July 8, 2001 

This Date's Issues:   5342

Johnson's Russia List
#5342
8 July 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: Political risks haunt Putin as Kursk operation begins.
2. Interfax: Expert reveals shocking figures about drug addiction in Russia.
3. Scotland on Sunday: Alice Lagnado, Putin’s ‘archaic’ reign over Moscow roads drives electorate to misery.
4. Baltimore Sun: Kathy Lally, Drawn to tattoos' secrets. Language: A new book by a former Russian guard examines the private culture of prisoners.
5. Washington Post Book World: Robert Kaiser, Blood Red. (reviews Hosking, Merridale, Lieven, and Lincoln)
6. The Sunday Times (UK): Mark Franchetti, Stalin drew cartoons of his victims' fate.
7. Moscow Tribune: Stanislav Menshikov, ECONOMY WITHOUT A STEERING-WHEEL. Sailing at the Mercy of Waves Spells Disaster.
8. The Russia Journal: Alexander Golts, Battle begins over Russia’s defense budget cash. Duma chiefs and generals worry that higher spending may be counterproductive.
9. The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontkovsky, Russia’s honeymoon with missile defense is over. But Putin’s threat to withdraw from every security treaty is counterproductive.
10. Itar-Tass: World Bank chief backs Putin's economic reforms.
11. Reuters: EBRD chief says Russia is on the right track.
12. Reuters: Russia upbeat on economy, wants to join WTO soon.]

*******

#1
Political risks haunt Putin as Kursk operation begins

MOSCOW, July 8 (AFP) -
As Western ships raced Sunday to an arctic spot where 118 lost their lives in
the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, President Vladimir Putin faced the risk
that his perhaps rash promise to raise the sub could go wrong.

From some poorly choreographed comments that ring an echo of the Kremlin's
original reaction to an August 12 disaster that broke the nation's -- if not
the world's -- heart, Putin has some reason for concern.

For one, there is disagreement about the Kursk's explosive front end. As
eventually disclosed, it was packed with 18 torpedoes and 24 cruise missiles
when it somehow ripped open in a blast that caused the Kursk to sink.

Admitting the dangers, Russia now wants to slice that front end off before
pulling up the rest of the 20,000-tonne submarine. But top chiefs, pressed
repeatedly on whether that operation itself was safe, have argued in public.

"I am certain about the front section's safety," said Igor Spassky, who heads
a military organization that designed the Kursk.

"Everything is possible, if we take into account that we are dealing with a
submarine loaded with torpedoes," countered navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov.

Then there is the nuclear worry -- a big one for Norway, which profitably
fishes in the waters of the Barents Sea where the Kursk sank.

Oslo has repeatedly asked, without a direct reply from Moscow, just what the
rescuers plan to do should the two nuclear reactors on board break up while
being tugged to shore.

Most navy observers agree that the main worry is of a storm sweeping over the
Barents Sea just as the Kursk is being brought up in mid-September.

"We have made long-term weather forecasts, and we are not expecting any major
storms at that time," a gruff deputy navy commander Mikhail Barskov replied
when asked, point blank, about the possibility.

But beyond the human danger and Russian officials' self-contradictions lies
the political danger for Putin himself.

The Russian president was at the height of his popularity just as the first
major tragedy under his term struck. But the icy ex-KGB spy faltered when it
came down to one of the head of state's most sensitive jobs -- consoling the
nation in a time of grief.

After tanning at a seaside resort while Russians stayed glued to their TV
sets for a week awaiting news of the tragedy -- and watching the first
official assurances dissolve -- Putin eventually visited the Kursk victims'
families at their humble military base when it was clear all was lost.

Then, he promised action.

Amid witness accounts of victims' wives being shot with tranquilizers while
berating visiting ministers for giving them false hope, Putin -- in an
apparent bid to save his can-do image that helped win an election -- vowed to
raise the Kursk and its crew.

"The sorrow is immeasurable and no words of consolation will suffice," Putin
told the grieving. "My heart is filled with pain. But your pain is even
worse."

Public opinion polls now show that Russians are growing uneasy with the
rescue effort, which in fact contradicts the ancient tradition of leaving
fallen sea mariners to rest in a common grave.

In a sign of the times -- and a worrying one for Putin -- one Russian
television journalist last week mentioned in a news report that the
government would be wiser to grant the estimated 80 millions dollars to be
spent on the salvage effort to the crew's families.

Sensing the urgency and remembering Western media astonishment at the
government's original nonchalant coverage of the disaster, the Kremlin has
vowed to open up a massive press room near the site where the Kursk will be
raised.

But on visiting the location -- a devastated and long-abandoned ice rink in
the city of Murmansk -- a top Kremlin media chief berated regional
administration officials for failing to supply the place with simple phone
lines and electricity.

He agreed that the Kremlin had some public relations sweeping up to do.

*******

#2
Expert reveals shocking figures about drug addiction in Russia
Interfax

Moscow, 8 July: The number of drug addicts has increased by 12 times in
Russia over the past 10 years. Moreover, the age of drug addicts is
becoming increasingly young, Tatyana Dmitriyeva, academician of the Russian
Academy of Medical Science and director of the forensic psychiatry research
institute, has told Interfax.

Whereas the number of adult drug addicts has increased eight times over the
past 10 years, that of teenage drug addicts has multiplied 18 times. The
growth of drug addiction among children under 14 years of age is even more
shocking - by 24.3 times, she said.

The percentage of children among new drug addicts has increased from 5 per
cent in the late 1980s to 26 per cent in 2000.

This process is being accompanied by an increase in the use of heavy drugs
- heroine and cocaine. Light home-made drugs of the ephedrine type which
alarmed doctors 10 years ago have been replaced by purely chemical drugs of
the "ecstasy" group of which there are 40 kinds.

The geography of drug addiction has changed too. Whereas previously,
illegal drugs were mostly used in ports, in cities located along the main
transport routes and in Moscow, now the leading places are held by Siberia
(313.2 drug addicts per 100,000 citizens) and the Far East (184.8). Moscow
is in third place (154.3 drug addicts per 100,000 citizens.)

The number of drug addicts officially registered in Russia is less than
300,000. But in accordance with calculation methods used worldwide, this
figure must be multiplied by 10, which means there are at least 3m drug
addicts in Russia, or 5 per cent of the population, Dmitriyeva said. World
Health Organization experts believe that, when the number of drug addicts
and alcoholics surpasses the 7 per cent barrier, irreversible negative
processes begin. "We have approached this barrier very closely," Dmitriyeva
said.

One tenth of crimes committed in Russia are committed by teenagers using
drugs.

Dmitriyeva said that over 90 per cent of Russian citizens who became
infected with HIV in 2000 contracted the disease through intravenous drug
use.

*******

#3
Scotland on Sunday
July 8, 2001
Putin’s ‘archaic’ reign over Moscow roads drives electorate to misery
By Alice Lagnado in Moscow

WESTERN leaders have virtually ignored president Vladimir Putin’s clampdown
on the press and brutal war in Chechnya in favour of promoting business
interests and a policy of "engaging with Russia".

But one aspect of the ex-KGB spy should have told them everything they
needed to know about the Russian president’s character: the sight of his
limousine speeding through central Moscow as ordinary Russian drivers wait
for hours in side streets to allow Putin to glide by at 85mph.

Putin’s motorcade, which holds up drivers and their families for hours each
day in Moscow, has provoked a backlash from furious Russians. The Duma,
Russia’s parliament, this week voted by 262-1 to pass a special appeal to
the president to stop making life a misery for thousands of Muscovites.

Putin’s insistence on keeping families stuck in cars in the summer heat
while he is driven to the airport or to the Kremlin from his country dacha
is a powerful statement of his attitude to ordinary Russians.

A growing campaign, spearheaded by the country’s top investigative tabloid
newspaper and a prominent MP, has shown that Russians are tiring of their
president’s lofty disregard for the electorate.

Campaigners want Putin to stop the chaos he is causing on Moscow streets.
Drivers are forced to stop minutes or even hours before the motorcade goes
by to ensure the road is clear. Critics say Putin should fly to the airport
by helicopter and live in the presidential apartment in the Kremlin during
the week instead of driving to his country residence.

"The president doesn’t seem to know what happens when he drives by, but
making life hell for thousands of people in the city is just not on," said
Yuri Geiko, the journalist behind the campaign in Komsomsolskaya Pravda .
"Children sit in cars in this heat for 40 minutes, two hours."

Last month, dozens of Russians had to spend the night in their cars when
Putin commandeered the streets of St Petersburg, his home town, for a
meeting with the Austrian president, Thomas Klestil.

Stanislav Govoryukhin, a prominent MP and filmmaker, is battling to gain
support in Russia’s parliament to pressure the president to change. "Only
in our country would the presidential bodyguards go to such extremes," he
said. In his address to Putin this week, he called for the president to
"abolish the archaic practice of blocking roads for the passage of official
convoys of any level".

"I don’t mind the president but I begin to hate him when they close streets
off. We are paying for this with our time and our nerves," said Sergei, a
Moscow businessman who spends hours waiting for Putin’s cortège to pass.

"There is a Russian tradition of respect for leaders in which everything
pales into insignificance next to his comfort and safety," Sergei Ivanyenko
of the Yabloko party said.

Putin, however, is the first leader to spark a serious protest movement.
His predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, got on a Russian bus to show he was a man
of the people. That is not Putin’s style. Whatever he may say to Western
statesmen, the Russian president is a product of his past. As young men, he
and his peers in the KGB looked down on figures such as Yeltsin and former
president Mikhail Gorbachev, whom they saw as woolly-headed liberals
betraying the motherland.

The president seems unable to resist the thrill of sweeping through Red
Square, flanked by black Mercedes packed full of armed bodyguards, as the
masses wait for their great leader to pass as they did for Stalin and
Brezhnev.

Putin’s reign over Moscow’s roads is more than an unfortunate accident. It
is simply the least dangerous of his authoritarian leanings. While Putin is
forcing through real reforms to the corrupt courts, paying pensions and
collecting taxes, in his broader understanding of democratic freedoms he is
backward-looking.

This week he signalled the end of Ekho Moskvy, Russia’s dearly loved
national radio station, the last serious independent news outlet in the
country.

*******

#4
Baltimore Sun
July 7, 2001
[for personal use only]
Drawn to tattoos' secrets
Language: A new book by a former Russian guard examines the private culture
of prisoners.
By Kathy Lally
Sun Foreign Staff

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - Looking back on 33 years of working in Russian
jails, Danzig Baldayev likes to see himself more as cultural observer than
prison guard.

When he talks of his days spent in St. Petersburg's Kresty Prison, he is not
speaking of presiding over fear and humiliation, of prisoners overcrowded and
badly nourished.

He speaks instead of his entry into a secret world, where he became something
of an ethnographer, setting down the ways of a closed society. Baldayev, 75
and retired, used his time as a guard to observe the tattoos prisoners here
apply to each other.

"It was like a foreign language," Baldayev says, "so I started to collect
it."

Baldayev, who had briefly studied art, drew copies of the tattoos and noted
their meaning. Eventually, he collected 3,600 examples. And now he has
published the results in a 166-page book called "Prisoners' Tattoos," issued
by Limbus Press in St. Petersburg.

The tattoos are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and sometimes simply
strange, reflecting as they do the lives and mores of convicts. There are
skulls with swastikas, naked women, a smiling Al Capone, assorted demons,
medieval knights in armor, daggers and blood, benign images of Christ,
mosques and minarets, sweet-faced mothers and babies, tanks, a horned Lenin,
numerous and salacious sexual images - and more naked women.

"We see this as a great ethnographic and linguistic accomplishment by
Baldayev," says Konstantin Tublin, publisher of Limbus Press. "After 50
years, what we're hearing and seeing now will be forgotten. In general, the
level of criminalization of society will fall, and this book will be a
monument to a culture that has passed."

Slang in wide use

The preface to the book mentions that one in five Russians has passed through
the prison system, leading to wide use of prison slang and to the wearing of
tattoos.

In Russia's recent past, you didn't have to be a criminal to go to prison.
All you had to be was an enemy of the state, and nearly anyone could be made
to fit that category.

The result of such wide-scale imprisonment, Tublin says, is that much of
modern Russian word use has been influenced by prison slang. Perhaps the
best-known practitioner is President Vladimir V. Putin.

Last year, he promised to fight Chechen rebels by "wiping them out in the
outhouse." His words, in Russian, were quintessential prison jargon, and many
Russians were surprised if not shocked to hear their president use it.

Other vocabulary: To play the piano means to take fingerprints. A radish is
an unreliable person. A joyful bug is a member of parliament. To call someone
cheerful means he's mentally ill. A horrible breakfast of cereal mixed with
rotten vegetables is called the daybreak of communism.

"Once the criminal language and tattoos were the code of a restricted world,"
Tublin says. "Then the world of the criminal became open, and the language
was diffused into society. Tattoos were the remaining secret part."

Unlocking the mystery

With Baldayev's book the secret is out.

A prisoner who has a tattoo of a cat smoking a pipe is a successful thief,
Baldayev says. A snarling tiger or wolf means the thief is particularly
powerful. A murderer might have a tattoo of a warrior in armor standing on
severed heads or a tattoo of a sword piercing a skull.

Some prisoners have tattoos of churches. The number of domes on the churches
represents the number of years spent in prison.

The tattoos are administered in prison by other prisoners, and, of course,
they are prohibited.

"They use whatever sharp instruments they can find," Baldayev says, "along
with ink or coal. Or they take leather from shoes, burn it and use that."

A serious subject

The tattoos are taken very seriously, he says, and if a prisoner has a tattoo
that he doesn't merit, he can be badly beaten or even killed.

"They have a world of their own," he says. "If a person doesn't have tattoos,
or has the wrong tattoos, then he's not a member and not even considered a
human being."

Baldayev was introduced to this prison world in 1948, when he was fresh from
World War II and given a work assignment.

"I went to the local party committee," he says. "They asked me, 'Are you a
member of the Komsomol [Communist youth league]? Do you love Soviet power?' I
answered, 'Yes, yes,' and they sent me to work in Kresty Prison."

In the 1980s, he compiled a dictionary of prison slang.

"I never felt sorry for the criminals," Baldayev says of his years as a
guard, "but the teachers, doctors, writers, journalists - I was very sorry
for them. They were our best lights."

Baldayev, who was born in Ulan Ude in Russia's Buryatia region, remembered
his father being taken off to prison in the years of Stalinist repression.

"They arrested my father when I was 13 and took me to an orphanage," he says.
"I spent two years there as a member of a traitor's family."

Eventually, his father was freed. "We were not a politically dangerous
family," Baldayev says. "They were satisfied with smashing his teeth in and
keeping him in prison for a few years."

Making a statement

In prison, everything makes a statement, Tublin says. Everyone, even
dissidents, had to master the language or suffer for it. He recalls a story
told to him by Lev Gumilyov, son of poet Anna Akhmatova.

"He told me your status in prison depends on the impression you make the very
first day," he says.

Gumilyov had entered prison at mealtime and asked other inmates for a plate
and spoon. "A prisoner approached and said, 'I could give you a plate, but
maybe you're a rooster.'"

Gumilyov broke the prisoner's nose with a fast punch.

"A rooster is the very lowest status," Tublin says. "Gumilyov knew his
response would fix his status forever and nothing in the world would ever
change it. So he broke his nose in answer.

"Then he was able to take a decent place in the cell, near a window.
Otherwise he might have ended up sleeping on the floor next to the toilet."

Just as prison slang passed into wider use, so did tattoos. Baldayev got his
as a child in the orphanage.

He has a heart and his initials on his left hand.

"It was the fashion," he says. "We were teen-agers, trying to be cool."

*******

#5
Washington Post Book World
July 8, 2001
Blood Red
By Robert G. Kaiser
Robert G. Kaiser, The Post's Moscow correspondent from 1971-74, is the
author of "Russia, The People and The Power" and "Why Gorbachev Happened."

RUSSIA AND THE RUSSIANS A History
By Geoffrey Hosking
Harvard Univ. 718 pp. $35

NIGHT OF STONE
Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia
By Catherine Merridale
Viking. 402 pp. $29.95

EMPIRE The Russian Empire and Its Rivals
By Dominic Lieven
Yale Univ. 486 pp. $35

SUNLIGHT AT MIDNIGHT
St. Petersburg and The Rise of Modern Russia
By W. Bruce Lincoln
Basic. 419 pp. $35

"Russia is one of history's great survivors," writes Geoffrey Hosking at
the outset of his vast tome, an idiosyncratic, exasperating and brilliant
recounting of Russia's astounding thousand and more years. He is surely
right about that.

In a contest for best national story, only the English could compete with
the Russians. And if the contest took into account grimness and gore, the
English would fall out of the running. From its ninth-century origins
around Kiev, to the Mongol Golden Horde, to the two Greats, Peter and
Catherine, to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Pushkin, Lenin,
Stalin and Gorbachev, the history of Russia is a mind-boggling parade of
horrors, triumphs, glories and disasters. For curious human beings it is an
endlessly fascinating subject.

So authors continue to write an endless supply of sometimes-endless volumes
exploring it. No single volume can do justice to the subject. Hosking's
Russia and the Russians proves that point emphatically. The monumental
achievement of a distinguished historian, it is engaging, provocative,
intelligent, overwhelming and -- at many junctures -- woefully inadequate.
It's a wonderful book, but skimpy on many of the great subjects of Russian
history, from Peter and Catherine the Great to Joseph Stalin. Reading
Hosking leads to the conclusion that doing even cursory justice to Russian
history would require several thousand pages, and he gives it barely 700.
The fact that he is trying to pack it all in makes the book as dense as a
Russian forest, though fluently readable nevertheless. Hosking's literary
problem, simply put, is that Russia has too much history.

The gem in this group of new books is also the most narrowly focused,
Catherine Merridale's haunting history of unnatural death in 20th-century
Russia. Night of Stone is a revelation, though it deals with familiar
subject matter. By confronting her topic with determination and
resourcefulness, Merridale succeeds in making the oft-told tale of Russian
brutality to Russians both fresh and unbelievably horrific. Considerably
more than 50 million Russians died prematurely in the 20th century, a
number so big it cannot be fully absorbed. (It's as if England, Scotland
and Ireland had all been erased from the map.) But reading Merridale will
bring one as close as it may be possible to come to a vicarious
understanding of what such losses mean.

"The heart of this book," she writes, "is absence and loss. Silence, and
not answer, lies at its core." The silence is a consequence of the Russian
penchant for forgetting and denying. An important part of Merridale's
research was the gathering of oral history from subjects who, it appears,
never discuss the topics she asked them about in their ordinary lives.
Obviously an empathetic person and talented interviewer, Merridale could
get them talking about the horrors they'd seen, to her readers' great
benefit. But she is rattling skeletons (quite literally) in the Russian
national closet that are normally ignored. By the end of Night of Stone,
you understand the enormity of the hidden horrors that modern Russians are
not confronting.

Even readers familiar with the history of 20th-century Russia will be
stunned by Merridale's careful accounting of the killing that took place.
Stalin's terror in the '30s and the devastation of World War II, the
best-known episodes, together represent only about three-fifths of the
total. Russia lost perhaps 2 million in World War I, more than Germany did
(and 25 times more than the United States). As many as 7 million more died
in the Russian civil war that followed the truce at Versailles, and
consolidated the Bolshevik revolution. Famine in the early '20s claimed 5-7
million victims, then the "collectivization" of agriculture killed 1-2
million, and more famine in the early '30s killed millions more. Then the
great terror of 1937-38, a monument to Stalin's madness, took the lives of
now-uncountable millions, including many of the most talented members of
society. In World War II about 25 million Russians perished. Right after
the war the terror resumed, taking millions more victims, including
hundreds of thousands who had been prisoners of Nazi Germany, and were
eradicated merely because of that. (This is one category that Merridale's
account almost ignores, oddly.) In 1946-47 famine returned, and killed
thousands more.

This is far from a complete list, since Russians were dying unnaturally
before the first World War, and for 50 years after the second. Russian life
expectancy has been, for all of modern history, radically shorter than in
other European countries.

Even more impressive than her accounting is Merridale's literary skill.
Using individual cases and an ingenious combination of memoirs, archival
materials and histories, she brings this horrific tale of death to life.
Her book is a tour de force. She successfully debunks the prosaic and
prejudiced idea -- commonly heard in Europe for centuries -- that the
Russians are somehow barbarians beyond the reach of normal human instincts
by demonstrating, again and again, how unmistakably human both perpetrators
and victims have been.

Merridale is especially compelling in sections addressing the enormous
question of how the Russians who survived cope with the horrors they
witnessed and experienced. Most often they have coped by denying and by
forgetting. That is why she puts silence at the core of her story. Russians
have survived the last century in part by ignoring what really happened.
This is one way to cope, of course, but it leaves terrible scars.

All of Russian history has left scars: Each of these books forces us to
confront them. Russia is a country never governed -- never -- by a regime
that worked to improve the life of its citizens. Only in the last 15 years
have Russian leaders made any serious effort to change this state of
affairs, still without much success. Hosking's Russia and the Russians and
Dominic Lieven's Empire both emphasize the importance of empire in Russia's
past. But as both books show, Russian leaders viewed the accumulation of a
vast empire as a way to protect the Russian state, not to improve the
circumstances of ordinary Russians.

Lieven's book is an artful argument about the nature of the Russian empire
that rests in large part on comparing it to others, particularly the
Austro-Hungarian, British and Turkish versions. It's an impressive piece of
English intellectual showmanship, full of insight but marred occasionally
by a pinched reading of the Russian experience. Still, Lieven argues
persuasively that for the leaders of Russia, "vulnerability and weakness
were often at least as powerful a factor as an instinct for territorial
expansion" as the empire grew.

Empire also allowed Russians to think well of themselves, an important
concern for centuries. As Lieven makes clear, Russians' sense of their
uniquenesss has been central to the national myth, under both tsars and
commisars. This pride was another kind of defense. He quotes the delighted
response of an enthusiastic delegate to the Communist Party Congress of
1921 to the Bolsheviks' success in making the new communist Soviet Union
"the center of a world movement," which "has filled with pride and with a
special kind of Russian patriotism the hearts of all those who are
connected with the revolution." This wasn't exactly what Marx and Engels
had in mind with "workers of the world, unite," but it does help explain
the early success of communism in Russia.

The least original but easiest to read of these books is W. Bruce Lincoln's
Sunlight at Midnight, a biography of St. Petersburg. This is Lincoln's last
book. A prolific author of accessible Russian histories, he died at 61 in
2000. His subject is one of the great Russian inventions, a beautiful
European city built from nothing, literally in a swamp.

Peter the Great began the project in the early 18th century; it was
completed by successors who embraced Peter's compulsion to give Russia a
great European capital and a window on the West. European architects and
artists made it possible. After the revolution of 1917, St. Petersburg (by
then Petrograd, and later Leningrad) lost its role as national capital,
because the Bolsheviks turned away from its pretensions. This happened,
Lincoln observes, in part because rapid industrialization at the end of the
19th and beginning of the 20th centuries transformed St. Petersburg into a
center of industry, its glorious palaces ringed by factories belching thick
smoke and pollution. "Awash in the paraphernalia of progress," Lincoln
writes, "St. Petersburg stood no longer for the grandeur of Empire but for
the things that many thoughtful Russians found troubling in the West." So
moving the capital to Moscow under the new red flag allowed the old dreams
to survive in a new setting.

Lincoln's book would make a good companion on a trip to what is again St.
Petersburg, where the life of the imperial capital can no longer be found
but the stage set remains intact.

In more than a millennium of recorded history, the Russian experience has
been marked by great accomplishments and great deprivations. Sadly, the
deprivations have consequences that now weigh down the accomplishments.
These books describe the legacy that makes Russia's current experiment so
challenging. There is little in the country's past that has prepared it to
become a modern, tolerant and efficient democracy. Russians have no real
experience with independent civic institutions, checks and balances, or
even the restrained use of power. Russian citizens have been estranged from
the state for many centuries -- one of Hosking's themes. The modern history
so painfully and vividly recounted by Merridale is a kind of curse.

The tragedies of Russia's past haunt its present and cloud its future. So
far, free Russians haven't found ways to confront this reality. They are
trying to borrow foreign notions (most notably, capitalism and democracy)
to create a new Russia without fully accounting for the previous versions.
It would be wonderful if these books, particularly Merridale's and
Hosking's, were translated into Russian now and widely read by Russians,
who could benefit greatly from them. •

******

#6
The Sunday Times (UK)
8 July 2001
Stalin drew cartoons of his victims' fate
By Mark Franchetti, Moscow

NEWLY discovered cartoons and doodles believed to have been drawn by Joseph
Stalin could provide an unusual insight into the mind of one of the 20th
century's most ruthless dictators.

According to Boris Ilizarov, a historian and member of the Russian academy
of sciences, Stalin used to draw offensive sketches of some of his victims
while attending politburo meetings. In one cartoon, which Ilizarov believes
Stalin drew around 1930, his finance minister, Nikolai Bryukhanov, is
depicted naked, hanging from a rope by his genitals.

The sketch was found with a note written and signed by Stalin in which the
tyrant made no effort to disguise his pleasure at the fate he had in mind
for Bryukhanov, a politburo member for four years.

Under the heading "Special File", it read: "To all members of the
politburo, for all his present and future sins, Bryukhanov should be hung
by his balls. If they hold up he should be considered not guilty as if in a
court of law. If they give way he should be drowned in a river."

Bryukhanov was executed on Stalin's orders in 1938 on trumped-up charges.
He was rehabilitated in 1956, three years after Stalin's death.

A copy of the cartoon and the note were taken from a state archive by
Ilizarov, who recently also uncovered KGB documents revealing that Stalin
had an illegitimate son from a relationship with a 14-year-old girl. The
affair was hidden by the Kremlin for decades. Hundreds of files on Stalin,
who ruled Russia from the 1920s until his death in 1953, remain closed,
even to academics.

"These drawings give us a unique chance to look into his complicated mind,"
said Ilizarov, who is writing a book about Stalin. "I have no doubt there
are many more such drawings which fully reveal the inner depth of his soul."

The archives contain more than 500 sketches and cartoons. Dozens were drawn
by members of Stalin's inner circle, including portraits by Nikolai
Bukharin, a confidant who was also executed in 1938. Another prolific
sketcher during meetings in the Kremlin was Valery Mezhlauk, Stalin's
right-hand man, who died the same year.

However, Ilizarov believes many were drawn by Stalin himself during the
years when his policies and repressions claimed 20m lives. Several experts
have confirmed that the note about Bryukhanov was written by Stalin.

"The drawing and the note come from the same file and I have no doubt that
both are Stalin's work," said Ilizarov, who noted that in the doodle
Bryukhanov is depicted crouching like a cat. He said this echoed episodes
from Stalin's early years in which he watched and probably helped other
children torturing cats.

"As a child he watched several executions when criminals were hanged," he
said. "He had the sense of humour of a hooligan. He loved humiliating and
mocking those who surrounded him. He was cruel and a sadist, especially
with people who made fun of him."

Stalin often doodled with a blue pencil during long Politburo meetings.
Archives also contain dozens of books from his personal library in which he
scribbled in the margins, often making offensive silhouettes of characters
he was reading about. In his copies of the works of Lenin, he wrote
comments deriding the father of the Russian revolution, pencilling in huge
question marks and writing "Ha Ha Ha!!" alongside.

"Stalin loved to scribble all over his books and papers," said Larissa
Rogovaya, an archivist with access to Stalin's files. "He also doodled in
his books. And in his remarks he did not mind his language.

"After defeating the Nazis he became even more megalomaniac. He wrote
speeches and scribbled in the text at what point the audience was meant to
applaud and for how long."

******

#7
From: "Stanislav Menshikov" <menschivok@globalxs.nl>
Subject: ECONOMY WITHOUT A STEERING-WHEEL
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001

"MOSCOW TRIBUNE", 6 JULY 2007
ECONOMY WITHOUT A STEERING-WHEEL
Sailing at the Mercy of Waves Spells Disaster
By Stanislav Menshikov

President Vladimir Putin recently assembled his economic ministers and
praised them for an economy that this year is growing better than expected.
German Gref added to the praise by announcing that the economy had in fact
experienced a "quiet revolution". Instead of economic growth forecasted at 4
percent, GDP is rising at the annual rate of 5.4 percent, and industrial
production at 5.9 percent. All important indicators are up, he said, and
Russia has become the most liberal country in Europe in terms of taxes.

Well, the economy is growing, no doubt about that. This is certainly a
welcome change after the long recession and stagnation under Yeltsin. But is
it a result of a "quiet revolution" unleashed under Putin? We doubt it. The
profit tax change will only start next January, and has nothing to do with
growth this year. Reforming natural monopolies has so far triggered
tariff-push inflation, which works against growth by eating into real
incomes and profits. More inflation is ahead as the upsurge in rents joins
prices for electricity, gas and transportation. In view of these negative
factors created by the government it is a miracle that the economy is
growing at all.

Now about the figures quoted above. Where did the additional 1.4 - percent
come from allowing GDP growth to be pegged up from 4 to 5.4 percent? The
Economics Minister did not disclose the secret but we will. Goskomstat
(Government Statistical Office) has just changed its methodology of
calculating macroeconomic indicators. The new methodology provides nicer
looking results. For instance, industrial production growth in 2000 is now
reported at 11 percent instead of 8, an improvement of 3 percent. In other
words, better growth this year is a result of statistical massage.

In the old Gosplan such tricks were dubbed "special enthusiasm". In Anatoly
Chubais's time, Goskomstat would also show annual growth (by 0.9 percent in
1997) where there was in fact a fall by 2 percent. This was achieved by
raising the "guesstimate" for the share of the shadow economy from 22 to 25
percent. This brought an automatic addition to GDP. We are yet to discover
what kind of statistical innovations were introduced this time around. But
would it not be more honest to admit them right away instead of inventing a
"quiet revolution"?
Statistical manipulation is no substitute for lack of creative policy.

Vagit Alekperov, head of LUKOIL, largest concern in Russian oil business,
recently complained that the government is failing to provide the industry
with long-term projections of domestic demand for oil and oil products. This
leads to cycles of under- and over-supply, and prevents companies from
making long-term-oriented investments. Projections are supposed to be done
by Mr. Gref's ministry, but aren't. This is another instance of poorly
co-ordinated macroeconomic policy.

The government's proposal that the obligatory sale of 75 percent of
exporters' dollar proceeds be reduced to 50 percent is yet another example.
The main reason cited is that the Central Bank is forced to print more
roubles than the economy needs in exchange for petrodollars and thus pushes
up inflation. Excessive currency reserves also allegedly tend to drive down
the dollar/rouble exchange rate and thus undermine competitive power of
domestic producers.

But serious doubts exist about this reasoning. For instance, in
January-April 2001 the foreign trade surplus amounted to $18.9 billion. If
75 percent of this money was in fact sold to the Central Bank, the net
addition to rouble money supply should have been 541 billion roubles.
Actually, from the end of December 2000 to the end of April 2001 money
supply (M2) increased by only 131 billion roubles, i.e. four times less than
incoming hard currency. The claim that every extra petrodollar sold to the
Central Bank creates an equivalent amount of roubles in circulation does not
seem to hold water.

There are many means, by which roubles are being effectively pumped out of
circulation. One of these is failure to spend the full amount of money
appropriated in the federal budget and not spending extra revenues from
exports for domestic needs. Another is permitting more capital to be
exported abroad. Reducing obligatory dollar sales will certainly add new
billions to capital flight. Promoting further rouble devaluation helps
exporters but adds to domestic inflation. All these are negative factors
that reduce effective domestic demand and investment activity. When weighted
against possible positive effects of currency liberalisation (if there are
any), the overall net result could be negative and thus harm the economy
instead of helping it.

But, as in most other cases, the government does not bother to make the
necessary macroeconomic analysis without which the president and the cabinet
become easy prey to pressure from lobby groups leading to contradictory
decisions that creates more problems for the economy.

Sailing without a steering wheel is pleasant when the weather is calm and a
mild wind is blowing the right way. Caught in a storm, such a boat is bound
for disaster. Alas, the lessons of 1998 have not been learnt.

*******

#8
The Russia Journal
July 6-12, 2001
Battle begins over Russia’s defense budget cash
Duma chiefs and generals worry that higher spending may be counterproductive
By ALEXANDER GOLTS

For the first time in Russia’s post-Soviet history, the Defense Ministry
has asked the president not to raise wages in the armed forces as the Duma
requested.

The move comes alongside radical changes in relations between the military,
the legislative and the executive branches of power, bringing both promises
of better pay for Russia’s armed forces and fears that the cash will be
given with one hand and snatched away with the other.

Just a couple of years ago, the annual battle for the defense budget
followed completely different tactics. The budgets drawn up by the
government never even allocated the Defense Ministry the minimum it needed
just to keep the armed forces afloat.

The defense minister and his deputies at that time didn’t want to risk
protesting publicly. Instead, they would take the battle to the Duma, which
would add a few dozen billion rubles to the government draft budget. Once
the budget was approved, Defense Ministry officials would spend much of
their time at the Finance Ministry trying to get hold of the money they’d
been promised.

But now the situation has totally reversed, and the defense budget is being
scrupulously executed. Speaking recently to the command of the Black Sea
Fleet, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that for the year to June, the
armed forces had already received 45 percent of the 2001 defense budget.

Even better for defense officials, the government draft budget for 2002
promises to increase defense spending from 231 billion rubles to 262
billion rubles. President Vladimir Putin has also proposed his own draft
law on the status of servicemen, which could double military wages.

But despite this positively rosy-looking picture, the military is far from
happy. Many sources say that representatives of the different security
agencies in Russia have set aside their endless rivalry and joined forces
to sink the government and Kremlin plans. The Duma’s Defense Committee,
decidedly against the plans of the government, will form the nucleus of
this opposition.

This is because the specialists in the Duma Defense Committee think that
rather than improving the financial lot of officers, half of whom live with
their families under the poverty line, the increase in the defense budget
will be followed by vigorous cuts in the cost of maintaining the armed
forces.

The Duma recently approved amendments to the law on the status of
servicemen, seeking to bring military wages in line with those of public
servants. The government calculated that this would require an extra 60
billion rubles. It also proposed making the increase in two stages, the
first in mid-2002 and the second only in 2004. What is most amazing here is
that the officials behind this government proposal were Defense Minister
Sergei Ivanov and his deputy, Lyubov Kudelina, a former deputy finance
minister.

Military officials fear that along with the first wage increase, the
government will abolish benefits for the military. At the moment,
servicemen don’t pay taxes, have free use of public transport and pay
considerably less than civilians for telephone and utilities. If the
government abolishes these benefits, even with the wage increase military
incomes will fall over the next two years. Added to this is inflation,
which is around 20 percent at the moment.

The Defense Ministry looks like it intends to spend money on buying new
military equipment rather than to pay its soldiers. The government plans to
allocate an extra 40 billion rubles to buying equipment in the 2002 budget
(the defense budget overall will increase by only 31 billion rubles).

This represents an attempt by the Defense Ministry to rectify the abnormal
situation in the defense budget over the last 10 years. Currently, more
than 70 percent of all defense spending goes on maintaining the armed
forces, so that soldiers are fed and clothed but have little to fight with.

Some generals worry, however, that the latest plans could lead to the
inverse situation where there will be new tanks and planes, but no one to
use them. At the moment, a lieutenant commanding a military unit earns
1,600 rubles a month.

If this situation doesn’t improve soon, the Army will face a flood of
junior officers leaving its ranks. As it is today, some units are already
commanded by civilians drafted into the Army for two years, and these
soldiers often don’t have the professional expertise required.

But the Defense Ministry seems to have decided to rely on administrative
measures to keep officers in the armed forces. Garrison commanders are
being ordered to do everything they can to prevent officers from leaving.

Unexpected support for the officers has come from Duma deputies. The Duma
Defense Committee is examining a draft law that would allow officers to
leave the armed forces without losing pension rights if the state violates
the conditions of their contract.

Something like abolishing benefits would constitute just such a violation.
If this law passes, garrison commanders could well find themselves swamped
by officers’ notifications of intention to leave the armed forces.

Meanwhile, servicemen in general, especially middle-rank and junior
officers, have less and less trust in the people running the Defense Ministry.

*******

#9
The Russia Journal
July 6-12, 2001
Russia’s honeymoon with missile defense is over
But Putin’s threat to withdraw from every security treaty is counterproductive
By ANDREI PIONTKOVSKY

It appears that the Russian Foreign Ministry’s honeymoon with flexible and
conciliatory statements, and the hope of reaching a constructive compromise
on missile defense are over. The honeymoon lasted from Foreign Minister
Igor Ivanov’s May 2 press conference to President Vladimir Putin’s press
conference on June 16.

It’s hard to shake off the impression that the only reason for this
peaceful offensive was to get the Americans to agree to a summit that would
give Putin the chance urbi et orbi that he is a president with a human soul.

Once, that reader of souls U.S. President George W. Bush officially
confirmed the existence of one in his Russian counterpart (I looked deep
inside him and saw it), the tactical mission was fulfilled and our foreign
policy establishment was able to breathe a sigh of relief and return to its
staple diet of "the cornerstone of global security" and the terrible threat
that U.S. missile defense plans represent to the Russian nuclear deterrent.

The only difference is that what the establishment was repeating for years
before the summit in Ljubljana at scores of symposiums and colloquia can
now be heard from the mouth of the president.

Putin is a thorough and disciplined president. He reads new texts aloud or
speaks by heart, giving his expression, making it look as though he has
taken in their meaning and providing the public with a display of
coherency. But it would be good if, as a man with a curious mind and a
professional inclination toward analytical work, he actually checked the
logical compatibility of various passages from the Foreign Ministry’s
concoctions.

Over the years of their propaganda offensive, our diplomats have
ingenuously failed to notice certain contradictions between their two main
arguments.

The first argument takes the line that U.S. missile defense plans are all
bluff, that it’s impossible to implement, and the tests carried out were
falsified.

The second argument calls U.S. missile defense plans a huge threat to
strategic stability and to our nuclear deterrent, and says that it would
draw us into an arms race, in which, unable to bear the cost, we would make
an asymmetrical answer.

Both of these arguments have a right to exist, but not both at the same time.

President Putin is following the same model of thinking. First he
demonstrated his in-depth knowledge of ballistics and combinations of
speeds (7.5 + 7.5 = 15) to explain to American journalists why you can’t
hit one bullet with another.

But then he moved on to the second argument. So as to put an end to the
futile exercises in trying to hit bullets with bullets, Moscow will equip
its strategic missiles with warheads that separate into several projectiles
– what are known as Multiple Independently targeted Reentry Vehicles, or
MIRVs – and would thus annul the START-2 treaty.

The most likely scenario here would see Russia equip its Topol-M missiles
with three nuclear devices and extend the service lives of its SS-18
missiles. (All of this bears the caring hand of the president’s advisor on
strategic stability, who combines his job with that of leading the missile
lobby in the armed forces.)

This, then, is our asymmetrical answer and our famous promise to show the
West "Kuzkin’s mother." If this is a threat, then it is absurd both in
political and in military-strategic terms. The United States doesn’t care
whether we have 1,000 or 3,000 warheads. They know full well that Russia
will never launch a nuclear attack on the country.

The United States will continue cutting back its warheads, as is planned in
the defense budget for next year, and no increase in the number of Russian
warheads will have any effect on U.S. plans to deploy its missile defense
plans. Missile defense has nothing to do with Russian warheads; it’s a
system that will never provide protection from 3,000, 1,000 or 500 warheads.

The main purpose of the U.S. missile defense program is to generate
multibillion-dollar investments in technology sectors that will have a
multiplying effect throughout the American economy.

Our asymmetrical answer, on the other hand, is to increase the number of
our useless phallic symbols and risk bankrupting our entire economy, which
has only the rickety legs of raw-material exports to stand on.

This would be a truly unique arms race – one in which there is no opponent.
Although this is entirely in keeping with the spirit of martial arts. The
Grand Judo Master doesn’t need a rival, he competes against himself in
search of perfection. The only problem is that in his urge to flex useless
military muscles, he could end up with no more to show than the Russian
economy’s atrophied remains.

As for the political aspect of Putin’s sensational statements, the threat
to withdraw from each and every treaty – often heard of late from the lips
of Russia’s civilian defense minister followed by his dazzling smile – are
counterproductive and irresponsible.

It’s no secret that a fierce political battle is now underway in the United
States between supporters of a unilateral U.S. withdrawal from
international security agreements, above all from agreements with Russia,
and those who would rather adapt the existing security architecture to
today’s circumstances and challenges.

Our hawks are playing actively into the hands of America’s hawks and vice
versa. The only thing is, Sergei Ivanov would prefer to see the treaties
torn up by Donald Rumsfeld’s hands, while Rumsfeld would rather see Ivanov
do it.

Our diplomats still have a chance to take a surefire winning position that
would bring them allies in Europe, China, and among the Democrats in the
U.S. Congress – and even among a significant part of the Republican
administration.

But rather than propaganda exercises and empty threats, this would require
serious negotiations about amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,
maintaining and developing the existing system of security treaties
(including with the European Union and China), mutually agreed cuts to
strategic offensive arms and participation of Russian advanced technology
in international projects.

*******

#10
World Bank chief backs Putin's economic reforms
ITAR-TASS

St Petersburg, 8 July: The World Bank fully backs President Vladimir
Putin's initiatives to turn Russia "into a very serious competitive state",
World Bank President James Wolfensohn said today in an interview with
ITAR-TASS in St Petersburg.

In Wolfensohn's opinion, the main thing is that the results of reforms in
the country should come to rank-and-file people, to poor segments of the
population, so that general conditions of life in Russia should become
better.

Asked what he expects from the Moscow part of his Russian visit, the
president said that he expects a new meeting with friends. Wolfensohn noted
that the bank is implementing a serious programme in Russia and he intends
to inspect its realization.

*******

#11
EBRD chief says Russia is on the right track

ROME, July 7 (Reuters) - Russia is on the right track to entice investors by
combining payments on its debt and setting reforms to put the economy on a
sound footing, the head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development said on Saturday.

Jean Lemierre said Russia's improved economic climate was largely due to the
rise in revenues it generated from oil and gas, and wider reform and
investment was needed in the medium term.

"They need a lot of money, they need to invest a lot," Lemierre told
reporters after attending part of a meeting of finance ministers from the
Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers plus Russia in Rome.

"I'm not saying it's easy but now they have a pilot," he said, adding that
Russian President Vladimir Putin was making the right moves to rebuild
investor confidence after the financial market meltdown in 1998.

"You can lose investors in two minutes, like in 1998, and spend years getting
it back. That's what they're doing."

The president of the EBRD said Russia had a positive economic growth rate
last year and was set for another one in 2001.

"The situation has improved. There is more political -- I would not say
stability, that's not the right word -- but political visibility," he said.

Lemierre also noted that Russia was not living for the present on the back of
high world oil and gas prices.

"They've increased central bank reserves at quite a high speed, which means
that a part of oil and gas reserves is put aside for the future," he said.

"They've got a certain cushion for the future."

London-based EBRD is the main international lending agency in Eastern Europe,
mainly devoted to loans for private sector projects.

*******

#12
Russia upbeat on economy, wants to join WTO soon
By Svetlana Kovalyova

ROME, July 7 (Reuters) - Russia, invited as observer to a meeting of finance
ministers from the Group of Seven richest nations, wasted no effort on
Saturday to convince foreign officials the country should become a full
trading partner.

Russia's finance minister Alexei Kudrin spent two days in bilateral talks in
Rome restoring the country's international image, shattered after the 1998
financial crisis when the government defaulted on billions of dollars in
domestic debt.

Kudrin said he had informed the G7 finance ministers about Russia's progress
in structural reforms and fighting money laundering and tried to win their
support in speeding up entry to the World Trade Organisation, a key for
future investments.

"Accession to the WTO is the most important thing for us now... It should be
quick, but should not hurt our interests," Kudrin, who is also deputy prime
minister, told reporters on the sidelines of the G7 finance ministers'
meeting.

Moscow, which aims to get international consent on joining the multilateral
trading system by the end of this year, needs support of the world's richest
countries after protracted talks stalled last week over the requirements of
WTO members.

Russian officials have said the WTO demanded that Russia should adjust
foreign trade legislation to WTO standards before further talks could
proceed, as well as cut state subsidies in agriculture and remove tariff
barriers to imports.

Moscow says it needs a long transitional period to bring its laws up to world
standards, but argues this should not hinder accession to the WTO. That is
because other countries, which have recently joined the WTO, had been given
such a chance.

Kudrin said senior officials from Italy, which currently chairs the G7,
backed Russia's request for the transitional period as reasonable. U.S.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had also promised to discuss the issue in
detail when he goes to Russia at the end of July, they said.

Russia put a bid to become part of the WTO in 1993 and hoped for quick
accession.

President Vladimir Putin has said entry to the WTO is a top priority for his
administration and set the end of 2001 as the deadline for completing all
preparations to join the club.

However, despite international support for Russian membership, negotiations
to enter the global trading bloc are often a painful process, with China
battling for years to join.

RUSSIA WINS CREDITORS' PRAISE

Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said the G7 -- Britain, Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, all of which are among
Moscow's major creditors -- had agreed that Russia's economic outlook was
fundamentally positive as it was boosted by prices on oil, the country's main
export.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov painted a rosy picture of
political stability and a resurgent economy, driven by increasing domestic
demand and investment.

Kudrin said gross domestic product would grow by more than five percent this
year, up from the original official target of 4.0 pct. GDP was up 8.3 pct in
2000, a post-Soviet record.

Jean Lemierre, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, said Russia was on the right track to entice investors by
combining payments on its debt and implementing economic reforms.

Russia is struggling under some $140 billion in foreign debt, including about
$40 billion of Soviet-era debt, to Paris Club creditor nations as it carries
out structural reforms.

Lemierre said Russia's improved climate was largely due to the rise in export
revenues from oil and gas and warned that more reforms and investment were
needed in the medium term.

Analysts have said rapidly rising inflation is a major threat to Russia's
economic growth.

Inflation hit 12.7 percent in the first half of this year compared with 9.5
percent in the same period a year ago, beating the government's original 12
percent forecast for the whole of 2001. Kudrin said the government would take
urgent measures to combat inflation.

*******

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/