August 10, 2001

This Date's Issues:  5386

Johnson's Russia List
#5386
10 August 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AP: BBC quiz show "The Weakest Link" to be shown in Russia.
2. UPI: Joseph Boris, Russians: No breakthrough on missile talks.
3. Luba Schwartzman: ORT Review.
4. Interfax: Russia wants ties with NATO, but not membership.
5. Moscow Times: Boris Kagarlitsky, The Russian Melting Pot.
6. strana.ru: Political scientist: Russia may join NATO only if that alliance undergoes radical change. (Sergei Markov)
7. AFP: Kursk: the living nightmare that laid bare Russia's disarray.
8. The Guardian (UK): Women: Survivors of the Kursk: It is a year since 118 Russian sailors drowned in a nuclear submarine in the Barents sea. Amelia Gentleman meets the women and children who mourn them.
9. Financial Times (UK): Robert Cottrell, Dissenting voice may be drowned out in Belarus.
10. BBC: Tim Whewell, Russia's "dirty war."
11. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Mikhail Tulsky, THE TRUE FACE OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC CATASTROPHE. Over the past decade the number of Russians in former Soviet republics declined by at least 10 million.]

******

#1
BBC quiz show "The Weakest Link" to be shown in Russia
August 9, 2001

LONDON (AP) -- The successful television quiz show "The Weakest Link"
-- made famous by the acerbic tongue of British presenter Anne Robinson
-- is to be exported to Russia, the British Broadcasting Corp. said
Thursday.

The show, due to begin transmission next spring, will be fronted by a
Russian version of the feisty host. The quiz is now seen in 70 countries
around the world.

Under the deal, BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the corporation,
has also exported children's television program the "Tweenies," which
will be dubbed into Russian for transmission next spring.

"This new agreement marks a milestone in our strong relationship with
the BBC," said Andrei Balashov, commercial director of the Russian state
broadcaster ORT.

Each installment of the "The Weakest Link" sees the host hurling
questions at contestants, then dismissing each loser with a brusque,
"You are the weakest link, goodbye!"

The BBC is currently negotiating deals to export the format to China
and India.

*******

#2
Russians: No breakthrough on missile talks
By JOSEPH BORIS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- The head of a Russian military delegation that
met with U.S. officials this week in Washington on a possible agreement to
allow construction of missile defenses while cutting nuclear arsenals said
Thursday that a U.S. violation of the treaty banning such a system was not
inevitable.

Echoing the Americans' assessments of the talks conducted Tuesday and
Wednesday, Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky stressed that no breakthrough had been
reached and that further talks would be held over the next several weeks or
months.

Baluyevsky said, however, that U.S. plans for a missile defense system may
never be deployed, given the technical complexity and multibillion-dollar
cost involved.

Baluyevsky, deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff, spoke
after two days of discussions at the Pentagon that both the Russian and U.S.
sides said were meant only to work out an agenda for higher-level talks next
week in Moscow led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Russian Defense
Minister Sergei Ivanov. Those talks are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.

Baluyevsky told reporters that, at best, a missile defense could be relied
on "maybe 90 percent" of the time, but could never guaranteed to work all
the time without fail. He said a U.S. test on July 14, in which a U.S.
interceptor launched from California successfully hit its target, a dummy
missile launched from the South Pacific, could not be considered a complete
success because it was a controlled event that did not take into account the
complexity and confusion of a real missile attack.

"In the very distant future, we still would not be able to solve the
problems" of building a totally reliable defense, said Baluyevsky, who was
joined by another member of the delegation and two Russian diplomats at a
news conference at the Russian Embassy in Washington.

He said he believed "future generations will arrive at a different
conclusion, a more simple conclusion" rather than building a missile shield
like the one President Bush and other U.S. officials have envisioned.

The general also said the Russian side was not concerned that the United
States would soon run afoul of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which
bans missile defenses, either by stepping up in-flight
missile-and-interceptor tests or by starting construction on a series of
underground silos at Fort Greely, Alaska, that would house interceptors.

Pentagon officials have said that work could begin as early as next
spring, prompting Russian officials to reply that starting construction of
the silos would mean a U.S. violation of the treaty, which Moscow says must
be maintained to preserve the balance of strategic power in the world,
including all international arms-control agreements.

President Bush, at a meeting in Italy last month with Russian President
Vladimir Putin, raised the specter of discussing changing the ABM treaty - a
move Russia strongly opposes - to allow each side to build a missile
defense, simultaneous with talks on reductions in each country's nuclear
warheads. Both sides were tight-lipped this week, and rejected speculation
that a linkage of the two issues had been discussed.

On Thursday, Baluyevsky backed away from the notion that the Alaska
construction would be considered an automatic violation of the ABM treaty.
Asked whether this week's talks had given him an idea when the United States
would violate the treaty, he shot back: "Are you absolutely sure they will
violate it?"

"We are living in a civilized world, so let us wait for such a
notification," he said. "Let's not jump the gun."

The general and the other officials noted that the "consultations" had
begun only in July (following the Bush-Putin meeting, U.S. National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice visited Moscow to discuss the issue) and would
continue for weeks and perhaps months.

He added that during the talks Tuesday and Wednesday the Russian side
heard "no concrete proposals" from the Americans on specific changes in mind
for the ABM treaty.

*******

#3
ORT Review
www.ortv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba7@bu.edu)
Research intern at the Center for Defense Information
Research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy
at Boston University

HEADLINES,
Thursday, August 09, 2001

- The heating crisis in the Maritime region (Primoriye) has made winter
preparations a political question. The government has decided, however,
to shift the focus back to engineering aspects. According to the
ministers, if all of the decisions they made today are carried out, there
will be no emergencies in the coming winter.

- Chief Commander of the Russian Navy Vladimir Kuroedov said that a
respected Russian scientist (whom he did not name) has put forward another
theory for the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine, which, according to
Kuroedov, fits with the other three versions (mine, collision, explosion
in the first section). The first cuts in the front section of the
submarine will be made on August 12th, the one-year anniversary of the
tragedy.

- An ammunition dump in the Karagandinsk oblast' in Kazakhstan has been
burning for two days. This is one of the biggest storehouses in
Kazakhstan, housing mainly ammo for small arms and grenade launchers.

- In the northern regions of Primoriye, the South Sea storm still rages.
Ten people are reported to have died. In Vladivostok, the rain has
subsided, but a major problem is shortage of clean drinking water.

- The strike of the port pilots in Kaliningrad has been settled; the St.
Petersburg pilots are still on strike, but according to the
administration, the situation will be normalized shortly.

- An arms deal with China may be concluded in September. Russian Deputy
Premier Ilya Klebanov said that sales of TU-214 planes will be discussed
during the upcoming visit of the PRC State Council Prime Minister.

- About thirty people were diagnosed with leptospirosis in Krasnodarskii
krai. The infection spread through a pond on the outskirts of the town of
Apsheronsk.

- The temporary headquarters of one of Shamil Basaev's fighters has been
destroyed. The operation was carried out based on information received
from fighters who were recently detained in the Alleroi village in
Chechnya's Kurchaloev region.

- An orthodox orphanage was opened at the Novo-Tikhvinskii Monastery in
Yekaterinburg.

- Orthodox Christians throughout the world are celebrating the name-day of
the great martyr and healer Panteleimon.

- An unusual competition in Sochi: 530 policemen from 12 different
countries are racing in police cruisers and motorcycles.

- American Fulbright student John Tobin has retuned home. At a press
conference, he said that he was satisfied with the treatment he received
in the prison, and with the many Russian friends he made.

*******

#4
Russia wants ties with NATO, but not membership
Interfax

Moscow, 9 August: Russia wants to promote cooperation with NATO, but has no
intention of joining it, Russian diplomatic sources told Interfax on
Thursday [9 August].

The speculation of highly-placed Western statesmen on the possibility of
Russia acceding to NATO is a theoretical exercise, they said.

"At the moment, only cooperation on the basis of the Founding Act signed by
the two sides is possible," the sources said.

Asked whether Russia could in principle ever join NATO, the sources replied
that the Soviet Union announced back in 1954 that it was prepared to join
NATO.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Wednesday that today's
Russian-NATO cooperation council cannot be the last word in the alliance's
relations with Moscow.

No matter what people think or say, in the long term, Russia's membership
in NATO cannot be ruled out, he said in an interview with Stern magazine.

Condoleezza Rice, the US National Security Adviser, in recent remarks also
did not rule out the possibility that Russia might one day become a NATO
member nation.

*******

#5
Moscow Times
August 10, 2001
The Russian Melting Pot
By Boris Kagarlitsky

Three road workers in orange vests were digging on the side of a road near
Moscow. They were slowly poking at the earth beneath the blazing summer
sun. The scene would have been utterly familiar if not for one fact: All
three men were black.

Russia is becoming ever more multicultural, much to the horror of the
guardians of racial purity. Along with memories of its former greatness,
Russia, like any empire, has inherited much human capital, which far from
everyone is prepared to accept. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union,
a multitude of "foreigners" from the former "fraternal republics" remained
on Russian territory. After the war in Afghanistan, large numbers of
refugees arrived from that country. Refugees and migrants continue to
arrive from Tajikistan, Vietnam, China and Africa. In principle, this
should fill us with optimism for it suggests that our country holds some
attraction.

Patriotic public opinion, alas, is obsessed with one question: Will
Russians remain the majority ethnic group? In every new arrival they see
only a threat to the territorial integrity of the state. In every Moslem, a
terrorist. In every Chinese, a dangerous competitor and potential conqueror.

On the face of it, there would seem to be no cause for concern. Ethnic
Russians make up the overwhelming majority of the country's population. But
the nationalist press is already sounding the alarm. More importantly, the
birth rate among non-Russians is higher than among Russians.

Russia's demographic crisis is real. But the fact is that closing our
borders and oppressing non-Russians is not a realistic response. Quite the
opposite. We should expand immigration on the obvious condition that steps
be taken to make the new arrivals feel a part of their new homeland. Russia
was never ethnically homogeneous. By the eve of the 17th century, highborn,
Christianized Tatars formed the basis of the Muscovite aristocracy.
Ugro-Finnic and Turkic tribes blended with the ruling peoples, sometimes
dissolving without a trace. The Russian language and culture were
sufficiently vigorous to absorb every group.

We now have Chinese restaurants and Vietnamese markets. Immigrants bring
all their talents to their new homeland. They are ready to work. They
thankfully accept any assistance, and they are prepared to prove their
usefulness to their new country. If not for all this, the United States and
Canada would likely not have such wealthy and dynamically developing
societies.

A rising birth rate is inseparable from rising immigration. The future of
ethnic Russians depends on the extent to which Russian culture can absorb
new arrivals. And this, in turn, is conditioned upon a basic respect for
the human dignity of all those who live here.

We complain about the Estonians, who have dragged their feet on granting
full civil rights to their Russian-speaking population. We are troubled
that in Latvia the children of mixed marriages face discrimination. But
even as it hands out passports to millions of Tatars and Caucasians, the
Russian government continues to view them with suspicion. Tajiks, Uzbeks,
Azeris, Moldovans and Ukrainians are favored with the right to beg for alms
or work for peanuts. But Afghans, Chinese, Vietnamese and Nigerians are
very nearly viewed as potential invaders.

Despite all this, Russia's ethnic minorities to date have presented no
danger to the authorities. In fact, they have displayed far greater loyalty
to the government than could possibly be expected, given our government's
policies and the pronouncements of our official ideologists. Unfortunately,
the main roadblock in their way is the Russian government itself.

Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.

*******

#6
strana.ru
August 9, 2001
Political scientist: Russia may join NATO only if that alliance undergoes
radical change
Sergei Markov: Germany has a stake in NATO transformations

Sergei Markov, Director of the Institute for Political Studies, is of the
opinion that Russia will not join NATO until the alliance has undergone
radical change.

He said in an Interfax interview if Russia were to join the North-Atlantic
alliance, that would mean that "military-political organization is turning
into a kind of collective security system."

In Markov's opinion, "western bureaucracy is not yet ready" for this sort
of evolution. "They want to simulate change rather than make change."

In this connection the political scientist recalled what U.S. National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said recently: she did not rule out the
possibility of Russia joining NATO.

He feels the aim of such statements is to "mislead Moscow" and encourage
Russia to make a statement like this: "Yes, in principle we might join NATO."

Markov explains the support given to the idea by German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder by "a different logic, a logic more beneficial to Russia -
cardinal transformation of NATO."

He noted that from the very start NATO sought to "keep Germany within
bounds." To this day its political role does not match its "economic
weight." Hence, "dissatisfaction among Germans and their desire to
transform many institutions, Europeanize NATO, develop a separate military
European corps and become a permanent member of the UN Security Council."

"In other words, the interests of Germany and the United States are far
from identical today."

At the same time Markov described as "insane" attempts by some Russian
politicians to play on differences between Europe, including Germany, on
the one hand, and the United States, on the other.

"Germany and the United States have much more in common than differences.
Therefore, Russian attempts to play on their differences will be rebuffed,"
Markov remarked.

*******

#7
Kursk: the living nightmare that laid bare Russia's disarray

MOSCOW, Aug 9 (AFP) -
Erupting into the doldrums of summer, when many Russians were at their
dachas or enjoying the annual August go-slow at work, the Kursk disaster
was a living nightmare, combining confusion, vividness and an acute sense
of helplessness.

For two weeks millions of Russians gathered round radios and television
sets to follow the twists and turns surrounding the plight of the Kursk's
118 doomed crew-members with an intensity usually reserved for family
dramas, their mood veering from anguish to anger and finally to resignation.

But first came the confusion. What actually happened to send the
nuclear-powered submarine to the bottom of the Barents Sea on the morning
of August 12 last year is still not clear even now, and the precise
sequence of events that followed remains shrouded in obscurity.

The first the West knew of the disaster -- though the connection with the
Kursk was not made until some days later -- came when seismic monitoring
stations in Norway, Germany and Scotland detected two blasts 15 seconds
apart, the second registering 3.47 on the Richter scale, the explosive
power of nearly two tonnes of TNT.

The shocks are now believed to have been caused by the explosion of the
Kursk's torpedoes, although Russian officials continue to claim that a
collision with another vessel, implicitly foreign, could have sent the sub
to the bottom.

By late Saturday, with the Kursk failing to respond to radio signals, it
was clear that the submarine was in distress, and Russian naval command
sent search-and-rescue ships into the area, around 160 kilometres (100
miles) off the Kola peninsula.

In the small hours of Sunday morning the Pyotr Veliky command vessel's
sonar equipment detected the Kursk lying on the seabed, and later in the
day a minisub sent below by rescue ships made a failed bid to contact the
vessel.

It was not until midday Monday, two days after the event, that Russia's
military high command could bring itself to admit to the world that the
pride of the Northern Fleet was "in serious trouble" -- and even then it
deliberately misled the public by saying the accident had occurred on Sunday.

Navy spokesmen said there were still signs of life inside the Kursk, with
survivors apparently tapping on the hull.

What followed, in what had clearly become a race against time, was a
torrent of misinformation and self-contradiction from military officials as
the government resolutely refused to ask for foreign assistance and the
Kremlin remained deafeningly silent.

For President Vladimir Putin, holidaying at Sochi on the Black Sea, the
Kursk emergency and the official bungling and high-handedness that it
revealed became a public relations fiasco comparable with the Chernobyl
disaster of

In his own case it was compounded by an ill-judged decision not to break
off his vacation and to appear on television four days after the sinking,
tanned and in shirt-sleeves, to say that the navy was doing everything it
could to save the trapped seamen.

Reflecting mounting public anger, the Russian press pursued the story with
unprecedented vigour and launched a barrage of criticism.

"Whose honour is drowning in the Barents Sea?" headlined the daily
Kommersant, while the mass-circulation tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda asked,
"The Kursk sailors fell silent yesterday: why is the president silent?"

As hopes of saving at least a few lives faded and died -- except among the
seamen's distraught relatives who travelled to Murmansk from all over
Russia -- attention turned to the causes of the disaster, seen by some as
symbolic of the country's post-Soviet condition.

A crumbling state infrastructure, a decline in authority and discipline,
under-funding, official callousness, rampant petty crime and a Soviet-style
obsession with secrecy were all summoned as explanations for the disaster
and its subsequent mishandling.

Amid the welter of introspection, further embarrassment for the authorities
arrived when Norwegian and British divers succeeded in ripping off the
outer casing of the submarine's escape hatch in just 24 hours, something
four Russian rescue subs had tried and failed to do for almost a week.

With final confirmation that all the seamen were dead, Putin declared a day
of national mourning.

But before the drama faded from the world's headlines, there were further
scenes that scored themselves into the memory.

In a gesture difficult to imagine from a Western military officer, the
commander of the Northern Fleet, a visibly haunted Admiral Vyacheslav
Popov, snatched off his cap and implored to camera on prime-time
television: "Forgive me for not saving your sailors."

*******

#8
The Guardian (UK)
August 9, 2001
Women: Survivors of the Kursk: It is a year since 118 Russian sailors
drowned in a nuclear submarine in the Barents sea. Amelia Gentleman meets
the women and children who mourn them
BY AMELIA GENTLEMAN

On an ugly stretch of boulevard at the edge of a grey and unremarkable
provincial Russian town, a long line of saplings has been planted, two by
two. There are 118 birch trees here - one for each submariner who died last
summer on board the Kursk.

The avenue was planted by the mayor of the town of Kursk earlier this year,
to stand as a permanent reminder of the once close ties that existed
between this southern town and Russia's most prestigious submarine, named
in its honour. Oblivious to the noise and the fumes, the town's growing
community of Kursk widows claims to find the long walk among the trees
calming.

It is almost a year since their husbands died, when an unexplained
explosion sent the nuclear submarine to the Arctic seabed. Lied to and
treated with callous insensitivity by the Russian navy in the aftermath of
the catastrophe, the sailors' widows remain bitterly suspicious of the
government's capacity for honesty.

"They lied when they said they were still alive; they lied when they said
they were going to save them; they lied when they said they were going to
give them oxygen. Why should we expect anything except more lies now?" asks
Lyuba Kalinina, widowed with two young daughters.

As the salvage mission begins, the families of the dead men are interested
only in whether any bodies can be retrieved for burial and whether the
question of how the tragedy happened will finally be answered. They have
grave doubts on both fronts.

Valentina Staroseltseva has chosen one of the birch trees to represent her
son. She comes every few days to inspect its progress and talks to it as if
it is, in fact, Dmitri. At home she also talks to the photographs of the
skinny 19-year-old, arranged in a shrine in the corner of room where he
used to sleep. She spends several hours a week rearranging a display of
memorabilia, a test-tube of salt water from the sea where he died, a letter
he sent her from the base, his huge naval overcoat.

When the Kursk was patrolling the oceans, its affiliation with the town was
a source of great pride to the local administration. Local teenage boys
were encouraged to apply to serve on board when the time came for their
military service. Members of the now dead crew were invited to bring their
families here on holiday. When state television announced last August that
the submarine was in trouble, the news was greeted here with pain. Seven
families in and around the town had sons and husbands on board; dozens of
local men had served on the submarine and immediately understood the
seriousness of the situation. Everyone knew someone whose life was
devastated. In the months since the accident, the town has become a refuge
for a new community of widows. An unusually generous state compensation
deal provided the family of every dead man with a new flat and 720,000
roubles (pounds 18,000). Sixteen widows said they wanted to move from
Vidayevo - the naval base - to Kursk, guided by their affection for the
town bred during annual holidays there.

Not far from the birch boulevard, a new nine-storey apartment block was
rapidly, shoddily finished at the end of last year to house the Kursk
bereaved. Three widows and their fatherless children moved into it in
January and a dozen more are expected soon. Every week, the community of
Kursk veterans and relatives gather in one of these flats to continue
interminable discussions of what happened last August 12, why the
government lied, and why they still don't know the truth.

Their conversation quickly betrays a sad anger - not simply at the deaths,
but at the thankless hardship endured by anyone who dedicates their life to
serving the Russian military.

The wives draw some satisfaction from debunking the myths associated with
the Kursk's glorious past. Sailors thirsted to serve on the Kursk, because
of its reputation as the most advanced nuclear submarine in the Russian
fleet. The base in the closed military town of Vidayevo was meant to be an
elite residence. The reality was closer to grinding poverty.

Lyubov Kirchkiryuk, lived with her husband Vasily,- senior midshipman - and
two children in the cold northern village for almost 10 years. As head of
the Kursk wives committee, she was an enthusiastic organiser, and was more
positive than most about the privations they had to endure. But even she
was dismayed by how swiftly the standard life deteriorated.

"When we first arrived there was a restaurant, but it shut down because no
one had enough money to go there," she says.

The economic crisis that troubled Russia through much of the 90s meant that
for month-long stretches the government was unable to pay military wages.
"Through the months when salaries were not being paid, we all suffered
together. When times were bad we caught crabs and gathered berries and
mushrooms to eat instead of shop food. Sometimes we couldn't afford to buy
bread and survived by living on the credit we were given at the naval
stores," she says. "On the day that the money finally arrived, the whole
garrison would be out celebrating."

It was difficult to enjoy being the wife of a Kursk sailor. There were
months of solitude and suppressed anxiety when the men were at sea,
confined to a town which for eight months of the year was dark and covered
in snow. Life was only bearable because a powerful sense of duty dispersed
through the community helped to soothe away dissatisfaction. It is only
now, that the families are beginning to question whether it was at all
worth it. There is also the unsettling doubt over whether the Kursk's
achievements justified its reputation. From the moment construction ended
in 1994 to its final dramatic end, the submarine only completed one
mission. The rest of the time it was occupied with training exercises or
grounded because of lack of money for fuel.

Sveta Kuznetsova has kept video tapes of all the news broadcasts from the
week she lost her husband - they met at a school disco in Vidayevo when he
was a teenage conscript and she was 13. His was one of the 12 bodies
retrieved last October, during preliminary salvage work and there are tapes
of his funeral. She knows that he was probably alive for several hours,
possibly days, after the accident and may have tried to escape; she doesn't
like to think about how he died. She hopes her three-year-old son will be
interested in the videos when he is older.

Occasionally, the families gather in her flat, send their children to play
in the yard and watch the week unfold again. Invariably their conversation
returns to Sunday August 13, when they first began to hear about the
accident. Then and later, their sole source of information was via rumour;
the families of the dead men were treated to the same extremes of
obfuscation as the rest of the country.

"We sensed something was wrong, because the life-saving command was called
out early on Sunday morning, but no one was meant to know what they were
looking for," Sveta says.

"One of the rescue team returned, visibly exhausted, later that morning and
went to buy some bread from the shop. 'I'm so tired, I'm about to
collapse,' he told the women in the queue. 'Why?' they asked. 'We've been
up all night looking for a sub. The Kursk is at the bottom of the sea.' One
of the women fainted, with her grandson in her arms, right there on the
floor. That's how we found out that the Kursk was lost. There was no
official announcement. The commander's wife knew no more than we did."

From a financial point of view, the widows have no complaint with the
government; they have been paid the compensation promised publicly to them
by President Putin at the height of the crisis. The families no longer have
to worry about buying bread. They will never have to pay their electricity
or telephone bills, and have been awarded free travel on the town's buses.

But the government's continuing secrecy distresses them all. Despite a
concerted attempt by the Russian navy to improve its popular image by being
more open about the salvage operation, the families still feel no effort
has been made to keep them informed. Some naval experts have warned that
the fire that raged within the submarine in the hours after the explosion
and the effect of a year under water will mean that although pounds 50m is
being spent on the operation, no more than a dozen or so bodies will be
retrieved for burial.

"The navy believes that it is its sacred duty to determine the reason for
the demise of the boat," said Vice Admiral Mikhail Motsak, chief of staff
of the northern fleet, as work began. But few believe that the raising of
the submarine's hull will offer any clue as to the cause of the accident,
because the front section where the explosion occurred - which is crucial
to establishing the origin of the disaster - has been sliced off and left
on the seabed.

All the government has said so far is that the nose may be raised next
year, but there is scepticism about whether the money will ever be found,
allowing the Kursk's secrets to remain forever hidden. "They don't want to
find out what happened, because then they'll have to admit that someone was
guilty and senior officials will lose their jobs," Lyuba Kalinina says.
"It's much more convenient for them if the truth doesn't emerge." Even the
unusually generous compensation payment has aroused her suspicion. "We get
a lot more than the Chechen widows, 10 times more. The Russian government
doesn't give out money like that for nothing; I think they bought us off.
There must be something they are trying to hide. They must be feeling
guilty."

*******

#9
Financial Times (UK)
10 August 2001
Dissenting voice may be drowned out in Belarus
By Robert Cottrell

President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus probably does not need to rig the
vote directly to win next month's presidential election, says one western
diplomat in Minsk. But force of habit, at least among his supporters, may
be too strong.

Mr Lukashenko reportedly said this week he thought 90 per cent of the
population would vote for him on September 9.

He scarcely needs a result that implausible. But after seven years in
office, and after rewriting the constitution in 1996 to concentrate power
in his own hands, he can probably have any result he wants. "If he didn't
appoint the deputy mayor of some small town, he appointed the guy who
appointed him," says another diplomat.

Mr Lukashenko has kept the economy largely under government control.
Average wages are less than $100 (E113.60) a month. But they are paid on
time, as are pensions, and there is little unemployment. This gives the
president a genuine basis of popular support among the 10m population, says
a western economist.

But the survival of an autocratic regime in a country that lies across
Russia's main communication lines to central and western Europe leaves many
of Belarus's neighbours more than a bit uncomfortable.

Poverty aside, the dark side of Mr Lukashenko's rule includes his retention
of a large and heavy-handed security apparatus to suppress dissent. In
recent weeks leaked documents and testimony from defectors have told of a
police "death squad", first set up to kill suspected gang-leaders, but also
used to kill critics of the regime.

Mr Lukashenko has not been directly implicated in this scandal. But he has
resisted calls to set up an independent inquiry and to suspend the
officials allegedly involved.

The allegations rest partly on papers sent anonymously to Vladimir
Goncharik, leader of the country's independent Trades Union Federation, who
made them public.

Mr Goncharik is one of the country's few remaining strong voices of
dissent. Support is building behind his plans to oppose Mr Lukashenko in
next month's election. Five other opposition figures have so far rallied
behind his "single candidacy".

Mr Goncharik says he has stepped up his own security precautions but does
not fear for his life. "I don't think it would be in Lukashenko's interests
to have something happen to me or my family," he said in an interview. Too
many people, he says, would blame the president directly for any such attack.

Mr Goncharik says he thinks 30 per cent of voters back Mr Lukashenko.
Another 30 per cent are determined to vote against Mr Lukashenko. The rest
are undecided.

He thinks that gives him a chance of victory but only if the coalition
behind him holds together, and only if he can somehow get his message out.
His hopes for publicity rest with the Russian and Polish television
stations widely watched in Belarus, with the country's much-harrassed
independent newspapers and with the grassroots influence of the trades
unions.

This month Mr Goncharik overcame one big bureaucratic hurdle by submitting
100,000 authenticated signatures to the electoral commission in support of
his candidacy. Out of 22 would-be candidates, only four, have got this far.

Apart from Mr Lukashenko, the other two are Sergei Gaidukevich, seen by
many as an ally of Mr Lukashenko, and Semyon Domash, a liberal who has
declared his support for Mr Goncharik.

Mr Domash is maintaining his candidacy as a reserve, in case Mr Goncharik
is disbarred on technical grounds before final registration on August 8. In
policy terms, Mr Goncharik's platform is a modest one. He is not promising
radical economic reforms, nor big shifts in foreign policy. He is a social
democrat, he says. He favours a mixed economy and a welfare state. He wants
to bring Belarus closer to the European Union but he wants close ties with
Russia too.

Mainly, he says, he wants to get rid of the fear and aggression that he
sees as the basis of Mr Lukashenko's rule. "Lukashenko has created a
situation in which everyone around him is an enemy," he says. "Everyone is
afraid. Businessmen are afraid. Ministers are afraid." His aim, he says,
"is not simply to change Lukashenko but to change that system of power. If
we do not, then a new Lukashenko will emerge."

But Mr Goncharik's chances of winning an election in Mr Lukashenko's
Belarus are slim. Marius Vahl, research fellow with the Centre for European
Policy Studies in Brussels, says: "Maybe six months ago I might have said
that the opposition would pull something off, but there are minimal chances
now."

Additional reporting by Andrew Jack in Moscow

*******

#10
BBC
August 9, 2001
Russia's "dirty war"
As the conflict between Russia and the breakaway republic of Chechnya
continues, Tim Whewell travels to Moscow to hear the story of one man's fight
for justice for the Chechen victims of war, and finds out how the Chechen
community - so reviled throughout Russian history - maintains its identity
and culture.

The man I've been brought to meet in the dark kitchen of a bare flat in a
small north Caucasian town won't give his name, and never looks me in the
face.

He talks almost expressionlessly, as though afraid that if he gives way to
emotion he won't be able to complete his story.

I can tell by his speech that he's a highly educated man. And he tells me
that if I want to get back in contact, I should do so by e-mail.

But on July 2nd this year, he was treated no differently from all the other
men of the Chechen village of Sernovodsk.

Violence

"The Russian forces came for us at about 8.30 in the morning," he says. "They
beat up my son, who's 12, and when my daughter started to cry they kicked her
in the stomach.

"They took me to a truck, put handcuffs on me and started to beat me up.
After they hit me in the diaphragm, I lost consciousness. When I came round I
was lying in the foundations of a half-finished building."

Zachistka

My informant was describing the beginning of what the Russian army calls a
zachistka, literally a "cleaning up operation", supposedly intended to "flush
out" guerrilla fighters hiding among the civilian population. Hundreds of
zachistki have been carried out throughout Chechnya since the latest war with
Russia began nearly two years ago.

Most go unreported, because movement within Chechnya is highly restricted and
journalists and human rights workers are banned from working independently
there. But the operations last month in Sernovodsk and the neighbouring
village of Assinovskaya took place right on the border of the rebel republic,
from where it's comparatively easy to escape across the border into the
neighbouring Russian region of Ingushetia.

Horror in Sernovodsk

That's where I learnt, from the man I met in the kitchen, of the full horror
of what happened in Sernovodsk.

More than 700 people were detained for about 15 hours in the open air on the
edge of the village, most of them forced to squat with their shirts pulled up
over their heads as blindfolds.

"They brought a small barrel of water and told us we could have three gulps
each. A soldier put his finger on each person's throat as they drank, and
anyone who swallowed more than three times was beaten over the head with a
baton."

According to my informant, those who complained they were ill and needed
medicine, and those unable to understand the soldiers' commands because of
mental difficulties were singled out for special beatings. Some who protested
had dogs set on them.

Abuse

One woman was raped, another who resisted was dragged off to an army truck
where she was tortured with electric current. "Then some of the soldiers said
to us: 'You're supposed to be brave men, you Caucasians - why don't you get
up and defend your women?'

Difficult to prove

The shame of rape is so great that such allegations are very difficult to
corroborate. But most of the other details of the zachistki in Sernovodsk and
Assinovskaya, including many instances of torture by electric shock, were
confirmed to me by other villagers who've taken refuge in Ingushetia.

Allegations of atrocities by Russian servicemen against the civilian
population of Chechnya have been common throughout the war. In the refugee
camps of Ingushetia, which house about 180,000 people, almost everyone has a
story to tell of a family member who's disappeared, or been tortured or
killed. But now the abuses seem to be intensifying just as the Kremlin claims
the conflict is largely over and operations are being scaled down.

Officially, control of Chechnya has been transferred from the army to the FSB
security police, the successor to the KGB. Victims of zachistki are often
unable to say what force has been behind the operation in their village -
their tormentors are usually masked and have all names and insignia removed
from their uniforms. But the picture that's building up is that both soldiers
and security police have become largely undisciplined forces, using the
"cleaning-up operations" as a deliberate means of terrorising the population
of Chechnya.

Army corruption

Individual contract soldiers serving in Chechnya also use zachistki as a
means of personal enrichment. The operations commonly involve looting of
villagers' homes, and there are also numerous reports of Russian servicemen
demanding money from Chechen villagers for the release of detained family
members - or even for the return of their dead bodies. Andrei Mironov of the
Moscow-based human rights organisation Memorial says: "Servicemen used to
volunteer for Chechnya because they were promised they'd be paid better -
they were offered $1,000 a month, which is high by Russian standards.

"But now, contract soldiers think about how much they can get from the local
population. Chechens are being systematically kidnapped and sold back to
their families, and the money servicemen get for that is much more than their
salaries."

"They (Russia's political leaders) don't even try to control the army. They
believe it's OK if it runs wild," says Andrei Mironov. And that's an
impression that's been confirmed in recent weeks. At a rare news conference
last month, President Putin lost his cool when asked about reports of human
rights violations in Chechnya, saying that the zachistki "essentially boil
down to passport checks and measures to identify people who are on the
federal wanted list."

He added that anyone guilty of crimes against civilians should be punished,
but referred specifically only to Chechen "fighters who kill people,
including their own compatriots."

Investigation The presidential representative responsible for the north
Caucasus region, Viktor Kazantsev, initially apologised for the military's
actions in Sernovodsk and Assinovskaya, and, unusually, an investigation was
ordered.

But refugees I spoke to said many victims had too intimidated to seek
justice. "Federal forces with guns and dogs visited the houses where people
made statements," one young man told me. "They asked: 'Are you sure you don't
want to withdraw your complaint?" The implicit threat was clear.

Human rights

Vladimir Kalamanov, President Putin's commissioner for human rights in
Chechnya, says that in the course of the present conflict 82 criminal cases
have been opened against servicemen for crimes committed against civilians in
Chechnya. But only 25 of them have come to court and there have been only 11
sentences. Mr Kalamanov was unable to tell me what the sentences were for.
And he was also unable to say if any of the cases involved allegations of
torture.

When I talked to him in his office overlooking the Kremlin in central Moscow,
Mr Kalamanov told me proudly that he had received a medal for his work from
President Putin. He said he was ready to meet any Chechen civilian who might
have complaints against the Russian authorities. But he suggested that most
Chechens were more concerned with economic problems, such as the price of
bread, than they were with the behaviour of the military in their republic.

That's certainly not the impression I got from the many Chechens I talked to
in Ingushetia. Mr Kalamanov is regarded by most people there as a Kremlin
stooge.

One man I met, a former schoolteacher, claimed he was tortured over a period
of several months in a Russian detention centre, in the course of which his
ear was cut off.

Did he get any help from the President's human commissioner? He looked at me
in amazement before replying: "Absolutely none."

******

#11
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
July 19, 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
THE TRUE FACE OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC CATASTROPHE
Over the past decade the number of Russians in former
Soviet republics declined by at least 10 million
By Mikhail TULSKY

The decline in Russia's population has been discussed of
late at all levels. At the same time, another problem, which is
no less critical, remains untouched: the total number of
Russians throughout the post-Soviet territory is dramatically
decreasing. Today one may talk about a demographic catastrophe. Anyway, the
problem of a general decline of Russians is evident.

Three basic sources are employed in order to determine the
number of Russians in the CIS and Baltic states: censuses and
current registration of national composition in respective
countries, as well as the data of the State Statistics
Committee of Russia concerning the migration of Russians from
the former Soviet republics to Russia and vice versa (the
collection of articles "The Population of Russia-1999" and Nos.
2-3, 1999 of the Diaspora magazine first published the data of
the State Statistics Committee not only on all migrants, but
also emigrants and immigrants of Russian origin).

Censuses were carried out in 1999 in Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and in 2000 in Estonia, Latvia, and
Tajikistan. Moreover, a census was conducted in 1995 in
Turkmenistan. The results of censuses in Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Estonia, Latvia, and Turkmenistan have been
published.

The number of Russians declined between 1989 and 1998 for
a number of reasons: natural decrease, migration, and
assimilation. However, the main reason of the Russian population's decline
varies from country to country: in one country it is decrease,
somewhere else - assimilation; in most countries Russians are
simply leaving for Russia. Principal and secondary reasons for
the fall in the Russian population will be pointed out as
regards each country.

According to the census of February 14, 1999 in Belarus,
its population stood at 10,045,200, including 1,141,700
Russians and 8,158,900 Byelorussians. The share of Russians
dropped from 13.2% to 11.4%, while the share of Byelorussians
increased from 77.9% to 81.2%. In absolute figures the number
of Russians dropped by 200,400 people, 17,000 of them due to
the fact that more people went to Russia than left it in
1989-1998 (hereinafter referred to as the migration decrease in
population exchange with Russia), 30,000-40,000 - as a result
of natural decrease (excess of deaths over births). Thus, the
main reason why the number of Russians in Belarus decreased is
assimilation, i.e. the fact that children from mixed families
previously registered as Russians, now call themselves
"Byelorussians."

The census held on March 24, 1999 in Kyrgyzstan registered
4,822,938 permanent residents, 603,201 of them were Russians
(12.5%). In 1989 the percentage of Russians was 21.5%, or
916,558 people of 4,257,755 inhabitants. During the same
period, the share of the Kyrgyz people increased from 52.4% to
64.9%. Russians dropped to third place being surpassed by Uzbeks, who
now make up 13.8% (12.9% in 1989). According to the census
data, the number of Russians in Kyrgyzstan decreased by 313,000
people over the last decade, including due to the migration
decrease: in 1989-1998 - 215,000 people went to Russia. The
reduction by another 98,000 people is explained by natural
decrease and, to a lesser extent by Russians' departure to
other republics, and assimilation.

Kazakhstan turned out to be the only former Soviet
republic where the official statistics bodies revised the
official data of the 1989 census: as a result, the population
in 1989 was cut from 16,464,500 to 16,199,100 people, and the
number of Russians - from 6,227,500 to 6,062,000 (37.4% of the
whole population), while the number of Kazakhs fell from
6,534,600 to 6,496,900 (40.1%). The census held on February 12,
1999 registered 14,953,100 permanent residents, including
4,479,600 Russians (30%) and 7,985,000 Kazakhs (53.4%). These
changes in the national composition were caused by two reasons:
Russians' dying-out and Kazakhs' natural growth (in 1996 in the
East- Kazakhstan region Russians' birth-rate was 0.78%,
Kazakhs' - 1.8%; Russians' death-rate - 1.52%, Kazakhs' -
0.95%) and mass departure of Russians from Kazakhstan, while
the tide of Kazakhs into the country remained significant (in
1998 59% of emigrants were Russians, while Kazakhs made up
below 5%, while 47% of immigrants were Russians, and 29% -
Kazakhs). During the decade, the number of Russians decreased
by 1,582,000. The main reason is the migration decrease, which
made up 1,032,000 in 1989-1998 in population exchange with
Russia, while with other states - another 100,000 people. The
rest of the population decline (450,000) was caused by natural
decrease (250,000-300,000) and heavy assimilation (the
percentage of mixed marriages used to be high in Kazakhstan,
and if semi-Russians - semi-Kazakhs were previously registered
as "Russians," now they have probably been re-registered as
"Kazakhs." It can also be noted that the Russian population has
continued to fall after the census: 120,700 people left
Kazakhstan in 1999, over 55% of them were Russians (the rest -
Germans, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, etc.) Latvia's permanent
population decreased from 2,666,600 according to the 1989
census to 2,375,300 according to the census held on March 31,
2000, while Russians' share fell from 34% to 29.4% (905,515 and
699,506 people respectively), and that of Letts grew from 52%
to 57.7% (but it's a decrease in absolute figures, from
1,387,757 to 1,369,661 people). The number of Russians declined
by 206,000 people, including 94,000 as migration decrease in
population exchange with Russia in 1989-1999, and the remaining
112,000 were lost as a result of natural decrease and
assimilation (in 1989 the percentage of multinational families
in Latvia was the highest in the USSR - 27.5% against a USSR
average of 17.7%) and departure for other republics.

According to the census of January 10, 1995 in
Turkmenistan Turkmen made up 77.0%, Uzbeks - 9.2%, and Russians
- 6.7%. In 1989 Turkmen made up 72%, Russians - 9.5%, Uzbeks -
9.0%. Which means that Russians have shifted from the second
place, by their number, to the third, and in absolute figures
their number declined from 334,000 to 298,000, i.e. by 36,000.
At the same time, in 1989-1994 the migration decrease in
population exchange with Russia amounted to 43,000, i.e. there
was a natural increase of Russians in Turkmenistan in 1989-1994
(about 10,000 in six years). In 1995-1998 the migration
decrease in population exchange with Russia made up 41,800 and
total migration decrease - about 50,000. In addition, in
1995-1998 the natural decrease of Russians made up 10,000.
Accordingly, we believe that the number of Russians in
Turkmenistan by the beginning of 1999 was 240,000 people.

The results of the census held on March 31, 2000 in
Estonia revealed that Russians made up 25.6% of 1,370,100
permanent residents, i.e. about 350,000 people (for in 1999,
according to the official data, the number of Russians dropped
by 2,100 - we estimate that in January, 1999 353,000 Russians
lived in Estonia). If in the period from January, 1989 to
March, 2000 the share of Russians in Estonia fell from 30.3% to
25.6%, that of Estonians grew from 61.5% to 67.9%. In 1989-1999
the number of Russians decreased by 121,000 people, including
59,000 as migration decrease in population exchange with
Russia, and the rest - because of natural decrease (about
20,000) and assimilation (above 40,000).

In Uzbekistan, according to the data of state registration
quoted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Russians made up 6.0%
(about 1,350,000) in 1995 instead of 8.3% (1,653,500) in 1989.
Within the same period the share of Uzbeks increased from 71.4%
to 75.8%. The number of Russians decreased in 1989-1994 by
300,000, due to Russians' departure (in 1989-1994 the migration
decrease in population exchange with Russia made up 295,000).
In 1995-1998 the number of Russians leaving for the Russian
Federation exceeded those entering Uzbekistan by 130,000 and in
general the number of Russians who left Uzbekistan was greater
by at least 150,000. Natural decrease of Russians in 1995-1998
amounted to about 50,000. Thus, we believe that the number of
Russians in Uzbekistan at the beginning of 1999 was 1,150,000
people.

According to the census of January 20, 2000 in Tajikistan
(NG thanks the director of the state statistics board attached
to the Government of Tajikistan, Khabib Gaibullayev, for the
given information), out of 6,127,500 inhabitants of the country
68,200 called themselves Russians and 4,898,400 - Tajiks. Thus,
during the 11 years, the share of Tajiks increased from 62.3%
to 79.9%, and that of Russians fell from 7.6% to 1.1%. The main
reason why the number of Russians decreased that they left the
country (in 1989-1998 the migration decrease in population
exchange with Russia made up 220,000). We believe that the
number of Russians at the start of 1999 was 80,000.

In Lithuania, according to the data of state registration
quoted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Russians made up 8.2%
in 1996. The number of permanent residents registered by the
census held in April 2001 made up 3,496,000 which is
significantly below the figures named previously according to
the annual registration data. According to the census data, the
permanent population of Lithuania at the beginning of 1996 may
have been as high as 3,530,000 including about 290,000
Russians. In 1989 Russians made up 9.4% (344,500 people). On
the contrary, the share of Lithuanians increased from 79.6% in
1989 to 81.6% in 1996. In 1989-1995 the number of Russians
declined by 55,000, the migration decrease in population
exchange with Russia equalled 42,000 during the same period. In
1996-1998 the migration decrease in population exchange with
Russia made up 2,700, while the natural decrease of Russians
was at least 5,000. Accordingly, we believe that the number of
Russians in Lithuania at the beginning of 1999 was 280,000.

In Armenia, according to the data of state registration,
15,500 Russians remained in 1995 (in Dmitry Rogozin's book "The
Russian answer" this figure refers to 1994) instead of 51,600
in 1989. At the same time, according to the Armenian
government's official data, the share of Armenians in the
population of the country rose from 93.3% to 96% in 1995. The
main reason for the dramatic fall of the number of Russians is
their departure for Russia (the migration decrease in Russian
population exchange with Russia in 1989-1994 was 26,000
people). In 1995-1998 the migration decrease in population
exchange with Russia made up 6,000 people. Taking into account
the natural decrease among Russians in Armenia and their
departure to other countries, we may conclude that by 1999
8,000 Russians remained in the country (3,000 of them are
Molokan village inhabitants).

The 1989 census registered 562,000 Russians in Moldova.
According to official data, Russians' natural decrease in the
republic was as high as 6,700 people in 1993-1996 and 3,700
more in 1997-1998. Taking into account the low natural growth
among Russians in 1989-1990, the natural decrease in 1989-1998
made up about 9,000 people. 95,664 Russians abandoned Moldova
in 1990-1996 (78,580 of them went to Russia), 50,362 Russians
came to Moldova (including 34,813 from Russia). Approximately
13,000 Russians left the republic in 1989 (9,399 went to
Russia), about 14,000 arrived (9,325 - from Russia). Which
means that the total migration decrease of Russians amounted to
44,000 in 1989-1996 (including 43,800 in population exchange
with Russia). The migration decrease in population exchange
with Russia made up 7,400 people in 1997-1998, while the total
migration decrease of Russians during the same period was as
high as 8,000). That is, in 1989-1998 the natural decrease of
Russians in Moldova made up 9,000, migration decrease -
52,000). Thus, in 1989-1998 the number of Russians in Moldova
decreased by 61,000 and by the beginning of 1999 it made up
501,000 people (11.6% against 13.0% in 1989), but this figure
does not take assimilation into account, which apparently also
took place (in 1989 Moldova held the 3rd or 4th place in the
USSR in terms of the number of mixed marriages - 24.6%).

The 1989 census registered 119,865,900 Russians living in
the Russian Federation (81.53% of the population). In 1989-1998
the number of deaths among Russians was higher than the number
of births by 4,622,800, while the number of those who came to
the country was higher than the number of those who left it by
2,640,400. Thus, during the decade the number of Russians
decreased by 1,982,400 people and made up 117,883,500 people
(80.58%). These data were published in the collection of
articles "The Population of Russia-1999" edited by Ph.D.
(Economics), academician of the Russian Academy of Natural
Sciences A.G. Vishnevsky, and computed on the basis of both published and
non- published data of the State Statistics Committee by
demographers Ye.M. Shcherbakova and D.D. Bogoyavlensky. The
share of Russians in the republics within the Russian
Federation is dropping even faster. The micro-census of 1994
fixed the fall of Russians' share in many republics (while the
share of Russians in the country as a whole increased in
1989-1994 from 81.53% to 82.95%, because in 1989-1993 almost no
decrease of Russians was registered, but migration increment
was high). In 1989-1994 the share of Russians in Buryatia
dropped from 69.9% to 67.3%, in Yakutia - from 50.3% to 45.5%,
in Tuva - from 32% to 30.4%, in Chuvashia - from 26.7% to
26.5%, in Bashkiria - from 39.3% to 39.0%, in Adygea - from 68%
to 64.9%, in Karachai-Circassia - from 42.4% to 40.6%, in
Daghestan - from 9.2% to 8.2%, in Ingushetia - from 13.2% to
0.3% (!). Taking into consideration that the share of Russians
inevitably dropped by 2-3% in these republics in 1994-1999 (as
on average in Russia), the forcing out of Russians from the
national republics becomes evident. The data quoted at Duma
hearings said that in Daghestan Russians made up only 6% in
2000. This process is most manifest in Chechnya, where
(according to the 2000 census), out of 733,889 registered
inhabitants 9,372 were Russians (about 60,000 lived in mountain
districts and were not covered by the census), while the
percentage of Chechens made up 97.7% of the registered
inhabitants (and 100% of those not registered). This means that
together with the inhabitants of mountain districts who were
not registered in 2000 Russians made up 1.2% of Chechnya's
population, and Chechens - 97.9%, while in 1989 Russians made
up 25% of the population of Chechnya (without Ingushetia).

There are no data of official statistics concerning
Ukraine, but there are results of the representative poll, held
by Moscow State University Center of Sociological Studies, at
the beginning of October 1999 in the 25 regions of the country
and in Kiev - the proportionality concerning the regions as
well as the ratio between urban and rural population, age, and
other sociological and demographic characteristics of the
respondents were strictly observed. 1,419 people were
questioned (a good selection for Ukraine), 1,089 of them called
themselves Ukrainians and 255 - Russians. Thus, the share of
Russians dropped from 22.1% to 18% in almost 11 years, while
that of Ukrainians grew from 72.7% to 76.7%. As of the
beginning of 1999 these figures would be 18.2% and 76.4%,
respectively. In this way, at the start of 1999 9,100,000
Russians remained in Ukraine instead of 11,400,000 by 1989,
while the number of Ukrainians increased from 37,400,000 to
38,100,00 people (the situation is analogous to that in
Belarus, but the rate of Ukrainians' increment was lower
because of a higher natural decrease). The principal reason for
this is assimilation (in 1989 Ukraine held the second place in
the USSR in terms of mixed marriages - 25.3%), followed by
natural decrease (about 500,000) and Russians' departure for
Russia (the migration decrease in population exchange with
Russia in 1989-1998 made up 296,000).

A total of 341,200 Russians lived in Georgia in 1989. In
1989-1998 the migration decrease in population exchange with
Russia made up 158,000 and general migration decrease of
Russians - 170,000-180,000, their natural decrease -
approximately 20,000 (possibly, even more, considering the wars
on the Georgian territory. Accordingly, 140,000 Russians
remained in Georgia by 1999.

According to the 1999 census held in Azerbaijan, out of
7,953,438 people 141,687 called themselves Russians, and
7,205,464 - Azeris. Thus, compared with 1989 the share of
Russians dropped from 5.6% to 1.8%, and that of Azeris grew
from 82.7% to 90.6% (but as far as we know, Talysh ranked in
1989 among Azeris were registered separately in 1999, so the
share of the latter grew by about 10% during the decade). The
main reason of the decrease of Russians' number is their
departure for Russia (the migration decrease in population
exchange with Russia in 1989-1998 is 188,000).

The data on the number of Russians in former Soviet
republics is given in the table.

As we see, during the decade the number of Russians in the
countries of the former Soviet Union decreased from 145,000,000
to 136,900,000, i.e. a drop of 8,100,000 people. The decline of
Russians in these countries in 1999-2000 made up no less than
2,000,000 people, therefore currently about 135,000,000 of
Russians live in former Soviet republics compared to
145,000,000 in 1989.

The number of Russians in former countries of the USSR
(thousands of people)

*******

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