Johnson's Russia List
#6094
23 February 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

[Note from David Johnson:
  1. Itar-Tass: Russia publishes population figures.
  2. Interfax: Russia publishes output, trade, inflation data.
  3. AP: Aeroflot introduces total ban on smoking.
  4. New York Times: Bill Keller, Arise, Ye Prisoners of Starvation.
  5. Luba Schwartzman: ORT Review.
  6. Reuters: Chechnya security tight on deportation anniversary.
  7. Itar-Tass: Gorbachev gives Putin full backing over Chechnya.
  8. The Russia Journal: Alexander Golts, A humanitarian intervention.
  9. The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontkovsky, New hawk would steer Russia 
off-course. (re Alexei Arbatov)
  10. AP: Russians awake to another Olympic humiliation - a hockey defeat.
  11. Los Angeles Times: Robyn Dixon, Russians Bear Ill Will Over Perceived 
Injustices.
  12. Boston Globe: Michael Holley, Russian whine leaves sour taste.
  13. Baltimore Sun: Douglas Birch, Russia's history written in vodka.
Museum: In St. Petersburg, there's a spot to explore the drink's role in 
centuries of culture. 
  14. Financial Times(UK): Andrew Clark, EXILE MAKES HIS PEACE WITH RUSSIA 
THE ARTS INTERVIEW: MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH.] 

*******

#1
Russia publishes population figures 
Itar-Tass

Moscow, 22 February: The Russian State Statistics Committee has estimated
that Russia's GDP was worth R9,040.8bn in current prices in 2001...

People's incomes adjusted to inflation were up by 8.5 per cent in January
2002 on January 2001, and down 36.2 per cent on December 2001.

Average per capita incomes amounted to R2,629.7, up 31 per cent on January
2001 and down 34.5 per cent on December 2001.

According to preliminary estimates, average monthly wages in 2002 have
increased by 41.2 per cent since last January to R3,860.

Russia's population shrank by 846,600 people in 2001 and was put at 144m
people on 1 January 2002, the Prime-TASS economic news agency reports with
reference to the Russian State Statistics Committee.

In 2000, the population dwindled by 740,100. In 2001, 1,308,600 people were
born in Russia compared with 2,251,800 who died, up 3.3 and 1.2 per cent on
the same period last year.

Natural diminution calculated as the variance between death and birth rates
stood at 943,200 people compared with 958,500 people over the same period
last year. The number of marriages and divorces has increased by 11.6 and
21.6 per cent, respectively.

The birth rate increased in 72 Russian regions and territories last year.
At the same time, people died at a higher rate in 60 regions and
territories within Russia. The proportion between death and birth has
almost remained unchanged since 2000. Natural diminution has been
registered in most parts of Russia compared with just 16 regions with
natural population growth.

The number of migrants dropped by 66.2 per cent in 2001, largely due to the
fact that many immigrants have not been officially registered...

*******

#2
Russia publishes output, trade, inflation data 
Interfax

Moscow, 21 February: Production of goods and services in the five core
sectors of the Russian economy - industry, construction, agriculture,
transport and retail trade - grew 3.0 per cent year on year in January
2002, compared with growth of 6.7 per cent in the same month of 2001, the
State Statistics Committee reported on Thursday [21 February].

Production in the core sectors was down 14.6 per cent from December 2001
due to seasonal factors, since there are more holidays in January, the
committee said.

Industrial production in January rose 2.2 per cent year on year to
R514.4bn, agricultural output grew 4.1 per cent to R37.4bn, capital
investment was up by an estimated 0.5 per cent to R73.7bn, freight turnover
increased by 1.8 per cent (including a drop of 3.5 per cent by rail) and
retail sales rose 10.1 per cent, the committee said.

The visible foreign trade turnover in December 2001 slumped 9.0 per cent
year on year to 13.8bn dollars, as exports plunged 20.2 per cent to 8.2bn
dollars, while imports rose 14.6 per cent to 5.6bn dollars.

Real disposable incomes rose by an estimated 8.5 per cent year on year in
January and the real average wage was up 18.7 per cent; in nominal terms,
not adjusted for inflation, wages rose 41.2 per cent. Consumer price
inflation was 3.1 per cent in January and 19.0 per cent in the year to the
end of January; producer price inflation was, respectively, 0.3 per cent
and 8.5 per cent.

*******

#3
Aeroflot introduces total ban on smoking 
AP
February 22, 2002

MOSCOW - Russia's largest airline, Aeroflot, has decided to ban smoking on
all its flights starting March 31, a company representative said Friday. 

Passengers will be offered an assortment of nicotine-containing products
such as chewing gum and inhalers as a substitute for smoking, said Aeroflot
spokeswoman Lyubov Kalinina. The airline has already stopped selling
cigarettes during flights, she said. 

Once among the world's most smoker-friendly airlines, Aeroflot introduced
some nonsmoking flights a few years ago and later extended the policy to
all flights lasting less than four hours. 

More than half of Russians smoke, and officials say smoking has risen
alarmingly among children over the past decade. 

Kalinina said that a poll of 5,000 passengers recently conducted by the
airline showed that 70 percent of nonsmoking passengers and 40 percent of
smokers supported the ban on smoking in flight. 

Russia remains one of the most comfortable nations in the world for
smokers, with few limits on smoking in public places.

*******

#4
New York Times
February 23, 2002
Arise, Ye Prisoners of Starvation
By BILL KELLER (billkeller@nytimes.com) 
MOSCOW

One way to measure Russia's slow recovery from the 70-year coma of
Communism is to count lobster tanks and sushi bars. Old Russia hands like
me, who remember when a banana was more wondrous than a Fabergé egg, swoon
at the profusion of delicacies available these days in the bright showcase
cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

My own crude index of the economic condition, however, is the brazen yellow
M that now seems to illuminate every other corner of this winter- gray
city. California rolls and foie gras are evidence of the great wealth
enjoyed by an industrious few, some of whom are even industrious at
legitimate businesses. McDonald's is a barometer of how the wealth has
seeped out beyond the elite. It tells you a bit about how Russia is doing
at the critical business of building a middle class. Drop into a McDonald's
here, and you find Russians who scarcely existed a dozen years ago —
Russians with decent clothes and healthy teeth, Russians with jobs that
give them spare time and cash for a family splurge, Russians with, polls
show, a flicker of optimism. You find Russians who have more or less
achieved their plaintive ambition to be "normal people." 

Whether this represents an improvement in culinary or nutritional standards
in Russia is another conversation, although those who want to argue the
evils of cholesterol should know you're talking about a country where a
slab of pork fat on buttered bread is considered the ideal accompaniment to
a jolt of vodka. There is also a fine term paper to be written comparing
the regimental good cheer of McDonald's cadres to Lenin's Young Pioneers,
but we'll leave that for another class.

As a business venture, McDonald's has been not just an indicator of
economic advance but a contributor to it. At this point, globophobes may
want to leave the room. I know that elsewhere in the world McDonald's is a
swell symbol of American cultural imperialism — blockaded by French
farmers, bombed by Turkish protesters and most recently vandalized by
Pakistanis angry at American bombing raids in Afghanistan. In Russia,
McDonald's is a lesson in the salutary potential of globalization when a
company comes to stay rather than strip-mine.

The story begins in the Gorbachev era, when the abject failure of the
Soviet economy became clear to all but the most deluded. In farming towns
you found spoiled land, demoralized workers, broken-down equipment, wheat
rotting in the open. Agriculture occupied an astounding 19 percent of the
work force (in the U.S. the figure was 3 percent), yet even in a good year
the country imported millions of tons of grain.

Mr. Gorbachev, himself a farm boy, led a frantic hunt for ways to fix it,
and for a time the countryside was beset by reformers and rainmakers of all
kinds, devoted to saving Russia from starvation. There were idealistic
young administrators who tried to invigorate collective farms by turning
spiritually depleted farm workers into shareholders. There were family
farms and sharecropping schemes. I met a few solo farmers back then
teaching themselves agronomy out of library books. Dutch experts arrived
bearing "turnkey potato projects," little swatches of Holland planted in
Moscow's exurbs. Mr. Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin tried incentives,
they tried hectoring, they tried firing agriculture ministers by the bushel.

All these well-intentioned efforts ran up against a killing reality: There
was no marketplace in which to sell. The Soviet Union had one insatiable
customer, the state, which prescribed what farms could grow, established
quotas, set prices and monopolized distribution. No one wanted to dismantle
this creaky arrangement for fear of chaos, hunger and revolt. This meant
that a farmer who mustered the energy to grow more than his obligations to
the state had nowhere to sell the surplus except in neighborhood produce
bazaars, where the prices were more or less fixed.

Enter McDonald's. The company arrived late in the first wave of Western
companies that had come to cash in if Russia succeeded. Most were
opportunists looking to import Western products and skim the dollars of
foreign expatriates, tourists and the lucky Russian rich. But McDonald's
threw itself into the deep end. From the outset, it sold food to Russians —
for rubles. And since rubles were then next to worthless outside Russia, it
began looking for Russian suppliers.

McDonald's scouts trolled the countryside for ambitious young farm
directors, offering a premium price if they would provide beef and milk and
pickles to the company's rigid specifications. The reactions ranged from
suspicion to ridicule to slack-jawed amazement, as if these guys had come
not from McDonald's but Mars. 

Viktor Semyonov, who runs a farm south of Moscow, told me the other day
that when McDonald's first showed up, offering to pay rubles if he would
grow some strange lettuce called "iceberg," a deputy rudely dismissed the
visitors. A silly idea, he insisted, and anyway an American company
(actually it was the Canadian branch of the company that opened the Russian
frontier) should pay dollars. Mr. Semyonov, who had a nose for an
opportunity, sent his man to grovel before the foreigners. His farm is now
a prosperous supplier of vegetables and herbs from acres of efficient,
computer-sprinkled greenhouses. Mr. Semyonov went on to serve a term as
minister of agriculture.

By the opening of the first store McDonald's had managed to obtain a fourth
of its ingredients from Russian sources. Now the company has 100 Russian
suppliers who provide 75 percent of what goes into the restaurants here.
The company's processing center outside Moscow (it goes by the
cringe-inducing name of McComplex) even exports fruit pies to Germany —
payback, perhaps, for all the trainloads of charity food the Germans sent
here during the various famine scares of the Gorbachev era.

Thus did the McDonald's model provide a missing link between would- be
Russian farmers and would-be Russian consumers. McDonald's did not save
Russia. Russia, in fact, is still some distance from being saved, as
insider syndicates and provincial feudalism dominate much of the economy,
including the big farms. But the country no longer totally defies the laws
of supply and demand. 

Although there has always been in Russia a streak of messianic estrangement
from the West, the globalization backlash has not taken hold here, at least
not yet. In the early days, McDonald's was as much a spectacle as a place
to eat — a heartbreaking reminder of how pathetically far behind this
superpower was. Visitors from distant cities flew home with hamburgers, as
if bearing relics of civilization. Once in those early days, after an
Aeroflot flight to Baku, in Azerbaijan, I hitched a ride in from the
airport with a family coming home from business in Moscow. As the driver
raced along the highway, one of my fellow passengers reached across the
seat and proudly offered me an eight-hour-old Big Mac from a bag of them
brought home as souvenirs.

The novelty has diminished as a competitive abundance of decent, home-grown
cafes and fast-food outlets materialized in McDonald's wake, but today
Russians still greet the opening of a McDonald's as a vote of confidence in
the neighborhood, not to mention a clean, well-lit place to congregate and
a source of scarce jobs for local youngsters. The jobs, more than 9,000 of
them now, pay poorly, but a little less poorly than most other employers,
and they pay on time in a country where wages often lag many months behind.
The training includes heavy indoctrination in a work ethic that had been
smothered by Soviet complacency. Unlike companies that came for the easy
profits — Pizza Hut comes to mind — McDonald's weathered the economic
storms and devaluations of the late 1990's without layoffs. A company that
started under expatriate management is now run entirely by Russians.

"Yes, we think globally, but we act locally," says the president of the
Russian venture, Khamzat Khasbulatov, reciting a bit of company propaganda
that, here at least, is true. And if all this makes you feel less guilty
about the times you succumbed to your brainwashed child's demand for a
Happy Meal — O.K. by me.

So how is Vladimir Putin's economy doing, on my highly scientific
McDonald's Index? It's on a slow climb out of a very deep hole.

From the first hamburger emporium that opened on Pushkin Square in January
1990, still the busiest outlet in the world, McDonald's has grown to 74
restaurants. They have now begun to spread beyond the outskirts of Moscow
to a few provincial cities like Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Yaroslavl
and Kazan. The plan is to keep expanding by 20 or 25 stores a year. 

According to my calculations, judged by the number of McDonald's outlets
per capita, Russia will be Canada in — hmm, about 70 years. 

*******

#5
ORT Review
www.ortv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba7@bu.edu)
Research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and
 Policy at Boston University

HEADLINES,
Friday, February 22, 2002
- Russian President Vladimir Putin met with representatives from the North
Caucasian region to discuss socio-economic development.  Presidential
Plenipotentiary to the North Caucasian Federal District Viktor Kazantsev
and his deputy, Murat Zyazikov, attended the meeting.
- President Putin met with Oleg Morozov, the leader of the State Duma's
Russian Regions faction.  They discussed legislative work and relations
between the regions and the federal center.
- A celebration in honor of tomorrow's Day of the Defenders of the
Fatherland was held at the Kremlin.  President Putin declared: "We must
renew and strengthen the Armed Forces and the Navy, we must improve the
technical and strategic capacity.  Today, we need a secure national
shield."
- President Putin said that the Olympic judges are biased -- not only
against Russia, but against participants from other countries like South
Korea.
- The Russian State Duma voted in favor of "non-participation" in the
closing ceremony of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games as a response
to the unfair treatment of the Russian athletes.
- Presidential Spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky declared that suggestions of
withdrawing the Russian team from the Winter Olympic Games are mistaken,
but supported the State Duma decision to skip the closing ceremony.
- Seventeen people died and three were injured when an An-26 military
airplane crashed 1.5 kilometers away from the Katunino airfield in the
Arkhangelsk oblast.  One of the three survivors, Captain Yuri Koledov
suggested that the bad weather and strong wind caused the accident.  An
investigation is underway.  The aircraft's black boxes have been removed;
according to investigators the last words of the pilot were "I see the
ground, I'm preparing to land."  
- The remains of the Su-24 front-line fighter have been discovered near
the Serbino settlement of the Pskov oblast.  The airplane crashed three
days ago.
- President Putin spoke at the ceremony celebrating the 10-year
anniversary of the Russian Arbitration Court.  He emphasized the
importance of cooperation among the Supreme, Constitutional, and
Arbitration courts and the need to strengthen the judicial cadres and to
intensify the fight against corruption.
- Russia's first public museum, the Hermitage, turns 150 years old today. 

*******

#6
Chechnya security tight on deportation anniversary
By Ron Popeski
  
MOSCOW, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Russian forces stepped up security checks in
separatist Chechnya on Saturday in an apparent bid to pre-empt violence
linked to the anniversary of mass deportations by Soviet dictator Josef
Stalin. 

A rebel Internet site reported separately that the brother of Chechnya's
separatist president, Aslan Maskhadov, had been killed in fighting in a
mountainous area of the mainly Muslim region on Russia's southern fringe. 

NTV television showed security forces stopping residents in Chechen towns
and searching buildings. It said "special operations" -- often a euphemism
for blanket searches in Russia's 2-1/2 year-old drive against separatists
-- were being conducted in the regional capital Grozny and three other towns. 

On February 23, 1944, on Stalin's orders, the entire Chechen people,
accused of collaborating with the Nazis, were rounded up and dispatched in
cattle trains to Kazakhstan and Siberia. 

Almost half of those deported, numbering tens of thousands, died on their
way into exile or on arrival. Survivors were allowed to return home --
along with other exiled ethnic groups -- in 1956 under Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev's reforms. 

Sultan Satuyev, a senior local police officer, told NTV he expected little
rebel activity to mark the anniversary of the deportations, compared to
actions undertaken in previous years. But Russian forces remained on guard. 

"These people issue eloquent threats without doing anything. It's all
bluff," Satuyev said. "But we will not stand back and merely watch. We will
take up offensive positions." 

February 23 also marks the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. An official of
Russia's FSB domestic intelligence agency told Interfax news agency there
were concerns rebels might the festival as a cover. 

Interfax said three Russian soldiers were injured in Grozny when their
armoured vehicle hit a mine. At least three Russian positions came under
fire in the past 24 hours. 

The rebel website Chechenpress said Aslanbek Maskhadov, the president's
40-year-old brother, died after his unit came under fire in recent days in
Nozhai-Yurt district, southeast of Grozny. 

Despite claiming to control the rebel republic, Russian forces remain
subject to almost daily sniper attacks and ambushes which have killed more
than 3,500 servicemen since Moscow ordered its forces back into Chechnya in
October 1999. 

*******

#7
Gorbachev gives Putin full backing over Chechnya 
ITAR-TASS

Lyon, 23 February: The world community "should acclaim President Vladimir
Putin's earnest intention and steps to switch the Chechnya problems to
political rails," Social Democratic Party of Russia leader Mikhail
Gorbachev told ITAR-TASS on Friday [22 February]. As chairman of the
International Green Cross, he is taking part here in the work of the
Dialogue for the Sake of the Earth Forum.

Everything that is happening in that Caucasian republic, he stressed,
"shows that Russia has to deal there both with bandit organizations of
Chechen origin and international terrorism. I back President Putin, who, in
spite of the present conditions, is not neglecting the main task of
restoring normal life in Chechnya," Gorbachev noted.

"Thanks to the support of the Russian president," he said, "republican and
local administrations are being formed, lessons were resumed at local
schools, the refugees are beginning to return home, and work to restore
Groznyy is under way."

*******

#8
The Russia Journal 
February 22-28, 2002
A humanitarian intervention
By ALEXANDER GOLTS

The war in Chechnya has often been compared to the United States¹ war in
Vietnam. This comparison could perhaps become even more precise soon. During
Vietnam, the American generals tried to convince the White House that they
weren¹t able to defeat the Viet-Cong because they were hiding out in Laos
and Cambodia. In the end, the generals got the go-ahead to take the war to
Vietnam¹s neighbors.

Similarly, Russian generals have been trying to prove to President Vladimir
Putin throughout the second Chechen war that rebel detachments have moved
into neighboring Georgia, to the Pankisi Gorge, where Chechens live. The
authorities in Tbilisi have always vigorously denied these allegations,
accusing Moscow of trying to push an imperial policy. Washington has also
reacted sharply to Moscow¹s accusations.

But this has changed in recent weeks. Georgian State Security Minister
Valery Khaburdzania suddenly admitted that there are Chechen rebels in the
Pankisi Gorge and that they even have training camps there. Meanwhile,
Philip Remler, the acting U.S. ambassador in Georgia, said terrorists
fleeing Afghanistan had entered the gorge, and that they are in contact with
Jordanian rebel leader Khattab, who is active in Chechnya and has contacts
with Osama bin Laden.

When Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, speaking at an international security
conference in Munich, called Georgia a weak country unable to control its
own territory, this looked like just another attempt to place the Chechen
war in the broader context of the global war against terrorism. But now it
looks more like Ivanov was asking Russia for the go-ahead to launch a
military operation in Georgia. And he got it.

A secret General Staff directive that became public provides another clue
that events in Georgia could take an unexpected turn. The directive calls
for the Russian trans-Caucasus military group to evacuate its Tbilisi
headquarters as soon as possible. The only logic in this move is to avoid
acts of provocation against the Russian officers by the local population.
But these kinds of acts would be likely only if Moscow did something to
provoke a sharp rise in anti-Russian feeling ­ a military intervention, for
example.

In this case, it isn¹t the Defense Ministry, but one of the other Russian
security ministries, that Putin is ordering to carry out an operation in the
Pankisi Gorge. The president has ordered Emergency Situations Minister
Sergei Shoigu to organize a homecoming for several thousand Chechen refugees
currently in the Pankisi Gorge. Evidently, a humanitarian operation is the
only thing Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze could officially agree to,
knowing that the opposition could take the chance to brandish anti-Russian
slogans.

But what looks like a clever cover for a potential military operation is
completely unrealistic in practice. The refugees don¹t want to return to
Chechnya so long as the war continues, and only a madman could imagine that
the rebels would let the Russian emergency situations workers deprive them
of their human shield.

At best, this means that while preparing the ground for the military
operation, Moscow has already taken care to find a justification for
potential victims among the refugees and civilians, the idea being that
everything was done to evacuate civilians, but the circumstances got in the
way. At worst, the Russian emergency situations workers will play the part
of Chechen terrorists¹ victims. This will then serve to convince the Russian
public that a military operation in Georgia is the only solution.

But the main issue is just how successful a military operation in the
Pankisi Gorge would be anyway. We already know how good the Russian military
is at localizing military action and blocking adversaries in small
settlements. 

The most likely result of such an operation would be to spread the conflict
to a large part of Georgia. History already knows similar cases. After
blaming their failures in Vietnam on the fact that Viet-Cong was escaping
into Laos and Cambodia, the U.S. generals finally got permission to fight in
the territory of these countries. But rather than securing a U.S. victory,
this sparked internal conflict in Vietnam¹s neighbors, plunging them into
decades of bloody civil war.

******

#9
The Russia Journal
February 22-28, 2002
New hawk would steer Russia off-course
By ANDREI PIONTKOVSKY 

After seeming to have died down last year following the appointment of a
new defense minister, it looks as though the conflict within Russia’s
military leadership is still far from over.

The General Staff’s proposals on cutting back strategic forces were
approved last year, putting an end to an unprecedented public polemic by
top Defense Ministry officials. But a series of articles and TV interviews
by Alexei Arbatov, deputy chairman of the Duma’s defense committee, has
sparked a new round in this polemic. Arbatov predicts that the Americans
won’t sign any legally binding strategic arms limitation agreements with
Russia. But, "If we revise our strategic forces development program, which
is the material base of diplomacy, then we can hope that the U.S.
administration will change its approach and will hold serious negotiations
with us," Arbatov suggests. He also said Russia "needs to expand its
ground-based missile forces in order to form a foundation for its nuclear
might."

That the commanders of the ground-based missile forces should be interested
in expanding rather than reducing them is only natural and justified from
both a professional and a human point of view. After all, the issue isn’t
just about missiles, but about the fate of thousands of high-class
specialists.

But as a professional well-versed on the subject, Arbatov knows full well
that increasing Russia’s strategic forces won’t make the slightest
impression on the United States. The strategic equation wouldn’t change a
bit – Russian and U.S. strategic forces were already within the limits of
stability as defined by the MAD concept, and so they would remain.

Rather than threatening the United States, Arbatov’s plan threatens only
Russia’s own military budget and economy. Arbatov won’t frighten the
Americans into running to the negotiating table. Indeed, on the very day
that Arbatov published yet another article predicting the failure of
negotiations, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made a statement during
hearings in the Senate suggesting that the Americans are ready for serious
negotiations on strategic-arms limitation. But what forced Washington to
change its approach was the "intellectual," rather than the "material,"
base of Russian diplomacy.

Arbatov added to the list of invectives against head of the General Staff
Anatoly Kvashnin an accusation I have to take a closer look at, as it
concerns issues I was actively involved in for many years.

According to Arbatov, Kvashnin is "to blame for what is now happening with
Russian-U.S. negotiations. After all, only two years ago, the U.S.
administration held very serious negotiations with us on amending the ABM
Treaty and on START III. But when we took such radical decisions, they lost
all interest."

The only thing close to the truth in this quote is that two, three and four
years ago the Clinton administration persistently tried to hold serious
negotiations with Russia on amendments to the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty. In essence, what the Americans proposed was that the Russian side
take pencil and paper and set out the limits (number of interceptors,
technical parameters for radars, etc.) they would like to place on the U.S.
missile-defense project.

Then-U.S. President Bill Clinton was never particularly enthusiastic about
missile defense and made decisions on it only under pressure from
Republicans. Clinton would have happily accepted any reasonable limits set
out by the Russian side and formulated as amendments to the ABM Treaty.

If no serious negotiations on this point took place, it is the Russian side
that is to blame. Russia’s worthy diplomats drove the Americans to
desperation with their refusal to understand the heart of the matter.
Instead, the Russians proudly recited their one enduring mantra about the
1972 ABM Treaty being the cornerstone of strategic stability.

Only a few experts, myself included, spent all these last years writing
about the rigidity, shortsightedness and unforgivable stupidity of Moscow’s
official position, which was closing the door to what would have been an
advantageous compromise for Russia. But these were lone voices crying in
the wilderness. We had no support from any of the more official political
specialists, including Arbatov. Though it turns out he realized all along
that we were right.

Whatever the case, the chance for a compromise in 1998-2000 was lost in the
stupidest fashion. And Arbatov knows perfectly well that the shift in the
U.S. position had nothing to do with Moscow’s decisions, but was due to a
new administration coming to power in the United States. It has long since
been known that, for the Republicans, withdrawing from the ABM Treaty is an
ideological or even quasi-religious issue – a sort of symbol of the
Republican faith.

Now Arbatov is making a maximal increase of Russia’s strategic symbols his
own driving idea. And if Moscow’s chosen foreign-policy course of
partnership with the United States and the West gets in the way of this
idea, then so much the worse for this approach. In one article after
another, Arbatov spins the legend of a trusting and shortsighted president
who has fallen under the influence of the cunning head of the General
Staff, whose interests "have nothing in common with the country’s national
security."

But playing with this legend, which was invented only in an attempt to get
Kvashnin removed, could have unpredictable consequences in a country where
the president has found himself well ahead of his bureaucracy in how he
sees the real geopolitical challenges of the 21st century.

(The writer is director of the Center for Strategic Research. )
 
*******

#10
Russians awake to another Olympic humiliation - a hockey defeat
February 23, 2002
By MARA D. BELLABY
  
MOSCOW (AP) - Russians, who have complained that their athletes are the
victim of North American favoritism at the Winter Olympics, awoke Saturday
to learn that their powerful hockey team had lost to the United States. 

The Americans advanced to the gold medal game against Canada after holding
off a furious rally by the Russians to win 3-2 Friday night. The victory
came 22 years to the day after the Americans' ``Miracle on Ice'' Olympic
win against the former Soviet Union at Lake Placid, N.Y. 

After the game ended, about 20 young Russians marched to the U.S. Embassy
to protest, but were dispersed by police. 

In Salt Lake City, Russian hockey coach Slava Fetisov suggested that the
championship game between the two North American teams was no fluke. 

``An agreement's been signed that is designed to have a final between
Canada and the USA,'' Fetisov said. ``You have this final, you have NHL
referees. 

Under an agreement between the National Hockey League and hockey's
international governing body, NHL referees must work any Olympic game in
which a majority of the players are from the league. 

Usually a winter sports powerhouse and big medal winner, Russia has just 14
medals so far in Salt Lake City - far less than expected and far behind the
United States' 30. 

Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have complained
about unfair decisions, prejudiced refereeing and anti-Russian sentiment
throughout the games. 

What started as minor annoyance over the unusual decision to award a second
gold medal in pairs figure skating exploded into outright rage when one of
the country's top cross-country skiers was disqualified Thursday after a
drug test. 

In another disappointment, 16-year-old American figure skater Sarah Hughes
swept past Irina Slutskaya, leaving the Russian with the silver. A Russian
protest seeking a second gold medal for Slutskaya was rejected. 

Russia's fate at the Olympics has been especially frustrating for Putin,
who urged the nation to revive its Soviet-era dedication to sports shortly
before the games began. 

On Saturday, about 20 young Russians protested outside the Canadian
Embassy, criticizing what they consider the first slight of the games: the
decision to make a Russian figure skating pair share the gold with a
Canadian team. 

``We are a great sports power,'' Maxim Korotkov-Gulyayev, who organized the
rally, told Interfax news agency. ``If the North Americans want to prove
they are stronger, they should not prove it on the shoulders of our
athletes.'' 

********

#11
Los Angeles Times
February 23, 2002
Russians Bear Ill Will Over Perceived Injustices
By ROBYN DIXON, Times Staff Writer

MOSCOW -- The Russian president called the Winter Olympics "a flop." The
head of Russia's church called it unfair. And a leading politician
complained that Russia's athletes have been robbed "in broad daylight,
arrogantly, boorishly, insolently and cynically."

As the ice wars played out, Russians stayed up late and fumed in front of
their television sets.

The Russian ice hockey team was taking on the United States in what was
widely seen as a grudge match recalling the famous 1980 face-off between
Cold War foes. The Americans won then, and they won again Friday, 3-2.

The stinging loss added insult to hurt pride, as accusations of
anti-Russian bias at the Games sweep the country. For a while, it looked as
if Russia might even pull its athletes from the rest of the competition and
boycott the closing ceremony.

It wasn't until late Friday that Guennadi Shvets, a spokesman for the
Russian Olympic delegation, put those fears to rest, announcing, "We will
stay at the Games."

Earlier Friday, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said, "Several things
[at the Games] evoke astonishment, speaking mildly." His spokesman and the
Russian parliament called for the boycott.

Putin, normally restrained and cool, lashed out at the International
Olympic Committee leaders elected in July, pressuring them to act more
forcefully in defending Russian athletes against perceived bias.

"Their passive stance astonishes me," said Putin, who is an enthusiastic
downhill skier.

And commenting on the abundance of National Hockey League referees in the
Games, he said, "Northern American athletes receive a clear advantage."

Russian Olympic officials first threatened to pull out of the Games on
Thursday after a star cross-country skier, Larissa Lazutina, was
disqualified; a drug test had indicated a high level of blood hemoglobin,
which Russian officials attributed to Lazutina's menstrual cycle, not doping.

That controversy came on the heels of last week's decision to award a
second set of gold medals to two Canadian figure skaters amid reports of
judging misconduct. This was seen as a deep humiliation for the original
gold medalists, Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, and many
here believe it fanned ill will over later judging decisions that went
against the Russians.

Thursday night, Russia filed a protest with the International Skating Union
after figure skater Irina Slutskaya narrowly lost a gold medal to American
Sarah Hughes, an outcome seen as robbery by Russian spectators. Demands
from Russian Olympic officials that Slutskaya, too, be awarded gold were
rejected in less than 24 hours.

On Friday, Putin said Russia should see out the competition. "Let's see how
the Olympics end. Let us hope that the IOC leadership will manage to
resolve these difficulties," he told reporters.

Attempts to placate Putin backfired when the Russian leader took umbrage at
a letter from IOC President Jacques Rogge, which said all the judges'
decisions were correct.

The letter, delivered via the State Department, contained a blunder, which
the presidential spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, exposed during a live
program on the national NTV network.

"The letter is addressed to Mr. A. Putin!" he said, holding the letter up
to jeers from a studio audience. "So I would like to say to Mr. Rogge that
if he had the misfortune of ending up at the head of IOC and thus got into
big politics, then before sending a letter to a head of state, it wouldn't
hurt to learn that he is not Antoine nor Andre but Vladimir."

He said the letter symbolized the scornful attitude many foreign
bureaucrats and sports organizations have developed toward Russia.

"We are being treated now differently from the way we were treated in the
past," Yastrzhembsky complained. "At least they were afraid of us then. And
they were afraid to mess with us."

Complaints about the judging came from the patriarch of the Russian
Orthodox Church, Alexy II, from captains of industry and from ordinary
Russians who vowed to march on the Canadian Embassy today.

Dmitri Rogozin, head of the Duma foreign affairs committee, captured the
national mood in a phone interview with The Times.

"The public is fuming and boiling now. The public anger against the U.S.A.
is now the worst it has been in years. Every Russian citizen is holding a
deep grudge against America now. How would you feel after they robbed you
of your victory in broad daylight arrogantly, boorishly, insolently and
cynically?" he complained.

Yastrzhembsky, the presidential spokesman, acknowledged that part of the
problem was Russia's economic difficulties and declining state investment
in sports.

Victor Tikhonov, a renowned former Soviet hockey coach of gold
medal-winning teams, said in a telephone interview that government
indifference to athletics is to blame for the Russians' low medal count in
sports they once dominated.

"We have now come to the point where we are eating up the last crumbs of
success planted back in the Soviet times. And it hurts very much when even
these crumbs are stolen from us, as happened more than once in Salt Lake
City."

He said that after the Soviet Union fell, the infrastructure of sports
schools and training centers began to crumble, but no one cared because
athletes were still bringing in medals.

Political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky of the Independent Institute for
Strategic Studies, a Moscow-based think tank, said the scandal was unlikely
to harm relations between Russia and the U.S. He expressed surprise at
Putin's remarks.

"It is not the smartest statement our president ever made. It is a pity
that the president allowed himself to be involved in this controversy where
the Russian sports officials are trying to cover obvious shortcomings in
their own work by accusing the Games judges and organizers," he said. "This
painful hysteria reflects the very sick state of the Russian political
environment now."

With the flare-up over Russian perceptions of bias, the pressure was on the
Russian team going into the ice hockey game against the Americans on Friday.

As the match approached, former Russian hockey champs involved in the 1980
showdown said Russian pride was as much at stake in Friday's game as it was
then.

Vladimir Krutov, 41, who played in the 1980 game, said memories of the loss
still bring pain.

Before Friday's showdown, he spoke of the pressure the athletes face. "Each
of them must realize that they are playing not an ordinary game, but are
defending the pride of their own country. If the Russians win this game, it
will mean that the entire Russian Olympic team has won. That Russia has
won. If we lose, it will mean that the entire country is defeated."

Sergei Loiko and Alexei Kuznetsov of The Times' Moscow Bureau contributed
to this report. 

********

#12
Boston Globe
February 23, 2002
Russian whine leaves sour taste
By Michael Holley, Globe Columnist

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah - Playing against the Russians just isn't fun
anymore. The games themselves are OK, but it's the postgame persecution act
that's hard to take. 

Listening to them talk about the Winter Olympics is like listening to Al
Davis talk about the NFL in court. Everybody is out to get them. They are
being robbed. They are being disrespected. They are in the cross hairs of
the International Olympic Committee. They are in the American West, victims
of a new gold rush: The gold is truly theirs, but the cheating North
Americans are doing all of the gold digging.

I'll agree with the Russians on the subject of the skating scandal. They
got a bad deal on all counts. There are still people who believe,
incorrectly, that the scandal occurred when a French judge saw ghosts and
voted for Russian skaters who were undeserving of a medal. That's not what
happened. Sharing your space atop the medal stand is bad enough. It's even
worse when the majority of the public thinks that you have no right to be
there.

That's one legitimate complaint, and we'll still be talking about it 30
years from now. But what about this other pouting? Russia lost a men's
hockey semifinal to the United States last night, 3-2. Team Russia lost
because it slept through the first two periods, trailing, 3-0. It lost
because it was outshot in the first period, 20-4, and appeared to be
indifferent around the net.

There was a close call on a puck that nearly slipped into the American net,
but it didn't get an official review. Maybe it should have. To say that it
was definitely a goal is an overstatement.

I knew the Russians wouldn't see it that way, though. I camped out in their
E Center interview room, waiting for their coach to explain why his players
have to run uphill on the world stage.

''They didn't help us, that's for sure,'' Slava Fetisov said of the
officials. He went on to say that American and Canadian referees are
inherently biased and, in crucial situations, ''they are not going to call
it a penalty.''

Worst of all, Fetisov said this of tomorrow's USA-Canada gold medal game:
''It was designed for the game [to feature] the USA and Canada.''

Fetisov said a lot of other things during that news conference. He gave a
tremendous, Hamlet-like monologue in Russian. When English-speaking
reporters were asked what he said, an interpreter replied that the coach
simply repeated his previous statements. So, at minimum, Fetisov twice
accused the IOC of fixing its hockey games. Once in English and once in
Russian.

Twenty-two years to the day that a group of American underdogs defeated the
mighty Russians, we had the Profanity on Ice. As soon as the game ended,
Russia's Danny Markov cursed the officials and repeatedly grabbed his
crotch. It was embarrassing. He had to be pulled off the ice by a teammate.
Then there was Fetisov implying that the result was determined before the
game was played.

The only good thing about this is that, maybe, it will wake up some of the
Miracle on Ice romantics. They make a reference to that game each time the
US plays Russia. It's incredibly annoying. As much as Americans love a good
sequel, there can never be a repeat of the game in Lake Placid. If there
were, it would probably be as hollow as Woodstock II. Anyway, we are a
different United States and they are a radically different Russia.

Russia will always be a natural villain, I guess, but Canada is the
contemporary rival. Americans are tired of hearing how the Canadians
invented the game and the Canadians are tired of hearing that Toronto is
really an American suburb.

''They may have every bus and plane coming down from Canada to watch this
game,'' US forward Jeremy Roenick said. ''This game is going to be great
for hockey.''

Last night's game could have been great for hockey. But following a Russian
threat to leave the Games (and to not participate in the 2004 Summer
Games), there was yet another official calling foul.

You would hate to see Fetisov show up at your local Y. You couldn't play
cards with him because he would accuse you of tampering with the deck. You
couldn't finish a basketball game with him because he would keep
complaining of a slap on the wrist.

Let the US-Maple Leaf rivalry begin. Our old athletic rivals have now
become interested in appeals.

******

#13
Baltimore Sun
February 23, 2002
Russia's history written in vodka
Museum: In St. Petersburg, there's a spot to explore the drink's role in
centuries of culture. 
By Douglas Birch
Sun Foreign Staff

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - It was the lifeblood of empire, and fuel for
revolutionary mobs. It has been banned, curbed and cursed. And it has
killed millions of Russians over the centuries, but there is nothing
Russians love more. 

Vodka, the drink that has put serfs and czars under the table, is still the
liquor of choice here - a source of national pride, of intemperate joy and
of considerable suffering. 

At the Museum of Russian Vodka, curators argue that vodka is more than just
the national drink, that it has played an important role in Russian
politics and culture. 

"The history of Russia has always been closely connected with vodka," says
Segei Chentsov, the physician and amateur historian who serves as museum
director. 

For much of the past 500 years, vodka production has been a state monopoly.
Taxes and profits from the beverage helped pay for the building of St.
Petersburg in the early 18th century and helped finance the defense of the
city (renamed Leningrad) during World War II. 

A ban on the consumption of alcohol in 1914 helped undermine the authority
of the czar's officials. In the 1920s, taxes on vodka helped shore up the
finances of the young Soviet state. 

Ice fishermen drink vodka as they wait on the ice. Soldiers traditionally
drank vodka before battle. They dip their newly won medals in vodka, to
"wash" or bless them. 

Vodka is drunk to celebrate the purchase of a new car, moving into a new
apartment, even the acquisition of a new washing machine. Most national
celebrations revolve around its consumption: a holiday is not over, the
saying goes, until the last drop is drunk. 

At parties, there are strict rules for the consumption of vodka - from
restrictions on what foods can accompany it (bread is good, fruit is bad)
to the way it is drunk. 

The only proper method to empty a glass of vodka is in a single gulp;
Russians are appalled by foreigners who sip it like wine. And they are
baffled by guests who refuse a second and third and fourth glass. By
tradition, once your host opens a bottle of vodka, he throws away the cap. 

Vodka is regarded as more than just a major source of recreation. It is
Russia's national tranquilizer. When a tornado hit a Volga River town in
the 1980s, local Soviet officials suspended the rules prohibiting vodka
sales before 11 a.m; sales instead began at 8 a.m. 

The museum traces vodka's history to the early 15th century when Russians
tried to imitate a distilled alcoholic beverage that traders brought to
Moscow from Genoa. The recipe they developed was simple. They made alcohol
from fermented wheat, then added spring water - tossing in a few berries or
herbs for taste. 

Russia's upper classes delicately referred to it as "wheat wine." But
Russia's serfs and tradesmen gave vodka the name that took hold, derived
from voda, the word for water. 

At first, the Russian Orthodox Church controlled alcohol production and
sales. But by the 18th century, during Peter the Great's reign, the sale of
vodka became a state monopoly. It remained so for most of the next 300 years. 

Vodka was the drink of the lower classes but spread to the nobility.
Taverns called kabakhs opened to serve vodka to gentlemen. The minimum
order in the mid-17th century was a "basket" - more than six gallons.
Baskets were shared among a crowd, of course, and the alcohol content was
slightly lower than today's. But no one left a kabakh sober. 

Russian leaders more than once tried to ban or restrict the sale of
alcohol. Czar Nicholas II outlawed its consumption in 1914 - but was
overthrown and killed by the Bolsheviks. Communist Party leader Mikhail S.
Gorbachev tried to curb the consumption of all alcohol- and presided over
the end of the Soviet Union. 

The vodka museum is sponsored by two of Russia's largest vodka distillers.
The exhibits include praise from 19th-century scientists for vodka's
alleged health benefits, a diorama of a joyful monk distilling alcohol and
samples of modern vodka bottles shaped like bears and tank shells. There is
little mention of the toll vodka takes in shattered lives and families. 

But tour guides say they tell both sides of the story. "We don't
propagandize vodka," says Natasha Gordeyeva. "There were some very bad
pages in our history." 

By some estimates, alcohol consumption in Russia - which means mostly vodka
- rose 500 percent between 1995 and 2000. That year, according to
government statistics, it reached a new high - the equivalent of more than
10 gallons a year for every adult. 

Chentsov suspects that Russians over the centuries became genetically
adapted to drinking large amounts of alcohol - and that people who
couldn't, didn't survive. And Russians in general are proud of their
capacity for drinking. But Russians are far from immune to the effects of
alcohol. 

Alcoholism doesn't just cause health problems, absenteeism and brawling.
Every winter, hundreds of people die in Moscow after passing out drunk and
falling asleep in the snow - and there are presumably thousands of other
victims throughout the country. Heavy drinking also partially explains the
rate of drowning being 500 times higher than in the West. 

In The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia,
historian Patricia Herlihy suggests that Russia's problems with alcohol are
symptomatic of its problems in forming a modern democratic society. The
Russian temperance movement at the turn of the century was one of the few
genuine grass-roots reform movements in Russian history. And it failed
miserably. 

American humorist Will Rogers noted in 1924 that Russians kept their
precise recipe for vodka a secret. "Nobody in the world knows what it is
made of," he said. "And the reason I tell you that is that the story of
vodka is the story of Russia. Nobody knows what Russia is made of, or what
it is liable to cause its inhabitants to do." 

*******

#14
Financial Times (UK)
23 February 2002
ARTS: EXILE MAKES HIS PEACE WITH RUSSIA THE ARTS INTERVIEW: MSTISLAV
ROSTROPOVICH 
By ANDREW CLARK
Andrew Clark finds the great Russian cellist at his Parisian apartment - a
haven filled with pre-revolutionary portraits and furniture. Exiled in
1974, the artist has decided it is time to go home

The voice at the other end of the electronic security system is
unintelligible. From inside his Parisian apartment building, Mstislav
Rostropovich is trying to explain the entry code to me, standing outside in
the rain. Faintly amusing at first, before provoking frustration on both
sides, our confused exchanges continue until I break the code to his unique
form of speech: a bortsch of several languages, stirred by a tongue that
plays havoc with articulation.

Upstairs, the door is already open, revealing a short, bandy-legged figure
with trousers up to his chest, a thrusting jaw and a bald pate fringed with
prickly white hair. Neither effusive nor forbidding, the great cellist
ushers me through a circular salon d'accueil, past a desk swamped with
letters, scores and suitcases, into a drawing-room furnished like a Tsarist
museum. It is seriously impressive, and I say so. Rostropovich explains its
genesis.

When he was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, and later stripped of
Russian nationality, he spent most of his earnings buying up
pre-revolutionary portraits and furniture. The aim was to create a refuge
in which he could lock himself away and curl up with a vodka, surrounded by
reminders of home. He is still doing so: he recently bought the Rasputin
estate, and proudly tells me he is about to publish the journals of Maria
Fedorovna (1847-1928), Danish-born mother of the last Tsar.

But this slice of Russia in the middle of Paris carries just as many
reminders of Rostropovich's life as a working musician. A cello lies next
to the score of Messagesquisse, a fearsome Boulez solo which he practises
to keep his fingers supple. A glance at his hands reveals a feminine
softness - the key to his sensitive touch and still-formidable technique.
And his diary, a hefty long-range planner inscribed in thick pencil, is a
global aide-memoire of longstanding loyalties, fresh commissions and what
he calls "my three genius" - Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten.

Slava, as he is known to friends and admirers, is a phenomenon whose gifts
are hard to quantify. He seems to live on his nerves, packing into 24 hours
what most people struggle to achieve in a week. It's not just his
incredibly robust constitution, or his energy, which would be colossal for
someone half his age. It is his extraordinary musical brain: there's
nothing he can't remember, nothing he can't play at the drop of a hat. It's
not all intuition. Everything has been totally studied, with a thoroughness
that leaves fellow-professionals gaping in wonder.

And halfway through another non-stop day, he still finds time to sit down
and talk, recalling dates, conversations and events of the past 60 years as
if they happened yesterday. In truth, Rostropovich looks a little tired -
less a reflection of his lifestyle, more an after-effect of the lunch he
has just had with President Jacques Chirac at the Elysee palace. Where most
septuagenarians would sensibly withdraw for an afternoon nap, Rostropovich
gladly gives of himself - without giving too much away. He is too
great-hearted to be self-centred. There's not much introspection, and not a
shred of narcissism, in spite of decades of adulation from colleagues,
potentates and royalty. He has, however, become increasingly conscious of
mortality.

That explains his plan to move his worldly goods, currently divided between
homes in six countries, back to St Petersburg, where he is establishing a
Rostropovich archive. "All my life, I never look behind," he says. "Now I
look behind." Although he refuses to take back a Russian passport, out of
loyalty to western friends who supported him in 1974, he says he wants to
be buried in Russia, in the same soil as his teacher Shostakovich, his
composer-colleague Prokofiev, and his contemporaries Richter, Oistrakh and
Gilels - "all my friends. Maybe we have a drink together after this life."

A sense of mortality also underpins his recent decision to stop
commissioning new works for cello: the last of his 120-plus world premieres
will be a Penderecki concerto, to be given next year with the Vienna
Philharmonic.

"I must stop because now is so many talented younger generation. They must
look for another style of composer, not my style. I have TV from Russia -
this pop music, so ugly, without voice, without music. Now must be coming
new generation composer who have exactly unison with this time. Already
impossible for me make something more than I make with Britten,
Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Messiaen, Dutilleux, Lutoslawski, many, many.
Maybe now something in between, waiting for new time, new style, new
Beethoven, because now make rest."

By which he means that, in his opinion, the music world is going through a
lull in creativity. But he's surely not thinking of giving up the cello
completely?

"I very careful now. Maybe I stop after two weeks, maybe after one year,
but I careful until I see my muscles very good. You know, I don't like make
celebration my last concert - 'bravo, bravo', I cry, my family cry, another
pupil so happy I stop . . . (laughter). I don't like this theatre. But I
still have good control of myself. Now I more conduct, it become equal as a
cellist."

Even though Rostropovich's English is garbled, his train of thought is
clear - at least in conversation. Orchestras tell a different story. In
rehearsal, he has a habit of getting words mixed up, especially when he
gets excited. When he calls out "not so fast, not fast, slow, slow, not
slow, not faster", as a way of indicating the tempo he wants in a
Shostakovich symphony, it's hardly surprising if everyone feels befuddled.

But such is his passion and generosity of spirit that his performances
create their own aura. The cello may be Rostropovich's trademark, and the
engine of his musical authority, but his moral authority is best expressed
as a conductor - in spite of those technical shortcomings. He covered great
swathes of repertoire in his 17 years with the National Symphony Orchestra
of Washington, but no one today really wants to hear his Beethoven, Mahler
or even Tchaikovsky, where his tempi have become debilitatingly slow. It's
the musical truths of his "three genius" that he is uniquely qualified to
interpret.

Orchestra managements on both sides of the Atlantic have shrewdly picked up
on this: the surest way to attract Rostropovich, and a capacity audience,
is to give him carte blanche with these three composers. Chicago will hear
a slab of Britten later this year, followed by Prokofiev next year. Munich
is about to hear the Shostakovich cycle that London, New York and Chicago
have already enjoyed. Vienna will have the War Requiem in 2005 - "I give my
word, or I hear together (beyond the grave) with Ben". The furthest ahead
that he has planned is January 2006: Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
with the London Symphony Orchestra.

And it's to the same three composers that Rostropovich turns for his LSO
concerts over the next couple of months. The series begins at the Barbican
on March 14 with a semi-staged performance of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet,
and ends with three Shostakovich concerts at New York's Avery Fisher Hall
in late April. In the middle falls his 75th birthday on March 27 - which he
has also chosen to spend with the LSO, as guest of honour at a gala to
raise funds for the orchestra's music education centre at St Luke's.

The precise nature of Rostropovich's empathy with his three composer-heroes
cannot be explained in words. It has to be experienced in the concert hall.
Shostakovich succoured him as a pupil. Prokofiev inspired him as a young
professional musician. Britten sheltered and supported him as a refugee.
All three dived at the chance to write music for him.

Rostropovich's loyalty to them - and to other Soviet-era friends, including
Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Boris Yeltsin - was forged through the
life-and-death conditions of communist Russia. He traces his disaffection
with communism to February 10, 1948, the day he read that Shostakovich had
been removed as a teacher at the Moscow Conservatoire, because of so-called
"formalist" tendencies. Thereafter Rostropovich refused to sign
Party-inspired denunciations of fellow artists - a stand that led, three
decades later, to exile.

He says that unlike Prokofiev, Shostakovich knew he had to compromise with
the authorities, and was wracked by guilt about it.

"Prokofiev very naive, not understand what happen around him. Shostakovich
know very precisely, very deep suffering. Of course he cover this, because
he make some composition for the communists. But he make this for have
permission for the next composition (to write) exactly what he like. He was
neighbour in our dacha, always he come and cry, cry. 'Slava, Galina, that's
not corrupt for me to sell my composition, I must feed 20 people around me,
only for that composition can I get money'. For two years after 1948,
Prokofiev and Shostakovich have real hunger, not enough money for food, no
royalty in Russia, no commission for new composition."

Did Rostropovich never think of the consequences of his own refusal to seek
an accommodation with communism? "I was proud I near to Shostakovich and
Prokofiev. For me I rather die than come out against these people. I was so
happy - if you see KGB archive, never I make one word of doubt about these
two composers. Even great people, even Oistrakh and Gilels, was very
careful, because both were communist. The Party ask you to sign and
normally they sign. Not open criticise, but, 'Yes, I think that is good
idea, make more music for simple people'."

As Rostropovich sees me to the door, I ask if he has any regrets about the
way his life has worked out. "I tell you now, if God ask me after I died,
you would like I give you another time on the earth? You would like
something changed in your life? I reply no, I would like to repeat my life
from beginning to end."

Including the events of 1974? "Yes, yes, because, you know, if you not
coming to big tragedy, you not understand what is big joy. It must be like
that for performer - if you not play pppp, you not understand what is ffff."

********

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