Johnson's Russia List
#6154
24 March 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

[Note from David Johnson:
1. New York Times: Michael Wines, Russia's Feuding Liberals Are Shoved to 
Fringes.
2. US News and World Report: Moscow's Vlad and Gorby show.
3. The Times (UK): Carl Mortished, Russia's Siberian crude comes in from 
the cold. Saudi Arabia's dominance of oil production could face a growing 
threat.
4. Newsday: Liam Pleven, Russia Slow to Adopt Jury Trial Process.
5. Miami Herald/AP: Sarah Karush, Russian passports vital, those without 
them find.
6. The Times (UK): Michael Binyon, Brave voice of Russia's accuser. A
tribute to a Russian journalist's expose of the Chechen war. (Politkovskaya)
7. Mikhail Tsypkin: Re: Stratfor/Crisis Looming Between U.S.,Russia(#6152).
8. Literaturnaia Gazeta: Aleksandr Panarin, On Totalitarian Utopianism and 
Liberal Realism.
9. New York Times: Celestine Bohlen, An Escape Artist Trained During the 
Soviet Circus. (Boris Eifman)
10. The Times (UK): Alice Lagnado, Russians outraged at Ukraine's 'Nazi 
heroes'
11. RIA Novosti: DUMA SPEAKER TO SUSPEND COMMUNIST PARTY MEMBERSHIP? 
12. RFE/RL: Nikola Krastev, Central Asia: 'Taliban' Author Says Russia To 
Regain Influence In Unstable Region.
13. The Russia Journal: Ajay Goyal, Putin forging new links with Jewish 
right.]

*******

#1
New York Times
March 24, 2002
Russia's Feuding Liberals Are Shoved to Fringes
By MICHAEL WINES

MOSCOW, March 23 — Yuli A. Rybakov was at his seat in Russia's lower house
of Parliament last month when the legislators took up a measure outlawing
the torture of animals. For Mr. Rybakov, who once spent six years in an
Arctic logging camp as K.G.B. punishment for handing out Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn's works, this was too good an opportunity to let pass. 

So he offered his own bill, outlawing the torture of human beings. 

The animal-torture ban garnered 219 yes votes. The human-torture ban got
134. Nine legislators voted against it.

As Mr. Rybakov can testify, it is tough to be a Russian liberal these days. 

It was not supposed to be. Just two years ago, the same mix of free-market,
human-rights ideology that occupies the West's political mainstream seemed
to be in ascendancy. President Boris N. Yeltsin's pro-Western advisers had
formed a party, the Union of Right Forces, to carry its banner. The other
liberal party, Yabloko, bragged of expanding outside its big-city base. 

Moreover, the new president, Vladimir V. Putin, unhesitatingly endorsed
capitalism, democracy, "a law-based state, and personal and political
freedom." 

In theory, not much has changed. But in practice, liberalism exists today
on the edges of politics — spurned by most Russians, powerless before the
Kremlin, and rent by feuds. 

"It's not an easy fight," Yegor T. Gaidar, Mr. Yeltsin's first prime
minister and, to some, a founding father of Russian liberalism, said in an
interview. "I'd put it this way: in the next decade, Russia will be a
market economy, and a very liberal market economy. But I am not sure that
Russia will be a democracy."

For the moment, liberals are preoccupied with fighting — bitterly — among
themselves. 

Last year, a proposed alliance between left-leaning Yabloko and the more
conservative Union of Right Forces fell apart, the victim of mutual
suspicions and opposing views on economic regulation and Russia's war in
Chechnya. 

"They were supporting the war," Yabloko's chairman, Grigory A. Yavlinsky,
said in an interview, "and because Yabloko was saying no, they said we were
traitors — traitors. It's very hard to make a coalition with those guys." 

Those guys have their own problems: this winter, a quarter of the Union of
Right Forces's 32 legislators walked out, charging that the party had
abandoned human rights to become a captive of big business. 

The defectors have since joined Liberal Russia, a new party that embraces
both capitalism and civil liberties and claims to have recruited thousands
of Union supporters. The new party, meanwhile, is anathema to both the
Union and Yabloko because of its parentage. Its godfather is Boris A.
Berezovsky, the tycoon, onetime power behind Mr. Yeltsin and blood enemy of
the current president, Mr. Putin. 

Mr. Berezovsky's many detractors call him a cunning opportunist who helped
create the maelstrom that engulfed 1990's Russia, making a considerable
fortune in the process. Facing corruption charges that he calls
Kremlin-inspired, he fled in late 2000 to London, where he is bankrolling
Liberal Russia's startup.

This three-way power struggle disguises the fact that there is precious
little power over which to fight.

Political scholars say perhaps 15 percent of Russians are Western-style
liberals, a figure that has changed little in a decade. Or maybe decades:
85 years ago, in 1917, the liberal Cadets held but 10.8 percent of the
seats in the final Parliament under Czar Nicholas II. Today, Yabloko and
the Union of Right Forces control 10.8 percent of the 450 seats in the
lower house. 

Real power belongs to a four-party alliance; it is dominated by Unity, a
faction that swept almost one of every five parliamentary seats in
elections only months after the Kremlin created it in late 1999. 

Analysts usually call the coalition centrist. But that is a misnomer, says
Boris Makarenko, the deputy director of the Center for Political
Technologies in Moscow. Its true ideology is based not on political
principles, but on loyalty to Mr. Putin.

"It's a pro-president coalition, not pro-government," said Mr. Makarenko,
the author of a new statistical analysis of Russian legislators. "If it
comes from the president, it's guaranteed automatic support." 

Having a bloc of votes under presidential control proved a masterstroke.
When the Parliament's sizable Communist faction lined up against Mr.
Putin's free-market economic agenda, the Kremlin turned to liberals for the
vital swing votes. 

But when liberals protested his plans to consolidate the reins of power in
the president's office, the Kremlin counted on the authority-minded
Communists to provide a majority. 

By the end of 2001, Mr. Makarenko said, the whipsawing had worked so well
that a reinvigorated Kremlin no longer needed swing votes to pass most of
its agenda. Since then, both liberals and Communists have gone from helping
write legislation to tinkering around its edges. 

When liberal parties have lined up against highly disputed government
initiatives — as they did last year in opposing the establishment of a
multibillion-dollar business to store nuclear waste from abroad, or in
fighting Kremlin efforts to shut down independent network television — they
have often stood almost alone. 

Mr. Yavlinsky of the left-leaning Yabloko party calls his little band of 17
parliamentary deputies the main opposition to Mr. Putin on the crucial
questions of Chechnya, the Kremlin's appetite for power, and human-rights
issues, and he may be correct.

"Yabloko is in opposition to the domestic policy of the president," Mr.
Yavlinsky said. "We can't accept the situation with the media. We can't
accept the situation with the political system, when it is used as a tool.
We can't accept the elections, the falsification of which happens very
often. We're strongly opposed to creating in Russia a Potemkin village
instead of a democracy."

Yet by itself, Mr. Putin's dominance, even if engineered by his own
Kremlin, hardly makes Russia undemocratic. Mr. Putin himself has said
Russia's future lies in Europe, with its Western values, even as his
civil-rights and military policies in war zones like Chechnya seem to
indicate otherwise. 

In fact, Adam Smith's economic philosophy is flourishing here, although the
other part of the European equation — the beliefs of Locke and Jefferson in
individual rights and free will — seem to be wavering. 

When he confronts Mr. Putin with such seeming contradictions, Mr. Yavlinsky
said, the replies are vague. "He says it's a very complicated thing here in
Russia, because of the bureaucracy, because of Russian politics in
general," Mr. Yavlinsky said. 

Mr. Rybakov traces the box that liberals are in to the resurgence of his
Soviet tormentors. Months before becoming president, Mr. Putin directed the
Federal Security Service, independent Russia's successor to the K.G.B.'s
hated domestic arm.

"The guards of the prison fled because they were afraid they would be hung
from the lampposts," he said, alluding to the collapse of Communism. "Now
it turns out that we can exist, and life has stabilized. Now the guards are
back. And this time, they're wearing plainclothes. Our task is not to allow
the restoration to happen."

Yet most Russians seem unmoved. In a poll by the Russian Public Opinion
Center this year, just 5 percent of respondents chose European society as
the model for Russian development, and 20 percent favored a return to
Communism. 

But 60 percent said the country should follow its own unique path. Another
majority, 70 percent, said that above all Russia needed a strong leader. 

Mr. Makarenko and others say that majority — anti-Communist, but hardly
pro-Western — may determine the course of Russian politics. 

"Many Russians who have drifted away from Communism as a way of life have
not come to the Western way of life," he said. "They're in between, and
that in-between doesn't include human rights as part of their system of
values." 

Basically, he said, "the future of democracy in Russia depends on whether
Western-style liberals and these non-Communist centrists will find more and
more in common." 
 
*******

#2
US News and World Report
March 24, 2002 
DAILY WHISPER
Moscow's Vlad and Gorby show

He's not pitching Viagra yet, but Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the
Soviet Union, is riding a successful return from political failure that
rivals that of Republican Bob Dole. Pushed aside by Boris Yeltsin, then
boxed away for several years, Gorby is once again a Kremlin regular, often
chatting about world affairs with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two
have become close, with Putin lifting some of Yeltsin's restrictions on
Gorby—like a ban from appearing on tv. And Gorbachev, who always had a
special touch when it came to Western politics and pr, has been tapped as
an official emissary, even to the White House. The Bush team welcomes
Gorbachev's new role, but the administration looks at the Putin-Gorbachev
relationship a little differently. "Putin," says a Bushie, "taps folks from
the old regime who might have a skill or special access in the West. He
makes them feel good, and it gets them to stop pestering him." And, the
Bush aide adds, "it's just good politics. It's like Bill Clinton tapping
Bob Dole to go on a mission for him."
 
*********

#3
The Times (UK)
March 22, 2002
Russia's Siberian crude comes in from the cold
Saudi Arabias dominance of oil production could face a growing threat
By Carl Mortished
 
THE balance of power in world energy shifted towards Russia last month as
America’s new ally become the world’s largest oil producer, pushing Saudi
Arabia into second place for the first time in more than a decade. 

Russian output soared from 6.5 million barrels per day (bpd) to more than
seven million in February, according to figures from the International
Energy Agency. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has cut production by one
million bpd to 6.9 million bpd to comply with Opec quota reductions. 

The revival of Siberian crude follows a surge in Russian investment in an
industry starved over the past decade. If investments made last year come
to fruition, Russian oil output could soar another 7 per cent this year. 

Over the long term, the desert Kingdom retains the most clout in the oil
market. Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest reserves and the capacity to
boost production quickly to ten million bpd. However the sudden ascent of a
long-standing rival to the top of the pile will ring alarm bells. 

Riyadh is worried that Russia could gain market share at its expense and
the surge in Russian output is occurring at a time when diplomatic
relations are poor between Arab countries and the West. The former Soviet
Republic’s political credibility, meanwhile, has been steadily growing. 

Saudi anxiety about Russia's oil strength meant feverish negotiations last
year between Opec and Russia over export curbs. These led to an agreement
with the Kremlin to restrict pipeline exports by 150,000 bpd but Russian
analysts are sceptical that the cutback will have much long-term
significance. 

According to Peter Sullivan of United Financial Group, a Moscow brokerage,
Russian oil companies are doing all they can to circumvent the export
restriction, which applies only to oil routed through pipelines controlled
by Transneft, the state pipeline company. “They are refining it and sending
products abroad. They are exporting it by barge. I don’t think the export
curbs will last well into the second quarter. They don’t want to miss out
on the higher oil prices,” he says. 

Low US petrol stocks and encouraging signs of signs of economic recovery
have sent the oil price climbing above $25 during the past week as
expectation grew that demand is rising again. 

However, within Russia itself, the oil price has virtually collapsed,
falling from the equivalent of $12 to just $4.25 per barrel, as oil
companies dumped barrels previously destined for exports into Russian
refineries. 

Domestic prices are the Achilles’ heel of Russian oil producers, says Mr
Sullivan. Russian is currently producing barrels at full throttle as a
result of big recent investments by the oligarchs that control the Russian
producers. 

However, companies such as Lukoil and Surgut, which have production costs
of $4 per barrel, will make little money if export curbs continue and the
internal fuel price fails to rise. In that event, investment will decline
sharply with production growth arrested. 

During the decade to 2000, the Russian hydrocarbon industry was looted by
asset-strippers and cash generated from oil exports was stashed in foreign
bank accounts and real estate. Negligible investment in new drilling caused
a steady decline in production. 

However, President Putin’s agreement not to threaten the assets of Russia’s
oil tycoons in return for their political loyalty has stimulated a new oil
boom. The oligarchs who once looted their companies are now investing in
the hope of securing respectability and higher share prices.
 
********

#4
Newsday
March 24, 2002
Russia Slow to Adopt Jury Trial Process
By Liam Pleven
RUSSIA CORRESPONDENT

Moscow - Irina Pevcheva sat in the drab cage that holds the accused in a
Moscow courtroom this month, charged with arranging the brutal ax murder of
her mother almost three years ago, as a judge read aloud the following words:

"Guided by the presumption of innocence, you are obliged to interpret all
irremovable doubts in favor of the defendant," said Yelena Snegiryova,
addressing the seven women and five men who formed a jury of Pevcheva's peers.

The speech would not have been read in the former Soviet Union, which
dispensed justice from above through judges who followed the instructions
of the ruling Communist Party. In 1993, Russian reformers re-introduced
jury trials - which had existed toward the end of czarist rule - in an
effort to advance basic civil liberties and limit the enormous power of
judges and prosecutors.

But the jury revolution has come piecemeal. Almost nine years after the
first post-Soviet jury trial, only nine of Russia's 89 regions allow
juries, in part because they are expensive to implement. Only defendants
accused of murder or a few other crimes may request them. And even with
juries, acquittals are rare.

President Vladimir Putin has called for establishing a a strong civil
society - in his words, a "dictatorship of law." He signed bills last year
that will implement a jury system nationwide starting in January and that
shift the power to issue arrest warrants from prosecutors to judges.

The creeping adoption of jury trials reflects the pace of evolution in a
judicial system still stacked against the accused. "Such cultural work is
slow," said Sergei Pashin, an attorney who helped draft the 1993 reforms. 

Juries have wrought some changes, legal experts say. Police now conduct
more professional investigations, aware that they may have to convince a
jury, rather than a judge, of a defendant's guilt. Investigators now
"actually write down the names of the witnesses," said Alexei Shurygin, a
judge on Russia's supreme court.

Juries have "had an effect, even in places where they haven't been
introduced," said Alexander Kolpakov, one of Pevcheva's defense lawyers.

Russian juries have authority to ask for mercy for defendants they convict,
which limits the sentence a judge can impose. In Pevcheva's case, the
maximum penalty would generally be 20 years - or 15 years with mercy.

Defendants have a slim, but slightly better, chance of winning acquittal
from a jury. Russian juries deliver convictions roughly 85 percent of the
time, according to Supreme Court statistics, compared with a rate of more
than 99 percent in verdicts by judges. 

Convictions after a jury trial rise to more than 90 percent after figuring
in appeals by prosecutors, which can result in repeated trials. "I know
cases where defendants have gone to trial four times," said Pashin.

By comparison, 70 percent of defendants charged with violent felonies in
New York last year were convicted, according to the state Department of
Criminal Justice Services. And American prosecutors cannot charge people
with the same crime after they have been acquitted by a jury.

As the jury system is set to go nationwide, some Russians resist,
preferring the country's Soviet-designed non-jury system, in which judges
deliver their verdicts with two ordinary citizens acting as court-appointed
"people's assessors".

"If they introduce it, we will work on it. But in my personal view, the
present system of people's assessors works rather well," said Nikolai
Zaitsev, court chairman in Krasnoyarsk, a Siberian region.

This month, Pevcheva, 27, the mother of a 4-year-old son, stood accused
largely on the basis of statements that police took from two co-defendants
who were younger than 18 at the time of the killing. At the trial, Pevcheva
uncomfortably shared the defendants' cage with the two young men.

The prosecution said Pevcheva quarreled with her mother, asked the teens to
kill her and gave them and another man, Pavel Rybalko, cash, jewelry, a TV
and other goods, all worth about $200. Rybalko lured Lyubov Petrova to a
stairwell and, while the teens acted as lookouts, he killed her, the
prosecution said.

The youths said in court that police had beaten them to get the statements
that implicated Pevcheva. In a statement, Pevcheva said she had learned
Rybalko had killed her mother over a debt, but had not gone directly to
police because she had been threatened. Rybalko, who had confessed to the
killing, said nothing about Pevcheva being involved.

Only about a third of eligible defendants opt for a jury trial, many
fearing they cannot be acquitted under any circumstance, preferring to
plead guilty to a judge because that can elicit a more lenient sentence.
But Pevcheva asked for a jury, her husband said, because she had real hopes
of acquittal.

After Pevcheva's jurors deliberated for two-and-a-half hours, they returned
to the court and the foreman, a middle-aged man with dark hair and silver
sideburns, read her verdict: guilty. The jury recommended mercy. 
 
********

#5
Miami Herald
March 24, 2002
Russian passports vital, those without them find
BY SARAH KARUSH
Associated Press

MOSCOW - Alexander Lemekhov, a homeless Muscovite, has one prized
possession that he jealously guards: a thin booklet with an official
Russian seal, a glued-on photograph and his name and date of birth.

It's a Russian internal passport, something most of Lemekhov's countrymen
take for granted.

Although called a passport, this all-important document is not used for
crossing borders. Rather, it is needed for everything from signing a lease
to buying a train ticket, and a Russian cannot function in society without
it. Its closest U.S. equivalent is the social security number, but it's
needed far more often and also serves as a photo ID.

A holdover from the Soviet Union, the internal passport creates a wide
field for abuses, critics say. For the country's most marginalized groups,
including refugees, ex-convicts and the homeless, the passport system can
keep them trapped -- unable, for example, to get jobs or travel to another
part of the country.

Police maintain that the system is necessary for security reasons and have
intensified their passport checks in response to the war with separatists
in the Chechnya region and alleged terrorist attacks.

Some officials in the United States and Britain have suggested instituting
a national ID card in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Opponents fear such
cards would encroach on personal freedoms and say there is no proven
security value.

PETER'S IDEA 

In Russia, identification papers were first introduced in the 18th century
by Peter the Great to control population movements and to ease tax
collection and conscription.

Under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, passports became a key instrument of
totalitarian control. The passports contained residence permits, which
meant official approval was required to move to another town or city.

Peasants were not issued passports at all, forcing them to remain in the
countryside during the brutal collectivization drive and famines of the
1930s. They were granted passports only beginning in 1974.

A variation on the residence permit exists even today: Anyone who travels
within the country is required to visit police within three days of
arriving in a city to get a registration stamp in the passport.

Soviet passports were also infamous for the ''fifth clause,'' which
identified a person's ethnicity, formalizing discrimination against Jews
and other minorities.

Today, every Russian citizen is required to bring his or her birth
certificate to the local police station to receive a passport by age 16.

The booklets are embossed with Russia's double-headed eagle seal instead of
the Soviet hammer and sickle, but otherwise they differ little from their
predecessors.

The new passport does not have an ethnicity clause, but contains data on
its holder's place of residence, marital status, children and military
service. Critics say that is too much information.

'Such `necessary' notes in an identification document are signs of a police
state and are absolutely inappropriate in a democratic country,'' the
magazine Yezhenedelny Zhurnal protested recently.

SOME ARE LEFT OUT 

But, human rights advocates say, an even more glaring injustice is that
some people are left out of the system completely, just as peasants once were.

''Without a passport, you're an outcast,'' said Lemekhov, who lived without
one of the little booklets for 12 of his 57 years.

In Russia, medical treatment, employment, education, social assistance and
voting are all tied to passports.

In some parts of the country, they are needed simply to walk down the
street. Police in Moscow and other major cities regularly check the
residence information in people's passports and fine those who lack a local
registration stamp.

Lack of a passport can land a person in jail for up to 30 days.

For the homeless, lack of a passport is ''one of the main obstacles to
returning to normal life,'' said Alexei Nikiforov, coordinator of a
homeless assistance program run by the Belgian branch of Doctors Without
Borders.

About 60 percent of the estimated 100,000 homeless in Moscow have no
passports, according to surveys by the group.

Lemekhov tells of a labyrinth of conflicting regulations that combined with
official indifference to keep him without a passport for years.

His struggle began when he was released from prison in 1987 after serving a
four-year term for ''parasitism,'' the Soviet-era crime of not having a
job. Like many ex-convicts, he had only his release papers to prove his
identity. His original passport was confiscated upon his arrest and lost
somewhere in the maze of the criminal justice system.

In the Soviet era, ex-convicts were not allowed to live in Moscow, so
Lemekhov wandered from town to town. In 1995, after the regulation was
overturned, he returned to the capital.

But without a passport, he could not obtain housing or get a job. Police
frequently sent him to one of the city's seven holding centers for people
without passports, where he could be held in a cramped, unlit cell for up
to 30 days.

For most Russians, replacing a lost or stolen passport involves a trip to
the police. But the lack of a national database can create problems for
those far from home, or without a home.

To get a passport, Lemekhov was told to go to the police station in his old
neighborhood, which should have had his records. But the building where
Lemekhov used to live had been torn down, and the passport records destroyed.

Other police stations refused to deal with him, but authorities eventually
issued Lemekhov a passport. It was only a temporary victory. Still
homeless, he awoke from a nap on a park bench one day to find the precious
booklet gone.

When he tried to have it replaced, Lemekhov again met with refusals, even
from the police station that had issued him the lost passport.

Eventually, after great difficulty, he obtained a new one.
 
*******

#6
The Times (UK)
March 22, 2002
Brave voice of Russia's accuser
A tribute to a Russian journalist's expose of the Chechen war
By michael binyon
 
One of the bravest and most outspoken Russian journalists, a woman who has
exposed the brutalities, corruption and human rights violations of the
Russian troops in Chechnya, was yesterday honoured by a British human
rights campaign with an award for the most courageous defence of freedom of
expression. 

Anna Politkovskaya was given the award by Index on Censorship for her
dogged insistence — despite official harassment, arrest and crude threats
of rape and murder — on reporting the terrorising of Chechen civilians, the
destruction, torture, kidnappings and barbarities on both sides in this
rarely reported war. 

She has made 40 visits to the breakaway republic, sending vivid and
meticulously researched reports to Novaya Gazeta, a small, liberal
bi-weekly that is one of the few remaining independent papers in Russia. In
recent weeks Russian courts have imposed two huge libel fines on the paper,
of more than £700,000, in an officially inspired attempt to force it into
bankruptcy and silence its criticisms. 

Speaking to The Times, Politkovskaya says that the threats against her have
been continual since August. Russian officials hinted that she should go
into exile or live abroad. Friends have warned her that she could be the
victim of a car “accident”. She has been vilified in the Russian press,
denounced as a Western agent and accused of stirring up trouble for her
paper to win a grant from the Soros Foundation. 

“I will go on working for as long as possible,” she says. The record libel
fines imposed on Novaya Gazeta, officially for defaming a judge and to
compensate a bank that was named in a money-laundering scandal, would be
fought in the courts, Politkovskaya says. The paper could continue
publication for several months. She also intends to sue for defamation over
some of the charges made against her. 

Politkovskaya, a middle-aged mother of two from a privileged background, is
the modern equivalent of the dissident in Soviet times. She says that last
night’s award will increase the pressure on her in Russia, but will also
offer a measure of protection as the authorities will not now dare to kill
or harm a woman honoured abroad. 

Her protests, like those of the late Andrei Sakharov, have also evoked
widespread, though silent, admiration from many senior figures in Russia.
“There is no question that many ordinary soldiers agree with what I have
been saying,” she says. “The younger ones in the Army have often helped me.” 

She began reporting from Chechnya after the start of the second war there
in 1998. But conditions have become more difficult. Few foreigners venture
there; almost all Russian reporters now visit only with official escorts,
and report only what the Kremlin licenses. 

Politkovskaya is in no doubt who is responsible for the conduct of the war.
“It is the President (Putin),” she says. “He directs military operations
and has overall responsibility. Why does the Army allow soldiers to do
everything they want in Chechnya?” She is equally outspoken, however, in
condemning some of the Chechen leaders, especially Shamil Bassayev and the
Arab-born Emir Khattab, both of whom she believes had clear criminal
connections. 

She insists that she has no political agenda in Chechnya: “My task is easy.
I am a journalist. I write what I see. I have talked a lot with all kinds
of people, including generals. I am obliged to speak out. The rest is the
job of the politicians.” 

It was her humanity that drew her gradually into this embattled position.
Previously she had reported mainly on social deprivation. She began to
visit Chechnya when she realised that, with seven million refugees from the
conflicts all over Russia, the situation was not being properly reported. 

But her lone voice is not popular with ordinary people. Most support the
war in Chechnya and believe that the Chechens have brought the devastation
on their own heads. Last month she was taken to a military base, supposedly
for her own protection, but was harassed and intimidated. She managed to
slip away and disappeared for two days until she was able to walk across
the frontier to safety. 

Is the West naive over Chechnya? “No, the West knows well what is going on,
but prefers not to look. The war there is convenient — the West wants Putin
to ensure that there is no hunger, no refugees.” 

She will continue to be an awkward voice, in Russia and in the West. Her
book A Dirty War is a devastating indictment of what she has seen. One by
one, human rights groups honour her testimony. 

Anna Politkovskaya won the Most Courageous Defence of Freedom of Expression
Award at Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards on March 21.
For more information about Index on Censorship visit www.indexoncensorship.org
 
*******

#7
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 12:09:14 -0800
Subject: Re: Crisis Looming Between U.S., Russia(#6152)
From: mikhail tsypkin <tsypkin@mbay.net>

I've never been a great fan of Stratfor analyses, but they have outdone
themselves this time.  Their prediction that "if Putin does not accept U.S.
demands, he faces the distinct possibility of attacks on Russian weapons
facilities and the potential elimination of his country's nuclear
capability" is both exceedingly stupid and irresponsible.

Stupid -- because the United States will under no circumstances attack a
nuclear power like Russia unless we are at war. Russia will retain its
capability to do infinitely more damage to the US in a retaliatory strike
than any number of Moslem fanatics even after all the currently proposed
cuts in strategic offensive systems take place. Moreover,the last thing the
US wants -- and Condoleeza Rice made it very clear in the early days of the
Bush administration - is a weakened Russia that cannot control weapons of
mass destruction on its territory. An attack on Russia will produce
precisely this result.

Irresponsible -- because ravings of this type tend to be picked up by those
in Russia and elsewhere who hate the United States, and broadcast such
ravings to Russian (and other) publics as representing an influential
American opinion, if not the US government's point of view, thus fanning
fear and hatred of this country, and making international cooperation in
fighting terrorism more difficult.

It would really help if Stratfor, before unleashing their analysts on the
Web, make sure that they (supposedly experts in international security) know
something about nuclear weapons, US government policy, and information
operations.

******

#8
From: "Joseph Bayerl" <joe_bayerl@hotmail.com>
Subject: From the recent lit. gazet. on the dangers of the new ideology
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 

Literaturnaia Gazeta
Vol. IX
6-12 March 2002
On Totalitarian Utopianism and Liberal Realism
By Aleksandr Panarin

Our times evoke a compelling analogy with 1939, when brazen force, not
resisted in time, crossed over a critical threshold. For the six years that
followed, mankind resonated with that force through its collective efforts.
The Nuremberg Tribunal took care of the headmen of the Third Reich.

But it remained to deal with the type of personality that made up the
massive support for the Fascist movement. The philosophers of the Frankfurt
School came up with a term for this type-the authoritarian personality. The
defining characteristic of this type is their longing for a blind faith and
unreasoning submission to authority. Some never came to doubt, others
"tired" of doubting. Thus, the destitute and the decadent formed an
unexpected union of "the doubtless," longing for an inspirational myth. The
instigators of the Second World War tried to reassert the ascendancy of myth
over reality. Those who finally cut them short in 1945 restored the place of
reality over myth.

Here we come to the main question. What reality were they talking about?
Today a new state ideology, liberalism, is seeking to become the sole bearer
of social realism. It offers its victory over communism as evidence of the
final victory of social realism over all of those who reject the yoke of
reality. But if we look a bit closer at what the new liberals call reality,
we will see that that reality takes us not only beyond the bounds of
totalitarian myth-making, it takes us beyond the bounds of all the "social
standards," commonly known as civilized existence.

Reality here signifies a social Darwinist understanding of "natural
selection." Theoreticians of "Reganomics" and "Thatcherism" spoke of social
Darwinism. But they were originally thinking not of natural selection among
people, but rather among firms, in the context of which the unprofitable and
ineffective were destined to die out, while the state was to "wash its
hands" of the matter. However, people gradually came to be counted within
the process of natural selection. Those individuals not adapted to the
market were identified as marginals and the impoverished-the refuse of
society. This dehumanization of the socially defenseless is called upon as a
defense for the social Darwinist practices of the liberal course, armed with
its heartless "Social Realism."

How are human relations evaluated according to the criteria of this sort of
realism?

All evidence suggests that they are evaluated according to the principle
that might makes right. The new liberals attribute everything that
interferes with the dominance of the powerful or condemns it to the vestiges
of traditional psychology and values. Meanwhile, do they explain to us just
how, if this is so, civilized existence differs from animal existence? Does
not the exaltation of market economics with its social Darwinist laws
conceal the exaltation of biology?

From this it is clear why, in practically all fields from industrial
manufacturing to sexuality, the new liberals came to be apologists for
instinct and to indulge it. The instinctive individual does not condition
his reactions on complicated intellectual or ethical constructs, he is
automatically drawn to the simple and customary, whereas the difficult
repels him. At the sight of a more powerful person, he grows timid. In the
presence of a weaker person he bullies. If the complexity and refinement of
human relations are the measure of progress, one must admit that the victory
of the new liberal principle amounts to unmistakable regress.

We also see that regress in civilized conduct in modern international
relations, which have been simplified in favor of the naked dictate of
power. The body of contemporary liberal analysis, describing the nature of
US actions, finds in them one simple but all encompassing explanation and
justification. It is because they are stronger. In this evaluative system,
there are virtually no criteria in accordance with which they censure the
weak. It is characteristic of the social Darwinist principle of
unconditional triumph of the strong that gives rise not only to cynicism,
but also to a special kind of "simple-mindedness," connected to reflexive
capitulation.

It turns out that power is not only to be served, it is also to be believed.
In other words, it accounts for the sum total of reality, with no remainder.
There are none of the subtexts or paradoxes, like those found in Christian
love or classical humanism, which would require that a distinction be drawn
between force and truth, between force and justice, or between the laws of
selection and the laws of history. This is the source of the pagan faith of
the new liberal consciousness in the artless arguments through which force
justifies its actions. A strong superpower asserts that it is not simply
bombing the capitol of a sovereign country along with the entire civilian
population located there, but is actually performing a "humanitarian
action." And people believe it, since here it is not a matter of what is
said, but rather who says it. Today, the superpower has started its global
fight against international terrorism. By some mysterious coincidence, it
happens that the terrorists are concentrated in those regions of the world
where there are strategic energy reserves. At just that point where the
earth brings forth oil, it also brings forth terrorism wed to
fundamentalism.

Soon, I am sure, we will come to see equally extraordinary correlation
between places with concentrations of other limited resources and places
with accumulations of global evil. It will be possible to construct a sort
of geostrategic table, similar to the Mendeleev's Table, on which the range
of one indicator (resources) would correspond to the range of indicators
that "civilized society can no longer tolerate."

Do our liberals actually believe in the noble sensibilities of American
democracy, provoked to forceful intervention in all sorts of "evil empires"
and "axes of evil?"

From the position of social Darwinist realism one may with confidence say,
"Yes, they will believe for as long as America is destined to remain the
strongest. In their own time "influential persons," restricting the right to
reason in the name of the inspiration provided by myth, raised up fascism
and opened the path of revanche to it. Who will open the road to the liberal
"realists" who restrict the right to justice and integrity, in the name of
the principles of "natural selection?"

It would seem that the social Darwinist truth concerning man and society
will be somewhat more frightening than the old myths. "How far can
ideologies armed with such truth carry the world?" This is a question, to
which we will receive an answer forthwith.

*******

#9
New York Times
March 24, 2002
An Escape Artist Trained During the Soviet Circus
By CELESTINE BOHLEN

IN the Soviet Union of the late 1970's, Boris Eifman was an exception — a
young, ambitious choreographer who had his own dance company, then known as
the Leningrad Ballet Ensemble. That alone made him practically unique in a
world of state-controlled institutions. But what made him even more
exceptional was his popular success, which stood out like a beacon at a
time when most Soviet artistic culture was mired in stagnation.

So how did he do it? Interviewed recently at City Center in Manhattan, Mr.
Eifman had to think a bit before revisiting a phase of his life that now
seems unreal, bizarre, even comic.

Those years of struggle seem particularly far away as Mr. Eifman, now 55
and considered Russia's leading modern choreographer, prepares to embark on
his fifth New York tour. His company, now called Eifman Ballet of St.
Petersburg, opens at City Center on Wednesday with a program featuring two
American premieres — "Pinocchio" and "Don Quixote." In "Don Quixote," as in
so many of his ballets, Mr. Eifman portrays the individual trapped in a
society in which he has no voice. Such themes, in Soviet times, would never
have passed the censors.

"It was a time when it was necessary to waste a lot of time, and nerves, on
a war with fools," he recalled with a smile. "Now I can look back and
laugh, but at the time, it was difficult, very difficult."

Mr. Eifman's struggle with the cultural bureaucrats in Leningrad (as St.
Petersburg was known then) began soon after he founded his ensemble a
quarter-century ago. The company had official status under the umbrella of
LenKonsert, the local government concert presenter, but it did not receive
state subsidies and had no space to call its own: the 25 dancers rehearsed
in gymnasiums scattered around the city.

But Mr. Eifman had big ideas. Born in Siberia, raised in the southern
republic of Moldavia, he had made a name for himself in Leningrad as the
choreographer for the famous Vaganova Ballet Academy and had even staged a
production of "Firebird" at the Kirov ballet.

His goal when he founded Leningrad Ballet Ensemble in 1977 was to rock the
Soviet ballet establishment — epitomized by the mighty Bolshoi Theater —
out of its complacency and create something new and exciting that would
appeal to young audiences. "I wanted to use the opportunity to express my
ideas about the future of Soviet ballet," he said. "I didn't have negative
feelings toward the Bolshoi Theater, but I did have negative feelings
against the cultural bureaucrats who were too afraid for their jobs to risk
anything new."

And Mr. Eifman didn't want to waste time. "I didn't do things gradually,"
he said. "I started out with a very direct challenge."

His first ballets were set not to Tchaikovsky but to Pink Floyd, rock music
that was practically forbidden in those days. The story lines were
provocative, based on the Old Testament or a short story of a soldier
ruined by his experience in the Russian Army. The movement on stage was
emotional, dramatic, sensuous, even erotic. Predictably, some critics
accused him of producing pornography, not choreography.

Also predictably, in those dull times, the performances were a hit, not
only in Leningrad but in other parts of the Soviet Union, particularly
Moscow. A performance there by the Leningrad Ballet Ensemble filled the
4,000-seat theater at the Rossiya Hotel.

That popularity was to serve as Mr. Eifman's shield when he came under
attack from Communist apparatchiks, who slowly realized what it was they
had unleashed. In 1979 Mr. Eifman's work caught the attention of Anthony
Austin, then the Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times. He cited the
Leningrad Ballet Ensemble as an example of a slight "relaxation" of
ideological controls in some cultural spheres. And he noted that Mr. Eifman
was allowed to do daring things in ballet at a time when a group of young
writers was being expelled from the Writers Union and effectively banned
for publishing Metropol, an unauthorized almanac.

Admiring notices in the American news media in those days were a mixed
blessing for Soviet artists. "It was a great joy, of course," Mr. Eifman
recalled, "but also a big problem."

Not long after the article in The Times, Mr. Eifman, who is Jewish, was
summoned by "particular organs" — whom he described as cultural officials
with obvious commitments to the K.G.B. "They wanted to know about my
relations with the American, Americans, with The New York Times," he said.
They also proposed that he emigrate. "If you don't want to be a Soviet
choreographer, then go to your Israel, and do it there," he said he was told.

But Mr. Eifman stayed, and in one of those strange tales of the late-Soviet
period, actually thrived. By the mid 1980's, he was filling the 7,000-seat
Palace of Congresses inside the Kremlin in Moscow, and his rising
popularity not only protected him but also helped pay the rent and the
salaries. Unlike his government-subsidized colleagues, he learned how to
manage an independent company and live within his means. His artistic
derring-do won him the audience he had wanted in the first place: young
Soviets, who, like him, were eager to break loose from the Communist
Party's shackles.

HIS story became a manual on how to duck and dodge the punches of a dying
regime. He discovered, for instance, that he had to submit a work to the
local censorship commission in three successive years before it would pass
muster. "It was a big diplomatic game," he said, recalling battles over a
ballet based on the Song of Songs and another about army life. "I would
make little changes, and they of course would forget. But two times was
never enough. Only after the third time would they give permission."

Several years after he had been urged by the K.G.B. to emigrate, he was
refused permission to leave the country when his troupe was invited to tour
abroad. (His dancers were given exit visas.) That time, the authorities
clearly feared that he would emigrate. "It wasn't about me," Mr. Eifman
said. "All they worried about was their own jobs and how they would look if
I never came back."

But the "biggest joke," as he put it, came in 1987, as perestroika, the
reforms begun by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, was just gathering steam.
That year Mr. Eifman submitted a work that depicted a psychiatric ward, a
sensitive subject to a regime that had had a habit of declaring its
opponents insane. To his utter amazement, the censorship commission
accepted the work on the first go-round.

It was at that moment that Mr. Eifman realized that the Soviet system was
on the verge of collapse. "The year before, they would have sent me to
prison for presenting such a work," he said. "Then suddenly, here I was the
hero of the new Soviet ballet. That was when I realized that perestroika
had reached the world of the arts."

Looking back, Mr. Eifman said that the Soviet period had taught him some
valuable lessons about running a ballet company without relying on
government subsidies and about reaching out to new audiences. "Thank God I
spent those 10 years keeping the theater alive, and thank God I didn't
leave," he said. "But I am very happy that it happened when I had the
strength required to survive. Ten years later, I might not have had the
strength, and I would not have survived."  

*******

#10
The Times (UK)
March 22, 2002
Russians outraged at Ukraine's 'Nazi heroes'
From Alice Lagnado in Moscow
  
THE rehabilitation of Ukrainians who fought with the Nazis as “freedom
fighters” against Soviet Russia during the Second World War has provoked a
political row between Moscow and Kiev and reopened old wounds about
collaboration with Hitler. 

Thousands of Ukrainian guerrillas fought with the Germans in the name of
nationalism during the Second World War. The Ukrainians said that they were
fighting against Stalin’s totalitarian regime, which had brutally
suppressed them. The Russians, however, allege that the guerrillas were
criminal-infested gangs happy to be paid by Nazi Germany to betray their
motherland. 

This week the authorities in the town of Ivano-Frankovsk in western Ukraine
passed a resolution giving the 14th SS Galicia division the status of
“fighters for the freedom and independence of Ukraine”. The decision gives
those who fought in the Galicia division the rights to the same pensions
and benefits as Ukrainians who fought with the Red Army against the Nazis. 

Anatoli Kinakh, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, gave the initiative his tacit
backing yesterday. “All decisions should be made in accordance with justice
and history,” he said. His press spokesman said: “These groups were
fighting for the independence of Ukraine.” 

But the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a strongly worded communiqué
condemning the move as “a dangerous precedent aimed at revising the results
of the Second World War and the decisions of the Nuremberg trial”. The
statement added: “The rehabilitation of these people was a disgraceful act
of betrayal toward millions of peaceful civilians, including Russians and
Ukrainians, who perished fighting Hitler’s army or in occupied territories.” 

Mikhail Margelov, a prominent MP and chairman of the Russian Parliament’s
Committee on International Affairs, suggested that today’s Ukrainian
Government sympathised with the Nazis. He said that the next logical step
for the Ukrainians would be to put up a statue of Himmler in Ivano-Frankovsk. 

The move has also been condemned by Jewish campaigners. Vadim Rabinovich,
the head of the Ukrainian Jewish Congress, described the move as a scandal
and a crime against the Ukrainian and Jewish people. “They have spat on
history and on all those who died in the war,” he said. 

Mr Rabinovich said that the Jewish Congress would do everything possible to
overturn the decision, and called on the Ukrainian Parliament to condemn
the move. “If they start rehabilitating the former SS, the next thing will
be a statue of Hitler at Babi Yar,” he said, referring to the area outside
Kiev where German occupying forces killed more than 100,000 people, most of
them Jews. 

Efraim Zuroff, director of Jerusalem’s Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said:
“There is a dangerous tendency in certain post-Communist countries to
attempt to rehabilitate those units which fought alongside the Nazis. Those
who volunteered to fight for Hitler and Nazi Germany are the moral
equivalent of those who support Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist
network.” 

Critics such as Dr Zuroff say that the Ukrainians are desperate to create
new heroes for themselves as they struggle to come to terms with the
poverty-stricken reality of modern life in the country. They say that
military divisions such as Galicia are being promoted as folk heroes to
fill the ideological vacuum left by the collapse of Communism. 

But others argue that the Ukrainians were so poorly treated by the Soviet
regime that many felt they had little choice but to take up the Germans’
invitation to fight and accept their money and uniforms. Some, who joined
“Bandera’s boys”, a 300,000-strong force led by Stepan Bandera, fought both
Germans and Russians. 

The Ukrainians, like all those under Stalin’s regime, had suffered greatly
from his rule. Up to ten million Ukrainians died in the famine engineered
by Stalin in the early 1930s. 

From the mid-1940s to the 1950s a fierce guerrilla war raged in Ukraine, a
war whose history is still largely unwritten. Thousands of Soviet troops
were lost in battles with Ukrainian nationalists and in similar wars in the
Baltic states and Poland. 

The Soviet Government reacted harshly, deporting or imprisoning 300,000
people from western Ukraine alone. It took until 1959, when Stepan Bandera
was killed by Soviet agents in West Germany, to pacify Ukraine. 

It is that same area of western Ukraine that is today the stronghold of
Ukraine’s nationalist movement, with campaigns to ban the Russian language
and even pop music.
 
******** 
 
#11
DUMA SPEAKER TO SUSPEND COMMUNIST PARTY MEMBERSHIP? 

MOSCOW, MARCH 24, 2002. /RIA Novosti correspondent/ -- Gennady Seleznev may
suspend Communist Party membership for his term of State Duma Speaker,
leader of the Russian parliament's lower house said in an interview with
the Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper. 

He will not make the step, however, unless it is stipulated by the Duma
regulations or, better still, in the law on the parliamentarian's status.
If the arrangement gets on a formal footing, no Duma Speaker will be "a
plaything of particular political forces." A campaign is underway in the
Duma to put Seleznev down. The Speaker must be above political parties,
argue its activists as they strongly come down on the present Speaker as
communist. 

Mr. Seleznev thinks the present situation smacks of political witch-hunt,
especially when he is attacked for his vote on particular bills. "I abstain
from voting on most cases because a Speaker ought to vote only when an
equal vote comes out otherwise - when the fate of a bill really depends on
his one vote," he said. 

A Speaker's neutrality helps him to lead a search for necessary
compromises, added Seleznev. 

A Speaker ought to cling to his stances irrespective of public opinions and
passing moods, and his status requires to add related procedures to the
house regulations, and a clause supplemented to the respective legal act,
he pointed out. 

*******

#12
Central Asia: 'Taliban' Author Says Russia To Regain Influence In Unstable 
Region
By Nikola Krastev

Ahmed Rashid, author of the bestseller "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and 
Fundamentalism in Central Asia," says Russia is poised to regain its 
influence in Central Asia due to the growing split in the region's governing 
elite. Rashid, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism, yesterday presented his 
latest book, "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia," at the Asia 
Society, a nonprofit organization in New York. Speaking at the presentation, 
Rashid warned that the suppression of Islam in Central Asia and the 
unwillingness of the authoritarian regimes there to take on political and 
economic reforms are speeding up the radicalization of Central Asia.

New York, 22 March 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Ahmed Rashid describes his latest book -- 
"Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia" -- as a "wake-up call" to 
the world. Unless the international community becomes aware of the growing 
instability in the region, he warns, Central Asia could become the world's 
next hotbed of violent unrest. 

Rashid, a noted scholar and author of several bestselling books on Islamic 
extremism in Central and South Asia, says despite the establishment of U.S. 
military bases in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan after 11 September, 
and the broader involvement of Central Asian states in international affairs, 
there has been almost no change in the region's domestic political situation. 

The author, speaking yesterday in New York at a presentation of "Jihad," says 
the absence of political alternatives and reforms has forced the opposition 
to go underground.

"If you go underground there are only two ways to go. Either you go to 
Moscow, which has become a kind of Miami for Central Asian dissidents, or you 
go to Afghanistan, which has become a Miami of Islamic radicalism."

Central Asia, Rashid says, is probably the only part of the world where there 
have been no changes in leadership since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 
1991. The same bureaucratic structures that were prevalent during the Soviet 
system are still existing there. As a consequence, Rashid says, there has 
been no creation of a middle class. With the collapse of social services, 
soaring unemployment rates, and crippling poverty, people in Central Asia are 
much worse off in 2002 than they were in 1991. 

It is a situation, Rashid says, that has provided a breeding ground for 
fundamentalism. The Islamic revival that came in the wake of 1991 was not 
properly channeled -- frightened by the religious resurgence, he says, 
Central Asian regimes simply suppressed it.

"And because the regimes in Uzbekistan, in Turkmenistan, in other [Central 
Asian] countries, were so scared of this Islamic revival, they basically 
decided to crush it. So what you had was a radicalization of Islam where a 
lot of the militants -- people opposed to the regime -- either went to 
Tajikistan, or Afghanistan, or Pakistan, looking for inspiration, for 
training, for religious education. [This,] of course, over the last 10 years 
has worsened the situation."

The impact of Afghanistan has been huge in Central Asia, Rashid says -- not 
only because of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban militia's support of radical 
Islamic groups there, but also because of the region's growing exposure to 
what he calls the "weapons and drugs culture." 

"A lot of Afghan heroin is exported through Central Asia which, of course, 
gives funding to these groups because these groups are able to set up 
networks -- not only for their own parties and for the radicalization of 
Islamic Central Asia, but also [to] make money on the drugs trade exporting 
heroin from Afghanistan to Moscow and Eastern Europe, which becomes a very 
lucrative business to fund their own network."

Rashid says younger recruits in regional militant groups like the Islamic 
Movement of Uzbekistan are now looking to violently overthrow authoritarian 
regimes in Central Asia because of their longstanding policies of religious 
repression. He says such groups are gaining rapidly in strength and numbers.

"The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan [IMU] and other such groups are not only 
able to take radicals from Central Asia to Afghanistan for training, but they 
are able to import radicals from the Caucasus, from Russia itself. Which is 
why you've got this huge manpower base in Afghanistan after 11 September of 
Chechens, of Daghestanis, of Tatars from Russia itself, the Muslim part of 
Russia. And the IMU itself evolves into a pan-Islamic, if you like, former 
Soviet Union recruiting ground where it is able to recruit people from all 
over the former Soviet Union."

The problem is compounded by the fact that in the post-11 September period, 
the Central Asian elite is very seriously divided, Rashid says. In 
Turkmenistan, former Foreign Minister Boris Shikhmuradov deserted the country 
for Moscow, where he set up an opposition group and convinced several leading 
Turkmen to follow suit. In Kazakhstan, the leader of the opposition, Akezhan 
Kazhegeldin, is the former prime minister. In Kyrgyzstan, many members of the 
former elite are in jail and are now leading the opposition. Only in 
Uzbekistan, because of the state of repression and the tight control by 
President Islam Karimov, the elite has not yet splintered, Rashid says.

"And of course, this is going to allow Moscow -- because a lot of this 
dissident elite is now sitting in Moscow -- [huge] leverage in Central Asia. 
There's been a lot of talk about a coup against President Saparmurat Niyazov 
of Turkmenistan in the next few weeks, and I think this is quite a 
possibility. And this is a way Russia's going to get back into the game in 
Central Asia after losing out because of the American presence there and 
American buildup there."

Rashid says the U.S. administration has yet to come up with a coherent aid 
strategy or economic plan for Central Asia. As a result, he warns, the 
authoritarian regimes will have no reason to open their societies to genuine 
economic reform and to foster the establishment of a stable middle class.

*******

#13
The Russia Journal
March 22-28, 2002
Putin forging new links with Jewish right
By AJAY GOYAL 

The refusal by the chairman of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Sergei
Mironov, to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during his recent
trip to the Middle East was the most public display yet of a shift in
Russian policy toward Israel and the Jewish community at home and abroad.

Whether the shift is tactical and temporary, or strategic and long-lasting,
and how big a departure it marks from the past is being widely debated. The
snub, however, had the paradoxical effect of making people at each extreme
of the policy spectrum agree with each other.

Many in the Russian media ridiculed Mironov for the apparent gaffe. To me
it was another in a series of messages President Vladimir Putin has been
sending to the Jewish lobby in United States. The overall message is that
under Putin, Russia has broken away from the anti-Semitic policies that
American Jews associate with the Soviet Union, tsarism and the Russian
Orthodox Church.

Tactically, Putin is making a shrewd move aimed at many targets at the same
time.

Begin with Arafat: He is widely recognized as having lost his grip on
Palestinian national sentiment and on the evolution of the conflict with
Israel. The intifada is now in the hands of militant groups such as Hamas
that are engaged in a killing game with Ariel Sharon. Putin would not want
anything to do with that, and siding with Arafat does not offer any
tactical advantages.

Russian support for Arafat was partly a vestige of Cold War confrontation,
when every foe of the United States was considered a friend. Even during
the Soviet years, when Yevgeny Primakov formulated Russia’s policy in the
Middle East, there was no love lost for Saddam Hussein, a self-appointed
defender of Palestinian and Arab interests. Indeed, as Primakov knew,
Saddam’s Baath party had shed as much communist blood as that of other
domestic and foreign adversaries. But the Soviets went along with him
because he, along with Iran, Syria, Libya, Algeria, and Arafat’s
Palestinian movement – the so-called rejectionist front – formed a bulwark
against U.S. expansion in the region. The Soviets had also watched with
dismay as Saddam destroyed the potential for a new anti-American front by
his ruinous wars on revolutionary Iran and on neighboring Kuwait.

Putin’s foreign policy in the last year has taken this history lesson into
account, but it has become more flexible out of pragmatic necessity. At the
very least, it marks the abandonment of simple Cold War-style thinking, and
a challenge to those, like the Jewish lobby in Washington, who have long
linked U.S. support for Israel with Cold War ideology.

Initially, the Putin policy shift had a major domestic purpose rather than
a foreign policy aim. His initial drive to protect himself from domestic
attack – and cut the oligarchs down to size – necessitated the campaign
against Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky. Both of them are not only
Jews, they hold Israeli passports. They also presented themselves in Israel
and in Washington as the leaders of the Russian Jewish community. This,
they said, made Kremlin attacks against them look anti-Semitic.

To neutralize that claim, and to get rid of them just as surely, Putin
moved to patronize rival Jewish organizations and the Russian rabbinate,
which is supported by Orthodox Jewish leaders in Israel and the United
States, including Lev Levyev, a diamond merchant, and Natan Sharansky, a
right-wing Israeli politician. While Gusinsky has hired Bob Strauss, a
close friend of the Bush family, as his lawyer to make life difficult for
Putin in Washington, the Russian president has taken the surprising step of
seeking support from conservative Jewish communities. One of his objectives
is getting the U.S. Congress to abolish the Jackson-Vanik amendment,
legislation enacted in 1974 that restricts U.S. extension of
most-favored-nation trading status to Moscow to punish the Soviet regime
for restricting Jewish emigration.

Putin first started hobnobbing with Sharansky – a Soviet-era emigre to
Israel and now a Cabinet minister in Sharon’s government – two years ago,
and the Washington press corps was spoon-fed stories on how Sharansky had
been called back from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for a private lunch
with Putin. Later, Levyev shared the stage with Putin at the inauguration
of a Jewish community center, while a pro-Kremlin rabbi took over as
Russia’s official chief rabbi, ousting Gusinsky’s candidate for the post.

This can be interpreted in many ways. But at the very least, Putin has
managed to change the historic burden of Russia’s sad relationship with the
Jewish community within a short time.

That Putin is also playing his own Jewish card in Middle East politics is
evident from the way he has steered the Foreign Ministry away from its
subservience to oil companies such as LUKoil and encouraged Russian oil
majors to fight among themselves. Several oil company executives are
Jewish, but LUKoil’s Vagit Alekperov has Muslim roots. While LUKoil has
been favored in many European ventures by Putin, the shift in Middle East
policy will have dramatic impact on the company, which has been given large
concessions in Iraq. In that, its interests have been surrendered for the
aims of a pro-Israel policy.

Putin has pursued a similar approach to the arms business, which at one
time was dominated by Russians of Jewish origin, in alliance with Israelis.
Nowadays the state arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, can work with the
Israeli aircraft industry in bidding for arms deals in Turkey, an tie-up
that would have been unthinkable in the past, although still a losing one
to the Americans.

What do these combinations tell you about Putin’s policy? That being Jewish
doesn’t carry a negative connotation; that it’s the business the Kremlin
cares about, not the religion of the businessmen.

Who knows what Mironov thought he was doing when he snubbed Arafat. As
gestures go, its clumsiness was everything Putin’s moves are not. Subtlety
in a crass world is easy to misunderstand.
 
*******