Johnson's Russia List
#6044
28 January 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Moscow Times: Michael McFaul, 2 Out of 3 Is Not Good Enough.
2. Interfax: Putin talks of his devotion to judo.
3. AFP: Russia loses key commanders as helicopter downed over Chechnya.
4. stratfor.com: Warhead Storage Ensures More Than U.S. Nuclear Superiority.
5. AFP: Russia undecided on participation in Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
6. Interfax: Russian reforms yet to bear fruit, World Bank official says.
7. Interfax: Russian oil output up last year, gas slightly down.
8. Interfax: Foreign car sales booming in Russia.
9. The Independent (UK): Felix Corley, OBITUARY: Viktor Astafyev.
10. AP: Russia may offer easier visas to boost tourism.
11. CNN: Soviet Remnants Remain in Kandahar.
12. Forbes Global: Daniel Fisher, Kabuled together. Oil companies have
dreamed of a trans-Afghan pipeline. Are they crazy enough to pull it off now?
13. BBC Monitoring: Russia manoeuvres over energy export routes to
safeguard position in Central Asia.
14. Moscow Times: Yevgenia Borisova, So, Think You Want to Buy Some Land?]

********

#1
Moscow Times
2 Out of 3 Is Not Good Enough
By Michael McFaul  
Michael McFaul is an associate professor of political science and Hoover
fellow at Stanford University and a senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. His latest book is "Russia's Unfinished
Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin." He contributed this
comment to The Moscow Times.

Ten years ago, President Boris Yeltsin and his newly minted government
launched a set of revolutionary changes comparable in scale and scope with
the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. Like these earlier
social revolutions, Yeltsin and his band of revolutionaries sought to
transform the fundamental organization of the polity and economy within
Russia. Their aim was to destroy the Soviet command economy and replace it
with a market economy. They also aspired to crush Soviet dictatorship and
replace it with a democratic polity. Unlike their counterparts in France in
1789 or Russia in 1917, Russia's anti-communist revolutionaries added an
additional task -- the dissolution of the Soviet empire. In some respects,
then, the agenda of change introduced a decade ago in Russia was even more
far reaching than that which the Jacobins or Bolsheviks sought to achieve. 

A decade ago, few predicted that "the reformers" (they were really
revolutionaries, but the label has a very negative connotation in both
Russian and the West) would be successful in implementing their agenda of
triple transformation. At the time, Russia's elite and society were deeply
divided on every issue of this agenda. As demonstrated by the overwhelming
majority who voted in favor of preserving the union in the March 1991
referendum, Soviet dissolution was very unpopular. The growing resistance
to Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and his reforms in the Russian Congress
underscored the weak support for market reforms. If many post-communist
countries debated what sort of market reforms to pursue after the fall of
communism, Russia debated whether to pursue market reforms at all. In 1992,
the one set of changes that appeared to be most successful was democratic
reforms. Yeltsin and his allies believed that the political struggle was
over and the democratic side had won. In January 1992, therefore, the focus
had to be on the other two agenda items -- confirming Russia's new borders
and creating new market institutions. 

A decade later, one has to be impressed with the scale of change already
achieved. Well into the 1990s, it remained unclear (1) if boundaries
between new states would become permanent and peaceful, (2) if capitalism
would ever take hold or (3) if democracy would ever be consolidated.
Amazingly, only a decade after this revolution began, two out of three of
these transformations have been completed. Ironically, however, democracy
-- the one change that seemed most secure in 1992 -- is most threatened in
2002.

The Soviet empire is gone and will never be reconstituted. Belarus may join
Russia again, but the coercive subjugation of states and peoples adjacent
to Russia's borders appears very unlikely. Though thousands of lives have
been lost as a result of this empire's dissolution, Russian decolonization
has been relatively peaceful compared to the collapse of other empires. 

The Soviet command economy is also extinct and will never rise from the
dead. Russia today has a market economy. This market system is severely
flawed. But the fundamental institutions of the Russian economy today look
more like other capitalist economies around the world and less like the
command economy practiced by the Soviet ancien regime. In addition, even
former counterrevolutionaries such as the Communist Party of the Russian
Federation now endorse the basic tenets of capitalism.

Third, the autocratic institutions of the Soviet ancien regime have also
collapsed. Yet, it is still too early to declare that democratic
institutions will permanently replace the old order. Post-communist Russia
most certainly has experimented with democratic practices. That every major
political leader in post-communist Russia has come to power through the
ballot box is a real accomplishment for a country rich in centuries of
autocratic rule. That the constitution adopted in 1993 has remained the
highest law in the land is also a good sign. In addition, every serious
poll conducted in Russia in the past five years shows that a solid majority
of Russian citizens support democratic ideas and practices. Yet, compared
to the deep roots of Russian independence and Russian capitalism, Russian
democracy remains the unfinished agenda item of the revolution launched a
decade ago. 

Early in the Putin era, Russia's revolutionaries and their supporters in
the West remained hopeful that the new Russian president would move to
consolidate the fragile achievements of the revolution from the previous
decade. Like all revolutions in their later stages, consolidation would
require greater state power, more order and even a return of some old
practices (i.e. Thermidor). Supporters of the revolution remained
optimistic that Putin was too smart, too young and too Western to become
the Bonaparte or Stalin of their revolution. 

He has disappointed. Though still too early to make final judgments, the
accumulation of anti-democratic acts has become too great to ignore. 

Perhaps the emasculation of the Federation Council and the brutal methods
used in Chechnya could be overlooked or justified. 

Revolutionaries interested in the triple transition -- decolonization,
capitalism and democracy -- could even make rational arguments for why NTV
(that is the real NTV) had to go. Vladimir Gusinsky is no Andrei Sakharov.
Yet, no one originally dedicated to the revolutionary mission of a decade
ago can make an honest argument in defense of TV6's closure. Boris
Berezovsky, the majority stakeholder in TV6, has done a lot of damage to
the advance of Russia's capitalist and democratic revolution, but the
process by which TV6 was shut down has done even more damage. Even my
colleagues who work for and support Putin privately express dismay. They
defend the president only half-heartedly by saying he was not involved. But
his noninvolvement is exactly the problem. 

A leader dedicated to furthering democratic practices would speak out about
this case and not pretend that the rule of law had suddenly appeared
overnight in Russia. 

Two out three is not bad. That Russia is a not an empire and is a market
economy are solid achievements for a decade's work. But two out of three is
not good enough. If Putin does eventually erect a new dictatorship, then
the two other achievements of the revolution could become less secure. In
dictatorships, the military is the most important constituent. In Russia,
the military is the most pro-imperial interest group in the country. In
contemporary dictatorships, capitalism rarely thrives. China is the
exception; Angola or Saudi Arabia the rule. A Russian state strong enough
to take away TV6's license can also seize Boeing's assets. 

Russia's revolutionaries from a decade ago (and their supporters in the
West) need to re-dedicate themselves to completing their revolutionary
agenda before it's too late. Especially those liberals in the Kremlin and
the government must begin to question whether their continued support for
Putin serves the aims of all parts of the old revolutionary agenda. To
ignore the democratic component is to abandon the original ideals of a
decade ago.

*******

#2
Putin talks of his devotion to judo

MOSCOW. Jan 27 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the
education center Sambo-70 in Moscow on Sunday. 
   The president inspected the gyms in which sambo and judo was going on at
the moment and met with prominent representatives of those sports. 
   Talking to the press after the visit, Putin said, "the atmosphere here
is like home to me." 
   When asked by a journalist what the sports term "pure victory" means to
him, Putin replied, "It is a very pleasant sensation, it is even hard to
convey in words." 
   While speaking to young girls studying judo at the center, Putin said in
response to their questions that he still studies judo and has a tatami at
home, an Interfax correspondent reported. "When friends come see me, we do
judo," he said. 
   Putin also said that his daughters used to study judo in a sports school
but now "they are lazy." 

*******

#3
Russia loses key commanders as helicopter downed over Chechnya
January 28, 2002
AFP 
 
Russia suffered one of its most serious losses in the 28-month Chechnya war
when five commanders, including two top generals, were killed when their
helicopter was shot down over the renegade republic.

Initial Russian reports attributed the explosion to "an act of terrorism,"
signaling involvement from Chechen rebels.

A claim of responsibility for the explosion was posted on a website close
to the separatists, www.kavkaz.org.

Interfax news agency said a preliminary investigation of the wreck showed
the chopper had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile.

The Mi-8 chopper's downing coincided with the end of the five-year mandate
of separatist Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, although he has vowed to
remain president of the republic.

However, FSB (Federal Security Service, ex-KGB) spokesman Sergei Babkin
later told Interfax that "the cause of the explosion had not been
established as of yet."

The crash will deliver a severe blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin,
who has declared the Chechnya war as already won, saying federal troops are
only in the region for policing purposes.

The Russian interior ministry said 11 people were aboard the chopper, which
went down around 11:30 am (0830 GMT) when it was flying over Chechnya's
northern Nadterechny region.

ITAR-TASS quoted a source saying as many as 14 could have been killed.

Some of the most senior Russian commanders of the Chechnya campaign had
been killed, according to the office of Putin's advisor on Chechnya, Sergei
Yastrzhembsky, quoted by Moscow Echo radio.

These included deputy interior minister General Mikhail Rudchenko, who
oversees the southern Russian administrative region, and his second in
command, General Nikolai Goridov, who was earlier identified as General
Davydov.

Other lower-ranking officials on board the Russian interior ministry
helicopter included Colonels Yury Orlenko, Yury Stepanenko, and Alexander
Trofimenko.

Yastrzhembsky's office said the explosion took place some seven kilometers
(four miles) from the village of Shelkovskaya, in the Nadterechny region,
which fell under Russian control at the very start of the Chechen war.

It was seen as one of the few where federal troops could move about in
safety without fear of rebel ambushes that are a regular occurrence in the
republic's mountainous south.

If the crash was caused by rebel forces, it would represent one of the most
astounding attacks against Russian troops in the war, which has degenerated
into hit-and-run guerrilla fighting in the past two years.

The Russian army swept into Chechnya in October 1999 on what Moscow called
an anti-terrorist campaign that followed a series of bombings in Russia in
which almost 300 people died.

Putin pinned those bombings on Chechen guerrillas, although no proof of
their involvement has ever been made public.

The war was a political gamble for Putin, with the resounding failure of
the previous 1994-96 campaign that left tens of thousands dead and Chechnya
with de facto independence.

In this second campaign, the rebels were quickly forced out of their
capital Grozny, which was shelled for some three months before being
stormed by Russian forces, who avoided the heavy casualties they suffered
in taking the city in the first war.

But supported by mercenaries from abroad, the guerrillas regrouped in the
mountains in the following months and have since attacked Russian positions
apparently at will.

More than 3,500 Russian soldiers and up to 20,000 rebels have been killed
in the fighting, although those figures are disputed. The civilian toll of
the war has never been reported.

Putin's popularity remains high despite his failure to keep the promise of
a lightning, decisive campaign in the republic.

He has been helped by more favorable Russian media coverage of the war,
with NTV television -- the only network reporting independently from the
region -- being taken over by a government-aligned company last year.

*******

#4
stratfor.com
Warhead Storage Ensures More Than U.S. Nuclear Superiority
24 January 2002 

Summary

The White House said on Jan. 9 that it will not destroy all of the nuclear
weapons that would have been decommissioned under a planned U.S.-Russian
agreement. The move will ensure that Russia will lose its last vestige of
superpower status and that China can never beat Washington in an arms race.
But more important, the plan will help preserve the military, political and
economic dominance of the United States for decades.

Analysis

The White House shocked arms-control advocates and Russian disarmament
negotiators Jan. 9, when it revealed plans to store, not destroy, most of
the 4,000 U.S. nuclear warheads that would have been dismantled under a
developing U.S.-Russian disarmament agreement. The move complicates
relations with both China and Russia, but the rationale behind it is about
much more than maintaining mere numerical superiority in nuclear capacity. 

The decision reveals that the United States is finally moving beyond the
Cold War security policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Stockpiling
the warheads will trigger an evolution in the military toward more advanced
and readily deployable conventional forces. This will help safeguard U.S.
military, political and economic dominance for the next century.

Since long before the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty first entered into
force back in 1970, U.S.-Soviet relations were predicated on the premise of
mutually assured destruction and strategic parity. With some notable
exceptions, such as de-targeting agreements, much of this Cold War balance
of power still remained in the post-Cold War era.

The Bush administration's decision to store the warheads instead of
destroying them, particularly when combined with Washington's abrogation of
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), shatters this pre-existing order.
The most immediate effects will be visited upon Washington's former foe
Russia -- which is also expected to dismantle around 4,000 nuclear warheads
once the new treaty is signed. 

After a decade of political, economic, social and military decline, Russia
was left with but one fragment of its old superpower status: its nuclear
parity with the United States. The White House's recent announcement
thrusts forward a cold, hard fact: Russia cannot afford to maintain its
nuclear arsenal on a 2002 defense budget of $9 billion while the United
States -- with $379 billion penciled in -- can.

This unpleasant disconnect is not a new one for Moscow. The Russians have
known for years they cannot directly compete with the United States missile
for missile or dollar for dollar, but previous U.S. administrations have
been willing to let Moscow save face.

Now, however, the Bush team has decided the time has come to end the
illusion of strategic parity despite Russia's assistance to the United
States in its recent war effort in Afghanistan. The message to Moscow is
that it's great if you are willing to be an ally, but there should be no
mistake about who is in charge. Even if it is just stating the obvious, for
Moscow that's the diplomatic equivalent of a kick in the teeth.

For China, Washington's signal is equally clear and somewhat more ominous.
Behind the wall of rhetoric, Washington and Moscow have quietly worked
together on some facets of an anti-ballistic missile shield under the
rubric of the RAMOS (Russian-American Observation Satellite) project. And
one Russian proposal that would necessitate Moscow's cooperation, that of
targeting hostile missiles while they are in their launch phase, looks to
be a central tenet in Washington's developing ABM framework. 

China has no chance of such involvement with the United States. This is
mainly due to the fact that Beijing is an as-yet-unspoken rationale for a
U.S. missile shield, which could easily guard against the threat posed by
the 20 Chinese missiles currently capable of striking the United States.
China will use the planned shield as its rationale for enlarging and
modernizing its fleet, and the United States in turn will use China's
efforts as its rationale for its own upgrades. 

In the intelligence business, this is called an arms race, but the U.S.
decision not to destroy the 4,000 warheads means the race is over before it
has begun. 

Between the ABM treaty, the economic prowess of the United States, its
overwhelming technological edge and a store of ready-to-go warheads, the
Bush plan ensures American nuclear superiority for at least the next
century. If China attempts to keep up, it will have to surmount far greater
economic hurdles than the defense-budget crunch that led to the Soviet
Union's downfall in the late 1980s. 

After all, even after the expected U.S.-Russian cuts, the United States
will still have about a 1,500-active-warhead advantage over China, plus the
4,000 warheads stored in reserve. 

That does not, however, mean a nuclear America of the 21st Century will
mirror 20th Century strategies. By taking its missiles off high alert,
separately storing warheads and developing a multilayered missile defense
system, the United States also ends MAD as a strategic doctrine. 

Although it is extremely unlikely the United States will ever publicly end
its first-strike doctrine, the mothballing of most of Washington's
offensive capability by its very nature makes America a reactive, not
proactive, nuclear power. Warheads collecting in a warehouse certainly
cannot also be on hair-trigger alert.

The change in nuclear stance will send a powerful shockwave through U.S.
military capabilities.

The abandonment of MAD destabilizes the global security environment. MAD
granted predictability, and it ironically gave second- and third-tier
states room to maneuver. A country such as North Vietnam knew that the
United States would never move too boldly against it for fear of
retribution from the Soviet Union. 

With MAD discarded, the United States largely is free of that concern. This
opens up a diverse array of options previously denied it. Now, anyone
opposing the United States must factor in the possibility of facing U.S.
forces that are free to operate without hesitation or reservation. That
will certainly make these states more skittish and unpredictable,
increasing the United States' need to be able to project power.

To project this power will require entirely new generations of weapons
systems, with modifications of regional strategic doctrines to match. The
Bush administration's proposed $379 billion for defense -- a 15 percent
increase over last year's and the largest increase since former President
Ronald Reagan's 1981 buildup -- is only the first step in that very
expensive direction.

This is an expense the United States has proven it can easily afford. At
the end of the Cold War, Washington spent about 5.4 percent of its GDP on
defense. After the unprecedented economic expansion in the 1990s, were the
United States to ratchet up to the same level again, it would need to spend
$540 billion, something the U.S. economy could easily support. 

Such a military-capacity expansion will have a multitude of follow-on
effects, most noticeably on American foreign policy. During the Clinton
administration, capability shortage was one of the most significant
restrictions on American power projection. Replacing MAD with military
hegemony changes all that.

From a military standpoint, Washington will be much more capable than in
years past of addressing skirmishes on multiple fronts. From a political
point of view, the United States will have a far greater array of options
to pursue policies. 

Economically, the constant innovation and upgrading that will occur in the
military sector will also flow into the civilian market. Such a spin-off
phenomenon that came with the 1980s defense buildup -- which brought the
Internet, civilian satellite systems and modern medical laser therapies to
the United States -- is set to echo throughout the 21st Century.

*******

#5
Russia undecided on participation in Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline 
January 27, 2002
AFP
 
MOSCOW: Russia has not yet decided whether to participate in the proposed
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline project, as Moscow remains
unconvinced of its economic viability, Russia's ambassador in Azerbaijan
said Saturday.

"We are watching this project's development with interest, waiting to make
our decision," Nikolai Ryabov was quoted as saying by the RIA-Novosti news
agency.

"We reject no projects, but our first consideration is how profitable any
given project turns out to be," Ryabov added.

Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, the United States and later Kazakhstan agreed
on building the pipeline, which is due for completion in 2005.

The pipeline will run 1,743 kilometres (1,089 miles) from the Azeri capital
Baku, through Georgia to Ceyhan in Turkey.

Some energy analysts have warn that the project is not commercially viable
but is being pushed through by Washington for political reasons. But
backers insist it will turn a profit.

The BTC consortium currently comprises BP, which is also the operator,
Azeri state oil company SOCAR, ExxonMobil, Statoil, ENI Agip, Unocal, Delta
Hess, Devon, TPAO and Itochu.

The US oil major ChevronTexaco also announced its intent to join the
2.9-billion-dollar project in December last year.
 
*******

#6
Russian reforms yet to bear fruit, World Bank official says 
Interfax

Moscow, 25 January: Russia's ten-year long reforms have failed to bring
about the anticipated results, World Bank Vice-President for Europe and
Central Asia Johannes Linn has said.

Russia has remained below the zero line as the public sector continues to
make losses, new market players have failed to benefit from reforms and
oligarchs have retained controlling positions in the economy, Linn told
Kommersant newspaper.

CIS countries accomplished a turnaround in the past two or three years.
Their growth rates are similar to that of Central European countries, and
total 3 per cent to 4 per cent per year, he said.

If Russia and Ukraine persevere with the consistent steps of the past few
years, and all the previous reforms yield benefits, they will be able to
attain the global level, he said.

******

#7
Russian oil output up last year, gas slightly down 
Interfax

Moscow, 25 January: The extraction of oil including gas condensate in
Russia grew 7.7 per cent in 2001 against the previous year to nearly 348.1m
tonnes, Interfax was told at the State Statistics Committee.

Without gas condensate, extraction amounted to 336.99m tonnes, a
7.69-per-cent increase.

The biggest oil producers were LUKoil with 62.92m tonnes (101.2 per cent of
the 2000 level), Yukos - 58.01m (116.5 per cent), Surgutneftegaz - 44.03m
(108.39 per cent), the Tyumen Oil Company - 32.97m (115.34 per cent) and
Tatneft - 24.6m tonnes (101.05 per cent).

In the same period, Russia extracted 550.83bn cubic metres of natural gas
or 99.22 per cent of the 2000 amount, with Gazprom producing 510.88bn of
the total (97.89 per cent).

*******

#8
Foreign car sales booming in Russia 
Interfax

Moscow, 27 January: Foreign car manufacturers sold around 80,000 cars in
Russia in 2001 against 47,800 in 2000, nearly doubling their sales...

America's General Motors increased sales 2.26 times against 2000, selling
2,141 cars, and Ford by 204 per cent, selling 4,124 cars.

The best results among Japanese car manufacturers were achieved by
Mitsubishi Motors, which sold 6,004 cars against 3,836 in 2000 (an increase
of 56.5 per cent), Nissan - 5,286 cars against 2,536 in 2000 (up 2.08
times) and Toyota - 4,461 cars against 2,307 in 2000 (up 93 per cent.)

Most European car manufacturers effectively doubled their sales. Germany's
Volkswagen increased sales 2.09 times, selling 7,254 cars against 3,469 in
2000, and the Czech Republic's Skoda Auto, a Volkswagen subsidiary,
increased sales 2.87 times to 8,391 against 2,924 in 2000.

France's Peugeot and Citroen, which earlier played a modest role on the
Russian market, increased sales almost three times. Peugeot increased the
sale of new cars through the official dealer network by 2.97 times as
compared to 2000, selling 4,246 cars against 1,428 in 2000 (604 in 1999),
and Citroen increased sales 3.67 times to 1,009 against 275 in 2000 and 90
in 1999...

*******

#9
The Independent (UK)
28 January 2002
OBITUARY: Viktor Astafyev 
BY FELIX CORLEY

IN HIS numerous works of fiction, Viktor Astafyev portrayed, unvarnished,
life in rural Russia during the later Soviet period, a life imbued with
despair and alcoholism.

After a childhood which saw him experience all the privations possible in
the Soviet Union - except imprisonment or execution - Astafyev was one of a
generation of young Russians to return in 1945 from life-changing
experiences of war to what they hoped would be a better life, only to find
the remote countryside little changed.

An authentically peasant writer, who never fitted in amid the Moscow- based
literary elite, Astafyev became famous for his stark novels about the
Soviet Union's costly victory in the Second World War, in which he
questioned decisions taken by Stalin and the military leadership.

It was the publication in 1959 of the story "Pereval" ("The Crossing") that
turned Astafyev into a literary star. Gde-to gremit voina ("Somewhere
Sounds the War", 1968) was one of many of his war novels that resonated
with his generation. Tsar Ryba (The King-Fish, 1972), one of the few works
by Astafyev translated into English, is an epic, somewhat mythological tale
about the threat of ecological catastrophe in Siberia.

Prokliaty i ubity ("The Damned and the Dead"), published in the mid-1970s
and for which Astafyev won the 1975 State Prize, was considered the most
truthful literary depiction of the ruinous effects of the war on Russia's
villages. The State Prize was the first of what would become many of the
Soviet Union's highest literary honours for Astafyev, who also wrote plays
and film scripts.

Born in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, Astafyev lost both parents in
the 1930s: his father died of hunger and his mother drowned in the Yenisei
river. He grew up in an orphanage and, after railway school in Novosibirsk,
volunteered for the front in the Second World War. It was not until he was
27 that his first works were published in his local paper in the Urals and
he was eventually admitted to the Soviet Writers' Union in 1958.

By the end of the 1970s Astafyev had become a leading figure in the more
nationalist "village writing" school, incorporating a covert, more
political agenda, pointing out the virtues of Russian rural life untouched
by Communist dictates. He even dared to challenge the Soviet authorities'
attacks on his fellow novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Pechalnyi detektiv ("The Sad Detective", 1986), published just as the
Soviet system buckled under the after-effects of Leonid Brezhnev's stagnant
rule, tells of the miserable life of a detective in a depressed provincial
town. By the glasnost era of the late 1980s, Astafyev had turned to
politics. With other board members of the conservative journal Nash
Sovremennik ("Our Contemporary") he founded the Fellowship of Russian
Artists, which opposed the disintegration of the Soviet Union and of Russia
itself.

In the semi-free elections to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989, he
became a deputy as a Writers' Union nominee. He contributed to debates,
once arguing publicly with Mikhail Gorbachev about the extent to which the
state should have the power to crack down on public protests (Astafyev
rejected any state powers to stifle peaceful protests).

Like many writers in his circle, he was not free of anti-Semitism, accusing
Jews in his writings of corrupting Russian culture. Some admired his
opposition to the Chechen war and his refusal to acknowledge the readopted
Soviet hymn as Russia's national anthem. "It was a stupid hymn and a stupid
party," he declared.

Astafyev always disliked cities. For short periods after the war he lived
in Perm and Vologda but returned to Ovsyanka, his ancestral village in
Krasnoyarsk region, where he built a house, chopped his own wood and not
only observed, but also lived, village life.

Krasnoyarsk's regional legislature - led by Communist deputies - turned
down a request this summer by the Governor of Krasnoyarsk, Aleksandr Lebed,
the former general, to grant Astafyev a special pension as a great writer.
Russian Aluminium, one of the region's industrial giants, said it would pay
the pension.

Despite a stroke last spring, Astafyev continued up to his death to work on
the latest book in a trilogy entitled Tak khochetsia zhit ("I Want to
Survive").

Viktor Petrovich Astafyev, writer: born Ovsyanka, Soviet Union 1 May 1924;
married 1945 Mariya Koryakina (two daughters); died Krasnoyarsk, Russia 29
November 2001.

*******

#10
Russia may offer easier visas to boost tourism 
January 25, 2002
AP

MOSCOW: Russia plans to offer moderately priced, three-day tourist visas to
some foreigners entering the country through selected points in a bid to
boost tourism.

The move, which will be introduced on Feb. 1 for a one-year trial period,
is a sharp departure from the current, strict Russian visa rules, which can
cost travellers up to several hundred US dollars and keep them waiting for
weeks.

Vladimir Kotenev, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Consular
Service, said on Tuesday that the experiment "does not mean that Russia is
changing over to a simplified visa regime," the Interfax news agency reported.

Foreigners must still apply for the new visas more than 48 hours before
they plan to visit and "only through a travel agency organising a
three-day, group visit," he said.

The 72-hour visas will be available through 29 travel companies and will be
issued at Moscow's main international airport, Sheremetyevo-2, and St.
Petersburg's Pulkovo airport, border crossings in the Baltic enclave of
Kaliningrad and a crossing between Russia and Finland, according to the
news agency.

Only passport holders from Britain, Switzerland, Japan and the Western
European countries that signed the European Union's 1985 Schengen
agreement, which allows people to travel freely within the member states,
will be eligible for the $35 visa.

Natela Shengelia of the Ministry for Economic Development's Department of
Tourism said the changes are primarily targeted at bus tourists arriving in
the Kaliningrad region from Germany and Finnish visitors to the St.
Petersburg region.

Russia's complex visa system is partly a holdover from Soviet days, when
travel by Soviet citizens and visitors was tightly restricted. It's also a
response to strict rules imposed on Russian citizens traveling abroad,
particularly to the United States and Western Europe, to prevent illegal
immigration. 

******

#11
CNN
Soviet Remnants Remain in Kandahar
January 27, 2002
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY
BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: One American serviceman at - in Kandahar,
Afghanistan is actually from Ukraine. His father was a veteran of the old
Soviet army and now, he wears an American flag patch on one soldier. From
Kandahar, CNN's Martin Savidge tells us about old wars and new soldiers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There are ghosts at the
Kandahar Airport. They dwell in the outer buildings and linger in the
shadow of a still-growing U.S. military presence. At this former hub of
another army, of another time, the shadowed remnants of the failed Soviet
occupation bleach beneath the Afghan sun. Russian planes that once roared
for the runway now rest beside it in a mass grave.

Not far away, there's spare engines still stacked in the crates they came
in. A former barracks reeks of dust, decay and defeat. The Soviets do not
appear so much to have left but fled.

(on camera): Signs of a hasty Russian departure can be found everywhere. In
this room, it is piled two, three feet deep with old uniforms, a Russian
gray coat, an old suitcase here, part of a harness for a uniform, bandages,
lots of bandages, even an old boot.

(voice-over): Next to where the American forces now burn their garbage lies
a junk yard, stacked 50 feet high with Soviet vehicles as abandoned as the
empire that built them.

For the modern day occupiers, the past is just an oddity -- except for one.

Meet Andriy Kononenko. As a boy growing up in Soviet Ukraine, he dreamed of
joining the Army, but never in his wildest imagination did he envision it
would be the U.S. Army.

KONONENKO: Here we go. I'm ready to strike.

SAVIDGE: Six years ago, he moved to New York. Three years later, he was
wearing the uniform of the Army's 101st Airborne. Now he stands on the
parameter of America's war on terrorism. Recalling a recent conversation he
had with his father, a Soviet Army veteran, when Andriy said he was heading
for Afghanistan.

KONONENKO: He actually got -- I can't say scared, but he got very nervous
about it.

SAVIDGE: History is not lost on the 26-year old. From his post, Andriy can
see the demise of Russian domination. He can also see the irony.

KONONENKO: Who would think that in all the countries that I've ever been
and will ever be would be Afghanistan. It's amazing.

SAVIDGE: Andriy is prepared to lay down his life for America, saying he
chose to be here. That freedom to choose, he says, makes all the difference
between the soldiers here today and the ghosts of the past.

Martin Savidge, CNN, Kandahar. 

*******

#12
Forbes Global
February 4, 2002
Kabuled together 
Oil companies have dreamed of a trans-Afghan pipeline. Are they crazy
enough to pull it off now?
By Daniel Fisher

It has been called the pipeline from hell, to hell, through hell. It's a
1,270-kilometer conduit, 1.2 meters in diameter, that would snake across
Afghanistan to carry natural gas from eastern Turkmenistan--with 700
billion cubic meters of proven reserves--to energy-hungry Pakistan and
beyond. Unocal of the U.S. and Bridas Petroleum of Argentina vied for the
$1.9 billion project in the 1990s. Now, with the collapse of the Taliban,
oil executives are suddenly talking again about building it. 

"It is absolutely essential that the U.S. make the pipeline the centerpiece
of rebuilding Afghanistan," says S. Rob Sobhani, a professor of foreign
relations at Georgetown University and the head of Caspian Energy
Consulting. The State Department thinks it's a great idea, too. Routing the
gas through Iran would be avoided, and Central Asian republics wouldn't
have to ship through Russian pipelines. 

But like everything else in Afghanistan, the unbuilt pipeline is already
scorched by history. Bridas made a stab at construction in the 1990s, says
Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani financial journalist who recalls bumping into
Carlos Bulgheroni, Bridas' chairman, leaving a meeting with Taliban leaders
in Kandahar in early 1997. Later that year Unocal formed a consortium to
build the pipeline. (Bridas sued the California oil giant for stealing its
idea but lost.) Unocal mixed it up with tyrants, too, flying a delegation
of Taliban officials to its engineering headquarters in Houston, Texas, and
taking them on a side trip to the NASA Space Center. 

It gets uglier. The Taliban lusted after the $25 million a year in would-be
pipeline royalties. Such a prize leads William O. Beeman, a professor at
Brown University who's an authority on Central Asia, to conclude that Osama
bin Laden's bombings in 1998 of U.S. embassies in Africa were designed to
nip the budding relationship between the Taliban and Western interests.
"Bin Laden didn't want the Taliban to be in bed with the U.S.," he says.
"It would have made his position untenable." 

A spokeswoman for Unocal insists that the company never considered building
the pipeline under an illegitimate regime and is no longer interested in
the region. Still, the potential bounty of delivering $700 million or so of
gas each year is bound to tempt someone, even if Afghanistan's new interim
government and old warlords don't bury the scimitar. 

At least whoever picks up the challenge needn't worry about the Afghans'
blowing the thing up. Unocal studied the problem extensively and concluded
that, with the exception of Colombia, rebels in war-torn countries don't
destroy key elements of the economic infrastructure. That's true even in
Afghanistan, where a series of dams and hydroelectric plants built with
American support in the 1950s and 1960s have survived two decades of almost
constant warfare. Demolishing giant sculptures of the Buddha is one thing,
sabotaging royalties quite another. 

*******

#13
BBC Monitoring
Russia manoeuvres over energy export routes to safeguard position in Central 
Asia 
Source: Panorama, p9, Almaty, in Russian 27 Jan 02

In its attempt to counteract the growing US presence in Central Asia, Russia 
might threaten the Central Asian republics with cutting their gas export 
routes across its territory if they fail to be loyal to Moscow, Panorama 
commented on 25 January. During his recent meeting with Turkmen President 
Saparmyrat Nyyazow, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that an 
alliance of gas producers be set up between the Central Asian republics and 
Russia. However, all his proposals might imply a threats to the Central Asian 
states' infrastructure, as all their gas export routes pass through Russian 
territory. The following is the text of the report entitled "Moscow, in an 
attempt to counteract the strengthening of the US position in the Central 
Asian region, will use the dependence of its infrastructure on Russia".

As was to be expected, Moscow, in an attempt to counteract the strengthening 
of the US position in the Central Asian region of late, will use the 
dependence of its infrastructure on Russia as an argument.

In this context, one has to consider the topic of gas, raised by [Russian 
President] Vladimir Putin during his talks with his Turkmen counterpart, 
[Saparmyrat] Nyyazow. According to the mass media, Mr Putin spoke about the 
need to create a regional alliance of gas producers which would unite not 
only the countries that are extracting gas for export, but, also those across 
the territories of which export pipelines pass. This, the Russian president 
thinks, would help us to pursue a coordinated policy in extracting, exporting 
and transporting gas. Obviously, the talk might be about such countries as, 
on the one hand, major gas exporters - Russia and Turkmenistan, (which are in 
the first and second places in the world in terms of explored gas reserves, 
respectively) - and on the other hand Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, across whose 
territories international pipelines pass. Russia, incidentally, may come out 
both in the first as well as the second category, taking into account the 
fact that the only gas pipeline which provides access for Central Asian gas 
to the international market also passes across its territory. Obviously, the 
essence of the issues raised by Putin is behind this. There might be a 
proposal as well as a warning hidden behind the words quoted by news agencies 
about "unconditionally taking into consideration the interests of all the 
members".

First, obviously, this might be connected with certain profitable proposals 
on the transit of Turkmen and Uzbek gas via the system of [Russian] Gazprom. 
What concession will Russia make over this? First, there might be talks about 
concessions in prices for pumping gas. Second, Moscow may propose to the 
countries in the region that their quota be expanded in its gas pipeline, or 
even maybe to take part in major joint projects, such as the Blue Stream 
[pipeline] for supplying gas to the Turkish market. This is in no way 
outrageous, given that it was decided in Russia itself to start gradually 
increasing prices for gas on the domestic market (even if only by 25 per 
cent, as was decided by the Russian government), that means that it will 
become more profitable for gas producers to sell their gas in the very Russia 
where the price for gas was considerably lower till now than on foreign 
markets. Accordingly, a kind of niche in export projects might appear, in 
which Central Asian countries might be invited to participate, in exchange 
for a certain loyalty to Moscow in the standoff that is arising between 
Russia and the USA in the region.

The words spoken by the Russian leader might simultaneously contain an 
implicit threat: if the countries in the region take on too strong a 
pro-American tendency, Russia will be able to "put pressure" on them through 
creating difficulties or even by cutting access to export infrastructure. The 
issue of gas pipelines more concerns Turkmenistan, which is preserving its 
traditional neutrality on the presence of US bases in Central Asia for the 
time being, but Moscow might drop a "hint" for [the Turkmen capital] Asgabat 
not to change its foreign political traditions.

Apart from that, the issue of gas pipelines might serve as a "mirror" in 
which each of the countries in the region will see something of its own in 
terms of what Moscow wants to signal to it: the infrastructure in all 
post-Soviet republics in Central Asia depend on Russia.

******* 

#14
Moscow Times
January 28, 2002
So, Think You Want to Buy Some Land?
By Yevgenia Borisova 
Staff Writer   
  
Ivan Ivanov has some capital and decides to build a small widget factory in
the Moscow region. He finds a vacant lot to build it on in an area where
new construction is allowed and sets out to buy it from the owner, in this
case the regional administration.

So he goes to the regional property committee to find out how he can go
about buying that lot.

The answer: Nobody knows. Or rather, nobody knows for sure.

Article 30 of the Land Code seems to say that if a company or individual
wants a specified parcel of land to build on -- say, next to a river or
between two hills -- he can only lease the land, not own it. The only other
option is to be granted the land "in use," a designation usually reserved
for nonprofit organizations such as churches, schools and hospitals.

However, if an individual or company wants to purchase an unspecified plot
of land -- say, 10 hectares, no matter the location -- among those being
offered by an administration, it seems he or it can only do so through a
tender or auction, unless no other party has applied for that tender or
auction.

And this is just Article 30. In all, the new Land Code, despite being just
several dozen pages in length, contains 103 articles, many of which appear
to contradict each other or articles in other codes such as the Labor Code,
Civil Code and Administrative Code.

Conflicting Opinions

It is telling that within a month of the passing of the code at least three
books appeared, all with the same title: "Commentary on the New Land Code
of the Russian Federation," and each longer than the code itself. 

And in the case of Article 30, all three give different interpretations of
its meaning.

Nikolai Kalinin, head of the State Duma's agrarian committee, says in his
commentary on Article 30 that if an applicant want a specific plot of land,
he needs to only designate "lease" or "ownership" when applying, suggesting
that a specific land plot can indeed be bought. 

However, professor Sergei Bogolyubov, who helped draft the code as head of
the department that oversees agrarian and ecological law at the
government's Institute for Legislation and Comparative Legal Studies, says
otherwise. In his book, Bogolyubov concludes that under Article 30 only
nonspecified plots can be bought. Specified plots can only be leased or
given "in use."

And yet a third interpretation is offered in a book by Nikolai Popov and
Vladimir Zakharyin that was published in the Vladimir region. In their
commentary on the code, Popov and Zakharyin avoid Article 30 altogether,
saying only that it "is hardly possible at the level of federal legislation
to take into account all peculiarities that could come up when the
procedures of land transactions will be implemented." 

Regional land inspectors and committees are stumped over Article 30 and
many other items in the code. 

At last month's First Land Congress in Moscow, thousands of inspectors from
all of Russia's 89 regions expressed confusion over the details -- or lack
thereof -- in the code and demanded clarifications. 

And the frustrated property committee of the Moscow region, which presides
over what is widely considered to be Russia's most desirable
nonagricultural land, had to officially request that several relevant
federal organizations explain what Article 30, among other articles,
actually means.

"In connection with the new Land Code, we would like to ask you to comment
for us on the use of Articles 30, 31, 32 and 38 [as regards] the sale and
lease of spare land parcels," the committee wrote. 

These and other problems have led to uncertainty as to when actual land
sales will begin.

Deputy Moscow Mayor Oleg Tolkachyov, citing the need to harmonize local
laws with the new Land Code, told the Kommersant newspaper last week that
the city has yet to set a date for its first land auctions and left unclear
when it might. (Moscow's first experimental land auction was largely a
failure. The city tried to sell 13 plots in Zelenograd in 2000, but the
starting prices were too high and too many limitations were put on what
could be done with the land. In the end, only three plots found owners.) 

Breakthrough or Chaos?

"The positive influence of the introduction of the Land Code is so great
that any faults are insignificant at this point," a group of Andersen land
experts said in a recent statement.

Although the new code ignores the thorniest issue -- agricultural land --
it nonetheless permits nationally what until now was only legal in a
handful of regions, that is the buying and selling of urban and commercial
land, or about 2 percent of Russia's 1.7 billion hectares. 

Under various regional and local laws passed in the last 10 years, 129.1
million hectares, or some 7.6 percent of total Russian land, have been
privatized, according to the government's National Report on Land, issued
in December. 

The code -- passed after much stormy debate in the Duma, including chants
of "shame, shame" from Communists and Agrarians -- replaces the 43 main
federal land laws and regulations and hundreds of other resolutions.

"It effectively did not bring up anything new, but it put land legislation
in order and gave further impetus to its development," said Vladimir
Mogusev, the head of the legal department of Roszemkadastr, the country's
top land management authority and organizer of the First Land Congress. "Of
course, the code could be argued and debated, but only practice will show
what needs to be changed," he told delegates.

Despite this achievement, the code itself is being criticized by experts
and officials not only for its internal inconsistencies, but also for the
lack of regulations needed to implement and enforce it. 

In fact, many experts say the code was passed without enough debate and
think it might have been better not to pass it at all.

"This code looks like it was written by at least 30 people who refused to
talk to each other," said Alexei Leonov, a prosecutor in the Moscow region
who specializes in land and ecology. 

Leonov said that events like the First Land Congress, which he attended
along with land inspectors and other experts and high-ranking officials,
"should have been organized before the Land Code was approved." 

The Land Code has so many faults that "now only courts can decide who is
right," Yelena Galinovskaya, senior researcher at the Institute for
Legislation and Comparative Legal Studies of the Russian Federation, told
delegates at the congress.

Another problem, according to most Moscow real estate experts polled for
this article, is the voluminous "back-up" documentation needed in order to
make the code work. Additionally, the areas where foreigners can and cannot
buy land, a decision much awaited by the foreign business community, has
not been established.

"The code doesn't address the lack of zoning plans in most Russian cities,
nor does it introduce [general] principles for the parceling of land," the
Andersen experts said in their statement.

Conflicting Codes

"One of the most striking examples of the discrepancies introduced into
land legislation by the new Land Code is the regulation of the right of
permanent use," said Konstantin Kouzine, a lawyer with the law firm
Linklaters & Alliance.

"According to the Civil Code, the right of permanent use in respect to
state or municipal land can be granted by the respective state or
municipality to any person or legal entity," Kouzine said. "The Civil Code
also states that in the absence of any other claim to the land under a
building, the building's owner has the statutory right of permanent use in
respect to the land."

But the new Land Code states that the right of permanent use can only be
granted by governmental or municipal legal entities or authorities and
provides no statutory ground for the creation of such a right. Despite this
omission, the code states that legal entities (except governmental ones)
claiming land via the right of permanent use must convert this right into a
lease or ownership by Jan. 1, 2004.

It is unclear which of the two codes should prevail in this respect. The
intention of the government seems to be to amend the Civil Code to bring it
into compliance with the Land Code. But until then it will be up to the
courts to decide, and whether they will give preference to the more recent
Land Code is unknown.

For example, what happens if the land lease signed by a building's owner
with regard to the land under his building terminates and he cannot renew
it for some reason on reasonable terms within a reasonable period of time? 

Under the Civil Code, the owner of the building automatically gets the
right of permanent use. Under the new Land Code, the building's owner is
entitled to nothing. 

"Say some enterprise signed a 49-year land lease -- and Moscow signed a lot
of such leases. But no one knows what will happen when they expire.
According to the new code, when the lease finishes the owner of the land
does not necessarily have to sign a new land lease with the same lessee,"
Kouzine said. 

"Well, of course, it would happen in the distant future and we will
probably have ceased to exist then, but this issue should have been
resolved by the Land Code," Kouzine said, adding that even if some legal
mechanisms could "arguably" be used for the protection of the building's
owner, the absence of a title to the land will almost inevitably decrease
the value of the building substantially.

"Another question is what will happen with land leases between permanent
users of land [acting as landlords] and their tenants on conversion of the
right of permanent use into lease or ownership. There are quite a lot of
such leases in Russia, and there is no provision in the Land Code to tackle
them," he said.

Clever Lawyers

Eventually, one of the main goals of the Land Code is to introduce a real
market and increase local, regional and federal tax bases. But the current
management of land is so poorly organized that only a tiny fraction of
potential revenues are being collected -- or are likely to be collected --
in the near future. From taxes on land already privatized, together with
income from rent, a total of just 24.8 billion rubles ($810 million) was
collected in Russia last year.

The problem with tax collection regarding land is a combination of
stupidity, as one prosecutor called it, and "clever lawyers," as one Tax
Ministry official put it.

The "stupid" part, according to prosecutor Leonov, is that the new Land
Code, as opposed to the old one, does not list fines and penalties for
violating land legislation. Such fines are detailed in the Administrative
Code, which was approved by the Duma in December. 

But the new Administrative Code comes into force only in July.

"This is a stupid move," said Leonov. "How can a law cease to work for six
months? Imagine we stop punishing for theft or murder -- just for half a
year?"

He said violations of land legislation are common. In the Moscow region
last year, 1,139 violations were registered and 1.2 million rubles worth of
fines were collected. 

But, Leonov said, if a plot of land is occupied illegally, it is extremely
difficult to drive out the squatters. "Yes, there is a possibility to clear
them through the courts. But local law enforcement bodies don't have enough
manpower to deal with all this," he said.

And then there are the "clever lawyers" mentioned by the Tax Ministry
official, Rafail Gabbasov, at the First Land Congress.

"There are companies here in Russia with clever lawyers who say they have
no legal documents for the possession of land they occupy, and they refuse
to pay land tax," Gabbasov said. "Imagine, the company that runs foreign
embassies and consulates does this," he said, referring to the Foreign
Ministry's Main Administration for Service to the Diplomatic Corps, or
GlavUpDK.

The head of the Moscow tax inspectorate's payment department, Faina
Khusainova, said GlavUpDK cost the city budget 46 million rubles last year
alone.

GlavUpDK is a state enterprise that runs diplomatic properties, including
most of 138 foreign embassies and consulates located in the city. It also
owns 160 old and new mansions and its own prestigious polyclinics,
hospitals and other properties. 

"This is a long, involved story concerning this company," Khusainova said.
"They say that they don't have any legal titles [for the use of land], and
because Article 15 of the law on payment for land says that payments are
done on the basis of such documents, they don't pay taxes at all."

The precedent is not unique. According to Moskomzem, City Hall's land
committee, only 32 percent of the capital's land has been clearly assigned
to lessors or users who hold official contracts for lease or use (see
table). Another third of Moscow's land is occupied by roads, parks, water
reservoirs and other places of common use.

In fact, it seems that officially only 3,775 land users have legal titles
that oblige them to pay land tax. However, according to the Moscow tax
inspectorate, about 30,000 land users pay tax. So, are most of these 30,000
paying taxes voluntarily? It looks that way.

"We are explaining to them that they must pay tax on the actual use of the
land," she said. "But those with clever lawyers are a disaster," Inna
Pugachyova, tax expert with Roszemkadastr, the federal government's land
management authority, said in an interview.

"In 2001 alone, the losses caused by GlavUpDK by not paying land tax is
about 46 million rubles, including about 43 million rubles for its
properties located within the Garden Ring," said Khusainova.

She said total losses were much greater: GlavUpDK, whose properties are
located on 416 hectares of land throughout Russia, including a total of 161
hectares in Moscow, 75 of which are in the center, has signed leases on
only 19 hectares of its Moscow land.

These unpaid taxes would have added 13 percent more to Moscow's land tax
collection total of 349 million rubles last year -- or enough to pay the
wages of at least 2,500 teachers for a year.

Khusainova said there are no official statistics on such violations, but
listed three other examples of companies with "clever lawyers" who have
recently won court cases -- after the Moscow tax inspectorate sued them --
that exempt them from taxes as long as they don't have legal titles to the
land they occupy. 

Among these three are the Moscow Broadcasting Co., which occupies 29
hectares of land and has failed to pay 4.1 million rubles in taxes;
Mosstroi-6, which has failed to pay 154,000 rubles in taxes on its 1
hectare of land; and Mosoblbytsoyuz, which has not paid 268,600 rubles for
its 0.5 hectares of land.

Khusainova said these defeats have discouraged tax officials from pursuing
GlavUpDK in court.

"We ... applied to Moskomzem last summer, asking it to speed up the
preparation of legal title for the land," said Khusainova. "We got an
answer from the committee that deals with the issue, but the problem is
that the land this organization sits on is federal property [and Moskomzem
does not exercise power over it]."

A source in Moskomzem, who asked not to be named, said the issue is being
reviewed, but it is complicated and must be taken piecemeal.

"The issue will be completely clear after all land is divided legally into
federal, regional and municipal [parts]," the source said. The law on the
division of lands into federal, regional and municipal took effect Jan. 17,
but most experts think it will take at least a year to complete.

Another problem with GlavUpDK in particular is that it is a designated
"special land user."

"Russia has intergovernmental agreements with some of the foreign embassies
that use our land for very little money -- say, for 1 ruble. And in their
countries, our embassies use their land for the same sort of money," the
Moskomzem source said.

"According to a presidential decree of 1993, our land is federal property
and the issue of taxation of such land is not sorted out," GlavUpDK chief
Ivan Sergeyev told reporters last week.

"We have our land in free term-less use," he said.

*******