Johnson's Russia List #6006 5 January 2002 davidjohnson@erols.com A CDI Project www.cdi.org [Note from David Johnson: 1. Nikolai Zlobin: Washington ProFile. 2. Luba Schwartzman: ORT Review. 3. Interfax: Nearly 1,000,000 locked up in Russian prisons. 4. Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial: Russia's economy: Cause for cautious celebration. 5. theglobalist.com: Putin, the Modern Czar. 6. Financial Times (UK): Andrew Jack, Russians question quality of the president's men: Vladimir Putin's habit of recruiting senior aides from his home city has raised doubts over his judgment. 7. Wallace Kaufman: Central Asia's core problem. 8. Los Angeles Times editorial: Uzbekistan's Chance to Act. 9. Oskars Ceris: NATO's Ongoing Role: Peace, Power and Money. 10. Financial Times (UK): Andrew Jack, Moscow ushers in reform of labour law. 11. RIA Novosti: SEVEN-YEAR-OLD WESTERN CAR IS BETTER THAN RUSSIAN CAR MADE IN 2002. 12. pravda.ru: WEST ADMITS: CHECHNYA IS RUSSIA'S INTERNAL PROBLEM. 13. RFE/RL: Francesca Mereu, War Destroyed Chechnya's Clan Structure (Part 1). 14. RFE/RL: Francesca Mereu, Islam Plays Fundamental Role In North Caucasus Life (Part 2)] ******** #1 Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 From: Nikolai Zlobin Subject: Washington ProFile Washington ProFile The Center for Defense Information announces Washington ProFile, International News and Analysis Agency, an independent, Washington-based organization committed to providing reliable information in Russian about American politics, business and culture. Dr. Nikolai Zlobin brought this project to CDI in September 2001, and continues as director and editor-in-chief. The goal of Washington ProFile is to provide unbiased news and analyses based on government and non-government sources about America, including how Americans perceive Russia and the Former Soviet Union. 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The Center for Defense Information can be found online at www.cdi.org; CDI telephone number: (202) 332-0600. The office is located at 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC 20036. ******* #2 ORT Review www.ortv.ru Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba7@bu.edu) Research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy at Boston University HEADLINES, Friday, January 04, 2002 - Ruslan Yunusov, the Chechen deputy emergency minister was seriously wounded in Grozny. He was brought to a hospital, but died on the operating table. - Gennady Fadeev has been appointed the new Transportation Minister. Fadeev held the position between 1992 and 1996; he began working for the ministry in 1987. During the last two years he was the general secretary of the International Committee on Transsiberian Transit and the head of the Moscow Railways system. First Deputy Transportation Minister Aleksandr Tselko had been appointed Acting Transportation Minister by the former minister, Nikolai Aksenenko. - The Governmental Committee on the protection of domestic trade and customs-tariff policy will make a recommendation to the Russian Cabinet to lower the customs tax on oil exports from 23.4 Euros to $8 per ton. - A major fire broke out at an oil refinery in Moscow's Kapotnya region. According to preliminary information, two people have been injured. - Admiral Vyacheslav Popov has been selected as the Federation Council representative for the Murmansk oblast. - About 100,000 Arkhangelsk residents have been without water since early yesterday morning. The main pipe from the city's water reservoir burst yesterday and had been repaired, but a new rupture followed. - According to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, Russia and the United States have no disagreements about Chechnya; the American administration supports the Russian government's approach to the Chechen problem. - Russia has made its first IMF payment of the year - 113.4 million of the more than 1.5 billion it will pay in 2002. - Three people were injured when a bomb went off in the Vladivostok office of two oil-trading companies - Rai and Primoil. The office is located in a movie theater and a children's New-Year show was going on next door -- none of the children were hurt. The bomb was hidden in a present (a desk lamp) brought by two women dressed as Santa's helpers [Snegorochki]. It exploded when the lamp was plugged in. Federal Security Service officials suspect that the attack was directed against Ivanov, the head of one of the firms, but he was on holiday in Thailand. An investigation is in progress. - Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov will be on vacation until January 14th. He will spend his holiday in Slovenia, where he was invited by the Slovenian Prime Minister. Fourteen other ministers will also take their vacations in early January, so the next Cabinet meeting will be held on January 17th. ******* #3 Nearly 1,000,000 locked up in Russian prisons Interfax Moscow, 5 January: Russia's prisons have 980,000 inmates, including 744,000 convicts and 216,700 people whose cases are currently under investigation. Included in this figure are 19,000 minors and 50,000 women, the press service for the Russian Justice Ministry told Interfax. There are 11 homes for children of female convicts who are less than three years of age. In addition, there are 1,863 offices in Russia holding the records of 660,300 people who were convicted but not put in jail. There are 282 night schools and 205 counselling services at correction institutes, where more than 60,000 convicts study. Russia's prisons also have 286 churches and 662 prayer rooms. Inmates receive medical care from 119 hospitals. Special TB treatment is provided in 34 hospitals and 55 medical penitentiaries, including 9 for drug addicts. Russia's prison inmates work for 750 enterprises, including 50 agricultural ones. Their annual output exceeds R9bn. ******* #4 Minneapolis Star Tribune January 5, 2002 Editorial Russia's economy: Cause for cautious celebration At the end of 1998, it was difficult to find anyone willing to bet on Russia. Plenty were willing to bet against it. But three years later, the cockeyed optimists seem to be winning the day -- so far. In August 1998, because of the Asian financial collapse and the slackening in commodities demand it caused, oil-revenue dependent Russia had seen its international debt balloon and the value of the ruble collapse. The former central republic of the Soviet Union was in full-blown economic crisis. The International Monetary Fund finally refused to pour any more money into the country. Unpredictable and ineffectual President Boris Yeltsin was in the waning days of his second term. The country had suffered through almost a decade of wanton looting of its economy by a small band of oligarchs. As a consequence of the thievery and mismanagement, the output of the Russian economy had shrunk by half. Organized crime seemed at times to have more power than the central government. While the beginnings of a middle class could be seen in Moscow, people across vast swatches of rural Russia lived in grinding poverty. Unemployment was endemic, alcoholism was soaring and the health of the Russian population was deteriorating rapidly. Now consider the Russian economy at the end of 2001. In the previous year, the Russian stock market rose 60 percent, the most of any market in the world. The economy grew by a respectable 5 percent. Standard and Poor's upgraded the country's credit rating to B+ from B, reflecting the disciplined fiscal and monetary policies of President Vladimir Putin's administration. Inflation, though still high, was down dramatically from the mid-1990s. As economists point out, now comes the hard part. While Russia has begun to diversify its economy so it is less dependent on volatile world prices for oil and natural gas, much more remains to be done in that regard. A truly diversified economy that is attractive to global investors requires reforms in the banking system, the passage of further judicial reform and still more tax reform. The system must become more transparent, more governed by the rule of law than by the law of the mafia jungle. Government needs to pay a great deal more attention to aiding small, home-grown entrepreneurs with credits, grants and tax policies that encourage growth and risk. Poverty, health care, transportation, regional economic development all remain urgent challenges for the years ahead. And yet Russia now seems to have passed a critical tipping point. Despite the travails of its first post-Communist decade, and especially the whomping the economy took in 1998, the country has embraced vigorously the market and democracy. As Mikhail Gorbachev, last secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party, observes, once people have grown accustomed to those freedoms, they are loath to go backward. Russia is so rich in resources and in bright, well-educated people that by all counts it should be looking forward to a very prosperous future. In the early post-Communist years, that future was taken from Russia by thugs and thieves. How good now to see the country on the high road at last. Thank goodness the optimists, and we count ourselves among them, appear for now to have gotten it right. ******** #5 www.theglobalist.com January 4, 2002 Putin, the Modern Czar Russia's President Vladimir Putin put on a bravura performance late last year, when he answered questions from ordinary Russians in a two-and-a-half-hour live television broadcast. Mr. Putin noted — and historians concurred — that it was an unprecedented display of democratic politics by a Russian head of state. Yet, some of the questions — and many of Putin's answers — harked back to an ancient tradition in Russian history, which predates not only the current democratic period, but also the Soviet era. Russian peasants had an unshakable belief in the goodness of the Russian czar. No matter how hard their lives were, their czar — the ultimate ruler — bore no responsibility. Our Father, the Czar Or so the farmers believed. In their minds, the true state of affairs in the country was concealed from the czar by his ministers and courtiers, who were the true villains exploiting all ordinary people. The only hope was to somehow go over the heads of the czar's entourage, inform him directly about the injustices carried out in his name — and he would set everything right. That mythological czar was also a great alms-giver. For someone with a problem, the best course of action was to appeal directly to the czar. People who tried this avenue were called "truth-seekers," and it was the czar alone who could establish the truth. In popular lore, the czar could pardon the wrongfully convicted and punish those who were responsible for the injustice. Not surprisingly, the traditional way to address the monarch by his subjects was to use the familiar "ty" form in Russian — and to call him "Czar — Our Father." Knowledgeable leader When Mr. Putin answered questions from his constituents during a recent live TV broadcast, he was well-prepared and had a slew of statistics at his fingertips. Whenever a caller raised an issue — whether it concerned low wages, official corruption, drug addiction or the condition of Russian-speaking minority populations in the former Soviet republics — Mr. Putin would invariably declare that he is aware of it and that his government is working to resolve it (see also Part 1 of this series, "Mr. Putin: Super-Democrat"). Yet, some of Mr. Putin's answers, as well as the tenor of many of the questions put to him, contained quite a bit of the old "Autocrat of All Russia" thinking — which was, of course, the official title of the Russian czar. "Thank you for raising our pensions" Typically, Mr. Putin would talk about the difficulty of addressing the issue raised by a caller, and then assure the caller and the audience that government officials had already been directed by the President to work on the solution. If somebody got blamed, it was invariably local officials who either were not doing their job properly or not quickly enough. Even though a broad array of intractable social, economic and political problems were raised, Mr. Putin presented himself as someone in total control. In most cases, he promised eventual improvements. In fact, in the fawning manner of old serfs, some callers felt obliged to thank Mr. Putin for whatever progress there had been. One pensioner gushed effusively that at last Russia has a decent president. Another thanked him personally for raising her pension and taking good care of them — even though after a 23% increase, the average pension still amounts to around $60 per month. That amount affords only a bare-bones existence, pretty much on the edge of starvation. Not so impromptu A few questions appear to have been set pieces, giving Mr. Putin an opportunity to come to the aid of his constituents — just as they would expect of a czar. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Antinina Rzhanova had been carefully pre-selected to ask a supposedly impromptu question that revealed a glaring injustice. Evidently, Ms. Rzhanova gets paid a pension of only $30 per month, even though as a war veteran with combat duty during World War II, she is required to get at least three times as much. "I hope that they have your phone number at the studio," responded Mr. Putin. "They will pass it on to us here, and I promise to you that this issue will be resolved." A kid's tale One 10-year old was concerned because his school had been shut down for lack of heating. He feared the students would be made to repeat a grade. In a typical czar-like manner, Mr. Putin hinted that the governor of the boy's region was watching the show on TV — and "would do everything necessary to restore the viability of educational institutions." The plight of kids typically melts the hearts of even the most hardened cynics. No surprise then that Mr. Putin personally selected this quote from a letter sent to him by a seven-year-old named Vanya. "Our life is hard," read Mr. Putin on national TV. "Our house has burned down. We live with grandmother. We have to rent an apartment. I rarely see my mother, she has to work so much. I'm very lonely." So heart-wrenching. Yet, there is help on the way. In a gesture reminiscent of Santa Claus, movies by the American director Frank Capra or, indeed, a long line of Russian czars, Mr. Putin hints at a Christmas miracle: "I have a strong reason to believe that you and your family will be helped." Thank you, Mr. Putin, Our Father! ******* #6 Financial Times (UK) 5 January 2002 Russians question quality of the president's men: Vladimir Putin's habit of recruiting senior aides from his home city has raised doubts over his judgment By ANDREW JACK Two years after taking charge in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin faces growing criticism for one of the most potentially damaging aspects of his management style: the narrow pool of people from whom he draws to fill top appointments. In dozens of senior strategic jobs - in politics, the civil service and state-controlled business alike - Mr Putin has named or left in charge a group of long-standing acquaintances, including many from his native city, St Petersburg. With economic growth beginning to slow, the elections cycle drawing on and the critical phase of implementing his ambitious reform plans coming to a head this year, the skills of those in leadership positions are coming under more intense scrutiny. Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of the Union of Right Forces movement in parliament, has returned repeatedly to the theme in the past few months, telling party activists in one recent speech: "It is Putin's sacred belief that only St Petersburg has good people. It is his profound mistake. (His) main tragedy is that he doesn't trust people." While Alexander Voloshin, the head of the presidential administration, remains in office from the time of President Boris Yeltsin, many of Mr Putin's other senior Kremlin aides have arrived since from different circles. Those from St Petersburg include Dmitri Medvedev and Dmitry Kozak, both deputy heads of his administration in the Kremlin, and German Gref, the minister for economic trade and development. Alexei Kudrin, the finance minister, is also from the city. In the business sector, Alexei Miller, the new head of Gazprom, the gas monopoly 38 per cent owned by the state, was chosen personally by Mr Putin in May, after a career in St Petersburg. Mr Miller has in turn hired others from the city to join him. In politics, their ranks were swelled most recently by Sergei Mironov, a politician and administrator from the city, who was elected in December as the new head of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament. From Mr Putin's previous career in the security services there is Sergei Ivanov, now the minister of defence, and many lower-profile figures such as Sergei Chemezov, a senior manager at the state arms company Rosoboronexport, with whom he worked at the Soviet embassy in East Germany in the 1980s. In some ways, St Petersburg - as Russia's second largest city and traditionally an intellectual haven - is a rich recruiting ground for Mr Putin. If he had been from Moscow or worked there for longer, for example, the trend would have been less obvious - particularly to vocal Muscovites. He has also been following a long tradition in his hiring practices, by using people he knows. Mr Yeltsin initially hired people from his traditional power base in the city of Yekaterinburg, for instance. Mr Putin himself says that there have been many appointments of people from elsewhere during his term so far, while also arguing that it is logical he will chose those whom he knows and trusts "professionally and morally". He stresses that he has been in the Kremlin for only two years and it takes time to get to know those with suitable skills from other regions. Yuri Kotler, a partner with Ward Howell, the international recruitment agency, says: "He is trying to put into decision-making positions people that he can rely on. The vast majority come from his previous life. But I don't think he is able to find a lot of people from business." His firm has helped place two people with useful skills in Mr Gref's economic development ministry. But the selection has proved extremely difficult, with maximum salaries for senior officials of just Rbs5,000 a month (Dollars 166). He argues that the fact that many of Mr Putin's close aides come from the security services or the bureaucracy means they are used to controlling and supervising, rather than implementing. They also lack the experience of democratic politics. But the mettle of the president's men has yet to be thoroughly tested. That will change in the coming months. The government wants to push ahead this year with reform of Russia's big state-dominated industries - in gas, electricity, telecommunications and railways. It wants to implement land sales legislation, tax and labour codes and anti-red-tape measures. Mr Putin's St Petersburg allies will ultimately be judged by results. ******* #7 From: "Wallace Kaufman" Subject: Central Asia's core problem Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 "Letter From Uzbekistan" by RAFFI KHATCHADOURIAN ( JRL 6005) emphasizes once more the often overlooked volatility of Central Asia, the West's best hope for diversifying the world's energy supplies, among other things. His focus on the harsh measures of the Karimov regime, however, highlights grim human rights problems, but not the main reason some Central Asians are increasingly ready to embrace violent fundamentalism. True, even if the snake oil of radical and violent ideologies is being sold by comfortable mullahs and Saudi millionares, people are driven by despair, not understanding, to embrace them. These ideologies offer the one thing that so far Central Asia's regimes have not been able to offer--hope. And the first hope of all people's is not political but economic hope. Where Kachadourian goes astray is in suggesting that somehow US criticism of these regimes is the key to change, that a US military presence is an inevitable irritant, and that only after Sept. 11 aid started to 'pour in'. In fact, in Uzbekistan, as in all the Central Asian countries, the US has since 1992 financed tens of millions of dollars in programs designed to improve human rights, solve environmental problems, and encourage economic development from microfinance in the Fergana Valley to housing credit in Kazakhstan. In addition to US programs these countries host programs run by EBRD, ABD, and the World Bank. Not all the programs have been well run or wisely designed, but even the best programs, unfortunately, cannot be more effective than the regimes that must pick them up and expand their benefits to the general population. Housing credit alone, for example, could unlock billions of dollars in equity not controlled by the government, the most democratically distributed equity in the former Soviet Union. For this equity to multiply, of course, it needs infrastructure, both physical and institutional. Mortgage banking was proposed for Kazakhstan in 1993 on the heels of a presidential decree on housing, but only last year was a real housing credit program put on the ground, strongly supported by US funds and assistance. So far the rulers of Central Asia have not invested effectively in necessary human, institutional or physical infrastructure. Kazakhstan, for instance, has squandered its vast oil revenues on moving its capital to the middle of the steppes where it was for a while known appropriately as "Akmola" or 'white grave' in Kazakh. Simultaneously that move destroyed billions of dollars of investment in the old capital, Almaty. The country's schools languish, its medical system is worse than in Soviet times, investment in its vast farmlands is minimal since no one can own those lands, and corruption continues to drive the entrepreneurial spirit underground or abroad. Meanwhile the president's family and relatives seem to appear in every business venture and the former communist leader with his modest salary has become inexplicably rich. The people of Central Asia can be well fed, well closed, and well housed, or they can be well equipped to feed, clothe and house themselves. Being well equipped is the preferable course to the dependency on inevitably inefficient and corrupt government charity. So far there is little hope for either course. It's a red herring to hold the US accountable for the potential disaster facing these countries. Ridding Afghanistan of the Taleban and Al Qaeda certainly buys time for Central Asia, and the presence of US troops in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan is a small risk to take for the potential benefits. But here as with more direct forms of aid, what the rulers of these countries do with the time we buy them is all important. ******* #8 Los Angeles Times January 5, 2002 Editorial Uzbekistan's Chance to Act The ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan has produced an important side effect for neighboring Uzbekistan, removing a sanctuary for Islamic fundamentalist warriors challenging the repressive government of Islam Karimov. The Uzbek president--a holdover from Soviet rule of his land and a man apparently bent on staying as leader until he dies--should take advantage of an improved security situation by loosening the political reins. Uzbekistan is the pivot of Central Asia, a region of former Soviet republics that are desperately poor despite their deposits of oil and gas. It has outlawed even the most moderate Islamic political movements and in the process turned some groups that might have become the loyal opposition into potentially violent foes. The government designates religious leaders and requires religious organizations to register, in effect deciding who can preach and who cannot. By not developing political institutions, Uzbekistan is setting itself up for an ugly payback down the road. When the Soviet Union disintegrated a decade ago, residents in the five former republics hoped for political liberalization, religious freedom and economic improvement with the removal of the shackles of central planning. Instead, the leaders then are the leaders now and the Soviet-style bureaucracy continues its mismanagement. The area is predominantly Muslim, but Uzbekistan and the other nations are secular and worry about militant Islam. The argument against liberalization has been the need for security. But the quick ouster of the Taliban has removed one source of danger and has discredited Islamic fundamentalists throughout the region. Karimov is more secure now and should allow a free press, legitimate opposition political parties and the unrestricted operation of human rights groups. There's a lesson to be learned from Pakistan, where Islamic political parties have done terribly at the polls but have gained influence in the mosques and religious schools when secular governments and political organizations have proved feeble or corrupt. Like Afghanistan and Pakistan, Uzbekistan needs dramatic economic progress to lift the terrible poverty that helps fuel extremist movements. Of the five central republics, Uzbekistan has most distanced itself from Russia, which still considers the region part of its area of influence. Even before Sept. 11, Karimov looked to the United States as a counterweight to Moscow. Now Washington has even greater influence because it has removed a major source of danger to Uzbekistan. It should encourage Karimov to improve the lives of his people, not just tighten his grip on power. U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe did a good job in December in helping persuade a Czech court not to send back to Uzbekistan Mukhammat Salikh, who ran against Karimov for president in 1991 and two years later fled the country out of realistic fear for his life. Washington must stay focused on Central Asia, beyond Afghanistan, to help prevent nations from disintegrating into failed states that are fertile ground for terrorism. ******** #9 From: "Oskars Ceris" Subject: Re: GETTING RID OF NATO #6004 Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 NATO's Ongoing Role: Peace, Power and Money I would like to use the opportunity of this list to respond to John Danzer's comment on the need to dismantle, so far the world's most potent military organisation - NATO. The main argument lies in the fact that NATO is considerably more than just an uncomfortable exclusive club of Western nations for Russia and the so-called relic of the Cold War. 1. NATO's primary function as a Cold War alliance, was by no means to fight wars and withstand a Soviet aggression, but to discourage would be aggressors, chiefly the Soviet Union, of fighting ones, since both realised the potential outcome of a war. Thus its basic function was that of the "police man" for Europe and "bogey man" for the Soviet Union, which based its own credibility on contrasting its capabilities against those of USA and its European allies. 2. It is very unlikely that even Russia envisages a Europe without NATO. What Russia may in fact experience, is a Europe without USA in purely military terms. Though, the absence of USA in the NATO framework is highly unlikely. Arguably USA's trust in its European allies is grounded in the belief of their consensual recognition of America's vast military superiority. If Europeans envisage to set up a security branch within the EU, let them try. Russia on the other hand is hardly in a position to challenge the current global setting that is being conducted by the USA, that has never experienced as much global legitimacy to its use of force. Putin apart from his predecessor, is hardly stuck to the superpower illusion of his country and most likely realises the benefits of playing along. A highly fortunate turnout of Russian foreign policy owes credit to Putin's administration that has realised the failure of useless and embarrassing rhetoric of confrontation with the West. 3. Russia's security needs are considerably more vague than objections to NATO enlargement. In realpolitik terms Russia's concern over security on its Western boarder is based on ambiguous perceptions of the Cold War termed in security studies as a "security dilemma" - basically - they have more weapons than we do. With instability in the Caucasus, vast boarders in the far East, Russia simply lacks financial and logistic capability to afford a standoff with the West. Thus Russia's rapprochement with the West and befriending with the East is a rational choice, following an analysis of geopolitics, complemented with notions of capability and prestige. Additionally, internal vulnerabilities, more than ever following September 11, need to be addressed more than external threats that are built on stereotypes and twisted public opinion. 4. European security is another complex issue. Current military potential of European nation is insignificant compared to the United States credibility. While France and United Kingdom remain nuclear powers, such status provides only symbolic power and in reality offer an option of last resort. Germany on the contrary possesses the hardware and is unquestionably the foremost potent conventional military force in Europe, yet it is overly cautions with power politics. Provided that Russia can still be regarded as a hypothetical would-be aggressor, with all due respect to the Russian military, its current military credibility is highly questionable. And while European nations are willing to break their dependence on US military support, having the US on board just in case by means of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Charter, is sufficiently satisfactory for most. Additionally, the US needs NATO as an institutional basis of its credibility in Europe. Gaining political support and consensus via an institutionalised process is considerably easier than on a bilateral basis. 5. With regard to NATO expansion, a principle of alliance formation is very simplistic - small is better. More precisely, small is more efficient. With the alliance most likely reaching the size of 23 members by the end of this year, it is only to Russia's benefit, since NATO acquisitions in Central Eastern Europe are hardly of military value, yet a stable to contribution to the organisation's ineffectiveness. Moreover, most are currently leaning westwards anyway. Perhaps Russia's greatest loss is reputation, having lost an empire, yet, with the current shape of Russia few Russians question the choice of Central Eastern European nations to seek prosperity in the West. 6. Mercantile interests are frequent determinants of high-politics. NATO's technical requirements for compatibility provide vast entrepreneurial opportunities for Pentagon's arms industry, particularly in Central Eastern Europe, which apart from transition to market economies and democracy, are in need of qualifying for NATO's requirements of modern warfare. Europeans no doubt are gross exporters of arms and military technology, yet few would argue against the superiority of US technology, particularly with regard to advanced weapon and radar systems, missile complexes, jet fighters, etc. Military marketing closely resembles Microsoft's marketing strategy of newer versions of software. New possibilities require technical upgrading, and NATO's institutional framework serves the purpose of a credible marketplace. While the few points mentioned are far from all the reasons why NATO currently is still operational, I hope that my crude analysis of realpolitik in relation NATO's necessity has given some ideas to contribute to the debate over NATO's future and Russia's possible role. ******** #10 Financial Times (UK) 5 January 2002 Moscow ushers in reform of labour law By Andrew Jack Russia's first significant reform of labour legislation in the post-Soviet era comes into effect this week after being signed into law by President Vladimir Putin on Monday. The new labour code eases the restrictions on employers wanting to dismiss staff, while obliging them to accept collective bargaining. It concluded a year of intensive economically liberal legislative reform, including changes to Russia's pension fund system, urban land sales, and tax and social security regulations. The latest text updates the previous body of labour regulations introduced in 1961, which has seen only minor modifications since and which severely restricted the formal scope of companies to carry out restructuring. Christopher Granville, an analyst with the Moscow-based brokerage United Financial Group, said: "The old code was part of the workers' paradise of 'you pretend to work and we'll pretend to pay you'. The new version is one of the basic supply-side building blocks which needed to be in place in order to create an ordinary state which obeys the rule of law." The code imposes tougher requirements for employees seeking to strike. But it also penalises employers who fail to pay wages on time, a frequent complaint in recent years, requiring them to pay penalty interest and allowing employees to stay away from work after more than 15 days' arrears. The old labour code was in practice less restrictive than it appeared on paper, because it was widely ignored or manipulated in ways that benefited both employers and employees but left them little chance to defend themselves through labour law. The new code was pushed through against a backdrop of public debate that highlighted the tensions between the old-style state-controlled trade unions and an emerging independent labour movement. ******** #11 SEVEN-YEAR-OLD WESTERN CAR IS BETTER THAN RUSSIAN CAR MADE IN 2002 MOSCOW, January 4, 2002. /RIA Novosti/. - A Western or Japanese car made seven years ago is better than an up-to-date Russian car of 2002, assert experts. As RIA Novosti was told by a manager on duty at the Audi special centre, at the present time, the seven-year car class includes the Audi A4 cars with 1.6 cubic centimeter engines. Such a car, brought to Russia from Germany, now costs not more than 9,000 dollars." "Such cars cannot be compared with the latest Russian Ladas of the 10th or 11th models - in the level of safety, or the quality of assembling, or the resources of units and sets. The used foreign cars cost by 1,500-2,000 dollars more, but even with a total of 100,000 kilometres logged such a car will give odds in quality to any Russian car which has just come off the conveyer. Add comfort to this, which is much better than in Russian cars," pointed out the manager. Unfortunately, our automobile industry is hopelessly lagging behind, and it will be hardly possible to catch up with the civilised production by artificial protectionist methods," he summed up. A spokeswoman for the Volvo company, Viktoria Pavlova, told RIA Novosti by telephone that from the ecological point of view a used foreign car is better than any Russian car. "Comparing foreign and Russian cars, supremacy of foreign cars can be found practically in everything," she said. "I know a Volvo car with a total four million kilometres logged which still serves its master. But it is not real to find a Russian car still in motion after a total of 500,000 kilometres logged." The Toyota-Bitsa sales chief, Sergei Bezborodov, said in this connection: "Of course a seven-year-old foreign car is much better than any latest Russian car even if it costs some 2,000 dollars more. This is a just price for the lack of spoilage inherent in Russian cars." Director of the Ford service centre Strogino-Auto Grigory Chumakov is convinced that the cheapness of spare parts to Russian cars can be regarded as their only supremacy. However, the relatively cheap Russian units break much more often than their foreign colleagues, said he. The Ford cars, which have been in use for seven years, are represented in the Russian market by the Mondeo model which has the plant's guarantee for 300,000 kilometres. And I don't have to tell you what happens with a Russian car after 60-80 thousand kilometres - it simply falls to pieces, concluded Grigory Chumakov. ******** #12 pravda.ru January 4, 2002 WEST ADMITS: CHECHNYA IS RUSSIA'S INTERNAL PROBLEM Russia's Foreign Ministry has finally achieved a slight, but significant victory on the international scene. The Chechen problem is a green wound for Russia and an instrument of pressure exerted on Russia -- for the West. Richard Boucher, an official spokesman for the US Department of State, confirmed a connection between the Al Qaeda terrorist organization and Chechen militants, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports. At that, Mr.Boucher told at the briefing in Washington on January 3, the USA were in contact with Russia during the military operation against Al Qaeda. Richard Boucher repeated the opinion of the US administration once again that the Chechen problem is to be solved in a political way: "We may struggle with terrorism, but fundamental political problems are to be solved in a political way." It was mentioned that Russia and the USA had no contradictions as for this approach to the Chechen problem. Russia has been trying to assure the world community of a connection between the Sept. 11 terror acts and events in Chechnya for a long period already. The Chechen war has always been a ground for the USA to threaten Russia with a punishment. The situation has changed recently: the USA has admitted that the situation in Chechnya is Russia's internal problem. It can be considered a great success. But still Europe will retain the function of humanitarian and cultural control represented by Lord Jadd. Mikhail Leontiev, Russian journalist and the author of Odnako (However) news program, told: "Russia has finally understood how to talk about Chechnya with the West. Now we know the way to send Europe and the rest of the world a message to be read in the letters they understand." The Kremlin agreed to organize talks with a representative of Aslan Maskhadov, that has also contributed greatly to the victory. Russia demonstrated that it hoped to settle the Chechen problem in a political way. It does not matter that the talks had a negative result, - that is quite enough for the West. Especially regarding the fact that the number of militants in Chechnya is steadily decreasing. But it does not mean that the situation in Chechnya will radically change after this. It is very important for Russia "to stand for ages in Chechnya, as our predecessors would say. The price of it, that is what really matters here. Dmitry Litvinovich translated by Maria Gousseva ******** #13 Russia: War Destroyed Chechnya's Clan Structure (Part 1) By Francesca Mereu With the world's attention largely focused on the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, Russia's two-year-old war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya -- which it defends as a battle against terrorism -- continues unabated. The Russian military said on 3 January that it had killed more than 100 rebels in a special operation that ended a week of fierce fighting. The war -- Chechnya's second such conflict with Russia in a decade -- has claimed thousands of lives and has irreparably altered the traditional bonds of religion and family structure that shape Chechen society. In the first of two stories, RFE/RL Moscow correspondent Francesca Mereu looks at Chechnya's clan system, which has been an integral part of life and politics. Moscow, 4 January 2002 (RFE/RL) -- The Chechens of Russia's North Caucasus region are a tight-knit society based on extended families, or clans, guided by a council of elders. These clans, which traditionally lived together in a single village, are called "taips." During Stalin's infamous deportation of Chechens to Central Asia -- and even now, as war and social unrest have forced thousands of Chechens to leave their home villages and scatter throughout the republic or abandon the region altogether -- the links remain strong between members of a single taip. There are more than 150 taips in Chechnya, each with its own traditions and council of elders. Respect for elders is paramount in Chechnya, where a clan's oldest members traditionally have the final say. But in recent years, the elders' absolute authority has given way to an arrangement of making recommendations to the taip that can be, but are not always, followed. Sergei Arutyunov is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the head of the Caucasus department at Moscow's Ethnology Institute: "[A] clan may have more or less informal elders. These elders may form a kind of council -- a clan council -- which may give nonobligatory recommendations. [The elders] have no power to enforce these recommendations. But they may give some valid recommendations, which will probably be more or less followed by the majority of clan members." Traditionally, taip members can recall the name of their original ancestor from whom the clan originates. They can also recite the names and details about the lives and deaths -- often on the battlefield -- of at least seven generations of male ancestors. Ian Chesnov is an anthropology professor at Russia's State Humanitarian University in Moscow. He spent several years in Chechnya studying cultural traits. Chesnov says that according to Caucasus tradition, a member of a taip is never abandoned in time of trouble. To the contrary, a taip acts as a kind of family network that makes sure all members have the support they need. Chesnov describes attending a clan gathering where taip members discussed how to provide a dowry, or "kalim," to a young woman who had been raised an orphan: "[The families discussed the case of] a young girl without parents, an orphan. The girl was of marriageable age and, according to the Caucasus tradition, she needed a dowry -- called a kalim -- a certain amount of money. When [a woman] gets married, with the money of the kalim, the newlyweds buy things for the house. Then [at the gathering, the clan members] collected money for the [girl's] future life." The taip forms the core of Chechen society -- and, many Chechens believe, predetermines the characteristics and personalities of its members. The perceived link between clan and character type is so strong that taips are considered a key aspect of the region's political life as well. Chechen warlord Salman Raduev, who in late December was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism and murder, is a member of the Gordaloy taip. His crimes, including a 1996 raid on the southern Russian town of Kizlyar in which 78 people were killed, dishonored all the members of the taip -- including Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, whose wife is a member of the Gordaloy taip. Valery Batuev, a reporter on Caucasus issues for the "Vremya MN" Russian daily, says Maskhadov -- who is often criticized for what is seen as an inability to maintain control over rival factions within Chechnya -- was unable to arrest or condemn Raduev, since doing so would have meant conflicts within the taip. Chechnya's taips fall into nine distinct "tukums," or tribes. Legend holds that all Chechens descend from an original family of nine brothers, a belief represented by the Chechen symbol, which depicts a wolf encircled by nine stars. Batuev describes the tukums' function: "The taips are organized in nine tukums. A tukum is a political-military union meant to function in cases of [outside] threats or aggression. [The tukums] used to unify all the [Chechen] nation and the taips." A tukum has no leader and is composed of a loose group of clans who share a common ancestry. Batuev says that if, in the past, tukums were able to organize fighting in case of war, in recent times they have played a role that is more symbolic than military. During Chechnya's two latest military conflicts, the tukums had little influence over events. Together, Chechnya's two wars with Russia have cut its population by half. Many Chechens have fled their homes to escape the bloody conflict, and many have died -- some 50,000 in the 1994-96 war alone. Before that war, Chechnya's population stood at some 1.2 million. By 1999, estimates had dropped to between 600,000 and 780,000 people. The capital city of Grozny once had 400,000 residents. Now, analysts say, there are fewer than 40,000 people remaining. Such drastic demographic shifts have inevitably left their mark on Chechnya's tukum and taip structures. According to Arutyunov, the republic is undergoing a severe identity crisis. Just 10 years ago, he says, Chechnya's younger generations had every reason to expect that their lives would progress much as their parents' had -- with marriage, children, and the building of a career. This meant that young people still turned to their fathers or taip elders for advice, and the clan's older generations helped arrange good marriages and interesting, well-paid jobs for the young. But now, Arutyunov says, Chechen society has changed: "Now, in most cases, the influence of [older] people is lost, and as a rule -- except for some very rich and influential people -- a father is hardly in a position to arrange a decent and profitable marriage for his son. He is in no position to put him into any good job. And so the authority, the prestige, the influence of this elder generation is destroyed." Chechnya's younger people, Arutyunov continues, are disoriented, and are now looking for new authority figures -- a search that in many instances leads them to the radical Wahhabi Islamic sect or leaders of criminal rings. The generation gap has gotten so severe, Arutyunov says, that there have been several reported cases of young Chechen men beating their fathers to death. Just a few years ago, this was the strictest taboo in the Chechen social code. ******* #14 Russia: Islam Plays Fundamental Role In North Caucasus Life (Part 2) By Francesca Mereu The Russian republic of Chechnya is located at the northeastern end of the Caucasus mountains, which extend some 1,100 kilometers from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and largely separate Christian Europe from the Middle East. The Muslim nations of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq are only a few hundred kilometers from Grozny, the Chechen capital. Though Chechens were converted to Islam quite late, their belief was strong, and the religion became part of the Chechen national identity. Today, Islam continues to play a fundamental role in the lives of the Chechen people. In the second of two stories on the cultural and religious heritage of Chechnya, RFE/RL correspondent Francesca Mereu reports on the traditional Chechen religion and how it has changed over the years. Moscow, 4 January 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Islam was introduced into Chechnya over a period of centuries, gaining a number of converts by the 15th and 16th centuries but not taking firm root until well into the 18th and mid-19th centuries. The Chechens were converted to the Sunni branch of Islam, with particular emphasis on its mystic Sufi form. Sufism has come to mean those who are interested in finding a way or practice toward inner awakening and enlightenment. Sergio Salvi is a history professor at the University of Florence in Italy and author of many books about Chechen history and religion. He explains the peculiarity of the Sufi interpretation of Islam: "As far as Sufism is concerned, it is [a movement] of organized brotherhoods, who are grouped around a [spiritual leader or] sheik. [Sufi followers] understand Islam in a mystic way. Sufi doesn't differ from Islam in the theological point of view, to use a Western term. The [Sufi interpretation] is a different way to look at Islam. Ardor is the medium to get in touch with God. [Sufi followers] use a variety of techniques [to move toward God], like singing, circular dances, etc." Mikhail Roshin is a professor with the Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He says the goal of the Sufi interpretation of Islam is to establish direct contact with God: "The fundamental nature of Sufi is that the person who [has chosen] this path can reach an individual contact with God. Sufi followers have a teacher who acts as an intermediary between God and the person. [The teacher] gives the precepts according to which people should behave. Usually Sufi followers respect these rules." More than 800 mosques and numerous Islamic schools were located in Chechnya at the turn of the 20th century. But from 1928 to 1941, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin tried to eliminate the country's Islamic traditions. Most mosques were closed and Muslim clerics and believers in the Chechen and Ingush republics were arrested, deported, or executed -- in all, some 14,000 people. Sufi spiritual leaders and believers were labeled "counterrevolutionaries." A small number of Chechens are believed to have colluded with the German army when it occupied the North Caucasus in 1942-43. In 1944, Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Chechen and Ingush population to Kazakhstan as punishment. Stalin is also believed to have been concerned about an armed conflict with Turkey and thought it too risky to have Muslim communities in the North Caucasus. According to Roshin, far from destroying the Sufi brotherhoods, the mass deportation actually had the opposite effect: "It may seem strange, but the deportation played a conservatory role for the Islamic traditions, since [Soviet] authorities thought that [the Chechens] were in exile and did not care about them anymore. [Chechens] preserved their spiritual life, their inner Islamic world." Russian novelist and poet Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, describing Stalin's mass deportations in his masterwork, "The Gulag Archipelago," wrote that "only one nation refused to accept the psychology of submission" -- Chechnya. In the late 1950s, after Stalin's death and Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign, the Chechens were permitted to return home. But the persecution of Sufi brotherhoods did not end. In Chechnya and Ingushetia, the control of the organs of Soviet power remained in Russian hands, with no concessions to local authorities, as in other Soviet Muslim republics. Only in 1979 did Soviet authorities allow the opening of a few mosques, to stop the growth of clandestine Sufi brotherhoods. Indeed, the orders themselves organized their own clandestine Arabic classes and schools where the Koran was taught. In Chechnya and Ingushetia, there were five legal and 292 clandestine mosques. When Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic, political, and social restructuring, or perestroika, began in 1986, it also brought about wage cuts, price hikes, food shortages. and unemployment. The North Caucasus republics were not spared. On the one hand, massive unemployment caused the rise of criminal structures, destabilizing Chechen society. On the other hand, people enjoyed more religious freedom. According to Professor Salvi, Sufi brotherhoods were unable to function in the new conditions. The sheiks were able to exercise their moral authority only in conditions of relative social peace. But from the start of perestroika, that peace was under threat. This situation encouraged the spreading of a fundamentalist movement called Wahhabism. Said Yakhyev is a Sufi spiritual leader who teaches Islam at Moscow State University. Yakhyev lived in Chechnya during perestroika. He explains how and why this radical Islamic religious movement took easy root in Chechnya: "Wahhabism in Chechnya began to spread in the 1980s in the period of glasnost, when thing were allowed. And people who got freedom [for the first time] began to think about a new kind of religion, about new ideas. It was very fashionable at the time. Wahhabism was able to spread in Chechnya because at the time nobody was able to face it and to negate its false dogmas. There was no real religious opposition to it, and now it is the same." Wahhabis call themselves the followers of pure Islam and oppose all practices not sanctioned by the Koran. They look at Sufi Islam as a deviation from the original Islamic rules. Roshin explains that this view of Islam rejects "magical rituals," pilgrimages to saint shrines, or recitations of the Koran in cemeteries -- all activities that had become commonplace among the Chechen Sufi orders: "[Wahhabis] deny the role of the teacher, which for the Sufi is very important. They also deny the cult of the saints and pilgrimages to the saint shrines that are widespread among the followers of Sufi Islam. Among the Northern Caucasus' Islam followers, and Chechens in particular, the ritual of condolences is widespread. When someone dies, there is a [particular] condolence ritual followed by the relatives [of the deceased] and by the entire village. But the Wahhabis think it is enough to bury a deceased person. They [think] it is useless to follow the [condolence] ritual. The inner link with God, typical for the Sufi followers, is denied by the Wahhabis." The Wahhabis' influence became stronger in Chechnya after the Russian military campaigns in the republic. Many years of war impoverished and destabilized Chechen society, and the Wahhabis used this situation to their advantage. Sergei Arutyunov is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the head of the Caucasus department of Moscow's Ethnology Institute. He cites the example of how Chechens had to change their burial traditions due to lack of money. According to Chechen custom, when someone dies, the family has to feed everyone who attends the funeral. A cow or a few sheep are slaughtered to feed up to 200 guests. This tradition has always been difficult to fulfill, since most families in the region have little money. Today, many families have lost everything in the wars. Few can afford to continue the burial tradition. Some families are forced to borrow money for funeral banquets. According to Arutyunov, it is now common for young members of a family to tell people who arrive for a funeral to leave. And these impressionable young people, after listening to Wahhabi leaders, begin to believe that the burial tradition is wrong and in opposition to real Muslim principles. According to the Wahhabis, Islamic law forbids rejoicing or eating at the funeral of a fellow Muslim. Arutyunov says many young people are beginning to think the Wahhabis teach principles that have more relevance to current life in Chechnya. "It is strongly contrary to the [Chechen] customary laws and habits, but many people will listen and say, 'This guy [a Wahhabi leader] is right.' He has reasons to talk so. Indeed, the custom is bad, because fulfilling the custom means to ruin his family." In 1999, RFE/RL correspondent Oleg Kusov interviewed young people in Gudermes, the second-largest town in Chechnya. They told him they would follow the Wahhabi principles because the Wahhabis gave them $100 a month -- a large amount of money the traditional Sufi orders are unlikely to be able to pay. According to Professor Roshin, the differences between the Wahhabi followers and the Sufi can best be understood in their differing concepts of the jihad. "Wahhabis follow the old concept of jihad, meaning the holy war to convert the infidels. The Sufis have another interpretation of jihad. They see it not as a war against the infidels, but as a war that a Muslim has to fight against his own defects to try to reach perfection." The Russian military refers to Chechen field commanders as Wahhabis. But Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist with "Novaya Gazeta" who has covered the Russian-Chechen conflict, contends that this is a mistake. According to Politkovskaya, Chechen field commanders loyal to Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov defend Chechen national traditions and oppose fundamentalist groups like the Wahhabis, since they believe they will destabilize Chechen national unity. Another group, according to Politkovskaya, consists of those who surround field commanders like Shamil Basaev and Khattab. This group seeks an Arab-style Islamization of Chechnya. The Sufi brotherhoods try to keep their distance from the conflict. With no end to the war in sight, many believers and spiritual leaders have left Chechnya for neighboring Ingushetia or Russia. Chechnya's traditional Islam has been represented by two Sufi "tarikats," or orders: the Qadir and the Naqshbandi. The Qadir order first appeared in the Caucasus in the middle of the 19th century and was headed by a Daghestani shepherd named Kunta Khaji. Khaji believed in a mystical practice that, unlike the Naqshbandi, permitted the central "zikr" ritual to include ecstatic dances, songs, and even music -- all practices forbidden by the Naqshbandi, who prefer a silent form of zikr closed to outsiders. Zikr, which means "remembrance of God," is the central ritual practice of most Caucasian Sufi orders. This mystical ceremony, designed to lead participants into an ecstatic union with God, involves the group repetition of a special prayer. During the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which ended in mid-December, many Chechens living in Moscow gathered to pray and perform the zikr in the capital's central mosque. Qadir Chechens performed the zikr. They danced in a circle, holding each other's shoulders and singing in Arabic, "Allah is our only God." They clap their hands ecstatically. In the middle of the circle the imam, or prayer leader, leads followers to clap in the proper rhythm. Yakhyev explained that, in this way, believers reach direct contact with God. Sufi spiritual leader Yakhyev explains what the zikr means for different Chechen Muslim orders: "For the Naqshbandi, the zikr is an inner ritual, what they call the zikr of the heart. For us Kunta Khaji followers [or Qadir], it is the zikr of the language. With our voice, we try to influence people that are taking part in the zikr and also people that are looking at us from the outside." According to Yakhyev, non-believers watching and listening to the zikr sometimes fall into a trance. *******