May 16, 2001 

This Date's Issues:   5256 • 5257

Johnson's Russia List
#5256
16 May 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Itar-Tass: Number of mentally ill children in Russia increased by 20 per cent.
2. AP: Top Gorbachev Aide Dies. (Georgy Shakhnazarov)
3. The New Yorker: David Remnick, Land Without Giants. Sakharov and the Russia that might have been.
4. Christian Science Monitor: Fred Weir, Russia battles its sex trade. An unprecedented media and civic campaign to warn rural girls starts today. 
5. strana.ru: Russians prefer to see the electricity generating and distributing industry totally in the hands of the state.
6. Interfax: Russian church calls for "national spiritual security" 
7. Le Monde diplomatique: Karine Clement, WORKERS LIVING BY THEIR WITS. New ways of saying no.
8. Moscow Times: Yulia Latynina, From Sprats to Diamonds: Just Add Gas.
9. Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS): Dmitri Glinski-Vassiliev, The Politics of Labor Code Reform in Putin's Russia.
10. RFE/RL: Paul Goble, Federalism And Its Discontents.
11. BBC Monitoring: Collective farm denies communal services to farmers wishing to leave.
12. AFP: Mixed results, less power, after Kasyanov's year as Russian PM.
13. strana.ru: Sergei Markov: "Only a pro-Russia president can be elected democratically in Ukraine"] 

*******

#1
Number of mentally ill children in Russia increased by 20 per cent 
Itar-Tass

Moscow, 15 May: In the past five years, the incidence of mental disorders
among children and teenagers in Russia has increased by 20 per cent. Mental
illness became one of the main reasons for poor performance at school,
exemption from the army draft and teenage crime. 

These problems were discussed today at a session of the Russian Health
Ministry's collegium. The ministry's head of department Anatoliy Korsunskiy
pointed out that one out of three children with psychological problems has
some form of mental deficiency. One in two teenagers registered with a
psychiatrist is diagnosed as mentally deficient. The situation with
children under three is getting even more alarming. Fifteen toddlers out of
100 have some form of psychological disorder. 

Psychological disorders are more frequent among children in boarding
schools, orphans and children from dysfunctional families. An increasing
number of cases are caused by alcoholism and drug addiction. For every
100,000 children, 762 are registered alcoholics or drug addicts. Police
records show that 20 per cent of teenage crimes are committed under the
influence of alcohol. 

[Passage omitted: ministry recommends amendments to the existing
legislation to help early diagnosis of psychological disorders in young
people] 

********

#2
Top Gorbachev Aide Dies
May 15, 2001

MOSCOW (AP) - Georgy Shakhnazarov, a close aide to Mikhail Gorbachev before, 
during and after the tumult of the 1991 Soviet collapse, has died at age 77. 

Shakhnazarov was headed to the town of Yasnaya Polyana south of Moscow after 
a giving a speech in the nearby city of Tula when he died, the Interfax and 
ITAR-Tass news agencies and Russian television reported Tuesday. The cause 
and date of death were not reported. 

Born in 1924, Shakhnazarov fought with the Red Army against the Nazis in 
World War II in Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states, according to an 
official biography. 

He graduated from Azerbaijan State University, and earned a doctorate in 
political science and philosophy. A member of the Russian Academy of Sciences 
and the Communist Party, he rose to political heights amid the reforms of the 
1980s. 

He became aide to then-Soviet leader Gorbachev in 1988. Shakhnazarov 
championed Gorbachev's policies that ultimately, if unintentionally, helped 
lead to the end of the Cold War and his country's disintegration into 15 
independent nations. 

But Shakhnazarov was critical of Gorbachev's successor Boris Yeltsin and the 
way he took over Russia. 

Shakhnazarov also was a lawmaker in the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies 
during 1989-1992. He became a key figure at the foundation that Gorbachev 
created after resigning, and remained affiliated with the foundation until 
his death. 

There was no immediate information on survivors or funeral arrangements. 

*******

#3
The New Yorker
May 21, 2001
COMMENT
Land Without Giants 
Sakharov and the Russia that might have been.
by David Remnick

THE MISSING MAN

Vanity is no small component of political ambition, so the American
Founders, like the British royals they ousted, hired portrait painters to
capture their images. Posterity, they were convinced, would be grateful.
They were right; we are grateful for even the secondary
documents—Washington's Farewell Address, the Jefferson-Adams letters—and
Gilbert Stuart's canvases, too. The greatest share of our shared good
fortune resides in that spontaneous combustion of thought and action, the
freakish appearance of a highly varied array of Enlightenment thinkers who,
for all their differences and blind spots, established the permanent
arrangements of American liberty.

This summer, the Russian people will commemorate (at least in some muted,
rueful form) the tenth anniversary of the collapse of the "August coup,"
which led to the first flickers of democratic nationhood in their
thousand-year history. Expect no triumphal fanfare, no fireworks. Expect no
portraits of the first Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, or of his
successor, Vladimir Putin. (Russians with a memory of Soviet
iconography—those enormous Orwellian faces parading by on May Day—have no
need of more portraits.) Hopes have lately receded to the vanishing point,
but there was a time, particularly in the early nineties, when mention of
"democratic Russia" was neither ironic nor disdainful. There was talk,
however naïve, of a historic miracle, of a peaceful transition from
autocracy to popular governance, of Russian constitutionalism. A decade
later, the basic institutions of public administration and welfare are in
catastrophic condition, wide-scale corruption is the economic norm, and the
guarantors of liberty are, at best, in jeopardy. Yeltsin, who had begun
with such bravado, lumbered out of office a moribund and degraded man—but
not before endorsing Putin, a career officer in the secret police. The
country is now so demoralized that it has readily accepted Putin's implicit
grand bargain: to suspend further democratic transition in favor of
essential order. Putin's popular support is enormous, and there is no
opposition. Symbols of the Soviet state, including the old anthem, have
been brought back. More than half the Russian people favor a return to
state censorship.

As the years have gone by, it has become clear that among the most
significant differences between late-eighteenth-century America and
post-Soviet Russia is their respective founding generations. Moral and
intellectual leadership may be a luxury item in a mature state, but it
seems a necessity in the earliest days. Russians habitually think of their
country as both great and star-crossed, and perhaps its worst stroke of bad
luck in recent times was that Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov did not live
longer than he did. Sakharov, who died in December of 1989, would have been
eighty this month. As a thinker, as a man of uncanny judgment and courage,
he was the one figure in the drama of the Soviet collapse who was the equal
of Jefferson, Adams, and the rest.

Sakharov's original renown, along with his unique plane of regard, came
from science. He was one of the finest physicists of his generation, an
inventor of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. Then, like something out of
mythology, the creator of a force capable of destroying the world tried to
save it; Sakharov turned against the bomb, calling on Khrushchev to uphold
a moratorium on nuclear testing, and then became the leader of the
dissident movement. For years, his modest apartment, on Chkalova Street in
Moscow, seemed the moral center of an immoral empire. Working with his
wife, Elena Bonner, he wrote essays, signed petitions, gave interviews,
went on hunger strikes, visited courtrooms and prisons, and generally used
the prestige of his first career to stand up to the Soviet leadership.
Finally, in 1980, the Politburo exiled him to the closed city of Gorky, and
he lived there until December of 1986, when Mikhail Gorbachev, in an effort
to win support from the West and from his own country's intellectuals,
brought him home. "Go back to your patriotic work!" Gorbachev nervily told
him. As a member of the new Congress of People's Deputies, Sakharov
transformed the causes of the dissident movement into founding principles
for a potential democratic state. Like Chekhov, he called on all Russians
to squeeze from themselves the last vestiges of slavery.

Were Sakharov alive today, he would surely be campaigning in opposition to
Putin. He would make every attempt to rouse the Russian public from its
apathy and the Bush Administration from its decision to disengage. He would
not allow the political discussion in Russia to reside in one place, in the
Kremlin; he would not allow technocratic order to pass for human idealism.
"Other civilizations, perhaps more successful ones, may exist an infinite
number of times on the preceding and following pages of the Book of the
Universe," Sakharov wrote in his Nobel Prize lecture. "Yet we should not
minimize our sacred endeavors in the world, where, like faint glimmers in
the dark, we have emerged for a moment from the nothingness of
unconsciousness into material existence. We must make good the demands of
reason and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly
perceive." Sakharov's was a higher order of political and human ambition
than anything now heard across Russia, and, until his inheritors appear, it
will be hard to think of the country as more than a dream gone wrong.

*******

#4
Christian Science Monitor
16 May 2001
Russia battles its sex trade
An unprecedented media and civic campaign to warn rural girls starts today. 
By Fred Weir 
Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Lena, a Russian woman in her 20s, still remembers the friendly middle-aged
woman who spun a tale of her own daughter going abroad and sending cash
home to her mother. Lena leapt at the chance to go to Greece as a maid. 

But the day Lena arrived, her employers seized her passport, beat her, and
forced her to work as a prostitute. 

A year later, back in Russia, Lena says she is filled with anger and shame,
but is going public with her ordeal for the sake of an estimated 50,000
Russian women who are lured into sexual slavery abroad each year by fake
job offers. 

This is not a new problem here, nor is it exclusive to Russia. But several
factors have converged to make Russia one of the world's leading exporters
of involuntary prostitutes. 

In an effort to disrupt this sex trade, the first-ever large-scale
public-awareness campaign on this sensitive issue will get off the ground
in Moscow today, with 600 volunteers distributing leaflets, and a media
blitz made possible by free air time on state-owned TV stations. 

"We have brought together 43 regional organizations, and hope to make
generally known the facts of the criminal flesh trade," says Valentina
Gorchakova, executive director of the Angel Coalition, the umbrella group
that is sponsoring the campaign. "Until now, the voices of the victims have
not been heard, and very many women remain unaware of the dangers of
slavery." 

The campaign is being supported financially by several Western women's
groups and charity organizations. 

But Ms. Gorchakova says the main resources to keep it going will have to be
raised in Russia. "We couldn't have gotten this off the ground without
foreign help," she says. "But if we want to spread this message across the
country, we need to organize our own people. This sort of campaign is a
rather new and unfamiliar thing in Russia, so that isn't going to be easy." 

The group has mobilized volunteers in Moscow to distribute leaflets and
place informative posters at the private employment centers, newspapers
that run fake job ads, and tour agencies that - sometimes unwittingly, say
campaigners - act as fronts for the traffickers. 

"I'm appalled at the numbers of Russian women who have fallen victim to
this racket," says Julie Pedersen, an American charity worker who is
helping with the campaign. "This is a problem in many countries, but in
Russia it's a mass phenomenon. And it should be so simple to fight, just by
making information widely available." 

Desperate for work in rural Russia 

The problem, say women's activists, is less severe in Moscow and other
large Russian cities, where there are at least some real job opportunities
for young women, and information about potential criminal dangers is more
widespread. 

"In many small provincial cities and towns, women have no chances to find a
job," says Maria Mokhova, executive director of Sisters, a Moscow-based
charity group that works with victims of sexual violence. "We see so many
women who have been led into slavery through a combination of economic
desperation, ignorance about the world, and psychological restlessness,"
she says. "There are no reliable statistics about this, but I'm sure the
problem is much bigger than anyone thinks." 

In a 1999 survey sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for
Women, 20 percent of Russian respondents reported knowing someone who had
been pressed into sexual slavery. 

The Angel Coalition estimates at least half a million Russian women have
experienced this ordeal over the past decade, in some 50 foreign countries.
That list includes the United States, but the main destinations for Russian
sex slaves are Germany, Italy, Greece, Belgium, China, and the Persian Gulf
States, says Gorchakova. 

In some Middle Eastern countries, Russian women's names have become slang
for prostitute. 

Pattern of deceit 

Typically, women are lured by advertisements or recruiters who promise
well-paid jobs as maids, nannies, waitresses, or dishwashers in a foreign
country. Tour agencies working with the criminal gangs provide visas,
arrange transportation, and often keep up the fiction by reassuring the
victims that all is normal and legitimate. 

When the woman arrives in the designated country, she is met by local
criminals, who seize her passport, warn her she is in the country
"illegally," and tell her she must pay off the "debt" for her travel
expenses. Many victims report brutal violence, sexual abuse, and long
periods of confinement. 

"This can happen because there is large-scale cooperation between criminal
gangs, shady businesses, and corrupt officials within Russia. But there are
also strong working links with international crime," says Viktor
Pokhmelkin, a member of the legislation commission in the Duma, Russia's
lower house of parliament. "Sex slavery is a vast and lucrative global
criminal enterprise, like arms smuggling or narcotics trafficking." 

Lena managed to escape from her captors and went to the police in Greece.
She was deported back to Russia. But even when they return, women can find
themselves subject to threats and extortion from the hometown gangs that
recruited them in the first place. 

"It is so hard to get victims to give evidence," says Ms. Mokhova. "We see
this all the time. Women we work with are overcome with shame and living in
terror of retribution against their families if they talk about what
happened to them." 

Getting Lena and four other women to agree to go public with their stories
was difficult, say the organizers. 

Russia's lack of reliable law enforcement is one major reason the flesh
trade thrives on such a huge scale, but it does not explain how the trade
continues to find thousands of new victims each month. 

"You have to see this in the context of our post-Soviet moral malaise,"
says Galina Sillaste, president of the Women and Development Association,
an academic group. "There has been a collapse of public morality, and most
community controls have completely eroded. Nowadays the thing is to make
money by any means possible. Our society has become utterly criminalized.
Young women, who are unprotected, vulnerable, and naive, make easy targets." 

It is those women that the Angel Coalition hopes to reach, with the aid of
volunteers and supportive Russian media organizations. "We're not trying to
do anything impossible here, like fighting crime or breaking the mafia,"
says Gorchakova. "We are just aiming to get one simple message across to
every Russian woman, so that the next time she sees a job offer that looks
like the answer to her prayers, she'll know for sure that it's an
invitation to visit hell." 

*******

#5
strana.ru 
May 15, 2001
Russians prefer to see the electricity generating and distributing industry 
totally in the hands of the state

The Russian people are interested in reforming natural monopolies in the very 
direct, mercantile sense. They are tired of the race of tariffs for 
transportation, electricity and so on that has been going on all the years of 
reform. They are eager to find out how the coming reforms of monopolies will 
affect their standards of living. 

An opinion poll conducted half a year ago demonstrated that only 9% of the 
Russians know definitely what natural monopolies really are. 31% of the 
respondents "heard" about them, while 47% heard about them for the first 
time. 

However, even such knowledge did not prevent the population from expressing 
their attitude towards the idea of reforming RAO Unified Energy Systems (UES) 
of Russia. For instance, the majority of the population still believes that 
only control on the part of the state can offer reliable guarantees for the 
stable functioning of the life sustenance system in the country.

According to the data from the Russian Public Opinion Poll Center, 60% of the 
respondents consider that the power generating and distributing industry will 
work better if UES is placed fully into the hands of the state. Another 58% 
are convinced that the federal budget will receive larger revenues in the 
event that this industry is nationalized. And only 10% believe that the 
country will fair off better when UES is divided into several private 
companies.

When the Russians were asked what they would choose: to allow UES to remain a 
joint stock company belonging to the state and private Russian and foreign 
companies or to transform it into a totally state structure, the majority of 
the population (73%) opted for the second version.

*******

#6
Russian church calls for "national spiritual security" 
Interfax 

Moscow, 15 May: The Moscow Patriarchate has announced that the total annual 
budget of foreign sects operating in Russia amounts to 150m dollars and is 
several times greater than the budget of the Russian Orthodox Church. 

"Russia has been inundated with sects, including those banned in the West - 
totalitarian sects dangerous for the mental, moral and physical health of the 
younger generation. Really, the time has come to talk about national 
spiritual security," Archbishop Aleksandr of Kostroma and Galich, who heads 
the Moscow Patriarchate's department for youth affairs, said in an interview 
with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. 

"We are witnessing a real expansion of totalitarian sects and a deliberate 
campaign to destroy the holy Orthodox religion," he said. 

In these conditions the Russian Orthodox Church must rebuff the foreign 
missionaries' offensive, the archbishop said. "The Patriarchate's department 
for youth affairs has set itself the task of using the Internet in its 
project Nevod (Sweepnet). The Internet realm is to be filled with a content 
that will grip the human spirit," he said. 

*******

#7
Le Monde diplomatique 
May 2001
WORKERS LIVING BY THEIR WITS
New ways of saying no
by our special correspondent KARINE CLEMENT

Opposition to exploitation and dehumanisation in Russia comes in various
guises that may not be immediately obvious. All those workers with insecure
jobs, who make up the bulk of the population and are apparently plumbing
the depths of society, turn out to be quite different once you stop looking
down at them from the lofty heights of the Kremlin. But there is that gulf.
To the average Russian, it seems unbridgeable, and deters public
demonstrations of opposition. The real problem is that the façade of
democracy confers legitimacy on the new capitalists and those with clout,
and thwarts protest by discrediting or concealing, hijacking or repressing
it. 

Nonetheless, public protest does occasionally surface. Sometimes the
protesters manage to get the authorities to retreat, within the factory, in
the city, the region and, less frequently, the country. In that context,
the people of Astrakhan are extraordinarily combative and dynamic. The
region is one of the main strongholds of a new leftwing trade union called
Zaschita (Defence). Since 1995, Zaschita has been heavily involved in
fighting for social justice. It now has a presence in more than 50
factories and is helping set up many associations for pensioners, small
traders, refugees and even people living in the poorer districts. 

Last year the assassination of the young co-chairman of the regional trade
union, Oleg Maksakov, sent shock waves through the population. Before he
was shot in the back, he had been campaigning for election to the regional
assembly and was conducting an investigation into the financial dealings of
several of the region's bosses. Anger at his death and popular mobilisation
prompted the election to the state Duma of another trade union leader, Oleg
Shein. It is a measure of the courage of these men and women, who dare to
defy management or the local leadership, that they come under great
pressure immediately a trade union cell is set up or any kind of action
begun. 

In June 1998, for example, 102 workers in a construction company were
sacked. They all happened to be members of Zaschita . That provocation
sparked major regional mobilisation. A tent village was set up, a permanent
picket outside the regional government offices. With workers camped out in
front of his windows, the governor had no choice but to meet the strikers. 

Monitoring committees that include representatives of the camp have been
established, and have identified an astonishing number of illegal acts by
various managers. Personal villas had been built practically free of
charge; company funds transferred offshore; material and equipment
sold/donated to firms belonging to members of the management and funds
misappropriated. There had been unwarranted personal expenses, exorbitant
senior management salaries and so on. The conflict had a positive outcome
for the protesters who were paid and reinstated. The trade union emerged
strengthened and even managed to get the regional public prosecutor
dismissed – he had shut his eyes to the managers' actions and on several
occasions instructed the police to charge the demonstrators. 

Limited resources, plenty of influence 

Its resources may be limited, but Zaschita has enormous influence in the
region. It may never be mentioned in the national press, but everyone knows
about it. The work of mobilising and educating continues daily.
Representatives come to explain to the newly formed trade unions – the
trolley-bus drivers for instance – what Zaschita is, what the trade
unionists can expect from it and the risks of belonging to a trade union
without management approval. 

There are dozens of militants like them. The result is plain to see: a vast
network of trade unionists and sympathisers with varied and uncertain
ideologies. These people have very different backgrounds, motivation and
ideas, but all are united in their determination to oppose arbitrary
decisions and the denial of their rights and dignity. The chatty and
affable Igor, for example, a chubby Georgian trader who is helping Zaschita
because it was "born beneath the red flag." Or the charming and dynamic
Irina. A young single mother, she runs a stall at one of the city's markets
and one day decided to stop putting up with "the administrative harassment
and taxes that cripple small traders". Or the fantastic and fabulous Tania
who has relaunched the old trade union in a suburban school to demand that
wages be paid. Then there are Alexander, Sergei and the rest of the
unshakeable "Vega Ten" (1). For two years now they have been fighting
Gazprom and the justice system throughout the country to gain recognition
of the harm they suffered as a result of unknowingly working in contact
with nuclear radiation for ten years. 

Men, and particularly women, living in workers' housing in a "unique health
and safety environment" on the outskirts of Astrakhan, come out on to the
streets to demand to be rehoused by the management of the gas-production
company. It has been poisoning them for years and feigns to have forgotten
its obligation to the local population, recruited at the time to build the
plant and housed in huts designed to provide "temporary" accommodation in
the 1980s. 

People's committees have been set up to organise the struggle, most of them
led by women. Such is their anger at the corrupt justice system and the
cynicism of Gazprom that they are prepared to do anything. They even
threatened the governor with rebellion when he refused to meet the
demonstrators: "They went so far as to sack all the former workers to avoid
having to rehouse them. And now, penniless, in huts that are falling down,
we're supposed to wait patiently till we die of poisoning. No chance, we
shall fight to the bitter end. The people are mobilised and stand shoulder
to shoulder. Some even come to join us from Astrakhan" (2), say Tanya and
Elvira, both people's committee leaders. After several days of meetings and
road-blockades, they forced the local authorities and the managers of
Gazprom Astrakhan to draw up a rehousing scheme, its implementation to be
supervised by the people's committees. 

(1) Le Monde, 14 September 2000.

(2) See interview at http://www.left.ru
 
Translated by Julie Stoker

********

#8
Moscow Times
May 16, 2001
From Sprats to Diamonds: Just Add Gas
By Yulia Latynina 

Well, finally. Now they'll pay us for our gas," was what most of the media
had to say when news broke that former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin
had been named ambassador to Kiev. And, indeed, Ukraine presently owes
Gazprom $2.2 billion that, to put things in perspective, would be enough to
buy half a percent of Microsoft's shares or — to use another measure —
Ukraine's entire industrial base.

However, common sense tells us that not all of this money is really
properly described as "debt." In fact, one could even argue that none of it
is. Let me illustrate with a concrete example, the story of Rospan.

For the last few years, Gazprom has held a controlling stake in Rospan,
which has been developing the enormous Eastern Urengoi gas field. Rospan
approached Gazprom for money to pay off its suppliers, but instead of cash,
the company was given 2 billion cubic meters of gas. 

Of course, Rospan couldn't sell this gas itself, so Gazprom instructed it
to use Itera. Itera is an offshore company registered in Jacksonville,
Florida, to which Gazprom transferred — among other things — the exclusive
right to sell gas in Ukraine. Itera sold Rospan's gas and — surprise! —
Itera's Ukrainian customers never paid for it. Naturally, Itera never paid
Rospan. 

Subsequently, though, Itera found enough money to buy up Rospan's debts and
to begin bankruptcy proceedings against the company. Some cynics have
suggested that Itera bought up Rospan's debts with the money it received by
selling Rospan's gas. At the very least, the authorities should be asking
why Itera sold Rospan's gas without receiving payment.

But there's the rub. You see, Gazprom conducts all its transactions within
the former Soviet Union in rubles, while the controlling organs only verify
transactions conducted in hard currency. Only the tax inspectorate is
interested in ruble transactions, and it is only interested in making sure
that proper duties are paid. If no money is actually paid, the tax
authorities are not interested.

The price of Ukrainian transit gas is inflated. And they pay for this
insanely overpriced gas using still more insanely overvalued barter
arrangements. When used to buy gas, canned sprats in tomato sauce are
valued as if they were diamonds. These diamond sprats are then foisted off
on administrations in places like Novy Urengoi as tax payments. Eventually,
not even specialists can sort out where the sprats begin and where the
diamonds end, since every stage of the transaction is protected by some
interest or another.

The central press has lauded the Kremlin for the Chernomyrdin appointment.
Izvestia wrote that it "is a genuinely extraordinary presidential idea,"
"original" and "effective." However, when you consider that the gas-debt
problem is just a consequence of the universally advantageous process of
turning sprats into diamonds, the move doesn't seem so interesting.
Ambassador Chernomyrdin is not likely to improve Russia's position so much
as to merely place limits on the appetites of one of the Gazprom clans —
the one that shelters and nurtures the all-powerful Itera. 

Therefore, it is best to interpret the appointment as a victory for
Chernomyrdin personally and as another stage in the struggle within
Gazprom, for Gazprom. 

And, considering the example of Pavel Borodin, Chernomyrdin may find that
having a diplomatic passport is a handy thing, too.

Yulia Latynina is a journalist for ORT.

*******

#9
Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS)
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ponars/memos.html
Policy Memo Series 
Memo No. 197
PONARS, 2001

The Politics of Labor Code Reform in Putin's Russia
By Dmitri Glinski-Vassiliev
Dmitri Glinski-Vassiliev (Ph.D., IMEMO, 2000) is Senior Associate at the 
Institute for World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) of the 
Russian Academy of Sciences. He is co-author with Peter Reddaway of The 
Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy (2001: US 
Institute of Peace Press)
IMEMO--May 2001

The corps of deputies, the government and trade unions have differing 
views of the labor code...I am counting on the parliament to speed up 
the process of finalizing and adopting the labor code on the basis 
of the government's draft. I said on the basis of it, on the basis. 
Vladimir Putin, Annual Address to the 
Federal Assembly. April 2, 2001 

The recent announcement of a merger between the pro-Kremlin Unity party and 
Yuri Luzhkov's Fatherland movement (arguably the foremost anti-Kremlin force 
in the 1999 Duma campaign) was viewed by knowledgeable observers in the 
context of the Putin administration's efforts to prevent an impending crisis 
in the Duma over the issue that starkly divided the two parties--reform of 
the labor code. During the last several months, labor legislation has emerged 
as one of the most controversial and divisive subjects at the top of the 
political agenda. The government, while enjoying a comfortable majority on 
most other issues in the generally docile Duma, barely escaped defeat on the 
labor code in December 2000, and has had every reason for concern about the 
forthcoming debate over this legislation this coming May or June. (It should 
be noted that the proclivity of NTV, in contrast to the government-owned 
stations, to give voice to politicians and labor activists opposing the 
government draft was an additional irritant, as the extra publicity only 
aggravated the Kremlin's difficulties and may have transformed the issue into 
a focal point of broad societal discontent with the government.) 

The Context for Labor Reform 

Labor reform is one of the Russian government's long-standing obligations to 
the international financial community. International financing for the 
drafting of the new labor code was obtained from the World Bank as early as 
October 1997, as part of the $28.6 million Social Protection Implementation 
Loan. The government of Sergei Kiriyenko--in a July 16, 1998 joint memorandum 
with the Central Bank on the policies of economic and financial stabilization 
based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities--committed 
itself (and its successors) to ensuring passage of the new code through the 
parliament. In particular, the authors of the memorandum demanded "a more 
simplified procedure for dissolving individual labor agreements (such as 
excluding the need for the consent of trade unions)." 

Bound by these obligations, Yevgeny Primakov's cabinet in February 1999 
submitted the IMF-inspired draft of the new code to the Duma, but was 
lukewarm in lobbying for it. The leadership of the revamped Soviet-era labor 
unions--the Federation of Independent Unions of Russia (FNPR), and its 
recently established political wing, the Union of Labor--enlisted themselves 
in active support of the Luzhkov-Primakov electoral alliance, Fatherland-All 
Russia (OVR), with the hope of transforming it from an assembly of regional 
nomenklatura bosses into a Western-style social democratic party. Some of the 
FNPR activists and ideologues were elected to the Duma via the OVR slate. 
Then they initiated their own alternative draft of the labor code (the 
"Project of Eight," taking its name from the number of its original 
sponsors), which was submitted to the Duma in May 2000. In essence, it was an 
attempt to preserve some of the basic guarantees and privileges of both union 
officials and workers that exist in the present labor code, which dates back 
to 1971. 

At the time of this writing, there are five alternative drafts officially 
under consideration (including one originating from Yabloko, one hardline 
version of the government project supported by Unity and Zhirinovsky's 
Liberal Democratic Party, and one radical, labor-empowering draft sponsored 
by an alternative post-Communist union, Zashchita Truda). Some government 
critics also object to the FNPR's "Project of Eight," which they see as 
skewed toward the interests of the unions rather than the interests of the 
labor force. However, taking into account the actual balance of power in the 
Duma, the real struggle has been going on between those who have lined up 
behind the government-sponsored draft and the supporters of the FNPR's 
"Project of Eight." In the course of last fall's parliamentary hearings, the 
latter camp included both OVR and the Communist Party with their Duma allies, 
the Agro-Industrial group and Regions of Russia, and could further rely upon 
individual supporters from Yabloko and even the Union of Right-Wing Forces, 
thus potentially depriving the government of the required majority. This 
situation compelled the government to postpone the debate until this spring 
and refer the issue to a multilateral negotiating commission consisting of 
representatives of government, employers, and unions, as well as different 
Duma factions. 

How the Government and FNPR Drafts Differ 

There have been two clusters of basic disagreement between the government and 
FNPR drafts: differences over the rights of workers, and differences over the 
rights of unions. The following is a list of the most important points of 
contention regarding rights of workers: 
The length of the working day. The government-sponsored draft discards the 
existing standard (which predates the Bolshevik revolution) of a 40-hour work 
week and allows instead for the working day to be "voluntarily" extended up 
to four more hours, with up to 16 hours of overtime work weekly (overtime 
work is to be paid at the regular hourly rate). Unions object, saying anyone 
can be compelled by poverty to extend his working day "voluntarily;" 
The government draft encourages the broader use of limited-term contracts 
between companies and employees at companies' discretion--unions object to 
this; 
Maternity leave. The government draft cuts down the duration of benefits 
associated with maternity leave from 3 to 1 1/2 years; 
Education leave. The provisions of the government draft retain the option for 
students to receive paid leave for examination periods--but only if their 
study is in the same field as their present employment. Opponents say this 
modification will block social mobility and restrict access to education for 
the lower classes. 

As regards the rights of unions, their curtailment in the government draft 
primarily boils down to abrogating unions' right to intervene in both the 
firing process and in making decisions on the composition of company 
management. But given that the opposition in the Duma is represented by union 
officials rather than by workers, it was predictable that the disagreements 
over union rights would prove much more contentious than those over workers' 
rights--especially at the latest stage of the negotiating commission's work. 
Union officials obviously fear that reducing their role to mere consultations 
with management, coupled with divesting enterprises of their social 
infrastructure and responsibilities, will deprive union membership of 
practical meaning. 

There is merit to these concerns, since--given the destruction of the 
collectivist ethic in Russia's pulverized society and the cannibalistic forms 
of exploitation that currently prevail--the unions' legal rights to block 
certain management decisions have remained their major source of relevance. 
Whatever the advantages of the government-sponsored legislation might be from 
the point of view of international financial institutions and investors, the 
elimination of the unions' decision-making role in the enterprises would mean 
another blow to Russia's severely crippled civil society (hence the 
increasing support for the unions' demands on the part of some legislators 
that have a clear record as market reformers on other issues). 
Characteristically, the government's anti-union stance has not been supported 
by the corporate representatives in the negotiating commission. Some of the 
business executives, while being more insistent than the government as 
regards restrictions on labor rights and benefits, have been more forthcoming 
on compromises over the legal authority of the unions. 

The effort on behalf of the unions is led not just by the Soviet-era 
nomenklatura officials who have long been detached from the labor force, but 
also by some of the founders and veterans of Russia's democratic movement of 
the 1980s, such as Duma Deputy Andrei Isaev. In the run-up to the December 
hearings, the unions--both FNPR and Zashchita Truda--mounted a nationwide 
campaign in support of their respective drafts of legislation. The union of 
defense industry workers, in particular, called for Labor Minister Alexander 
Pochinok to resign. 

The Putin Administration's Role 

In this situation, the Ministry of Labor has shown some willingness to 
compromise on key issues. But this was recently offset by the apparently 
hardening stance of the Kremlin. President Putin's emphasis in his 
parliamentary address on the urgent need to adopt the labor code on the basis 
of the government draft is a case in point. As reflected in the official 
record (see the quotation that begins this paper), this was the only instance 
in which the president's speech was interrupted by a clamor of disagreement 
from the Duma benches. 

It was allegedly at this point that the decision was made within the 
administration to put more pressure on Yuri Luzhkov to persuade him to merge 
his party with Unity. That one of the purposes of this unification was to 
speed up the adoption of the labor code was publicly acknowledged by Unity 
officials. In this way, the unions' most vocal advocates are supposed to be 
silenced or forced to exit from Fatherland, a move that is likely to 
marginalize--and radicalize--them even further. It remains to be seen in the 
coming weeks whether this strategy will bring success to the Kremlin and the 
government in their effort to dismantle the remains of the 80-year-old 
legislation protecting labor interests. 

*******

#10
Russia: Analysis From Washington -- Federalism And Its Discontents
By Paul Goble

Washington, 15 May 2001 (RFE/RL) -- The presidential envoy system set up a 
year ago has helped President Vladimir Putin to recentralize control over 
some aspects of Russian life. But that system contains within itself the 
seeds of further disintegration of the country should Putin lose power or be 
replaced by a weaker leader. 

Indeed, the Moscow newspaper "Trud" put that possibility at the center of its 
analysis. In an unsigned review of the work of the presidential envoys to the 
seven federal districts Putin established in May 2000, the paper said that on 
balance and at the current stage these have been "more useful than harmful." 
But it warned of possible dangers ahead, especially if these entities are 
enshrined in the constitution.

According to the paper, the dangers of these institutions arise because the 
seven federal districts "practically coincide with the military districts" of 
the country. That is no problem, it suggests, as long as the president is 
strong and the envoys are "thoroughly controlled by the federal government." 

"But someday," the paper continues, "the president may become weak, or there 
may be no president at all. In this case, a serious regional crisis may 
start: Russia may be divided into seven independent countries. Thus, the 
country will overfulfill Zbigniew Brzezinski's plan. As is well known, he has 
long been suggesting that Russia be divided into three countries." 

This risk and the central government's efforts to counter it have been very 
much on public view both during the twelve months that the presidential 
envoys have existed and during the entire history of center-periphery 
relations in Russia for almost two hundred years. 

When Putin created the seven federal districts and named special presidential 
envoys to head them a year ago, many politicians and analysts in Russia 
suggested that this was a bold but potentially dangerous move. If Putin 
failed to give them real powers, these observers said, the envoys would 
become yet another dead layer of bureaucracy, one that would do little to 
promote greater central control.

But if Putin gave these figures enough room for maneuver, these observers 
noted, then the envoys would both build their own independent power bases and 
pursue their own agendas, even if they pursued his as well. That is what has 
happened. On the one hand, the envoy system has certainly helped to promote 
the harmonization of legislation across the country and weaken the power of 
the governors.

On the other hand, each of the current envoys appears to have his own agenda, 
a program that in the absence of a powerful leader could lead them to 
challenge the center. Putin's power of appointment and his own popular 
support limit that possibility for the time being, but these are personal 
qualities which a successor might not have or easily acquire. 

Since at least 1825, when a Decembrist leader called for dividing Russia into 
thirteen states and Nicholas I responded by carving up the regions to limit 
their power to block central initiatives, Russia has seen a tug of war 
between the center and its far-flung possessions.

Throughout the 19th century, the tsars routinely redivided the regions and 
sent in outsiders as governors to try to control the situation. They also 
used the police powers of the state to break up regional challenges as when 
they tried and convicted the Siberian "oblastniki," or regionalists, in the 
1860s. 

After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Soviet authorities did much the 
same thing, subdividing the regions of the RSFSR just as they did portions of 
the non-Russian periphery of the country to prevent challenges and using the 
crosscutting power of the Communist Party apparatus and the security organs 
to further limit regional challenges. 

But with the decay of Soviet power first under Leonid Brezhnev and then under 
Mikhail Gorbachev, the regions assumed ever greater powers, frequently in 
areas such as foreign policy that represented a direct challenge to the 
center. That was summed up in Boris Yeltsin's famous injunction to the 
regions to "take as much sovereignty as you can swallow." 

Putin is trying to reverse this process, and he has had some notable 
successes. But as the "Trud" commentary suggests, he has not yet found a way 
out of the problems inherent in the history of Russian federalism, problems 
that make it difficult for either the center or the periphery to escape a 
zero-sum relationship and that create risks for the country's integrity 
whenever its leadership grows weak.

******

#11
BBC Monitoring
Russia: Collective farm denies communal services to farmers wishing to leave 
Source: Centre TV, Moscow, in Russian 0900 gmt 15 May 01 

[Presenter] Extraordinary events are taking place on the Altay collective 
farm "The Road to Communism". A number of members have decided to privatize 
their land and leave the collective. In retaliation the management of the 
collective farm has unleashed a veritable campaign of terror against them. 
The renegades are being refused service in shops and hospitals. They are 
denied entry to the local House of Culture and are not even allowed to take 
walks in the local woodland. Asya Mayorova reports. 

[Correspondent] A veritable campaign of repression has been unleashed on 
farmers of "The Road to Communism" collective farm in Altay Territory after 
their decision to assume ownership of their portion of the collective's land. 
For simply expressing this wish they have been deprived of all the fruits of 
civilization. "The Road to Communism" is a well-respected collective farm in 
the Territory. It consistently brings in an annual profit and its members 
receive their wages on time. There is only one problem: there's a lot of 
people in the village and little land. Therefore there are many unemployed 
individuals who do not benefit from the farm's large profits even though they 
are members. 

[Passage omitted: incoherent explanation by farmer of motives for wishing to 
withdraw from the collective] 

[Correspondent] For this reason 29 individuals decided to transfer their lots 
in the collective to local businessman Aleksandr Golovachev. A general 
meeting of the farm was called to discuss this issue; then the management 
took a decision. It is a unique document of our times: seemingly 
market-oriented, but at the same time redolent of Soviet practices. The 
management forbade all those who decided to leave the collective farm from 
being served in shops, hospitals, mills, sowing mills and bakeries. They will 
be allowed to use ambulances only in the case of real emergencies, and the 
services of the local firemen will be available only to those of them who 
make an advance payment. The excommunicated individuals have also been 
deprived of the right to enter the House of Culture, the right to graze their 
cattle on common pasture land and the right to take walks in the local 
forest. 

[Passage omitted: incoherent, vehement protests of one of the outlawed 
farmers] 

[Correspondent] But the resolution was supported by many, including the head 
of the District administration, who has little faith in private agriculture. 

[Nikolay Lyudtsev, captioned as head of the administration of Zavyalovskiy 
District] Hectare for hectare, collectively-owned land contributes almost 100 
times more to the budget than privately-owned land. 

[Correspondent] The chairman of the collective farm, too, has no doubts about 
the correctness of the decision. 

[Viktor Reus, captioned as chairman of the collective farm "The Road to 
Communism"] I know life, and I know it first hand. If they see private 
farmers on the take, then they'll all start stealing and taking part in 
criminal activity. We can't have that. Either everyone or no-one [must leave 
the collective] - that's the rule. Like in the Soviet Army. 

[Passage omitted: daughter of one of the excommunicated farmers was not 
picked up by an ambulance after being bitten by an insect] 

[Correspondent] Nobody is in a rush to give [those who want to leave the 
farm] land. Both sides are waiting for a court resolution. In the meantime, 
some of the members have had second thoughts and have lodged applications to 
be taken back into the collective farm. 

******

#12
Mixed results, less power, after Kasyanov's year as Russian PM

MOSCOW, May 15 (AFP) - 
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov marks one year in office Thursday 
with mixed results from sluggish economic reform and an obvious downgrading 
of the premier's power under President Vladimir Putin.

"As long as Boris Yeltsin was in power, the prime minister of the day had 
more or less a free hand because the former president was weak and the 
parliament hostile to the government," observes Christopher Granville, Russia 
analyst with the United Financial Group.

Since being elected in March 2000, however, the more dynamic Putin has moved 
quickly to claw back powers long ago abdicated by his ailing predecessor and 
mentor -- something he has been able to accomplish due to his soaring 
popularity in the opinion polls.

Indeed Putin marked the anniversary of his landslide election victory by 
stamping his authority on the cabinet with the appointments of two key 
henchmen, Sergei Ivanov and Boris Gryzlov, as defence and interior ministers 
respectively.

The reshuffle left Kasyanov, 43, who was confirmed as prime minister by the 
State Duma lower house on May 17, 2000, in something of a power vacuum 
exacerbated by Putin's almost unprecedentedly firm grip on parliament.

A high-profile switch by one-time Kremlin critic Yury Luzhkov, who announced 
last month his decision to merge his Fatherland party with the Unity faction 
has given pro-Putin deputies the upper hand over the Communists.

"As a result, Putin is now able to use the Duma against Kasyanov, with the 
result that the latter's room for manoeuvre has been significantly reduced in 
the course of the year," notes Andrei Ryabov of the Carnegie Moscow Centre.

"Under Putin, the government has effectively become a branch of the 
presidential administration," observes the political analyst Vyacheslav 
Nikonov.

Moreover, the technocratic Kasyanov has been unable to prevent the slippage 
of executive authority to the president because, unlike former premiers such 
as Yevgeny Primakov and Viktor Chernomyrdin, he has never been one of 
Russia's political heavyweights.

"The role of the prime minister has been almost neutered, and now Kasyanov 
plays the part of the chief bureaucrat," says Granville.

An ex-finance minister under Yeltsin, and said to have been a close confidant 
of former Kremlin powerbroker, the now exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, 
Kasyanov has been assailed by rumours of his imminent dismissal since he took 
office a year ago.

In March, the prime minister narrowly headed off a Communist vote of 
no-confidence in his cabinet, but only after Putin loyalists withdrew their 
support for the censure motion in a bid to bring Kremlin critics to heel, 
analysts say.

Nevertheless Kasyanov's economic record is widely criticised by Russian 
commentators who argue that his lack of authority has prevented him from 
galvanising support for much-needed economic reforms.

"Kasyanov is a good negotiator, a safe pair of hands, but he is not by any 
means a reformer," says Ryabov, who notes that -- apart from tax 
restructuring -- all of the government's key reforms are on hold.

"The reforms of the electricity monopoly, of the natural gas giant Gazprom, 
of the railways, are mired in bureaucracy," adds Granville.

"Kasyanov has failed to exploit the opportunities provided by the robust 
health of the Russian economy to push the reform process forward," suggests 
Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation think-tank.

At the same time, the unfortunate prime minister has remained silent on a 
number of issues, or made apparent errors of judgment on others, such as the 
rescheduling of Soviet-era debt, while Putin regularly flags initiatives on a 
wide range of issues from land privatisation to exchange controls.

Most experts believe Kasyanov's days in office are numbered, and point to the 
year-end, or perhaps a mid-term reshuffle by Putin in mid-2002, as the likely 
date for his replacement by an economic reformer such as Finance Minister 
Alexei Kudrin or Economic Development Minister German Gref.

For the moment, however, it is ironic that Kasyanov appears to rely for his 
political survival on the fact that his position inside the government has 
been so compromised over the past year that he no longer poses a threat to 
Putin, giving his wary boss free rein.

******

#13
strana.ru
May 15, 2001
Sergei Markov: "Only a pro-Russia president can be elected democratically
in Ukraine"

Strana.Ru observer Viktor Sokolov has interviewed the Director of the
Institute for Political Studies, Sergei Markov, in connection with the
situation in Ukraine

QUESTION: Has Ukraine really become a battlefield between Russia and the West?

ANSWER: I do not think so. That would be such a simplification that turns
into untruth. 

The fact is that the West's policy towards Ukraine has been formulated only
in the most general terms. The essence of this policy is that Ukraine must
receive support to strengthen its independence, that it must exist as an
independent European state, and that it must not be gobbled up by Russia.
At the same time, Ukraine must be given assistance in carrying out
democratic and economic reforms and gradually to integrate into European
structures, but here this assistance is already minimal. In other words,
the Ukrainians must do everything by themselves, while the West must clap
its hands and give a little bit of help.

Russia's policy is not at variance with a single of these principles in the
West's policy towards Ukraine. Russia also considers that Ukraine must be
an independent European state and that it must integrate into European
economic and political structures. Further come certain differences,
however, differences not between the West and Russia, but differences
between two western approaches.

Europeans think that Ukraine must join European structures but that
simultaneously it must in every way get integrated with Russia. It must
sign with her an economic union, a treaty on the tax space, visa-free, of
course, and other things. Europeans believe that jointly Russia and Ukraine
will be able to move faster towards integration into Europe. Europeans do
not see any serious threat in this joint integration.

The U.S.A. has a different policy. The U.S.A. today fears Russia's and
Ukraine's integration very much, but again there is a specific approach
here. It primarily fears the strengthening of Russia. It is necessary to
note here that the American policy vis-a-vis Ukraine is marginal. It is not
the State Department or the White House that are in charge of the American
Ukraine policy. It is tackled by groups of Senators and Congressmen, who
control the foundations that directly operate in Ukraine. The system is
well oiled and works admirably. Work is conducted directly with Ukrainian
deputies, Ukrainian journalists, Ukrainian leaders of political parties,
prominent politicians. Ukraine has long been an U.S. vassal and the
President of Ukraine is not free in his policy, he must ask the Americans
for a permission. 

The aim of this policy is to prevent integration between Ukraine and
Russia. It provokes and fans conflict between the two countries. Most
American diplomats, to say nothing of the American people, are not even
aware of this policy. 

As a policy that does not express U.S. national interests, still less the
West's general line, it conflicts with the Russian approach. 

Viktor Yushchenko cannot be regarded as a pro-Western politician,
considering that most of the demonstrators in his support are
ultra-nationalists and fascists who too dislike the West and see the West
today as a castrated subject of the world. 

In that sense I would say Russia is not in conflict with the West as far as
Ukraine is concerned. But it is not engaged in a dialogue with the West and
in particular Europeans over Ukraine. In this situation a marginal conflict
between a marginal group which has usurped U.S. policy toward Ukraine and
Russian diplomacy which is doing nearly nothing about it has come to the
fore. 

Ukraine wants democracy. And Russia, too, is interested in Ukraine's
democracy. Since the absolute majority of the Ukrainian population is for
the closest alliance with Russia, the more democracy is in Ukraine the more
pro-Russian policy Ukraine would pursue. I believe that Russia should
contact with Europeans most closely and jointly pursue a policy with regard
to Ukraine, a policy that would promote democracy. If a democratic way is
used, only a pro-Russian president would be elected there, and an
anti-Russian policy may only be imposed on Ukrainian voters.

****** 

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

CDI Headlines:  http://www.cdi.org/

Defense Monitor:  http://www.cdi.org/dm/2001

Weekly Defense Monitor:  http://www.cdi.org/weekly/

CDI News Analysis and Press Advisories:  http://www.cdi.org/press/

CDI Asia Forum:  http://www.cdi.org/asia/faarch.html

CDI Video:  http://www.cdi.org/adm