Johnson's Russia List
#6083
18 February 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Note from David Johnson:
1. Financial Times (UK): Andrew Jack, Risk indigestion for a slice of
Russian success: The outlook may be rosy but the hardest part still lies ahead for
the Putin-led government.
2. Richard Thomas: Erickson Memorial.
3. Reuters: Lucky Kyrgyzstan finds Afghan war a boon.
4. Moscow Times: Matt Bivens, No Sushi Satisfaction. (re Chubais)
5. Newsweek International: Fred Guterl and Eve Conant, In the Germ Labs.
The former Soviet Union had huge stocks of biological agents. Assessing the
real risk.
6. Mikhail Tsypkin: re: Aslund's response to Reddaway/6078.
7. Financial Times (UK): Matthew Garrahan, Sponsor's frozen vodka to melt
Olympic hearts.
8. Moscow Times: Nabi Abdullaev, Break-in Highlights Nuclear Security
Problems.
9. The Times (UK): Alice Lagnado, What the Russian papers say.
10. The Russia Journal: Ira Straus, Paranoia about the West and TV-6:
A tale of a dark world filled with enemies external and internal.
11. The Independent (UK): Charles Arthur, New laws to suppress academic
research.
12. AP: Russian Olympic Chief Blames Media.]
******
#1
Financial Times (UK)
18 February 2002
Risk indigestion for a slice of Russian success: The outlook may be rosy
but the hardest part still lies ahead for the Putin-led government
By ANDREW JACK
Moscow's upmarket hotels and restaurants have been doing a flourishing
trade in the last few weeks, as western investment banks bring large
delegations of potential investors to the Russian capital to persuade them
to part with their money.
After a period during which eating nuclear waste from one of the Soviet-era
weapons scattering the country seemed more appealing than dabbling in its
equities or bonds, mainstream international funds suddenly seem unable to
consume enough.
Where Moscow-based market strategists used desperately to seek listeners
for their efforts to talk up the market, they now spend much of their time
travelling to London and New York to address packed halls.
Specialists from other countries suffering from the global financial
services sector shake-out - and the specific negative view on emerging
markets in most of the rest of the world - are arriving fast to see if
there are any jobs going.
But is the turnround taking place just a little too hastily? There is a
risk that the sudden surge of interest in Russia may end up giving everyone
a sharp bout of indigestion.
There is no doubt that on paper, the Russian "story" looks very positive.
As successive recent reports from the World Bank and the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development have pointed out, the changes in the
past two years have been impressive.
For the first time in its history, Russia is running a budget surplus.
Foreign debt is being serviced. Economic liberalisation that was long
stalled under Boris Yeltsin has progressed apace under President Vladimir
Putin. The rouble is stable, inflation is relatively low and unemployment
declining.
It would be unfair to claim that this is all a result of the boost to
domestic competitiveness driven by the August 1998 devaluation, and the
fortuitous sharp rise in commodity prices that followed, providing
unexpected gains to companies and the government alike.
After all, the government could have given in to temptations to use the
windfall for higher expenditure, rather than exercising self-constraint in
its spending patterns.
It could have simply continued to service foreign debts, but it has instead
accelerated repayment.
And Mr Putin has taken steps to implement proposals discussed without
result for years. Suddenly, Russia has a flat-rate 13 per cent personal
income tax, as well as simplified and lower corporate profits taxes.
Initial steps have been made to reform the labour code, permit the sale of
land and restructure the unwieldy state pension scheme.
But the curious thing is that most of these steps were already under way
nine months ago. Little fundamental has altered in Russia since then, at
least in comparison with the scale of the reforms of the first few months
of Mr Putin's presidency. The main change, of course, is a sudden love-fest
between the US and Russia.
A year ago, the US administration of George W. Bush thought it could simply
ignore Russia. September 11 changed that, and more precisely September 24,
when Mr Putin pledged support for the international coalition against
terrorism. The two leaders now talk about their close personal relationship
and trust.
From that has followed a wave of more positive statements, official visits
and good publicity. Russia has, objectively, also provided a rare safe
haven of strong economic - and markets - growth against a more gloomy wider
picture.
But the hardest part for Russia is still ahead. Mr Putin and his government
face the challenge of implementing the ambitious series of laws that they
have introduced. Tax reforms are one thing; persuading inspectors to agree
to them quite another. Fighting back thousands of federal and local
bureaucrats who make a living from them will be far from easy.
Furthermore, the electoral clock seems already to be ticking. Parliamentary
elections are scheduled for next year, and Mr Putin's term comes up in
2004. Yet already many of the - admittedly vast - reform plans now under
way have a second, controversial and potentially unpopular element that
only begins after these dates.
That may be one reason why - even while portfolio investors are submitting
to the appalling bureaucracy of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport - direct
investors are staying at home. Foreign direct investment in China last year
alone substantially exceeded the total amount for the past decade into Russia.
There have been some notable exceptions, including Exxon's multi-billion
dollar pledge late last year to develop the Sakhalin-1 oilfield in the
Russian Far East. But companies committing large sums for the long term -
the experience and money of which arguably offer the most to build a
stronger Russia - remain cautious of corruption, bureaucracy and legal rights.
What looks good at the macro level may be translated into disappointing
micro results. And what swings rapidly one way - whether it is personal
bonds between presidents, or the conversion to good corporate governance by
former robber barons - always risks swinging back the other.
******
#2
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 15:07:36 -0500
To: davidjohnson@erols.com
From: "Richard Thomas"
Subject: Erickson Memorial
Dear David,
Those of us who were privileged to have known and worked with John
Erickson are pleased that you have included articles about him in the JRL
but we have a favor to ask. Those articles did not include mention of a
Memorial Service that is planned for him and of a Memorial Fund at the
National Library of Scotland. I received the following from Ljubica
Erickson today.
"All friends and colleagues are invited to a memorial service on 5th May
2002, 3.30pm, St. Mary's Cathedral, Palmerston Place, Edinburgh. No
memorial flowers, but donations to The National Library of Scotland (c/o
Ian McGowan, NLS, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1EW) would be much
appreciated."
David, we would appreciate your including this in the JRL. Many thanks.
Dr. R. Thomas
Center for Strategic Technology
Texas A&M University
r.thomas70@verizon.net
*******
#3
Lucky Kyrgyzstan finds Afghan war a boon
By Sebastian Alison
BISHKEK, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Few countries in the world are as remote,
little known or hard to pronounce as Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous land of five
million on the furthest fringe of the former Soviet Union's Central Asian
empire.
But the cash-strapped nation, with few resources and half its population
living in poverty, stands to become a major winner from the war against the
Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in nearby Afghanistan, and
its leaders have not been slow to realise it.
"Of course it's very difficult to say any war has a positive influence, but
in an economic sense the long-term effect will be positive," says Ulan
Sarbanov, chairman of the central bank.
Foreign Minister Muratbek Imanaliyev is just as optimistic.
"For us it was obvious that the changes in the situation in Afghanistan
after October 7, when the anti-terror campaign started, were in many ways
favourable for the general situation in the region," he told Reuters.
Kyrgyzstan lies close, but not too close, to Afghanistan -- another
ex-Soviet state, Tajikistan, forms a handy buffer -- and the U.S. airforce
has chosen Manas airport, close to the small and down-at-heel capital,
Bishkek, as its main centre of operations in the region.
Already some 500 U.S. and French troops are there, building an entirely new
base, named after firefighter Peter J. Ganci who lost his life in New
York's World Trade Center on September 11, within the existing airport.
Up to 3,000 personnel will be there in the next six to eight weeks. The
existing troops are already making their mark.
"There will be positive economic and business benefits to the airport and
to Kyrgyzstan," said Colonel Bill Montgomery of the 86th Air Mobility
Squadron, normally based in Ramstein, Germany.
"We purchase supplies, food, furniture, we're leasing buildings."
But the impact goes far beyond this.
TERRORIST PAST
Kyrgyzstan, like other former Soviet Central Asian states, has long
suffered from Islamic militias funded from, and in some cases trained in,
Afghanistan, penetrating its borders and attacking government troops in an
effort to set up an Islamic state in the region modelled on Taliban lines.
"In Central Asia and especially in Kyrgyzstan, people awaited the
appearance of terrorists every spring starting in 1999," Foreign Minister
Imanaliyev said.
"The anti-terror campaign, the destruction of the Taliban, the war with
terrorist groups including al Qaeda were very serious elements for peace
and stability. This is why Kyrgyzstan supported the forces of the United
States and other countries. We are extremely interested in this war."
Kyrgyzstan's instability caused by the terrorism, and unwelcome headlines
when a group of Japanese geologists and a party of U.S. mountaineers were
kidnapped in 1999 and 2000 respectively, have helped keep foreign
investment to a minimum.
This may now change, although Imanaliyev was at pains to stress this was
not a reason for offering the coalition support.
"We're not doing this because we want to receive any economic, financial or
trade dividends. Our starting point is that this is about the war against
terrorism," he said.
But rebuilding Afghanistan will surely help countries nearby. Imanaliyev
cites such basics as cement, bricks and glass which Kyrgyzstan expects to
start exporting there, as well as specialists. The country also stands to
become an important aid route.
END TO DRUGS
Central Bank Chairman Sarbanov points out another benefit: Kyrgyzstan, like
Tajikistan and other countries in the region, is on a major
drug-trafficking route stretching from Afghanistan to Russia and on to
markets in Europe and beyond.
"Resolving the Afghan problem has short-term and long-term positive
aspects," he told Reuters in an interview.
"In the short term some problems may emerge but in the long term it will be
positive beyond any doubt, including the fact that if the Afghan question
is resolved, then the drug traffic though Kyrgyzstan will stop."
The benefits of cosying up to Washington are clear, but Kyrgyzstan borders
China and has overwhelmingly important trade links with Russia. Does
Imanaliyev fear that its new links with the United States will put strains
on these relationships?
"I see no difference in our relations with these countries," he said,
adding that ties were already excellent. On the contrary, the whole
sequence of events has been a benefit to his country.
"I really don't see any minuses."
BUSY AIRBASE
Back at Manas airbase, on a beautiful crisp morning with snow lying thick
on the ground, soldiers who had until recently never heard of Kyrgyzstan
were hard at work at their exotic new posting.
"You can say they're enjoying themselves," says Lieutenant-Colonel Betrand
Bon of the French detachment. "Our first impressions of the country are
good. Of course most people in France don't know much about Kyrgyzstan."
The base is already busy, with typically eight to 15 military aircraft,
mostly Boeing 747s, or military C-5, C-17 and C-141 cargo planes passing
through every day. This number will rise sharply as more troops arrive.
A huge tent city has already been erected to house the troops, who are
getting used to a diet of a cooked breakfast, an "MRE" (Meal Ready to Eat)
packed lunch and a hot dinner -- usually spaghetti, lasagne or chicken.
But creature comforts are not too far away.
"We had 160 guys in the chow hall at 4:00 a.m. the other day to watch the
Super Bowl (American football championship)," says U.S. Air Force Captain
Kristi Beckman. "That was something."
*******
#4
Moscow Times
February 18, 2002
No Sushi Satisfaction
By Matt Bivens
WASHINGTON -- The Financial Times is fresh back from a sushi lunch with
Anatoly Chubais, and the result is an article so, ahem, odd, that I can't
let it pass.
Several years ago, Chubais parceled out the oil fields and nickel mines via
rigged auctions to insiders who came to be dubbed "the oligarchs." Back in
1996, when anger was high, Chubais admitted it had been a "mistake" to let
oligarchs organize the auctions and also to win them. (I'm actually
grateful he did it that way: It provides a certain clarity.) This mistake
was "ethical" and not "legal", he said, adding, "We must remember that
Russia is a transition economy."
I never was clear on how being a "transition economy" justified rigging
government auctions.
But if this is now boring stuff, there are a dozen other questions one
might ask Chubais -- from his role in the Russian debt market that
collapsed in 1998, to his rocky stewardship of the national power monopoly.
(No one even laughed when Chubais insisted he'd use auctions and tenders to
bring in reforms at Unified Energy Systems -- or at his desperate public
flirtation with "strategic partner" Enron as late as September 2001.
Chubais told the newspaper Vedomosti he would demand Western suitors get
serious: "It won't be a conversation along the lines of 'Dear Ken [Lay],
how do you feel about energy restructuring in Russia?,' but a conversation
like 'Here are four projects for you, they cost this much and these are the
parameters, how much time do you need to give me a 'yes' or 'no'?")
Personally, I'd have been curious to hear Chubais talk about jockeying to
get "Dear Ken" involved in Russia. The FT, alas, approaches Chubais with
far too much deference for that.
Along with endless detail about the Izumi sushi restaurant, the Feb. 16
article "Lunch with the FT: Anatoly Chubais" breaks the following news:
Chubais arrived on time. He has lost weight. He was polite to the waitress.
He was meeting the prime minister later that day, a fact mentioned three
times.
The only real news is that Chubais, a Vladimir Putin supporter, professes
alarm that Russia is drifting toward a police state.
That would have been a good moment to ask Chubais about his own three
minutes of hate -- he used to insist even meek questions about the war in
Chechnya made one "a traitor." (Or what of reports that Boris Yeltsin's
campaign manager Chubais threatened newspaper editors at a 1996 Kremlin
meeting? As quoted by editor Vitaly Tretyakov, Chubais told those
assembled: "You will do what the owners [of your paper -- i.e., the
oligarchs] tell you. And if you don't, bones will crack.")
And privatization? The FT says Chubais "forced capitalism of a harsh and
wild kind on Russia. It made a few people very rich and left a lot of
people very poor. Most Russians hated him for it." This perpetuates the
myth that ordinary people are angry about privatization because they are
jealous losers unable to function in a market. Let the record show: Russia
was already a market, with people building their own businesses, long
before Chubais showed up to take credit for it all simply because he gave
away the oil companies to his friends.
The FT falls for this absurd chestnut, stating that thanks to
privatization, "Russia will have private property for generations to come."
It quotes Chubais crowing, "And I did it. With all the mistakes. Despite
all the criticism. I did it."
This is where a journalist would probably ask questions like: By mistakes
are you referring to the fact that the oil companies were sold at rigged
auctions? Or: The government will soon be selling another stake in LUKoil
-- does it matter this auction will probably also be rigged? (When should
they stop being rigged?) Or: When you announced your UES restructuring in
2000, $2.5 billion in company value evaporated as panicking shareholders
dumped UES stock -- why do you think they did that?
Instead, the FT opts for a slo-o-o-w fade to black: "The time is coming for
Chubais to leave [the restaurant]. ... He decides against dessert and seems
faintly irritated when a plate of creamy sticky things arrives, compliments
of the house. I see him off, pay the bill and wander out on to Spiridonovka.
"It looks little changed but then it always was a posh street. More of
Moscow, and of Russia, is catching up with it. The privatized economy is
beginning to work. In a sense, Russia is coming round to Chubais's way of
thinking.
"And he is still only 46. For all his protestations to be happy in
business, I would eat my chopsticks if he did not have his eye on the
Russian presidential election of 2008, when Putin's second term is over.
And at Izumi, the chopsticks are made of stainless steel."
So he's a future president now? Well, with such uncritical media treatment,
you never know.
"Lunch with the FT: Anatoly Chubais" amounts to an argument in a
world-class publication that government corruption on a massive scale --
while perhaps "a mistake," and certainly not something a polite person
brings up over sushi -- has no wider significance for the economy, or
democracy, or the nation. Wow.
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a Washington-based
fellow of The Nation Institute [www.thenation.com].
*******
#5
Newsweek International
February 25, 2002
In the Germ Labs
The former Soviet Union had huge stocks of biological agents. Assessing the
real risk
By Fred Guterl and Eve Conant
Bakyt Atshabar has worked for the anti-plague Institute for more than
25 years, and for much of that time there was little need for security
guards and fences and heavy metal doors with keypad locks. As an unofficial
part of the Soviet Union’s vast bioweapons program, the institute routinely
kept dozens of different strains of anthrax, plague and tularemia stored in
unlocked refrigerators. But Moscow’s ironclad control over life in
Kazakhstan protected the labs. So did a veil of secrecy that hid the
institute’s bioweapons role from local residents.
WHEN THE SOVIET UNION collapsed, however, the thick shrubs
surrounding the institute’s campus began to attract petty thieves and
drunks. “We had bums right outside my window here,” says Atshabar, now
director of the institute, which is located in a leafy suburb of Alma-Ata,
the largest city in Kazakhstan. “They would sleep there”—he points to a
tuft of trees—“and drink vodka.” Criminals once broke in and stole an
aluminum part of a centrifuge, useless except as scrap metal. It would have
been even easier to rob—or smuggle out—a small vial of nasty germs to sell
on the black market. As far as anybody knows, no such theft ever occurred
at the institute (formally known as the Kazakh Science Center for
Quarantine and Zoonotic Diseases). But keeping close track of pathogen
cultures is next to impossible, even for the most tightly run lab. And at
the Alma-Ata institute, vials of anthrax are kept in coffee cans, which
themselves are stored in a 40-year-old refrigerator secured with a simple
padlock.
In the wake of September 11, the Big Fear—the one driving President
George W. Bush’s most important decisions and dire pronouncements—is that a
terrorist group like Al Qaeda will eventually get its hands on weapons of
mass destruction. These worries are heightened because U.S. officials have
learned that Osama bin Laden’s network was trying to acquire such weapons.
Documents recovered from Qaeda safe houses and camps in Afghanistan “show
that bin Laden was pursuing a sophisticated biological weapons research
program,” CIA Director George Tenet told Congress earlier this month. Bush
has used such concerns to justify his warnings against Iraq, Iran and North
Korea—what he calls the “axis of evil.” Such countries “could provide these
arms to terrorists,” he declared in his State of the Union Message. In
large part, it’s the fear of WMD in the hands of terrorists that is behind
large increases in spending on the military and on home-land defense.
JOBS WITH AL QAEDA
But the “rogue states” are not the only concern when it comes to WMD
proliferation. Some experts worry that the countries of the former Soviet
Union, with enormous stockpiles of pathogens, high levels of corruption and
grim conditions for scientists, could be vulnerable to terrorists looking
for highly destructive agents. Al Qaeda itself appears to have targeted
ex-Soviet weapons scientists for recruitment. According to U.S.
intelligence reports, some Russian experts traveled to Kandahar for job
interviews with unidentified Qaeda leaders. Intelligence officials believe
the Russians turned down the chance to work for bin Laden, however, and by
all accounts Al Qaeda’s efforts to make or acquire bioweapons have gone
nowhere.
So how worried should we be? At their peak, the Soviets probably
employed upwards of 60, 000 people on bioweapons projects, which produced a
greater volume and variety of deadly agents than any other country. When
Ken Alibek, a senior Soviet bioweapons official, defected in 1992, he
described a staggering offensive bioweapons production capacity—4,500
metric tons of anthrax a year, for instance—and an alarming array of deadly
pathogens, including smallpox and antibiotic-resistant anthrax.
Gennady Lepyoshkin was Alibek’s deputy in the Soviet era, and later
took his job as head of the giant production facility at Stepnogorsk in
Kazakhstan. In its heyday, the facility, with fermenting tanks as tall as
four-story buildings, could produce 1.5 tons of weaponized anthrax in only
24 hours. Lepyoshkin has more than 20 years’ experience in biowarfare, a
doctorate in biology and another in microbiology. Now he’s unemployed.
(Russian born, he was replaced recently by a Kazakh.) As he walks along the
perimeter fence at Stepnogorsk, where he no longer has clearance, he drinks
a shot of cognac in honor of his old haunt. “Most of our scientists left
for Russia, Ukraine or Belarus,” he says. “But the ones who
stayed—biological and chemical engineers—make ends meet by driving to Omsk
to buy sausage and cheeses and then selling them here.”
A few years ago the U.S. government estimated that 7,000 former
Soviet bio-weaponeers were a “proliferation concern,” says Amy Smithson, a
bioweapons expert at the Stimson Center in Washington. After September 11,
they upped the figure to 10,000. Suddenly, formerly benign activities began
to look worrisome—veterinary institutes, for instance, hold livestock
pathogens that in the wrong hands could devastate a nation’s farms.
FROM WEAPONS TO VACCINES
For the past eight years the State Department has been retraining
former weapons scientists and helping institutes turn their bioweapons
programs into peaceful, commercial ventures. The incoming Bush
administration initially regarded this—and similar efforts to help Russian
scientists—with deep suspicion. But 9-11 changed that. Now the Defense
Department’s work on former Soviet bioweapons facilities is to be greatly
expanded, from $17 million in the current fiscal year to $55 million. Early
this year the State Department’s assistance program received a one-time
appropriation of $30 million, which it will use to dismantle the
Stepnogorsk military fermenters and put former Soviet scientists to work
making vaccines. “They do a great job with the resources they have,” says
Smithson, “but even with the extra money they’re only getting at the tip of
the iceberg.”
Not everyone agrees. It would be irresponsible for an expert like
Smithson not to be concerned, but many respected specialists believe the
numbers of unemployed bioweapons scientists are exaggerated. Alibek, the
Soviet defector, has said that there are perhaps 100 former Soviet
scientists capable of building a soup-to-nuts bioweapons factory. Western
bioweapons experts put that figure higher—”the low hundreds,” says one. But
the more important point, says an intelligence source, is that “we think we
know where almost all of those people are.” An effort by Iran to recruit
former Soviet scientists in 1997, in fact, helped invigorate the U.S. push
to pay the scientists to stay in place. “We said, ‘Work with us and you
will get funding for real collaborative research; work with Iran and you
will never see a penny of our money’,” says Elisa Harris, who handled
nonproliferation programs in the Clinton administration. Experts also
stress, moreover, how difficult it is to turn a pathogen into a bioweapons
agent like the “aerosolized” anthrax sent through the U.S. mail system in
October. (Although investigators haven’t ruled out a foreign source, the
prevailing theory is still that the anthrax came from within the United
States.)
But what about ready-made stockpiles of weaponized agents, or even
just virulent strains? Two years ago the DOD began helping former Soviet
bioweapons labs to beef up security. The institute in Alma-Ata, which
houses cultures of nonweaponized, but still dangerous, germs, now boasts a
2.5-meter concrete wall topped with barbed wire. Two guards armed with stun
guns and tear gas patrol the front and rear entrances. But still, nobody is
searched upon entering or leaving the building. And on a recent visit, no
security guards were posted at the door to the “highly hazardous
infections” wing.
The larger problem is that the Alma-Ata lab is about as good as it
gets. Kazakhstan alone has eight other anti-plague institutes and about 140
minor labs. None of them have had the benefit of the DOD program. Beyond
Kazakhstan, throughout the ruins of the Soviet empire, hundreds of
laboratories holding samples of bioweapons agents also are poorly guarded.
September 11 spurred the Bush administration to take the issue more
seriously. But when success includes anthrax vials in coffee cans, it’ll be
a long time, if ever, before anybody feels absolutely secure.
With John Barry, Mark Hosenball and Adam Rogers in Washington
New Fears About an Old Threat
U.S. officials have long worried about lax security at former Soviet
bioweapons facilities. These concerns were heightened after the September
11 attacks. Select from the cities below to find out where bio-weapons
agents are located in Russia
Kirov - Plague, Anthrax
Koltsovo - Smallpox, Hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola, Marburg, Lassa
Viruses and others)
Minsk - Anthrax, Tularemia, Plague
Obninsk - Hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola, Marburg, Lassa Viruses and
others)
Omutninsk - Plague, Tularemia
Penza - Anthrax
Rostov - Anthrax, Tularemia, Plague
Samara - Anthrax, Tularemia, Plague
Saratov - Anthrax, Tularemia, Plague
Sergiyev Posad - Tularemia
Stavropol - Anthrax, Tularemia, Plague
St. Petersberg - Anthrax, Tularemia, Plague
Tbilisi - Hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola, Marburg, Lassa Viruses and
others)
Volgograd - Anthrax, Tularemia, Plague
Yekaterinburg - Tularemia, Botulism
******
#6
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002
Subject: re: Aslund's response to Reddaway /6078
From: mikhail tsypkin
Don Jacobsen (6082) has dealt very well with Anders Aslund's very selective
approach to the text of Peter Reddaway's and Dmitri Glinskii's The Tragedy
of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy. This book is a
major contribution to our understanding of the developments of the last
decade -- and I say this even though there are inevitably some points on
which I disagree with the authors.
Aslund begins his attack on Reddaway (and it's really Peter Reddaway as an
individual, not Reddaway and Glinskii as scholars, who is the target of
Aslund's attack) by saying that "few people have made so many incorrect
predictions of impending Russian disasters." I don't want to get into an
argument over who predicted what and when about a situation that's still
unfolding. But I would like to remind the readers of JRL that in the summer
of 1989 Peter Reddaway was the first (to the best of my knowledge) of
Western specialists on the Soviet Union to state in print (in the Report on
the USSR, published by the RFE/RL Research Institute) that the USSR was
likely to disintegrate in the near future. Pretty good, especially given
the sorry record of the rest of us in this matter. I also remember very
clearly a conversation I had with Peter Reddaway in the early fall of 1986,
in his office at the Kennan Institute. At the time, I was working at the
Heritage Foundation and was writing a backgrounder on human rights situation
in Russia, which was pretty grim at the time. I came to discuss the subject
with Reddaway, as the leading expert on this subject. And Reddaway really
shocked me by saying that Dr. Andrei Sakharov will be released from internal
exile within several months. At the time, I thought that Reddaway's
forecast was wishful thinking, but I certainly had to change my view of his
powers of prediction in December of that year, when Sakharov was indeed
released from his exile.
Reddaway has always paid attention to social phenomena viewed at the time as
marginal by most other scholars. This was the case with Soviet dissidents:
he not only embraced them as a cause, but also drew important conclusions
about stability of the Soviet system from studying dissent, a phenomenon
most other Western scholars of the Soviet Union considered irrelevant.
Today, Reddaway is interested in considerably less appetizing characters in
Russian politics -- but they are presumed marginal by many other experts,
and thus methodologically important to Reddaway. Mr. Aslund's
misrepresentation of Reddaway's interest in Shafarevich, Zyuganov et al. as
sympathy to their views is most disconcerting and reminiscent of Soviet
attacks on dissidents.
Finally, I would like to address Mr. Aslund's thinly veiled smear of
anti-Semitism against Reddaway. ("Igor Shafarevich, Russia's leading
anti-Semite, is lauded on three pages.") Don Jacobsen has already
demonstrated convincingly that Aslund's charge has no foundation whatsoever.
It is truly sad that an academic employed by the highly respected Carnegie
Endowment tries to smear with anti-Semitism a man with Peter Reddaway's
record of standing up for human rights. Not to mention that Mr. Aslund's
attempt, to put it mildly, it's not very smart.
Having spent the first half of my life as a Soviet citizen, I sometimes
wonder how my Western friends and colleagues would have fared had they lived
as my contemporaries under the Soviet regime. I know that Peter Reddaway
would have ended up in jail for speaking the truth and defending the
defenseless. I wonder where Mr. Aslund would have ended up...
*******
#7
Financial Times (UK)
18 February 2002
Sponsor's frozen vodka to melt Olympic hearts
By Matthew Garrahan in Salt Lake City
Officials in the Russian Olympic Committee like to celebrate with shots of
frozen vodka and there was plenty consumed at the Winter Olympics in Salt
Lake City this week, notably at a reception marking the arrival of Russian
Aluminium as one of the organisation's principal sponsors.
The sponsoring of Olympic teams by large corporations is not new.
Well-known brands can benefit from international exposure and enhance their
domestic standing by supporting national sporting endeavour.
But the RusAl deal with the Olympic team signals a turning point in the
evolution of business and sport in Russia. Since the collapse of communism,
state investment in Russian sport has all but dried up. Money from western
sponsors was the largest source of income and funded the team's
participation in sporting events.
"It was a ridiculous situation," says Alexander Livshits, former economic
adviser to Boris Yeltsin and deputy general director of RusAl. "The
sponsors were Smirnoff, Adidas, Samsung, Reebok and Coca-Cola. Not a single
Russian company."
That has all changed at the Salt Lake games, where Russian companies
account for 22 of the team's 24 sponsors. For RusAl, the world's second
largest aluminium producer, the move into sports sponsorship is an
opportunity to raise its profile, particularly in the US, which takes 30
per cent of the company's exports.
Aluminium producers require huge amounts of power to smelt their metal.
With the US domestic aluminium market reeling from the effect of the
California energy crisis last year, non-US providers have the opportunity
to improve their market share.
Of equal importance to Mr Livshits is improvement in RusAl's corporate
governance and its relationships with the world's financial centres. "The
US market is important to us but more important is the company entering
financial markets and having contact with US-based bankers and investment
funds," he says.
Mr Livshits wants to introduce more accountability and business practices
akin to western companies. This comes at a time when other Russian
companies have started taking matters of corporate governance more
seriously and have started improving certain practices, such as increasing
dividends to investors.
RusAl was created from the merger of the country's main aluminium
producers. Since then, the company has reduced the number of third parties
who traditionally sold the company's products, and moved instead to a model
of direct sales.
This was particularly difficult in the Russian domestic market, which is in
a constant state of flux and dogged by lawlessness and improper conduct.
RusAl itself has not escaped unsavoury allegations. Oleg Deripaska, RusAl's
general manager, has been denied entry to the US following charges of
racketeering and corruption brought by two of the company's former partners.
Image problems aside, Mr Livshits is keen to improve the company's
practices, which he says will change the way it, and Russia, are perceived.
"We want to show the world that Russia is changing," he says.
******
#8
Moscow Times
February 18, 2002
Break-in Highlights Nuclear Security Problems
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer
In broad daylight, a State Duma deputy, two Greenpeace activists and three
NTV cameramen sneaked into a supposedly high-security industrial complex in
western Siberia and spent several hours near storage facilities containing
3,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. The six men took dozens of photographs,
shot a video and returned to Moscow undisturbed.
"We entered through two-by-two-meter holes in the barbed wire and walked on
well-trampled paths, probably made by local citizens," Sergei Mitrokhin, a
liberal lawmaker in the Duma's Yabloko faction, said of his break-in at the
Krasnoyarsk Mining and Chemical Plant, which was shown in a special report
by NTV broadcast Thursday night. "The guards drove past us several times,
and we passed by their sentry boxes, but we pretended to be locals and
nobody stopped us."
In November, the Krasnoyarsk plant received 41 tons of spent nuclear fuel
from the Kozlodui plant in Bulgaria under a controversial new law allowing
the import of spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing and storage.
Advocates of the law, which was signed by President Vladimir Putin in July,
argue that Russia could earn $20 billion over the next decade by importing
some 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. However, environmentalists have
fought the law, saying that turning Russia into the world's leading nuclear
recycling facility would cause far greater ecological damage than the
billions earned could repair. When the first consignment of spent nuclear
fuel arrived in Russia from Bulgaria in November, Greenpeace activists
demonstrated outside the Nuclear Power Ministry in gas masks and chemical
protection suits.
At a news conference in Moscow on Friday, Mitrokhin said that his break-in
at the Krasnoyarsk plant was designed to show that Russia is not ready to
import radioactive material. The country's system of nuclear safety is not
just poor but "nonexistent," he said.
Mitrokhin, a member of the presidential commission on controlling imports
of spent nuclear fuel, said that during a hearing on ecological safety in
the Duma on Feb. 7, the Nuclear Power Ministry assured deputies that there
were no security problems at its facilities.
But Mitrokhin said Friday that he could have easily climbed onto the roof
of the Krasnoyarsk plant's storage building and got inside it.
"I was shaken to see it," he said. "Anybody can come to a depository with
extremely dangerous materials and do whatever he wishes near them. And the
Nuclear Power Ministry plans to bring 20,000 tons of nuclear supplies from
abroad here and leave it adrift."
According to Mitrokhin, safety measures at most of Russia's 96 nuclear
plants and research centers are not covered by the federal budget at all.
As a member of the international coalition fighting terrorism, Russia must
be more responsible for the safety of its nuclear facilities, Mitrokhin
said, otherwise it will become "the weakest link of the coalition and a
potential target for terrorists."
Vladimir Chuprov, a Greenpeace nuclear expert, shared his fears. "Several
dozen kilograms of regular explosives would be enough to trigger a new
Chernobyl there," he said Friday.
Chuprov said the plant's storage facilities contain 1 billion curies of
radioactive waste. The radioactive discharge from Chernobyl was about 50
million curies, he said.
However, the management of the Krasnoyarsk plant insisted last week that
security at its storage and transportation facilities remained unbreakable.
"We employ several hundred guards, and one regiment of Interior Ministry
troops is delegated to guard us," Vasily Zhidkov, the head of the plant,
said in the NTV report. It was unclear whether Zhidkov was aware of
Mitrokhin's break-in at the time.
Zhidkov could be reached for comment about Mitrokhin's claims Friday.
Mitrokhin said that he would send a video about the break-in to Putin. In
addition, Greenpeace said it has sent letters about the security breaches
at the plant to the Federal Security Service and to the Prosecutor
General's Office.
*******
#9
The Times (UK)
February 18, 2002
What the Russian papers say
from Alice Lagnado in moscow
ONLY 10 per cent of Russian teenage boys actually want to sign up for their
compulsory two years in the army, where hard labour, beatings and torture
are commonplace.
This spring the army again had to press-gang boys off the streets. Once
drafted, many desert, shooting dead anyone who gets in their way. This week
Aleksei Khozeyev, an 18-year-old conscript, fled his base in southern
Russia and is suspected of shooting dead two officers with his Kalashnikov.
A fortnight earlier two deserters killed nine people in a bid for freedom.
Last week the Russian Government finally agreed on a new law allowing
conscientious objectors to apply for alternative service instead of the
army. “This day will be seen as a turning point in the fate of dozens of
young people,” Izvestia said. “The Government has taken care of its
pacifists,” Vremya Novosti said.
The introduction of alternative service is a great victory for campaigners
and a big step on the road to army reform. Boris Yeltsin promised Russians
a professional army but could not provide it. President Putin is starting
the process.
But talks led by the Government in recent weeks revealed the chasm between
current thinking in the Defence Ministry and that in Russian society.
In Itogi news magazine, Leonid Radzikhovsky recalled a speech by a
hardliner: “He said, if this alternative service is to be allowed, it is at
least necessary to introduce the same kind of bullying, to send alternative
servicemen thousands of kilometres away from home. In other words, ‘I’ll
teach you how to love your motherland!’ ” According to the final Bill, set
to apply in 2004, boys will be able to live at home during alternative
service instead of at army bases as proposed by the General Staff. They
will be able to take menial jobs, cleaning streets and working in
hospitals, orphanages and homes for the elderly.
But conscientious objectors must spend four years working for the State and
prove before a local military board that they have strong grounds to do so
— a procedure which some say will be extremely vulnerable to bribery.
*******
#10
From: IRASTRAUS@aol.com (Ira Straus)
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002
Subject: uncut version
Dave,
Here's an article that appeared in The Russia Journal this week. This is a
pre-edited version; they cut out a paragraph to make it fit, I thought you'd
prefer the original.
Best,
Ira
The Russia Journal
February 15-21, 2002
Paranoia about the West and TV-6:
A tale of a dark world filled with enemies external and internal
By Ira Straus
Our story begins in the first months of the Putin government in 1999. Russia
is going through a strange kind of war scare. Fears of the U.S. and NATO were
recently whipped up by the Primakov government, when NATO was bombing
Yugoslavia. In the streets it was said that the U.S./NATO were bombing
"Belgrade today, Moscow tomorrow". People seriously think NATO might
intervene next on Russian soil. Defense Minister Sergeyev says Russia is
fighting in Chechnya against a U.S.-NATO scheme to drive Russia out of the
entire Caucasus. In a poll by the Public Opinion Foundation, 73% say that
foreign enemies might attack Russia, 48% naming the U.S. as that enemy.
A new Military doctrine is developed in this atmosphere, pointing to NATO as
an threat. So is a new Information doctrine and the idea of the "information
war". The mass media are seen as an arm of the U.S./NATO enemy, the advance
forces of the New World Order, leading NATO first in Kosovo, next into
Chechnya.
The reality, to be sure, was different. The U.S. was supporting the Russian
military in Dagestan, cooperating with Russia on intelligence against the
rebels, and backing Russia's goals if not its tactics in Chechnya. But Russia
heard the rhetoric in the Western mass media and listened to its fears, not
the facts.
Lurid theories were spread about the New World Order (NWO) and the mass media
as its ruling elite. Onto a button of truth was sewn an entire jacket of
paranoia. It was as if the Western mass media were all consistently
manipulating the countries of the world to some single dark purpose. That
purpose was described in various ways -- the global unipolarist diktat of the
West led by the U.S. was the moderate version, building on the language of
Messrs. Primakov and Zyuganov. Alternatively, it was the "Hassid-Masonic
world government", as one author put it in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, writing in
the name of an analytical center of the Putin administration. In either case,
the media were pegged as a key part of the apparat of the New World Order.
(As a matter of full disclosure, I should admit that one of my cousins is
Hassidic. Also, that I made myself a business card a few years ago reading
"International Jewish Bankers Conspiracy, Official Membership Card". Also, I
wrote the article "Unipolyarnost’: Kontsentricheskaya struktura Novogo
Mirovogo Poryadka" in the journal Polis 1997 No. 2. Funny thing, though;
American journals weren't interested enough in unipolarity to publish the
article, they were mostly writing in favor of multipolarism just like
Primakov. Only in Russia was there enough interest to publish the article.)
It was also being said that TV made it impossible for the U.S. to fight a
traditional war; it could win only by a quick air war without U.S.
casualties. There was some merit in this view. It was contradictory to the
first view -- of the media as an apparatus of a U.S.-NWO conspiracy -- but
the two views were spread together anyway. The enemy was the same, after all;
what mattered was to throw mud at it, never mind logic.
In a further leap in logic, the fear of the media's role was transposed from
the West straight to the Russian scene in Chechnya. The Russian government
wanted to forget the main reasons for its difficulties in Chechnya, so it
blamed the media for losing the first Chechen war. To win the second Chechen
war, it would win the "information war". To do this, it would fight a shadow
war against the independent mass media. The Western media were beyond its
reach, but there was always NTV: it had won the trust of Russian viewers and
the plaudits of Westerners; it could be pictured as an agent of the Western
media-NWO.
In reality, NTV, like the rest of society, was fairly supportive of the
government in the second Chechen war. It was very different from the first
Chechen war. There was no need for the "information war"; it was not a
defensive battle of the state, but an offensive act of a statism that was
winning anyway. It was as if the regime didn't to want to lose a chance to
knock off its supposed enemies.
NTV was, you see, a part of the enemy-conspiracy that was destroying Serbia
and Russia. It was part of the open society conspiracy that was infiltrating
Russia everywhere. It was not really an "independent TV", it was Gusinskiy
TV, it followed the Soros line, it was the internal enemy linked to the
external enemy. It had to be destroyed.
This attitude was in evidence long before the Kursk submarine sank. NTV
seized upon that tragedy, both as honest news and as a chance to fight back
against the government's war on the media. The government's mishandling of
the disaster was, after all, partly a result of the "information war": it
misinformed itself as well as the media, suppressing the warning signs that
might have led it to correct its mistakes. It accused the U.S. of ramming the
Kursk, blaming its own disaster on the supposed external enemy. It repeated
lies for days on end, until the time had passed when it might have been any
use to ask for foreign help.
However, Mr. Putin was not yet in a mood to learn from these facts; he dug in
his heels and redoubled the attack on honest journalists. He blamed them for
having discredited the military and caused its deterioration and thus the
sinking of the Kursk. He had enough popular support that he could get away
with this.
NTV fought the good fight against the "information war", but it lost. It was
beaten with the simplest authoritarian-populist arguments: that its fight was
unseemly, that it had tried to embarrass the government, that it was being
used by Gusinskiy as a pawn in his struggle with Putin. The issue of the mass
media, you see, wasn't about getting out the information that was needed, it
was about the dignity of the power structures.
From that time on, the government strove to destroy or take over NTV. It
required many months, but in the end it succeeded. The government played the
role of hidden hand behind private legal maneuvers. Minister Lesin played a
particularly curious role, offering Gusinskiy a deal to get out of jail in
return for handing over NTV.
Despite this war on the media, not because of it, a sense of stability was
returning to Russia. Mr. Putin had recentralized power from the regional
fiefdoms. People stopped predicting the disintegration of the country (in a
1999 poll of elites, over 30% had said Russia might break apart). The Chechen
rebels were driven into the hills without any NATO intervention. Fears
subsided of a NATO plot to drive Russia out of the Caucasus.
Attitudes toward the West recovered part-way. Russia no longer felt itself
under siege. The mass media were no longer suspected of being the first wave
of a NATO military intervention in Russia. The fears that had driven the
"information war" were dissolving.
With its motives fading, it seemed that the information war might be called
off. The leading NTV journalists, headed by Kiselyov, were allowed to regroup
within TV-6, financed by Berezovsky. The restructured, taken-over NTV was
itself allowed to continue a somewhat more independent and honest
broadcasting line than was permitted the other state-dominated channels.
But the line of attack soon shifted onto TV-6, coupled within further
pressures on NTV.
The terrorist attacks of September 11 provided a second chance for scrapping
the information war. The U.S. and Russia faced a common enemy. In a November
2001 poll (Public Opinion Foundation), Afghanistan surpassed America as the
most likely enemy in the minds of Russians: 61% feared attack by a foreign
enemy (November 2001 Public Opinion Foundation poll), 19% naming Afghanistan
as that enemy, 13% naming the US -- still too many, but no longer the mass
hysteria of 1999. Another poll showed that as many Russians considered
America an ally as an enemy. Mr. Putin himself soon followed in the path of
TV-6 in advocating an alliance with the U.S. against terrorism, leaving the
state-dominated TV channels behind in their anti-Americanism.
The old reasons for the information war had faded into the mists of time. The
information war went on anyway, but it seemed absurd. People wanted to hope
that it would be called off. Mr. Lesin and Mr. Putin gave assurances that the
TV-6 journalistic team would have their support.
And then the plug was pulled on TV-6.
The TV-6 team might yet be allowed to reclaim its station, but probably only
if its tender amounts to a self-mutilation. For now, the logical conclusions
seem these:
1. Once Mr. Putin decides something is a domestic enemy, his goal is to
destroy that enemy. He clings to that attitude like a bulldog, no matter if
facts prove there was no enemy or if his or Russia's practical needs have
changed.
2. He is more forgiving of countries than of individuals: he accepts the
reality of the external world, he knows it is beyond the range of his
manipulation. He has made his peace with the West. But he will have to think
again and show some real capabilities for introspection, if he is to find the
moral resources to make peace with the authentic staffs of TV-6 and NTV.
*******
#11
The Independent (UK)
18 February 2002
New laws to suppress academic research
By Charles Arthur
Technology Editor
Laws being introduced by the Government would give it the power to see
academic papers before they are published and suppress them. It could also
prevent the use of e-mails between foreign colleagues.
The Export Control Bill, being steered through the Lords by the Department
of Trade and Industry, could also mean foreign students working in British
laboratories would need "licences".
The Bill, a revision of the 1939 Export Control Act, will include powers
that put software, e-mail and even speech under official control.
"This has serious implications for academic freedom," said Dr Ross
Anderson, of the security research group at Cambridge University. Dr
Anderson, an expert in cryptographic systems, went on: "The DTI is trying
to extend the scope of the Export Control Bill to interfere with all the
nooks and crannies of science and technology. They like the idea of being
able to exercise a pre-publication review – which they've never been able
to do in the past. If you submit a patent, it could be suppressed for
defence reasons but scientific papers never had that."
The DTI insisted the laws would not be applied to information already in
the public domain and the legislation contained an exemption for "basic
scientific research".
But determining whether the science was "basic" or "applied" – which would
need licensing – would require the scientist to contact the DTI.
The areas covered could change all the time. In the House of Lords,
Baroness Hendon argued that the Secretary of State would have a "continuous
power" to make fresh orders that could add to or detract from the type of
goods governed by the legislation. That would let the minister change the
reason software or even e-mail would require a licence – and what subjects
were proscribed from communication.
Peter Cotgreave, director of the pressure group Save British Science, said:
"It's all very well saying they won't use these powers themselves but they
are creating these powers, and who knows who will be in charge a few years
down the line?"
He added: "This is especially ironic, given that this Government claims to
be in favour of freedom of information. Anything that stops the publication
of any serious peer-reviewed work is bad.
"We've seen from the examples of BSE and genetically modified organisms
that the only way to get people to trust scientists is to be completely
open – not to stop them doing something on the grounds of national security."
The DTI said European regulations that recently became law already
controlled the export outside the European Union of "dual-use" items and
ideas, which could have civil or military uses. The new laws would be used
principally to cover military uses and the export of any objects or
concepts that could be used for nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
But Dr Anderson noted important implications for universities. "Teaching
medicine to a foreign national would appear to require a licence – many of
the core curriculum subjects, such as bacteriology, virology, toxicology,
biochemistry and pharmacology are central to a chemical and biological
weapons programme. South Africa's programme was set up and run by P W
Botha's personal physician. Other problematic subjects include not just
nuclear physics and chemistry but aerodynamics, flight control systems,
navigation systems, and even computational fluid dynamics."
Dr Anderson said he had been told by the DTI that the e-mails he swapped
with scientists in Norway and Israel in the late 1990s, when they were
developing a cryptographic technique for a competition, would be subject to
licensing under the revised Act. A DTI spokeswoman said she could not
comment on a specific case.
The Bill is a piece of "primary legislation" that creates a legal
framework; and is made enforceable through "secondary legislation" that
specifies the objects covered by the new law.
However, the Government has not published the secondary legislation – only
a dummy version.
During debate in the Lords last week, Lord Sainsbury of Turville said the
new Bill was the result of a detailed examination of the former Act called
for by the Scott report into the arms-for-Iraq scandal in 1996. That report
said arms controls were too lax and there were not enough checks to make
sure items had the use that was claimed for them and they reached the
destinations they were said to be bound for.
*******
#12
Russian Olympic Chief Blames Media
February 18, 2002
By LARRY SIDDONS
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The head of the Russian Olympic committee blamed ``an
extensive campaign'' by the American media for the pairs skating
controversy and raised questions about U.S. wrestler Rulon Gardner's upset
of a Russian superstar in Sydney.
While it had ``the full moral right'' to protest the decision that cost
Alexander Karelin a fourth gold medal, Leonid Tyagachiov said, the Russian
Olympic panel refrained ``in order not to sow discord.''
Tyagachiov also said that ``no protests will follow'' from his committee
over the decision by the International Olympic Committee to award duplicate
gold medals to Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada, who finished the
competition second to Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia.
``We respect the decisions of the IOC and the international sports
federations, and specifically this decision,'' Tyagachiov said in a
statement. He said the Russian pair would participate and the Russian
anthem would be played at the ceremony where Sale and Pelletier receive
their medals Sunday night.
But Tyagachiov said the action by the International Olympic Committee and
the International Skating Union resulted from ``an extensive campaign began
in the United States and Canadian press concerning a revision'' of the
pairs' results.
``This likely caused certain moral damage to the Russian athletes ... and
at the same time provided powerful support for'' the Canadians, Tyagachiov
said. ``As a result, the executive board of the IOC decided to present the
Canadian pair with a second set of gold medals.
``In this case, public opinion played the role of referee, which by all
respects cannot replace the institution of the sports referees, even with
all of its imperfections.''
IOC president Jacques Rogge and ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta
acknowledged massive media and public criticism of the silver-medal finish
for Sale and Pelletier but insisted the double-gold solution resulted
solely because a French judge had been pressured to vote for the Russians.
Tyagachiov expressed ``doubts in regard to the legitimacy'' of changing
results after events are finished.
Specifically, Tyagachiov pointed to Gardner's gold-medal victory over
Karelin in the 286-pound class of Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2000 Games,
perhaps the greatest upset in Olympic wrestling history. The loss was
Karelin's first in 13 years.
Tyagachiov said the American won because of ``a judging mistake'' but that
the Russian Olympic committee, did not protest ``in order not to sow
discord in the Olympic family and to not create a dangerous precedent.''
The U.S. Olympic Committee declined to comment.
Gardner's 1-0 win in Sydney wasn't assured until after a 90-minute review
of tapes by the judges, who determined that he held his grip on Karelin
while the Russian lost his during a clinch. While there were some
complaints of judging bias at the time, other commentators in Moscow blamed
Karelin's recent entry into politics for distracting him from wrestling.
Gardner is hospitalized in Idaho in fair condition with frostbite, after
getting lost on a snowmobile trek and surviving a frigid night in the
Wyoming backcountry.
*******
Web page for CDI Russia Weekly:
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With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and
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