Malashenko
disagrees with members of the political elite like Chubais and Nemtsov, who
view the NTV affair as a "minor bump" on the road to democracy and market
capitalism; without a free press and other critical voices of opposition,
Putin will not be able to achieve the promised economic reforms. And a
government-controlled mass media can never be free, it is "an incurable
evil." 
According to Malashenko, Putin's KGB regime is placing Russia on a
"collision course" with the United States. There has been a lot of
misperceptions about Putin in the US over the past year, but it is time to
stop allowing him the benefit of the doubt. President Putin and his key
supporters are "viscerally anti-American," and will bring their KGB views
to bear on Russian foreign policy. It should be of no surprise if North
Korea, Iran or Iraq emerge with a more threatening arsenal of weapons and a
more advanced nuclear program. Whether as a response to President Bush's
NMD plans, or in some other form, there will be trouble for the US from
Russia. 

"The only future for Russia is to become a Western nation," Malashenko
emphasized. Over the last decade, US-Russian relations have been
characterized as a "strategic partnership," the goal of which was not
entirely formulated to most American leaders. Malashenko advocated a new
strategy and a new goal to guide the US in its relations with Russia -- a
strategy of compulsion. Without US support and influence, NTV, Itogi and
Segodnya would have been shut down a long time ago, Malashenko claimed.
The US should use its influence to compel Russia to enter the West -- for
its own sake, for the US, and for the rest of the world. 

Lipman: Eliminating Opposition to What End?

When Kremlin began its campaign against Gusinski and his media holding,
Lipman stated that her news weekly Itogi, with its modest circulation, was
not worried about its own fate. (Itogi is published in cooperation with
Newsweek, by Seven Days publishing house that is part of Gusinski
Media-Most empire). That President Putin would go after NTV is
understandable; national television is truly a powerful tool of influencing
public opinion. But why would Kremlin bother with a small bunch of
liberal-minded individuals who read Itogi?
Yet on April 17, 2001 the entire staff of Itogi was fired, under the
pretext of restructuring the publishing house, which no longer had space
for an old magazine like Itogi. The excuse was clearly bogus; for weeks
prior to this date, Lipman said, a new team of journalists was being
trained by the publisher to take over Itogi. This new team consisted of
30-40 of Segodnya's staff, a daily newspaper produced by the same
publisher. The publisher, deciding to side with the "strong guy" - that
is, Gazprom and the Kremlin, told Segodnya journalists that the newspaper
will be shut down, but offered them to publish "a magazine." The magazine
promised to the Segodnya staff was Itogi. 

The new Itogi came out a week ago, without a single mention of these events
or even a notice to the readers explaining the change. 
There was no public protest or outcry and not many stories appeared in the
Russian press. Even the take-over of NTV, with its 100 million-strong
audience, did not evoke significant public protest. The importance of the
two rallies of roughly 20,000 people, Lipman claimed, were exaggerated.
These cannot be seen as popular democratic rallies for a liberal cause;
people came mostly because they believed NTV risked being shut down
altogether. 

When NTV was finally taken over by force, the public reaction was largely
absent. The state now controls all three national channels; this is barely
seen as a problem among Russians. Even the vast majority of people who
supported the old NTV staff and came out to rally does not see this as a
freedom of speech issue; only 4% believe that this freedom is at stake.
Lipman suggests that this is due to two forces. First, Kremlin and Gazprom
were successful in their efforts to spin the conflict as a business
dispute. Second, the public in Russia is generally in favor of greater
government control over all spheres of life, not excluding the mass media.
Lipman cited opinion polls demonstrating that over half of the Russian
population favor bringing back censorship. Even some journalists do not
object to working for a state-controlled media. Today, liberalism is only
popular in the economic sphere, while individual freedoms are regarded as
Western values unfit for Russia. 

Government rightly regards free media as a political threat; and since the
people generally don't care about the free media, the Kremlin saw no reason
to preserve it. Putin and his advisers view a uniformity of opinion as a
prerequisite for liberal economic reform. The desire for liberal reform is
understandable, even if it requires certain compromises, but Lipman voiced
a major reason for skepticism about Kremlin's ability to carry out such
reform. 

If Kremlin wants to have full license to implement economic reform, it
needs to have a specific plan, and it needs to base this plan on an
accurate, objective assessment of the country's needs. Fist, the Kremlin
is not a monolith, but an entity of feuding teams that disagree on most
major issues. The first year of Putin's presidency was wasted in inaction,
not because of political opposition to Kremlin's reform plans, but because
these feuding teams within the Kremlin could not agree on any course of
action in most major areas crying for reform.

Second, the current system is unable to give the necessary accurate and
objective assessment of the situation. Lipman brought up two examples of
inaccurate assessment and poor information. When the Kursk submarine sank
last August, the nation and President Putin were told that Russia had the
state-of-the-art equipment to rescue the sailors; as it transpired, a
foreign rescue team accomplished in half-hour what Russia failed to do in a
week. More recently, President Putin traveled to Austria to conclude an
arms deal, in which he had utmost confidence, only to discover upon
arrival, that the Austrian government had no interest in the deal. These
are just two of the many examples of misinformation and poor assessments
that should put in doubt the ability of the Kremlin to undertake the
correct remedies to Russia's problems, even if opposition is absent.

Putin and his advisers are now able to act unhindered by parliamentary
opposition or dissenting media; their time to make decisions has come.
Whether Putin can make the right choices, or whether he is even properly
informed to make them is doubtful. Lipman concluded by warning that
unanimity of opinion is unlikely to ensure better implementation of
reforms. "A passive, uncommitted and misinformed nation" cannot be
expected to overturn the status quo; and the hopes that changes will be
carried out entirely by some well-meaning government bureaucracy are even
more unfounded. 

Summary by Elina Treyger, Junior Fellow with the Russian and Eurasian Program.

********

#10
BBC Monitoring
Russia: TV alleges nuclear waste import without parliamentary approval 
Source: NTV International, Moscow, in Russian 1500 gmt 5 May 01 

[Presenter] Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry may well be on course for a major 
row after containers with a mysterious highly radioactive cargo have been 
discovered at a St Petersburg railway station. There is every reason to 
believe that this is a radioactive waste shipment from abroad, experts have 
said. Our correspondents in St Petersburg investigate. 

[Correspondent] Nobody knows when a decision on whether or not to allow the 
import of the world's nuclear waste to Russia will be taken. The date of the 
decisive debate in the State Duma, when the respective law will have its 
third reading, is a closely guarded secret: Those behind the legislation will 
make it known the day before the vote, to leave its opponents no chance of 
any action to scupper the bill. 

By all appearances, however, while the deputies are deep in thought about it 
the ministry has swung into action. There is evidence to confirm it. 

You can see how quickly the read-out of this obsolescent dosimeter changes. 
[Dosimeter held in hand on screen.] It goes all the way up to 700 
microroentgens per hour - it can measure no dose higher than that - within 
one metre of these railway wagons. In fact, the intensity of radiation here 
is 100 times that. 

[Natalya Avetisova, head of the radiation hygiene department in the mobile 
centre of the State Sanitary and Epidemiological Supervision Authority] 
Within one metre of the containers, it is six point seven milliroentgens per 
hour. 

[Question, off camera] That is, seven thousand microroentgens per hour? 

[Avetisova] Well, yes, seven - around seven thousand microroentgens per hour. 

[Correspondent] Four containers, marked Radioactive III, were shunted into a 
siding half an hour before we came. Earlier, they had stood within metres of 
the railway crossing at Avtovo station, in one of St Petersburg's most 
densely populated areas. 

[Railway worker] The radioactive wagons were here. These are the tracks. They 
were here. 

[Correspondent] Avtovo station is a point of transit in the shipment of 
radioactive waste. Railwaymen say that, since January this year alone, 10 
specialized trains, each with 20 to 40 wagons marked Radiation, have passed 
this way. All containers are unloaded at St Petersburg sea port and are then 
taken to Avtovo to await further shipment to their destination. 

The station manager told us the Atomic Energy Ministry was in charge of these 
shipments. As someone who has given a written undertaking not to disclose any 
details of radioactive waste movement, he could say nothing. 

[Question, off camera] How many trainloads such as this, wagons such as these 
have there been here? 

[Mikhail Karamazov, Avtovo railway station manager] I cannot answer your 
question. 

[Question, off camera] Nor can you say what their destination is, can you? 

[Karamazov] No, I cannot do that, either. 

[Question, off camera] Why not? 

[Karamazov] Shipment numbers are a commercial secret. Their destination is a 
state secret. 

[Correspondent] Any information about what is inside these containers is also 
secret, we were told by the transshipper's representative. Exactly what is 
inside is not even stated in the shipment documents. The only thing a member 
of the Izotop company's staff said was this: 

[Yuriy Sokolov, representative of the Izotop enterprise] This is uranium. 

[Question, off camera] Uranium? 

[Sokolov] A-ha. 

[Correspondent] The Atomic Energy Ministry officials say a uranium 
concentrate that occurs naturally, that is, ordinary uranium ore is inside 
the containers, while its destination is the town of Elektrostal, near 
Moscow. More precisely, it is a factory which produces nuclear fuel. 

However, the official version is disputed by independent experts. Arkadiy 
Aleksandrov has worked at the Nuclear Physics Institute for more than 25 
years. His calculations show that a natural concentrate in protective 
containers would not have resulted in such a high level of radiation. 

[Arkadiy Aleksandrov, specialist in dosimetry and ionizing radiation with the 
Nuclear Physics Applied Institute] Either the container did not meet the 
requirements for the transport of radioactive materials and there was 
virtually no protection except for the thickness of the container's walls, a 
centimetre of iron, or what was transported was something altogether 
different, in a normal airtight container with normal protection. 

[Question, off camera] For example, what? 

[Aleksandrov] In the case of uranium, it is most likely that it was uranium 
from a reactor to be reprocessed, rather than uranium that occurs naturally. 

[Question, off camera] That is, spent nuclear fuel? 

[Aleksandrov] Quite possibly. 

[Correspondent] No checks were carried out. No containers were opened. No 
specialist equipment was used. 

The Federal Monitoring Authority for Nuclear and Radiation Safety has 
confined itself to this reply: The shipment mentioned above went through all 
formal channels. This is a routine operation. [ The letter, however, mentions 
Germany's Internexco as the company which has shipped the nuclear materials 
to the St Petersburg port. It is one of six companies in Germany which work 
in the nuclear industry. [Excerpt from document on screen: On 7 April 2001, 
at St Petersburg sea port, four 20-foot containers with nuclear materials, 
sent by the Internexco company in Germany to the Mashinostroitelnyy Zavod 
open joint-stock company in the town of Elektrostal, in Moscow Region, were 
unloaded from a ship and loaded onto two railway platforms. The shipment was 
made under a contract (number given) between Mashinostroitelnyy Zavod and 
Internexco.] 

Back on 12 January, the Greenpeace web site published details of a secret 
deal between Internexco, the Atomic Energy Ministry and Switzerland. It is, 
in effect, a detailed plan for the reprocessing of nuclear waste in Russia as 
put forward by [ex-Minister] Yevgeniy Adamov. [Greenpeace page on screen] 

Consider Point 11 in the Protocol of Intent. The Atomic Energy Ministry would 
like to offer worldwide services and accept 10,000 tonnes of spent nuclear 
fuel from Switzerland, Germany, Spain, South Korea and possibly Japan. The 
value of the contract is 10bn US dollars. [Greenpeace page on screen] 

The environmentalists' report has caused a furore in St Petersburg. Many 
today do not think Internexco's nuclear shipment and the reported secret deal 
are simply a coincidence. The city's MPs have drawn up a parliamentary 
question, to be answered by the Atomic Energy Ministry. They have grounds to 
fear that the Duma's consent for the import of radioactive waste to Russia is 
treated as a mere formality to legitimize the deals, worth billions of 
dollars, already done by the ministry. 

*******

#11
Newsweek International
Atlantic Edition
May 7, 2001
Moldova's Red Revival; A miserable former soviet republic decides that maybe 
the old days weren't as bad as it thought they were 
By Eve Conant 

This is a revolution!" exclaims Ivan Ursu, a lifelong communist, surveying 
the banquet tables at the Inauguration of Moldova's new communist president. 
"And there wasn't even any shooting!"

In Moldova, the party is partying again. Back in 1991, the tiny former Soviet 
republic was among the first to declare independence and embrace capitalism. 
The country even outlawed the Communist Party. But after 10 years of poverty, 
corruption and misery, Moldovans have decided that maybe the old days weren't 
so bad after all. In February, the country became the first former Soviet 
republic to vote the Communist Party back into power. On April 7, it became 
the first to reinstall a communist president. To hear him tell it, it won't 
be alone for long. "The vanguard of the world communist movement has fallen 
[on Moldova]," Vladimir Voronin told comrades at the party's Fourth Congress 
recently. Now, he said, Moldova has the "honor" of leading the revival.

Most Moldovans would have been appalled by such talk a few years ago. In the 
early 1990s freedom brought a blossoming of ethnic pride--some people even 
advocated merging with Romania; at least 65 percent of Moldova's 4 million 
citizens are ethnic Romanians. But now Moldova has become the poster child 
for the frustrations of the former Soviet republics. And hunger and nostalgia 
are proving to be stronger political forces than self-determination. 
Increasingly, Moldovans view impoverished Russia as a beacon of prosperity. 
"Democracy" has become a dirty word, associated with a laissez-faire approach 
to corruption, the rise of the mafia and declining living standards. "Life 
was freer under communism," says villager Sveta Mraga, who equates "freedom" 
with clothes for her children and heat for her home that she can no longer 
afford. "We want some of that freedom back."

It's not hard to see why. In just 10 years Moldova has become the poorest 
country not only in Europe but in the entire former Soviet Union. Nowadays 
it's best known for a bustling trade in women, smuggled out of the country 
and forced into prostitution. More than 75 percent of the population lives in 
poverty. Industrial production is one third its 1991 levels. Things are so 
bad that "night thieves" steal power-line wires and telephone cables. In 
March two women were caught selling human meat, stolen from the garbage bin 
outside a cancer ward. "This country has an economy?" asks an adviser to the 
World Bank working in Moldova.

Still, Moldova's appetite for a wholesale return to Stalinism remains 
unclear. "The communists didn't win because of ideology," says journalist 
Alexander Tanas. "They won because the past 10 years of 'reforms' brought 
nothing to the people." These communists, he explains, are not the 
ideological, Soviet-era apparatchiks of the 1930s. "They're not red," he 
says. "They're kind of pink." Voronin told NEWSWEEK that he plans to stick 
with the market economy. (Recently he described himself as Moldova's Deng 
Xiaoping.) But he says it's impossible to blindly adopt American-style 
democracy. "People have different blood types. Some of our values are 
democratic. Some are not. We want to take the best from socialism and the 
best from the past 10 years."

Some elements of capitalism will be difficult to erase. Many people don't 
want to lose the little private property they gained during those first heady 
years of democracy. The communists say they won't snatch privatized 
businesses, but lawmaker Viktor Stepanyuk says the new government will have 
to "fight thieves and the mafia" and "might have some renationalization if 
property has been taken unlawfully."

Before they can do anything, Moldova's new leaders will have to come up with 
a plan to revive their failing economy. They probably won't be able to do it 
alone. And the issue of whether to look to European capitals or to Moscow for 
help is sure to prove contentious. Iurie Rosca, leader of a pro-Romanian 
movement in Parliament, insists that nationalism hasn't lost its force. "The 
people voted communist because they want to eat," he says. "All the pain of 
our history is tied to Russia . Why should we love them? For killing our 
parents? We don't want to be their banana republic."

But Voronin is clear about where his loyalties lie. During his campaign, he 
promised to bring Moldova into the loose economic union that binds Russia and 
Belarus. He wants to hold a referendum on the issue and on whether to 
re-establish Russian as an official language. "We must speak about 
restoration of our traditional links with Russia and with other republics of 
the Soviet Union," says Voronin. The Soviet breakup "was done without 
anesthetics--a live body was cut, and we are suffering."

Most Moldovans agree about the suffering part. Villager Ivan Sekiera, 52, who 
was never a party member, says he voted for the communists to oust the regime 
of the past decade. Is he worried that they might bring repression back? "No, 
not at all," he says. "What could be worse than democracy?"

*******


********

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