Johnson's Russia List
#6124
9 March 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

[Note from David Johnson:
  1. Washington Post: Dana Hedgpeth, Final Chapter for a Cold War Relic.
(Victor Kamkin bookstore)
  2. Los Angeles Times: Paul Richter, U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear
Arms.
Military: Administration, in a secret report, calls for a strategy against
at least 
seven nations: China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria.
  3. Los Angeles Times: William Arkin, Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable.
A secret policy review of the nation’s nuclear policy puts forth chilling new 
contingencies for nuclear war.
  4. The Guardian (UK): Ian Traynor, Bush's legs walk all over Russians.
  5. Alexei Arbatov: IMPERATIVE PROBLEMS IN RUSSIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS AND
THE 
REDUCTION OF STRATEGIC OFFENSIVE WEAPONS.
  6. Boston Globe editorial: The Georgia gambit.
  7. Wall Street Journal: Vladimir Socor, America to the Rescue -- Again.
  8. The Jamestown Foundation PRISM: Elena Chinyaeva, THE PLIGHT OF
INDEPENDENT 
MASS MEDIA IN RUSSIA.]

*******

#1
Washington Post
March 9, 2002
Final Chapter for a Cold War Relic
By Dana Hedgpeth

In its heyday, the sprawling bookstore tucked into a nondescript industrial
park behind White Flint Mall in Rockville was a curious outpost of the Cold
War.

Researchers, Russophiles and spies made their way to Victor Kamkin Inc.,
which for decades collected and sold books detailing every aspect of life
and history in the Soviet Union, all in their original Russian. A little
more than 1 million bound volumes were in the last inventory, taken two
years ago. Workers there estimate there could be nearly 2 million books and
other published materials today.

On Monday morning, Montgomery County sheriff's deputies are expected to
receive the entire collection at the county incinerator. 

Victor Kamkin Inc., named for the Russian emigré who founded it 50 years
ago, is being evicted, a victim of the Cold War's demise and declining
demand for Russian books. With no buyer for the collection, its landlord
arranged for the entire stock to be destroyed.

"It's a real shame to think these will become a book burning," said Igor
Kalageorgi, the great-nephew of Victor Kamkin and the store's owner. Late
yesterday afternoon, from his bed at Suburban Hospital, he was still trying
to negotiate with his landlord to save the books. He went to the hospital
Thursday for bleeding ulcers.

Victor Kamkin Inc. for decades was a strange middleman in the Cold War. It
reflected the geopolitics of its time, selling obscure titles to agents
from the CIA as well as the KGB, who were supposedly photographed by the
other side as they came and went. A capitalist business in one of America's
wealthiest counties, Kamkin nonetheless profited mightily from Soviet
subsidies and a state-owned publishing monopoly. Among its musty stacks
could be found the popular "Dr. Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak -- banned in
the Soviet Union -- and esoteric titles such as "Problems in Crystal
Physics With Solutions." A quarter of the store's sales were to U.S.
government agencies.

The Soviet government subsidized Victor Kamkin, said Larry Miller,
librarian of the Slavic collection at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, who has done about $25,000 worth of business a year with
Kamkin for 42 years. "Essentially, the Soviets were paying the rent because
the books were so cheap," Miller said.

When the state publishing monopoly collapsed with the Soviet Union, Kamkin
could no longer count on either the assured delivery or low prices it had
for years. Interest in Russian-language books waned. More book importers
entered the market. By last year, Kamkin couldn't pay the $15,000 monthly
rent for its warehouse.

Kamkin is $200,000 behind in payments to its landlord, Allen Kronstadt of
Randolph Buildings L.P., and in December eviction proceedings began. 

Normally in an eviction, anything left in the rented space is piled up on
the curbside. That usually amounts to a few items of furniture or clothing.
But the sheriff said putting nearly 2 million books on the street was
impossible. Sheriff's deputies insisted that Kronstadt take the books away
-- destroy them if he had to -- to keep them off the street.

"There would be nowhere to put that many books in the public right of way,"
said Lt. John Dean, who has been handling the case for the sheriff's
department.

The landlord, who has been taking books he wants on Russian Jewish history
off Kamkin's shelves in recent days, tried several book publishers, a
Russian newspaper, an auctioneer and libraries with special collections,
but to no avail.

"I've had a publisher tell me, sure, he'd want maybe 5,000 or 10,000 of the
rarest ones, but not a million," Kronstadt said.

So laborers have been hired to load the collection from the
20,000-square-foot warehouse onto trucks and haul it to the county transfer
station, where they could be burned.

Kronstadt, not eager to be seen as a man who burns books, said he was
looking into recycling options, which would mean, essentially, pulping them.

"Kamkin provided the Russian community with a good choice of books," said
Oleg Kalugin, a retired KGB general and former member of Soviet parliament.
"It's a pity. It's a loss for Washington," he said of Kamkin's closing.

Kamkin once was one of only two American importers of Soviet-published
books and periodicals. Generations of Russian immigrants ordered magazines
and newspapers from Kamkin.

Kamkin, who was a lawyer, was also said to have been a officer in the
Russian imperial army who fled to China from Russia shortly before the
Bolshevik October Revolution in 1917. There, he started publishing Russian
classics that became popular for the fairly large Russian population in China.

Kamkin came to the United States in 1949 and briefly ran a pig farm in
Tennessee. But after a heart attack, he moved to Washington in 1953, where
he opened his first bookstore on 14th Street. "He had one shelf of books
when he first started," said Kalageorgi, his great-nephew.

Kamkin cultivated a long business relationship with the Soviet government's
International Book Co. It made Kamkin's business extremely valuable to
Americans who wanted to find out what the Soviet government was telling its
citizens in the form of literature, newspapers and textbooks.

At its peak, Kamkin employed 40 mostly Russian immigrants.  A quarter of
the store's business was with the federal government, such as the CIA and
the National Security Agency.

"It was agencies that you weren't supposed to know existed ordering stuff,"
Kalageorgi said.

Kamkin often had books in Russian that were banned in the Soviet Union,
including works by Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam, a poet who was tortured
in Stalin's prisons.

"You couldn't get Mandelstam's books in Russia, but Kamkin would have
them," said Kalugin, who now lives in Silver Spring and has frequented
Kamkin's store for decades.

 Kamkin's business was helped by his relationship with the Soviet
government, which was eager to have a U.S. distributor for its publications
and sold them to Kamkin cheap.

"The books were treated as propaganda. The Soviets were interested in
getting as many Russian books into the U.S. as possible and Kamkin was one
of the ways they did it," Miller said.

"By the 1950s, they were the premier supplier of materials from the
U.S.S.R.," said John Daly, whose father was a professor of Russian studies
at the Naval Academy who started buying books from Kamkin more than four
decades ago and created a 7,000 volume library -- mostly from Kamkin.

After Kamkin died in 1974, his wife, Elena, took over the company's stores
in New York, Rockville and Reisterstown.

Kamkin has struggled for 10 years with declining sales. It grosses about $1
million a year.

"Ever since the Cold War ended, it was like a snap with our business,"
Kalageorgi said.

Shortly after taking over, Kalageorgi closed the New York store and has
moved some of the rare books from Rockville to the Reisterstown store. He
plans to continue operating in Reisterstown but that store can't
accommodate any more of the Rockville store's collection.

The amount of material to be cleared out is immense. In the front is a
small store with a few racks of cards, trinkets, matryoshka dolls and CDs.
In the back is the warehouse where there are rows and rows of books, packed
tightly, floor to ceiling. Yesterday employees were busily moving books
around, trying to help a few last-minute customers find rare treasures in
the stacks.

"This is the Elvis of Russia," said Nathaly Nikitina, a 57-year-old store
employee from Russia, as she held up a record by Vladimir Vysotsky, called
"Sons Are Leaving for Battle," with a $3 red price tag on it. Company
health benefits for Nikitina and her 16-year-old daughter were canceled
three months ago, but Nikitina, who makes $12 an hour, and about a dozen
other workers keep showing up.

"I came to work here my first day in America," 17 years ago in the New York
store, she said. When the former manager, Anatoly Zabavsky, told her that
New York was "no place to raise a young girl," she came to the Rockville
store.

"I like it here. This is what I know. These books," she said as she handled
"Crime and Punishment" by Feodor Dostoevski. 

Also slated for destruction: the two-inch-thick red book telling of 50
years of the Russian Red Army's activities, including its march across
Eastern Europe shown with colored maps; selected writings and letters of
such Russian greats as Pasternak and Maxim Gorky; large-print books for
children by Alexander Pushkin; and more than 20 volumes of Russian history
by Sergei Solovev in green leather binding.

A few rows down near the back are books by Vasily Shukshin, a Russian
writer and actor who died in 1974. And nearby lies a $13.95 copy of
selected works by Mikhail Bulgakov, a popular writer of satire.

The store will be open over the weekend for a clearance sale.

"I thought I could save it," Kalageorgi said, as he opened bills in a tall,
black leather chair in his office of his family's business Thursday
afternoon. "Most of the people working here are Jewish refugees. They've
worked here for years. I don't know what they're going to do. It's a bit of
a mess."

*******

#2
Los Angeles Times
March 9, 2002
U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms
Military: Administration, in a secret report, calls for a strategy against
at least seven nations: China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and
Syria.
By PAUL RICHTER, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has directed the military to prepare
contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries
and to build smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield
situations, according to a classified Pentagon report obtained by the Los
Angeles Times.

The secret report, which was provided to Congress on Jan. 8, says the
Pentagon needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia,
Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria. It says the weapons could be used
in three types of situations: against targets able to withstand nonnuclear
attack; in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical
weapons; or "in the event of surprising military developments."
 
A copy of the report was obtained by defense analyst and Times contributor
William Arkin. His column on the contents appears in Sunday's editions.

Officials have long acknowledged that they had detailed nuclear plans for
an attack on Russia. However, this "Nuclear Posture Review" apparently
marks the first time that an official list of potential target countries
has come to light, analysts said. Some predicted the disclosure would set
off strong reactions from governments of the target countries.

"This is dynamite," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear arms expert at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "I can imagine
what these countries are going to be saying at the U.N." Arms control
advocates said the report's directives on development of smaller nuclear
weapons could signal that the Bush administration is more willing to
overlook a long-standing taboo against the use of nuclear weapons except as
a last resort. They warned that such moves could dangerously destabilize
the world by encouraging other countries to believe that they, too, should
develop weapons.

"They're trying desperately to find new uses for nuclear weapons, when
their uses should be limited to deterrence," said John Isaacs, president of
the Council for a Livable World. "This is very, very dangerous talk . . .
Dr. Strangelove is clearly still alive in the Pentagon."

But some conservative analysts insisted that the Pentagon must prepare for
all possible contingencies, especially now, when dozens of countries, and
some terrorist groups, are engaged in secret weapon development programs.

They argued that smaller weapons have an important deterrent role because
many aggressors might not believe that the U.S. forces would use
multi-kiloton weapons that would wreak devastation on surrounding territory
and friendly populations.

"We need to have a credible deterrence against regimes involved in
international terrorism and development of weapons of mass destruction,"
said Jack Spencer, a defense analyst at the conservative Heritage
Foundation in Washington. He said the contents of the report did not
surprise him and represent "the right way to develop a nuclear posture for
a post-Cold War world."

A spokesman for the Pentagon, Richard McGraw, declined to comment because
the document is classified.

Congress requested the reassessment of the U.S. nuclear posture in
September 2000. The last such review was conducted in 1994 by the Clinton
administration. The new report, signed by Secretary of Defense Donald H.
Rumsfeld, is now being used by the U.S. Strategic Command to prepare a
nuclear war plan.

Bush administration officials have publicly provided only sketchy details
of the nuclear review. They have publicly emphasized the parts of the
policy suggesting that the administration wants to reduce reliance on
nuclear weapons.

Since the Clinton administration's review is also classified, no specific
contrast can be drawn. However, analysts portrayed this report as
representing a break with earlier policy.

U.S. policymakers have generally indicated that the United States would not
use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states unless they were allied with
nuclear powers. They have left some ambiguity about whether the United
States would use nuclear weapons in retaliation after strikes with chemical
or nuclear weapons.

The report says the Pentagon should be prepared to use nuclear weapons in
an Arab-Israeli conflict, in a war between China and Taiwan, or in an
attack from North Korea on the south. They might also become necessary in
an attack by Iraq on Israel or another neighbor, it said.

The report says Russia is no longer officially an "enemy." Yet it
acknowledges that the huge Russian arsenal, which includes about 6,000
deployed warheads and perhaps 10,000 smaller "theater" nuclear weapons,
remains of concern.

Pentagon officials have said publicly that they were studying the need to
develop theater nuclear weapons, designed for use against specific targets
on a battlefield, but had not committed themselves to that course.

Officials have often spoken of the advantages of using nuclear weapons to
destroy the deep tunnel and cave complexes that many regimes have been
building, especially since the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Nuclear weapons
give off powerful shock waves that can crush structures deep in the Earth,
they point out.

Officials argue that large nuclear arms have so many destructive side
effects, from blast to heat and radiation, that they become
"self-deterring." They contend the Pentagon needs "full spectrum
deterrence"--that is, a full range of weapons that potential enemies
believe might be used against them.

The Pentagon was actively involved in planning for use of tactical nuclear
weapons as recently as the 1970s. But it has moved away from them in the
last two decades.

Analysts said the report's reference to "surprising military developments"
referred to the Pentagon's fears that a rogue regime or terrorist group
might suddenly unleash a wholly unknown weapon that was difficult to
counter with the conventional U.S. arsenal.

The administration has proposed cutting the offensive nuclear arsenal by
about two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200 missiles, within 10 years.
Officials have also said they want to use precision guided conventional
munitions in some missions that might have previously been accomplished
with nuclear arms.

But critics said the report contradicts suggestions the Bush administration
wants to cut the nuclear role.

"This clearly makes nuclear weapons a tool for fighting a war, rather than
deterring them," said Cirincione. 

*******

#3
Los Angeles Times
March 10, 2002  
Commentary
Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable
A secret policy review of the nation’s nuclear policy puts forth chilling
new contingencies for nuclear war.
By WILLIAM M. ARKIN

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, in a secret policy review completed
early this year, has ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for
the use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, naming not
only Russia and the "axis of evil"--Iraq, Iran, and North Korea--but also
China, Libya and Syria.

In addition, the U.S. Defense Department has been told to prepare for the
possibility that nuclear weapons may be required in some future
Arab-Israeli crisis. And, it is to develop plans for using nuclear weapons
to retaliate against chemical or biological attacks, as well as "surprising
military developments" of an unspecified nature.

These and a host of other directives, including calls for developing
bunker-busting mini-nukes and nuclear weapons that reduce collateral
damage, are contained in a still-classified document called the Nuclear
Posture Review (NPR), which was delivered to Congress on Jan. 8.

Like all such documents since the dawning of the Atomic Age more than a
half-century ago, this NPR offers a chilling glimpse into the world of
nuclear-war planners: With a Strangelovian genius, they cover every
conceivable circumstance in which a president might wish to use nuclear
weapons--planning in great detail for a war they hope never to wage.

In this top-secret domain, there has always been an inconsistency between
America's diplomatic objectives of reducing nuclear arsenals and preventing
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, on the one hand, and the
military imperative to prepare for the unthinkable, on the other.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration plan reverses an almost
two-decade-long trend of relegating nuclear weapons to the category of
weapons of last resort. It also redefines nuclear requirements in hurried
post-Sept. 11 terms.

In these and other ways, the still-secret document offers insights into the
evolving views of nuclear strategists in Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's
Defense Department.

While downgrading the threat from Russia and publicly emphasizing their
commitment to reducing the number of long-range nuclear weapons, Defense
Department strategists promote tactical and so-called "adaptive" nuclear
capabilities to deal with contingencies where large nuclear arsenals are
not demanded.

They seek a host of new weapons and support systems, including conventional
military and cyber warfare capabilities integrated with nuclear warfare.
The end product is a now-familiar post-Afghanistan model--with nuclear
capability added. It combines precision weapons, long-range strikes, and
special and covert operations.

But the NPR's call for development of new nuclear weapons that reduce
"collateral damage" myopically ignores the political, moral and military
implications--short-term and long--of crossing the nuclear threshold.

Under what circumstances might nuclear weapons be used under the new
posture? The NPR says they "could be employed against targets able to
withstand nonnuclear attack," or in retaliation for the use of nuclear,
biological, or chemical weapons, or "in the event of surprising military
developments."

Planning nuclear-strike capabilities, it says, involves the recognition of
"immediate, potential or unexpected" contingencies. North Korea, Iraq,
Iran, Syria and Libya are named as "countries that could be involved" in
all three kinds of threat. "All have long-standing hostility towards the
United States and its security partners. All sponsor or harbor terrorists,
and have active WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and missile programs."

China, because of its nuclear forces and "developing strategic objectives,"
is listed as "a country that could be involved in an immediate or potential
contingency." Specifically, the NPR lists a military confrontation over the
status of Taiwan as one of the scenarios that could lead Washington to use
nuclear weapons.

Other listed scenarios for nuclear conflict are a North Korean attack on
South Korea and an Iraqi assault on Israel or its neighbors.

The second important insight the NPR offers into Pentagon thinking about
nuclear policy is the extent to which the Bush administration's strategic
planners were shaken by last September's terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. Though Congress directed the new
administration "to conduct a comprehensive review of U.S. nuclear forces"
before the events of Sept. 11, the final study is striking for its
single-minded reaction to those tragedies.

Heretofore, nuclear strategy tended to exist as something apart from the
ordinary challenges of foreign policy and military affairs. Nuclear weapons
were not just the option of last resort, they were the option reserved for
times when national survival hung in the balance--a doomsday confrontation
with the Soviet Union, for instance.

Now, nuclear strategy seems to be viewed through the prism of Sept. 11. For
one thing, the Bush administration's faith in old-fashioned deterrence is
gone. It no longer takes a superpower to pose a dire threat to Americans.

"The terrorists who struck us on Sept. 11th were clearly not deterred by
doing so from the massive U.S. nuclear arsenal," Rumsfeld told an audience
at the National Defense University in late January.

Similarly, U.S. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said in a recent
interview, "We would do whatever is necessary to defend America's innocent
civilian population .... The idea that fine theories of deterrence work
against everybody ... has just been disproven by Sept. 11."

Moreover, while insisting they would go nuclear only if other options
seemed inadequate, officials are looking for nuclear weapons that could
play a role in the kinds of challenges the United States faces with Al Qaeda.

Accordingly, the NPR calls for new emphasis on developing such things as
nuclear bunker-busters and surgical "warheads that reduce collateral
damage," as well as weapons that could be used against smaller, more
circumscribed targets--"possible modifications to existing weapons to
provide additional yield flexibility," in the jargon-rich language of the
review.

It also proposes to train U.S. Special Forces operators to play the same
intelligence gathering and targeting roles for nuclear weapons that they
now play for conventional weapons strikes in Afghanistan. And cyber-warfare
and other nonnuclear military capabilities would be integrated into
nuclear-strike forces to make them more all-encompassing.

As for Russia, once the primary reason for having a U.S. nuclear strategy,
the review says that while Moscow's nuclear programs remain cause for
concern, "ideological sources of conflict" have been eliminated, rendering
a nuclear contingency involving Russia "plausible" but "not expected."

"In the event that U.S. relations with Russia significantly worsen in the
future," the review says, "the U.S. may need to revise its nuclear force
levels and posture."

When completion of the NPR was publicly announced in January, Pentagon
briefers deflected questions about most of the specifics, saying the
information was classified. Officials did stress that, consistent with a
Bush campaign pledge, the plan called for reducing the current 6,000
long-range nuclear weapons to one-third that number over the next decade.
Rumsfeld, who approved the review late last year, said the administration
was seeking "a new approach to strategic deterrence," to include missile
defenses and improvements in nonnuclear capabilities.

Also, Russia would no longer be officially defined as "an enemy."

Beyond that, almost no details were revealed.

The classified text, however, is shot through with a worldview transformed
by Sept. 11. The NPR coins the phrase "New Triad," which it describes as
comprising the "offensive strike leg," (our nuclear and conventional
forces) plus "active and passive defenses,"(our anti-missile systems and
other defenses) and "a responsive defense infrastructure" (our ability to
develop and produce nuclear weapons and resume nuclear testing).
Previously, the nuclear "triad" was the bombers, long-range land-based
missiles and submarine-launched missiles that formed the three legs of
America's strategic arsenal.

The review emphasizes the integration of "new nonnuclear strategic
capabilities" into nuclear-war plans. "New capabilities must be developed
to defeat emerging threats such as hard and deeply-buried targets (HDBT),
to find and attack mobile and re-locatable targets, to defeat chemical and
biological agents, and to improve accuracy and limit collateral damage,"
the review says.

It calls for "a new strike system" using four converted Trident submarines,
an unmanned combat air vehicle and a new air-launched cruise missile as
potential new weapons.

Beyond new nuclear weapons, the review proposes establishing what it calls
an "agent defeat" program, which defense officials say includes a
"boutique" approach to finding new ways of destroying deadly chemical or
biological warfare agents, as well as penetrating enemy facilities that are
otherwise difficult to attack. This includes, according to the document,
"thermal, chemical or radiological neutralization of chemical/biological
materials in production or storage facilities."

Bush administration officials stress that the development and integration
of nonnuclear capabilities into the nuclear force is what permits
reductions in traditional long-range weaponry. But the blueprint laid down
in the review would expand the breadth and flexibility of U.S. nuclear
capabilities.

In addition to the new weapons systems, the review calls for incorporation
of "nuclear capability" into many of the conventional systems now under
development. An extended-range conventional cruise missile in the works for
the U.S. Air Force "would have to be modified to carry nuclear warheads if
necessary." Similarly, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter should be modified to
carry nuclear weapons "at an affordable price."

The review calls for research to begin next month on fitting an existing
nuclear warhead into a new 5,000-pound "earth penetrating" munition.

Given the advances in electronics and information technologies in the past
decade, it is not surprising that the NPR also stresses improved satellites
and intelligence, communications, and more robust high-bandwidth
decision-making systems.

Particularly noticeable is the directive to improve U.S. capabilities in
the field of "information operations," or cyber-warfare. The intelligence
community "lacks adequate data on most adversary computer local area
networks and other command and control systems," the review observes. It
calls for improvements in the ability to "exploit" enemy computer networks,
and the integration of cyber-warfare into the overall nuclear war database
"to enable more effective targeting, weaponeering, and combat assessment
essential to the New Triad."

In recent months, when Bush administration officials talked about the
implications of Sept. 11 for long-term military policy, they have often
focused on "homeland defense" and the need for an anti-missile shield. In
truth, what has evolved since last year's terror attacks is an integrated,
significantly expanded planning doctrine for nuclear wars.

William M. Arkin is a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School
of Advanced International Studies in Washington and an adjunct professor at
the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Airpower Studies. He is also a
consultant to a number of nongovernmental organizations and a regular
contributor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

******

#4
The Guardian (UK)
9 March 2002
Bush's legs walk all over Russians 
Ian Traynor in Moscow

For Muscovites of a certain generation, spam is the finest product America
ever made. We might turn up our noses at the affront to all things
culinary, but for starving Russians perishing in the second world war the
tinned ham and pork from the US was quite literally a lifesaver. 
Red Army soldiers wolfed it down. Moscow children devoured it. There were
also Sherman tanks and US bombers but it is the gifts of spam and corned
beef that have left their imprint on the Russian folk memory. 

George Bush's legs are the contemporary equivalent. Ten years ago, when
Russia was immersed in another time of trouble and hunger, the current US
president's father inaugurated a food aid programme that flooded Moscow
with chicken legs. 

The Russians are good at nicknames. The drumsticks instantly became famous
as "Bush's legs". 

Charity begins at home, of course. The philanthropy had an ulterior motive.
The aid programme was a huge boon to US chicken farmers. The aid soon
became trade and what began as charity helped to crush the Russian poultry
industry and corner the market for America. 

Take surplus goods or products unsellable at home and dump them on Russia.
It goes on all the time. It's not only aid, it's free trade. 

Women's sanitary towels, for example. You can only, and will only want to,
buy a western brand. But the latest designs are not available. The bigger,
thicker designs now obsolete in the west dominate the market here, at a
price higher than in the west. 

"Russia," the agriculture minister, Aleksey Gordeyev, complained last week,
"is not a rubbish dump for poor-quality food." 

He's living in a different country. 

I bought a bottle of Italian wine recently. Only after slurping a couple of
glasses did I notice something funny about the label and peeled it back to
find the real, different label underneath. 

There are very yummy chicken legs in Moscow, but they're not George Bush's.
They're at the Riga market, alongside the pig's trotters, calves' shins,
duck thighs, and plump geese - good, fresh home produce flogged by the
babushkas from the countryside around Moscow. 

The problem is that these chicken legs are three times the price of the US
drumsticks. The Americans send $600m worth of poultry to Russia every year
- half their worldwide chicken exports - cornering up to 60% of the Russian
market. 

The Kremlin is crying foul. Moscow is mulling a complete ban, complaining
the poultry are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, are

salmonella-prone, and that the packaging is deceitful. 

But will Russia go hungry without Bush's legs? Such is the condition of the
farming industry that the biggest country in the world can't feed itself,
importing £10bn worth of food last year. 

The answer, perhaps, lies in coming up with another madcap import wave of
the kind that periodically erupts. 

When demonstrations became a vogue here at the end of the democratising
80s, the riot police were at a loss. They lacked the riot control gear. 

Imports again supplied the answer. Thousands of rubber truncheons were
quickly bought from Germany. As I said, the Muscovites are quick with
nicknames. The truncheons were instantly dubbed "the democratisers". 

*******

#5
Center for Study of Disarmament and Ecology at the Moscow Physics Technology 
Institute
21 February 2002
IMPERATIVE PROBLEMS IN RUSSIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS AND THE REDUCTION OF 
STRATEGIC OFFENSIVE WEAPONS [excerpt]
The closing section of Deputy Chairman of the Duma Defense Committee ALEKSEI 
ARBATOV’S lecture

[...]
Conclusions:

1) The process of limiting and reducing defensive and offensive strategic 
weapons began as a strictly public relations phenomenon, but it quickly 
became a serious course of consultations based on formalized principles of 
strategic relations.  These relations concern a most serious subject -- 
nuclear war -- which was the main concern in international relations during 
the Cold War, and, to a certain extent, remains the main concern to this 
day.

2) This process gradually acquired its own particular inertia, logic, 
development model, and intellectual substance.  What began as a purely 
marginal question in the first Strategic Arms Limitation treaty (SALT-I), 
would ultimately, not simply powerfully influence the strategic polices of 
both sides, but dominate them.  This was revealed in the first Strategic 
Arms Limitation treaty, and even more so in the second one, irregardless of 
whether it was good or bad

3) The thirty-year history of the process certainly demonstrated that 
political relations between the nations seriously affected progress apart 
from the professional aspects of the issue.  But at the same time, the 
process itself strongly influenced all international relations.  Bound by 
the talks on this question of utmost importance, the Soviet Union and the 
United States were compelled, with the exception of several episodes, to 
conduct themselves very carefully in regional conflicts and in other 
affairs, lest they risk jeopardizing what they considered to be the primary 
national security concern.

4) Experience showed that, to a certain extent, improvements in political 
relations help the process of strategic offensive arms reduction.  The first 
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-I) is a classic example, [it is] the 
historical agreement of 1991, and to a certain extent [the same is true for] 
START-II.  But the connection is not a linear function.  After a certain 
point, further improvements in relations begin to harm the progress, as 
politicians, military leaders, and others lose interest in it.  Why should 
we discuss these strategic arms now that we are no longer enemies, now that 
nuclear war is impossible?  This was the maxim of the 1990s.  For various 
reasons, questions concerning the ratification of START-II were frozen and 
this did not really bother anyone; everyone lost interest, concerned 
themselves with other issues and pushed the process into a dead end that we 
still can’t get escape.

5) Inequality of the two sides destroys discussions.  The fact that we -- 
ourselves, and needlessly -- created a perception of acute inequality in 
this area between Russia and the US has immediately undermined the progress 
of the talks, despite the very good political atmosphere.  Since September 
11th, our relations are better than they have ever been since 1945, and yet 
the process of the discussions was wrecked by the Russian government’s 
decision concerning the development of Russia’s strategic forces.

6) Financial difficulties and the subsequent desire to cut military spending 
act, on the whole, as a stimulus for conducting strategic arms reduction 
talks.  But at the same time, when financial problems reach a certain limit, 
discussions are endangered.  The other side loses interest in conducting 
talks, aware of the economic trouble.  And, once again, if you know that you 
don’t have enough money, you don’t want to participate in discussions 
because the agreements will never be fair or advantageous.

7) And the final, and, in my opinion, most important conclusion:  If you 
review the entire history of the process -- from SALT-I to the latest talks 
and agreements -- you will see that the results have always been closer to 
the American starting position than to the starting position of the Soviet 
(Russian) side.  In different periods and at different stages, the final 
products as expressed in formal agreements were always close to the starting 
position of the Americans than to the Soviet one.  This was true even under 
conditions of parity, when, unlike at the present, the US was very 
interested in treaties and agreements that would limit Soviet might.

Why?  I can’t find an explanation anywhere except in the specifics or in the 
differences in Russian and American decision-making systems.  In the 
American environment of information transparency, fairly sensitive details 
are available to a number of congressmen and experts, the 
military-industrial complex do not have a monopoly on information related to 
decision-making, and the perspective position to be taken at official 
discussions is tried and tested in open internal debates; different points 
of view and perspectives are introduced.  All possible positions are 
considered from different points of view and all versions are assessed.  As 
a result, a position is achieved that conforms to the general consensus of 
both public and private professionals.  The proposed stance is backed by the 
public, especially as it is represented by the Congress.  The position and 
all of the consequences of the process are thoroughly considered and 
supported by a certain logic of strategic stability.

Our setting was, and despite democratization still remains, very different.  
Discussion positions and military decisions are made in secret, in a small 
circle, with absolutely no information.  Even State Duma Deputies, with the 
exception of a few professionally involved specialists, have a very limited 
idea of what’s going on.  And if someone wants to receive information, goes 
to the secret department, and obtains it, [s/he] would still be unable to 
understand it without the necessary preparation and corresponding 
explanations.  Our decision-making process has forced us to come out with 
positions that were insufficiently prepared and poorly defended.  
Ultimately, in the course of the discussions the Americans have always 
managed to secure more clout.  Unless we change the national decision-system 
as it concerns strategic questions as well as military programs and 
consultations, we are doomed to follow the lead of the United States, and to 
remain in a subordinate position.

(Translated by Luba Schwartzman)

*******

#6
Boston Globe
March 9, 2002
Editorial
The Georgia gambit

WITTINGLY OR unwittingly, the Bush administration has given a false label
to its decision to send 200 US military advisers to the Republic of Georgia
to train a Georgian ''antiterrorist'' force for operations in the lawless
area of the Pankisi Gorge bordering Chechnya. 

Even officials in the government of President Eduard Shevardnadze, who
wants the American military trainers there, acknowledge that there may be
only a couple of dozen Arab fighters among the 5,000 to 7,000 Chechen
refugees in the the Pankisi Gorge. And it is not known whether any of those
foreigners are members of Al Qaeda. So the US mission to Georgia cannot be
justified as a necessary component of the global war against terrorism.

Nevertheless, the gesture of sending 200 US military trainers to Georgia is
justified as a clever means of protecting that weak Caucasian country from
its Russian neighbor. 

For some time the Kremlin has been bullying Georgia, acting to undermine
Shevardnadze's government, Georgia's territorial integrity, and the former
Soviet republic's independence. For instance, Russia has asserted that the
badlands of the Pankisi Gorge, where smugglers and crime rings operate
unhindered, is also a rear-guard base for Chechen independence fighters,
all of whom Moscow likes to define as terrorists.

The Russian government under President Vladimir Putin has been demanding
that Russian forces be permitted to attack Chechen fighters in the Pankisi
Gorge. The US trainers will deprive Moscow of its pretext for inserting
Russian troops into independent Georgia.

Although Georgia's feeble military has not been able to do anything about
bandits in the gorge, much less Chechen guerrillas, Shevardnadze has
refused to allow Russian military operations on Georgian soil. He has
already had to contend with covert Russian backing of secessionist
movements in the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. A day
after Putin said he would not object to US advisers coming to Georgia,
members of the Russian Parliament said they would consider recognizing
Abkhazia's independence from Georgia. And Russia's state-owned natural gas
company said it would cut supplies to Georgia.

By pretending to take at face value Putin's allegations about terrorists in
the Pankisi Gorge and helping Georgia address the problem without Russian
intervention, Washington is able to enhance the stability of Georgia - a
country in the Caucasus that offers a safe air corridor to new US military
bases in Central Asia. However, the administration will have to be
extremely careful not to allow the United States to become complicit in any
way in the atrocities and war crimes that Russia has been committing
against the Chechens.

*******

#7
Wall Street Journal
March 8, 2002
America to the Rescue -- Again
By VLADIMIR SOCOR

America is again bearing the brunt of Europe's burdens -- this time in
Georgia, a country struggling to move from Russia's orbit into the West's.
The U.S. is now in the process of deploying some 200 Special Forces troops,
primarily Green Berets, on an equip-and-train mission to Georgia. The
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has given a grudging nod and reined in
his vociferously protesting hard-liners -- civilian as well as military.

The deployment decision lays a marker for Georgia's independence. It
forestalls recent threats by Russian hard-liners to use force within
Georgia under antiterrorist pretenses -- a move that could rupture the
political basis of the antiterrorist coalition which the U.S. wants preserved.
 
By helping stabilize Georgia, the U.S. secures Europe's vital transit
interests and access to Central Asia. Situated on Europe's doorstep, a
linchpin to all the planned westbound routes for Caspian oil and gas,
Georgia faces daunting external and internal threats. In addition to the
Russian and proxy troops on Georgia's territory, there have been
potentially explosive ripples from the war in Chechnya next door. This
latter factor has come close to creating an international crisis over a
once-obscure, now notorious, area of Georgia, the Pankisi Gorge abutting on
Chechnya.

The remote gorge, home to Georgian Chechens, harbors thousands of Chechen
refugees from the Russian war -- among them a handful of Chechen fighters
-- as well as armed groups of common criminals and racketeers. Georgian
police are only now beginning to get a handle on the situation. Moscow
wants the Pankisi crime problem treated as a terrorist problem --
"Georgia's Chechnya," or "Georgia's mini-Afghanistan," as Russian officials
put it -- and to let Russian troops bludgeon their way into Pankisi as they
have in Chechnya.

Between Sept. 11 and now, Moscow kept up a barrage of unsubstantiated
accusations that Georgia tolerated Chechen and "international" terrorist
bases in the Pankisi Gorge supporting the Chechen insurgency in Russia. Top
Russian officials constantly demanded that Georgia "invite" the Russian
army for antiterrorist operations on Georgian territory. Occasionally,
Russia's military aviation conducted air raids into Georgia. Intelligence
agencies in Moscow saturated the media with stories depicting Pankisi as a
sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists. All this was meant to
pressure Georgia into changing its Western orientation, or, failing that,
to help Moscow obtain carte blanche and subdue Georgia militarily.

In a new twist recently, Russia's foreign affairs and defense ministers,
Igor Ivanov and Sergei Ivanov, insisted that Osama bin Laden himself might
be hiding and operating in Pankisi, a possibility that "can not be
disproved" and must be acted upon. On that cue the armed forces chief of
staff, Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, announced that he was ready any time to order
troops into action in Georgia. President Eduard Shevardnadze, architect of
Georgia's Western orientation, urgently needed help.

At that point, the U.S. stepped in with the offer of Special Forces to
enable the Georgians to fight terrorism. Washington made clear its strong
support for Georgia's refusal to authorize any Russian "special operation"
there. The U.S. deployment decision fits within the framework of the grand
antiterrorist coalition, and also extends a protective hand over Georgia.

Moscow, having portrayed the Pankisi situation as an intolerable threat to
Russia, could not very well protest against an American-assisted Georgian
effort to suppress that threat. As Sergei Kazyanov of the Moscow-based
Institute for National Security and Strategic Research was quoted as saying
by the Christian Science Monitor, "Moscow has become a prisoner of its own
rhetoric. We kept saying that Chechen rebels are equivalent to al Qaeda
terrorists, and must be dealt with. We assumed that the U.S. would turn a
blind eye while we took care of that business in Georgia, on our own
border. Instead, we [unwittingly] opened the door for the U.S. to step in.
Once again, the Americans have turned the tables on us."

Moscow's response resembles its reaction to the U.S. military deployments
post-Sept. 11 in Central Asia. In both situations, Russian officials
initially rejected any such deployment, declaring that these countries
constituted Russia's own turf. When the indignation was exposed as
impotent, and the U.S. made agreements directly with the countries
concerned, Mr. Putin stepped in to accept the inevitable.

On March 1, Mr. Putin signaled an end to the storm of recriminations and
warnings, with which official Moscow had initially met the U.S.-Georgian
decision. He declared that the upcoming deployment is "no tragedy" for
Russia. "Once it became possible in Central Asia, why not in Georgia?" he
asked rhetorically, turning necessity into virtue. "We support any
antiterrorist effort in Pankisi irrespective of who conducts it -- whether
American or European partners or Georgia directly."

The American Special Forces troops will equip and train four Georgian rapid
deployment battalions for antiterrorism and counterinsurgency operations.
The year-long program forms the centerpiece of a military-reform effort,
led and funded by the U.S. in Georgia. A country of such strategic
significance cannot be left defenseless. This is the first-ever American
military deployment in the South Caucasus, and the first deployment there
by any Western force since the region's countries became independent a
decade ago.

But where is Europe's contribution? After all, Europe has an even higher
and more direct stake than the U.S. has in Georgia's security and
stability. The country matters to America largely because it matters to
America's European allies in the first place, as an energy transit corridor
and gateway to Asia, important to Europe's future well-being and thus to
the viability of NATO's European pillar. Europe, please stand up and be
counted to share with America the burdens of security assistance to Georgia.

Mr. Socor is a senior analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, publishers of
the Monitor: A Daily Briefing on the Post-Soviet States.

******

#8
The Jamestown Foundation PRISM
A monthly on the post-Soviet states
February 2002   Volume VIII, Issue 2, Part 3

THE PLIGHT OF INDEPENDENT MASS MEDIA IN RUSSIA
By Elena Chinyaeva

In late January the television channel TV-6 was taken off the
airwaves after the Press Ministry implemented a court order that
the channel's parent company be liquidated, which essentially
robbed its owners of their assets. This took place almost two
years after the ownership of another television channel, NTV,
changed hands under similar circumstances. While the NTV
incident was accompanied by scandal, in which the Russian
authorities were criticized internationally for curbing freedom
of press, the TV-6 closure--though described widely in the press
as marking the end of Russia's "last independent TV
station"--was commented on with restraint both inside and
outside the country. And perhaps rightly so. A closer look at
the conflict suggests that genuinely independent media is a
rarity in Russia. The reason for this should be no surprise:
There is no developed market for media products and may not be
for a long time, given that the main factor in its
development--the audience--has been grossly neglected by all the
parties in both conflicts.

HOW TO BE INDEPENDENT IN RUSSIA?

In any country, truly independent mass media are those that
generate enough money to sustain themselves. If a media outlet
depends on the financial support of the owner, it becomes very
vulnerable to influence--political, financial or otherwise. What
difference does it make, then, whether it is owned by the state
or by an individual? If the books are not in order, it is
dependent. By this standard, there are very few independent mass
media in Russia because there is no developed market for media
products. And an underdeveloped economy means that advertising
revenues are small.

Indeed, the advertising market has been directly affected by the
Russian economy's ups and downs. According to the daily
newspaper Kommersant, the advertising market grew to US$2
billion in the first half of 1998--120 percent higher than in
the same period of the previous year (in 1997, the whole of the
market accounted for US$1.845 billion)--and was expected to grow
another 30-40 percent by the end of the year. But the August
1998 financial crisis reduced the volume of advertising on
television and in the print media by four times. Television was
hit particularly hard, with ad revenues dropping by 70-80
percent and radio ads by 60 percent. Advertising rates hit rock
bottom. The advertising market underwent drastic changes, with
media of all kinds reorienting from big-budget advertisers
towards those with just US$5,000-$10,000 to spend. One of the
two companies controlling the market, Premier SV, closed down,
and the media-buying business was practically monopolized by the
Video International company, which seized some 70 percent of the
market.

As if the financial crisis were not enough, in August 2000 the
Ostankino television tower caught fire. According to Kommersant,
advertisers lost up to US$4.5 million for each of the three
weeks that the major television channels' signals were
disrupted. Last but not least, political factors also had a
negative impact on advertising. When Gazprom, the
state-controlled natural gas monopoly and NTV's main creditor,
moved to out the channel's owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, citing the
channel's debts, NTV, which advertisers had long considered the
most attractive channel, was selling a prime time ad slot for as
low as US$500.

Still, signs of recovery eventually appeared. According to a
yearly report published by the Russian Advertising Council in
September 2001, the advertising market in 2000 was worth US$1.1
billion, a 45 percent growth over 1999. Television accounted for
the single largest share of that market--33.5 percent, worth
about US$300 million. Advertising in the print media accounted
for 29.8 percent of the total (US$240 million)--down three
percent from the previous year. In radio broadcasting, the
leading FM stations, such as Russian Radio, were able to attract
US$60,000 a month in advertising money. Meanwhile, the
provincial advertising market's share of the total grew from 22
percent in 1999 to 24 percent in 2000, totalling US$260 million.

Russia has obviously been the most attractive of the former
Soviet republics for advertisers. In Ukraine, for example, which
has the second-largest economy in the region, the total
advertising market does not exceed US$270 million. Experts
believe that in 2001 Russia's advertising market exceeded the
pre-crisis 1997 level (the exact figures are not yet known). It
is still very small by Western standards, however, at just
US$7.5 per capita, compared with US$200-300 per capita in
Western Europe and US$800 in the United States.

HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE

So it took the Russian advertising market three years to
overcome the consequences of the 1998 financial crisis--three
years that were practically lost for the development of an open
and stable mass media market. Starved for funds, mass media
outlets are always fishing for money and not particularly touchy
about its sources. One incident illustrates the worrying state
of affairs well. In February 2001, Promaco, a start-up PR
company from St Petersburg, aiming to highlight media
corruption, offered all the country's major national periodicals
bogus advertising material about the opening of a non-existing
shop. Thirteen of them published it as a regular news article
but accepted payment for it. The case cast a bright light on the
mass media's shady practices. In the provinces, where the
advertising market is very narrow and the population often poor,
mass media are easy prey to influence, both financial and
political, and is in fact often fully controlled by the local
authorities.

In addition to the lack of advertising money--which is, after
all, determined by the general health of the national
economy--there is also in Russia a strong tradition of what
might be called economic infantilism. A media outlet would
rather become an instrument of influence by finding wealthy
sponsors then struggle on its own in the rough waters of
Russia's free--and often wild--market economy in order to become
profitable. Given the atmosphere of extreme political favoritism
that was characteristic of President Yeltsin's time in the
office, when individuals' status and wealth were dependent on
their ability to get "close to the throne," it was hardly
surprising that Russian mass media, divided between a few
so-called oligarchs, reflected the problems of society in a
crooked mirror of their owners' clan struggles.

It was then that the seeds of the later political scandals
surrounding the Russian mass media, particularly NTV and TV-6,
were sown. A number of individuals who had helped Boris Yeltsin
get re-elected in 1996 were later "rewarded" with virtually
unlimited access to the state resources. One of them, Vladimir
Gusinsky, was smart enough to use these resources to develop his
NTV channel into Russia's leading TV station, with quality news
broadcasting, top technology and the best presenters. But he
created a new business using old methods and attitudes,
borrowing freely from state-controlled companies like Gazprom
and Sberbank, with apparently little intention of paying them
back.

Moreover, with NTV having played a major role in turning the
tide of public opinion in support of President Yeltsin against
his major rival in the 1996 presidential campaign, the Communist
leader Gennady Zyuganov, Gusinsky got used to seeing himself as
a king-maker. During the parliamentary and presidential
campaigns of 2000-2001, Gusinsky decided not to support either
the Unity party, a new "party of power," or Vladimir Putin, whom
Yeltsin had named as his successor, unlike Gusinsky's rival,
Boris Berezovsky, who then controlled Russian Public Television
(ORT) and helped Putin become president. But while the Unity
party and Vladimir Putin came out the winners, none of the
oligarchs did. With his steely determination, the new president
took just a few months to put an end to the political influence
of the oligarchs, their misuse of the mass media for their own
ends and to freedom of the press--at least in the old sense of
the term, meaning being free to say what their owners wanted.
The number of those who pay the piper, as well as financially
viable media outlets, which play their own tunes, has
drastically reduced.

A MYTH OF INDEPENDENCE

Each profession creates its own myths. In Russia it has already
become a cultural tradition to consider a media outlet
"independent" if it is critical--what or about whom does not
really matter. The same can be said about individual
journalists: some of the best known are considered to be
"independent" just because from time to time they publish
"sharply critical" materials about this or that which are
heavily peppered with pathos and moralizing. More often than
not, they are supplied with such materials by interested
parties.

As good professionals--that is, having a good command of the
craft--journalists should be able to do their job well in any
place. This is not always the case in Russia. Thus, during the
NTV scandal a group of its journalists decided they could be
good professionals only under a certain leadership and when the
channel changed owners, they left for another channel--TV-6.
Instead of being "independent"--that is, doing their job well
wherever they are--they went from one owner to another, from
Vladimir Gusinsky to Boris Berezovsky, who, ironically, had
previously been the target of much of their the very one whom
many of them had previously devoted much of their "sharply
critical" materials. As the closure of TV-6 loomed, these
"independent" journalists changed their minds several times,
first defending the channel, then opting to form a new company
without Berezovsky out and then changing their mind once again.
The irony became surreal following TV-6's closure: in seeking to
start a new TV channel, these same journalists have turned to
some of the people they criticized most severely in the past.
These include Roman Abramovich, the oligarch and governor of the
Chukotka province, whom the old NTV-turned-TV6 team often
denounced as the key man in the "Family", influential group of
Yeltsin-era Kremlin insiders.

In both the NTV and the TV-6 conflicts, neither side thought
about the audience. TV-6 is now filled with free sports
programming supplied by the NTV Sport-Plus satellite channel,
which has raised the ire of those viewers who have already paid
for the same programming. Nor has anyone thought about those
people who worked at TV-6 but were not part of its "elite" and
thus denied a voice in deciding the channel's fate. These
included editors, technicians, and many others who have suddenly
had to look for new jobs. The economy might be on the rise, but
if it remains customer-unfriendly, the effects of this rise will
hardly be felt. After all, who would subscribe to or place an ad
in mass media that do not consider the interests of viewers or
clients and could be shut down overnight?

Elena Chinyaeva, who holds a doctorate in modern history from
Oxford University, is a writer with the leading Russian
political weekly Kommersant-Vlast.

*******

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