Johnson's Russia List
#6254
18 May 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. AP: Sarah Karush, Beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, an impoverished
Russia lies hidden from most visitors.
2. Reuters: Ron Popeski, Military man says Russia unhappy with pact terms.
3. RIA Novosti: WESTERN MEDIA REPORTS ON RUSSIA RESUMING NUCLEAR TESTS
ARE UNTRUE.
4. RIA Novosti: PATRIARCH ALEXIS II: ESTABLISHMENT OF ROMAN CATHOLIC
DIOCESES IN RUSSIA IS LIKE CREATING A STATE WITHIN A STATE.
5. Reuters: Caspian or Mazandaran, what's in a name?
6. Washington Post Book World: Robert Kaiser, Hero of His Time. (review
of 'Sakharov: A Biography' by Richard Lourie)
7. Financial Times (UK): Robert Cottrell, Why Cossacks are turning on
ethnic minorities.
8. Victor Kamkin, Inc.: Letter to our friends!
9. Izvestia: Maxim Yusin, Ask Ivanov. Foreign Diplomats Raise Scandal
to Make Russia Combat Racism.
10. The Globe and Mail (Canada): Sam Solecki, Dostoevsky our contemporary
is both saint and sinner. (review of Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet,
1871-81 by Joseph Frank)
11. Obschaya Gazeta: Grigory Yavlinsky, The Door to Europe is in
Washington. The Coming Visit of President G. Bush: What Should Be
Negotiated.]
*******
#1
Beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, an impoverished Russia lies hidden from
most visitors
By SARAH KARUSH
ULYANOVSK, Russia (AP) -- When President Bush visits Russia's two biggest
cities this week, he will see what the tourists see: the golden cupolas of
Moscow, the czarist palaces of St. Petersburg, the downtowns clogged with
imported cars, expensive restaurants and fancy boutiques.
What he won't see are piles of uncollected trash or buses packed with
sweaty passengers and spewing black exhaust. He's unlikely to experience
heating or water stoppages, or to meet a schoolteacher who has to plant
potatoes on her days off to feed her family.
In short, he won't see what for so many people is the real Russia. Moscow
and St. Petersburg are far wealthier than elsewhere, and offer few clues
about the rest of the sprawling country.
"That's the Russia that you can show people, and this is a different
Russia," said Valentina Semyonova, a teacher in Ulyanovsk, a city of
700,000 about 430 miles east of Moscow.
Ulyanovsk is in many ways typical of the Russian provinces. In recent
years, meager salaries, rising prices and crumbling infrastructure have
chipped away at the pride of this port city on the Volga River.
It is named after its most famous son, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better
known as Lenin. His statue still stands here, but the Soviet Union he
founded has been dead for more than a decade, and the capitalist system
that replaced it has yet to spread the wealth.
The city still has such old charms as tree-lined boulevards, unobstructed
views of the wide Volga and tasteful 19th-century buildings along the main
street. A few new restaurants and a Western-style supermarket have popped
up, along with a renovated movie theater that shows Hollywood blockbusters.
Shiny new washing machines and televisions fill the displays at the city's
main department store.
Democratic systems have taken root in Russia, meaning Ulyanovsk's local
leaders are elected.
But these improvements mean little to the average Ulyanovsk resident. Many
homes have no running water, and this year utilities have worked
sporadically throughout the city. In one big neighborhood, heat and hot
water was turned off during a chilly March because of a dispute between the
municipality and the power company.
These are familiar problems throughout the country, where the average
monthly wage equals about $130. Although housing remains subsidized and
food prices outside the capital are low, restaurants, foreign travel and
washing machines are beyond reach for most provincial Russians.
In many communities, telephones and indoor plumbing are still luxuries;
elsewhere, economic reforms have strained the existing infrastructure.
Blackouts and heating breakdowns occur regularly.
"They keep dogs in better conditions than people live in this city!" said
72-year-old Alexander Zykov, who was peddling homemade brooms to supplement
his 1,200-ruble ($39) monthly pension. "What can you do? There's no place
to complain. Under the Communists, you could complain, there was order, but
now there is none."
It's not only retirees who struggle. Alexei Pudovkin, 42, works as a
mechanic at the Ulyanovsk airport, earning $58 a month. He spends his days
off driving a cab to pay his son's $320 annual college tuition.
Pudovkin's co-worker, Konstantin Troshin, survives by planting vegetables
and raising ducks and pigs in his back yard.
Schoolteachers, whose salaries start at about $16 a month, have to grow
potatoes and other vegetables to survive, said Tamara Volchkova, assistant
principal at a school in Baratayevka, a suburb across the highway from an
airport that itself is a symbol of Ulyanovsk's decline. The once busy
runways are eerily quiet for a big city: Only one daily plane --
Moscow-bound -- takes off from here.
Outside the white brick school building in Baratayevka, plastic bags and
bottles glisten in the grass, while bigger piles of trash accumulate on the
sides of buildings -- the result of sporadic garbage collection, residents
say. Other basic services are similarly unreliable.
"Now we have water, but for much of last year, especially in the summer, we
didn't," said resident Nina Chernova, who lives in a two-story apartment
building. "We never see our local beat cop around here. It's like there's
no authority, no one to appeal to."
On a recent Tuesday, two baby carriages stood outside a garden shed across
from the school. A year-old boy named Maxim played with empty beer bottles
nearby. When approached, the children's mothers, apparently on drugs,
emerged reluctantly from the shed. "We have nothing to say," one of them
said when asked about their lives.
Back in the city, 24-year-old Vera Ronzhina was hanging laundry next to an
overflowing trash bin. She called her hometown "a swamp" and said there are
few employment prospects here for her and her friends, despite their
college education. Ulyanovsk offers little in the way of cultural life or
entertainment, she complained.
Recently, Ronzhina's aunt came to visit from Syracuse, N.Y. "She said she
would never bring her American friends here," Ronzhina said.
*******
#2
Military man says Russia unhappy with pact terms
By Ron Popeski
MOSCOW, May 18 (Reuters) - Less than a week before a Russia-U.S. summit, a
top military negotiator complained on Saturday that Moscow remained deeply
unhappy about U.S. plans to store rather than destroy nuclear warheads.
General Yuri Baluyevsky spoke before presidents Vladimir Putin and George
W. Bush were to sign a pact in Moscow slashing strategic nuclear arsenals
to a third of current levels.
Bush announced the deal on Monday in a surprise statement at the White
House, saying it would "liquidate the legacy of the Cold War," and Putin
said he was satisfied with it.
Russian officials say the four-page treaty is a compromise with neither
side compromising fundamental national interests. U.S. officials
acknowledge the pact was clinched after Russian concessions to ensure a
document was ready for the summit.
Baluyevsky, Russia's deputy chief of staff and one of the pact's main
negotiators, said Russia's leadership could not accept the notion of
"operationally deployed warheads" under which stored warheads would not be
counted in total arsenals.
"There have been repeated declarations at the highest level...that the
concept of operationally deployed warheads is unacceptable for Russia,"
Baluyevsky told a discussion on Mayak state radio.
"Hunters will find this easy to understand. Anyone with a gun has spare
shells to use in it. But nuclear weapons are not the sort of gun you need
spare shells for. You can't load a nuclear gun a second time."
He said accepting the principle was "tantamount to giving a 'green light'
to other states who hold or want to hold nuclear weapons. I believe that
storing weapons for what amounts to a 'rainy day' is not the path we should
be taking."
Washington says it needs to store, not destroy, the warheads so it can
respond to emerging threats from so-called "axis of evil" states like Iraq,
Iran and North Korea.
PUTIN STRATEGY
The arms deal is part of Putin's strategy of aligning Russia with the West,
underscored by his support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism, and boosting
living standards in a country where about a quarter of the population lives
in poverty.
A day after the arms deal was announced, NATO agreed to the creation of a
20-member council with Russia to be inaugurated at a summit in Rome later
this month.
The arms treaty limits each side's arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads,
instead of current levels of 6,000. The document contains no specific
provisions on which warheads are to be eliminated though compliance is to
be based on the START-1 treaty signed by the United States and Soviet Union
in 1991.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview on Saturday that
international relations had improved under Bush's leadership. Even his
announced intention last year to disregard Russian objections and pull out
of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to build a missile shield had
had little effect.
"The ABM treaty is about to lapse," Powell told Britain's Guardian
newspaper. "The geo-strategic situation is not collapsing and no arms race
is breaking out."
But some Russian analysts suggest that the Russian public may object to the
treaty's concessions and offer the first real resistance to Putin's foreign
policy before the pact goes to parliament for ratification. The Communist
opposition has already accused him of selling out the country.
The Russian Foreign Ministry complained on Saturday that some U.S.
officials were spreading false rumours that Russia planned a resumption of
nuclear explosions at its testing ground in the Arctic archipelago of
Novaya Zemlya.
In a statement, it repeated Russian denials that Moscow had any intention
of resuming tests and said this was an attempt to distract attention from
Congress's failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
********
#3
WESTERN MEDIA REPORTS ON RUSSIA RESUMING NUCLEAR TESTS ARE UNTRUE
MOSCOW, May 18. /RIA Novosti's correspondent Alexander Ovchinnikov/ --
Reports by the Western mass media on alleged preparations for resumption of
nuclear tests by Russia "are wholly untrue", a source at the Defense
Ministry told RIA Novosti on Saturday.
He said that in 2002 the Novaya Zemlya central testing site "will as before
be used for holding what is called subcritical non-nuclear experiments".
"Owing to the weather, such tests are usually held in autumn. The snow
cover on Novaya Zemlya now is waist-deep", said the source, who has just
come from the testing site.
According to the military, subcritical non-nuclear experiments have been
held in Novaya Zemlya since 1998 and "include tests of the reliability of
the explosive substance of a nuclear warhead, including its chemical and
physical invariability".
*******
#4
PATRIARCH ALEXIS II: ESTABLISHMENT OF ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESES IN RUSSIA IS
LIKE CREATING A STATE WITHIN A STATE
MINSK, May 18, 2002. /From a RIA Novosti correspondent/. - Establishment of
four Roman Catholic dioceses in Russia is like "creating a state within a
state", because "one should not forget that the Vatican is not only a
church, but also a state", Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexis II,
who is on a pastoral visit in Minsk, said on Saturday.
He indicated that the Vatican's policy in relation to Russia affects the
interests not only of the church, but also of the state.
Alexis recalled that in all western states establishment of new Roman
Catholic structures is agreed upon both with state bodies and with the
dominant church. In Russia, however, this procedure was not observed, he
said, noting that this complicated still further the far from simple
relations between the two churches. It was added to the complaints by the
Russian Orthodox Church about the situation in Western Ukraine, where a
rising wave of nationalism is threatening Orthodoxy.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church also said that he is ready to meet
Pope John Paul but when all these problems are settled.
*******
#5
Caspian or Mazandaran, what's in a name?
By Parisa Hafezi
TEHRAN, May 18 (Reuters) - Far from making progress on deciding how to
divide the oil-rich Caspian Sea, Azeri and Iranian presidents failed to
agree on Saturday on even what to call it.
Speaking of an April meeting of the five Caspian coastal states in the
Turkmen capital, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said at a welcoming
ceremony for Azeri President Haydar Aliyev: "The leaders' summit in
Ashgabad on the Mazandaran Sea was important."
"I do not understand. What is the Mazandaran Sea?" Aliyev interrupted.
"You call it the Caspian Sea and we say the Mazandaran Sea," replied
Khatami. Mazandaran is an Iranian province bordering on the sea.
"Caspian comes from Qazvin," explained Khatami, referring to a town in
northern Iran.
"Well, that's the first I've heard of it," came back Aliyev, a former
senior commander of the Soviet KGB who has ruled his country with a firm
hand since a military coup in 1993.
Of the five countries on the Caspian's shores, Iran and Azerbaijan are the
furthest from agreement on the issue of oil rights.
Iran, with massive oil deposits elsewhere, says unanimous agreement is
needed before the sea can be divided up. The Islamic Republic is also
strongly opposed to the presence of Western oil firms in the strategic region.
But Azerbaijan has already started extracting oil with the help of Western
energy firms from what it sees as its part of the Caspian in an effort to
bring prosperity to the fledgling republic in the troubled Caucasus.
Bilateral tension peaked last year when an Iranian gunboat and military
aircraft forced two Azeri research vessels hired by a British oil firm to
retreat from an oil field claimed by both Iran and Azerbaijan.
Aliyev called on Iran not to use force in the dispute, saying disagreements
should be resolved through negotiations. But Iran said no work should be
carried out in the disputed fields before a solution was reached.
"The Caspian Sea is a lake which belongs to the five coastal countries and
using its resources should be based on the agreements and understanding of
those five countries," Khatami said.
Iran and Russia have argued that the resources of the Caspian, the world's
largest inland waterway, should be divided equally between the five states.
The other states have said it is a sea where each country gets territorial
waters according to its coastline.
The Caspian is still governed by a 1970 agreement between Iran and the
Soviet Union that became outdated in 1991 when the Union collapsed and
three former Soviet republics - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan -
appeared as new coastal states along with Russia.
Russia and Kazakhstan clinched an accord evenly dividing resources in the
northern half of the sea earlier this month.
*******
#6
Washington Post
May 19, 2002
Book World
Biography
Hero of His Time
'Sakharov: A Biography' by Richard Lourie
Reviewed by Robert G. Kaiser
SAKHAROV
A Biography
By Richard Lourie
Brandeis/Univ. Press of New England. 465 pp. $30
This is the first English-language biography of one of the central figures
in the great Russian drama of the late 20th century. Andrei Sakharov lived
a true Russian epic. He did more of real consequence than most men can
dream of. He did what he did so well that the Soviet Union got a hydrogen
bomb years sooner than any American expert expected, and then the Soviet
Union disappeared altogether, something no expert of any nationality had
expected.
Sakharov's instrumental role in the first of those accomplishments is
indisputable; his was the most important intellectual contribution that
enabled the Soviet Union to detonate a hydrogen bomb in August, 1953, just
nine months after the United States did. In gratitude, the Soviet
authorities elected Sakharov to full membership in the Soviet Academy of
Sciences and made him a Hero of Socialist Labor (for the first of three
times). He was just 32, and at the time almost no one outside the
scientific establishment even knew he existed. (He was not, however, the
youngest man ever elected to the Academy of Sciences, an oft-repeated error
that Lourie has embraced here. The youngest was apparently a mathematician
named Sergei Sobolev.)
Sakharov's role in the collapse of the Soviet Union was less obvious and
less specific but still indisputably significant. He had been dead for two
years when the USSR disappeared at the end of 1991, but long before that he
had become notorious, and amazingly effective, in the role of leader of the
dissident opposition. He began that phase of his life dramatically in 1968,
by writing and circulating an essay called "Reflections on Progress,
Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom." When this was published in
the West, Sakharov was suddenly famous and in trouble. The trouble came
from the Soviet authorities, who banned him from all secret work, ending
his career at "the installation," the weapons lab several hundred miles
east of Moscow where he had made his biggest scientific contributions.
Sakharov's essay was discursive, naive and utterly explosive. Writing with
sympathy for the ideals of communism, he denounced the Soviet regime for
its denial of basic freedoms, defended intellectual openness and called for
the convergence of capitalism and communism under a new world government by
the year 2000. The essay circulated in samizdat -- typed manuscript that
dissidents copied on their own typewriters with fading carbon paper and
passed from hand to hand. Soon copies reached the outside world. The New
York Times printed the entire essay in July 1968, about a month before
Soviet and other Warsaw Pact tanks squelched the Czech Communist Party's
attempted liberalization in Prague.
Richard Lourie provides a fast-paced account of these and subsequent
events, which transformed Sakharov into the leading personality in the
so-called dissident movement. So-called because it seemed even to the
courageous but fatalistic participants of the movement that it was tiny and
had no prospect of overturning the Soviet order. "The dissident movement
was a moral and not a pragmatic undertaking," as Sakharov put it in his
Memoirs.
Despite its small size, that band of dissidents -- which was all but
snuffed out by 1979, when Sakharov was abruptly arrested and exiled to the
closed city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod, as it had been before the
communist era) -- ultimately had significance far beyond its numbers. The
dissidents regularly challenged the lies on which the Soviet regime was
constructed. They said, in different ways, that the emperor was actually
walking around without any clothes on.
Sakharov, who husbanded his moral resources brilliantly even in exile,
became a symbol whom even Mikhail Gorbachev had to acknowledge when he
began the process that dismantled the Soviet Union. The most important
telephone call made in Russia in the 20th century was placed by Gorbachev
to Sakharov in Gorky on Dec. 16, 1986. Gorbachev invited the physicist to
return to Moscow and "go back to your patriotic work." It was an astounding
concession and a harbinger that Gorbachev was serious about altering the
old order.
Lourie tells the Sakharov story, or most of it, but he doesn't explain
Sakharov, and he skims over some of the most obvious and compelling
questions about him. Two of these are particularly striking: Why was he so
willing to build a hydrogen bomb for Joseph Stalin, and why, two decades
later, did he decide to take the remarkable step of writing his essay and
declaring himself, in effect, an oppositionist? On the first point, Lourie
says simply, "he did not have any political doubts or moral qualms about
the weapon he was helping to design." This just echoes Sakharov's own
memoir: "We [scientists working on the H-Bomb] never questioned the vital
importance of our work." Why not?
To answer the second question Lourie gives a brisk, engaging account of the
series of events that led Sakharov into active opposition to the regime,
but does not explain it or explore what might have been going on inside
Sakharov's head. Sakharov himself provided some evidence in his memoirs. In
the second half of the 1960s, he wrote, he "inadvertently . . . picked up
quite a bit of information" about the potential effects of thermonuclear
war, something he had not previously considered in any detail, evidently.
"What I learned was more than sufficient," he wrote, "to impress upon me
the horror, the real danger, and the utter insanity of thermonuclear
warfare, which threatens everyone on earth." He attended meetings and
conferences where war was discussed in practical terms, as though it were
"a fact of life," which suddenly horrified him. He "could not stop thinking
about this." He came to the conclusion that "the fundamental issues are
political and ethical. Gradually, subconsciously, I was approaching an
irrevocable step," the writing of his 1968 essay. Here's something really
meaty for a biographer to play with, but Lourie passes it by.
It certainly appears that Sakharov, who began his career as a naive,
unthinkingly patriotic theoretician, realized after his great success that
he had helped put a truly horrific weapon into the hands of bad men. He
began to accept responsibility for what he had done, and that led him to
break with the Soviet establishment he had so slavishly served. The story
of Sakharov's moral evolution would make a gripping companion-piece to the
more superficial narrative of events Lourie gives us, but it isn't here.
Nor does Lourie capture the drama of Sakharov's transformation of himself.
Sakharov's memoirs, which Lourie translated into elegant English a dozen
years ago, offer a more compelling account of his personal odyssey. In this
biography, Sakharov's 1968 essay just happens -- it falls from the corner
of the sky that Sakharov's mind inhabited. This is one of several key
moments at which this book lets its subject down. Another is its failure to
come to grips with the influence of Elena Bonner, Sakharov's spirited
partner from 1971 onward. Sakharov had already cast his lot with the
dissidents when they met, but Bonner became an important prod and influence
on him, and surely changed the way he thought and behaved. Lourie alludes
to her influence but never really explores it.
Another frustration is Lourie's rather superficial approach to the politics
that swirled around Sakharov from 1968 onward. Lourie is a talented writer,
a distinguished translator and a loving student of Russian literature and
culture, but he is not a student of Soviet-era politics. This is reflected
throughout his book. His account of Gorbachev's rise to power bears scant
relationship to the now quite clear record on the subject. It begins with
the suggestion that Gorbachev had only "a slim chance at full power," when
in fact he had strong support in the Politburo when it had run out of
plausible alternatives.
Lourie writes that Boris Yeltsin lost two fingers "when pilfering grenades
to fight the Germans," when in fact he lost those digits in a reckless
childhood adventure that had nothing to do with Germans. The political
figures from the Sakharov era and their intrigues -- toward Sakharov and
among themselves -- would enrich a Sakharov biography, but politics is
scantily present here and often misleadingly so.
Writing a biography is a huge challenge. A great biographer will introduce
his subject's quirks and traits, his spirit and personality, with the skill
of a novelist, slowly giving the subject the depth, contradictions and
ambivalence that make a human being human. A great biography is a work of
literature. This book has more the flavor of an extended journalistic
profile, based on easily found sources and written without great
intellectual exertion. It is fun to read, and does provide in 400 pages a
brisk version of one of the great life stories of the 20th century. It's
not the great book that Andrei Sakharov deserves, but it certainly tells a
great story. •
Robert G. Kaiser knew Andrei Sakharov in 1973-1974, when he was The Post's
Moscow correspondent. He is the author of several books about Russia.
*******
#7
Financial Times (UK)
18 May 2002
Why Cossacks are turning on ethnic minorities
By Robert Cottrell
Krasnodar, southern Russia
I expected someone in a towering woolly hat and striped military trousers. So
I am somewhat taken aback by my first sight of the doyen of Russian Cossack
leaders, the Ataman of the Kuban Cossack Troops.
In his three-piece tweed suit and gold-rimmed glasses, with unruly grey hair
and beard, Vladimir Gromov looks much more like a university professor. A
moment later, he puts my mind at ease. He is indeed a university professor.
His field is history. His speciality (no surprises here) is the history of
Cossackry, if that is an acceptable way to render the Russian word
"kazachestva".
He spends half the day at Krasnodar State University, and half the day in the
grand but run-down old mansion in the centre of Krasnodar which is the Kuban
Cossacks' headquarters, where we are speaking. (Kuban is an old name for the
Krasnodar area.)
He was elected 12 years ago, at the start of the Cossack revival across
southern Russia, to lead the Kuban troops. His Cossack title, "Ataman", means
"master of horse". The Russian government has given him the military rank of
general, and he has an affidavit signed by President Vladimir Putin to prove
it.
He is also, for good measure, general director of the Cossack Affairs
Department of the Krasnodar regional administration The Kuban Cossacks (who
count themselves in families) number 147,600 families in Krasnodar and in the
neighbouring regions of Adigey and Karachaevo Cherkessia, says Mr Gromov. If
those figures are right, Cossacks may account for about a million people out
of a local population of 6m.
The ties here between government and Cossacks go deep – and high. One local
politician insists that to be elected governor of Krasnodar you must meet
three basic criteria. You must be a Cossack, you must have a moustache, and
you must have managed a collective farm. The incumbent, Alexander Tkachev,
lacks the facial hair, but he does meet the other two requirements.
And Mr Tkachev certainly seems to share the world-view of the Cossacks, who
claim kinship with the indigenous tribes of the North Caucasus but who are
not overly kind in practice to wandering ethnic minorities of any kind.
Picking up where his openly xenophobic predecessor, Nikolai Kondratenko, left
off, Mr Tkachev has been urging "illegal immigrants" to leave his region.
By this he seems to mean members of non-indigenous ethnic minorities without
Russian papers, no matter how long they may have lived in Krasnodar. They
include the region’s "Meskhetian Turks", who are not Turks, but Muslims
from
Georgia, deported by Stalin 60 years ago and rejected by Georgia ever since.
In 1989 some 70,000 or more fled ethnic violence in the Fergana Valley region
of Central Asia, and many settled in Krasnodar.
I have talked earlier in the day to a deputy governor of Krasnodar, who
claims the region has organised no deportations so far, contrary to reports
in the Moscow press. Its policy is to "propose to illegal immigrants that
they leave the territory," he says.
On the other hand, I can well imagine that if such a "proposal" is relayed to
a worried family by local police or local Cossacks, together with a
"proposal" to put the said family on the next train out of town, then it may
be hard to refuse.
Of course I intend to ask Mr Gromov about the Cossacks' part in all this. And
of course he has seen the question coming, even while I have been padding the
early part of the conversation with questions about Cossack life and culture.
"Five dollars for my thoughts," he replies with a laugh when I ask about
ethnic tensions. But he goes on to say, no longer joking, that he agrees
completely with the policy of the governor. Indeed, he says, it is the
Cossacks that have been pushing the regional government to bar immigrants for
ten years now.
"It’s not only in the Kuban but in all Russia," he says. "Uncontrolled
immigration over the past ten years has greatly changed the ethnic
composition of the people. There are groups here that have never been here
before: Meskhetian Turks first of all, then Kurds, Assyrians and a lot of
Armenians. The ethnic balance has been disturbed."
All of these people have "homelands," he says, and they should go back to
them. It may be that the Georgians will not let the Meskhetian Turks return,
but that is a Georgian problem. "For the English it is England. For the
French it is France. We are here."
I ask the Ataman about his own background. He can trace it back to the first
Cossack families who moved into Kuban from the Zaporozhye region, now part of
Ukraine, in the late 18th century. In the university he speaks Russian, but
at home he and his family speak a Kuban dialect which is "between Ukrainian
and Russian, and if anything closer to Ukrainian," he says.
I wonder whether the Meskhetian Turks, like the Cossacks, could acquire
indigenous status in the Kuban merely by staying around long enough. But
neither the Cossacks, nor Mr Tkachev, seems inclined to attempt the
experiment. Kuban is "on the edge of the abyss," Mr Gromov says. "Small
conflicts may become big ones."
I hope not. In April an Armenian cemetery was desecrated here, which may be
the sort of "small conflict" Mr Gromov has in mind. It certainly seemed a
pretty big insult to the local Armenians at the time.
Mr Gromov also hints that the Meskhetian Turks represent some sort of threat
to military security. They "settle in particular places," he says. Their
villages "control the road" linking Krasnodar to Novorossisk, the main
Russian Black Sea port.
Well, that will be something to look out for. I shall be taking that road
myself the next day. The Ataman and I wish one another good day, and he
sweeps off. Not on a great white horse, I am sorry to say, but in a grey
Toyota car.
*******
#8
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Rockville, MD 20848-0590
Tel: (301) 990-4010
Fax: (301) 990-4822
Email: kamkin@kamkin.com
Website: www.kamkin.com
*******
#9
Izvestia
May 18, 2002
Ask Ivanov
Foreign Diplomats Raise Scandal to Make Russia Combat Racism
By Maxim Yusin
(therussianissues.com)
An unusual meeting of Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov with foreign ambassadors
accredited in Moscow is to be held today (Saturday, May 18). The
ambassadors are to file a protest with the ministry in connection with a
wave of racism that has swept across the country. Foreigners, including
diplomats and members of their families, frequently become victims of
skinheads, neo-nazis and other "patriots."
It is an unprecedented demarche by the ambassadors. Previously foreigners
complained individually to Foreign Ministry or Interior Ministry officials
about attacks of racists. The officials nodded with compassion and promised
to take appropriate actions. But they did nothing
As before, "extremists" act with impunity. They even do not care about
covering their faces or going underground. They brag about their audacity
and ostensibly attack persons whose skin color, eyes or nose they do not like.
The foreigners have seen that their private talks yield no results and
started to act publicly. Not fearing to provoke an international scandal. A
scandal, we have to admit, we fully deserve.
The demarche has been supported by diplomats of the overwhelming majority
of states having embassies in Moscow. But since there is not enough room in
the office of the foreign minister for a hundred of ambassadors, each world
region elected a delegate for the meeting.
So, according to Izvestia, Southeast Asia will be represented by the
ambassador of the Philippines. The Spanish ambassador was to speak on
behalf of the European Union, but he is in Chechnya at present and the EU
will be represented by the Swedish ambassador.
The Europeans were the most active among those who initiated the Saturday
demarche. It would seem that Europeans may not worry - skinheads do not
attack them.
Here is an explanation given to Izvestia by a high-ranking diplomat
representing a key member-state of the EU in Moscow:
"It would be wrong to think that the problem does not concern us. Among our
diplomats and the technical personnel are quite a few people from former
colonies. For several months now these people fear to go out into the
streets. Some of them consider leaving Russia. There is yet another reason
why we cannot remain silent. It is our moral duty to warn our Russian
friends before it is too late, before irreparable harm has been caused to
Russia's reputation. We do not want Russia to be considered a country where
people are beaten (and killed) only because some one does not like the
color of their skin."
The ambassador of one of the ASEAN member states supports this view:
"The racists have made me change my lifestyle, to give up some of my
habits. I was fond of riding a racing bicycle about Moscow. Now I am
afraid, because someone does not like my Asian looks. They may not only
beat me up but also take the bicycle away from me. I worked in several
European capitals. But nothing of this sort ever occurred there. If at
least one group openly called for beating foreigners, it was immediately
dispersed and eliminated. But in Russia Nazis act absolutely legally, they
march in the streets and greet each other in a Nazi style. Before I arrived
here I could not imagine that all this was possible."
Izvestia was told confidentially by representatives of several big Western
firms that at present they have been instructed not to hire persons
originating from Asia and Africa. Security of those people and their
families cannot be guaranteed.
Meanwhile Russian officials ask not to create a scandal and not to make too
broad generalizations. Foreign Ministry officials denied for two days that
the Saturday meeting with Igor Ivanov would take place. It would seem that
precisely the Foreign Ministry should want the press to sound the alarm and
make the law-enforcement bodies concentrate on racist groups at last and
that courts would pass at least one sentence on Nazis.
If this goes on, all attempts by President Vladimir Putin to convince
Europe and America that Russia should be treated as a civilized country are
doomed.
Ambassador of Kenya to Russia Meshak Nyambati:
"I have been working in Moscow for over four years. All that time I hear
from my colleagues (not only Kenyans) complaints about local "passers-by" -
they may push and swear at you for no reason. There were instances when
African students and even schoolchildren were beaten and the police would
do nothing to stop it. In February young skinheads in black windbreakers
with swastika emblems beat severely Mr. Koima, third secretary of our
embassy. We called the police and sent notes the Foreign Ministry, asking
the authorities to restore law and order. But such incidents are increasing
in number."
Ambassador of Zimbabwe to Russia Agrip Mutambara:
"Recently I was walking out of a supermarket on Smolenskaya Square (near
the Foreign Ministry). Someone hit me hard on the back. I looked back and
saw an angry young man. The shop's security guards stood nearby. They had
seen everything, but pretended not to notice it. Only one of them tried to
detain the hooligan. To my surprise no one checked if the man carried arms.
After a while the security guards let the young man go. They explained to
me that they could do nothing to him under Russian laws. I reported the
incident to Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and he told me that the case was
being investigated. Besides, the ambassadors of African countries wrote a
joint letter to the Foreign Ministry at the end of last year. No
intelligible official answer has been received to this day."
*******
#10
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
May 18, 2002
Dostoevsky our contemporary is both saint and sinner
By SAM SOLECKI
Sam Solecki has just completed a study of Michael Ondaatje's poetry. In
April, 1974, an hour after defending his PhD thesis on D. H. Lawrence, he
celebrated by buying a hardcover copy of The Brothers Karamazov (the
Garnett translation).
Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-81
By Joseph Frank
Princeton University Press,
784 pages, $54.50
If you've read Dostoevsky, you probably remember being occasionally
surprised by sentences, like the following, that sounded unexpectedly
contemporary: "Psychology . . . [is] a knife that cuts both ways." "I've
long resolved not to think whether man created God or God man." "Who isn't
suffering from aberration nowadays?" "If there's no immortality --
everything is lawful." "Underground, underground -- that's where the truth
lies." "To be conscious is an illness -- a real thoroughgoing illness."
These have the ring of the 20th century, and there's nothing quite like
them in Tolstoy (nor in Hugo or Dickens, for that matter). Keeping them in
mind, we can imagine a book titled Dostoevsky Our Contemporary, whereas
something similar on Tolstoy would sound forced.
It's hard to believe that the two great Russians never met, or that they
rarely had anything good to say about each other. Yet, when Dostoevsky died
in January, 1881, Tolstoy told a friend that he had been "the person
nearest, dearest and most necessary to me." The Brothers Karamazov was one
of the last books he read before his death in 1910. Neither writer could
have anticipated that posterity would rarely name one without invoking the
other, with Dostoevsky playing the role of Tolstoy's shadow.
One of the many strengths of this fifth and final volume of Joseph Frank's
biographical and critical study is that, while its intention is to show
Dostoevsky as a man of his time, it reminds us that as psychologist,
religious thinker, analyst of modernism and radically innovative novelist,
he is also one of us. Or, to put it another way, there is a direct line
from Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment to nearly
countless 20th century novels, from Camus's L'Etranger to Bret Easton
Ellis's American Psycho. It's not surprising that Freud wrote a brilliant
though completely wrong essay on him or that Heidegger had his portrait on
his study wall.
Frank picks up the story in 1871, with the 49-year-old writer's return from
a four-year stay in Europe. Behind him were eight years of exile in Siberia
(1849-58) for conspiring against the czar, a disastrous first marriage,
years of journalism, and four major works: From the House of the Dead
(1860), Notes from the Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866) and
The Idiot (1868). Ahead lay The Possessed (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov
(1880), each dealing with the condition of the sick man of Europe. The last
was hailed in its time as the greatest Russian novel; it is still running
neck and neck with War and Peace, A la recherche du temps perdu and Ulysses
in the greatest novel sweepstakes, one of only two literary contests that
the gods watch with interest.
Once home in St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky was determined to become more
directly involved, through fiction and journalism, in the fierce
socio-political debates splintering the Russian intelligentsia. In the
ideological war between the Slavophile Populists and the liberal
Westernizers, he aligned himself with the former. As a result, his creative
energies too often went into journalism, especially The Diary of a Writer,
a monthly column dealing with issues such as Russia's manifest destiny,
socialism, the papacy, child abuse and the Jewish question. It was read by
everyone, including the czar, and secured him a national reputation as a
conservative, even reactionary ideologue.
Frank is surely right in suggesting that The Diary, however popular in its
day, holds little of interest for us except when it reveals unexpected
aspects of the author. The most troubling of these is his equal-opportunity
xenophobia toward almost all other nationalities, with special venom for
the Jews and Poles. There are passages here that leave me shaking my head,
wondering how to reconcile the novelist who emphasized Christian love and
forgiveness with the anti-Semitic columnist who habitually referred to
Zhidi (Yids) rather than evrei (Jews) and who believed charges of blood
libel. (It will be interesting to see whether Solzhenitsyn's forthcoming
study of Russia and the Jews -- Dvesti Let Vmeste -- glances at this
question.)
Perhaps there is a partial answer in the different truth claims made by an
essay and a novel. As a journalist, Dostoevsky never wrote against himself,
never questioned his ideas. As a novelist, however, he had to treat ideas
dramatically as embodied in characters. Instead of the essay's single
Truth, the novel works with the myriad truths of competing characters, each
embodying a different way of being in the world. In The Brothers Karamazov,
for instance, Dostoevsky identifies as much with the nihilistic Ivan
Karamazov -- whose ideas represent his worst fears about Europe's future --
as with the saintly Father Zosima, whose Christianity resembles his own.
This is the sort of empathy or negative capability that has led critics to
compare him to Shakespeare. Dostoevsky's comment, "I depict all the depths
of the human soul," has a Shakespearean resonance.
For anyone seriously interested in Dostoevsky, Frank's magisterial work
will be the place to go for at least a generation; its detailed readings of
the novels, including 150 pages on The Brothers Karamazov,alone justify the
price of admission. My only reservation is that, like almost all criticism,
Frank's study subdues Dostoevsky's vision of the tangled skein of the human
self, including what George Steiner calls "the labyrinth of the unnatural,
the cellarage and morass of the soul." He tells us almost everything we
need to know about the writer, but he does so in a manner that
inadvertently leaves the impression that Dostoevsky is less strange,
disturbing and dangerous than he is. Perhaps it's simply a sign of the
complexity of Dostoevsky's character -- "a sum of energies charged with
illness" -- that even a superb five-volume biography leaves me with the
sense that he remains elusive and troubling. If you're not convinced,
reread the first part of Notes from the Underground or Stavrogin's
Confession in The Possessed.
*******
#11
Obschaya Gazeta
May 16, 2002
The Door to Europe is in Washington
The Coming Visit of President G. Bush: What Should Be Negotiated
By Grigory Yavlinsky
After September 11, 200, Russia's foreign policy abruptly changed. Despite
the policy carried out in summer 2001, symbolised by Kim Chen Ir's travel
by armoured train across Russia, despite the opinion of the so-called
political elite, Vladimir Putin unreservedly supported the USA in their
fight against Ben Laden's terrorists and the Taliban.
The first reaction to developments in New York and Washington, coupled with
the decisions adopted by the Russian President within a fortnight of
September 11, represented a serious change in the value system applied by
the Russian authorities. On September 24, at a meeting between President
Putin and the leaders of parliamentary factions and the Presidium of the
State Council, one of the participants advocated support for the Taliban,
while 18 participants proposed that Russian remain neutral in the fight
between Americans and terrorists. Only two participants said that Russia
should participate in the anti-terrorist coalition. Efficient and
multilateral support for the US anti-terrorist efforts in Afghanistan was
attributable to the independent decision-making of the Russian President.
Such a decision has its own inner logic. The Taliban regime, connected with
the terrorist groups in Central Asia and the Caucasus, posed a direct
threat to Russia's security. This may represent the first time in history
when our country was offered an opportunity to resolve at least one of its
multiple problems by diplomatic means, while using the military force of
another state.
However, tactics are not the only thing. The decision in September and
subsequent decisions may serve as the basis for the establishment of a
strategic line based on the retention and implementation of a potential
opportunity for Russia's survival as a modern sovereign state in the 21st
century. Here I am clearly referring to the self-evident and unambiguous
move of our country towards the West.
Traditionally relations between Russia and the West have evolved as part of
the model existing in the 18th century. Western countries entered into
provisional agreements with our country, exploited our military potential,
but at the same time always maintained their distance and tried to restrict
and contain Russia. Unfortunately the past ten years have yielded very
little change.
Western politicians have perceived and still perceive Russia as a country
from another world. Depending on the situation it can be friendly or
hostile, but it always remains strange to them. Characteristically, despite
the informal meetings between friends Boris and Helmut, Europeans
consistently implemented the policies to push NATO expansion in the East.
This was demonstrated most clearly in the policies of the American
administration, irrespective of the occupant of the White House -Republican
or Democrat.
By waging everything on relations with the group in power, a "strong hand"
in the Kremlin capable of keeping the country under control, they never
believed in the country. The Kremlin team was perceived as the only force
capable of leading Russia along the path of democratic reforms both during
Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's reigns. Disappointment in the narrow group of
"reformers", who monopolised the right to democracy and the market, was
transformed into disappointment in Russia.
After September 11 and the change in Russia's foreign policy a logical
question emerged: what has changed in the attitude of the West towards
Russia? So far nothing much. Behind the facade of speeches and actions by
representatives of the West we can perceive the former mistrust,
incomprehension and fear.
It should be recognised, however, that there are reasons for such mistrust.
I would like to stress here that in my view this problem does not directly
concern the Russian population. They hardly differ from Europeans or
Americans. We have the same concerns -our children's future and the health
of our parents, work, home and security. Even our main problem - poverty -
is an understandable notion, although it has been to a large extent been
overcome and defeated in the West. There is another problem.
Unpredictability represents a political demonstration of the internal
problems of the Russian authorities and elite. Changes in foreign policy
did not have an impact on the course to build up a "manageable democracy"
within the country. Russia lacks real freedom of speech. There is no mass
media capable of systematically transmitting to the majority of the
population a view on most key problems in the country, which would
represent an alternative to the position of the authorities. Elections, in
particular regional elections, have been transformed into a formal ritual
of appointing a pre-selected candidate. Courts use the law as a tool to
enforce a political order.
This means that any group in control of a censored media, controlled
elections and obedient courts can very quickly turn the country wherever it
wants - towards nationalism, militarism or Pinochet capitalism. It will be
able to apply considerable pressure on or even remove a lawfully elected
president, if he stands in the way of such a turn. For the simple reason
that he does not personally control the bureaucrats in charge and does not
call the tune with the TV.
Russian business, especially big business, is literally tied to the
authorities via its past and present. Over ten years we have witnessed the
emergence of an economic model where it is impossible to achieve
significant results without special relations with the authorities. It
still functions today, and there is no place for independent people there,
let alone for the middle class.
The political elite resembles a thirteen-year-old teenager with all the
multiple complexes you expect at this age. He feels humiliated by the whole
world, especially the grown-ups (their role is certainly accorded to the
West), who do not understand him, teach him how to live, restrict his
freedom and give him too little pocket money. Time passes, but the elite
does not "grow up", because a society raised in lies does not grow up at
all, just as trees never grow without sunlight.
Finally, the developments in Chechnya also make Russia unstable and
unpredictable. The situation has reached a deadlock. The only way out would
involve a conference on political regulation of the situation there, based
on the Russian Constitution and Russian laws, that will sooner or later
take place in Moscow involving all the interested parties and chaired by
the President of Russia. But there has been no movement in this direction.
In view of such developments, we should not be surprised that other
countries would like to exploit us wherever possible, and do not want to
regard us as allies or even serious partners.
Does this mean that the West should wait until Russia matures and is able
to manage its problems on its own, whereupon it will call the West and say:
"I am ready, will you accept me?" No. This will never happen, and there is
no time to wait. In view of developments, the West should first and
foremost recognise Russia as a country belonging to the Western community
today.
And Russia should be taken on board warts and all, just as it is today.
To accept Russia, the West must accept at least two theses. First, the West
should recognise the existence of a very important priority for Russia -
the security of our present borders separating Russia from the most
unstable, dangerous and unpredictable regions in the world. Secondly, the
West should realise in principle and be practically prepared for the
possibility that Russia will join all the economic, political and military
European structures within 15-20 years as a fully-fledged member.
The first step in that direction could involve the signing of a document on
a military-and-political union between Russia and the USA during President
Bush's visit to Moscow. In terms of form this could be an agreement, a
memorandum or treaty. Most importantly this should be a qualitatively new
development, compared to polite cooperation within the framework of NATO or
an agreement covering only armaments issues. This should constitute a joint
declaration of a common understanding of freedom, democracy and human
rights as fundamental principles in the world in the 21st century, common
priorities and threats, mutual guarantees of security in case of terrorist
or military aggression.
The signing of such an agreement is realistic. Negotiations on concluding a
political union with the USA have been conducted for more than six months
in Washington, London and Berlin.
Russia - USA - Europe
Does this mean that Russia will protect the USA from Mexico, and the USA
will protect Russia from China? - the reader may ask with a grin. It does
sound funny, but if you laugh like this, you can lose your future. It is
high time to understand that the situation should be regarded in compliance
with the phenomena of the new era rather than the last century.
Certainly, the USA is the strongest country in the world: it is the only
superpower with a really impressive defence capability and it is unlikely
that someone would challenge it in the traditional military sense. However,
the US armed forces, as well as that of the USSR, were oriented towards a
certain type of war: to provide defence against large and very large beasts
- bears, lions, crocodiles and rhinoceros.
The events of September 11 demonstrated that modern security problems are
connected with lethal poisonous gnats, rather than large beasts of prey.
Due to mental inertia, it is quite difficult to understand that this is a
qualitatively new situation. One American strategist agreeing to such a
"gnat" example told me: "We shall eliminate their nests." He does not know
that gnats have no nests, that they live and propagate in marshes and that
you can only fight them by drying up the marsh. The fight with the present
terrorist threat differs from the military science of the last century,
just as irrigation differs from a bear or lion hunt.
It is impossible to achieve such a task without Russia's help. In addition
to purely military tasks - and today Russia unfortunately has a restricted
or even symbolic ability to resolve such tasks (and here Americans will
obviously have to act on their own) - it is necessary to provide the
following: diplomatic support and sanctions against the harbourers of
terrorists, provision of intelligence information, aid in control over
financial flows and detection of the sources and means used to finance the
terrorists, guarantees of non-proliferation of different types of weapons
and technologies, depriving terrorist organisations of even the possibility
to use the territory of a country, and many other things. Finally,
political support is also very important. Military actions alone, deprived
of such support, are futile and never-ending. Even if you have a large
house-flannel and the most modern mop, it is better to close off the water
tap than endlessly wipe the floor.
In addition to direct aid in the fight with terrorism, if the USA signs a
union with Russia, it will finally be able to eliminate OPEC's monopoly on
the global oil market and, consequently, put an end to its energy dependence.
New improved mechanisms will be created that guarantee non-proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction.
The position of China in the system of international relations will
stabilise - China will remain a superpower, but will not be able to
qualitatively change the geopolitical situation in Asia and the Pacific,
which will finally lead to an improvement in US-China relations.
In addition, Western politicians cannot fail to understand that Russia's
weakness presents a threat to international security. The weaker Russia is,
the more terrorism we will face in the world, and vice-versa. At present
terrorist structures have been ousted from their customary hide-outs and
have to become accustomed to new territories. Russia has all they are
interested in - territory, all kinds of weapons and means of production,
the necessary materials and, what is especially important, highly-qualified
specialists who were even trained during the Soviet period. They are
extremely poor and absolutely disoriented morally and politically. If you
add here the degree of corruption in Russia, it will be clear that if this
process begins developing (and it is possible that it has begun developing
already), it will be extremely difficult to handle. Can one imagine the
price that Russia, the USA and Europe will have to pay in the fight with
terrorism if this happens?
Certainly Russia is also interested in containing the terrorist threat.
However, this is not the only issue. The course of foreign policy marked
after September 11 is obviously beneficial to Russia: moreover it is the
only possible course from the viewpoint of the long-term interests of the
country. Long-term military-and-political partnership with the USA implies:
the security of our long borders and preservation of the country's
territorial integrity, i.e. preservation of Russian statehood;
consolidation of Russian sovereignty in Siberia and the Far East, surge in
investment for the development of eastern territories;
opportunities for Russia to achieve leading positions in world energy
production and for Russian science and hi-tech industries to participate in
implementation of the most advanced and promising projects;
clear orientation of the Russian armed forces to integration in the
military system of the West, which would considerably facilitate the
creation of a modern army;
elevation of Russia's status in the world.
A fully-fledged union with the USA and the West can play a factor in the
consolidation of real democracy in Russia and improved implementation of
the country's potential. This may be the only way to guarantee a normal end
to Russian reforms that have been conducted in such a way over the past ten
years that they would appear to have completely exhausted the Russian
people's energy for reforms. Bureaucratic reshuffles in most state
structures will become inevitable, as officials are simply unable to
conduct policies oriented towards union with the West.
In addition to the proper interests of Russia, the USA and Europe, there
are also international problems that cannot be resolved once and for all
without close cooperation between these three forces, such as the situation
in the Balkans, the Palestine-Israel conflict, problems in relations
between India and Pakistan, environmental problems, international crime and
the drug trade, and problems connected with unpredictable totalitarian
regimes.
I don't mean here that Russia will be able to play a role of superpower in
the resolution of all these problems and consider the whole world as in the
sphere of its vital interests. No. Simply Russia can facilitate resolution
of these problems, if it tries to help, and can aggravate them, if it acts
counter-productively.
The tragic developments in Yugoslavia in 1999 continued until Yeltsin said
"Enough" to Milosevic, whereupon the Yugoslavian army left Kosovo. By that
moment the beginning of the NATO's ground operations was already on the
agenda. This was avoided: I am sure that with the help of Russia it would
have been possible to prevent the bombings of Yugoslavia and deaths of
innocent people. Instead of the follies in Rambouillet in autumn 1998, the
political decision should have been developed in Moscow with Yeltsin. This
was possible.
In general the list of strategically important results of the
Russian-American union looks very impressive. In my view the risk is worth
taking. Many people understand that.
This is possibly the most unexpected fact. Without a Russian-American
agreement on strategic partnership and the creation of a strong and
clear-cut system of relations with the USA, Russia's integration into
Europe is impossible. This may not be nice to know, but admittance into the
European club is impossible without implicit consent from Washington.
Certainly, the USA is not Europe: in many cases they have different
cultural, ethical and political orientations and even principles. But they
share fundamental values forming the basis for a stable union. The European
countries will always regard as a priority their long-term stable relations
with the USA, despite inevitable contradictions, first of all in the
economy. These conflicts are not serious:, they resemble the inevitable
family quarrels of spouses who have been living together for a long time.
Therefore there can be no real integration of Russia into Europe, while our
relations with the USA remain unresolved. The Russian-American treaty on
strategic partnership is a pre-requisite for the European countries and
their governments for the beginning of a real political, military and
economic rapprochement with Russia, which represents a kind of landmark
showing that we are not strangers, they have nothing to fear and that they
can start opening the door.
I would like to focus on the following: agreements with the USA and even a
treaty in some form of a union will not guarantee automatic decision-making
on Russia's accession to the European Union - while this is a prerequisite,
it is only the start. We also need to see abrupt changes in [Russia's]
domestic policy similar to those in foreign policy. The abolition of silent
political censorship at the leading television channels and in other mass
media, and end to manipulation and falsification at elections at all
levels, the provision of real independence of justice, a real fight with
corruption, a separation of business from power and creation of a
competitive environment… In general this implies the replacement of the old
Stalinist -Byzantinian methods of ruling the country by modern, transparent
and liberal-democratic methods; the state and whole system of
decision-making should be based on the priorities of protecting and
observing human rights. Only this will represent a real movement towards a
future union with Europe.
This in no way means that the European countries and structures should
immediately stop criticising restrictions on the freedom of speech or
developments in Chechnya. Such criticism is not an indicator of hostility
and does not serve as its main criterion. The absence of such criticism,
despite the lawlessness in Chechnya and attack on freedom of speech only
serves to confirm that Russia is being treated as a country from another
world that should be ruled with an "iron fist".
Russia will never be like Germany or Poland, it will never resemble any
European country. Moreover, Russia will never be like America. We are in
some ways better and in some ways worse. However, real mutual understanding
and partnership are possible only on the basis of a common value system
that is applied in both foreign and domestic policies. A common system is
as necessary for efficient partnership, as multiplication tables and
methods used to work out the time.
Are we witnessing another "detente"?
A union with the West is definitely the intention of President Putin. In
the current circumstances, his political will is enough. He has support and
in general the backing of public opinion.
Since September 11 Russia has transmitted very clear signals to the West.
Military bases have been removed from Cuba and Vietnam. The reaction to
America's withdrawal from the ABM treaty was calmer that could have been
expected given the stereotypical approach to Russian-American relations: in
the past this would have been enough for someone to turn their plane back
in the midst of flight over the Atlantic. The plans of Baltic States to
join NATO do not provoke loud declarations. The Russian President has
conducted his line very calmly and convincingly towards the signing of a
pithy and legally binding document during negotiations on a reduction in
strategic weapons. There was no hysteria when the Americans said that they
had no plans to sign any binding agreements or when they declared their
intention to store the dismantled warheads. Vladimir Putin does not think
that the presence of the American troops in Central Asia and Georgia is a
tragedy. It was clearly stated that coordinated military operation against
Hussein's regime would not become the pretext for termination of Russia's
membership in the anti-terrorist coalition.
All this has been done despite the position and opinion of virtually all
the presidential circle - many bureaucrats from the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, the military, politicians. This is definitely a gesture by the
Russian President to the Western world.
This gesture was noticed. Now the Americans understand that they should not
push this hand away and think about reaching strategic agreements. This
evidenced, for example, by the decision that was adopted, expressing
readiness to sign a binding treaty on the reduction of strategic weapons.
Moreover, Deputy Secretary of State John Bolton, during his visit to
Moscow, issued declarations that made it possible to believe that long-term
strategic and military partnerships could be established. The negotiations
of Igor Ivanov in Washington and Georgy Mamedov in Geneva on the threshold
of the May summit were quite successful.
Russian-American rapprochement, coupled with the establishment of a stable
partnership, is supported by influential and authoritative people in
Washington, such as Henry Kissinger. A politician who could never be
accused of warm feelings towards our country, supports today the idea of a
strategic union between Russia and the West, as a pragmatist recognising
that this idea meets best the present interests of the West.
And what about Europe? It can be stated with confidence that Great Britain
and Germany support and will welcome the signing of a strategic
military-and-political union between Russia and the USA. Europe is in
general interested in fundamental and serious integration with Russia, but
understands that this is impossible without the regulation of relations
between Russia and the USA. Obviously, once such an agreement has been
signed, the rates of rapprochement between Russia and Europe will grow.
It is difficult for Europeans today to focus on Russian affairs - they have
enough problems of their own. The situation with coordination of actions
within a united Europe is absolutely unclear: how will a common foreign
policy be determined, how will new applicants to the European Union be
integrated, how they will be adopted and how decision-making will be
performed in general. The positions of the national states differ
considerably: there is no single centre for the urgent adoption of
decisions that are binding on all European Union member-states. The more
serious the external challenge, the more painful these problems become.
While Europeans are resolving their problems, we have to implement a
pre-condition - create stable relations with the USA. If Putin and Bush
take this seriously, then at least two of their European colleagues - Blair
and Schroder - will do all they can to support the establishment of this
Russian-American union.
Certainly, this will not be easy. Both Russia and the European countries
will face problems caused by the new international status of the USA.
Objectively the USA today is in a very difficult situation. It is very
difficult to be the only superpower and at the same time a stable partner.
The provision of security in the 21st century is a long-term joint venture,
where participants should work together not simply because they like each
other, and not even because they belong to one and the same civilisation,
but because the problems they confront cannot be resolved in any another
way. To create such a venture, learn to be the elder, but a partner: this
is the main challenge that the USA has to meet at the beginning of the new
century. History demonstrates that the USA can meet the difficult
challenges of the time. There was slavery. There was the Great Depression.
There was segregation. In each case a wise answer to the challenge was
found. There is hope that such an answer will be found today too.
However, it may be transpire that nothing serious happens. In general all
the possibilities for a strategic rapprochement of Russia and the USA and
the Western world that appeared after September 11 are very fragile. These
sprouts should be treated with care, and it is easy to eliminate them. The
inertia of confrontation that accumulated over the past century and even
earlier, is such that it is much easier to go backwards than move forward:
everything is prepared for a regression-stereotypical thinking, behaviour,
well-learned phrases.
The easiest thing is to replace the serious modern political process by the
well-known Soviet politics of detente: the counting of warheads, carriers
and proclamation of the "victories of Soviet-Russian diplomacy in the fight
for peace between Russia and the USA." Do you remember "detente"?
Detente as a foreign policy concept in current conditions is absolutely
senseless. This a rational, but technical issue that is incomparable in
terms of importance with the logics of political values. Therefore, if
negotiations on May 23-26 end with an agreement on disarmament, on NATO, on
"Jackson-Venik" and common declarations, this would mean that the potential
opportunities from September 11 will be lost and that everything will
revert to its previous form: to the type of agreements signed in the 1970s.
Implementation of the new opportunities is the personal responsibility of
the leaders of Russia, the USA and European countries.
Vladimir Putin carries the heaviest burden of responsibility, as in
Russia's case, not only security but the very existence of the country is
at stake. Putin criticises the government for lacking a strategic approach
to the economic course, proposals that would make it possible to narrow the
gap with industrially developed countries. This is right, but our main
chance to overcome this gap lies in Putin's hands.
The significant difference between the foreign and domestic policies of the
Russian authorities cannot exist for long. There are not that many options.
Either domestic policy will correspond with the foreign policy course aimed
at rapprochement with democratic countries, or, on the contrary, the
decisions adopted after September 11 will turn out to be a temporary zigzag
subject to amendments.
In the first scenario Russia will gradually be transformed into a European
country from the viewpoint of democratic procedures, development of the
economy and living standards.
In the second scenario the customary logic for an authoritarian armoured
train will once again become the symbol of foreign policy in Russia.
It is necessary to understand that President Putin cannot be absolutely
certain that a document on partnership will be signed, must have doubts as
the extent of its implementation and as to the real extent of Russia's
support towards the West. This is why he doesn't burn bridges and retains
his previous entourage in case of the need to retreat. The specifics of
domestic policies of the Russian authorities demonstrate the direction that
this retreat will take if the alliance with the West doesn't happen.
Obviously, there are no prospects for Russia in this direction, but there
is no other way for a President who would like to retain power if the
alliance fails.
Where the President will find himself and what will his power base be in
the case of a retreat, will the events Foros be repeated (Ed. the place
where President Gorbachev was kept under arrest during the putsch)- this
issue will arise.
However, today there still is a chance. President Putin can make the most
important choice and open the door to Europe for Russia and just the window.
*******
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