Johnson's Russia List
#6102
27 February 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Note from David Johnson:
1. strana.ru: U.S. Envoy Speaks to Calm Fears of Cooling Moscow Contacts.
"Unfounded" concern at break-up of temporary alliance, says ambassador.
2. strana.ru: Different Focus and Long-Term Money "Drive New Business
Leaders." Decade of change brings consensus on reform.
3. Reuters: Russian reforms have shrunk black economy -finmin.
4. RIA Novosti: RUSSIA'S BOOK MARKET ON THE RISE.
5. Obshchaya Gazeta: Oleg Yefimov, DOES RUSSIA HAVE CIVIL SOCIETY?
6. Reuters: Russian TB figures drop despite epidemic fear.
7. Reuters: Top Russian general backs cautious military reform.
8. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace meeting report:
Russian Science After Ten Years of Transition and Foreign Support.
9. Vladimir Socor: re 6097-Moldova.
10. International Herald Tribune: Joseph Fitchett, Participation of Russia
would transform NATO.
11. RIA Novosti: RUSSIAN MEDIA MINISTRY SUMS UP YEAR.
12. Ekspert: Igor Bunin, Quiet, Please! Why the Russian population isn't
worried about the fate of TV6.
13. The Russia Journal: Matt Taibbi, Press Review. Wines Jogs On.
14. AP: Corruption Interfering in Caspian.
15. Vladimir Shlapentokh: re 6075-Stephen Shenfield.]
*******
#1
strana.ru
February 26, 2002
U.S. Envoy Speaks to Calm Fears of Cooling Moscow Contacts
"Unfounded" concern at break-up of temporary alliance, says ambassador
By Michael Stedman
The top United States diplomat in Russia sought to calm speculation that
relations between the White House and the Kremlin were now cooling after the
terror attacks in New York and its fallout into Afghanistan had seen a marked
coming together.
U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Vershbow told a conference in the Russian
capital Tuesday that current discussion of relations between the two nations
had revealed a tendency to focus on disagreement.
Reports in Russia and the U.S. suggested that contacts had taken a turn for
the worse after a "strictly tactical" response to a convergence of strategic
interest, the envoy said. Talk was "that the basis for the temporary alliance
had largely disappeared and that differences had taken center stage," he said.
"It seems to be completely unfounded," Vershbow said. Disagreement would
continue in certain areas, but Russian President Vladimir Putin's concept of
a "Logic of Common Interest" would be a key factor determining bilateral ties.
The diplomat offered his assurance to delegates at an American Chamber of
Commerce conference examining the economic environment and investment climate
in Russia, noting that trade ties had "barely tapped the potential", and were
at the level of those between the United States and Costa Rica.
To encourage better links, the U.S. administration would push ahead with
endeavors to support Russian membership in the World Trade Organization,
Vershbow said. In doing so, "Russia will be asked to meet standards - no
more, no less - than those asked of other countries," he said.
Reform of the banking system was "the key missing link," he warned, and there
had to be a level playing field for foreign companies in Russia. Protection
of intellectual property rights was a key issue in the construction of "a
rules-based system governing international trade."
*******
#2
strana.ru
February 26, 2002
Different Focus and Long-Term Money "Drive New Business Leaders"
Decade of change brings consensus on reform
By Michael Stedman
A change of attitude among Russian citizens has now won their approval for
economic and social reform, contrasting sharply with a decade ago, when
changes were in conflict with public opinion in a still-communist state, a
top Russian economics observer told a conference in Moscow Tuesday.
This important result reflected the emergence of a new Russia, making it, "a
very appealing emerging market on the international scene," said Evgeny
Yasin, director of the Expert Institute "think tank'.
An increase of 5.1 percent in Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) was one
of the best performances in the world, he told an American Chamber of
Commerce conference on investment and economic prospects.
Foreign investment had climbed steadily from less than US$2 billion in 1998
to US$9.7 billion in the first nine months of last year, Yavin said.
This year, GDP was expected to grow by between two percent and four percent,
and inflation was likely to fall by two percent to 16 percent, he added.
The upbeat assessment was echoed by the head of accountants Ernst & Young at
their Moscow office, Stephen Moosbrugger, in observations about, "a much
improved and very robust investment climate" where mergers and acquisitions,
and divesting of assets, figured large.
"A new generation of Russian business leaders is changing its focus, and
strategic planning has entered the lexicon," he told delegates.
Russian accession to the World Trade Organization would be welcome, "because
it has the ability to pull through a great deal of economic progress and
change, simply on its coat tails."
A key advance was that business was now being powered by "smart, long-term
money", Moosbrugger said. "There's much greater comfort that this money is
here to stay," the speaker said.
But researchers from his own firm sounded a cautionary note in a separate
report presented to the conference.
"The profound economic decline that has taken place over the past ten years
and the need for modernization will necessitate investments in the region of
several dozen billion dollars in order to achieve a qualitative breakthrough
and create conditions conducive to stable long-term growth," their analysis
said.
Despite Russia's increasing attractiveness as a foreign direct investment
destination, inbound money remained substantially below the rest of Eastern
Europe at only 1.7 percent of GDP in the year 2000.
The authors warned, too, that the slow pace at which the economy was
modernizing undermined prospects for expansion and becoming more competitive.
"Reform of the natural monopolies is one of the keys to the emergence of a
competitive market in Russia," the report said. "It is a task of massive
proportions that will impact society in general and the economy as a whole.
"It is a task in which the interests of elites, business and government cross
paths."
*******
#3
Russian reforms have shrunk black economy -finmin
By Patrick Lannin
MOSCOW, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Russian reforms have led more companies to quit
the shady world of the black economy, where tax is avoided and the rules
ignored, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Tuesday.
"The shadow economy has started to shrink and is becoming more legal," he
told a luncheon organised by the American Chamber of Commerce.
"We have a wide plan of further reforms that should take away the barriers to
investment which exist today," he added.
Russia, which faced an economic crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union but
is now in the middle of a recovery, quickly developed a big semi-legal
sector.
In this economy, called the shadow, black or grey economy, companies avoid
doing business openly to escape tax and sometimes to avoid heavy-handed laws
that were either contradictory or often impossible to implement.
Analysts have estimated that at one point up to 30 percent of the country's
gross domestic product was accounted for by this shadow economic activity.
Kudrin gave no figures, but said capital flight was also falling as a result
of government reform measures.
Russia in 2001 was one of the few bright spots in the global picture, growing
five percent after 2000's record nine percent.
However, it remains heavily dependent on exports of oil, gas and metals and
Kudrin said further reforms would focus on boosting domestic activity and
encouraging investment.
He said more laws to ease taxes such as levies on company turnover and
consumer sales would be introduced.
He noted that reforms of business-related laws such as easier procedures to
get licences and to register a company as well as lower corporate taxes had
already led to the creation of 400,000 new small businesses.
Kudrin said the government was steadily heading to entry of global trade body
the World Trade Organisation of which Russia is the only major power not to
be a member.
He said Russia did not want preferential treatment in the tariff barriers it
would impose once in the WTO, noting that its average effective customs
import duty was 10-11 percent now, would rise to 16-17 percent in the first
years of entry and then be cut to 10 percent after a seven-year transitional
period.
Russia, negotiating for the last 10 years on WTO entry, hopes to get the
benefits of more open access to the markets of other countries, but has said
its own under-developed sectors, such as agriculture, need protection.
*******
#4
RUSSIA'S BOOK MARKET ON THE RISE
MOSCOW, February 26 /from RIA Novosti's Yelizaveta Sviridova/ - Books of
70,500 titles and in a total 542.3 million copies came out in Russia last
year. First Deputy Media Minister Mikhail Seslavinsky cited the statistics as
he spoke at a ministry board session Tuesday. Today's session summed up the
results of 2001 and made plans for this year.
The number of the book titles released has increased by over 18 percent
against the year 2000, while the number of book copies has seen a 15-percent
increase. According to Seslavinsky, the titles brought out last year hit a
record mark for the national publishing industry. The total number of copies
exceeded 500 million, for the first time since the collapse of the early
1990s.
The textbook and manual output has increased 20 percent. Scientific books and
belletristic literature, too, are published in growing numbers, he said.
The deputy minister attributed such positive dynamics to the law on
government support of the media and the book publishing industry, in effect
till December 31, 2001. The new terms of taxation will make it harder for
insiders to maintain this optimistic trend in the sector's development, he
pointed out.
*******
#5
Obshchaya Gazeta
No. 8
2002
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
DOES RUSSIA HAVE CIVIL SOCIETY? Observations of an Analyst
By Oleg YEFIMOV
The Civil Forum held in Russia aroused heated debates
about what civil society is and whether it exists in the
country at all. One of the logical conclusions was that the
structures of Russia's civil society are still too weak.
Further on, opinions began to differ.
Some insist that we shall have to wait for decades until
these structures form all by themselves "from below,"
explaining that this kind of spontaneous "forming from below"
is in fact the essence of civil society institutes.
Others object that "spontaneous" forming is impossible and
that civil society can - and must - be formed, "from above" as
well as "from below."
It appears that both opinions are right and wrong at the
same time. The structures of civil society, i.e. parties and
public organisations of all kinds, can indeed be formed "from
above" as well as "from below." The question is, how do they
form and what does this "above" and "below" mean?
The term "above" seems appropriate when it comes to party
construction, a process that is universally supposed to
represent political interests: certain /usually elite/ groups
recognize their interest /class interest, corporate interest,
etc./, expose the broad social basis of this interest, and
form a party - a political institute that will represent this
interest in bodies of power. It is no secret that the
mentioned elite groups often find themselves among
powers-that-be in the process and at least partly use the
"administrative resource" available while forming their party.
From this point of view, we cannot but acknowledge that the
situation with the "party constituent" of Russia's civil
society looks promising, if not exactly fine.
The other large group of civil society institutes is made
up of all kinds of "lobbyist" organizations, business
organizations in the first place. While having no outward
political role, they nevertheless lobby the interests of
business corporations, either officially /many countries have
special laws about that/ or, in some cases, unofficially.
Unofficial lobbying, a permanent source of scandals
worldwide, is generally recognized as fraught with "oligarchic
degeneration" of power - a danger that overhung Russia just a
short while ago. However, the "Equi-distance of Oligarchs"
principle recently adopted by President Putin's team is
expected to make the lobbying of business interests more legal
and cautious.
The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Association of
Entrepreneurial Organizations, Business Russia, Business
Development, the Coordination Council of Employers and other
Russian organizations engaged in this field of activity are the
only proper means that civil society can use to make capital
influence power. The high activity of these organizations shows
that Russia is developing certain features of civil democracy
in this sphere as well.
And yet, there is one more significant group of civil
society institutes, the one that unites associations oriented
at analytical and educational work rather than political action
or lobbying /Soros's Open Society Foundation and the Ford
Foundation are two outstanding examples/. These, however, are
still new to Russia, which probably has just one organization
of this kind, namely the inter-regional association
Mobilization and Development. Also known as MIR, it was set up
in 2000 and unites scientists, entrepreneurs and managers.
Judging by the nature of MIR's activity, it mostly
concerns itself with independent public expertise in those of
the social and economic spheres that are characterized by acute
problems and general instability. MIR hosts regular
conferences, seminars and round-table discussions dedicated to
such problems. Results of its research are released in the form
of subject-related reports and compilations, all of them
well-substantiated and to the point.
Significantly, the association keeps growing despite being
non-profitable for its members. Today, MIR has 20 subsidiaries
registered in different regions of Russia, employs the services
of numerous qualified experts and is gaining the reputation of
an authoritative organization.
To sum it up, Russian society is in the making, forming
its structures both from "above" and from "below."
Furthermore, the process is based on healthy pluralistic
competition among the social associations that are capable of
coupling their private interests with common goals and
interests. Hopefully, the country will eventually create a
solid basis for modern civil society and for an effective legal
democratic state system.
*******
#6
Russian TB figures drop despite epidemic fear
MOSCOW, Feb 26 (Reuters) - New cases of tuberculosis are dropping for the
first time in years in Russia despite fears of a possible epidemic, Russian
health officials said on Tuesday.
According to Health Ministry figures, 133,000 new sufferers of TB -- an
airborne bacterial infection that attacks the lungs and is a major health
problem in poorer countries -- were diagnosed last year, about 1,000 fewer
than in 2000.
Russian health officials were reported last November as saying a rapid rise
in the number of people infected with HIV in Russia could lead to a
tuberculosis epidemic.
"Fears of a growth have not been justified," Ruslan Khalfin, a senior health
official, told a meeting of Health Ministry officials, reporting a drop in
new cases in 55 of Russia's 89 regions.
Officials were quoted by Russian state television as attributing the TB
decline to better medicines produced by Russian pharmaceutical companies and
better techniques of early diagnosis.
An estimated 16 million people, or one in six, in Russia are already infected
with TB.
People infected with HIV, whose immune systems are weakened, are 30 times
more likely to develop tuberculosis, one of the main opportunistic infections
that kills AIDS sufferers.
********
#7
INTERVIEW-Top Russian general backs cautious military reform
By Jon Boyle
MOSCOW, Feb 26 (Reuters) - A top Russian general said the country's armed
forces must be overhauled because of poor health, bad education and declining
male population, but not too hastily.
General Valery Astanin, in charge of manpower in the world's fourth largest
military, said in a rare interview with foreign media that the armed forces
would hand President Vladimir Putin a detailed plan by July 1 on a switch to
a volunteer army.
But he dismissed a rival proposal by liberal politician Boris Nemtsov which
would cut the armed forces to 400,000 over five years from the present 1.2
million members.
"What good is an army of 400,000 for a country such as our Russia?," fumed
Astanin, springing from his desk and sweeping a hand as big as a shovel over
a map of the biggest country on the planet.
With a 1.2 million strong military dependent on conscription, Russia remains
a force to be reckoned with. But an ageing nuclear arsenal and struggles to
quell Chechen rebels point to a much weaker force than during the Soviet
heyday.
Military reform has been a buzzword in Russia for a decade, and Nemtsov,
parliamentary leader of the Union of Right Wing Forces (SPS), says Putin has
promised to consider including a start date for the move to a fully volunteer
force in a major policy speech due in around a month.
The cabinet is due to discuss the issue on March 15.
Defence analysts say the inclusion of Nemtsov and other leading liberals at
key meetings on the military's future suggest the Kremlin chief is frustrated
with the slow pace of reform and is ready to listen to voices other than his
generals.
"Nemtsov is a politician, that's all," Astanin told Reuters, his voice a
reflection of his powerful build. "They (the SPS) are people who have never
done anything useful in their lives. They just talk," he said.
The general's frustration is fuelled by a sense that the military is being
blamed for problems that affect the whole of Russian society: lack of cash,
disintegrating infrastructure, and falling educational standards.
A halving of the number of boys born each year in Russia from 1987-95 leaves
no long-term future for a mass army.
It currently drafts some 400,000 young men a year, a figure Astanin says is
only 12 percent of the 18-27 year-olds liable for conscription.
The rest win exemption as students or due to ill-health. Tens of thousands
prefer to risk arrest by evading the draft and many pay huge bribes to avoid
service.
And those who do make it into uniform are of little help.
More than half are too unfit to be of operational use, says Astanin. Another
40 percent have never worked or studied, and over a fifth have only primary
and secondary school education.
"That means that we can't send them to be trained as specialists because they
won't be able to cope with the programme. So that is the state of the 12
percent we get."
SHAKE-UP
Those stark figures have convinced the military of the need for a volunteer
army, well-equipped, well-trained, staffed by men for whom the armed services
are a profession offering decent living standards and the chance to learn new
skills.
But the million-strong force envisaged by the General Staff contrasts sharply
with the 400,000 army of volunteers contained in the plan pushed by
politician Nemtsov.
Nemtsov's plan calls for a five-year transition, starting next January, and
would create a 160,000-strong reserve entirely drawn from conscripts serving
just six months. That, the authors say, would end the mistreatment of
conscripts which has so hurt the army's image.
But Astanin said 50,000 men would be needed to train the conscripts, who
could not be viewed as an operational reserve.
Rattling off a barrage of statistics, Astanin said Russia had 16 soldiers per
km of border -- compared to 58 in Turkey, 83 in the United States, 107 in
China and 152 in India.
Astanin argues that the liberal politicians of SPS, lobbying hard to win over
President Putin, are pushing for too much.
"To complete the changeover will take at least six to eight years... In
France, for example, they are making the changeover now, over about six to
eight years. And that is taking into account that their economy is doing
rather better than ours.
"Our SPS want to do it in just two years. You could take nine pregnant women,
but before the nine months are up none of them will give birth," he said,
meaning there are some things that cannot be rushed.
But Astanin could barely contain his exasperation with the SPS costings,
notably its call for a basic monthly pay for infantrymen of 3,500 roubles (a
little over $100). A colonel currently earns around 3,000 roubles.
"If we formed this (volunteer) army now, and found this 3,500, we'd spend our
entire military budget and have nothing left to develop new weapons or even
buy them," he said.
*******
#8
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
meeting report
www.ceip.org
Russian Science After Ten Years of Transition and Foreign Support
Moderator: Andrew Kuchins
Presenters: Irina Dezhina and Loren Graham
On February 19th, 2002, Irina Dezhina and Loren Graham delivered a
presentation at the Carnegie Endowment on the state of Russian science to
launch their working paper just published by the Carnegie Endowment, "Russian
Science After Ten Years of Transition and Foreign Support." Irina Dezhina is
a senior researcher at the Institute for the Economy in Transition in Moscow,
Russia. Loren Graham is professor of the history of science at MIT. Their
paper was initially presented at the conference "International Support for
Science in Russia and Ukraine: A Ten-Year Retrospective and Look Ahead," held
in London on October 22-23, 2001. The research and writing of this paper was
supported by the U.S Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF).
Loren Graham opened the presentation with a short introduction on the basic
structure of the Soviet scientific establishment inherited by the Russian
Federation. The Soviet system was composed of three separate institutional
"pyramids": the university system, the academy system, and the
military-industrial complex. Of these three, the military-industrial complex
enjoyed the lion's share of the funding, receiving some 80% of all resources
devoted to the sciences. The remaining resources were split unevenly between
the university system, which received 7% of the funding available, and the
academy system, which received 13%. Unlike its western counterpart, the
university system of the Soviet Union placed a low priority on research and
was mainly a pedagogical system. In fact, almost 60% of all fundamental
research was done through the academy system which was large enough and
powerful enough to warrant the title of "empire of knowledge." This academy
system has no western analogs; it was both a learned society and an
administrative bureaucracy.
The Soviet scientific system possessed both advantages and disadvantages. It
enjoyed generous financial and psychological support, a strong educational
establishment and had the ability to concentrate on a few high-priority
projects through centralized control of research. However, the Soviet system
was negatively impacted by its insistence on rigidly segregating research
from education and fundamental research from applied research as well as the
over-emphasis placed on the military and the low productivity engendered by
the absence of genuine peer review and other factors.
The abortive putsch of 1991 allowed critics of the system the opportunity to
engage in genuine reform, which they did by establishing a new Russian
Academy to serve as a Western-style learned society in competition with the
existing Soviet Academy. Initially, the two academies coexisted, however, the
privileges and prestige of the old Soviet academy proved too enticing and the
two academies were fused into a single entity by December, 1991. The result
was a Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) that was basically the same as the
Soviet Academy except for a reform of the presidium election process and the
introduction of a limited system of peer-review.
The failure to reform the institutions of Russian science was quickly
overshadowed by the financial and human crisis that developed. As Irina
Dezhina explained, the statistics from 1991 to 1999 reveal a drastic decrease
both in the amount of funding provided for research (which fell from 1.03% to
.32% of GNP) and in the number of personnel involved in R&D in Russia (which
was cut in half). This general collapse was accompanied by a massive "brain
drain" that was both internal and external. According to Dezhina, exact
numbers are difficult to come by and estimates of external flight range from
7,000 researchers for the period 1993-1996 to 30,000 for the same period.
Moreover, it is estimated that only ten percent of all researchers in Russia
are working full time in science, while the rest of Russia's scientists
continue to list themselves as staff members but spend most of their time in
activities outside of science as part of a huge internal "brain drain."
During this period of tumultuous upheaval, foreign support of Russian science
constituted a very important source of financing. This support has taken many
forms over the past decade, progressing from emergency help extended to
individuals in the early 1990s to cooperative support and research during the
mid 1990s with an emphasis on the development of infrastructure (libraries,
telecommunications, laboratory equipment). From 1997 on, foreign support has
been geared towards supporting the institutional reform of Russian science,
strengthening the bond between basic and applied research and between
research and education, and supporting underrepresented groups like women in
science and young researchers. Foreign initiatives have not been large enough
to fundamentally reorganize Russian science.
Rather, they have provided "demonstration models" that have helped the
scientific establishment adapt to the new economic and political environment
of Russia. Specifically, foreign assistance has helped Russian science by
teaching better planning strategies and better proposal writing skills,
improving the material resources available to Russian scientist and by
reducing the extent of the brain drain.
Graham and Dezhina are cautiously optimistic about the future of Russian
science. While it may still be in trouble, there are a few bright spots on
the horizon. In the last two years, the Russian government has delivered the
sums it promised, and the decline in the number of researchers in Russia has
halted. It seems likely that the worst period has past. Moreover, Russia has
not lost its interest in science, as demonstrated by the rise in enrollment
of graduate students in Russian universities. In Graham's words, "Science is
not the delicate flower that we thought it was. Rather it is more like a
hardy weed." But he cautioned that, "Although science may be resistant to
poverty, it may also be resistant to reform." In the view of these two
scholars, if reform of Russian science is to occur, it will be evolutionary,
not revolutionary. In this process, the impact of foreign influence has been
great and positive and should be continued if not simply for the sake of
science, than for the sake of international security and the future of a
civil society in Russia.
Summary by Karlis Kirsis, Junior Fellow, Russia & Eurasia Program.
*******
#9
From: "Vladimir Socor"
Subject: re 6097-Moldova
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002
Don Jacobsen's note, #3 in JRL 6097, February 25, cites unspecified sources
in Chisinau claiming that "many if not the vast majority" of the "tens of
thousands" of anticommunist protesters are being paid to demonstrate, and
are paid some more if they'll carry a flag. Mr. Jacobsen feels that "readers
might be interested to know" about this.
As I watch the situation closely, I have never come upon any indication of
the aforementioned practice. The internal affairs minister and special
information service [state security] director in Moldova's communist
government certainly don't corroborate the allegations of Mr. Jacobsen's
sources. The two officials, questioned by the communist parliament in
plenary session as to whether demonstrators were being paid, answered that
they had "no such information." These and other officials have every
incentive to discredit the protests through that kind of allegations. They
can't.
The protesters don't "just scream about status of the Moldovan language"
(this issue is hardly relevant at present) but against communist measures to
give the Russian language a privileged status (re-russification) and to
bring back Soviet Moldovan historiography. Beyond those demands, the tens of
thousands of young people demonstrate for Europe (in their understanding of
that notion), and for the Romanian identity which--in Moldovas's
conditions--implies some closeness to Europe. Above all, they scream to stop
the communists from dragging the country backward and eastward.
*******
#10
International Herald Tribune
February 26, 2002
Participation of Russia would transform NATO
By Joseph Fitchett
PARIS-A transformation of NATO is emerging as it prepares parallel moves to
bring in up to seven new East European members while simultaneously upgrading
relations with Moscow, the alliance's longtime principal adversary, diplomats
say.
The proposal to improve ties with Moscow, set to receive tentative approval
this week in Brussels, could receive final clearance at a NATO summit meeting
in Prague in November. That summit is also scheduled to announce the member
states to be included in the next round of alliance enlargement. Most
observers now expect a so-called "big bang" expansion that would extend NATO
membership to countries along Russia's western frontier, including the three
Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
At the same time, NATO sources said Tuesday, the alliance has readied
proposals designed to give Russia a formal voice within the alliance on
selected matters, such as peacekeeping operations, cooperation against
nuclear proliferation and other areas of presumed common interest. But it
would fall far short of granting full membership or even a Russian veto on
alliance military decisions.
There is no explicit linkage between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's
expansion eastward and improved ties with Russia, but the negotiations on
both issues have proceeded simultaneously. President Vladimir Putin of Russia
has not yet agreed to the NATO overture, which was reported Monday by the
Financial Times.
"It will really be up to the Russians to show whether and how far they can
learn to play the cooperation game by the alliance's rules of real candor and
genuine give-and-take," a NATO ambassador said.
Significantly, NATO's plan could turn the group from a defensive military
alliance into a more political organization that underpins security
throughout the European Continent. A change along those lines would deepen
the current doubts about NATO's future military importance, and even its
survival in its old Cold War role as a crucible for forging collective
trans-Atlantic security policy between the United States and its European
allies.
With the inclusion of East European nations and a greater role for Moscow,
NATO seems likely to become less crucial as a forum for Western
decision-making in major military conflicts. The 1999 Kosovo conflict, the
alliance's first combat operation, demonstrated the complications of wartime
consultations among allied capitals. And late last year, the United States
effectively ignored NATO as a source of significant military assistance in
Afghanistan.
Even so, NATO can remain militarily valuable as "a toolbox" of allied forces,
an official said, explaining that the alliance amounted to a pool of armed
forces with similar operational doctrines that could fit into alliances of
the willing led by the United States - or perhaps by the European Union in
regional crises.
The dual opening to Moscow and to the most sensitive former Soviet satellites
such as the Baltic states has been a topic of debate within the alliance for
months. Now the NATO offer to Moscow for joint meetings on some matters "at
20," which means such meetings would include the current 19-nation alliance
and Russia, is set for formal approval Wednesday at the regular weekly
meeting of NATO ambassadors known as the North Atlantic Council.
Putin is known to be seeking more Western recognition for Russia, but he is
facing resistance from hard-liners in Moscow, including much of his own
military hierarchy. They opposed his backing of the U.S.-led war on terrorism
and his endorsing of U.S. military bases in Uzbekistan and other former
Soviet republics in Central Asia.
The impending changes in NATO reflect radical U.S. rethinking about the
alliance as an instrument for consolidating the new status quo throughout
Europe, Western diplomats said. Seven new members are being considered in the
plans for enlargement: Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the three
Baltic states. Even if not all are accepted this year, Europe in its
geographical entirety could soon be included in NATO, with the exception of a
few small neutral nations, Albania and the new countries that used to be
Yugoslavia.
Bush administration officials have said publicly that alliance membership
should be open eventually to Russia. That stance is a shift in U.S. attitudes
that reflects the trend for NATO to become an organization in which military
matters take second place to the political goal of democratic stability in
Europe.
However, a Russian presence, even in only symbolic strength, could be
valuable politically in the future, as it was in the NATO peacekeeping forces
in Bosnia and Kosovo.
*******
#11
RUSSIAN MEDIA MINISTRY SUMS UP YEAR
MOSCOW, February 26 /from RIA Novosti's Yelizaveta Sviridova/ - Economic
relations in the media business are "basic with regard to the problems of
creation and freedom of self-expression," remarked Russian First Deputy Media
Minister Mikhail Seslavinsky.
"We have seen this confirmed in deed as in word," Seslavinsky said as he
spoke at a ministry board session held Tuesday to sum up last year's
performance and to make plans for this year.
According to Seslavinsky, this is the reason why the TV-6 editorial team now
views, as its main task, "building a capital and a shareholder structures of
the new legal entity." Summing up the ministry's performance in 2001,
Seslavinsky said last year's media owner conflicts and events surrounding the
television networks NTV and TV-6, as well as the radio station Ekho Moskvy,
generated "extremely politicized and emotional debates of the situation in
our domain." Last year witnessed the violation of the taboo on media
shareholders fighting in public, the deputy minister pointed out. "It has
become evident that the publicity and the scandalousness of all other fights
between owners in Russia's modern political history were petty in comparison
with those battles," he said.
On the other hand, 2001 was also a year of dynamic development of the mass
media and the book publishing business, Seslavinsky said. "The results
achieved go to show that the sector's hard transitional stage is past and
that its onward march has begun," he added.
********
#12
Ekspert
February 26, 2002
Quiet, Please!
Why the Russian population isn't worried about the fate of TV6
By Igor Bunin; chief of the Political Technologies Center
(therussianissues.com)
Russian TV's new configuration appeared not only because the authorities
wanted it; it also meets the requirements of the bulk of the population.
Russians are tired not only of the negativity shown on TV. They don't like
the NTV style of Gusinsky or Kiselyov either.
Earlier, only supporters of the Communist Party and the Liberal Democrats led
by Vladimir Zhirinovsky were negative about information with underlying
ideas, about irony in the coverage of the main political events, about TV's
attempts to play the main arbiter in the authorities' disputes, and about the
various appeals to the "civilized world." At present, there are far more
people displeased with the manner information is presented on TV. These
people are not only the "silent majority" approving of President Putin's
policy, but also liberals, mainly from the Union of Right Forces.
A TV style is closely associated with current processes in society. The new
trend in the media cannot be separated from the phenomenon of psychological
stabilization; irony in the period of "Sturm und Drang" has ceased to be a
social norm. The last splash of positive interest in the "criticism" on
political TV was associated with TV anchorman Sergei Dorenko, who in fact
broke with the liberal tradition and replaced irony with Soviet-style satire.
Television is no longer the dominant influence. It is the ersatz of a
political party or opposition. It no longer generates ideas capable of
mobilizing society. It does not tend to interpret news. Other factors come to
the foreground - regionalization, the social differentiation of the TV
audience, and depoliticization. The most popular shows are the ones that are
appalling to sophisticated viewers.
Television is a means of broadcasting information. The majority of the
population does not recognize its right to have a position contrary to
society's prevailing sentiments (for instance, tough criticism of the
super-popular president). In the opinion of most Russians, TV should not
focus on boring subjects such as the struggle for influence between groups in
the Kremlin).
All these trends are seen in the studies conducted by the Public Opinion
Foundation. The most positive comments have been about RTR's and the new
NTV's information programs, while Kiselyov's program, which has toned down
its opposition drive but has retained the old style, is not recognized at
all. During the struggle around TV6, the viewers mainly worried that the only
non-state channel's broadcasting would be cut off.
The population is tired of conflicts, the meaning of which they often fail to
understand. They do not want to obtain deeper insight into conflicts or savor
details; this is of interest only to professionals and to the hopelessly
politicized 5% of the population. During an opinion poll conducted by the
Political Technologies Center, respondents only recalled Voloshin among the
Kremlin "Family" members. Neither Abramovich nor Mamut, nor the St.
Petersburg men around the president, nor banker Pugachev evoked any public
interest.
But everybody knows and remembers pop singer Alla Pugacheva. Sports
competitions have only begun to interest people since early 2002. People are
ready to put up a psychological barrier between themselves and information
and propaganda broadcasts attacking the authorities. No wonder then that
state-controlled TV catering to the popular authorities gets higher ratings:
there is a need for self-assertion and not for self-reproach. The opposition
cannot expect significant public support.
The greater part of the "advanced" TV audience does not care much about the
freedom of speech. The TV channels in Russia have failed adequately to meet
the demands of the most exacting viewers. This goes for both news and
entertainment programs. At the same time satellite television allows Russian
yuppies to watch popular foreign channels (primarily CNN). So, there is an
obvious tendency towards marginalizing the Russian media in most "advanced"
social groups.
The present configuration of the electronic media corresponds well with the
course towards strengthening the state's positions, a course adopted by the
authorities and supported by the population. At the same time, it retains the
possibility for the continued existence of non-state structures on the media
market, although in a greatly weakened state. The objective need for them
still exists because the various influence groups that survived while the
mono-centric state took shape need media resources of their own. This helps
preserve information pluralism, although it is more limited in comparison
with what it used to be in the 1990s.
One should not ignore the "Western factor." If the Russian authorities
continue to go along the road of "Westernization," they will not be able to
do without independent television. This means that in the middle and long
term the non-state electronic media could not only be preserved, but could
also gradually expand their influence.
*******
#13
The Russia Journal (US edition)
February 22-28, 2002
Wines Jogs On
Press Review
By Matt Taibbi
In 1961, in the first year of his Presidency, John F. Kennedy developed
something of a bee in his bonnet about national physical fitness. The subject
was so important to him that he included it in his first address to congress
on "urgent national needs", talking about Americans having the freedom to
"attain good physical fitness for themselves and their children."
Later on that year, he gave a speech at the National Football Hall of Fame.
"We have become more and more not a nation of athletes but a nation of
spectators," he said. Soon after that, he went one step further and said that
all of America needed to start running-- beginning, comically enough, with
his own cabinet. As one person I know who actually remembers the event put it
to me in a letter: "I recall his collective cabinet jog that almost brought
poor, fat Pierre Salinger to heart failure, all shown on TV."
Within a few years, jogging was so popular in the United States that even one
of Kennedy's mistresses, a CIA agent's wife named Mary Meyer, managed to be
murdered mysteriously while indulging in the practice. Her body was found on
a path along the banks of the C&O canal, a favorite Kennedy jogging spot.
With the Kennedy marriage becoming the absolute model for the yuppie family
unit over the last thirty years or so, there's no question that Kennedy
himself was largely responsible for making jogging one of the chief
affectations in the life of the modern, non-athlete yuppie. Bill Clinton was
certainly not imitating Laase Viren when he had an indoor jogging track
installed in the White House. And Kennedy's own son certainly didn't have his
eyes on athletic glory when he took up jogging in Central Park in the 1980s.
Like his Dad, he kept his eyes focused elsewhere; he met his wife, Carolyn
Bessette, on an afternoon run up the West side.
I mention all of this mainly because it was for some reason left out of a
recent piece by the New York Times' Michael Wines, about a jogging initiative
launched by Vladimir Putin.
The Feb. 10 article, entitled "When Putin Says 'Exercise!' Russia Treads a
Beaten Path", is a classic example of a story that could have been pushed in
any number of directions, both positive and negative. Rather than cast a
Putin drive to get the notoriously unhealthy Russian populace to exercise as
the same kind of laudable use of the bully pulpit shown by the jogger
Kennedy, or the volunteerism-happy George W. Bush, Wines chooses to paint a
darker picture.
In fact, in Wines' eyes, Putin's jogging craze shows Russia at its worst,
slavishly worshipping the executive, indulging in a deep-seated instinct to
obey, and incidentally shunning all healthy exercise unless one happens to be
a politician seeking Putin's favor.
It all starts with the headline. In fact, the actual story doesn't add much
to the headline. It conveys all the necessary information: Putin's recent
remarks about Russia's need to exercise more (made in an address to Olympic
athletes three weeks ago) did not constitute a suggestion, but an order (the
meaning of 'When Putin says 'Exercise!"' is pretty clear). Likewise, the
response is not something new and exciting, but something old and depressing,
a "beaten path."
Wines kicks off his piece with a pat and very irritating lead:
"MOSCOW, Feb. 9 - It was 100 years ago that Lenin stirred future Russian
revolutionaries with the portentous query, 'What is to be done?'
"Two and a half weeks ago, President Vladimir V. Putin proffered an answer:
calisthenics."
Wines is growing into his job. In a process similar to carbon-dating, you can
always tell how long a reporter has been working at the New York Times by the
number of unpretentious expressions left in his writing. One vocabulary
half-life ago, the naïve Wines might have written, "Lenin stirred future
Russian revolutionaries by asking..." But now he is older and wiser and knows
to replace those two simple words with four cumbersome ones: "With the
portentous query..." Likewise, "proffer" is an excellent New York Times word,
and you can tell it is because no sane person would ever use it in speech.
As for the Lenin reference-well, this is typical Wines. You take one part
cliché hackery (Wines is the only reporter I know who could without
embarrassment begin a piece with 'What is to be done?' and end it, as he does
later, with 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'), one part glib
semi-ignorance (we assume, but are not sure, that Wines knows the
'portentous' 'What is to Be Done?' quote originally came from Chernyeshevsky
and not Lenin) and one part distant mockery of some hallowed piece of
Russian history (Wines humor: calisthenics as the answer to Lenin), and
you've got the Times bureau chief in a nutshell. One other thing to note
here: Lenin himself was a great believer in calisthenics, and in fact forced
many of his fellow revolutionaries to perform them, a fact that when you
think about it detracts somewhat from Wines' "ironic" punchline in the lead.
Another example of Wines' sour-puss attitude toward Russia comes in this
passage, in which he describes the Soviet sports system:
"The system worked, in a sense: the Soviet Union regularly took top Olympic
honors in the last decades of the 20th century, even as Soviet life spans
slowly declined."
Wines can't even bring himself to unequivocally praise the Soviet sports
system, which by any standard has to be one of the greatest in modern
history. No, he has to mention that the success came amid declining life
expectancy rates, as though the sports program was somehow responsible for
the environmental destruction, the collapsing medical system and the
increasingly dangerous and outdated industrial equipment that were the real
causes of Russia's rising mortality rates. This would be like noting that,
while Americans had won all but two of the Olympic basketball gold medals,
the country at large became the most obese in the world during that period-a
nitpicking and not terribly relevant thing to say, certainly not with regard
to our prowess at basketball, anyway.
From there, Wines goes on to connect the response to the fitness drive to a
larger issue about the apparent forming of a cult of personality around Putin:
"By harking back to that era on the eve of the Olympics, many here believe,
Mr. Putin was simply playing smart politics. He was also in his element: for
two years, the Kremlin has lovingly groomed his image as a judo master,
wrestler and skier."
Wines forgot handball. That was the athletic skill he himself praised in his
slavish profile of Putin written two years ago, back when he was swallowing
whole the very Kremlin "hagiographies" he criticizes in this piece:
'Last month, a Moscow publisher issued the first of a three-book biography,
"Vladimir Putin: A Life History," that some critics are already comparing to
the stream of hagiographic Soviet books that all but deified Lenin after his
death.
'The Kremlin periodically expresses embarrassment over such fawning, but
taken with the final disappearance of independent network television, critics
wonder whether Mr. Putin and the country are breaking the Soviet mold or
simply reverting to it.'
Give me a break. At least no one in this country is calling Putin a "mythic
folk hero" and comparing him to Moses, Prince Hal or Frodo Baggins. That was
the New York Times a few weeks back, about George Bush. If any country is
guilty of fawning over its leader, it's ours. If George Bush were to call for
Americans to start jogging, Michael Wines, Elisabeth Bumiller and the rest of
the Times staff would be fitting themselves for new Cross-Trainers, tails
wagging, within about two minutes. But when the Russians do it, it's an
excuse to get snide.
*******
#14
Corruption Interfering in Caspian
February 26, 2002
By ANGELA CHARLTON
MOSCOW (AP) - The U.S. envoy to the strategic Caspian Sea region on Tuesday
decried the corruption that has stymied investors trying to get its oil and
gas riches to market - while his Iranian counterpart warned that foreign
investors were too aggressive already.
Opinions clashed at a conference in Moscow on the 10-year-old legal dispute
over how to divide the sea, highlighting differences in the political
interests of Moscow, Tehran and the West.
Russia's top official in charge of Caspian issues, Deputy Foreign Minister
Viktor Kalyuzhny, said it was time to end the dispute. He said plans were
under way for an oft-delayed presidential summit on the Caspian, likely to be
held in Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat, in the fall.
Use of the Caspian resources, including fertile fishing grounds and what are
believed to be the world's third-largest oil deposits, was defined by
treaties between Iran and the Soviet Union.
After the 1991 Soviet collapse, the five countries around the Caspian -
Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakstan and Azerbaijan - laid conflicting
claims to the sea. They have been unable to reach a compromise.
U.S. and other foreign investors, meanwhile, have been jockeying for a chance
to develop oil and gas fields despite the legal limbo.
``The Caspian region has not had the progress we expected,'' Ambassador
Steven Mann, the U.S. envoy on Caspian energy issues, told the conference. He
said corruption had hindered growth in the five states and a lack of legal
guarantees had scared away investors.
Mann did, however, express optimism about two projects in the region.
Construction on an oil pipeline from Azerbaijan's capital Baku to the Turkish
port of Ceyhan should begin by early summer, he said. The long-delayed
pipeline bypasses Russia and Iran and has been championed by the U.S.
government.
He also said the Shah Deniz gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey remains on
track. Both pipelines will be operating by 2005, he said.
Iran's envoy for the Caspian region, Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi Safari,
told the conference that foreign companies and governments should not be
allowed to study the region's oil deposits until a decision on dividing the
sea is reached.
``Until an agreement is concluded, the Caspian states must refrain from
unilateral decisions that are harmful for good-neighborly relations,'' he
said.
Safari, a former ambassador to Russia, stood firm on Iran's proposal to
divide the sea equally among the five states. Russia's Kalyuzhny, however,
dismissed that plan.
Russia, Kazakstan and Azerbaijan want to divide the seabed into national
sectors, leaving Iran with the smallest zone. Turkmenistan has not made its
position clear.
*******
#15
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002
From: Vladimir Shlapentokh
Subject: re 6075-Stephen Shenfield/JRL RESEARCH AND ANALYTICAL SUPPLEMENT
No. 5
A response to Andrew Savchneko's and Stephen Shenfield's review of Vladimir
Shlapentokh's A normal totalitarian society, published in JRL Research and
Analytical Supplement (Issue No. 5, January 2002).
Certainly, I am grateful to my reviewers for their comments. I am grateful
to Mr. Savchenko, the main reviewer in the publication for his final kind
assessment of my book and nice remarks about my scholarly past. My gratitude
also goes to the editor of the JRL Supplement for his interest in my book
and his own comments.
To begin I would like to praise the reviewers for their intention to be
objective as much as possible to the book, which explains why they were not
afraid to insert in their texts mutually exclusive statementsÂone denying my
theses and the other accepting them (though seemingly reluctantly).
So, formulating the major goal of my book (to explain "why did the Soviet
Union collapse so rapidly and unexpectedly") Mr. Savchenko warns readers
that they "will not find a satisfactory answer to this question." However,
by the end of the review he seemingly accepted my refutation of "several
commonly advanced hypotheses regarding the causes of the Soviet collapse"
(the Soviet economy fell because of the economic failure, the disappointment
of the masses or elites with ideology, the discontent of the population with
its standard of living, ethnic conflicts, or because of the anti-Soviet
activity of dissidents and other). With evident sympathy, he agrees with the
concept, which I developed in the book, about the crucial role of SDI in
starting Perestroika. He wrote, "The desire to maintain military parity was
the main reason for reform," and that this thesis was "supported by many
researchers whose studies are quoted by the author."
The main reviewer also attacked my loyalty to the concept of
totalitarianism, which he dismissed as 40 years old and obsolete. However,
his critiques were contradictory. While condemning my use of this concept in
the beginning of his review, he later praised me for the same concept. He
wrote, "To his credit, the author recognizes the affinity between the Soviet
and Nazi political systems, thereby consistently keeping the Soviet Union
within the category of totalitarian societies."
Mr. Shenfield, the editor of the supplement, followed the same pattern. He
also disliked the "totalitarian model" and started his contribution to the
analysis of my book with the statement that "the exact meaning of
Shlapentokh's definition of the Soviet system as ‘normal totalitarianism'
was never clarified." However, a few paragraphs later he fully accepted this
concept. He wrote, "Shlapentokh's data on the public support that the Soviet
system eventually acquired ... point in the same direction" (i.e. the
recognition of Soviet society as normal because it was "compatible with
human nature"). He even referred to Alexander Zinoviev who "vigorously
expressed" the same view. By the way, he wrongly reproached me for not
citing him, which I did indeed, along with Vasilii Grossman, whom I also
considered as my predecessor of the idea of the normality of Soviet
totalitarianism.
Contradicting themselves, my reviewers advanced a few arguments against my
"restoration" of the concept of totalitarianism, but their arguments were
forty years old as well. They only allowed me to use this concept as "an
idea or aspiration."
Following the logic of the reviewers, the model of liberal economy based
on
the assumption of perfect competition, or the model of democracy supposedly
based on full political equality of citizens should both be discarded as a
tool of analysis, because these models have not been "fully realized" in any
country in the world.
The major theoretical mistake of both reviewers is that they, as the
majority of the critics of the totalitarian model, confused the monopoly on
political power and the efficiency of power. Between 1918 and 1989, there
was only one center of political power in the Soviet Union and it resided in
the Kremlin. This monopoly on power makes up the core of the totalitarian
system, from which derive all its other elements. There were no forces in
the country that challenged the Soviet leadership, which had a monopoly on
all strategic decisions in all areas of life.At the same time,this
monopolistic power was often inefficient. It failed to achieve its
objectives in many cases, which was often the norm for cruel regimes in
history.
In his attack on the totalitarian model as the most adequate tool for
analyzing the Soviet system, Mr. Savchenko used another typical argument of
"revisionists": It is "the untenable position of claiming that the main
Soviet institutions remained basically unchanged from 1918 until they began
to fall apart in the late 1980s." In the famous middle age argument between
"nominalists and realists," Mr. Savchenko clearly takes the side of
Roscellinus, the French philosopher and theologian from the twelfth century
who held that universals are nothing more than verbal expressions and
objected to the use them as empty words. Following the nominalist logic
there are no commonalities between Felix Dzerzhinsky and Yuri Andropov (the
second would have vehemently denied Mr. Savchenko's suggestion), or between
the functions of departments of propaganda of the Central Committee in 1929
and 1985, or Gosplan in Stalin's and Brezhnev's times. Without denying the
various differences, essentially these institutions were the same until 1987
when Gorbachev began his attack on the fundamentals of the totalitarian
system.
Mr. Shenfield chose another avenue to attack totalitarianism as an
outmoded
concept. He agrees with my rejection of the pluralistic model of the Soviet
system, which underpinned 90 percent of so called revisionist theories in
the 1970s and 1980s, but he proposes the use of the "corporative model." In
its pristine form corporatism as an idea was formulated by Adam Muller, an
Austrian philosopher who was close to Prince Metternich (it was not invented
by Italian fascism, as Mr. Shenfeld contends). In fact, the doctrine of
corporatism demands the active role of each corporation (as did middle age
guilds) in the protection of the interests of the members of a corporation.
Nothing like this happened in Mussolini's Italy in which all corporations
were simply the tool of the fascist state . Italy pretended to be a
corporative state just as Soviet Union claimed to be a dictatorship of the
proletariat.
Indeed, to talk about corporations in the Soviet Union is no less
preposterous. What corporations were able to challenge even remotely the
monopoly of the Kremlin's power? Even the mild General Secretary Gorbachev,
in 1987 (not 1937), was able to fire 150 top military officials after the
famous Mathias Rust case. Should we label the KGB as such a corporation when
its heads were fired or even murdered by the Soviet leaders? Did Soviet
managers make up a corporation? What about trade unions, "the Union of
Soviet Writers," or "The Union of Soviet composers?" Indeed, there was no
organization that was able to defend the interests of its members vis-a-vis
the Soviet leadership.
Mr. Savchenko challenged some of the specific statements in my book,
which,
incidently, demonstrates the advantages of being the reviewer versus the
author. While the author tries to bolster his assertions with empirical
data, the reviewer is free from doing so. Mr. Savchenko rejected my
statement about "the falling value of the rouble" as "irrelevant in the
context of Soviet economy" without any evidence. Seemingly, he confused the
inconvertibility of the rouble ("the Soviet national currency at the time
was never legally traded") with the role of the rouble in the life of the
Soviet population. Indeed, the people observed the fall of their purchasing
power, in the last decades of the Soviet system, with great dismay.
Mr. Savchenko has an unfavorable impression of the Soviet economy. He said
that its "rapid economic growth" is an impression "created by official
statistics." Meanwhile, according to CIA data, the GNP of the Soviet economy
(without speaking about the period of industrialization in the 1930s) was
said to have grown by 28 percent between 1960 and 1965 (27 percent for the
U.S. during this period), by 18 percent between 1965 and 1970 (18 percent in
the U.S.) and by 18 percent between 1970 and 1975 (14 percent in the U.S.).
Even if we consider the minimalist data of my friend Grigorii Khanin (G.
Khanin, "Ekonomicheskii rost: al'ternativnaia otsenka," Kommunist No. 17,
1988, p. 85), to whom Mr. Savchenko refers, the Soviet economic growth was
lower than in the U.S. only after 1975 (which I mentioned in my book). The
average annual growth rate of Soviet national income was 4.4 percent in
1961-1965, 4.1 percent in 1966-1970, 3.2 percent in 1971-1975, and 1.0
percent in 1976-1980. The same indicator for the U.S. for the period
1961-1970 was 4.2 percent, and for 1976-1980, 3.2 percent.
However, even more striking is Savchenko's perception of the character of
Soviet economic growth. He was seemingly impressed by the fact that in post
Soviet Russia the oil industry provided the major source of revenue for the
Russian budget. But it seems that he projected this fact on the whole of
Soviet history. While disputing my assessment of several successes of the
Soviet economy, he attributed the growth of Soviet economy "mostly due to
the expansion of extractive industry," as if the Soviet Union had not
created a gigantic military industry that achieved parity with the U.S. by
the mid-1970s. If to take only the period between 1970 and 1986, the rate of
growth of the machine building industry was more than two times higher than
that of the extracting industry.
Mr. Savchenko was seemingly amused when he read in my book that the
directors of leading enterprises, who were subordinate to Stalin, had a
great deal of independence as managers. In fact, he proposed an opposite
interpretation of such circumstances. Perhaps fortunately Mr. Savchenko
never worked in a hierarchical organization. Otherwise, he would understand
that the ability of a manager to skip a few levels of the hierarchy and deal
directly with the top leader immensely expanded his degree of freedom. For
instance, Isaak Zaltsman, the director of the tank complex during the war,
had access to "Stalin himself," which allowed him to solve millions of
problems including those in in the supply of raw materials and parts. This
had been a major problem of the Soviet economy, from its beginning to its
end, another evidence of the essential unity of Soviet history.
Whatever my disagreements with my critics, I found their arguments
stimulating and helpful for the continued discussion of the unsolvable
Russian problems.
********
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