June 25, 2001 

This Date's Issues:   5320 • 5321  

Johnson's Russia List
#5320
25 June 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
DJ: In the spring I asked for comments from JRL recipients about
how they use JRL and its value to them. I received many very helpful
messages. If there are others who would like to give me some feedback
on this subject I would appreciate hearing from you.

1. Reuters: Russian minister predicts higher 2001 growth. (Gref)
2. Reuters: Pope to pay tribute to Jewish massacre victims.
3. Moscow Times: Sergei Chapnin, Is the Pope the East's Friend or Foe?
4. Message from Dimitri Simes. (re 5316-Simes Interview)
5. The Independent (UK): Steve Crawshaw, Russia's moribund film industry in search of post-Soviet salvation.
6. Baltimore Sun: Kathy Lally, Russia's villages fading fast. Touchstones: Political and economic changes are killing the rural areas long seen as the safeguards of the soul, the repositories of national memory.
7. Moscow Times: Oksana Yablokova, 8 Russians Named on Forbes' Rich List.
8. Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Opening statement of ALEXANDER VERSHBOW, nominated TO BE AMBASSADOR TO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.
9. St. Petersburg Times (Florida): Frederick R. Strobel, Paltry U.S. economic aid has hurt Russia's chances of democracy.
10. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Richard Foster, Russian poverty precludes much of a missile build-up. (Interview with Sergei Khrushchev)]

*******

#1
Russian minister predicts higher 2001 growth

MOSCOW, June 24 (Reuters) - Economic Development and Trade Minister German
Gref said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that the Russian economy could
experience higher than expected growth this year of more than five percent.

Gref, interviewed by RTR state television, also concurred with many analysts
in saying that annual inflation might overshoot forecasts of 14-16 percent,
but suggested the level would not be much higher.

Gref said the improved growth figure, compared to official forecasts of four
percent, was part of Russia's generally rosy picture of improved stability
backed by passage of vital legislation.

"Pessimists said the figure would be below two to three percent. Optimists
said perhaps 4.5 to five percent," Gref told RTR. "Now we are making even
bolder forecasts that growth will be more than five percent."

Gref put GDP growth in the first five months at 5.4 percent.

Russia's economy expanded a record 8.3 percent last year and the government
had foreseen about four percent for 2001.

Putin's economic adviser Andrei Illarionov has said growth may be only two to
three percent and that the government would struggle to stay within the 14-16
percent inflation forecast.

An International Monetary Fund statement issued at the end of a week-long
mission on Friday urged the government to tighten monetary policy to check
inflation and to hold to spending plans in its current budget.

Gref told RTR that inflation was higher than planned "for a whole series of
reasons" but said the government was pleased that price rises were slowing
for producers.

"Consumer inflation is not catastrophic so far. It is within acceptable
levels of fluctuation, but on the high side," he said.

"The cumulative level of inflation after five months is 11 percent...So far,
we are forecasting 14-16 percent. It is possible the figure will be higher,
but not very much higher.

Gref said last week's parliamentary approval of a cut in reduction in
corporate profit tax to 24 percent from 35 percent was a critical part of
President Vladimir Putin's drive to increase stability and attract capital.

"This is a demonstration of the government's real intentions to create a
civilised economic system in the country," he said.

"I believe this will without any doubt be greatly appreciated by investors.
Probably this year and most definitely next year, we will see a considerable
rise in investment.

*******

#2
Pope to pay tribute to Jewish massacre victims
By Olena Horodetska

KIEV, June 25 (Reuters) - Pope John Paul will pay tribute on Monday to
Ukrainian Jews who were killed in a 1941 massacre that was a chilling
precursor to the horrors of the Holocaust.

The Pope will stop to pray at the Babi Yar ravine on his way to an open-air
mass on the third day of his trip to Ukraine.

More than 100,000 people, mostly Jews, were herded from the districts of Kiev
from September 1941 onwards and shot at Babi Yar by Nazi forces. Their bodies
were dumped in the ravine there which is shrouded by forests.

The Pope recalled the massacre in an address to religious leaders on Sunday
night.

"May the memory of this episode of murderous frenzy be a salutary warning to
all. What atrocities is man capable of when he fools himself into thinking
that he can do without God," he said.

The site, now a public park just beyond the centre of the Ukrainian capital,
has become a place of pilgrimage for Jews. The 60th anniversary of the
killings falls later this year.

Having tried to mend fences with the Orthodox community in Kiev, the Pope
takes his pilgrimage to the heartland of Ukrainian Catholicism on Monday
evening when he flies to the western city of Lviv.

Crowds have been thin in the Ukrainian capital, where the theme of the Pope's
first two days has been reconciliation with the Orthodox Church, which split
from Rome 1000 years ago.

A far greater turnout is expected in Lviv where the Pope will beatify 27
Soviet-era Catholic martyrs, putting them on the road to sainthood.

MEMORY OF PATRIARCH'S SNUB

But even though he will be talking to a predominantly Catholic crowd in Lviv,
he will take with him the memory of a snub by the head of Ukraine's largest
Orthodox Church.

Patriarch Volodymyr, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow
Patriarchate, was the only notable absentee at an evening meeting between the
81-year old leader of the Roman Catholic Church and Ukraine's religious
organisations.

The absence highlighted the difficulties facing the Pope during his visit,
which he launched on Saturday with a diplomatic apology for Catholic wrongs
and an assurance to Orthodox believers that he was not on a crusade to win
converts.

Disputes between Orthodox and Catholics, mainly over land and fears that each
is wooing away the other's believers, have sometimes flared into violence in
former Soviet Ukraine, which has seen a religious renaissance since
independence in 1991.

Ukraine's two smaller Orthodox Churches welcomed the Pope. But the largest,
with 7.5 million followers, and its ally, the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox
Church, said the visit could wreck relations between Christianity's eastern
and western branches.

Patriarch Filaret, head of the smaller Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kiev
Patriarchate which has welcomed the Pope, said the fears of the Russian
Orthodox Church were misplaced.

"We believe your visit in Ukraine has nothing to do with proselytising and
will not increase divisions as Moscow prophesies but, on the contrary, will
favour better relations," Filaret said in an address direct to the Pope.

Alexiy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said during a visit to
neighbouring Belarus that the visit would close the door to reconciliation
and prevent the Pope coming to Moscow.

Vatican officials in Kiev played down the row.

"The Pope did not come to be geographically closer to Moscow. He came to be
close to Ukrainians," spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told reporters.

"The Moscow trip will take place when God wants it. Nothing is happening that
will bring it closer or nearer," he said.

*******

#3
Moscow Times
June 25, 2001
Is the Pope the East's Friend or Foe?
By Sergei Chapnin
Sergei Chapnin is editor of the Internet magazine Sobornost. He contributed
this comment to The Moscow Times.

The Russian media's attention to the pope's foreign trips is intensifying
as the route of the papal visits forms a ring around Russia.

The five-day official visit of John Paul II to Ukraine, where as in Russia
the Orthodox Church is the church of the majority, has resonated widely
through society. This is in no small measure due to the fact that in making
his trip to Ukraine, the pope for the first time disregarded one of his
main rules and did not first win the agreement of the country's largest
Christian denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow
Patriarchate.

Is the pope friend or foe? It is hard to pose such a question
straightforwardly, but behind it lies fear, pain and hope. One's attitude
toward the pope's visit depends on one's answer to that question. In the
Orthodox world, that question causes deep divides within society and splits
national elites.

The political establishment interprets the pope's visit as one of the
symbols of the Western world's recognition of the country, an important
sign of its integration into the Western world.

In the words of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko, the visit
testifies to "the unconditional recognition of Ukraine by the Holy See and
the international community," while at the same time it "confirms the path
of Kiev toward European integration." Comments in the same spirit were made
earlier by the political leaders of Romania and Georgia where the pope made
his first visits to traditionally Orthodox countries in 1999.

As for the spiritual reasons for these trips, as well as their religious
and social implications, politicians prefer not to speak of these matters.

But members of the Orthodox Church, whether from the hierarchy or simple
believers, when asked the question "friend or foe?" have answered
unequivocally, "of course, foe." Because, such is their centuries-long
memory, in places where Catholics gain power, the Orthodox expect
oppression and even forced conversion to Catholicism.

Orthodox Greece will not forget the Fourth Crusade, which ended with the
establishment in 1204 of the Latin patriarchate in Constantinople, which
was plundered by the crusaders, and the institution of Catholic dioceses in
continental Greece accompanied by the coercive subjugation of the Orthodox
congregations by the Latin bishops with the help of the state. Ukraine
remembers well the crushing of the Orthodox dioceses and forcing of the
Orthodox into the "Unia" with Catholics — i.e. subjugation to the Roman See
at the end of the 16th century, which took place with the help of the
Polish king. And Russia remembers the mission of Cardinal Michel
d'Herbigny, a French Jesuit who in the 1920s tried to take advantage of the
Bolsheviks' persecution of the Orthodox Church to expand the Catholic
Church to the East. In other words, undisguised proselytizing of Orthodox
believers was not a chance occurrence but a consistent policy of the
Vatican toward Eastern Christianity.

For the sake of fairness, it should be said that last month, during his
visit to Greece, the pope apologized for the Fourth Crusade. But he is not
expected to do the same in relation to the Greek Catholics, who practice
the Eastern rite but are faithful to Rome. The pope's visit to Ukraine is a
sign of his complete and unconditional support for the Greek Catholics. And
although on his first day in Ukraine, John Paul II said he had no
intentions of proselytizing during the visit, how can one explain the
refusal of Catholics to discuss proselytism, even theoretically, at joint
theological discussions with the Orthodox Church?

The Orthodox hierarchy has no illusions about the future. Metropolitan
Agafangel of Odessa and Izmail, one of Ukraine's leading pro-Moscow
bishops, said that "the semblance of peace between Orthodox believers and
Greek Catholics, which supporters of the visit have spoken about,
represents an attempt to construct a peace without justice, which will
never be a truly Christian peace and will seal for many years the Uniates'
'achievements' in their struggle against the Orthodox Church." And
Patriarch Alexy II said bluntly a few days ago: "The pope's visit to
Ukraine could irrevocably close the door to an improvement in relations
between Orthodoxy and Catholicism."

Yet the toughest stand is that of the rank-and-file priests and
worshippers, and not only in Russia and Ukraine but also in Greece, where
the pope's visit in early May was preceded by rallies decrying the Roman
bishop as an "arch-heretic" and the "two-horned monster from Rome."

Orthodox groups in Ukraine call the papal visit "a desecration of the
sacred soil of Kievan Rus," and an anti-Catholic demonstration in Kiev two
days before the beginning of the visit drew 10,000 participants.
Nevertheless, the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church has asked
believers to refrain from protests during the pope's visit and no one is
likely to violate that order, even more so because the Ukrainian special
services have taken unprecedented security measures.

But at the same time, Orthodox believers themselves are not able to
overcome the ambivalence in their attitude toward Catholics. On the one
hand, Catholics are seen as heretics, but on the other hand, they maintain
an intellectual leadership in the Christian world. Orthodox experts relied
on the Catholic experience in devising the Orthodox Church's first social
doctrine and building a new model of church-state relations in Russia. Even
in a harsh statement, a Moscow Patriarchate spokesman acknowledged a couple
of days ago that the "social activity of the Catholic Church, its care for
the helpless and deprived throughout the world can only inspire respect."
However in Russia, he said, the Catholic Church has betrayed its mission
and is engaged in proselytizing.

What is surprising is that from the moment the pope's visit to Ukraine
became inevitable, the position of the Moscow Patriarchate has not
undergone any change. It seemed, along with letting off steam with
processions and rallies, the Orthodox Church should have demonstrated
diplomatic foresight and at least resolved several issues that would be
impossible to resolve under other circumstances, first of all the lack of
rights of Orthodox believers in Western Ukraine.

The uncompromising position of the Russian Orthodox Church provokes the
undisguised irritation of the Vatican. "The Russian Orthodox Church,
opposing the visit of the pope to Ukraine, is falling behind the train of
history," said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Vals. It seems the pope
can't get used to protests by Orthodox believers, even though he has
encountered them in Georgia, on Mount Sinai and in Greece.

Why does Pope John Paul II so strongly desire to travel to Orthodox
countries despite the breakdown in theological discussions with the
Orthodox? Perhaps not the least because Catholicism is steadily losing its
position in Western Europe and the Vatican is concerned with preserving its
influence. It is essential to attract new believers and if that is not
possible in Western Europe, then why not make more active attempts to
convert the Orthodox? Or at least reinvigorate the Catholic Church at the
expense of the Eastern religious revival?

In an interview not long before his death, Sir Steven Runciman, a British
diplomat and scholar of Byzantine civilization, said: "Sometimes, how
should I put it, I feel great disappointment with Western churches.
However, I am happy in the thought that within 100 years, the Orthodox
church will be the only historical church that will be strong. … I believe
it offers people genuine spirituality, which other churches can no longer
provide."

That historical optimism, unexpected in the context of a secular society,
is typical of most Orthodox believers today and is linked to the rebirth of
the church that has taken place over the past 10 years not only in
countries of the former socialist camp but also in Western Europe, where a
growing number of people are discovering Orthodoxy. And Pope John Paul II
wants to partake of this optimism.

Too bad for what is known as "Catholic-Orthodox dialogue."

While informal contacts between Orthodox and Catholic believers are
certainly not suffering, official relations between the churches have
entered a phase of deep crisis. The start of the third millennium since the
birth of Christ has failed to become a time when hopes of a unified
Christian world could be realized.

*******

#4
From: "Paul Saunders" <paulsaunders@erols.com>
Subject: Message from Dimitri Simes
Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001

Dear David:

I am writing about item #5 in JRL 5316, purported to be a translation of a
recent interview I did for Izvestia on the Media-MOST controversy.
Unfortunately, the text you received is fundamentally flawed in several
respects.

First, most of the questions are phony. They have little to do with the
questions I was actually asked during the interview. Attentive readers
probably noticed the disconnect between the alleged questions and my
responses. In addition, a couple of my statements were seriously distorted.
This was on top of the very poor translation provided by the WPS Monitoring
Agency. I find the end result to be inaccurate, incoherent, and confusing.

For me, the whole episode once again demonstrates that while there are
serious and real problems with press freedoms in Russia, the frequent lack
of journalistic responsibility comes in a close second.

Sincerely,
Dimitri K. Simes
President
The Nixon Center

******

#5
The Independent (UK)
25 June 2001
Russia's moribund film industry in search of post-Soviet salvation
By Steve Crawshaw

Once upon a time, the Mosfilm studios in the Lenin Hills overlooking the
Moskva river, was a name to be reckoned with. All the great directors of
Soviet cinema, from Sergei Eisenstein to Andrei Tarkovsky, worked here. The
opening titles of every Mosfilm production – the Soviet equivalent of MGM's
roaring lion – showed one of the most famous Communist statues, depicting
an industrial worker and a collective farm girl who stride together into
the bright Soviet future. The confidence seemed to reflect the confidence
of Mosfilm itself.

Now, all that is gone. Moscow's 23rd international film festival, which
began on Friday, includes 200 films in 12 locations. Not one Russian film
is in the running for the competition. Russia's cinematic glory days seem
little more than a memory – though some hope that a turnaround may finally
be on the way. "We used to make 60 films a year; last year, we made just
one," is the mournful lament of one Mosfilm employee. The studios' last
great success, Nikita Mikhalkov's Oscar-winning Burnt by the Sun, an
elegiac story set in the Stalin era, was released seven years ago. His £30m
Barber of Siberia was disastrously received on its release in 1999.

The sprawling 34-hectare site has an overgrown and forgotten feel – a
dowager living on the memories of a more glorious past. The studios'
custodians wistfully display collections that reflect the studios' history.
Elaborate costumes from past productions, produced by an army of in-house
seamstresses, are on show in a special museum for visitors. Elsewhere, huge
rooms are filled with more than half a million costumes that can
theoretically be used in new productions; but they are now rarely needed.

In one corner of the grounds is a collection of vintage vehicles, all of
which have starred in Mosfilm productions, including a 1913 Rolls-Royce
that belonged to Lenin and a 1948 Land Rover.

The studios also own the Zil limousine used by the former Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev. (I am permitted a quietly surreal moment when invited to
ride inside the limousine, comfortable but oddly characterless with its
muddy-yellow velour seats and copious walnut panelling. When I lived as a
student in the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev era I once glimpsed the old
monster's motorcade sweeping in through the Kremlin gates; at that time,
even a glance inside the curtained Zil would have seemed unthinkable. Now,
the former symbol of omnipotence is just another souvenir of a bygone era.)

To hear the director of the Mosfilm studios talk, all is looking rosy.
Karen Shakh-nazarov says foreign film makers now often use the studios'
facilities. Japanese are currently using sound studios to record some
music; the Spanish are recording a soap opera. The studios used to employ
6,000; now, there are just 700 permanent employees. On one day last week,
the most active work in hand was the filming of a commercial for processed
cheese, which involved pink Teletubby lookalikes on the moon. Eisenstein,
director of The Battleship Potemkin – would not necessarily have been
impressed.

The situation seems unlikely to continue unchanged. Earlier this year,
Vladimir Putin signed a presidential decree paving the way for the
privatisation of the Mosfilm studios. Mosfilm is resentful at the prospect.

Mr Shakhnazarov insists that this is not just a film studio, but "has come
to occupy a real place in Russia's cultural life". In many respects he is
right, though it is difficult to see how the faded giant can survive
without radical re- invention. The expert sound-effects specialists – whose
roomful of basic equipment enables them convincingly to imitate the sound
of everything from waves breaking on the beach to feet walking through
crisp snow – are understandably proud of their unusual skills. But their
future, too, is unclear.

The Culture Minister, Mikhail Shvydkoi, suggested that Mosfilm's reason for
resisting privatisation was partly because the management of the studio had
sought to make money on the side by sub-letting parts of the site for light
industry, including even a factory for the manufacture of plastic
bottles.Mr Shakhnazarov initially says that he has never heard any such
suggestion before. When pressed, however, he agrees that he is familiar
with Mr Shvydkoi's allegations. He insists – as he did when Mr Shvydkoi
first made his accusations – that the allegations are quite unfounded.

There is no sign of bottle makers at Mosfilm. But there is not much sign of
anything else, either.

The Russian government is eager for the country's once great cinema
industry to become a force to reckon with once more. If that happens, the
now sleepy site on Mosfilmovskaya Street will look very different.

*******

#6
Baltimore Sun
24 June 2001
Russia's villages fading fast
Touchstones: Political and economic changes are killing the rural areas
long seen as the safeguards of the soul, the repositories of national memory.
By Kathy Lally
Sun Foreign Staff

PALAGINO, Russia - As the days turn warmer, the meadows here in central
Russia are green and busy, full of people and cows, each person holding his
cow by a rope as if walking a much-beloved pet.

Nearly every villager has a cow, kept all winter in a shed attached to the
house, and when the cows go outside for the first time in spring, they are
easily frightened and likely to run off in panic. They need a steady,
comforting hand until they grow accustomed once more to the long days of
sunshine and freedom.

Walking your cow is part of the rhythm of Russian village life, as
recurring and ceaseless as sowing and reaping. And soon another year has
gone by, another year of chopping wood, hauling water, gathering mushrooms,
picking berries, putting up preserves, churning butter, gathering eggs,
stoking fires. Russians regard their villages as eternal, the repository of
the national memory, the places that safeguard the soul.

And now they are dying.

"The process is painful and irreversible," says Valentin G. Rasputin, a
writer. "Even if a person moved to a town, his village was always there, in
the back of his mind. He could always feel his homeland was there, and even
if it was very poor, it provided him with his character and his
spirituality, and he was proud of it."

Rasputin made his reputation as a village writer. He was part of the
Village Prose school of writers that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s.
They celebrated the virtues of rural life, criticizing the Soviet lust for
industrialization and its accompanying environmental destruction and
dehumanization.

Rasputin was speaking by telephone from his home in Irkutsk in Siberia. He
had just returned from visiting villages along the Lena River there. He
lost his own village years ago to a dam.

"Spiritually, the villages are linked with nature, with Russian traditions
and the graves of our grandfathers," he says. "In the West, people are
different. They can do without the fields and villages. For a Russian, it
is different. It will destroy his personality. There will be a vacuum that
cannot be filled."

Four time zones to the west of Rasputin, near Nizhny Novgorod, the village
of Palagino lies among the dying. Forty wooden cottages - called izbas -
line the village's single dirt road. Several are abandoned; others have
only summer residents.

Wood is at the heart of a Russian village. Weathered wood fences surround
the wooden cottages, some worn to a silvery hue, others painted bright
blues or green. Villagers use wood in their masonry stoves to heat their
homes. They cut out lacy pieces of wood to decorate the eaves and window
frames. The woods provide them with berries and mushrooms.

Like other villagers in Palagino, a tiny, isolated settlement about 350
miles northeast of Moscow, Valya Konyova and her daughter, Tanya, have a
huge pile of wood stacked extraordinarily neatly next to their house. The
wood will keep them warm - and alive.

"I'm old," declares Valya Konyova, a cheerful 65-year-old woman with thick,
black-framed Soviet-issue glasses. "I wish I were younger so I could work
more."

Valya and Tanya, who is 37, have more than enough work to do because
everything they eat - except their bread - they produce with their own hands.

They have electricity - thanks, no doubt, to Lenin famously declaring, in
one of his catchier slogans, "Communism is Soviet power plus the
electrification of the whole country."

Unfortunately, Lenin didn't say anything about running water or toilets, so
no one ever bothered to give this village and others like it water pipes or
sewer lines. The villagers haul their water from a well on the street and
use an outhouse attached to the house so as not to stray too far in the
depth of winter. The smell is unnoticeable, scented as the house is with
the odor of cow.

This state of affairs results in an odd juxtaposition: The Konyovas have to
haul water for themselves and, in the winter, for their very large, thirsty
cow - 10 pails a day for the cow, 10 pails each for a bath for themselves.
They haul their wood for heating and cooking. But when they collapse into
weary heaps in the evening, they do so in front of a Japanese color
television.

"I like the game shows and the Mexican soap operas," Auntie Valya confides.

"I fall asleep in front of it," Tanya laughs. She's a sturdy woman. "Her
hands are as big as shovels," a neighbor says in admiration.

The village has 80 people. Eight of them have jobs, four are unemployed and
the rest are pensioners. Angelina Farofonova, the village administrator,
says the surrounding countryside used to have 25 villages. Now there are 11.

"Many of them are dying," she says. "The largest one, Alekhina, has 336
people. Other villages had only two or three people left. In all 11
villages, there are only 446 people."

It's a familiar pattern. In the Smolensk region to the west of Moscow, 500
villages have disappeared in the past 20 years, and 200 have only three or
four elderly inhabitants.

The villages are dying because the old Soviet farming system has collapsed
and there is no other work in the countryside. Young people don't have the
money to replace the huge state and collective farms with family farms.

In Soviet times, Farofonova says, each village here was a separate kolkhoz,
a collective farm. Now only one kolkhoz, in Alekhina, is operating. Only 84
people work on it, she says, and the farm has 130 pensioners. In better
days up to 300 people worked there.

"The kolkhoz has 400 cows and sells milk," Farofonova says, "but it has a
lot of debts. It hasn't paid the electric bill for a long time, and it
hasn't paid salaries either."

The kolkhoz hasn't had any money to buy machinery or even spare parts for
10 years. Farm workers are paid $30 a month - on paper. They haven't
received money for years.

"Now everything is dying," Farofonova says, "and we don't have anything to
produce. There is land, but nobody wants it."

The young people are leaving for the city as fast as they can. The small
children on the street are here to visit their grandparents and take
advantage of the village's last wealth - its fresh air, its milk straight
from the cow, its eggs directly from the hen.

"The women watch television," Farofonova says, "and our men are turning
into drunkards. They drink, drink and drink."

Tanya Konyova is one of the few people here with a job. She's a bookkeeper
at the Alekhina kolkhoz but can't remember the last time she was paid in
cash. Instead, she gets meat or other products from the kolkhoz. She and
her mother save her mother's pension for the few purchases they make with
cash.

Auntie Valya says she worked for 20 years without a day off, caring for
cows on the kolkhoz. "We did our best," she says. "And now we don't have
much time to live."

Tanya shows off the washing machine - an ancient metal barrel with a plug.
She hauls water to fill it, and after it's done agitating, she puts the
clothes in a basket and carries the heavy load to the river for rinsing.
She scoffs at the suggestion that this is hard work.

"After all," she says, "I'm not washing by hand."

Houses are very cheap in the village, and that has attracted a few new
residents - a retired couple bought one cottage as a summer home. And
Yevgenia Kudrina, a Moscow artist, bought a house 11 years ago.

In Moscow, Kudrina shares one small room in a communal apartment with her
daughter. Here, she has a house with a kitchen, a living room and bedroom,
and space for a studio.

She comes here a few times a year, catching a 10 p.m. train in Moscow that
arrives in Ivanovo at 5:30 a.m. She goes to the bus station and waits 2 1/2
hours for a bus, which takes three hours to travel to a small town near
Palagino. Then she catches another bus to the village.

"This is the only place where I feel I'm recharging," she says.

About the time she bought her cottage, she began sculpting in wood, turning
out haunting figures of people who remarkably resemble some of the
villagers. Their faces are always sad.

She admires the people here, finding them more direct, open and accepting
than many city folk. They have been tempered by their everyday struggle
with the elements.

"I love the village art," Kudrina says, walking past a house decorated with
intricately cut wood trim. "I like the way people treat wood here."

People in the villages traditionally used wooden bowls, spoons and pails.
They painted their cupboards with flowers. They used beautifully weathered
rakes in their fields. The spent their lives surrounded by forest, fields
and beautiful wood.

"I had never seen such things before," Kudrina says. "I didn't realize
everyday life was based on wooden pieces of art."

Now it's noon, and cows are running up the street, udders heavy. The
Palagino cows have gotten used to freedom. They have been out in the
meadow, and a few of the men are driving them home for the afternoon milking.

The women stand in front of their houses, calling their cows, shooing them
into their sheds.

Later in the day, Auntie Valya reminisces over a cup of tea and spoonfuls
of wild strawberry jam.

"We haven't had much happiness, anyway," she says with a hearty laugh.

Tanya, just as jolly, lived in the city of Ivanovo once, studying
bookkeeping. She came home.

"It's hard, but I'm used to it," she says. "I was born for village life.
And somebody has to stay."

******

#7
Moscow Times
June 25, 2001
8 Russians Named on Forbes' Rich List
By Oksana Yablokova
Staff Writer

Oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky is the wealthiest man in Russia with an
accumulated fortune of $2.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine's annual
list of the world's richest people released Friday.

Seven other Russians — including two former Gazprom officials — are also
counted on the list, giving Russia the most billionaires on the list since
Forbes first included Russians in 1997.

The list is topped by Microsoft Co. founder Bill Gates, who has held the
magazine's title as the world's wealthiest man since 1998.

Khodorkovsky, who at 38 heads the country's second-largest oil company,
Yukos, is in 194th place. The second most wealthy Russian according to
Forbes is Vladimir Potanin, president of the Interros financial-industrial
group and the only Russian billionaire to make Forbes listings for a third
time. This year Potanin is ranked 272nd with $1.8 billion, up from $1.6
billion in 1998 and $700 million in 1997.

No Russians were included on the Forbes lists in 1999 and 2000.

This year, Surgutneftegaz head Vladimir Bogdanov is the third most wealthy
Russian on the list, ranked 312th with $1.6 billion, former Gazprom head
Rem Vyakhirev is 336th with $1.5 billion and oil and media tycoon Roman
Abramovich is 363rd with $1.4 billion.

LUKoil president Vagit Alekperov and Alfa Group head Mikhail Fridman are
tied at 387th with $1.3 billion each, while former Prime Minister Viktor
Chernomyrdin rounds out the list at 452nd with $1.1 billion.

The overall list of this year's billionaires grew to 538 members up from
482 last year because Forbes for the first time included all billionaires;
previously it counted only the "working rich" billionaires to differentiate
between those who ran businesses and those who were living off their wealth.

The magazine, which keeps tight-lipped about its calculations, said only
that it had estimated the wealth of billionaires with publicly traded
fortunes by using share prices and exchange rates from May 21 to calculate
net worth. The value of art collections and real estate was also added when
possible.

The Russians on the list have been mum for years about their personal assets.

Abramovich's ranking as the fifth richest Russian — well behind four oil
and energy tycoons — contradicts earlier media reports naming the
34-year-old as the wealthiest man in Russia with estimated personal assets
of more than $2 billion.

Abramovich controls No. 5 oil company Sibneft and last year acquired a
major stake in Russian Aluminum, the world's second-largest aluminum
producer, and 49 percent of ORT, the country's No. 1 television station. He
is also the governor of the Chukotka region.

Forbes had little good to say about the Russians on the list other than
that Khodorkovsky had wisely invested into his business and Bogdanov, who
runs No. 3 oil company Surgutneftegaz, was "a competent and honest
industrial tycoon."

Here's what Forbes had to say about the other rich Russians on its list:

The magazine reported that Vyakhirev had built his fortune as chief
executive of the Gazprom gas monopoly by acquiring stakes for himself and
his family in the company and its subsidiaries. Vyakhirev was ousted from
his post by President Vladimir Putin last month amid reports in The Moscow
Times and other media documenting improprieties at Gazprom.

"There's enough money sloshing around Gazprom for Vyakhirev and his
children to take a big chunk without rocking the boat," Forbes said.
"Together they have a stake in the parent company, as well as in the sales
and distribution companies, equipment importers, construction and financial
companies that service this unwieldy giant."

Forbes said that the 51-year-old LUKoil head, Alekperov, "used his close
friendship with the fuel and energy minister to muscle into lucrative oil
deals around the Caspian Sea in the early 1990s."

Chernomyrdin, who founded Gazprom and served as prime minister from 1992 to
1998, "missed out on much of the privatization windfall, but not all of
it," Forbes said. "He and his family own significant Gazprom stakes and
related properties."

Chernomyrdin was appointed Russia's ambassador to Ukraine in May and is
expected to handle disputes such as the theft and nonpayment of Russian gas
at his new post in Kiev.

He was named Russia's wealthiest man in March 1997 by the French newspaper
Le Monde, which put his wealth at $5 billion.

He has repeatedly denied reports of his vast personal wealth.

Chernomyrdin was the only billionaire named by Forbes to publicly comment
on the list, calling his ranking "nonsense."

"A few years ago they wrote that I had $5 billion, while now they write
that I have $1.1 billion Where did the nearly $4 billion go? Who stole it?"
Chernomyrdin told Interfax.

"If Forbes shows me where my $4 billion is, I will give $1 billion to the
magazine and $100 million to Interfax," Chernomyrdin said.

The former prime minister's estimated $1.1 billion in wealth is just some
$300 million less than the $1.4 billion Ukraine owes Russia for gas.

Russians first appeared on the Forbes list in 1997 when Boris Berezovsky
was named the richest Russian, in 97th spot, with an accumulated wealth of
$3 billion. He was then in a company of five other Russians including
Khodorkovsky, Alekperov, Vyakhirev, Potanin and Media-MOST head Vladimir
Gusinsky. Gusinsky has lost much of his once-sprawling empire over the past
year to creditor Gazprom.

Shortly before Forbes released its annual listings, Russian media reported
that the magazine had bowed out of a lawsuit with Berezovsky over a 1996
article titled, "Is He the Godfather of the Kremlin?"

The unsigned story, among other allegations, described Berezovsky as a
"powerful gangland lord" and indirectly linked him to the 1995 contract
killing of Vladislav Listyev, a television celebrity who had been appointed
chief executive at ORT shortly before his slaying.

Russian media reported that Forbes even paid $250,000 in court expenses to
Berezovsky.

******

#8
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
June 21, 2001
Nomination hearing
ALEXANDER VERSHBOW, OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, TO BE AMBASSADOR TO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Opening statement

MR. VERSHBOW: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee. It's a
great honor for me, as well, to have been nominated by President Bush to
serve as the United States ambassador to the Russian Federation, and it's a
great privilege to appear before the committee today to seek your approval.
And I appreciate your very kind words, Mr. Chairman, in your introduction,
and those of Senator Smith. If confirmed, I look forward to working closely
with this committee and others in the Congress, as we work together to
advance the full range of American interests in Russia.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, I've devoted a lot of my academic and
professional career to Russian and east European affairs. More by chance
than by design, I studied Russian in high school, and I had the opportunity
to visit the USSR back in 1969 as a language student. And since that time,
I've been fascinated by the Russian nation's struggle to define its place
in the world, and to overcome the destructive effects of 75 years of
communist rule. My early assignments in the foreign service focused on
managing the old Cold War relationship, maintaining the nuclear balance
through the SALT and START negotiations, countering Soviet interference in
regional conflicts, securing the freedom of refusniks and prisoners of
conscience.

Since the late 80s, things have begun to change, and I'm proud to have
played a small part in the efforts of four administrations to put that Cold
War relationship behind us. One of my highest priorities in my current job,
as ambassador to NATO, has been to encourage Russia, through its new
relationship with the Atlantic Alliance, to become an integral part of an
undivided Europe, and a genuine partner in addressing the common security
challenges of the new century. Now this is, to be sure, a work in progress.
Despite Russia's enormous potential, and its impressive physical and human
resources, it remains in the throes of a long and difficult transformation.
The Russian people remain torn between the principles of freedom and
democracy that began to take root in the 1990s, and a kind of nostalgia for
the sullen stability of Russia's authoritarian past.

Russian foreign policy remains torn between a policy of engagement based on
cooperation and mutual respect for other countries, and the zero sum
thinking of the Soviet era. This present uncertainty doesn't alter our
long-term strategic goals toward Russia -- first and foremost, to advance
and defend American interests by supporting the development of a Russia,
whose strengths arise from democratic institutions, a flourishing market
economy, and mutually beneficial relations with its neighbors in the world
-- a Russia, as President Bush said last week in Warsaw, whose greatness is
measured by the strength of its democracy, the good treatment of
minorities, and the achievements of its people.

Our policy toward Russia is guided by a realistic assessment of our
interests, and consistent application of our values as a nation. The
responsibility for the success of Russia's transition to a full- fledged
democracy lies first and foremost with the Russian people and their leaders
themselves. But, we stand to benefit from, and we obviously have a very
clear stake, in their success. And so for this reason, we do need to
conduct the fullest possible dialog with Moscow, in accordance with the
president's commitment to developing a positive, constructive relationship
with Russia -- cooperating where that's possible, and firmly defending our
interests where differences exist.

Now, we are already cooperating with Russia in many areas where our
interests do coincide, such as combating terrorism, narcotics trafficking,
and promoting diplomatic solutions to regional conflicts from the Middle
East to Nagorno-Karabakh. And I have personally seen cooperation between
NATO and Russia take root through our joint peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia,
Herzegovina, and Kosovo, and our intensive consultations through the
NATO/Russia permanent joint council. There are, of course, important issues
and areas where our approaches seriously diverge, such as proliferation of
nuclear and missile technologies to Iran and other rogue states.

Russia's brutal war in Chechnya, it's pressures on its former Soviet
neighbors, and recent moves to curb the independent press, also raise very
serious questions about Russia's commitment to the principles it has
pledged to uphold in the Helsinki Final Act and other documents.

In such cases, we'll be open, candid, and frank about our differences, and
not shirk from presenting our views. A true partnership cannot be built by
sidestepping areas of disagreement. In my current post at NATO, I've had
the chance to debate my Russian counterparts on some of the most difficult
issues on our current agenda, including missile defense, the future
enlargement of the alliance, and the use of NATO's military power to defend
our values and interests in the Balkans. I know from my own time in Russia,
how deeply ingrained the popular suspicion of NATO became after 40 years of
relentless propaganda. So, one of my goals, if you confirm me as the next
U.S. ambassador, will be to promote new thinking in Russia about NATO, on
the part of the people and the leaders, to try to show them that today's
alliance, with its new missions and its expanding membership, can actually
contribute to Russian security by consolidating stability and democracy to
Russia's west.

Regarding our bilateral relationship, if confirmed I will seek to broaden
those areas where the United States and Russia can cooperate in our common
interest, and I would include fostering stability in the Balkans and the
Middle East, combating extremism, organized crime, and creating conditions
that will stimulate increased U.S. investment and trade between our two
countries. I'll do my best to narrow the gaps on issues like proliferation
and missile defense. And I'll assure that our assistance funds are spent
wisely, focusing on strengthening civil society and free market principles
at the grassroots level, and ensuring the safe disposal or destruction of
chemical weapons and fissile materials. I will work to bring the most
promising young Russians to the United States under our exchange programs,
in order to build stronger bonds with the next generation of Russian leaders.

I will strengthen our outreach beyond the Moscow beltway, myself, traveling
and speaking across the country. And in this regard, I hope to build on the
very impressive efforts of my distinguished predecessor, Ambassador Jim
Collins, in using the Internet and other new technologies to bring
America's ideas and American support for Russia's reforms more directly to
Russia's 150 million citizens across those 11 time zones. And, of course, I
will speak forthrightly on areas of concern to us in Russia's ongoing
transition, to ensure that the Russians have a clear sense of our values --
the values that define us as Americans, and the values that should be at
the foundation of a stronger relationship that both sides would like to
build.

As you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, last Saturday in Slovenia, President Bush
and President Putin, met for the first time. They had a very constructive
review of our relationship. President Bush was emphatic that Russia is no
longer the enemy of the United States. The two presidents agreed that
there's far more that unites us than divides us, and they agreed to
intensified bilateral dialogue and cooperation across the board. So, should
you grant me the honor to serve as our next ambassador to the Russian
Federation, I look forward to advancing that work in close consultation
with the Congress, in support of our American interests and values, and for
the lasting benefit of both of our peoples.

*******

#9
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
June 24, 2001
Paltry U.S. economic aid has hurt Russia's chances of democracy
By Frederick R. Strobel (fredstrobel@home.com)
Frederick R. Strobel is the William G. and Marie Selby Professor of
Economics at New College of the University of South Florida.

President Bush, meeting earlier this month with Russian President Vladimir
Putin, found himself dealing with a quite different head of state than either
Bill Clinton or his father faced. That the head of Russia's former Communist
secret police has risen to power should be no surprise to anyone closely
following Russia's economic and social progress in the years since the
official end of communism in 1989. And there are further ominous signs are
that the country is drifting back toward a totalitarian, perhaps even a
militarist, state.

Almost equally disturbing is that the United States might have prevented this
from happening.

Russia's new free market economy stumbled badly in the 1990s. According to a
Barclays Bank of London report, the nation's total gross domestic product
plummeted from $ 1.1-trillion in 1990 to $ 185-billion in 1999. In the face
of this collapsing economy, American and Western economic aid to Russia has
been paltry. For this, history will judge harshly both the inaction and the
ill-conceived nature of America's Russia policy during the Bush and Clinton
years. And little appears to be changing with George W. Bush.

While more enlightened Russia experts in the early '90s argued for a sort of
Marshall Plan for eastern Europe, nothing of the sort occurred. What Russia
received was $ 2.3-billion in bilateral aid from the United States - much of
it to dismantle its missile system - and about $ 22-billion in loan packages
from the International Monetary Fund and $ 12-billion from the World Bank
over the decade.

By contrast, the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economies of both our European
allies and foes after World War II disbursed $ 13.3-billion in non-repayable
grants and technical assistance - the equivalent of $ 90-billion in today's
dollars. In today's dollars, England received $ 23-billion, France $
19-billion, Italy $ 10-billion and Germany $ 9.5-billion. All of the
countries had well-established tax collection, legal, banking and
commercial-law systems still in place, and individually were countries with a
population about half the size of Russia's. Russia, however, had few of these
institutions, having gone from Czarist rule to a brief democracy to the
Soviet takeover of 1917. Further, it had virtually no tradition of democracy.

The American parsimony in this regard looks even worse when we note that
annual American defense spending, largely due to the end of the Soviet
military threat, fell $ 95-billion (in inflation-adjusted dollars) during the
decade, and that the federal government enjoyed a $ 237-billion surplus last
year.

How could this all have happened? How could we have ignored the lessons of
the Marshall Plan?

There are several explanations. First, trade - not aid - became a major tenet
of foreign economic policy beginning in the Nixon years of the early 1970s.
Since then, the American economic philosophy has continually moved away from
government solutions in favor of private sector solutions. This usually works
well in a country with well-established laws and institutions. But what
Russia needed was help to build these systems. What it got was not enough in
both technical assistance and money.

Thus it was left to private economic advisers, such as Harvard's Jeffrey
Sachs, who after some success in advocating free market shock therapy in
Bolivia and Poland, became former Russian president Boris Yeltsin's senior
economic adviser. But it didn't work in Russia. Years under the communist
system left the country ill-equipped to deal with free markets, and the
result was a sort of crony capitalism where many former Communist officials,
the best educated and connected of the population, became rich and the middle
class melted away.

Second, there was too much reliance on loans from the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank. Many of these loans were tied to economic reforms -
such as privatization of state industries and cutting the size of the
government - and the faith that the free market would cause a burst in
Russian economic growth. The problem was that such loans had to be paid back,
and that encouraged dismantling the already weak government infrastructure in
place. Consider this budgetary comparison: Next year, Florida's budget will
total $ 48-billion for a state of 15-million people. Russia's 1999 federal
budget was $ 26-billion for a nation of 146-million.

Today the consequences of such economic failure are all too evident. A former
KGB director is head of state, and democratic freedoms are being seriously
curtailed.

In April, the Putin government arranged for the state energy monopoly,
GAZPROM, to take over NTV, the only private nationwide television channel.
The station had vehemently criticized his policies in Chechnya and had
attacked the government's actions following the sinking of the Russian
submarine Kursk. Editors and writers of newspapers associated with the
station were replaced by more government-friendly employees. Earlier this
month, the Putin government ordered more than 900,000 Russian scholars to
submit reports on their contacts with foreigners, reviving a KGB-directed
practice that had ceased in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.

One of the major accomplishments of the post-World War II Marshall Plan was
that it promoted democratic institutions and economic integration among the
nation states of Europe. Certainly, the former Soviet bloc countries were an
obvious laboratory. Recently, Russia's economy has shown signs of recovery,
somewhat helped by the rise in oil prices. But, with 40 percent of its
citizens living in poverty, it has a long way to go. Let us hope that Russia
does not choose to supplement its recovery with military spending and a
renewed Cold War mentality.

******

#10
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
June 24, 2001
Russian poverty precludes much of a missile build-up
By Richard Foster of the Journal Sentinel staff

Earlier this month in Slovenia, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir
Putin held their first meeting, at which Bush made a strenuous but
unsuccessful attempt to overcome Russian objections to his plan to build a
ballistic-missile defense.

Upon returning home, Putin made headlines by vowing that if Bush went ahead
with his plan, Russia would respond by eventually upgrading its nuclear
arsenal to ensure that it could overwhelm a defense.

The New York Times urged, editorially, that "the White House should take Mr.
Putin's warning seriously. Even a cash-strapped Russia could afford to add
hundreds of multiple warheads to new and existing missiles." Others had a
similar reaction.

But was Putin's threat credible?

Richard Foster, of the Journal Sentinel's Editorial Board, recently discussed
this question with Sergei Khrushchev, a senior fellow at the Thomas J. Watson
Jr. Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Khrushchev provided an unusually informed assessment of Russian attitudes and
military capabilities. He is the son of the late Soviet President Nikita
Khrushchev and was trained as an engineer in his homeland. Before becoming a
U.S. citizen in 1999, Khrushchev participated in the Soviet missile and space
program.

Q. What was your reaction to the statement by Russian President Putin that he
might add multiple warheads to his missiles?

A. It is that both leaders do not exactly know what they are doing, because
the idea of a ballistic missile defense has been in the air for the last 40
years, and it is still, I think, impossible to implement this in a serious
way.

So I think that President Bush is buying a low-quality product. You know, I
was on that side (in Russia) and I tried to sell such products when I was in
this business. These people told us, " Let's invest some money," and then, in
ten years, they said, "We still cannot do this and we need ten times more
money and some more time." So I don't think it is reasonable.

When we're talking about Putin, though, I think in these conditions of the
Russian economy, he's just bluffing. Last year, the Russians bought one
missile, one fighter and, I think, a few tanks. So what can be done except
empty words until he turns the country to the productive economy, and when
they have revenue to add to the budget?

There is no sign that Putin is really doing something like this. He's
fighting some oligarchs, but not oligarchy.

Q. Was he under some pressure from the Russian military to make his threat?

A. I think that he is under pressure from the military and society because
even after the destruction of the Russian economy, Russia wants to be, how to
say, to feel themselves as a great country, some kind of a superpower.They
want to be respected as an equal even if this is impossible, so he's trying
to threaten.

Q. Do you have a general assessment of the meeting between Bush and Putin?

A. I think if I had been President Putin I would not have gone to such a
meeting. It was very similar to those that occurred when the general
secretary of the Soviet Communist Party went on vacation and stopped in some
region and the regional secretary came into the car of his train and brought
him to the next station and then left.

I didn't see any urgent question that could be discussed between Bush and
Putin. But, in any case, it was positive because each meeting between leaders
is positive.

Q. Did any concrete results come out of it, except that the two got to know
each other?

A. I don't think anything could result from it because America cannot
influence Russia. Russian problems can be solved only by Russians, and if
Putin decides to fight the oligarchy and turn Russia into a productive
economy, that means foreign money will go to Russia.

When and if that happens, then it will be possible for the American
government just to conduct all these business things. President Bush's
position now is to distance himself from Russian events and not to get much
involved in this struggle inside Russia and to focus on the security issue.
It is a bold decision.

Q. You've said the Russians cannot afford to build new weapons. But what, if
anything, would they or could they do if the U.S. proceeds?

A. Russia will heed the possibility of a threat to their own security, so it
is possible to do something in a technical way to prevent the shooting down
of their warheads, technically.

I think that they will try to step in this direction, and there are many
ideas that can be discussed. But the Chinese are really the people who can
think that if it is threatening to them, then they can start to build more
missiles.

Q. So the Chinese are apt to build more missile, but the Russians not?

A. No, I don't think so. I just talked with the people who are making this
last Topol missile and they claim that Russians bought only one missile and
they don't know what to do. They asked my friend to find them customers in
Germany and the United States.

Q. Did he find any?

A. No, I don't think so. The Russians will say, "We'll build some missiles
that will overgo this missile defense," and all these things but everybody
can talk.

But going between proposals and the real step requires huge money, and the
Russian budget is the size of the Belgian economy.

*******

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

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/