Johnson's Russia List #6045 28 January 2002 davidjohnson@erols.com A CDI Project www.cdi.org [Note from David Johnson: 1. Reuters: House on Embankment is mirror of Russia's changes. 2. AP: Russian Official: Radio Liberty May Go Off Air Due To Bias. 3. Reuters: Russian military sees red over blackouts. 4. Itar-Tass: Trial by jury to be introduced in all parts of Russia by next year. 5. Washington Post: Fred Hiatt, Tiptoe Diplomacy. Chechnya and Afghanistan aren't the same. 6. New York Times: Sabrina Tavernise, Russia's Regional TV Stations Suffer as Nationwide Broadcaster Stays Dark. 7. Novoye Vremya: Nikolai Popov, TRUST BUT VERIFY. About confidence in popularity ratings and trust in them. 8. Washington Times/AP: Russians help bioterror defense. 9. NTV: NTERVIEW WITH MINISTER OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TRADE GERMAN GREF. (re prices and natural monopolies) 10. Itogi: Oleg Odnokolenko, WHAT IS THE PRICE OF A PROFESSIONAL? Ending conscription is likely to be a slow process. 11. Reuters: Landslide Uzbek vote may boost Karimov's term.] ******* #1 House on Embankment is mirror of Russia's changes By Richard Balmforth MOSCOW, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Tamara Ter-Egizaryan, using her good eye, squinted through a magnifying glass at the hand-written pages of the log she has kept of Moscow's House of Secrets for decades. She began reeling off names. "Khrushchev lived here before becoming state leader, Kosygin too," she said, a reference to the Brezhnev-era prime minister. "The great pilot (Nikolai) Kamanin who trained cosmonauts was here and Alexei Stakhanov," she said, alluding to the communist model worker whose reputed zeal at the coalface made his name synonymous with productivity. "He drank a lot," said the 93-year-old Armenian, shaking her head. "So did his wife and daughter." There is nowhere in Moscow that mirrors the lurching fortunes of Russia of the past 70 years quite as much as the "House on the Embankment," a vast housing block little more than a stone's throw across the river from the Kremlin. Opened in 1931 as an exclusive compound for Josef Stalin's ruling elite, its residents were subject to approval by the Kremlin chief. It was also a showpiece of contemporary design, projecting a new concept in community living for Soviet leaders. But almost immediately, the 10-storey luxury surroundings became a House of Horrors as Stalin had its residents spirited away, often at dead of night, to firing squads and prison camps. Few people know its secrets and ghosts better than Ter-Egizaryan, a tiny, bird-like woman and one-time child refugee who has lived there since it was built and in the same apartment since 1934. "It was a terrible time," she said of purges that hit a frenzied peak in 1937 as the NKVD secret police, precursor of the KGB, arrested people in droves, whole families at a time. "They came at night when there were no witnesses. You knew your neighbours had been taken when you saw their doors sealed." PRIDE AND SADNESS Her wistful voice reflected pride and sadness. "The most famous people in our country lived in this House," said Ter-Egizaryan, who owed her place to a successful brother in government service. "There have been 100 ministers and 150 deputy ministers living here. There were marshals like (Ivan) Bagramyan and (Georgy) Zhukov, of course," she said, referring to the legendary World War Two Soviet commander. There was Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva and his secret police chief Lavrenty Beria for a short time. Musician Alexander Alexandrov, composer of the Soviet anthem now reinstated in post-Soviet times, also lived there. Many survived Stalin's purges and went on to pursue successful careers after the dictator died in 1953. But, in all, around 700 officials and their kin were arrested as "enemies of the people" in the dark 1930s and 40s, according to records kept in a site museum. Ter-Egizaryan, swaddled in woollen garments at her two-roomed apartment in stairwell No 25, recalled the luxury offered when the House opened to take in Stalin's nomenklatura. "You can't imagine what it meant then to have hot running water. Even the Kremlin did not have that then. It was as if champagne was coming out of the taps," she said. Paradise turned quickly to horror. Life was bleak in pre-war Moscow and there may have been little sympathy from ordinary people as Stalin turned his purges against this pampered elite. At the foot of each stairwell in the House, which had more than 500 apartments, was an NKVD security checkpoint. Residents soon realised their guards were really their jailers. They held the life of the House in the palm of their hands. "You couldn't hide anything. Everything was written down -- who your visitors were, when they came, when they went," she said. With duplicates of all keys, the NKVD were often waiting for residents when they returned home. "You'd see a woman walking a dog. And you'd ask yourself. 'But where's the man that usually walks that dog?' But it was dangerous to ask or show any interest," she said. ARRESTS DECIMATE BLOCK'S POPULATION Relentless arrests decimated the block's residents. In stairwell 14, perhaps four of 20 families escaped unscathed. In the compound's museum, a board lists residents who vanished after the dead-of-night knock on the door. It includes families arrested wholesale, the Rozengoltz and Ganyetsky families for example. The parents were sent to execution or camps, the children consigned to orphanages. Soviet Marshal and military strategist Mikhail Tukhachevsky and his wife were among the most famous victims. Many others were not so well known, such as naval leader Romuald Muklevich and his wife, and journalist Mikhail Koltsov. All were shot. Many big apartments, after their occupants had been purged, were turned into communal dwellings for several families, a now defunct Soviet practice that tested patience to the extreme. When she retired from her job at the Moscow power company in the early 1960s, Ter-Egizaryan took up work as a mediator, helping to sort out squabbles among communal families -- hence her ledger of names and apartment and telephone numbers. In spite of, or perhaps because of, its tragic past the House, whose outer walls boast memorial plaques to the famous, has always held a special place for Muscovites. It has been the subject of books, plays and films earning its name the "House on the Embankment" from a novella of that title by Soviet writer Yuri Trifonov who lived there. His own father was arrested and shot in the early 1930s when he was 12. Seventy years on, in Vladimir Putin's Russia, the block with spectacular views of the Kremlin occupies 3,000 square metres of prime real estate on the banks of the river Moskva. Its apartments sell for up to $300,000 each. Moscow's "New Russian" elite are moving in, and affluent Westerners. At least one resident was killed in a row over the sale of her flat. The sound of drilling and hammering resounds through stairwells -- up-market renovations are afoot. Atop the building, dominating the skyline, is a gigantic, revolving emblem of the Mercedes car-makers -- a sign of how times have changed. Turn in your grave, Josef Stalin. ****** #2 Russian Official:Radio Liberty May Go Off Air Due To Bias January 28, 2002 DOW JONES NEWSWIRES MOSCOW (AP)--The Russian government will closely monitor U.S.-funded Radio Liberty's coverage of the war in Chechnya and may cancel its license if officials see it as biased in favor of the rebels, the top Kremlin spokesman on Chechnya said in an interview published Monday. Meanwhile, there was conflicting information Monday on whether a helicopter crash in Chechnya that killed 14, including top officials, was an accident as claimed by the government or brought down by a rebel-fired missile. Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman for Chechnya, said Radio Liberty's coverage of Chechnya over the last two years was "one-sided, biased and far from neutral: the radio station was justifying the separatists actions." Because of that, the government now has a "guarded" attitude to Radio Liberty's plan to start regular broadcasting in the Chechen language, Yastrzhembsky told Gazeta newspaper. "We will follow the broadcasts ... and if we see that it contains calls for inciting religious, national ethnic strife and justification or propaganda of terrorism ... we will act in line with the law," he said. The law envisages a government warning first, and, "after a second violation, the annulment of its broadcasting license in Russia and the closure of its bureau," Yastrzhembsky said. Andrei Sharyi, head of Radio Liberty's Russian service, dismissed the accusations of pro-rebel bias and said in a telephone interview that the station was focusing on "human rights violations and war against civilians" in Chechnya. The U.S. and other Western countries have acknowledged that rebels in Chechnya have links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network, and tuned down their criticism of the war in Chechnya after the Sept. 11 terror attacks when Russia cast firm support for the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition. Yastrzhembsky scoffed at the Western criticism that has resumed in recent weeks of the war in Chechnya, saying "it's hard to assess it seriously in view of similar American actions in Afghanistan." Despite claims that the main Chechen rebel forces have been defeated, Russian troops suffer daily losses in raids and mine explosions. On Sunday, a Russian helicopter carrying 14 people, including top Interior Ministry officials, crashed in northern Chechnya. Nikolai Britvin, deputy chief presidential representative for the North Caucasian region, said Monday that investigators had found no proof yet that the helicopter was downed by the rebels. However, the Chechen administration official said Monday that investigators had found some fragments of the helicopter that suggested it was hit by a shoulder-fired missile. Some Russian media said the government was interested in presenting the crash as an accident. ******* #3 Russian military sees red over blackouts VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Top military commanders rushed to Russia's far east on Monday after the local power company briefly pulled the plug on a crucial space communications base for failing to pay its electricity bill. The Russian armed forces, living on a shoe string since the collapse of the Soviet Union, have run up enormous power bills and have been the frequent target of humiliating blackouts. The latest conflict erupted last week when a local energy firm disconnected some navy and air force sites, and at the weekend blacked out a space tracking centre which liaises with spy satellites and the International Space Station. Airforce Commander Vladimir Mikhailov and navy chief Vladimir Kuroyedov were expected in the region later in the day, a spokesman for Russia's Pacific Fleet said. The two men will try to settle lingering debt problems with the local outlet of Russia's UES electricity monopoly in order to avoid more cuts. "Power supplies to airforce bases in the Primorye region have been reduced twofold," spokesman for local UES outlet Dalenergo, Mikhail Zedrik, told Reuters in Vladivostok. But he insisted that no strategic military sites were affected. Russia's Far East hosts a number of military bases and is home to its nuclear-capable Pacific fleet. The weekend power cuts have most enraged officials in charge of Russia's military space operations who accused UES of endangering a multi-million dollar spy satellite and temporarily severing communications with astronauts on the space station. But space officials in Moscow told Reuters they had not experienced any problems communicating with the station. They declined to comment on possible risks to satellites. UES dismissed the accusations, saying the power cuts were agreed with the military and were implemented at a time when they could not have caused any damage. The respected daily Izvestia quoted experts as saying the military's ire may be due to the fact that the power cut came as they were monitoring the latest U.S. tests for its national missile defence programme. Power companies are allowed to cut supplies to secondary army units for debts, but not to "strategic sites." The government last year started allocating special funds to pay off the debts. ******* #4 Trial by jury to be introduced in all parts of Russia by next year Itar-Tass Moscow, 28 January: Trials by jury will be introduced in all Russian regions by the year-end, director-general of the judiciary department at the Russian Supreme Court Aleksandr Gusev said in an interview with ITAR-TASS today. According to Gusev, under the new Criminal Procedure Code, trials by jury should start in all the 89 subjects of the Russian Federation as from 1 January 2003. "They operate only in nine Russian regions for the time being. But we are fitting out special rooms and teaching judges now in all other subjects of the Russian Federation," Gusev noted. He did not preclude a chance that some problems could arise in Chechnya. "But this question is being settled there as well, and I'm sure that trials by jury will be held there as well," he added. "In any case, starting from next year, Russian citizens in all Russian regions can enjoy their constitutional right of protection at a trial by jury," Gusev noted. The right to protection by a court of jury is provided for by Article 20 of the Russian Constitution. Under Russian legislation, jurors can be selected from people aged at least 25 and having no convictions. Fifteen jurors, two of whom are standbys, are selected by computer. The only demand of them is that they should know the language of judiciary and have no personal interest in the outcome of a case. The new Criminal Procedure Code was adopted by the State Duma [parliament's lower house] on 22 November 2001 and approved by the Federation Council [parliament's upper house] on 5 December. The president signed the law into operation on 19 December... ******* #5 Washington Post January 28, 2002 Tiptoe Diplomacy Chechnya and Afghanistan aren't the same By Fred Hiatt Last Wednesday the Russian desk officer at the State Department slipped out of his office for a rendezvous so sensitive that the Bush administration would not allow it to take place on government property. Sadly, this was not a case of back-channel diplomacy or counterespionage or other juicy intrigue. What administration folks were sensitive to were the tender feelings of Russian President Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush's ranch guest and soulmate. The rendezvous was with Ilyas Akhmadov, a representative of the elected government of Chechnya, and the problem was that Putin tends to get a little huffy whenever anyone calls attention to his savage war against that separatist province. The Bush folks, having beaten up on President Clinton for his insufficient concern for the plight of the Chechens, apparently couldn't bring themselves to shut the door altogether to Akhmadov. But they hoped that a brief session in an otherwise deserted classroom at George Washington University might keep Putin from getting too mad. This skulking diplomacy is odd for a few reasons. It's odd because Richard Armitage, in his confirmation hearing to be deputy secretary of state, said he expected that the Bush administration would receive Chechnya's representatives at the level of assistant secretary of state -- the implication also being, though Armitage didn't say so explicitly, that such meetings would not take place in underground garages. It's odd because the Europeans, normally first in line to kowtow to Moscow, have shown the fortitude to receive Akhmadov's colleague in the open -- in the British Foreign Ministry and at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. It's odd most of all because Bush's explicit policy on Chechnya, to the extent that one exists, is to convince the Russians that no military solution is possible and that Putin should meet with, yes, Akhmadov and his colleagues. How much credibility will such urgings have now? What's going on here, not surprisingly, is more Sept. 11 fallout. The Americans want Russian cooperation in the war on terrorism. One part of the price for that cooperation, the Kremlin has made clear, is American acquiescence in its view of the war in Chechnya -- which is that the Russian operation is a war against terrorists, as just as America's war in Afghanistan. Right about there, many Americans shrug and say, well, maybe so, it's all so complicated, and after all the Chechens are Muslims, and they have had support from al Qaeda terrorists, and who really knows what's happening in the Caucasus mountains? This is where Putin's strategy of choking the media comes into play. He's made sure that there is no longer an independent Russian television network to cover the war. Most journalists don't even try, and some who do -- such as Anna Politkovskaya and Andrei Babitsky -- are harassed and jailed by Russian forces. Still, enough information does emerge -- from Russian and foreign correspondents, and from Russian and foreign human rights groups, such as the Moscow-based Memorial -- to say flatly that the Chechnya and Afghanistan campaigns are not the same. Genocide is a word too often used lightly, but it belongs in this conversation. Before Russia's first war against Chechnya, which lasted from late 1994 into 1996, the population of Chechnya was estimated at 1.1 million, including many ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. Last fall, two years into the second war, Hoover Institution scholar John B. Dunlop estimated that Russia had killed some 12,000 Chechen fighters and 55,000 to 60,000 civilians. These are conservative estimates; Memorial's are much higher. Dunlop also noted that the number of refugees living in a next-door province in dire circumstances was probably twice the official tally of 148,000. Since then many more have been killed, and before and since many tens of thousands have been forced into exile, either within Russia or abroad. No one seriously disputes the Russian tactics that have brought about this catastrophe: the wanton shellings and bombings, the murders of civilians, the kidnappings for ransom. The result, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, is the "tremendous depletion of a very limited human population." Brzezinski, a former national security adviser who is now co-chair of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, adds, "A significant percentage of the male population aged 16 to 50 has been liquidated. . . . There are no POWs." No one suggests that the United States can force Russia to alter its behavior, and few Americans are ready to endorse Chechen independence or ignore the separatists' ties to Arab extremists. What is attainable, and what some administration officials continue to seek, is a balanced policy toward Russia, in which legitimate horror at the war in Chechnya plays a credible and substantial role. As State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said forthrightly a few weeks ago, "The lack of a political solution and the number of credible reports of massive human rights violations, we believe, contribute to an environment that is favorable towards terrorism." When the State Department then is so unwilling to offend Putin that it sends its officials slinking out of their own offices, that sends a different message. It tells human rights abusers around the world that it pays to push Bush around; it's worth at least trying to intimidate him. And it tells every government that would like to disguise its human rights abuses as anti-terrorism campaigns that Washington just might go along. One such government, the Soviet-style dictatorship of the ex-Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, is welcoming a high-level U.S. delegation this week. The Americans, to their credit, are pushing for at least a little space for civil society, a modest easing of repression. Uzbekistan's strongman will push back. Watch to see whether human rights get anywhere, or whether they end up in the Tashkent equivalent of an empty classroom at GWU. ******* #6 New York Times January 28, 2002 Russia's Regional TV Stations Suffer as Nationwide Broadcaster Stays Dark By SABRINA TAVERNISE MOSCOW, Jan. 27 — Last week, a Russian court shut off the signal of TV-6, the independent nationwide broadcaster, declaring it insolvent in proceedings the network says were rigged. The day after, the network's partner in the Siberian city of Surgut filled the void in its airwaves with a broadcast of the office parrot. If all-parrot, all-the-time television seems too offbeat, the TV-6 partner in Stavropol, a farm city in southeastern Russia, is replacing national news with music videos. In the Volga River city of Samara, a station is showing a black television screen. "It has become more famous than Malevich's black square," said Vitaly Dobrusin, president of the Samara television station, referring to the abstract artist Kasimir Malevich's 1929 painting of a black square on a white background. "It's a tragedy for us." He added: "In Moscow, at least they are filling the gap with a sports channel. But all over Russia, there is nothing." Regional stations are scrambling to fill giant gaps in their broadcasts left when the authorities unexpectedly switched TV-6 off the air at midnight on Tuesday. These stations — all 156 of them — have contract agreements to buy programming from the national network. Smaller stations with limited resources rely heavily on such arrangements. Moscow is abuzz with conspiracy theories about who is to blame. TV-6 is owned by the gadfly of the Kremlin, Boris A. Berezovsky, and many here say the Kremlin pulled strings to ensure that the court closed the network. The one certainty is that TV-6's regional station affiliates are losing viewers, advertisers and money. "No one understands that this is about business," said Valery Golubovsky, general director of the Stavropol Broadcasting Corporation, a holding company with two TV stations in Stavropol, a city in the Krasnodar region. "We have contracts with advertisers for two months in advance. They paid real money. What are we supposed to say to them? That it's the fault of some guy in Moscow?" The television industry is in its infancy in Russia. While TV's roots that go deep into the Soviet past, television has more often been a medium to control public opinion rather than a business. Three of Russia's biggest companies — Gazprom, the gas monopoly; Lukoil, the biggest oil company; and UES, the country's electric grid — own stakes in stations to bolster image, not profit. But a new layer of local stations has begun to take shape. In all, about 600 have sprung up across Russia's 11 time zones. Most are privately owned. Some present alternative views from those expressed by the state-controlled national channels. This is especially important in regions with strong-handed governors, like Krasnoyarsk in Siberia and Sverdlovsk in the Urals. In some regions, "the local stations are extremely important and much more widely watched and followed than the national networks," said Vladimir Posner, the Russian television journalist who is chairman of the Television Academy of Russia. The closing of TV-6 is causing havoc with the budgets of most of its regional partners, which reach about 80 million viewers — more than half the Russian population. The Surgut station of parrot fame is an exception. Only 10 percent of its revenue comes from advertising, and the rest is given by the mayor of the affluent oil town of Surgut in return for favorable coverage. Other stations say they are in trouble. "No one knows what to do," said Aleksandr Karpov, general director of the Afontovo TV station in Krasnoyarsk, one of the three biggest independent regional stations. "There is no extra programming prepared." Mr. Karpov said his station would lose about $15,000 in advertising revenue for the month of air time. It may seem a small amount to a Western broadcaster, but for Mr. Karpov's station it could mean insolvency and, eventually, the loss of control to the local politician or executive. Stations are running out of time. The longer they wait, the more money they lose. On Thursday, the government announced that it would sell TV-6's frequency in an auction on March 27. Though most do not want to look for a new partner network — the team of journalists that took charge at TV-6 last spring increased the network's ratings and drove up local advertising revenue for regional stations — not all have the luxury of choice. "Yesterday we had to make 10 news broadcasts to fill up the empty spaces," said Pavel Teleshevsky, general director at ASV Television in the Ural Mountain city of Yekaterinburg. "We are trying to hold out." Beyond business, regional stations say they have lost a worldview they valued. The state-controlled networks are similar in party line, while other private national networks, like STS and TV-Center, offer only entertainment programs — no news. Mr. Karpov likened the situation to the old joke about the monotony of television under the former Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev. As the story goes, a Soviet citizen turns on Channel 1 to watch the evening news and finds it is broadcasting a mumbling Mr. Brezhnev. He flips to Channel 2 and Channel 3 and finds, to his dismay, the same image. As he changes to the last channel, a K.G.B. general flashes across the screen and, wagging his finger, warns, "I'll show you a thing or two about changing channels." ******* #7 Novoye Vremya No. 4 January 27, 2002 TRUST BUT VERIFY About confidence in popularity ratings and trust in them Author: Nikolai Popov [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] PUTIN'S POPULARITY RATING HAS BEEN DECLINING, THE MEDIA REPORT: THE PEOPLE ARE GROWING POORER AND DO NOT BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT. VARIOUS STATISTICS ABOUT POPULARITY RATINGS CAN BE INTERPRETED DIFFERENTLY IN MANY CASES, SINCE THE POLLS CAN USE DIVERSE CRITERIA. Putin's popularity rating has been declining, the media report: the people are growing poorer and do not believe the government. Substantially different figures were mentioned: in Siberia 30% of people support Putin, while the figure of 70% is given in the official statistics. This variance is primarily due to the diverse approaches to the rating: in the poll done in Siberia the trust various institutions of the establishment and their leaders was verified, while the figure of 70% is the rating of Putin's actions in the president's post. The popularity rating of the president does not decline within the first two years in all countries. One must take serious endeavors to lose the authority, gained at the election, especially in the case of Putin, who won in the election with a large break. The electors from Unity and also many right-winged politicians from Yabloko and the CPRF seconded him. Nothing resembling a catastrophe happens neither in Russia, nor abroad in the middle of the presidency, and no decline in the popularity rating is observed. Positive president's popularity rating fluctuates between 60-70%, various polls show. At the same time, the people are not getting richer. Assessments of economists vary seriously in this issue; the differences between Moscow and the provinces are too evident, but many of them agree that "the rich become richer, and the poor are growing poorer." Likewise, speaking about the attitude toward the power, people's own opinion of their life, especially in comparison with the past, is very significant. So, as compared to the May 1998 (before the crisis), the share of people, who describe their welfare as "we live decently, even though we have to work as hard as we can," increased from 27% to 39%. At the same time, a group of people, who "refused almost everything since all the money are spent to buy food," decreased from 27% to 18%. The share of those who barely make both ends meet also decreased 2% - from 34% to 32%. "Big businessmen, bankers, oligarchs are continuously gaining more influence and power," some 86% of the population think (in 1994 the share of the like-minded was smaller - 70%). Only 21% of respondents, against 29% in 1994, think that we will be able to elect the most honorable people into the authoritative structures, if we manage to establish democracy. "The people we elect in the power structures forget about their concerns very soon," 90% of people assume. Distrust various institutions of the establishment was compared in the poll of Siberia, and if people are asked to name those "whom they trust the most," the highest-rated leaders cannot gain the majority of the vote. Over the past year, some 22-25% of the population trusted in the president as a link in the structure of the establishment "at most." At the same time, defining the trust the president, the results of the December poll are as follows. Some 21% of the people "fully trust" in the president and 42% "are more inclined to trust him;" 16% of respondents "were likely to distrust" and other 8% "distrusted him." The rest 13% gave no specific response. Thus, 63% of the adult population trusts the president to a certain extent. "Movements and organizations for environment protection" are ranked second with the summary trust rating of 56%, and followed by "the church and religious organizations" enjoying the 50% of trust. The trade unions, the army and the press enjoy the same trust rating of 40%, but the distrust them seems to exceed the trust. The figures are 42%, 45% and 51% respectively. The government and the republican, regional of territorial authorities enjoy the trust of 29% of respondents, followed by the "law enforcement agencies - the police, the prosecutor's office, and the court" with 23% of people having trust them. The figures showing trust the business people and the Duma are 18% and 17% respectively. The political parties bring up the rears, with the trust rating of 10%, but the distrust rating of 75%. (Translated by Andrei Ryabochkin) ******* #8 Washington Times January 28, 2002 Russians help bioterror defense By Judith Ingram and Sergei Shargorodsky ASSOCIATED PRESS OBOLENSK, Russia — The Soviet Union once ran a mammoth program to develop biological weapons for possible use against its enemies in the West. Today, some of the top scientists from that program are working with their old foes to build defenses against bioterrorism. Western governments may harbor suspicions about secret programs still being pursued in Russia, and there are worries about former Soviet bioweapons experts being lured to work for states like Iraq, yet Russia and the West are now allies in the war against terrorism, and the emphasis is on cooperation. One of the cogs in the Soviet bioweapons program was the State Research Center for Applied Microbiology in Obolensk, about 50 miles south of Moscow. It has one of the world's biggest collections of anthrax, working with about 30 live strains and perhaps 10 times as many variants. It is one of the premier repositories of expertise on anthrax and other pathogens, and has become a key collaborator with scientists in the United States. The researchers at the institute are already working on genetically altered antibodies that could block the anthrax toxin, a project financed by the European Union, and are involved in a program to exchange strains with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta (on the Internet at http://www.cdc.gov). In November, Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Bush signed an unprecedented agreement to encourage collaborative biodefense research. "Today, our center is in demand in Russia, the United States and Europe for the very reason it was created: to develop methods of prompt detection of biological agents, elaboration of identification methods, preventive measures and treatment," said Vladimir Volkov, the institute's first deputy director. Mr. Volkov and other scientists at Obolensk skirt the other reason the institute was founded: to develop ever more deadly germs for warfare. Soviet researchers at Obolensk and other institutes experimented with about 50 biological agents, including anthrax, smallpox and plague. Western governments are concerned that former Soviet scientists could now sell their expertise to some of the dozen states believed to be conducting illicit bioweapons programs. At least 7,000 former Soviet scientists, the vast majority of them in Russia, are considered to be of "critical proliferation risk," said Amy Smithson, an expert on chemical and biological weapons control at the Henry Stimson Center in Washington (on the Internet at http://www.stimson.org). Those scientists are believed to have sufficient knowledge as to be potentially able to advance the biological weapons programs of such countries as Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Libya. There is also some concern about four biological institutes in the Russian Ministry of Defense that foreign inspectors have never been allowed to enter. One is being transferred to the Ministry of Education, suggesting it will soon be opened, but U.S. officials say privately they are concerned that some elements of a small-scale, offensive biological weapons program might be continuing in Russia. "They don't seem to be as transparent or open about all their activities as you would expect them to be. So the question is, is something going on that shouldn't be?" said Michael Moodie, president of the nongovernmental Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington. Moscow long hid its program. After the Soviet Union signed a 1972 treaty banning the development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons, its government initiated the world's largest biological weapons effort. Part of the program, including the Obolensk institute, was hidden under a nominally civilian but secret front called Biopreparat, which worked both on weapons and on biological agents employed for peaceful uses, such as medicines and pesticides. Two top Biopreparat officials, the late Nikolai Pasechnik and Kanatjan Alibekov, now named Ken Alibek, defected to the West. They revealed the huge dimensions and scientific advances of the Soviet Union's germ weapons program, including development of super-resistant strains that could overcome existing Western vaccines and antidotes. Inspectors from the United States and Britain were able to confirm some of the defectors' testimony in trips negotiated with the government of then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and the program apparently began winding down in the late 1980s. In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced an end to the Soviet biological warfare program and cut off government funds. Entire biological weapons facilities such as the testing ground on Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea were abandoned while others tried, often unsuccessfully, to convert to civilian work. Many scientists lost their jobs, and some were courted by foreign states. "When we talk about these rogue states being familiar with biological weapons, that may be due to some participation of ours," said Igor Domaradskij, who was a deputy director at Obolensk for five years in the mid-1980s. Mr. Domaradskij said he personally did not know any former Soviet scientists who had gone abroad in search of laboratory work, but he did know of some who had taught there. "I know that in the mid-'90s several quite prominent scientists — genetic scientists whom I do not want to name — prepared personnel for Iran," he said. "But I think that ended several years ago." Western nations have tried to encourage former Russian bioweapons specialists to stay home through programs such as the nine-year-old International Science and Technology Center (on the Internet at http://www.istc.ru), which finances research for "peaceful science" and matches scientists in the former Soviet Union with foreign partners. Randall Beatty, deputy executive director of the center in Moscow, thinks the program has reached about half the scientists of top proliferation concern. "We know for a fact that a number who had been receiving e-mails from Iran or Iraq or Pakistan are now very sensitive and cut off all communication with these organizations ... because they want to be eligible to participate in programs like the ISTC," Mr. Beatty said. However, a Pentagon official said Iran's agents continue to try recruiting scientists from second-tier facilities. "That effort has not stopped," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The ISTC has 35 research projects under way at Obolensk, where it began cooperation programs in 1997, and it has devoted more than $4 million in salary supplements and other support to the institute. ISTC grants add $20 to $35 a day to scientists' salaries, which this past year was on average the equivalent of only $83 a month at Obolensk. Work with the ISTC and other foreign partners has helped bring back several former Obolensk researchers who had left in search of better pay, Mr. Volkov said. The ISTC spends about a quarter to a third of its $75 million yearly grant budget on work in the biotechnology field in the former Soviet Union, most of it focused on public health problems such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and AIDS. Miss Smithson, the arms-control expert, said the money should be doubled or tripled at a minimum. "There isn't sufficient funding in the program yet to keep even the critical proliferation risk bioweaponeers gainfully and peacefully engaged and to help them adjust their skills and add skills that would enable them to become self-sufficient in the commercial marketplace," she said. Obolensk, which in its prime employed more than 3,000 people, now has just over 1,000, half of them in research and the rest in production. Entire multistory buildings on the institute's 622-acre grounds stand empty, while others have been revamped for commercial activities: a plant for making agar, an organic medium for laboratory cultures, and another to manufacture human insulin. Both projects are a big step up from Obolensk's previous attempts to generate revenue, including a now-defunct ketchup-making plant. Mr. Volkov and other scientists see the emphasis on cooperation as some vindication of the decades of work they put in as Biopreparat researchers. While few say they aspired to do bioweapons work, and some toiled for years in ignorance of the ultimate goal of their research, they are proud of the scientific contributions they made. "The people sitting here are prepared to use their brains for these goals," Mr. Volkov said. "If they're forced to make kefir, they'll make kefir, but then they can't be used for countering terrorism." Some of the scientists have remained in basic research, including Nikolai Staritzyn, one of the world's top anthrax experts. Mr. Staritzyn and a fellow Obolensk scientist, Andrei Pomerantsev, provoked suspicions of continued Russian military bioweapons programs when they published a 1997 article summing up the results of their work on introducing genetic changes into anthrax, making it resistant to existing antibiotics. Mr. Staritzyn said that with 30,000 natural breeding grounds in Russia where infected livestock are buried, their research was meant to address the mutability of anthrax that occurs in nature. ****** #9 TITLE: INTERVIEW WITH MINISTER OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TRADE GERMAN GREF [HERO OF THE DAY NTV PROGRAM, 19:35, JANUARY 24, 2002] SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/) Anchor: Good evening and welcome to NTV channel and I am anchorman of Hero of the Day Program, Savik Shuster. The government today announced the prices for electricity, gas and railway tariffs. They will go up but not as much as the natural monopolies would like them to. The guest of Hero of the Day at our Rossiya studio is the Minister for Economic Development and Trade German Gref. Good evening. Gref: Good evening. Q: So, on December 6 the government fixed the maximum growth of tariffs at 35 percent. And today you said that this has been adjusted and that ceiling will not be reached. What will it be? A: You said quite rightly that on December 6 the government set the maximum growth of up to 35 percent and we were given a month to study the real costs of the natural monopolies. Today, in accordance with the proposals prepared by the ministries, the government decided to raise the tariffs for the services of the railway transport by 16 percent beginning from February 15, for generation of electricity by 20 percent beginning from March 1, and for gas by 20 percent beginning from March 1 this year. This was the decision taken. For the sake of comparison, it is about 2-3 times less than the natural monopolies had requested. Q: Let us try to analyze the reasons why the government acted as it did. The first thing that springs to mind is that it has acted so out of a fear of social unrest. The government was afraid of the reaction of the population. Is that possible? A: Of course, not only the population. The government had tried to identify the balance of interests. How to support the functions of the natural monopolies so there should be no interruptions in their activities and so as to ensure continuous supply of electricity and heat and railway services and supplies of gas. But at the same time it had in mind the costs of our enterprises and industries so as to avoid sending the industry into a state of shock. In some industries the cost of the services of natural monopolies is as high as 70 percent of the total costs. And of course, we took that factor into account. And of course, one critical factor is the rate of growth of incomes of the population. It should be harmonized with the growth of tariffs. Tariffs shouldn't be growing faster than people's incomes. Q: For example, the officials of RAO UES have already said that the whole industry may become loss-making given such tariffs. A: If I were the head of RAO UES I would be saying the same thing, like all of us. The aim of a good leader of a natural monopoly is clear: to raise tariffs as much as possible. But the government's decision today is not just figures taken off the ceiling. They are the result of our analysis of all the costs of the natural monopolies and a conviction that this level will suffice to meet all the conditions until the end of the year. If the macro-economic situation in the country changes and develops differently than planned, we may revisit the issue at the end of the year. Q: You analyze the balances of natural monopolies and the views differ so widely. You assess their costs in one way and they assess their costs much higher. So, they argue, they must raise their tariffs. How do you account for this discrepancy? A: Well, let me just name several parameters. First of all, there are different ideas on the indexation of the current costs of the natural monopolies. For example, the natural monopolies assume a growth of wages from 30 to 60 percent for 2002. We say, no, this is too high a growth of wages and consumers won't be able to pay that much. We index wages to the same extent as in the rest of industry. The second indicator. The cost of fuel is growing. And RAO UES or the Railways Ministry tell us that this year 30 percent more has to be paid for fuel than in the previous year. We analyze these costs and we see that the prices for fuel oil and gasoline dropped this year and there are no grounds for such an indexation. And so we take these indicators a peg down. Of course, it is impossible to predict what the tariffs for fuel will be at the end of the year. And it is a subject of debate. But we believe that our point of view is the most pragmatic and this will be the trend in costs in 2002. Q: Speaking about the growth of prices. Some forecasts say that you proceeded from a very simple consideration. You had to keep inflation down to 12-14 percent and the tariffs that the natural monopolies requested could have set inflation loose. It would have been much higher. And even people from your ministry, your deputy in fact, have said that in the first half of January inflation has growth by 1.2 percent in the absence of a tariff raise. And that indicates an unfavorable trend. A: Of course, when we made a decision on tariffs, we took all the macro-economic indicators into account. And all these figures were cited in the report to the government today. What inflation will be, what the costs in the main industries will be, if the tariffs are raised more or less, and what the macro and micro-economic consequences will be. Of course, if we have followed the path proposed by the natural monopolies, inflation this year would have topped the 18-18.5 percent mark. And we have demonstrated this in our illustrations in the report. It should not be done not only from the point of view of the budgets of the corresponding natural monopolies, but also from the point of view of maintaining macro-economic stability. And the final factor. We can talk about a serious raise of the tariffs for natural monopolies only if the budgets of these natural monopolies are totally transparent. So far, we cannot say that they are. We have analyzed only the investment programs of the natural monopolies. And there remains a huge part, the larger part, and that is the current expenditure. And the government has ordered us to study in maximum detail all the current costs of the natural monopolies. And then we will have the final figures and agreed rate of the raise of tariffs. Q: If we look at the Railways Ministry, which has already developed its budget assuming a raise of 66 percent and now you concede much, much less to them, the whole budget may be ruined or at least it will be very difficult to remake it now. A: Of course, after this decision all the natural monopolies will have to review their budgets. As for the Railways Ministry, during the past month we have adjusted very substantially the investment program and the budget of the Ministry. The leadership of the Ministry has worked very hard during the past month and I can say that the government has approved the investment program of the Railways Ministry proceeding from new premises and the dynamics of tariffs that we adopted today. So, I don't see any serious grounds for saying that the monopolies will have to moderate their appetites. They will have to do so to an extent. They expected an increase of 60 or 40 percent, but we cannot afford such a growth today. I think everybody would like to become richer by 40 or 60 percent within a year. But one should always remember at whose expense these riches will be achieved. Q: Some experts have already commented on your report and the government decision. And they have suggested that the growth of tariffs need not necessarily be bad for the economy. It may be scary in the short-term, but in the longer term it is a cure rather than a guillotine. A: I think this is a sound view. Like any medication, it may have two functions, it may cure or it may act as a poison to some parts of the body. The same is true of tariffs. Keeping tariffs down in the short term leads to long-term programs. But we have tried to balance all these trends. We chose not to limit the growth of tariffs too much whose consequences would be felt in a year or two. The dynamics that we determined represent a compromise between short-term and long-term goals. We cannot for the same of long-term goals sacrifice the short-term goals, or vice versa. It is always a policy of compromise. The question is, how accurately we have identified the borderline. In our opinion, -- and I think that after the natural monopolies calculate their budgets more thoroughly -- they would agree that this is the best compromise in terms of harmonizing goals. Q: As far as I understand, your view roughly is that people won't have it so bad and the industry will find it easier to develop with such tariffs. A: Yes, and the monopolies will survive. Q: And for the ordinary man, even if we talk about much lower tariffs for electricity, gas and railway fares, these raises of an average 30 percent are very high. Will wages keep up with the growth of prices? A: According to our forecasts for the current year, wages will grow a little faster and one should remember that the amount people spend on utilities rates are not proportionate to the growth of wages. If you look at electricity, the tariffs for electricity will grow by 17 percent. In the structure of utility rates electricity accounts for about 12 percent. So, all the other rates will not necessarily be increased proportionately. And the raise of wages will more than make up for the increase of utility rates. This is also one of the serious factors why we decided against a more rapid rise of tariffs. Anchor: Thank you and we were talking on Hero of the Day program with the Minister of Economic Development of Russia German Gref. ******* #10 Itogi No. 3 January 22, 2002 WHAT IS THE PRICE OF A PROFESSIONAL? Ending conscription is likely to be a slow process Author: Oleg Odnokolenko Source: Itogi, No. 3, January 22, 2002, pp. 18-20 [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] DEFENSE SPENDING IN RUSSIA SEEMS TO BE IRRATIONAL: AROUND 70% IS SPENT ON RUNNING COSTS AND WAGES, ALTHOUGH THIS FUNDING MIGHT BE USED TO IMPROVE SKILLS AND TECHNOLOGY. TOO MANY BILLIONS OF RUBLES ARE SPENT ON SERVICING THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS OF THE COLD WAR ERA. From January, the remuneration of officers in the Russian Armed Forces has been increased by 300 to 500 rubles a month, in accordance with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov's decree signed on Christmas Eve. Contract servicemen are to be paid a bonus if they hold a command position. However, our sources say the military is not overjoyed at these innovations. The conventional "commander's bonus" is poor compensation for the intention to equalize pay scales of the military with those of civil servants. The Finance Ministry only has one excuse for that: supposedly, defense spending eats up one-third of the budget. An internal redistribution of defense spending is also unlikely, since 70% of total military funding is spent on wages, housing, and ongoing costs. Such a ratio is considered to be unsustainable, and promises inevitable degradation for any armed forces using it. For instance, in the United States 70% of defense spending is allocated to purchasing new hardware and promising defense research. Taking Russia's economic capacities into consideration, many analysts believe that no substantial rise in military remuneration is possible, not even in theory. Yet a rapid transition to a professional army is much more expensive. Not many people can be persuaded to enlist in the Armed Forces at the current remuneration levels. However, the debate over ending conscription and making the army professional continues. President Vladimir Putin approved this topic in late 2001. By the way, the Union of Right Forces (URF) immediately claimed the authorship of this idea. URF leader Boris Nemtsov says that on the whole, even the General Staff agrees with the plan for reforming the Armed Forces and a transition to a professional army which has been drawn up at the Transition Economy Institute, headed by Yegor Gaidar. There is, however, a single condition. The process of moving the Russian Armed Forces to a contract basis must be initiated from as soon as 2003, otherwise "Russia will replicate the fate of the Roman Empire, the decay of which started with the stagnation of the army," say members of the URF. Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin has announced the intention of the General Staff to implement the transition to a professional army within a decade. Somehow, it seems that the top brass has been caught unprepared by such a turn of events. Major General Valeriy Astanin, chief of the Main Organization and Mobilization Directorate, expressed his attitude toward making the Armed Forces professional clearly: in his opinion, a rapid abolition of conscription will "cost hundreds of billions of rubles, which neither the nation nor its Armed Forces can afford; therefore the transition to a professional army could take a long time." The situation is clear. According to the Duma Defense Committee, there are around 157,000 contract personnel now in the Armed Forces; and 40% of them are women, officers' wives and daughters. As a rule, the men serve in Chechnya, Tajikistan and other hot spots, where contract servicemen are paid more than the average 1,500 rubles a month. However, this money is still not enough to recruit contract servicemen to all posts - from privates to junior officers. The number of these positions is around 500,000. The state does not seem to be taking advantage of such opportunities. Moreover, it is absolutely clear that increasing wages for contract servicemen would entail the need to raise the salaries of officers (around 500,000 of them) and generals. Military sociologists believe it is likely that money worries prompt some officers to commit various crimes. It is noteworthy that neither of the attempts to reform the Armed Forces (neither the attempt by Pavel Grachev, nor by Marshal Sergeyev) achieved their goals; rather the contrary. Even though current Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is given credit for downsizing and transforming the structure of five branches of the Armed Forces into three branches (ground, sea, air), the financial reserve which would make it possible to seriously plan a transition to a professional army, and to resume reforms, has never been brought out. Moreover, it is planned to spend the entire 15 billion rubles in the budget item entitled "military reforms" on building housing for servicemen transferred to the reserve, and on severance pay. The money the military is trying to save by shutting down Russia's radar installation in Cuba and the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay is unlikely to suffice for the reforms. It would be a drop in the bucket for the task of reforming the Russian Armed Forces. More radical methods, which our generals are afraid even to reflect on, are required. In part, the events in Chechnya have shown that Russia is able to use only 100,000 out of its several hundred thousand soldiers, if necessary. Several hundred thousand soldiers are on combat duty. It is very interesting what the remaining soldiers and officers are doing. Now, however, even Yabloko analysts have realized that the majority of the Russian Armed Forces continues to defend the mobile resources in case of a global war; in other words, they are acting as warehouse keepers. According to the most moderate estimates, the number of obsolete overcoats stored in Russia's strategic storehouses is enough to clothe Russia's entire male population of conscription age. Maintenance of this "economy" consumes the lion's share of defense spending. Additional funding for a professional army can be derived from the nuclear triad, military experts think. Since the Americans have withdrawn from the ABM Treaty of 1972, why should we retain nuclear missile parity of 1,500 warheads with the United States? Some think that 500 nuclear warheads would suffice for Russia to guarantee its security. Britain, France, and especially China maintain their status as nuclear powers with fewer weapons, and their nuclear status is cheaper than that of Russia. However, apart from ballistic missiles, we also have 10,000 tactical nuclear warheads in our arsenals, in case of a limited nuclear war against NATO. It is unknown against whom the generals are planning to use it now. Nevertheless, according to our sources, many billions of rubles are used to service these relics of the Cold War period. (Translated by Andrei Ryabochkin) ******** #11 Landslide Uzbek vote may boost Karimov's term By Dmitry Solovyov TASHKENT, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Uzbekistan awaited the near-certain result on Monday of President Islam Karimov's internationally condemned referendum to extend the presidential term, with turn-out already announced at 94 percent. The referendum has come at an awkward time for the United States, which has relied on Karimov to provide bases for the military campaign in neighbouring Afghanistan while at the same time denouncing his record on democracy. There was little doubt officials would report later on Monday that the bid to extend presidential terms from five years to seven had won landslide approval. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Elizabeth Jones, latest in a parade of American officials who have trundled through Tashkent in recent weeks, was due to hold security talks with top Uzbek officials. She arrived on the day of the vote and was to meet Karimov on Tuesday. Last week, U.S. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher denounced the poll, saying previous Uzbek elections were neither free nor fair and Washington was concerned the referendum would "not be consistent with international standards." But General Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, visited Tashkent last week and praised the leaders of the region for their support for the war on terrorism. After voting on Sunday, Karimov shrugged off Western criticism and made clear there would be no drastic change. "At a certain stage of historic change in your country, you need a strong will and certain figure...And you have to use some authoritarian methods at times," he told reporters. "I have never concealed that the president enjoys vast powers." HISTORY OF CHANGING RULES The authorities have not made clear whether the measure extending presidential terms from five years to seven would apply to Karimov's current term, which began in 2000. But the president, seen in the West as one of the most authoritarian of the former Soviet leaders, has a history of rewriting the rules to stay in power. His first term, which would have ended in 1995, was extended to 2000 in a referendum. His landslide re-election in 2000 was boycotted by Western monitors as unfair. Many suspect the 63-year-old former Soviet communist boss, who has ruled the country since two years before independence in 1991, could seek to alter a constitution which prohibits him from seeking a third term. New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch described Sunday's referendum as a "blatant grab for power." Karimov argues he needs power to ensure stability and peace. He frequently tells his people things could be much worse, pointing to economic chaos and unrest in other ex-Soviet states. Those contentions fall on fertile ground in Uzbekistan, where most weary and poor voters would not dream of supporting anyone else. ******