Johnson's Russia List
#6233
10 May 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. AP: Bomb Kills 36 on Russian Holiday.
2. Luba Schwartzman: ORT Review.
3. AP: Russian: US Fears Ease on Nuke Plant.
4. BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE: Investing in an Improved Russia. (interview
with Mattias Westman of the Russian Prosperity Fund)
5. Vladimir Shlapentokh: re 6231-Kipp/Shlapentokh.
6. Interfax: Leftist opposition demands that Russian president,
Cabinet go.
7. Izvestiya: Russian Internet Use Seen Growing 'Slowly but Surely'
8. UPI: Russian avant-garde books displayed. (MOMA in New York)
9. Washington Times: Natalia A. Feduschak, Kuchma implicated in Iraq
weapons deal.
10. AP: British Files: Stalin Confused West.
11. Matthew Maly: ENVY AND RUSSIA (reply to Shlapentokh and Kipp)
12. Brookings Institution: Clifford Gaddy and Fiona Hill,
Putin's Agenda, America's Choice.]
*******
#1
Bomb Kills 36 on Russian Holiday
May 9, 2002
By ARSEN MOLLAYEV
KASPIISK, Russia (AP) - A remote-controlled bomb shattered a holiday parade
Thursday in a Russian town near Chechnya, killing at least 36 people,
including children and members of a marching band that had just struck up
the tune ``Victory Day.''
Streams of blood trickled down the tree-lined road after the blast, which
injured about 150. A mangled drum heaped with flowers lay next to a pile of
abandoned horns and an empty boot.
No one claimed responsibility, but regional officials blamed Islamic
militants who have organized previous attacks in the restive region,
Dagestan. A 1996 blast in a Kaspiisk building that housed Russian border
guards killed 68 people. Officials never determined who was responsible.
On Thursday, a marine band had just started playing the namesake song of
Victory Day, which honors the anniversary of the Allied defeat of the Nazis
in World War II. Children ran in front, cheered on by veterans, as the
musicians and other servicemen headed to the cemetery in the Caspian Sea
port of Kaspiisk for a wreath-laying ceremony.
Then the bomb - an anti-personnel mine, packed with metal fragments,
according to witnesses - blew up.
``When I got there, I saw a mound of bodies, people in panic,'' said
Magomad Akhmedov, a 35-year-old teacher. ``Someone began giving first aid,
some started to bind people's wounds and stop the blood with whatever they
could find.''
Aminat Kuliyeva's children were playing on the street during the celebration.
``When I heard the blast I ran out to search for them, and I froze,''
Kuliyeva said. ``All around were the dead, lots of blood, people screaming.''
Eighteen servicemen - most of them musicians - 13 children and five adult
bystanders were killed in the Kaspiisk blast, said a duty officer in the
Dagestan department of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
NTV television showed footage shot minutes after the explosion. Soldiers in
camouflage uniforms lay sprawled in the middle of the street, blood
streaming from their wounds. Men carried limp children to waiting
ambulances, as policemen shooed away shocked bystanders still clutching
flowers they had planned to lay at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Screams
filled the air.
The explosion was the latest of a series of terrorist and criminal attacks
that have rocked the southern region. But coming on Victory Day, it shocked
and angered people across Russia. News of the explosion broke during the
annual military parade on Red Square, where thousands of troops marched
past Russian President Vladimir Putin and World War II veterans.
Putin appointed the head of the Federal Security Service to oversee the
investigation into what he called a terrorist act.
``Today is the dearest holiday for our people. ... Today's act was
committed by scum for whom nothing is sacred,'' he told guests at a Victory
Day reception. ``We have the right to view (the perpetrators) as we view
Nazis, as those whose purpose is to sow terror and kill.
``But however difficult the tasks before us today, they will be solved.''
The mine was enclosed in a metal canister and was equivalent in force of 6
1/2-11 pounds of TNT, according to the regional Interior Ministry. It was
hidden under greenery in a ditch along Lenin Street, the main street of
Kaspiisk.
Unlike normal practice, there were no police cordons along the route to the
cemetery, Patrushev said.
In contrast to other blasts in the Caucasus region, officials did not rush
to blame Chechen rebels. Prosecutors believed the attack was staged by
Islamic militants based in the region, members of the strict Wahhabi branch
of Islam. Dagestan sees frequent small-scale bombings and other unrest,
often spillover violence from Chechnya.
``This terrorist act was aimed at destabilizing the situation in
Dagestan,'' said Abdul Musayev, spokesman for the regional Interior Ministry.
Prosecutor general Imam Yaraliyev expressed hope that an alleged Dagestani
terrorist who was detained earlier this week, Zaur Akabov, would reveal who
had organized the blast.
Meanwhile, rebels fired on a stadium in the Chechen capital of Grozny,
where Russian forces and Chechen civilians had gathered for Victory Day
celebrations. Four police officers were wounded, according to an official
in Chechnya's Moscow-backed administration.
Other rebel attacks around the republic in the last 24 hours killed four
Russian servicemen and wounded seven, the official said on condition of
anonymity. While large-scale fighting in Chechnya has subsided, rebels
continue to stage raids and mine blasts that kill Russian troops daily.
Chechnya won de facto independence after a 1994-6 war between separatists
and Russian troops. Russian forces returned in 1999 after Chechnya-based
rebels invaded Dagestan and a series of apartment house bombings around
Russia left 300 dead. The bombings were blamed on rebels.
*******
#2
ORT Review
www.ortv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba7@bu.edu)
Research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and
Policy at Boston University
HEADLINES,
Thursday, May 09, 2002
- Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to the participants in this
morning's military parade, held on Red Square in honor of the 57th
anniversary of the Great Victory.
- In the evening, a fireworks display at 33 points throughout Moscow was
opened with an artillery salute of 30 shots from more than 70 mobile
stations.
- Celebrations of the Day of Victory were held throughout the former
Soviet Union. A parade of veterans also took place in Jerusalem.
- A powerful remote-controlled landmine was set off during a celebratory
parade in Kaspiysk, Daghestan: 34 people, including 12 children and 19
soldiers, were killed; over 150 others were wounded.
- President Putin held an emergency meeting at the Kremlin, attended by
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov and
Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev. President Putin ordered
Nikolai Patrushev to create an interdepartmental commission for the
investigation of the Kaspiysk terrorist act.
- President Putin opened this afternoon's meeting with veterans with a
minute of silence for the victims of the terrorist act in Kaspiysk.
- In Grozny terrorists shot two grenades from a grenade launchers during a
parade at the Central City Stadium. One OMON police officer was wounded.
*******
#3
Russian: US Fears Ease on Nuke Plant
May 9, 2002
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
WASHINGTON (AP) - Russia's nuclear energy minister cited progress Thursday
in easing U.S. concerns about Russian involvement in building a nuclear
power plant in Iran.
Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Russia's nuclear agency, acknowledged that
the deal with Iran remains ``a sensitive topic,'' but said that ``we are
close to finding a solution.''
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, at a joint news conference with
Rumyantsev, said Russia's nuclear assistance to Iran remains a concern.
But, he added, ``We had positive discussions.''
The two officials have met for three days to discuss energy issues related
to the May 23-26 summit in Russia between President Bush and Russian
President Vladimir Putin. The Russia-Iran deal probably will come up at
their talks, which will focus on nuclear weapons reductions and other
nonproliferation issues.
Rumyantsev repeated Russia's view that the light water nuclear reactor
under construction in Iran in an $800 million contract cannot be used to
develop material for weapons. The reactor ``is not a source of
proliferation of nuclear material,'' Rumyantsev said.
The officials announced agreement on a U.S.-Russia task force to look at
better safeguarding low-grade radioactive materials that could be used to
fashion a ``dirty bomb'' - which does not have a nuclear chain reaction but
can disperse radiation over a limited area by using conventional explosives.
These nonweapon radiation sources - isotopes used in medicine, construction
and, often in Russia, as a power source in remote locations - are
``potentially attractive targets for theft'' and could be used by
terrorists to make a dirty bomb, Abraham said.
Rumyantsev said his government has acted to improve the protection of such
radioactive materials. As an example, he cited a recent decision to let the
atomic agency control the disposition of radioactive material used in
beacons used for directional lights in remote parts of Russia.
The action ``shows how serious this issue is and that we're ready to solve
it,'' said Rumyantsev, who was named to his post by Putin last year.
Last week, in a letter to Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission acknowledged that about 1,500 such radiation devices have
disappeared across the United States over the past five years and that
about half are missing.
An NRC spokesman said the devices individually contain only very small
amount of radioactive material. ``We have no reason to believe that
somebody is systematically collecting this material,'' the official said.
Devices with small amounts of radioactive material are used in everything
from medical diagnostics and research to determining moisture density at
construction sites or to illuminate signs.
Abraham also said Thursday that the United States plans to resume purchases
of plutonium 238 from Russia for use as a power source in NASA spacecraft.
Since 1992, there has been an agreement with Russia to buy the nonweapons
grade plutonium, but in recent years none has been bought because the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration's needs could be met with
U.S. supplies, an Energy Department official said.
*******
#4
BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE
MAY 9, 2002
NEWSMAKER Q&A
Investing in an Improved Russia
Fund manager Mattias Westman, whose Russian Prosperity Fund is garnering
huge returns, thinks U.S. money managers should take note
Representatives from the Tacoma (Wash.) Russell 20-20 Association --
among the world's largest groups of pension and investment advisers --
are scheduled to arrive in Russia on May 12 for a very special visit.
The nonprofit Russell 20-20 was founded by Tacoma investment manager
George Russell Jr., after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as a
vehicle for top financial companies to explore the investment climates
in emerging-market countries. Representatives from GE Asset Management,
State Street Global Advisors, and Lazard Asset Management, among others,
will meet with Russian political and business leaders in Moscow,
including Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
The goal is for each company to assess Russia's prospects as a place for
long-term investment. (The association makes no joint investment
recommendations.) Everyone knows the country's stock market is hot --
the Russian Trading System index is up 43% for the year -- but is
topsy-turvy Russia a great spot for investors with a 30-year time
horizon?
On the eve of the association's visit, BusinessWeek Moscow Bureau Chief
Paul Starobin put that question -- and plenty of others -- to Moscow
investment fund manager Mattias Westman. The director of Prosperity
Capital Management, with $270 million in assets, Westman has had great
success in negotiating Russia's investment minefields. Over the last
three years, Russian Prosperity Fund, created in 1996, has been the
country's top performer, with a return on investment of 557%, according
to Standard & Poor's.
Westman, 36, is a native of Stockholm and a fluent Russian speaker. He
first visited the country in 1987 as an officer in training with Swedish
army intelligence and later worked for Sweden's foreign office. He also
has a MBA from the Stockholm School of Economics. His partner at
Prosperity Capital, Paul Leander-Engstrom, has the same background. "We
learned about Russia in the army," Westman says.
Great training, indeed, since murky political currents can still
influence the Russian stock market as much as the latest bulletin on
gross domestic product. Here are edited excerpts of Westman's May 8th
chat with BusinessWeek's Starobin:
Q: Does the Russian stock market now look good just because the rest of
the emerging markets look bad, along with established Western and Asian
markets?
A: Partly. But I think the real thing is that investors [who had stayed
out of Russia] lived a long time with the preconception that Russia was
a bad place [for investments], and they didn't pay attention to the
improvements. Then September 11 came, and the U.S. and Russia got
closer, and it just increased interest in Russia. People started looking
at the country, and they found the reality was different than their
preconception. So it's partly just a catch-up situation.
Q: So what then is the reality?
A: The reality is the economy is fairly sound now. There's a lot of
entrepreneurial activity, a lot of import substitution, improved product
quality, a very good macroeconomic situation. And there's political
stability. The main thing was the election of a new Duma, which made it
possible to push through structural reforms. That released productivity
gains.
Q: But is this really a place for long-term investors?
A: The type of investor who has invested so far is a short-term person,
like a hedge-fund manager. But I would be more prepared to recommend
Russia for a pension fund for than for an investor who might need the
money to buy a house next year.
Q: But isn't the economy's performance still too dependent on a small
number of people -- the oligarchs -- who control the big oil companies
and banks, and have a long record of ripping off minority shareholders?
A: That's a bit of a risk. At the same time, you're getting some
critical mass with [the oligarchs] looking at each other to make sure
the others are not abusing shareholders. If [oil major] Surgutneftegaz
does something bad, then [oil major] Yukos suffers, too. [Nobody] wants
to lose gains because somebody else is misbehaving in Russia and giving
the place a bad reputation.
Q: Yukos shares have had a spectacular ride over the last 18 months,
following corporate-governance reforms made by Chairman Mikhail
Khodorkovsky. How much better can things get for the stock?
A: It's not the cheapest oil company or the cheapest company at all in
Russia. But it may be the best one. Our calculation shows that Yukos
shares at the end of 2005 should be worth $25. Now they're at $10.
Q: Gazprom, Russia's biggest company, is being overhauled by its new
chief, Alexei Miller. Does it look like a good play?
A: Gazprom isn't a viable structure. It's too big to be managed. It has
more hydrocarbon reserves than Saudi Arabia. After a year or two,
they'll probably have to split it up. And then the oil companies might
take over the parts. Maybe Gazprom's current shareholders and the oil
companies will split the upside.
Q: What about investment opportunities outside the commodities sector?
A: The best thing you can ever find is a well-run consumer goods
[especially food-related] company at a reasonable price. They're going
to keep growing, because people want local [food] products and have
local tastes. People are very conscious of health issues. A lot of
Russians I know think their own food products are of much higher quality
than imports. But right now, choices [for investment] pretty much come
down to [juice maker] Wimm Bill Dann. And unfortunately, they have low
profit margins.
Q: What's the biggest downside risk of investing long-term in Russia?
A: The economy will have some mini-crises. Maybe some problem [with
state monopoly bank] Sberbank doing some reckless lending.... It's
inevitable that that will happen in a few years. There's also the risk
of appreciation of the ruble, driven by huge flows of money into the
country from oil and gas exports, which is bad for competitiveness.
These are the sorts of things that have happened in Mexico.
Q: Should it matter to long-term investors whether Russia ever becomes a
Western-style democracy, or is it enough to have political order under
authoritarian rule?
A: Russia is a democracy in a way -- not a very well-working democracy,
but not a dictatorship, either. But without a fully liberal, democratic
society, Russia will not reach its full potential. What really drives
the economy in the end is the middle class. And the middle class,
without real freedoms, will not be prepared to invest and will not
believe in their country. It does matter.
Q: What if Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot sustain his strategy
of a close political and economic alignment with the West -- a strategy
that is opposed by much of the military?
A: One thing the Soviets made sure of is that the army is not political.
They are suffering. And they are corrupt bastards, most of them. There
is a certain degree of discontent. But the risk of a coup is very low.
Also, if you're speaking about the general public being unhappy about
post-September 11 politics, Putin's popularity is reaching all-time
highs.
Q: Is Putin the indispensable President? What if his plane crashed in
the woods in Siberia?
A: [If something like that happened] it would pose a serious risk to the
investment community. But it's tempered with how happy people have been
in the past few years. People with money and influence are happy with
how things are now. They would try to find some similar person to
replace him -- and the public would vote for such a person. [But] he's
not perfect. He's not God.
*******
#5
From: Vladimir Shlapentokh [shlapent@msu.edu]
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002
Subject: re 6231-Kipp/Shlapentokh
I read Jacob's critical comments about my article with great interest,
though I must say I don't agree with them. Jacob ousted the issue of envy
from the world. During his childhood he was a Red Sox fan and hated the
Yankees, but as he mentioned, envy only relates to sports. In his
passionate denial of envy as a significant factor, Jacob challenges not
only me, a humble sociologist, but Shakespear in his description of Yago's
motivation in his intrigue against Cassio and Othello, and Pushkin
vis-a-vis Salieri's motive when he planned to kill Mozart.
With his reluctance to recognize the power of envy in Russia , Jacob
proposes to replace this emotion with another, more decent source of
anti-Americanism: pride. But the humiliation of one's pride, which
generates hatred, is an exact synonym of envy. Most Russians regard the
U.S. as the single power responsible for Russia's humiliation.
Refusing to recognize the existence of envy in Russia Jacob is forced to
deny, against plenty of empirical data, the spread of the complex of
inferiority in Russia. Such a denial seems as strange as a denial of the
existence of arrogance in the Soviet leaders of the past or some
contemporary American politicians. Jacob cites the famous movie, "Bread and
chocolate." Perhaps, he forgot the scene where tall and beautiful Swiss
aristocrats, males and females, look down from their horses upon the poor
illegal Italian emigrants who slouch in hen houses and watch them with awe
as if they are witnesses Gods and Goddesses. Will he also assert that these
poor creatures were not full of inferiority?
The major cause of our differences can probably be found in the
methodologies we used for analysis. Jacob operates only with Russia on the
whole, while in my piece I tried to make a distinction between three major
actors: the leader, the elites and the masses. Black envy of America indeed
has little to do with ordinary Russians who are totally absorbed with their
everyday lives and are rather friendly toward the U.S. (at least until the
Russian media began pumping out anti-American propaganda). For this reason,
Jacob is wrong when he describes the frenzy in Russia during the Olympic
games as being provoked by millions of Russian fans. Here, as in a few
other cases, Jacob's childhood memory and his continuing infatuation with
sports serve him badly. In fact, most ordinary Russians were quite sober in
their assessments of the games in Salt Lake City, ascribing the modest
successes of their athletes to the horrible status of sports in Russia. In
any case, ordinary Russians did not watch the American media and for this
reason he/she could not, contrary to Jacob's view, "direct ... sentiment
against the United States" as a result of the "arrogance of the American
media." Since anti-Americanism is rather weak among the masses it would be
wrong to suppose, as Jacob did, that "bashing America is just good domestic
policy."
It was the envious elites who fomented the scandal using the Games as a
pretext for launching a new wave of anti-Americanism in the country. It
would not be plausible to assume that the behavior of leading Russian
politicians and intellectuals, particularly the members of State Duma, were
full of hatred toward America due to their interests in sports, simply
because "sports excite passions." In fact, the Olympic Games revealed again
what is going on in the minds of elites. It is the elites who bear (as
recognized by the Russian people in various surveys) the full
responsibility for the lack of order in society and the miserable state of
the economy, army, science and health services in the country. They are
frustrated with their own failures as the leaders of society. With their
greed and indifference toward the plight of ordinary people, they behave
exactly as Nietzsche suggested: "Black envy" is particularly strong in
people and groups (or even nations) who are unable to stay on par with
their objects of envy and have no chance for success in the near future.
These elites (and not "different parts of Russian society" as suggested by
Jacob) have triggered various anti-American campaigns since the middle of
the 1990s.
It is amazing that Jacob, a prominent expert on Russia, does not make a
distinction between various Russian actors, nor between two different
periods: Before and after September 11. In fact, this date has changed a
lot not only in the U.S. but also in Russia. Jacob seems oblivious of
various radical acts by Putin after 9/11 which clearly showed that the
Kremlin for the first time in history considers itself a junior partner of
the U.S. Many Russians felt that after September 11 the gap between America
and Russia widened.
In his reflections, Jacob whom I respect very much, missed unfortunately
the drama evolving in Russia where the president has adopted a new foreign
policy course, while surrounded by elites who are full of envy and hatred
of America.
*******
#6
Leftist opposition demands that Russian president, Cabinet go
MOSCOW. May 9 (Interfax) - The president and the Cabinet must resign, the
leader of the mainstream Communist Party's Moscow branch Alexander Kuvayev
told an opposition rally on Lubyanskaya Square on Thursday.
Communist Party and People's Patriotic Front leader Gennady Zyuganov
supported the demand that the Cabinet must go. The Cabinet acts as a
colonial government, he said. Zyuganov called on Communist Party supporters
"to boycott this executive authority" and fight to install a people's
government.
Zyuganov listed the country's successes under Soviet rule and said that
within the last 10 years, Nazi Germany's Barbarossa plan to dismember the
country had materialized.
To the cheers of the crowd, he denounced the proposed legalization of
land sales.
Russia will be able to restore its former grandeur when it reunites with
fraternal Belarus and Ukraine under communist leadership, he said.
Former Defense Minister Igor Rodionov said the country has become a
source of mineral resources for the West. There is a gap between the
authorities and the people who are struggling for survival, he said. Russia
and its people are victims of "a cruel and treacherous secret war"
orchestrated by the United States, and Russia cannot win this war unless it
is headed by a united front, he said. The People's Patriotic Front, which
incorporates the Communist Party and other leftist movements, is this kind
of organization, he said.
"When we get together, we will be able to form a people's government and
decide in a referendum whether Russia needs presidential rule, imposed by
the West," Rodionov said.
The police say that a crowd of tens of thousands attended the rally.
********
#7
Russian Internet Use Seen Growing 'Slowly but Surely'
Izvestiya
8 May 2002
[translation for personal use only]
Report by Aleksandr Latkin: "Steep Growth Curve"
The non-commercial ROTSIT ("Internet Technologies
Center" regional organization) structure has published figures describing
the state of the Russian segment of the World Wide Web. These figures do
not in themselves add any bright new colors to the picture of Runet that
has taken shape over the past year. However, the very absence of
contradictions between figures from different sources testifies that the
Russian net is developing slowly but surely.
Quite a lot of reports are emerging, describing the Russian Internet
in recent period, and that is extremely encouraging. Until recently
high-tech human activity had not been described in Russian statistics --
for example, our programming industry is still not regarded by the State
Statistics Committee has a separate sector of the Russian economy. As
for the Internet, figures describing it began to emerge from the moment
when the net appeared in Russia. And these figures were initially
extremely contradictory. Now, though, the difference between numerical
indicators from different reports (this applies primarily to the number
of Runet users) is most often no higher than the routine statistical
error.
For example, ROTSIT asserts, citing the MIS-Inform Company, that in
2001 the number of Russian Internet inhabitants totaled 5 million. These
figures do not greatly contradict Communications Ministry figures. The
Ministry estimates the number of regular Russian net users at the end of
2001 at 4.3 million, with 12 million having visited the net at least once
in the year.
Other ROTSIT figures characterized the net from the quality viewpoint.
In 2001 a change occurred in the correlation between corporate net users
and "individuals". In 1998 the ratio was 60:40. In 1999 there were
already 70 percent corporate users -- a development that could be
accounted for by the short-term Russian "Internet boom". In 2000, the
boom had ended and the proportion declined by 10 percent. As for 2001,
corporate users gradually began recovering their positions, and the
proportion increased to 65 percent.
However, the reduction in the rate of growth in the total number of
Russian users in 2001 is cause for concern: whereas in 2000 numbers
increased by 79 percent, in 2001 the figure was only 47 percent.
Moreover, the increasing traffic on most domestic Internet resources was
extremely tiny. E-commerce project traffic grew by only 2.3% and, in the
case of net media, for example, it hardly changed at all. These trends
could be due primarily to the underdevelopment of the Russian
telecommunications infrastructure: The potential for "extensive" growth
is now exhausted, and Runet needs major influxes of money in order to
grow further.
Izvestiya Reference Note:
The "Internet Technologies Center" regional organization (ROTSIT) is a
voluntary association of individuals which pursues the objective of
accelerating "Russia's incorporation into the world information space by
means of the extensive introduction of technologies based on the use of
the global computer network". Legal entities such as public associations
can also be members of ROTSIT.
*******
#8
Russian avant-garde books displayed
By Frederick M. Winship
From the Life & Mind Desk
NEW YORK, May 8 (UPI) -- Most book exhibitions are dull affairs livened
only by finely tooled leather bindings or rare illustrations, but the
Museum of Modern Art has a real winner in a current display titled "The
Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910-1934."
The 300 books on exhibit through May 21 are part of a gift to MOMA of more
than 1,000 Russian rarities by the Judith Rothschild Foundation, collected
in the last four years by one of the foundation's trustees, Harvey S.
Shipley. It illustrates what can be found in the market by a collector with
a keen eye and deep pockets.
The show is visually stunning, brimming with images by the biggest names in
modern Russian art history from the first revolutionary decade through the
early experimental Soviet period and well into the repressive Stalinist
era. MOMA's staff has installed the books so that the insides as well as
the covers can be appreciated.
Some of the books are displayed in multiple copies so that several pages of
a single title can be shown, and some books can be glimpsed in their
entirety through computer animations and facsimile editions. Special
display mounts allow the viewer to see both the front and the back covers.
The artists who created these books not only designed them but often
printed them, illustrated them and bound them with their own hands.
All the Russian radical artists are represented, from Kazimir Malevich,
Marc Chagall, El Lissitzsky, Olga Rozanova and Liubov Popova to Vladimir
Tatlin, Natalia Goncharova, David Burliuk, Vasili Kandinsky, Varvara
Stepanova and Aleksandr Rodchenko. They were abandoning such mainstream
Russian styles as Symbolism and adopting avant-garde European styles such
Futurism, a movement that had its origins in Italy.
One of the first books encountered in the show is one put together by
Russian Futurists Burliuk and Kandinsky in association with poet Velimir
Khlebnikov. They didn't beat about the bush in selecting a title, calling
their publication "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste: In Defense of Free
Art, Verse, Prose, Essays" and binding it in burlap stamped with rude
lettering.
Cheap materials were the rule rather than the exception in the production
of most of these publications. All kinds of found papers were used --
yellow notebook paper, wrapping paper, even wallpaper, and inexpensive
printing methods such as crude mimeography and carbon paper reproduction
often replaced normal printing techniques.
These artists obviously wanted complete control over their publications,
especially how they looked, and they even sought a limited audience --
other artists and writers and their friends -- although they were out to
revolutionize the world. Until the 1917 revolution that overthrew the
czarist regime, this work did not have wide readership and probably little
political influence.
But some books were quite beautiful, especially a volume of geometric
collages by Aleksei Kruchenykh and a book designed by Rozanova with a
cut-out heart attached to the cover by a button. But grimmer aesthetics set
in with the advent of war with Germany in 1914.
Malevich turned out a series of propaganda postcards ridiculing Russia's
enemies with captions in the form of patriotic verses by Vladimir
Mayakovsky, the poet laureate of the Futurist movement. Goncharova is
represented by "Mystical Images of the War: Fourteen Lithographs" in the
neo-Primitivist style she favored and Kruchenykh with another book of
seemingly light-hearted collages titled "Universal War." Rozanova's
handsome book, "War," is illustrated in a number of avant-garde styles,
including the popular Suprematist style.
These artists found themselves promoted from the fringes of national
artistic life to its very center by the 1917 Revolution that adopted them
as official artists of the new Soviet government. The honeymoon lasted only
five years. Soviet officials decided that their art, especially Cubism and
its flirtation with abstraction, was too elitist and did not serve the
people or socialism.
Rodchenko led the way away from the avant-garde and applied his talents to
photographic books that glorified the Soviet system, even its slave-labor
building programs. It was no longer practical to handcraft books since they
were being published in editions of 500 to even 10,000 copies, but book
design was still inventive and often eye-catching.
Wraparound covers were particularly innovative, as in the case of
Stepanova's diagonal row of rifle-bearing soldiers against a red background
on the cover of a book titled "Menacing Laughter." Rodchenko's clashing
geometrical designs and stylized lettering on the wraparound cover of
another book, "Orator," leap at the eye and still looks as modern as tomorrow.
Lissitsky produced photomontages for propaganda books such as the 1934
publication glorifying the Red Army. By that time artists who refused to go
along with Socialist Realism had fled to Paris or New York and others
simply disappeared into teaching jobs if they were lucky enough not to have
been purged. The avant-garde and its dream of combining art and language
was purged with them.
*******
#9
Washington Times
May 9, 2002
Kuchma implicated in Iraq weapons deal
By Natalia A. Feduschak
KIEV -- Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, having survived accusations
of
ordering a journalist killed, is embroiled in a scandal over suspected arms
sales to Iraq.
Both investigations involve recordings made secretly by a former
bodyguard who has been given political asylum in the United States.
A recording made public this month is said to have the president
approving the sale of a $100 million radar system to Iraq, in defiance of
U.N. sanctions.
"I don't know if this is a falsification or not," said Oleksandyr Zhyr,
head of Ukraine's parliamentary commission investigating the death of
journalist Georgy Gongadze.
"I proposed to the president that 'if you're not to blame let our expert
commission prove this is a lie,'" Mr. Zhyr said.
It is said that in recordings released last year, Mr. Kuchma told aides
to get rid of Mr. Gongadze, whose headless body was found in a forest 90
miles outside the capital, Kiev.
Former presidential bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko, who lives in the
United States, says the recordings are his.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Melnychenko said he taped the president
because he no longer could stand the corruption he saw within the
administration.
"I needed to go [after] the people who are responsible for killing and
helping terrorists," Mr. Melnychenko said. "I'm going to fight so the powers
conduct themselves legally."
In the newly disclosed conversation, someone said to be Mr. Kuchma was
heard giving Valeri Malev, director of Ukrspetsexport, the state-run
arms-exporting company, the go-ahead to ship the radar system to Iraq.
The 90-second recording, purported to have been made on July 10, 2000,
also disclosed a method of transport: hiding the system in crates normally
used to export Ukrainian trucks.
On March 3 of this year, Mr. Kuchma was told that a parliamentary
commission had evidence he had violated the international arms embargo
against Iraq.
Four days later, Mr. Malev died in a car accident.
Bruce Koenig of Bek Tek, a Virginia-based firm that has done work for
the FBI and the Pentagon, said in a report that the recordings were authentic.
But Washington has kept the tape scandal at arm's length.
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said during a speech at Johns
Hopkins University that the accusations against Mr. Kuchma remained just that.
She said, however, that Washington had a "serious" conversation with
Kiev about the question of weapons proliferation.
Olexei Stepura and Peter Byrne, journalists who have spent more than a
year listening to and transcribing the tapes, also have voiced suspicions
about the recordings' authenticity.
"The words are very slowly said," Mr. Stepura said. "You can create
these 90 seconds."
The recordings were made using a digital recorder, making it much easier
to manipulate conversations than with a standard analog recorder, technical
analysts said.
An increasing number of Ukrainian lawmakers say it is important the
tapes be authenticated in Ukraine to put any questions to rest.
"All these are serious accusations," said Victor Yushchenko, head of the
reformist Our Ukraine bloc, which won the popular vote in the parliamentary
elections.
"In all of this we need the truth without emotions."
*******
#10
British Files: Stalin Confused West
May 9, 2002
By THOMAS WAGNER
LONDON (AP) - Newly released British intelligence files show confusion and
uncertainty among Western powers trying to determine what was happening in
the Soviet Union in the 1920s as Stalin amassed power.
Two folders on Stalin - part of 212 MI5 files made public by the British
government on Thursday - are dominated by accounts about ``intrigues'' and
``crosscurrents'' under way in the secretive Soviet leadership in the Kremlin.
Often, the yellowing letters, notes and Moscow-datelined newspaper articles
from that period read like a theater-of-the-absurd guessing game. Some
contain little more than gossip or discussions of group photos showing
where each Soviet official was standing, in an effort to guess Stalin's
position in the complex hierarchy.
However, one of the newly released MI5 files on Stalin also contains a
moving account about the sudden growth of anti-Semitism in cities such as
Moscow in 1926, shortly before he took power as the country's dictator.
Dated Oct. 5, 1926, about two years before Stalin completed his rise to
power, a yellowing two-page letter is typewritten, with a few small changes
made with a black fountain pen. Its title is ``Growth of Anti-Semitism.''
MI5 briefly describes it as ``Mr. Brumwell's covering letter p.a. Krasin,''
a possible reference to Leonid Krasin, the Soviet commissar for foreign
trade, who had arrived in London in 1920, to head the Soviet delegation in
Britain.
Officials at the British Public Record Office in London, where the files
were released to the media, could not identify who Brumwell was.
``The (news)paper Dni contains an article on the spread of anti-Semitism in
Soviet Russia,'' the letter begins, possibly describing a Russian emigre
newspaper. ``This is said to be obvious not only in Ukraine, where the
feeling against Jews was always very strong, but is also increasingly
noticeable in Moscow and other large centers.''
Anti-Semitism was strong in Russia before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and
continued even though some prominent leaders were Jewish. Stalin has been
regarded by most historians as an anti-Semite.
``In general, a reputation is being made for Stalin - not without his tacit
consent - of being an avowed anti-Semite. He is represented as the
antithesis of (Soviet leader Vladimir) Lenin, who favored the Jews,'' the
file read.
Also in the files is a letter from the U.S. Embassy in London to Scotland
Yard dated March 3, 1928. In it, an unidentified official writes:
``It is considered in Washington that there has already taken place a
decided swing to the left in the internal policy of the party, and that
there are indications of a corresponding trend in foreign policy.'' The
letter is signed ``B.B.''
A handwritten note dated Dec. 12, 1927, contains what is described as a
confidential German statement on ``the Russian question.''
``Stalin, hating England as he does ... is now the one who is propagating
and fostering the Anglophobe campaign. England is being accused again and
again of arming the world against Russia,'' it says.
Many other communiques describe the latest rumors that Stalin has suddenly
fallen ill. One Russian mole urged British intelligence to wake up to the
fact that the dictator often feigned illness as a tactic against political
rivals.
*******
#11
From: "Matthew Maly"
Subject: ENVY AND RUSSIA (reply to Shlapentokh and Kipp)
Date: Thu, 09 May 2002
ENVY AND RUSSIA
JRL #6227 published Vladimir Shlapentokh’s piece “The Rise of Russian
Anti-Americanism after September 2001: Envy as a Leading Factor”, and in
#6231 there was a Jacob Kipp’s reply to Shlapentokh entitled “Envy" and
anti-Americanism”. It is great that the words “envy” and “Russia” are being
used together as envy is the key to understanding Russia. But it is
upsetting to see the discussion suffer because of the failure to properly
define the term “envy” and, as a consequence, to fully understand its role.
In this short piece I will perform a minor miracle: I will start by defining
envy, and then will make Russia’s economy and history of the last century
understandable to preschoolers.
Jacob Kipp starts his piece by saying: “I was a Red Sox fan for all of my
childhood and hated the Yankees. If Vladimir is right I had a bad case of
envy.” Since the second sentence does not follow from the first one, Jacob
is announcing that he is writing an unscientific piece. There could be a
whole range of negative feelings, but they are not envy. Envy should be
defined as “choosing to make the other suffer more than oneself as a means
of achieving a desired outcome”. Envy is conscious willingness to expose
oneself to damage in order to damage the other. For envy to manifest itself,
someone has to clearly and consciously choose a lose/lose type of
interaction out of the range of available options. If lose/lose is the only
available option, this is not necessarily envy: a soldier sacrificing his
life is not acting out of envy, but has no other option. It is incorrect to
talk about envy unless there is someone who chose to act in a self-damaging
way in order to inflict a damage on another, who would then be known as an
object of envy.
You could hate or dislike John Lennon, but that would not make you envious
of him: to manifest your envy, you have to kill him and then spend the rest
of your life behind bars. Or, to put it in a correct order of events, to
agree to spend all your life behind bars in exchange for the perceived
benefit of killing John Lennon.
The West has been studying Soviet Russia for eighty years now creating the
biggest bunch of loonies in the history of science, because these “scholars”
uniformly assumed that people whom they were trying to understand were
searching for positive, win/win outcomes. Wrong. Twentieth century saw the
appearance of societies convinced that a positive outcome could be achieved
only as a result of a lose/lose, envious interaction.
We had Stalin concerned about well-being of his soldiers in the field, Pol
Pot searching for a brighter future for his fellow Cambodians, or the
Chinese Cultural Revolution described as a “great failure”. How could it be
a “failure” if you have just killed someone? Take his wristwatch and go rape
his daughter! Millions of people instantly understand this logic, but since
we are all reading the New York Times, we can’t.
In every failure, there is a great success for all those who remain alive.
Whoever killed the author of “Imagine” enabled all of us to listen to
Madonna without a profound feeling of shame. Indeed, this killer made it
possible for us to write our own songs, hopelessly devoid of talent, and
think that we are not so bad, after all. We talk about the purges as a
horrifying experience of being led away, but we never talk of them as a
joyful experience of moving into a newly vacant apartment and happily
surveying how many pairs of used underpants remain in a cupboard. As a
consequence, we do not understand why did Stalin kill so many and died so
popular.
Francisco Franco led his falangists to victory under a slogan “Viva la
Muerte”, which happens to mean “Long live Death”. Hitler’s SS did not wear
an emblem depicting a long-legged blonde, a mug of foamy beer, or a wad of
cash: their emblem depicted a human scull. the Reds were singing:
Bravely shall we go to fight for the power of the Soviets,
And every single one of us will die for that.
I would like to invite everyone who seeks to understand Russia to
contemplate the preceding two lines. You can do so for five minutes, for an
hour, or for a few years. But until you understand that it is EVERY SINGLE
ONE OF US (NOT OF THEM, OF US) WILL DIE (DIE, NOT HOPE TO PROSPER) FOR THAT
(NOT FOR FAIRER DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES, FOR BETTER LIFE, OR FOR ONE NIGHT
WITH MERILYN MONROE, BUT SIMPLY FOR “THAT” WHICH MEANS “FOR NOTHING”) – you
will not understand Russia. After the Red victory, not for a moment was
there “a power of the Soviets”, for which they were supposedly fighting.
because they were actually fighting for “that”, and there was a lot of
“that” there.
The last line of the song states: “we have a choice, but all of us actively
choose to die for nothing, we choose to self-destruct, we hate ourselves, we
want to transfer to another dimension, to escape the responsibility of
existing as human individuals”. And this is precisely what an envious person
does. And this is not rooting for the Red Sox against the Yankies, it is
killing all the Red Sox and all the Yankies to unite them in “that”.
An envious person may think about a benefit that will come later, but his
immediate task is to damage oneself. Yes, the enticement is that by damaging
oneself you would damage another person even more, but it rarely comes to
that: TO CONSCIOUSLY DAMAGE ONESELF – this is the main decision, and after
that life is never the same. You find yourself in a different dimension,
with different priorities. Indeed, if you reject yourself in favor of
inflicting a negative outcome on someone else, you are no longer “alive”,
because “alive” means that there is “an organism that seeks to protect and
develop itself”, not “seek to damage and destroy itself”.
And this explains our recent translation problem. We come to Gaidar and say
“private property”. For us, the term means “unhindered ability to create and
develop”. But for him “private property” means “ability to plunder and
destroy in order to preclude the very possibility of growth and
development”. We tell him “taxes” meaning “enabling the state to provide
public goods and take care of the disadvantaged without hindering and unduly
burdening the producers”. Gaidar translates taxes as “taking away 102% of
profit and creating a wasteland, while consuming cream cakes by the plateful
at a World Bank reception”.
I write that and I know that the western reader is thinking “Maly thinks
that Gaidar is bad”. Absolutely not! I happen to be for a 10% flat tax, so I
would describe as “bad” someone who is for a 30% flat tax. We are in the
same dimension, but differ significantly, and my opponent is wrong. With
Gaidar, I do not have the luxury of arguing, and I take Gaidar for being
Gaidar. My cat does not like Hemingway, it likes Chicken, and there is no
use arguing with it, and I love my cat for what it is.
Today is May 9, 2002. The former Soviet Union is celebrating the Victory
Day, a commemoration of the greatest event in the history of this galactic.
It was the day of Victory of the Horrible Evil over the Very Personification
of Death for the greater good of all of us. It showed that however much can
a human being be covered in Horrible Evil, deep inside the human being is
Good, and thus deserves to live and prosper on this Earth. It is a day when
with tears of gratitude, and standing in attention, we commemorate the
Liberating Army of rapists, rat-eating foul smelling Tartars, murderous
NKVD thugs, and both of my grandfathers, who liberated Europe under the
guidance of Joseph Stalin, a man whose evil nature has to be taken for an
absolute.
By failing to understand that envy provides a clue to understanding and
reforming Russia, we caused this long-suffering country to go through an
economic catastrophe comparable in scale to that of the Nazi invasion. In so
doing, we catastrophically endangered the world we live in for many decades
to come. Today, many of us are reduced to praying for Putin’s superhuman
powers. I would urge us all to repent and to study Russia more carefully,
and with a great deal more respect.
*******
#12
Brookings Institution
Policy Brief #99—May 2002
Putin's Agenda, America's Choice
By Clifford Gaddy and Fiona Hill
Clifford Gaddy is a fellow in the Economics Studies and Foreign Policy
Studies programs at the Brookings Institution.
Fiona Hill is a fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the
Brookings Institution.
In May, President George W. Bush travels to Moscow and St. Petersburg for
his fourth summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the
past year, Putin has made a number of compromises with America on key
questions such as the United States' withdrawal from the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the presence of U.S. troops in
Central Asia. As a result, American commentators have speculated about how
many concessions Putin needs from the United States to placate his domestic
critics and maintain the positive momentum of U.S.-Russia relations.
This discussion misses an important point. Putin's foreign policy agenda is
not defined by possible political trade-offs with the United States.
Rather, it is being shaped by the monumental challenges the country
continues to face in its transition from a totalitarian command-economy
system to a free-market democracy. To complete that transition, Russia will
have to make changes more radical and wrenching than those it made in the
1990s. But if it is ever to seriously undertake these changes, Russia needs
to be assured of a stable international environment.
Putin believes that the greatest threat to strategic stability is American
unilateralism. What he wants and needs right now is not a particular set of
U.S. concessions to Russia, but instead assurance that the United States
will act in a multilateral fashion—in concert with the rest of the
international community—to ensure international stability and not simply to
pursue its own national interests at the expense of others.
Putin's Priorities...and Problems
Putin assumed the Russian presidency in January 2000 with a pledge to bring
stability and order to Russia and begin a process of restoring the country
to "greatness." Throughout his short tenure he has enjoyed overwhelming
support from nearly the entire political spectrum. Although his supporters
differ in their visions of what a "great" Russia might be, they all endorse
a set of middle-term objectives for the current leadership: it must unify
society, stabilize the economy, and strengthen the state. They also agree
that Russia needs a period of calm in order to rebuild. A critical
component of this breathing space is a stable international environment.
Putin has made impressive progress in restoring domestic stability, using a
variety of methods. He has pursued a program of careful and consistent
administrative and economic reforms; co-opted potential political
opposition where he could and quashed it where he could not; reined in
recalcitrant regional governors; and reestablished the authority of the
central government. Key to all of this has been a highly favorable economic
situation. The country's Gross Domestic Product grew by 9 percent in 2000
and 5 percent in 2001, making it possible for Russia for the first time in
the post-Soviet era to balance its budget, pay its foreign debts on time,
and free itself from the need for huge infusions of foreign financial
assistance (and the outside interference in internal affairs such aid
entailed).
This economic success has been due largely to two factors outside Putin's
control: the real depreciation of the ruble following the August 1998
financial crisis and an increase in world oil prices. Thanks to the cheap
ruble, the economy was in full rebound by the time Putin became prime
minister in August 1999. Rising world oil prices—from around $10 a barrel
in December 1998 to a peak of around $33 a barrel in September
2000—provided an additional windfall. Every $1 increase in the price of a
barrel of petroleum translates into as much as $1.5 billion of additional
yearly budget revenues.
But the economic recovery that Putin inherited is now losing steam. Real
profits in the economy declined precipitously in 2001. Industrial output is
again shrinking in some sectors. Unemployment has been on the rise since
last November. Small business continues to stagnate. And Russia, with its
notorious "virtual economy," still leads the world in the extent of barter
with fully 23 percent of transactions between enterprises settled in
nonmonetary form.
The roots of the slowdown lie in the limitations of the factors that
brought the upswing in the first place: the once-cheap ruble has been
steadily appreciating, and oil prices have declined. But more disturbing
are the long-term limits to Russia's greatest asset—energy. Although Russia
briefly overtook Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer in
February 2002, after years of declining production in the 1990s, Russian
oil companies have still been unable to regain Soviet-era production
levels. Russia's gas fields, although extensive, will require huge domestic
and foreign investment to develop and will need considerable expansion of
infrastructure if Russia is to tap into potentially lucrative gas markets
in Asia and Europe. Moreover, gas output has also declined in the last
several years, raising questions of whether Russia will be able to meet its
domestic demand—a critical issue in a country where gas subsidizes a vast
portion of the economy that would otherwise be nonviable in the market
environment.
Adding to the strain on the Russian economy is the conflict in Chechnya,
which costs an estimated $2-3 billion a year—an amount equal to about half
of all federal government spending on health and education. To this must be
added the hidden costs of substantial casualties, both military and
civilian, thousands of refugees, and the total destruction of Grozny—once
one of the most livable cities in the Russian Federation and a major center
of Russia's oil industry—as well as of other urban centers. Finally, there
are the evident social costs incurred from large numbers of traumatized
former conscripts returning home to Russia's regions without alternative
employment and with no programs to assist their reintegration into their
communities.
As costly as the war is, Putin appears to have concluded that ending it
would demand even more resources, given the huge financial outlays required
for reconstruction and political reconciliation. The current strategy,
therefore, is to contain the situation—continue the war but minimize the
casualties, the financial costs, and the public relations fall-out—in the
hope that some kind of workable solution can eventually be found.
For Putin, the looming problems at home make it all the more important that
Russia not be distracted by unforeseen events on the outside. Yet it is
here, in ensuring stability in its external environment, that Russia
appears least able to shape its own destiny. Although it has some leverage
in international affairs through the legacy of its Soviet nuclear arsenal,
its energy resources, and its increasingly influential oil and gas
corporations, too many destabilizing factors are beyond Russia's control.
In Putin's view, by far the most challenging factor is the United States.
Putin and U. S. Unilateralism
In contrast to other politicians in Russia, Putin has never expressed fear
of any direct threat to Russia by the United States. This is not the
fundamental cause of his concerns about America's posture on national
missile defense, the presence of U.S. troops in Central Asia and most
recently in Georgia, or the possibility of a U.S. preemptive strike on
Iraq. In each of these cases, the issue for Putin is that the United States
is highly unlikely to protect Russia from any fallout it might face if
events get out of hand. Given its location in a volatile neighborhood
encompassing Central Asia, the Middle East and Northeast Asia, and
including several states on a potential collision course with the United
States—Iraq, Iran, China, and North Korea—Russia is extremely vulnerable to
the unintended consequences of U.S. action. A unilateralist approach on the
part of the United States, Putin believes, could prove disastrous for Russia.
In early 2001, Putin and other Russian policymakers were greatly concerned
by what they perceived to be a general attitude in the new Bush
administration that the United States was invincible and could go it alone.
America's plans to construct a missile shield to protect itself and its
propensity to tear up treaties and act outside international institutions
convinced Russian leaders that the United States was more committed to
unilateralism than ever. In a series of speeches in May 2001, Putin
publicly declared that the biggest threat to world peace was when one
nation aspired to world domination. He spoke of the shortsightedness of
politicians who failed to realize the real threat in time and did not unite
to fight it. He warned that "[the] entire experience of post-war history
tells us: it is impossible to build a secure world only for yourself, and
even less at the expense of others."
Believing that Russia's national survival was hostage to U.S. behavior and
fully cognizant of Russia's own weakness, Putin chose to align with other
leaders who share some of his uneasiness about the extent and exertion of
American power. His main hope has been Europe. British Prime Minister Tony
Blair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Putin believes, can be
moderating forces on President Bush. Putin does not envision Europe
becoming an alternative pole to the United States. Instead, he sees Europe
and Russia as nodes in a network of relationships that can temper perceived
American unilateralism, encouraging the United States to consult with
others before it acts.
In this context, the events of September 11, 2001, presented an unexpected
opportunity. Suddenly, the United States welcomed Russian support in the
fight against terrorism and, in the short-term, Russian cooperation,
intelligence, and experience in the campaign in Afghanistan. For Putin,
September 11 changed the calculus by demonstrating that Russia—and other
countries—had something concrete to offer the United States. The creation
of a loose coalition of states to assist America in its pursuit of the
campaign in Afghanistan was a chance to move the United States in the
direction of cooperative, multilateral action.
Putin's Real Challenge
In supporting the Bush administration in the war against terrorism, Putin
did not make a strategic decision to join the West. For now, his main
motivation for engagement is to try to shape, and even to try to restrain,
U.S. behavior out of fear of a perceived unilateralist threat to
international stability. The choice of joining the West still lies a long
way in the future, and it may not be Putin's to make. The choice will be
made by the way Russian leaders deal with the enduring difficulties caused
by Russia's seventy-year communist legacy. This legacy has compounded the
most problematic aspects of Russia's geography: its cold climate and vast
size.
In Russia, unlike in the rest of the northern hemisphere, the isotherms—or
lines of constant temperature—run in a north-south direction rather than
east-west. It becomes progressively colder as one moves east from Moscow
across the Eurasian landmass. Before the 1917 Revolution, this was not an
insurmountable obstacle to Russia's overall development, because the bulk
of economic activity took place in the more temperate regions of European
Russia. But in the Soviet period, communist planners moved people eastward
across the Ural Mountains and into Siberia for reasons only partly related
to the exploitation of strategic resources such as oil, gas, minerals, and
precious metals. More important were perceived considerations of state
security—industrial and military facilities were placed as far away as
possible from threats emanating from the United States or Western
Europe—and the idea that territory had to be populated to be controlled. In
Siberia—in places where other similarly cold countries, such as Canada,
would have constructed only small outposts or temporary bases—the Soviets
built cities with populations of a million or more.
As a result, Russia today is economically a colder and more remote country
than it was a hundred years ago [see box]. Some forty-five million
people—30 percent of the Russian population—live and work east of the Ural
Mountains in regions where average January temperatures range between -15
and -40 degrees centigrade (-5 to -40 F). As our research at the Brookings
Institution shows, this distribution of population and economic activity
across thermal and geographic space imposes huge costs on Russia's economy.
If Russia is to be globally competitive, it will have to "come in from the
cold" by divesting itself of "dinosaur" industries and downsizing its large
cities in regions east of the Urals. Moving people across the territory
back to European Russia would be Russia's real opportunity to join the West.
However, the current thrust of Russian policy suggests that the
misallocation of resources is likely to continue. Putin has spoken
explicitly of the necessity of redeveloping and repopulating Siberia.
Arguments about alleged risks to Russian security from the depopulation of
the region and China's demographic boom are bolstered by several centuries
of national mythologizing about Siberia—first as the Russian frontier and
now as the Russian heartland.
Turning Siberia back from the heartland into the periphery is a task that
Russia has to undertake if it is to become a truly modern and
western-oriented nation. It is not the only change that Russia still has to
make, but it is one of the most difficult. Dealing with it will shake
Russian perceptions of state security, territorial integrity, and national
identity to their core.
America's Choice
It is clear from the accumulated difficulties Russia faces that it will not
re-emerge to challenge the United States in the foreseeable future. But
this hardly means that Russia is irrelevant. In its current state it
already poses challenges for the United States and for its immediate
neighbors through its weakness, especially through the decline of the
Russian public sector. Failure to reverse this decline will further imperil
the security of weapons of mass destruction. Current American fears of the
proliferation of weapons and weapons-usable materials from Russia are not
ill-founded. The degradation of the environment and public health will also
continue, with increasingly ominous effects. Russia's poor maintenance of
nuclear submarine reactors in the Barents Sea has produced an environmental
catastrophe that threatens its Scandinavian neighbors. With the dramatic
rise of HIV/AIDS infections and drug-resistant tuberculosis, Russia is
becoming a public health menace to the European Union.
The collapse of the public sector also encourages continued violence across
the Russian Federation—of the nature already experienced in the 1990s
through ethnic conflicts, politically and commercially-motivated
assassinations of prominent figures, and acts of terror. Here, policymakers
should heed Russian history. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, as a result of state weakness and the shortcomings of reform,
Russia had the highest incidence of terrorism in Europe. Even today,
terrorist acts and assassinations can be tied to state failure and the
collapse of the USSR. The war in Chechnya is itself a result of state
failure. This conflict has now, in its second round, facilitated the
development of Islamic militancy, and terrorist penetration and
exploitation of the conflict.
As managing these negative trends in Russia becomes more difficult, Putin's
pragmatic and soft authoritarian approach to governance could give way to
something more crude and coercive. The need to maintain domestic unity and
cohesion can be used to justify increased authoritarianism and greater
threats to human rights and civil liberties. In 2000-2001, there were many
attempts to stifle dissent in the closure of television stations, the
persecution of journalists criticizing the war in Chechnya, the trials of
"whistleblowers" on environmental issues, and actions to corral and control
non-governmental organizations through the creation of the
government-sponsored Civic Forum. The gains made in the efforts of the last
ten years to transform Russia—efforts that have been actively supported by
the United States—could be reversed.
Conclusion
Russia's domestic challenges are huge. The only solutions are long-term,
and only Russians themselves can implement them. America cannot engineer
the Russia that it would like. It can make critical contributions to
Russia's future development, but only as long as Russia feels that it can
afford to interact constructively with the outside world. To the extent
that Russia feels threatened, not reassured, by the external environment,
it will neither engage with the outside nor will it seriously pursue the
domestic change it needs.
The real goal of Russia's foreign policy is strategic stability. This need
not put Russia on a conflict course with the United States. The U.S.
government can craft policies that serve its own national interest while
also reassuring Russia that America is wielding its power wisely, in
concert with other states, and in full awareness of the consequences of its
actions, not only for itself but also for others. Ultimately, this is
America's choice. If in its dealings with Russia, the United States chooses
to ignore these broader issues at stake and instead focuses on short-term
narrow deals designed to buy Putin's acquiescence to U.S. policies, there
will be no immediate cost. Russia is too weak to challenge the United
States. But for the longer term, two things are clear. First, Putin and
subsequent Russian leaders will be forced to make foreign, not domestic,
affairs their priority. And, historically, when Russia is weak internally
but preoccupied with foreign policy, it has been apt to destabilize the
international order itself. Second, and equally important, America will
have made a fateful choice for Russia: it will have left Russia where it
has been for the better part of a century—out in the cold and far from the
West.
*******
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