Johnson's Russia List
#6273
26 May 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

[Contents:
  1. AP: Putin Cites Bush Summit Progress.
  2. Reuters: George and Vlad a hit, but risks to ties remain.
  3. Boston Globe: David Filipov, Russia's legacy of close quarters.
  4. Washington Post: Dana Milbank and Peter Baker, Bush Wary of Confronting 
Putin.
  5. UPI: Martin Walker, Moscow's Soul Brothers.
  6. The Economist (UK): Bush’s Russian romance.
  7. Los Angeles Times: James Gerstenzang, REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK. From Russia, 
With Love and Responsibility.
  8. New York Times: Michael Wines, Contrary St. Petersburg in Limelight.
  9. The Russia Journal: Alexander Golts, The old dead-end road.
  10. Russian Communist Party resolution on Putin's foreign and defence
policy.
  11. Ira Straus: "Who dunit" at the WTC and the Moscow apartment bombings?
Conspiracy theories and cold facts.]

*******

#1
Putin Cites Bush Summit Progress
May 26, 2002
By DEBORAH SEWARD

PUSHKIN, Russia (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that
his summit with President Bush made ``great progress'' in resolving key
differences in relations between the countries.
 
Speaking to reporters at Tsarskoye Selo, the palatial 18th century complex
outside St. Petersburg that was the summer residence for Russia's royals,
Putin said he hoped the meetings with Bush would help remove obstacles to
further cooperation, such as ratifying the 1996 treaty banning nuclear
tests and repealing the Jackson-Vanik law that restricts U.S.-Russian trade.
 
Putin stressed the importance of the agreement signed in the Kremlin on
Friday that requires each country to cut nuclear arsenals to 1,700 to 2,200
warheads from the 6,000 each is now allowed.
 
``That we reached agreement on the key issues and that we signed these
documents, this is great progress,'' Putin said, responding to a question
posed in English.
 
``We have the right to fully consider this visit a success,'' Putin said.
 
Putin said the treaty ``gives the right, true signal for the direction of
cooperation,'' including in the area of containing the threat from
threshold nations that aspire to have nuclear weapons capacity.
 
Putin spoke moments after Air Force One carrying Bush flew above the vast
grounds of the palace where Putin was later playing host to visiting
Finnish President Tarja Halonen.
 
Demonstrating that he appears to have greatly improved his English, Putin
waved at one of his aides to refrain from translating the treaty question
but answered in Russian.
 
Putin appeared upbeat about the summit, noting that just a year ago when
summit preparations began that Washington and Moscow had been at odds over
nuclear weapons reductions and other issues.
 
``On the key issues our positions were either very far apart or were
exactly opposite,'' Putin said, adding that in the last year experts on
both sides ``managed to bring the two sides closer together to move in a
positive direction and finally reach agreement.''
 
The agreement signed at the summit to make huge cuts in both sides' nuclear
weapons arsenal formed a good basis for further progress, Putin said,
speaking after saying goodbye in St. Petersburg to Bush, who was heading to
France.
 
Turning to economics, Putin expressed disappointment that the U.S. Congress
has failed so far to repeal the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which links
privileges coveted by Moscow to the right of Jews to emigrate.
 
``Of course, we are not thrilled that this didn't happen,'' Putin said.
However, Putin said that he and Bush had done a lot to ``create the basis
for movement'' for removal of what for Russia is a serious irritation.
 
Putin expressed satisfaction that the United States was seriously taking
into consideration those problems which Russia feels should be on the front
burner.
 
Putin has been accused by his opponents of giving in to the United States
repeatedly on key issues without getting much in return.
 
``Our American partners pay attention to our concerns and respect them,''
Putin said.

******

#2
George and Vlad a hit, but risks to ties remain
By Peter Graff

ST PETERSBURG, Russia, May 26 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin
said goodbye to his friend George on Sunday after taking in the ballet,
staying out past midnight on the canals, and, of course, signing a landmark
arms control pact.
 
In all the years of superpower summitry, it is hard to remember two leaders
having a more demonstrably fabulous time than Putin and U.S. President
George W. Bush.
 
The ex-KGB spy and the Texas rancher talked about their kids, heaped praise
on each other and perfected the timing of what has to be one of the oddest
comedy acts in recent memory.
 
The lighthearted show has serious implications: if Russians were unsure
whether Putin was sincere in his sudden recent westward foreign policy
lurch, the round-the-clock televised camaraderie appeared intended to
settle the case.
 
"I'm absolutely convinced that the future of this country is incredibly
bright," Bush told students at Putin's alma mater, St Petersburg State
University.
 
"First, because of the great imagination and intellect of the Russian
people and secondly, because you've got a leader who understands that
freedom is going to lift the future of this country."
 
But after a summit that was heavier on style than on substance, there will
be serious work to do to ensure that the latest thaw does not end in a
refreeze, as so many have before.
 
Differences, notably over Russian technology exports to Iran, which
Washington calls the world's greatest nuclear proliferation threat, still
lurk just below the surface.
 
"Russia is still on probation," said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent
defence analyst based in Moscow.
 
"They say: 'Yes, Putin is a nice guy, but there's lots of nasty guys in
town around here'. And of course they're right. Russian foreign policy is
erratic and not really decided yet."
 
TREATY BILLED AS COLD WAR'S END
 
The centrepiece of this week's summit was the Treaty of Moscow, billed as a
landmark arms control pact that would finally bury the legacy of the Cold
War, committing both countries to cut deployed long-range nuclear arsenals
by two-thirds over the next decade.
 
Signing an arms pact was a minor victory for Putin: the Bush administration
had long resisted putting its pledges on paper.
 
"I believe we have every reason to consider this visit a success," Putin
told reporters after Bush left on Sunday. "The fact that we have reached
agreements on these issues and even signed documents, I believe is
tremendous progress."
 
He could also point to other victories. Bush notably avoided any reference
to accusations of Russian atrocities in rebel Chechnya, a war Washington
considers brutal but also sees as part of own struggle with Islamic militants.
 
The cordiality between Bush and Putin has perhaps been rivalled in the past
only by the hearty, back-slapping relationship between their direct
predecessors, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin.
 
Unlike Clinton and Yeltsin, and a majority of other post-war presidential
pairs, Bush and Putin have not had to overcome a wide difference in age or
physical health.
 
But Friday's three-page treaty looks nothing like the arms reduction
accords of the past, with their precise timetables for specific cuts and
elaborate mechanisms for verification.
 
The treaty commits Russia to making nuclear cuts that economic reality
would have surely imposed anyway. Washington can keep its warheads in
storage and re-arm them at any time.
 
"President Bush said, basically: 'You have a good president, but we need
thousands of warheads if something goes wrong with you guys'," Felgenhauer
said.

******

#3
Boston Globe
May 26, 2002
Russia's legacy of close quarters
By David Filipov, Globe Staff

ST. PETERSBURG - He has read the brooding writings of one local, Feodor
Dostoyevsky, and has toured the palatial Hermitage museum and the renowned
Mariinsky Theater with a native of the city, President Vladimir V. Putin.  

But if President Bush wanted to really get to know Russia's second city, he
might look beyond the faded but ornate facades of the 19th-century
buildings lining the canals that give St. Petersburg its nickname, ''the
Venice of the North.''

Inside a six-room apartment a minute's walk from the famous Nevsky Prospekt
lives the Gorbenko family, Andrei, Vera, and their 5-year-old daughter,
Katya - and about 17 people they do not know very well. Like 700,000 people
in this city of 4.5 million, the Gorbenkos and their housemates live in a
communal apartment, a Bolshevik-era solution to a post-Revolutionary
housing shortage that has become a legacy of St. Petersburg's seven decades
under communism.

Bush's visit coincided with St. Petersburg's 299th birthday celebration, a
day of concerts and parades that also kicked off the local government's
campaign to give the city a makeover for the 300th anniversary of its
founding by Peter the Great.

The city is rebuilding roads and repairing the sprawling palaces,
gold-domed churches, and monuments that make it one of most beautiful
cities in the world.

But no one is doing anything about the communal apartments. Funding for
housing is at a trickle, and families like the Gorbenkos may wait for
decades for a new place to live.

''This is the real St. Petersburg,'' Vera Gorbenko said as she and Andrei
showed guests the kitchen of her home, which, like most communal
apartments, features several stoves and refrigerators but no personal items
that would give the place some warmth. The Gorbenkos try not to leave
anything out; housemates have been known to steal pots and pans to resell
them and buy alcohol. 

The families share a single toilet and a sink that provides only cold
water; hot baths are a luxury that the Gorbenkos have to go to a public
bathhouse to enjoy.

A creation of the early years of the USSR, when St. Petersburg was renamed
Leningrad, after the founder of Soviet communism, communal apartments were
intended to solve a housing shortage and provide the lesson that strangers
could live and work together.

How it turned out in reality is something Bush could ask Putin, who spent
his youth in a communal apartment on St. Petersburg's Baskov Lane. Or he
could ask the Gorbenkos, whose house on Sennaya Square is in the
neighborhood of much of the plot of ''Crime and Punishment,'' the
Dostoyevsky classic that Bush reportedly read to bone up on St. Petersburg.

''What kind of relationship can there be ... six families of absolute
strangers, who live together in one cage and have to share a toilet?'' Vera
Gorbenko asked.

One of the housemates is in jail, awaiting trial on a drug-dealing charge.
Another lurched into the apartment while Gorbenko was speaking, casting an
annoyed look at the crowd in the kitchen before retreating.

St. Petersburg's Czarist-era splendor receded into the blight of communist
Leningrad over the decades, pushed near destitution by Josef Stalin's
purges of the intellectual elite and by the German siege from 1941 to 1944,
which cost nearly 1 million lives.

The postwar industrial boom that turned Leningrad into a center of Soviet
defense industry led to miles of bleak urban sprawl that extends in every
direction from the center of the city. Palaces were converted into warehouses.

Renamed St. Petersburg when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the city on
the Neva River found itself an economic wreck, home to drug abuse,
crime-gang shootouts, and contract murders that peaked in the late 1990s.
Corruption is still a problem: The city is trying to find out what happened
to $3.5 million in road-construction funds that have mysteriously disappeared.

St. Petersburg is trying to put that image behind it, Alexander Goregin, an
aide to St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, said during a recent
tour of the city that was part of a publicity campaign for the 300th
anniversary. 

Yesterday, flags and banners emblazoned with the number 300 appeared
overnight along Nevsky Prospekt in front of the neoclassic colonnades of
Kazan Cathedral, where Bush and Putin will attend a church service today.

''For almost 300 years our ancestors built, beautified, maintained, and
defended our city on the Neva,'' Yakovlev said in a television address as
Bush arrived. ''It has become one of the most beautiful in the world.''

Residents seemed happy to forget their problems and join in the
celebrations. Galina Romanova, a 69-year-old pensioner, was one of a dozen
Petersburgers who braved 42-degree weather to swim across the Neva in
celebration of yesterday's anniversary.

''I am proud of my city,'' said Romanova, who made the swim gripping a
Russian tricolor. ''Proud that I was born here, that I live here, and that
I learned to swim here.''

*******

#4
Washington Post
May 26, 2002
Bush Wary of Confronting Putin 
By Dana Milbank and Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service

ST. PETERSBURG, May 25 -- President Bush, facing television cameras at a news 
conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, announced that 
the two would meet with media representatives as part of his effort to 
convince Russia of "the important role of the free press in building a 
working democracy."

When the meeting happened a while later, it was a Kremlin gathering of a few 
news media figures who were given four minutes to make presentations to the 
presidents: two minutes for an American newspaper owner and two minutes for a 
Russian journalist. Participants said Bush and Putin thanked them without 
responding to the issues they raised. Although the event was meant to 
highlight support for a free press, news media coverage was not permitted.

Vladimir Posner, one of Russia's best-known television journalists and 
Russia's representative at the event, said he was pleased that the subject of 
press freedom was raised. But, he added: "On the minus side, it would have 
been good if we could have had a more in-depth discussion. And it would have 
been better if it had been open to the media, especially because we were 
talking about independent media."

The closed meeting reflected the tone that Bush has set on his three-day 
visit to Russia, the first of his presidency. Putin has been widely 
criticized for closing down an independent television station here, and he 
has overseen the prosecution of a brutal military campaign against Chechen 
separatists. But in public appearances, Bush did not confront Putin on these 
issues.

Bush extolled the virtues of a free and open society, visited a church and a 
synagogue, and met with Russian journalists, human rights workers and 
religious leaders. But he emphasized mutual cuts in strategic nuclear arms 
and cooperation in the war on terrorism. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, 
summing up the trip today, did not even mention human rights or democracy.

Bush praised Putin and his leadership throughout his visit while avoiding 
criticism of his host. At St. Petersburg State University, where Putin 
studied and later worked while also serving undercover for the KGB, Bush 
spoke warmly this afternoon to the students about "your president and my 
friend, Vladimir Putin." He told the students that "you've got a leader who 
understands that freedom is going to enhance the future of this country."

When a student asked about the characteristics of leadership, Bush said, "You 
have to stand on principle, you have to believe in certain values." But the 
only value Bush talked about during the appearance was how much Putin and his 
wife "loved their daughters. That's a universal value. It's an impressive 
value."

In recent days Bush has set a strikingly different tone than he did in his 
remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in November 1999. At the 
time, Putin was prime minister, and the Russian military was pushing ahead 
with a new offensive in Chechnya. Bush, then on the campaign trail, declared 
that "we cannot excuse Russian brutality" and argued that "Russia cannot 
learn the lessons of democracy from the textbook of tyranny." He said there 
would be no cooperation without "civilized self-restraint from Moscow."

"When the Russian government attacks civilians, killing women and children, 
leaving orphans and refugees, it can no longer expect aid from international 
lending institutions," Bush said then. "The Russian government will discover 
that it cannot build a stable and unified nation on the ruins of human 
rights."

As with Bill Clinton and others before him, though, Bush has since discovered 
that it's easier to talk tough as a candidate than as a president. The Sept. 
11 terrorist attacks led Bush to build an international coalition for the war 
in Afghanistan, and Russian cooperation was critical for U.S. forces to use 
Central Asian countries as bases of operations. Other considerations have 
taken a back seat, and not just with Russia; during a trip to China earlier 
this year, Bush played down concerns about Beijing's human rights record.

The emphasis on the fight against terrorism has dovetailed with Putin's own 
agenda. He launched the Chechen offensive after a series of apartment house 
bombings in Moscow and other cities that he blamed on Chechens, although none 
was apprehended. From the outset, Putin has cast the Chechen war as a battle 
against terrorists.

Russian and international human rights groups have called attention to 
numerous examples of brutality and abuses in the Chechen conflict, including 
cases in which Russian troops have rounded up civilians and allegedly 
tortured and killed them. On his current trip, Bush's only public mention of 
Chechnya in Putin's presence was a neutral line: "We will work to help end 
fighting and achieve a political settlement in Chechnya."

Bush also mentioned Chechnya to the political, religious, media and human 
rights leaders gathered late Friday at Spaso House, the U.S. ambassador's 
residence. A few reporters were allowed to cover his remarks, which were 
given brief coverage on Russian television.

"The experience in Afghanistan has taught us all that there's lessons to be 
learned about how to protect one's homeland and, at the same time, be 
respectful on the battlefield, and that lesson applies to Chechnya," Bush 
said. "The war on terror can be won and, at the same time, we have proven 
it's possible to respect the rights of the people in the territories, to 
respect the rights of the minorities."

Bush also spoke at Spaso House about the need for fair enforcement of law, an 
"independent media that is respected by the government," freedom of speech 
and of association for opposition parties and freedom of religion. Bush said 
both Russia and the United States must "respect the multi-ethnic character of 
our lands." Like Americans, Russians expect a government "that represents 
everyday citizens, not a corrupt elite," Bush said. 

"We'll be judged by history on how we defend our freedoms," he added. "And 
we'll be judged by history as to whether or not we defend the universal 
values that are right and just and true."

Some in the audience noted the difference between Bush's approach and 
Clinton's. When Clinton visited in 2000 in the midst of a crackdown on 
Russia's most prominent media tycoon, he offered his support by granting a 
long interview to the tycoon's flagship radio station, Ekho Moskvy.

Some in Russia said they were disappointed by Bush's approach. "It was 
interesting to listen to him, but I didn't hear anything new to what he 
usually says on the subject," said Valentina Melnikova, an activist with the 
Soldiers' Mothers Committee, a group that has protested military abuses in 
Chechnya.

Melnikova credited Bush with speaking emotionally about human rights but said 
she feared that his approach would only encourage Russia to persist in its 
actions in Chechnya without fear of international condemnation.

"As usual, I was upset at the way he spoke about ways to fight against 
terrorism," she said. "We know for sure the way he spoke about it gives more 
freedom to the Russian military." Melnikova approached Bush after his speech, 
introduced herself and urged him to have U.S. military officers teach the 
Russians to respect human rights.

"Of course we were not satisfied with that," said Tatiana Kasatkina, 
executive director of Memorial, a Russian human rights group, speaking of the 
Bush remarks at Spaso House. "He spoke about Chechnya and human rights only 
in passing. There was nothing in the speech like what he said during his 
election campaign. But what could one expect? . . . It's diplomacy. It's 
politics."

*******

#5
Walker's World: Moscow's Soul Brothers 
By Martin Walker
UPI Chief International Correspondent
May 26, 2002

In the old days of the Soviet Union, the workers in whose name the country
was supposedly run had their own version of the social contract -- "They
pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."

Now we have a new Moscow contract. George Bush pretends to treat Vladimir
Putin as the head of a superpower. And in return Putin pretends to be the
kind of free market soulmate Bush could meet down in the Rotary Club of
Crawford, Texas.

And just like workers and managers in the old Soviet days, both men know
they are faking it.

Putin is good at camouflaging the reality of systemic collapse. The
Russians had no choice but to agree to cut strategic warheads back to 2,000
-- they can neither maintain nor guard the 6,000-plus warheads they have
now. They lack the tritium to keep the warheads reliably potent. They
cannot even afford the traditional manpower of the old Strategic Rocket
Forces, and in some cases, have not even been able to pay the electricity
bills of the missile bases.

The once-famed Red Army, humiliated in Afghanistan and frustrated in
Chechnya, is a military joke. They still make sweet warplanes, and some
brilliant weapons systems like the S-300 missile, but Russian pilots get
less than one-fifth the flight time of the U.S. equivalents. Back in the
1970s, the Soviet military actually devised most of the high-tech warfare
concepts that we now call the Revolution in Military Affairs and admire
when the Pentagon does it. These days, the Russians probably couldn't even
take on Poland.

Their economy, on the most generous estimates, is still smaller than that
of Holland, whose population is one-tenth that of Russia. And things are
going to get worse. Russia's infrastructure of roads, bridges and rail
lines, of power stations and transmission lines and pipelines and sewers,
faces an urgent rebuilding and modernization bill that is equivalent to
three years of GDP.

Under low birthrates, HIV/AIDS, alcoholism and suicide, the population is
shrinking fast. Putin may well live to see the Russian population, which
has already dropped from 151 million to 144 million in the last decade,
drop below 100 million.

The country is a demographic and environmental disaster zone, with China to
one side and Islamic countries to the south, understandably wondering
whether this etiolated former superpower has the strength or the will to
defend all that desirable, mineral-rich real estate of Siberia.

Putin knows all this, and also knows that the best -- and possibly only --
hope Russia has to defend its resources and modernize its economy lies in
joining the West. For the next years, and probably the next seven, this
means playing the part of Bush's best buddy with Stanislavskian conviction. 

A cynic might say this calls for the kind of dissimulation that is second
nature to anyone who rose through the ranks of the old KGB. And yet looking
at the array of Putin reforms, the 13 percent flat rate tax, the cuts in
corporate taxes and the enactment of commercial codes and the steady
progress towards a market in farmland, Bush's top advisers like Condoleezza
Rice now on balance think Putin is a genuine and well-intentioned reformer.

There is one point where this new Moscow contract between Bush and Putin
can break down. The Americans remain not wholly convinced. They have
therefore established a litmus test -- the fat Russian contract to complete
Iran's Bushehr nuclear power station, and possibly to build another. Since
the Pentagon assumes (and Russians diplomats joke) that the reactor will
never go critical before Israeli bombs or cruise missiles take it out, this
is the wrong litmus test.

There are others. A full accounting of the old Soviet chemical and
biological warfare programs is long overdue. A free media would be
desirable. Some more transparency in the operations of Russian banks and
energy corporations would be good, particularly over their investments in
eastern Europe.

The Czechs, for example, suspect but cannot prove that Russian money is now
behind two of their private TV channels, and Russian funds -- some clean,
some dubious - are buying up pipelines and gas wholesalers across the region.

The kind of relationship that the two leaders fulsomely claimed to be
building in Moscow is unlikely to prosper or to endure if it is built on
the cynical old Soviet-style contract that Bush pretends to respect Russia
and Putin pretends to reform it. We tried that with Boris Yeltsin, who at
least was a convinced enough democrat to allow a free press to flourish.
For all his avowed intentions and warm words to Bush, Putin still has a lot
to prove.

*******

#6
The Economist (UK)
May 25-31, 2002
Bush’s Russian romance
In Russia as part of a a six-day trip to Europe, President George Bush has
signed a treaty agreeing mutual reductions in deployed nuclear weapons, and
hailed a “new era” of friendship. Why is he so enamoured of President
Vladimir Putin's Russia? 

WHEN the cold war ended in 1991, Russia seemed relevant to America only
because it had nuclear weapons. As that nuclear arsenal was reduced,
Russia’s importance would surely shrink too. After all, Russia’s economy
was about the size of Portugal’s. Without nukes, that fact would tell.
While Russia would plainly matter a little more than Portugal to America’s
geostrategists—its regional interests stretch from the Baltic to the Bering
Strait, from sea to frozen sea—it would become a second- or even
third-order country.

It would be replaced, at least from America’s point of view, by rising
China and rich Europe. The challenge of China was obvious to all, and
remains so. But to some of the camp-followers of the older George Bush, the
president at the time, the opportunity for Europe was no less striking.
With its shared democratic values, an even larger economy (the single
market opened in the beginning of 1993) and, with luck, a single foreign
policy, Europe, led by Germany, could become the most important partner in
the New World Order.

To begin with, the younger George Bush seemed to accept parts of that
doctrine: his advisers talked about Russia only in nuclear terms. Not any
longer. The meeting at which he signed the three-page Treaty of Moscow at
the Kremlin on May 24th, was his fifth get-together with Vladimir Putin in
less than 12 months. Mr Bush is spending three days in Russia, but less
than a day each in mainland Europe’s two largest economies, Germany and
France, whose leaders he is meeting for the first time on home soil. With
Mr Putin, Mr Bush has “looked into the man’s soul”; by contrast, he has
difficulty even looking Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac in the eye.

With the exception of Tony Blair, whom Mr Bush seems to regard as an
honorary American, the Europeans often seem like wallflowers at the Kremlin
ball. America’s relations with Russia are now better than at any time since
the end of the second world war and are improving, while transatlantic
relations are probably as bad as they have ever been. 

In Berlin, Mr Bush did his best to put this right, or at least to gloss
over the cracks. In a speech to the German parliament—which was punctuated
by applause—Mr Bush stressed the interest America and Europe share in
defeating “the enemies of freedom”. In a joint press conference with Mr
Schröder, he called Germany “an incredibly important ally”. Mr Schröder
said there were no differences between Germany and America over the issue
of Iraq—one of the main concerns of the large street protests which greeted
Mr Bush.

Mr Bush's reception in Berlin, the city of John Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein
Berliner”, shows how misguided is one commonly espoused view in the
American media—that Russia now loves America more than Europe does. Yes,
his arrival was accompanied by hostile demonstrations. But the only reason
why protests in Moscow were so much smaller was the deterrent effect of Mr
Putin’s more heavy-handed security services. Yes, the elites of Germany,
France and every other European country harbour plenty of anti-American
sentiments: they have sneered at Mr Bush’s “unilateralist overdrive” and
fumed at America’s backing for Ariel Sharon, Israel’s belligerent prime
minister. But none of them can hold a candle to Russia when it comes to
being rude about American foreign policy—or, for that matter, when it comes
to anti-Semitism. 

Similarly, Mr Bush’s warmer feelings for Mr Putin cannot be explained
solely by Russia’s exemplary behaviour after September 11th. Mr Putin
certainly won points by refusing to kick up a fuss about either American
bases in Central Asia, or Mr Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile treaty. But those perfidious Germans and French also rallied round
America, invoking for the first time Article 5 of the NATO treaty (on
mutual self-defence) and stepping up intelligence co-operation.

Indeed, the difference in warmth has largely been on America’s side. While
the administration made relatively little of NATO’s offer of military help
in Afghanistan, though it would have been easy to accept, Mr Bush happily
agreed to Mr Putin’s demand to enshrine the mutual nuclear-arms reductions
in a verifiable treaty, casually abandoning his strong preference for a
gentleman’s agreement by handshake. Which leads to an uncomfortable
conclusion: that Mr Bush’s people really do think Russia has more to offer
America than any other country.

In the world after September 11th, Mr Putin has three reasons to command Mr
Bush’s attention that western Europe (often mercifully) cannot match. First
and most important is nuclear security. This reflects Russia’s weakness.
The biggest danger facing the United States is the threat that terrorists
will steal weapons-grade plutonium, or radiological material for a dirty
bomb. Russia is the most likely source. Of course, the new missile treaty
will reduce that threat—but only a little and over ten years. For the
foreseeable future, America must rely on the Russians to guard thousands of
warheads—and, if Russia cannot guarantee that on its own, America will have
to help. In contrast, Mr Bush can take the safety of French nuclear weapons
for granted.

Second, Russia is the world’s third-largest oil producer and has the
world’s largest gas reserves. It is the country best able to reduce
America’s dependence on oil from the Gulf. If (a big if) it can increase
oil output at current rates for five years, it could outstrip Saudi Arabia
as an oil exporter. That would increase America’s freedom of action in the
Middle East (something conservatives in America are whispering about).

Third, Russia is needed in the war against al-Qaeda. Russia has closer ties
with all the “axis of evil” countries than has Europe, so it is a better
conduit for diplomatic pressure. And although the Europeans can be relied
upon (more or less) to do what America wants in the war on terrorism,
Russia cannot, quite. In Iran, for instance, it is helping to build a
nuclear reactor. Left to itself, it might provide Iran (which it regards as
a responsible Central Asian power) with nuclear fuel, not too many
questions asked. In exchange for closer ties with America, though, it might
impose stricter controls on fuel supplies. 

This new appreciation of Russia is thus mostly based on the country’s
shortcomings. Short-term opportunism on Mr Bush’s part could be very
useful. But longer-term alliances are based on trust—swapping intelligence
and so on. Those are things that the Europeans do without bidding, let
alone treaties. Pray that they do not conclude that the only way to make Mr
Bush love them is to stress their differences with America still more.

*******

#7
Los Angeles Times
May 26, 2002
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
From Russia, With Love and Responsibility  
By JAMES GERSTENZANG, TIMES STAFF WRITER

Sure, President Bush and his Kremlin counterpart talked about chemical
weapons and terrorism during Bush's Russian trip. They signed a promise to
cut their deployed nuclear arsenals by two-thirds, established a new
bilateral strategic relationship and issued serious declarations about half
a dozen other important matters. That was on Friday in Moscow.

But on Saturday, they talked of love.

What, a student at St. Petersburg State University asked Bush and Russian
President Vladimir V. Putin, are the qualities of a successful manager?
Two, Putin replied: "You have to have a sense of responsibility, and you
have to have a sense of love."

*

Bush and Putin have met five times in the last year, each time talking
about how they have broken down decades of mistrust between Washington and
Moscow by developing a personal relationship.

On Saturday, they demonstrated it.

They flew separately to St. Petersburg, Putin's native city, but then spent
most of the day together--and not in activities at which Bush spends much
time at home.

With their wives, they passed two hours at the Hermitage museum. Part of
the time was spent at lunch, part talking with reporters. Still, they did a
power walk through a history of Western art.

Entering the room in which Titian's "Venus With a Mirror" is being
displayed--and where reporters and photographers were stationed
nearby--Bush focused intently elsewhere. He regarded Putin. He made small
talk with reporters. But he made no eye contact with the partially nude Venus.

Later, in a city that is home to one of the world's most famed ballet
companies, the two couples saw a new production of "The Nutcracker" by the
company known here as the Maryinsky and in the West as the Kirov. And,
taking advantage of the dusky light late in the northern evening as the
summer solstice nears, they went for a cruise on the Neva River after the
performance.

At one point, Bush caught himself appearing too informal as he and Putin
spoke with the students at the university, which is the alma mater of the
Putins and Lenin.

The question dealt with how to prevent Russia's best and brightest from
heading to the United States.

"I tell Vladimir all the time--I mean, Mr. President all the time--that
Russia's most precious resource is the brainpower of the country. And
you've got a lot of it. It's going to take a lot of brains in Russia to
create a drain," Bush said.

*

The two presidents began their visit at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery
north of the city. It is situated in a community of dreary apartment blocks
and an occasional factory.

Buried there in 186 mass graves are the remains of 490,000 people, all
victims of the 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944.

At a measured pace, Bush and Putin followed two Russian soldiers who
marched with precise, synchronized and painfully slow goose steps past the
burial mounds down a path the length of three football fields, to jointly
present in silence a single wreath at a statue of heroic proportions
representing the Russian Motherland.

*

There are all sorts of changes in Russia, of course, and not just in
relations with the United States.

In stores retailing to Moscow's upscale consumers, $5,000 watches are
routine. Along the heavily traveled roads to a suburb on the city's west
side, a portrait of the Sphinx in gold advertises the latest-model Lexus.
And in and around the Kremlin, security agents demonstrate their skills at
manhandling and surreptitious searches.

Some things never change.

Consider the moment Friday when Bush and Putin plunged into a crowd of
about 100 tourists and students at Cathedral Square, within the Kremlin.

Russian security agents took that as a signal of sorts to plunge themselves
into American television camera crews, jostling some, whirling others and
turning the pack into the equivalent of a rugby scrum. The Russian crews
were ignored.

*

Putin has made his residence at Novo-Ogarevo, a government-owned compound
west of Moscow. It is just beyond a ghetto of sprouting McMansions,
imposing two- and three-story brick structures satisfying the dacha-needs
of Moscow's successful entrepreneurs.

To reach the dwelling on the Moscow River, a visitor passes through two
sets of large gates in a stone wall perhaps 20 feet high and drives up a
roadway that cuts through a forest of birch and pine.

The home is a two-story structure of yellow stucco, set off by four white
columns in the front and natural wood trim around the windows. Think rustic
Camp David gone upmarket.

Russian reporters say a sports pavilion on the property includes an indoor
swimming pool and a gym.

The Bushes and the Putins had dinner there Friday night; afterward, the
Bushes spent the night at the compound, just as the Putins had overnighted
at the Bush ranch in Texas in November.

"We talked about our families, we talked about our passions, we talked
about matters of life that friends would talk about," Bush said Saturday.
"But the thing that impressed me the most about the president and his wife
was how much they loved their daughters."

Again, love.

"That's a universal value," Bush said. 

*******

#8
New York Times
May 26, 2002
Contrary St. Petersburg in Limelight
By MICHAEL WINES

ST. PETERSBURG, May 25 -- Volodya Putin loves his hometown. But like any
love, 
this is a complicated relationship.

Today, Mr. Putin -- Volodya is one nickname for Vladimir, the Russian 
president's first name -- brought President Bush here for a weekend devoted, 
at its root, to showing off his birth city. They toured the Hermitage state 
art museum, Russia's greatest and one of the world's best. Tonight they 
viewed ballet at the Mariinsky Theater, which any Petersburger will tell you 
rivals the Bolshoi, then glided past blocks of magnificent prerevolutionary 
buildings lining the canals and rivers that split this city into 42 islands, 
linked by more than 500 bridges. 

You can't find canals in Moscow.

This is an old ritual for Mr. Putin. Mr. Bush is just the latest in a parade 
of world leaders brought here to sample the delights of Russia's imperial 
capital since Mr. Putin became president two and a half years ago. Mr. Putin 
has grand plans to invite the leaders of all Europe here next year, when the 
city celebrates the 300th anniversary of its founding by Czar Peter the Great.

Indeed, Mr. Putin has been trying to rebuild this city's greatness since his 
days as the top aide to the city's first democratic mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, 
whose goal in life was to rebuild the city as Russia's western front door.

"He's a real fan of St. Petersburg," said Valery N. Ostrovsky, a political 
scientist here.

Yet while St. Petersburg is clearly proud to have one of its own not just as 
president, but as an undeniably able one, it is harder to say that Mr. 
Putin's love is fully returned. A query about Mr. Putin to some residents, 
like 47-year-old Vera Rudova, a store clerk, strikes a gusher of praise: "A 
wonderful, remarkable guy. He's the first person who's tried to do something 
for the country. And he's made the city prettier — there's been a lot of 
restoration here since he became president."

But ask others about the city's favorite son, and the reply is more evasive. 
"I wouldn't call him a son," said one taxi driver who only gave the name 
Oleg. "He's the city's representative."

Petersburgers voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Putin for president in the March 
2000 elections. But two months later they rejected his favorite for governor 
of the St. Petersburg region, re-electing a politician, Vladimir Yakovlev, 
who had been a Putin critic. (The two have since made an uneasy peace.)

Muscovites openly resent the so-called Petersburg Mafia that Mr. Putin has 
placed in the top posts of Russian government and industry. So do many 
Petersburgers, who see them as something approaching runaways, and their loss 
as a brain drain to their rival metropolis.

Petersburgers respect Mr. Putin's economic liberalism and avowed democratic 
leanings. After all, this city held the first anti-Communist vote of any note 
in Soviet history, using the option of "none of the above" in 1981 to reject 
the city's Communist leaders.

But such historic liberalism also made it a favored target for the K.G.B. And 
even now Mr. Putin's own K.G.B. background gives many here quiet pause.

Don't blame Mr. Putin for all this standoffishness. By its nature, people 
here say, St. Petersburg can be contrary, unwilling to sacrifice its own 
cultural and historic uniqueness to join the Russian mainstream — even to 
grab back some of the power lost when Lenin moved the capital to Moscow from 
here.

"There's a feeling of autonomy in this city," said Lev Louriye, a newspaper 
columnist. "It's a very strong local culture that's based on frustration
— on 
the siege of '41 to '44, when we lost nearly a million people, on losing the 
capital."

Mr. Putin came of age in this bell jar of a city, but in a special time. The 
1970's were comparatively good to the Soviet Union, blessed with an 
oil-enriched economy and its American rival mired in Vietnam and an energy 
crisis. Leonid Brezhnev loosened his grip on the reins, and young 
Petersburgers like Mr. Putin got a glimpse of Western life and values, and 
liked much of what they saw.

That made him a liberal, which people here like. But it appears also to have 
made him determined to turn St. Petersburg back outward. 

Mr. Putin is showering St. Petersburg with support, from money for 
restorations and roads to anointment as Russia's gateway city for 
international conferences and other global events.

Thus did Mr. Bush come here, and the leaders of Germany, Britain, Austria and 
other nations before him, with still more certain to come later. If this 
continues, people here may find their town changing "from a provincial city 
with a great past to a great European city," as Lev I. Saulkin, a political 
scientist here, described Mr. Putin's aspirations.

Petersburgers are contrarians. They are not so sure about that.

*******

#9
The Russia Journal
May 24-30, 2002
The old dead-end road
By ALEXANDER GOLTS

Just two decades ago what Russia is doing now on the international scene
would have been called "bloc fever" by Pravda, the Communist Party daily.
At their anniversary session in mid-May, the leaders of the six countries
that make up the Collective Security Treaty decided to transform it into a
full-fledged military organization called the Collective Security Treaty
Organization, with its military command to be set up at the Russian General
Staff.

This was followed a few days later by a meeting of the defense ministers of
the so-called Shanghai Six – Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakstan,
all members of the Collective Security Treaty; China; and Uzbekistan, which
quit the treaty in 1999.

The Uzbek defense minister preferred not to attend the meeting, which
issued a communique recommending the creation of a joint mechanism for
resolving security and defense issues. There was even talk of holding a
joint anti-terrorist training exercise. Considering China has spent the
past decade scrupulously avoiding even the slightest hint of participating
in a military alliance, this signals a radical change in Beijing's foreign
policy.

Finally, the agreement founding the Council of 20 that will unite Russia
and NATO will be signed in Italy next week. Citing all this, pro-Kremlin
analysts have rushed to declare that, by uniting European and Asian
security structures, Moscow is becoming a major center of world politics.

This analysis could be valid if weren’t for the fact that the efforts to
invigorate the Collective Security Treaty and the Shanghai group directly
contradict the aims of the agreement with the 19 NATO countries.

Propagandistic exaggerations aside, what strengthening the Collective
Security Treaty really means is that Russia is taking on additional
commitments in regard to other member states. Russia has said, for example,
that it will train military specialists from former Soviet republics for
free and sell those countries military equipment at lower prices. In
return, it has proposed that Moscow have the Shanghai group's collective
rapid-reaction force at its disposal.

The problem is that this is all more probable in theory rather than
reality. It’s worth recalling that an attempt to create a rapid-reaction
force in Tajikistan was quietly sabotaged by the prospective participants.
And, in the case of Collective Security Treaty member Belarus, its
constitution prohibits sending troops abroad.

It is more likely is that the plans to transform the Collective Security
Treaty into a military alliance is a signal. The intended recipient of that
signal is no secret, thanks to tireless Belarusian President Alexander
Lukashenko, who declared that the new alliance would "create a powerful
center that the other international military-political alliances, above all
NATO, will have to reckon with."

It’s a similar story with the plans to give the Shanghai group a military
dimension. China is clearly worried by the way Russia and the West are
drawing closer. A sign of this is Defense Minister Chi Hao Tian’s refusal
to comment on the formation of the NATO Council of 20. It’s unlikely that
the Chinese leadership is about to take on new military commitments, but it
is in China’s interest to try to frighten the West with the prospect of an
alliance with Russia.

The question is, is this in Russia’s interest? It’s no secret that a large
number of Russian diplomats and military officials have their doubts about
this new form of cooperation with the West. It’s already clear that Russia
won’t have a deciding vote in NATO. And the promise by NATO members that
they won’t take a common position before council meetings with Russia
remains just that: a promise. This is why someone has advised President
Vladimir Putin that Moscow should try to gain as many points as it can,
right from the start. 

That same logic prompted Putin, immediately following U.S. President George
W. Bush’s election, to announce that Russia would sell arms to Iran and
keep its intelligence-gathering center on Cuba. The result was that
relations between Moscow and Washington took a turn for the worse.

Events could now take a similar turn. The new council doesn’t give Russia
any real new rights. But it does give Russia a chance to prove itself as an
important partner. NATO is going through a crisis at the moment, provoked
by the United States’ attempts to follow its own policy without consulting
its allies. At the same time, the alliance’s European members are more and
more aware of just how dependent they are on U.S. military might. In this
context, if Russia manages to put forward clear military-cooperation
proposals likely to interest its partners, it could win itself both
attention and authority.

So far, though, Moscow looks as if it's trying to revive the long-bankrupt
policy of trying to drive a wedge between NATO states. Now, suddenly, come
statements that Russia won’t send its representatives to the alliance's
Prague summit, where they will decide which countries will be offered NATO
membership. What’s more, Russian diplomats are already saying that
countries added to an expanded NATO wouldn't automatically become members
of the Council of 20.

Rather than signaling a willingness to cooperate, statements like these
suggest Russia still seeks some kind of special status. Following this
logic, having a key role in two Asian alliances is supposed to raise
Russia’s authority. But this looks less like a strategy for today and more
like what Moscow was trying to do eight years ago. At that time, when NATO
first began talking about expanding eastward, the Kremlin suddenly began to
say that the Collective Security Treaty could become an instrument against
NATO. At the same time, Moscow made concerted efforts to convince China to
form an alliance, but met with no success.

There won’t be any success this time, either. The only result will be that
this time, like the last, Russia will not be able to make use of an
opportunity for mutually beneficial cooperation with the West.
 
******

#10
From: "L.Dobrokhotov" 
Subject: Russian Communist Party resolution on Putin's foreign and defence
policy
Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 

Threat to National Security of Russia
Statement
by the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee,
Communist Party of the Russian Federation

25 May 2002

Russia's position in the world is rapidly deteriorating. The foreign policy
of president Putin and oligarchs who stand behind him threatens the very
existence of the country. Reliable allies have been sold out. Russian bases
in Vietnam and Cuba vital for our country's security have been closed.
American soldiers have appeared in Central Asia and in Georgia. Soon US
aircraft will land at the airfields of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The
CIS and Russia have already being proclaimed the sphere of the US vital
interests. The strategic encirclement of Russia is being completed with
full consent of Mr.Putin and his team.

Russia's defense capability is being purposefully undermined. The policy of
Putin - Kasyanov regime makes it impossible to maintain combat readiness of
the armed forces even at a minimum level. Under the pretext of its
reduction, the army is being openly destroyed. The size of our army will
soon go down to that of Turkish, which unlike the Russian army, is equipped
with modern weapons.

Our army did not receive new weapons for 10 years. The Navy is being
destroyed. Today military pilots have no fuel for training, and the Navy -
for sea exercises. For the first time in the history of Russia the
officers' privileges earned for protecting Motherland with their lives,
have been taken away. The pride by our space research - the orbital station
"Mir" - was drowned. In Baikonur the world largest space engineering
testing complex collapsed.

The special services of USA and their allies penetrate freely all corners
of the country. They are trying to infiltrate their agents of influence
into power structures of Russia. Pro-American forces are openly seeking
control over the Foreign Ministry, the army and security services.  

The present Russian leadership does not need either honest security
services or a strong national army. They need mercenaries able to suppress
any protest of the dispossessed people. The military "reform" moves in this
direction. Here the interests of the ruling groups of Russia and USA
completely coincide. 

The West has no need to occupy our territory, as the Russian authorities
prepare to sell land to foreigners. The USA have no need to bomb our
factories, for the "reformers" have already strangled whole industries and
continue to sell the rest of state property at miserable prices. America
has no need to intimidate our people, as the Russian TV became a weapon of
moral decomposition of the society and of psychological terror. 

The elections in our country have turned in farce and are needed only to
consolidate the rule of the anti-Russian forces. The planned sale of power
stations and railroads will result in the loss of Russia's sovereignty.
Washington has no need to push the Kremlin to new destructive "reforms".
Extremely radical approach has prevailed there anyway. 

 The class character of Putin - Kasyanov regime serving tiny layer of
oligarchs who seized public property is quite obvious. And servile attitude
of the present residents of the Kremlin to Bush confirms their readiness to
serve the global financial and speculative capital. 
America does not hide its pursuit of the world domination. But presently it
is blocked by the existence of Russia with powerful missile and nuclear
potential. This is why Bush is so persistently "courting" Putin who is
visibly turning into a dependent junior partner and is willingly
encouraging the US  global ambitions. 

The treaty on the reduction of strategic potentials signed by Bush and
Putin is a program of unilateral nuclear disarmament of Russia. 1,5
thousand warheads, which Russia will be allowed to have, is exactly the
number that the US Anti-Ballistic Missile system will be able to intercept.
 Destructive privatization of Russian factories, which are still able to
produce modern arms, is being prepared while scientific base of Russia's
strategic defense has already been almost completely destroyed. 

At the same time the US power is fast growing. The American military budget
for 2003 will reach astronomical figure of 400 billion dollars. The USA
will retain almost intact their nuclear forces. Simultaneously they have
started to develop their Anti-Ballistic missile system. American weapons
will appear in space and they will then be directed at "unfriendly"
countries and peoples. New systems of the precision weapon are being
developed. 

The USA are determined to protect their interests by global domination of
their armed forces. As a matter of fact America already conducts a war
against the world, imposing its standards, blackmailing peoples. USA have
proclaimed "pariah" states such countries friendly to us as Cuba, Iraq,
Iran, Libya, Northern Korea, Syria and are preparing to attack them.

Russia is one of main targets of this war. The USA have publicly declared
that Russia together with China and a number of other countries are still
targeted by the American nuclear forces. Completely false partnership of
the White House and the Kremlin in the struggle against "international
terrorisms" (as a rule sponsored by secrete services) in no way reduces the
animosities of the West towards our country. The military superiority of
the USA is rapidly growing; the security of Russia is as rapidly
deteriorating. Drastic weakening and eventual destruction of Russian
nuclear forces will open way to unrestrained US state terrorism directed
against the entire world. 

Planned admission to NATO of Baltic and East European countries presents a
great danger to Russia. NATO armies will reach the borders of Russia. The
tragedy of June 1941 again becomes possible. The Nazi Germany aggression
against the USSR was preceded by enslavement of Eastern Europe and invasion
of heroic Yugoslavia. Today this scenario repeats almost completely.

Creation of Russia - NATO Council is a deceit needed to deprive Russia of
the will to challenge new expansion of the Alliance to the East. In this
"council" Russia will have no voice on any serious issue. At the same time
NATO will get the right to interfere into internal affairs of Russia. The
unnatural union of Kremlin with NATO worsens our relations with China,
India, Arab countries, Muslim world. Alienates countries of Latin America
and Africa. Creates preconditions for dragging Finland and other neutral
states into NATO. 

Major decisions in military-strategic area were made by the Kremlin without
consulting brotherly Byelorussia. This contradicts the spirit and the
letter of the treaty on creation of the allied state. 

The total passiveness of Putin while facing an approaching catastrophe
confirms the loss of state will, his inability to protect Russia's
interests. We condemn the treaty on reduction of strategic potentials and
the agreement on partnership with NATO as sharply weakening the security of
Russia. 

Our security cannot be ensured without removal from power of the present
ruling group. We demand formation of the government of national interests
capable to unite people and to take the country out of the deep crisis. We
call on all citizens of Russia to express the will on this issue vital for
each person, for each family.

In the history of Russia more than once there were times, when it was
facing mortal danger. "Vague time" with Polish warlords in the Kremlin.
Napoleon's invasion and Hitler's aggression. Each time Russia went out of
the ordeals revived and stronger. 

In the XXth century the Soviet Union led by the Communist Party became the
world power that ensured not only its own security but also the balance of
forces in the world. Our banners are covered with unfading Victories. We
believe in Russia. We are convinced that it will liberate itself from the
yoke of the global capital and its stooges and will restore its role in the
world.

*******

#11
[DJ: An earlier version of this article appeared in The Russia Journal]
"Who dunit" at the WTC and the Moscow apartment bombings?
Conspiracy theories and cold facts
By Ira Straus

One keeps hearing it in Moscow. "Maybe the CIA planned the attacks on the
World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon. Just look how it benefited
American power and the U.S. economy (Americans would be surprised to hear
that it benefited their economy, but never mind). After all, we have no
proof that Osama bin Laden did it. Isn't it just the same as the idea that
maybe the FSB (the Russian secret police, successors to the KGB) did the
apartment bombings in Moscow in 1999?"

I heard this from a girl down the street. I heard it from a student in one
of my classes. Americans also heard it recently in Washington, intended as
a refutation of FSB involvement, at the Kennan Institute.

Let us examine the alleged conspiracies and conspiracy theories. It would
be comforting to find an equivalence and conclude that the FSB was probably
innocent. Unfortunately, in this case there is no equivalence.

1. In the case of the WTC attacks, there is no evidence that it was the
CIA. But there is solid public evidence that it was Islamists and that they
were connected with bin Laden. 

2. In the case of the Moscow bombings, there has been no evidence that it
was the Chechens. But there is some evidence that it was the FSB.

The two cases are as far from equivalent as possible. The evidence on the
Islamists and bin Laden in the WTC case is considerable, starting with
mobile phone calls from hijacked planes, moving on to instructional
materials found in vehicles, and ending with tapes released by and of bin
Laden. Whether the public as yet has been given a definitive "proof" is not
a relevant question; the allies were satisfied with the evidence given
them, and intelligence agencies rightly protect their sources in order to
prosecute the war.

Blaming the Moscow bombings on the FSB, on the other hand, is a view for
which there is unfortunately some evidence, inconclusive evidence, to be
sure, but inevitably so in the absence of a transparent investigation from
the government. The evidence starts with the Ryazan incident, where Federal
agents were caught planting sacks seemingly with hexagen and detonators in
an apartment block. This was later explained away as an exercise and with
other stories, all of which contradicted one another and none of which
seemed to fit the facts. The only explanation that did fit was the
unmentionable one.

Then there is the test of plausibility. It is unfortunately far more
plausible that FSB would murder its own citizens than that the CIA would.
The two organizations have very different traditions in this regard,
different capacities for stomaching evil, and different political oversight
structures. The apartment bombings would be a minor crime compared to the
ones in the KGB's historic repertoire in dealing with its own people. A few
hundred dead, for a specific practical purpose of the stability of the
state and of the entire Russian Federation -- this is light stuff, compared
to the millions who were killed to satisfy a dictator's whims half a
century ago. A dictator who was let off rather lightly in some recent
remarks of Mr. Putin in Poland. And whose picture now sits on the desk of
the guard where I live, alongside pictures of Putin and the Virgin Mary.

The coordination needed for bombing a few apartment buildings was far less
than for the WTC events. Secrecy would be much less difficult for this
low-tech operation than for a coordinated series of precision air attacks
on the WTC and Pentagon, with additional coordinated hijackings elsewhere.
Then there are the Russian traditions of secrecy and American traditions of
openness. The American professional pride in whistle-blowers and in
publishing leaks of malfeasance - traditions that have often made it
impossible for US officials to maintain even the most valid and vital state
secrets. A WTC-Pentagon conspiracy, even if it could somehow have been
carried off, could not have been kept quiet to this day. Yet there have
been no leaks or hints. By contrast, in Russia the secret seemed to leak
out at Ryazan anyway. And then there were the murky revelations about FSB
involvement in hexagen trafficking.

Then there's the test of "cui bono". The mainstay of any conspiracy theory
is to attribute some "bono" to the very party which was damaged. The
mainstay of reality is that it is usually hard to isolate a party whose
benefit is obvious and far greater than that of anyone else.

Nevertheless, it seems obvious who benefited most in the case of the Moscow
apartment bombings. The political career of Mr. Putin gained. The advocates
of a harsher war in Chechnya gained. Conversely, there would have been a
benefit to any terrorists who delighted in causing mass suffering to
Russians; so it is not impossible that terrorists would have done it,
conceivably internationalist Islamists like Khattab, or Dagestani
Islamists. Chechen terrorists seem to have mostly fit the classic mode of
kidnapping and hostage-taking for bargaining purposes, but there were
threats at that time of carrying the war back to Moscow. Bombings have
occurred, killing dozens of civilians, that almost surely were the work of
local anti-Russian terrorists, even if they have been local. The "cui bono"
test is inconclusive, as always, but somewhat unpleasant in its results.

In the case of the U.S., Mr. bin Laden would seem to have gained his usual
benefits -- vengeance, conflict-proliferation, ego gratification, and
ideological gratification ("propaganda of the deed" on behalf of Islam).
When people were arguing against a military response by the U.S., they said
that such a response would mean "falling into bin Laden's trap", since they
were quite sure that it would lead to a "war with all Islam". No one
doubted that it was his scheme to spread conflict. And bin Laden has
continued releasing tapes in which he relishes the war. No surprises here.

However, the conspiracy theorists are not satisfied with the obvious
evidence. Nor do they notice the actual conspiratorial apparatus of bin
Laden, which seems publicly proud of how it can secretly plan its crimes on
a global scale. They are not satisfied with the explanation of terrorists'
gratification for the occasion when U.S. embassies were bombed in Africa.
Or when the World Trade Center was almost toppled by a more traditional
bombing attempt in the early 1990s. 

Nor do they seem to notice the evidence of a growing conflict between the
U.S. and bin Laden long before those bombings. A conflict in which the U.S.
dropped some ineffective bombs on bin Laden's bases in Afghanistan and
finally joined Russia in supporting passive economic sanctions against the
Taliban, but shrank from any effective measures, giving bin Laden the
chance to strike first.

No, this would be much too naturalistic an explanation. Instead, they find
some made-up benefits for the U.S. out of this nightmare. The U.S. is
economy supposed to have benefited from September 11. Actually tens of
billions of dollars of damage were done, indirectly hundreds of billions in
security and insurance risks, with no final end in sight; but lots of
ordinary Russians repeat the economic benefit line anyway. In this, they
fall into an old pattern, one of "vulgar Marxist" or populist attribution
of insidious economic motives for everything that happens. Since money is
omnipresent in human life, there's an economic angle to every event, and
even if the logic is upside down, still the economic explanation can always
be expressed with an air of sophisticated cynicism. It is the reductio ad
absurdum of the cui bono method of analysis.

Then there is the matter of regime response. The Russian regime knew
immediately who to blame and what to do about it, despite lack of evidence.
Its politicians and media all snapped to cue: the "strong hand" made itself
felt, and with time has made itself felt even more strongly on this matter.
The U.S., by contrast, didn't know at first what to do or who to blame. It
had to figure it out. It spent some weeks sorting through the evidence and
providing it to international coalition partners. Its media and pundits
debated at length what to do. They kept debating what to do all the way
until the day the Taliban began collapsing. And resumed the debate as soon
as the main question moved on beyond Afghanistan.

Then there were the conspiracy theories held by the Russian regime itself.
One of the main sources of genuine conspiratorial behavior in history is a
group of people who believe they are battling a great conspiracy. Often
they conclude that a little conspiracy of their own is the necessary
response. And a moral response, in view of the great horror that they're up
against.

As of 1999, Russia was in the grip of a vast global conspiracy theory. The
West was perceived as agent of malevolent forces scheming to cause Russia
to fall apart. The war in Kosovo was depicted as a part of the scheme, one
whose real meaning and purpose was very different from the surface one
described by Western moralizers who were talking about stopping an ethnic
massacre. No, the "real" story was, you see, that CNN and the Western mass
media had become the arbiters of the New World Order. They had led the West
by the nose to intervene in Yugoslavia on behalf of the Muslim rebels
there. Next they would be leading the West to intervene in Russia on behalf
of the Chechen rebels. 

Russians and Serbs were well aware that Bosnian Muslims had staged
massacres of their own people to get international sympathy for their fight
against the Serbs. This was something that really did happen in Bosnia; it
was not just a Russian fantasy. And Bosnian Serbs had in fact tried the
same trick. They no doubt told themselves that it was justified, to
compensate for the Muslims' doing it. The Muslims in turn no doubt
justified their tricks as a way of getting the world to finally act on the
far larger authentic massacres of Muslims by Serbs that were taking place.

Given the utterly one-sided, conspiratorial way in which Russians were
discussing this pattern of dirty tricks -- recognizing only the Muslim
tricks not the Serb ones, depicting the global media as part and parcel of
one great apparatus of deception together with the Muslims -- it would be
surprising if the thought didn't cross the minds of some Russians to try
the same trick and set the balance straight. It would not have been an out
of place thought in the FSB or at the top of the regime, where people were
talking about the "information war" and "media doctrine" as the crux of the
effort to hold Russia together. If the Muslims can do it and get
international sympathy, why can't we? Maybe it's just what we need to whip
up public sentiment and get international support for our just cause. And
it is a just cause, isn't it? A few hundred dead are a small cost, compared
to the cost of losing the war, or the cost of letting it drag out
indefinitely because of insufficient determination on our side -- or
because of international sympathy for the wrong side.

Finally, there is today the ongoing suppression of discussion and evidence.
The war against the media, which has gone on and on despite the abandonment
of the 1999 conspiracy theories that provided the original justification
for it. The way Duma members have had to rely on their parliamentary
immunity to get copies of the Berezovsky film into the country. The failure
of any mass media to show it, although it only repeats what they all said a
couple years ago, when the media climate was still much freer despite the
widespread public fears at the time for the survival of Russia. The death
threats against Yuli Rybakov, a Duma member who brought in copies of the
film. The gang beatings of people who have brought the film to be shown at
local theaters. 

It gives the impression of a regime that was founded on a crime, and is
willing to go to any lengths to avoid getting found out. Risking dragging
much of the country down with it. 

But with no need to go on doing so. For the crime, if it did take place,
would have taken place in a period when the regime had very different ideas
about the world than it does today. It wouldn't be hard for it to explain
away the events as an unfortunate manifestation of a troubled moment in
Russia's evolution, a tragic misstep by overzealous FSB agents, acting out
of patriotic Russian misperceptions about the external world and trying to
get some control over what seemed like an emerging nightmare scenario for
their country. Such an explanation could provide a convenient occasion to
take some new initiatives for a settlement in Chechnya, if the regime felt
this worthwhile. Mr. Putin would have plausible deniability, since he
himself followed a far more sophisticated line than the conspiratorial one;
he described Western criticism of Russia's war in Chechnya, not as a plot
to destroy Russia, but as a way of hitting back at Russia for its criticism
of NATO's war in Yugoslavia. At a time when the world wishes him success,
he might well get away with such an explanation and come out the stronger
for it.

Be that as it may, the regime doesn't seem able to put the matter behind
itself. It seems to be digging itself in deeper and deeper, suppressing the
media and punishing those who mention the unmentionable. Evidently it still
feels the ground beneath itself isn't steady. It is as if it fears the
earth might open up and swallow it whole. The process could in theory go on
and on, dragging more and more of the Russian media and public structures
down into the abyss.

The regime accentuates its vulnerability with these tactics. It has enough
of a solid political basis today that it could move beyond its original
1999 crisis grounds of public acceptance, grounds long since abandoned in
its own ideology. Instead, however, the suppression serves to renew its
dependence on those grounds. The intensity of the cover-up tactics serve as
further circumstantial evidence for those people who think the FSB might
have done it. And "those people" evidently number 50% of the Russian
people, according to polls. 

It isn't Americans with "conspiracy theories" that Russia has to refute, by
equating the Moscow bombings with lunatic-fringe theories about the WTC
attack. It is the Russian people, with their common sense suspicions. And
it is the evidence that must be refuted. The only evidence extant. Russia's
well-wishers in the West might be convinced if Russia would finally produce
some authentic evidence of Chechen involvement. Or, if there is none, if
the Russian regime would find a way to come to terms with a more plausible
version of the truth.

*******

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