Johnson's Russia List
#6354
15 July 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

[Contents:
  1. Boston Globe: David Filipov, Cycle of violence holds Russians in
Chechnya.
  2. Washington Post: Sharon LaFraniere, Russia Pushes Reform of Soviet-Era 
Civil Service. Aides to Putin Say Corrupt, Ineffective Bureaucracy Stifles 
Country's Economic Advancement.
  3. Moscow Times: Andrei Zolotov Jr., Putin Lectures Ambassadors on Policy.
  4. UPI: Russian guards seize 440 lbs of heroin.
  5. Scott Gehlbacht: Sororkin pornography investigation.
  6. UPI: Kyrgyzstan: Kursk torpedo not factory fault.
  7. Inter Press Service: Russian Women Trafficked for Sex Trade all over the 
World.
  8. Luba Schwartzman: ORT Review.
  9. New York Times: Anna Kisselgoff, Stripping a Soviet Overlay Off the 
Classics. (re Kirov Ballet)
  10. Gulf News Online: Primakov urges 'quartet' to impose Palestinian state.
  11. New York Times book review: Liesl Schillinger, 'Black Earth City': 
Russian Pastoral. (re BLACK EARTH CITY When Russia Ran Wild (and So Did We)
by Charlotte Hobson)
  12. BBC Monitoring: Eastern Russian region suffers from aftereffects of 
nuclear tests - TV reports.
  13. JTA: Russian Jews of the world unite, but new group already has 
dissidents.
  14. Chicago Tribune: Alex Rodriguez, Law lets Russians avoid combat duty.
Critics say it's not meaningful reform.]

*******

#1
Boston Globe
July 15, 2002
Cycle of violence holds Russians in Chechnya
By David Filipov, Globe Staff

GROZNY, Russia - The Russian troops cannot trust anything in Chechnya. Any
object - a toy, a bottle of water, a flashlight, a pack of cigarettes, a
grave, the door to a factory - can be rigged to explode. Any road can be
mined. 

Blasts from such booby traps rock the bombed-out capital, Grozny, each day,
killing and maiming Russian servicemen and innocent bystanders alike.
Separatist militants put the explosive devices in place by night and
quickly melt back into the civilian population. 

These furtive minelayers are part of the vicious circle of mistrust that
Russia's war in Chechnya has become, a stalemate between a determined
occupying force and a small but implacable Islamic guerilla army, with
civilians caught in the middle.

To try to find the rebels hiding among the civilian population, Russian
troops conduct frequent security sweeps, known as zachistki. Nearly three
years of such sweeps have led the local population to believe that nothing
good will come from the Russian military presence in the region. Hundreds
of people are missing, and human rights investigators say the Russians have
summarily executed nearly 1,000 innocent civilians since federal troops
returned to Chechnya in October 1999.

Some victims' relatives join the insurgents, prompting more vicious
reprisals - and further loss of trust. 

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose drive to crush the separatists
helped bring him to power, is now looking for ways out of a conflict that
reportedly has killed 14,500 servicemen and maimed 65,000 since 1994,
losses that rival the death toll of the Soviets' ill-fated 1979-1989
campaign in Afghanistan.

Last month, Putin said the army must pull out gradually and allow loyalist
Chechen police to run their homeland.

Chechens say such a move would help restore their shattered confidence in
the pro-Moscow Chechen administration, which sits in a walled compound
guarded by the only people its officials trust, heavily-armed Russian
troops. But Putin's senior commander in Chechnya, Colonel General Vladimir
Moltenskoi, says the military does not trust the Chechens to run things
just yet.

''We can't just let any old person take power here,'' Moltenskoi said in
his air-conditioned tent on the main Russian base just outside Grozny. ''As
the Russian saying goes, `Trust, but verify.' We have fears that some
rebels could have tried to infiltrate the police.'' 

Alexei, a major in a Russian police commando unit that has fought in
Chechnya since 1994, said he believes that as many as 80 percent of
Chechnya's 9,500 policemen are rebel sympathizers. Alexei, who did not give
his last name, said the only unit he trusts is Chechnya's 300-man special
forces unit, known as OMON, which has lost 51 police officers in fighting
with the rebels in the past two years.

But even this force is suspect. The Chechen OMON commander, Lieutenant Musa
Gazimagomadov, said he fired 168 officers two years ago because ''they were
unreliable.''

For many Chechens, Gazimagomadov said, blood ties are stronger than the
law; policemen protect relatives who are rebel sympathizers. Gazimagomadov
said he himself does not put clan loyalty before the law, but he fears what
would happen if Russia pulled out and left Chechens in charge.

''If the federal forces leave, the Chechen people will die,'' Gazimagomadov
said. ''If the troops leave, Arabs and Turks will come in their place.''

Russia pulled out of Chechnya once before, after a 1994-1996 campaign that
left tens of thousands of troops and civilians dead. Last month, Putin said
Chechen citizens had been unfairly labeled as terrorists when, in fact, the
Kremlin had abandoned them and had allowed Islamic rebels to take control
of the Caucasus region. After the Russians pulled out, Chechnya became a
lawless zone of kidnappings, raids on neighboring regions, and, Russian
officials contend, a home to Islamic terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. 

Rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya's elected president, has denied
links to Al Qaeda. Maskhadov has also proposed a cease-fire and peace talks. 

But Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said last month that papers seized from
rebel fighters showed plans for a 1,000-man march on Grozny set for June 25
that the Russians had foiled. The plans indicated the potential scale of
rebel operations, as well as the sources of their financing, said Ivanov.
He displayed accounting ledgers showing incoming funds from Turkish,
Qatari, and Jordanian sources, hit lists naming pro-Russian local
administrators, and letters sent to Maskhadov from contacts in Germany.
This, Ivanov said, was why Russia should not engage in the peace talks
Maskhadov has offered. 

Washington says talks are necessary, but has been more tolerant of Russia's
campaign since Sept. 11. In 2000, then-candidate George W. Bush had
criticized Russian troops' use of force against innocent civilians. But
after Putin threw his support behind the US campaign in Afghanistan,
President Bush was quick to say that in Chechnya, Russia, too, is faced
with international terrorism. 

Moltenskoi, the senior Russian commander in Chechnya, said that several
Arab mercenaries have been detained and that others are suspected of
financing the rebels' hit-and-run attacks. A shooting is worth $15 dollars.
Setting off an explosion earns $50 to $150, depending on the size of the
blast. 

''There are always as many militants as there is money,'' Moltenskoi said.
He put the rebels' current strength at about 1,000, a force that has broken
up into groups of three to five men, which he said makes it harder to hunt
them down.

''Some young people join in because there is no work here. They fight to
make a living for their families,'' he said. ''When there are jobs, there
will be fewer fighters.''

At the moment, the pro-Moscow Chechen administration provides few jobs. 

Workers building Grozny's new market have one of the few paying jobs in
this city of 200,000, a paycheck of $30 per week. They cannot go out at
night, when the troops manning the reinforced bunkers dotting the
devastated city's roads fire at anything that moves. Rozambek Nachkhoyev,
deputy director of Grozny's Hospital No. 9, said his doctors treated 24
civilians in June for bullet and shrapnel wounds. So far this month 25
Russian servicemen and Chechen police have died in rebel attacks and bombings.

Meanwhile, the reconstruction of Grozny is going slowly. Magomad
Ibragimov's construction company has restored two nine-story buildings,
home to 70 families. But the two other restoration projects on the same
block, surrounded by so many similarly bombed-out neighborhoods, stalled
when state funding ran out.

The pro-Moscow administration of Akhmad Kadyrov says the estimated 300,000
Chechens who fled the fighting should return home. But many refugees do not
trust Kadyrov's assurances that it is safe. 

''We can't go on living here,'' said Taya Arsakhanova, who decided to take
her family home from the neighboring republic of Ingushetia when local
officials threatened to stop supplying electricity, water, gas, and food.
''But it is so dangerous there [in Grozny].'' About 147,000 refugees have
lived in Ingushetia since 1999.

Arsakhanova said she feared for her 19-year-old son, a natural target for
the security sweeps, like the ones last month in Mesker-Yurt and
Chechen-aul, two towns outside Grozny where, Russian legislator Aslanbek
Aslakhanov said, the military killed 30 innocent civilians.

Arsakhanova's teenage nephew and a friend disappeared after being
apprehended by Russian troops as they returned home from work this spring.
Last month, relatives found their bodies in a river - two more victims of
the anonymous killing machine.

******
  
#2 
Washington Post
July 15, 2002 
Russia Pushes Reform of Soviet-Era Civil Service  
Aides to Putin Say Corrupt, Ineffective Bureaucracy Stifles Country's
Economic Advancement 
By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service

MOSCOW -- Four days had passed since a new law aimed at easing the
bureaucratic burden on Russian businesses took effect. But at the state tax
office in Nizhny Novgorod, a leafy, mid-size city about 250 miles east of
Moscow, the hurdles to register a company were as high as ever.

Posted on the door of every room on Friday, July 5, was a sign: "We do not
give out any information. Working days Tuesdays and Thursdays." No one
answered a knock on the door of Room 10, the registration unit.

In the next room, a woman sat at a table piled with paper. "Didn't you see
the sign on the door?" she demanded when a visitor approached. "We do not
give out any information!"

The following Tuesday, a tax inspector was planted in the registration
office. But for the 10 people seeking help in a waiting room full of broken
chairs, she had but one direction.

"Read the law."

In the two years since he was elected president, Vladimir Putin has shown
his government can design comprehensive reforms and push them through the
Russian parliament. His administration has passed measures that call for
the institution of a flat income tax, a less arbitrary judicial system,
fewer inspections of small businesses, better protections of corporate
investors and a modern labor code.

Now Putin's team is starting to implement those reforms. But,
paradoxically, their success rests on the support of an unreformed
Soviet-style bureaucracy of hundreds of thousands of workers who staff
offices like the tax inspection unit in Nizhny Novgorod.

Transforming them into a modern and effective civil service is one of
Russia's biggest challenges. Aides insist that Putin intends to tackle it
next year, and he took an initial step in June by raising salaries of all
civil servants by 50 percent. Architects of his plan say the Kremlin next
year wants to crack down on conflicts of interest and open up more
government deliberations to public scrutiny, among other reforms.

Putin's hope, according to his aides, is to create something Russia has
never had: a bureaucracy that helps citizens instead of thwarting them.
Accomplishing this, they say, is crucial to economic revival, because venal
and oppressive bureaucrats are suffocating growth of the kind of small- and
medium-size businesses that jump-started the economies of other
post-Communist countries, most notably Poland.

The designation "civil service" has always been something of a misnomer in
Russia. Since the formation of a centralized state about 800 years ago,
bureaucrats have mainly served the country's leaders, not its people. And
they have been anything but civil.

Mikhail Dmitriev, the first deputy minister for economic development who is
fashioning Putin's plan for reforming the civil service, traces some
traditions of today's system back to the Mongol invasion of the 13th
century. It could take a generation to change that culture, he said.

"The administration was never accountable to the general public," he said.
"It was never in fact responsible for delivering a high quality of service
to society. Ordinary citizens were considered as subjects to be ruled, and
who themselves should serve the state. This is . . . the mirror opposite of
a modern state."

Unlike some of the changes Putin has championed so far, an overhaul of the
civil service system is not a priority for the oligarchs who dominate
Russia's economic landscape. To the contrary, it could challenge their
interests if, as Putin's aides predict, it limits the opportunity for
making corrupt deals with government ministers and their underlings.

Timing is another obstacle. Putin's command of the State Duma, the lower
house of parliament, has allowed him to advance many of his initiatives
intact. But with members of the Duma up for reelection in December 2003,
lawmakers could be less receptive to a plan that could shake Russia's
bureaucracy to its roots. 

Prodded by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Putin's
government already has tried to ease the bureaucratic burden on business
with new legislation that simplifies Russia's maze of licensing and
registration requirements. But that by itself may accomplish little if the
attitude of bureaucrats remains the same.

Christof Ruehl, chief economist for the World Bank in Moscow, said he
visited some of Putin's aides after the red tape bill passed, and found
them surprisingly despondent. "We may have succeeded in reducing the number
of inspections from 100 to 10," he said one told him. "But what if every
inspection takes 10 times as long?" 

As it is, Russia's civil servants have little incentive to perform. In
economic terms, the last decade has left them behind. Many of the most
effective state workers left for better-paying jobs in the private sector,
especially in Moscow. What remains is a cadre of 1.1 million people who
independent analysts said are as corrupt as any bureaucracy in the world's
poorest countries, according to Dmitriev.

In a World Bank study of government wages in 17 industrialized nations,
many of them in Europe, Russia came in second to last, after Hungary. China
and Chile paid their civil servants more as a per capita percentage of the
nation's wealth than Russia. Russia's average state salary is $113 a month,
less than a third of the typical salary of an ordinary citizen in Moscow.
By presidential decree, Putin raised the wages of every state employee last
month by 50 percent, according to Dmitri Kozak, deputy head of the
presidential administration. Even so, Kozak, a lawyer with 17 years of
government experience and one of Putin's top aides, will earn just $450 a
month. Putin's own salary will be $2,004 a month.

"Here, we are in a kind of vicious circle: On the one hand . . . as long as
there are ill-qualified state employees, the country's economic
possibilities remain small," Kozak said. "And as long as the economy's
possibilities remain small, we are not able to substantially raise state
employees' salaries." 

While pay is a huge problem, according to Dmitriev, inefficiency is a
bigger one. He cites an example from his own ministry: At any given moment
two or three employees from subordinate offices are traveling around Moscow
carrying documents that require a signature by an official from a different
ministry. Electronic signatures are prohibited.

"There is a huge burden of excessive paperwork," he said. "An enormous
volume of time and resources is just wasted. Efficiency and effectiveness
is the real problem, not the amount of funds spent on public administration."

Aides said Putin's plan calls in part for what are known in the United
States as sunshine laws, designed to give citizens a more accurate picture
of their government. At the moment, Dmitriev said, Russian officials have
far too much leeway to classify government documents as secret. In
practice, he said, the only officials who are reprimanded for
misclassifying documents are those who reveal too much, not too little.

Also in the works, Dmitriev said, are stronger conflict-of-interest rules
and new ethics commissions for every ministry, staffed in part by members
of the public and governed by a central commission that will handle
complaints about ministers themselves.

The reformers hope to limit the incestuous relationships between officials
and businesses. Although there are strict penalties for taking bribes,
nothing prevents state officials from making decisions that affect their
own business interests, Dmitriev said.

Two recent high-level cases illustrate that problem. Yevgeny Adamov, who
was Russia's atomic energy minister, resigned under pressure last year
after a Duma committee questioned whether a company he had established had
profited from U.S. government contracts to improve the safety of Russia's
nuclear plants. Adamov denied any impropriety.

Nikolai Aksyonenko, Russia's railways minister, was fired in January after
the Duma's audit chamber reported that his ministry juggled freight rates
to benefit companies owned by his son and nephew, among other
irregularities. Aksyonenko has said he was the victim of a political vendetta.

The Indem Fund, a social research organization, estimates that corruption
costs Russian businesses $33 billion in bribes every year. In a survey of
Russians published in March by the fund, nearly half of respondents said
bribery is either a necessity or makes life easier.

"The problem is to create an environment that is hostile in its very nature
to the corruption which is now the norm and the reality of Russian civil
service," Dmitriev said.

Like most other changes that Putin has advanced, civil service reform has a
history of failure. An attempt in 1997 to overhaul the civil service under
former president Boris Yeltsin went nowhere.

Still, Dmitriev argues, creating a service-oriented bureaucracy is the one
reform on Putin's list with solid popular appeal. "This is a novel concept
in Russia, and many Russians I am sure will be pleased with the idea of a
civil service that serves them," he said. 

He would get no argument from accountants, lawyers and business owners who
tried to comply over the last week with the new small-business law, which
among other things is meant to simplify registration of new companies. At
three different tax inspection offices visited by Russian researchers who
gathered information for this article, people were frustrated and stymied.

In Murmansk, a city on the Barents Sea in Russia's far northwest, a visitor
politely asked a tax inspector how to register a company. "We are not an
information service here," the inspector retorted. The inspector pointed to
the corridor, where there were half-printed, half-handwritten instructions
but no application forms.

Arsen Arsenovich, the tax inspector at Moscow's office No. 7, was much
friendlier, patiently answering every question. But he had no application
forms, either.

He told people they could either try the central tax inspection office,
miles away, or find a computer and print the form from the Internet. Few
Russians can afford computers, and less than 3 percent use the Internet
regularly. 

"You must be kidding," a businesswoman told Arsenovich angrily. "Are you
trying to say I am supposed to fill out forms that no one has?"

Only one person, a middle-aged woman, managed to secure a form. She got it
by wheedling and pleading in a manner that smacked of long experience in
Soviet-era lines.

"Hey, I am your client; you know me," she told Arsenovich with a big smile.
"We met before, right? I know you. Please give me just one form, I really
need it; I know you have those forms!" 

"This is the last copy," Arsenovich told her, handing one over. "The very
last copy. Only for you."

*******

#3
Moscow Times
July 15, 2002
Putin Lectures Ambassadors on Policy
By Andrei Zolotov Jr. 
Staff Writer 

Having summoned all of his ambassadors to Moscow, President Vladimir Putin
on Friday explained his new pro-Western foreign policy and laid out his
vision for a more modern and economically savvy diplomatic corps.

Formally dedicated to the Foreign Ministry's 200th anniversary -- in 1802,
Tsar Alexander I for the first time called the foreign service a "ministry"
-- the meeting of more than 130 ambassadors at the ministry was more than
just an office party. 

The only previous time a similar meeting was called was in 1986, when
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Eduard Shevardnadze as foreign
minister and the policy of bringing the Cold War to an end was inaugurated.
The last Soviet foreign minister, Boris Pankin, said in an interview Friday
that the 1986 meeting brought a "turning point" in Soviet foreign policy.

Putin re-oriented Russia's foreign policy in reaction to the Sept. 11
attacks, and the new pro-Western stance has been a hard sell to the
country's military and diplomatic establishment.

He told the ambassadors Friday that the new, closer relationship between
Russia and the United States was the result of a "new reading of both
countries' interests and a similar perception of the very character of
modern global threats." 

This does not mean that diplomats should not defend Russian interests more
vigorously, particularly in business, where diplomats could learn from
their foreign colleagues, he said.

"You should not be ashamed [of lobbying the country's economic interests],"
NTV television showed Putin saying in his 25-minute speech, in a departure
from the prepared text. "You know how your colleagues behave in this regard
in many countries including Russia: very persistent, to choose my words
carefully, sometimes even trespassing on the limits of diplomacy."

To help promote Russia's economic interests abroad, a plan is being
developed to transfer Russia's trade representative offices, currently
branches of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, to the Foreign
Ministry and turn them into economic sections of the embassies, Putin said.

The ministry's anniversary has served as a news peg for a wide promotion of
the country's foreign policy. Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov appeared on ORT's "Vremena" current affairs talk show, and last week
a lengthy interview with him appeared in the Izvestia newspaper. 

Continuing the PR campaign, Putin urged diplomats to improve their public
relations. He said the Foreign Ministry was too closed to the media and
said many important things diplomats do either go unnoticed or are
criticized. "We need to explain our foreign policy moves in a competent,
comprehensible and talented manner," he said.

Helping Russians in distress or businessmen abroad also was declared a
priority. "Many missions treat it as a peripheral issue," Putin said,
castigating diplomats for "bureaucratic indifference" to the needs of their
citizens. From now on, embassies would be judged by how well they helped
Russians abroad, he said.

Putin said Russia's diplomatic corps needs new faces and, causing many
smiles in the audience, more women. "It is especially noticeable in this
audience that women get undeservedly little attention in the diplomatic
service," Putin said. "The absence of the so-called weaker sex in our
diplomacy may prove to be a weak spot in our foreign policy," he said.

Putin also highlighted the most important policy issues, including
cooperation with CIS countries, integration into the decision-making
process of the global economy and relations with the European Union. 

Alexander Pikayev, political analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said
Friday that Putin's meeting with the ambassadors was not ceremonial but
marked an important turn in foreign policy -- if not in exactly the same
revolutionary way as in 1986.

"Putin's turn in foreign policy is not welcomed by everybody," Pikayev
said. "The time had come for the president to meet with ambassadors so that
they better understand his foreign policy."

To widen their knowledge of their country and its needs, the ambassadors
are now supposed to travel around Russia and meet with local government
leaders and businessmen.

Pankin, who was the Soviet ambassador to Sweden in 1986, recalled the high
expectations before the first ambassadors' meeting that year. Up until
then, he said, when groups of ambassadors were summoned to Moscow for a
conference, the meetings were overregulated and ambassadors were not
allowed to speak their minds freely. But with the advent of glasnost, the
ambassadors expected this meeting would be different.

But Pankin and his colleagues were disappointed when the country's leaders
arrived flanked by bodyguards and were inaccessible. "Shevardnadze opened
the meeting and, just as he had sung odes to [Soviet leader Leonid]
Brezhnev before, began to speak about the great historical importance of
the meeting with the general secretary," Pankin said by telephone from
Stockholm, where he lives. "Gorbachev had to interrupt and say it was an
exaggeration. Shevardnadze blushed but said he had to finish the speech
that had been written for him."

Pankin said that while Gorbachev initiated a real change in foreign policy,
Putin's sole goal was to vindicate his Chechnya policy.

"Whether it is a turn or not a turn, one should think about the protection
of our interests," Pankin said. "NATO or EU expansion are no longer
theoretical issues -- the visa barriers are hitting average Russians,
hitting small and mid-size businesses."

Pankin welcomed -- with a laugh -- Putin's proposal to transfer the trade
offices to the diplomatic service. "That is what I already did once,"
Pankin said, referring to his brief term as foreign minister from August to
December 1991. He said he drafted the decree, and it was initialed by
Russian President Boris Yeltsin and signed by Gorbachev. 

But the Soviet Union fell apart and Russian Foreign Economic Relations
Minister Sergei Glazyev, who is currently a prominent Communist deputy in
the State Duma, restored the old order, Pankin said.
 
*******

#4
Russian guards seize 440 lbs of heroin 

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan, July 14 (UPI) -- Russian border guards monitoring the
Tajik-Afghan border Sunday seized over 440 pounds of smuggled heroin,
making it the biggest haul over the last decade, Russia's RIA Novosti news
agency reported.

A group of 10 smugglers coming from Afghanistan crossed the Pyandzh River
on two rafts, when they were spotted by a Russian border guard patrol,
Russian troops spokesman Alexander Kondratyev said.

As the patrol attempted to detain the smugglers, they opened fire from
automatic weapons, immediately engaging the guards in a firefight.

The Russian guards radioed their headquarters for help and soon troops
arrived on the scene. The smugglers fled, leaving the narcotics behind.

Border guards seized six bags containing 204 packages of heroin weighing
over 440 pounds.

In less than two weeks, Russian guards have twice seized record amounts of
heroin on the border.

On July 5, Afghan smugglers tried to bring into Tajikistan 412 pounds of
heroin, but were repelled by a Russian patrol. Two smugglers were killed in
the fighting.

The seized drugs were of high quality and were disguised as coffee,
military sources said. 

Some of the packages even bore stamps indicating the name of the producer.

This year, border guards monitoring the Tajik-Afghan border have so far
seized nearly 2,000 pounds of narcotics.

Experts in the law enforcement agencies of Afghanistan's post-Taliban
government predict that between 200 tons and 300 tons of heroin would be
illegally produced out of Afghan-grown opium in 2002, RIA Novosti reported
Thursday.

During the five years of the Taliban's rule that brought Afghanistan to the
verge of economic collapse, opium growing, production of heroin and its
subsequent smuggling to ex-Soviet Central Asian states and Russia provided
the chief source of income for the regime.

Smuggling routes along the border with neighboring Tajikistan were regarded
as a stepping stone for reaching other markets.

In the event of success, Afghan couriers connected with their local Tajik
liaisons working within the same drug-trafficking network and handed over
the goods.

The Tajik-based couriers took advantage of the visa-free travel regime on
the ex-Soviet territory, boarding Russia-bound trains and planes and
attempting to smuggle narcotics to Moscow and other major Russian cities.

Since the mid-1990s, Russia has stepped up security at border posts,
airports and train stations, aiming to crack down on drug couriers believed
to be smuggling Afghan-produced narcotics.

Russia's Central Asian allies participating in the Collective Security
Treaty have joined Moscow's efforts to counter drug trafficking and other
security threats stemming from it.

Russian border guards have been patrolling the Tajik-Afghan border jointly
with Tajik policemen since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

********

#5
From: "Scott Gehlbach" 
Subject: Sororkin pornography investigation
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2002 

David - In reporting on the Sorokin pornography investigation, both the Los
Angeles Times and the Associated Press chose to elevate to state policy what
may simply be the actions of local authorities.  In doing so, they have
contributed to the too-common impression that any action by any state body
in Russia represents the will of central authorities.

The Times piece was entitled "Russia Targets Writer in Porn Investigation,"
the AP story "Russia Investigates Prominent Writer."  I am not a journalist,
but it seems to me that in reporting on the actions of government officials,
the term "Russia" should be reserved for decisions taken by central state
authorities, as in "Russia Cuts Taxes" or "Russia Signs Agreement with U.S.
on Poultry."  Clearly, it would not be appropriate to say "Russia
Liberalizes Procedures for Foreign Investment" if only Velikii Novgorod had
done so, or "Russia Restricts Grain Sales" in reporting on trade barriers
erected by one region against another.

The truth is that we don't know who, if anybody, within the Russian
government supports prosecuting Sorokin.  But given that Culture Minister
Shvydkoi has come out against the investigation, and that no similarly
placed individual in the Russian government has claimed responsibility, it
seems we should give the benefit of the doubt to "Russia," while expressing
concern about the actions of local authorities (and, in the process, asking
whether this is part of a general trend).

In truth, both the Times and AP story were more balanced than their titles
suggested (though, in trying to tie the investigation to worries about civil
liberties in general, the Times seemed to imply that the journalists who had
disciplined followed Putin's press conference were punished by the Kremlin,
when in fact it was local authorities who had done the disciplining).  But
titles matter:  they're all that many casual readers see, and they create
the first impression that frames the story to follow.

********

#6
Kyrgyzstan: Kursk torpedo not factory fault 
UPI
July 13, 2002

The Foreign Ministry in Kyrgyzstan has defended the former Soviet republic
company that manufactured the torpedo deemed responsible for sinking the
Kursk. But officials remained silent about details that could assign blame
for the torpedo's damage and its delivery to the Russian nuclear submarine.

The new, untested torpedo was dropped during transport from factory to
port, but was loaded aboard the Kursk anyway, according to a recent report
published in the Russian daily Izvestiya. It also said crewmembers heard of
the incident and were reluctant to set sail with it on board.

The Kursk sank in Barents Sea August 12, 2000, killing all 118 people aboard.

Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry officials said Friday that the article "does not
raise doubts that (Kyrgyz manufacturer) Dastan has kept its productive
potential and puts out goods that meet all qualifying standards."

However, the ministry did not comment on how the roughly 600-kilgram
(1,300-pound) torpedo was handled once it left the factory in Biskek,
Kyrgyzstan, and the circumstances that resulted in its being dropped --
and, indeed, whether the fall caused its subsequent explosion -- remain
unclear officially.

According to Roman Kolesnikov, the father of lieutenant commander Dmitri
Kolesnikov, who died as a result of the Kursk catastrophe, the torpedo was
a problem because it was dropped during embarkation. 

"One must not put out with such torpedo. But ... evidently somebody wanted
it (the Kursk) to be even more menacing," Kolesnikov told Izvestiya. 

A Russian governmental commission issued a final report in June that
concluded "the cause of the Kursk wreck is a thermal explosion of
components of fuel of the torpedo 65-76." 

At a press conference in February, the head of the Russian navy said the
torpedo's volatile fuel caught fire, apparently triggering the first of two
explosions that breached the Kursk's hull. That explosion was rapidly
followed by a second, when the remaining ammunition lit off.

Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov said the hydrogen peroxide fuel used in the torpedo
was "highly unstable" and its contact with "certain metals could cause
unpredictable consequences."

"The confidence of scientists, constructors and the navy leadership in the
fuel used in the torpedoes was not justified," he added

The torpedo has since been withdrawn from use by the Russian navy.

The torpedo 65-76, nine meters (30 feet) long, was designed to attack large
surface ships and submarines as well as powerful coastal installations up
to 70 kilometers (45 miles) away. It was produced by Dastan, a military and
defense company, in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek. 

*******

#7
Russian Women Trafficked for Sex Trade all over the World
By Gustavo Capdevila
8 July 2002

GENEVA, Jul 6 (IPS) - The trafficking and sexual exploitation of
women and children from Russia is "easily tolerated" by
authorities in that country and other nations, the International
Organisation of Migration (IOM) warned Friday.

Donna M. Hughes, the author of the IOM study, who lives in Moscow,
described it as "a growing and dangerous phenomenon throughout the
Russian federation."

The trafficking of Russian women for the sex trade is a multi-
billion-dollar business that involves at least 43 countries,
including most Western European nations, Canada, the United
States, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand.

Although no one knows just how many women and children are
trafficked for the sex trade from the countries of the former
Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department estimated that in 1997
alone, the total amounted to more than 100,000.

At the same time, there are more and more street children in
Russia, a problem that practically did not exist 10 years ago.
According to the report, many children as young as 12 "are
recruited at an early age, virtually sold into slavery, and may
never know another way of life" other than prostitution or a life
of crime within criminal syndicates.

The tentacles of the Russian criminal rings involved in
prostitution and trafficking in women and children extend
throughout Europe and to Asia, the Middle East and North America.

Some 200 crime syndicates in Russia are active in 58 countries,
such as Austria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Hungary, Israel,
Poland, Sri Lanka, Turkey and the United States, says the report.

"Russian organised crime groups cooperate with...U.S. crime
syndicates, the Cali drug cartel, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC), the four main Italian organised crime groups - the
Sicilian Mafia, 'Ndrangeta, Camorra and Nuova Sacra Corona -
as well as Hungarian, Czech and Serbian crime groups, the Albanian Fares,
the Japanese Yakuza, Israeli and Turkish organised crime
groups, and Chinese Triads," it adds.

A top destination for Russian women is the Commonwealth of
Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific ocean, a U.S. territory.
Saipan, the capital, is a hotspot for sex tourism, catering
largely to the Japanese, many of whom are drawn by the "exotic"
Russian women, says the report.

Although the study states that the local government denies the
existence of sex tourism, the author observes that Russian women
and Asian women from the Philippines and other countries are
recruited for jobs in the United States, not finding out until too late
that their real destination is the Northern Mariana Islands.

Once they arrive, their passports are seized by the crime
syndicates.

The report cited complaints that the local government of the
islands and U.S. officials obstructed investigations into the
trafficking and sexual exploitation of women.

A source in the Marianas quoted by the report said "the local
government has lobbied Republican members of the U.S. government
at a cost of over 11 million dollars to prevent legislative
intervention that would interfere with immigration and the
manufacturing industries in the Northern Mariana Islands.

"As part of this effort, over 90 members of the House of
Representatives and their families and aides had expensive paid
trips to Saipan," according to the IOM.

Trafficking of women has prospered in Russia for many reasons,
including the huge profits to be made, corruption "at all levels"
of the government and police force, and the reluctance of
lawmakers to intervene, due partly to the fear of reprisals by
organised crime syndicates.

The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 eliminated the majority
of "the systems and infrastructures that provided social safety
nets and a minimal standard of living for the Russian population," the
report points out.

The economic and institutional transition was characterised by
heavy capital flight, while inflows of foreign investment slowed
to a trickle.

The privatisation of industries and natural resources and the
opening of the economy was carried out without the oversight of
any regulatory body, Hughes noted.

Nor did the western governments or businesses that advised the
Russian authorities suggest mechanisms for limiting or regulating
the flow of resources from the state to the private sector, she
added.

"For this reason, many commentators believe that the problematic
transition in Russia has been in part the responsibility of
western advisers who failed to understand the full context and
ramifications of the transition," said the author.

The result was economic instability and an increasingly
impoverished population, said Hughes.

In 2000, nearly 60 million Russians, over 40 percent of the
population, was living in poverty, she reported.

In the transition process, many women lost their jobs and their
social status. That occurred in the context of a highly educated
female population, one of the characteristics of Soviet society.
In fact, educated women have been disproportionately affected by
unemployment, said Hughes.

"Many women have few choices because they have become impoverished and
find themselves devoid of options for jobs or means of
survival. This is the plight of many women in poor rural and
remote areas of Russia or those attempting to survive urban
poverty," the report underlined.

"In contrast to the deteriorating conditions in Russia, the people of
Russia have been bombarded with images of glamour and wealth
from the West by the media. Many Russians believe these images
represent the average standard of living and way of life in the
U.S. and Western Europe," explained Hughes in the study released
Friday by the IOM.

The "unregulated" transition provided fertile ground for the
expansion of organised crime, she added.

In conclusion, the IOM study expresses hope that authorities in
Russia, the United States, Western Europe and other areas will
take action to curb the trafficking and sexual exploitation of
women and children.

********

#8
ORT Review
www.ortv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba7@bu.edu)
Research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and
     Policy at Boston University

HEADLINES, 
Friday, July 12, 2002
- Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko declared that level of economic
relations with Japan has been dropping.
- Border patrol ship Tatarstan was put to sea in Zelenodolsk today.  The
Tatarstan will be the flagship of the Caspian Sea.
 - Karachaevo-Cherkessia residents Khubiev and Bidzhev have been convicted
of plotting and carrying out terrorist acts in Stavropol and in their home
republic that caused the deaths of 32 people.  Khubiev has been sentenced
to life in prison; Bidzhev received a jail term of 9 years.
- The leaders of all diplomatic missions in Russia gathered at the Russian
Foreign Ministry (MID) to discuss foreign policy challenges on the eve of
the 200th anniversary of the MID.
- Speaking at the Foreign Ministry, Russian President Vladimir Putin
declared that the positive changes in Russia are related to Russia's
strong position on terrorism, and to the improved relations between Russia
and the US.  President Putin also noted that relations with Europe are
very important to Russia, despite some of the stumbling blocks like the
Kaliningrad issue.  
- Ukrainian General Consul Petr Mazarski announced that Ukraine will not
require Russian citizens to get visas to visit the country.
- Russian Security Council Chairman Vladimir Rushailo reported to
President Putin on the results of his visit to Georgia and his talks with
the Georgian leadership concerning the fight against terrorism and the
situation in the Pankisi Gorge.
- A program aimed at preparing an anti-terrorist battalion in Georgia may
be shut down due to insufficient funding.
- An MI-8 helicopter flying in the Leningrad Oblast was forced to make an
emergency landing in a forest.  Twelve men were injured; four were
hospitalized.
- An airplane carrying 10 Arctic explorers who survived the stranding of
the Magdalena Oldendorf has arrived in St. Petersburg.
- German authorities designated 12 July as the Day of Mourning for the
victims of the TU-154 crash.  A memorial ceremony was held in the German
town of Ueberlingen.  Swiss President Kaspar Villiger will not attend the
ceremony in Ueberlingen on the recommendation of Bashkir officials, who
fear for his safety.
- Chechen rebels set off two explosions by the Krasny Molot [Red Hammer]
factory in the Leninsky region of Grozny.
- An Mi-6 helicopter carrying five pilots and 16 geologists is still
missing in the Taimyr Oblast.  Search-and-rescue workers say that the crew
and passengers have enough food and supplies to survive in the tundra for
10 days.
- The presidential clemency commission has begun its work in the Tyumen
Oblast. 
- Deputy Tax and Collection Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that the
tax services will conduct a large-scale re-registration of Russian
companies to eliminate loopholes for tax evasion.
- President Putin signed a decree appointing Abdul Sultygov special
representative for human rights in Chechnya and a decree appointing Ella
Pamfilova chairwoman of the presidential commission for human rights.
- New complications with flooding are expected in Daghestan.

*******

#9
New York Times
July 14, 2002
Stripping a Soviet Overlay Off the Classics
By ANNA KISSELGOFF

MAKHARBEK VAZIEV, the dynamic and opinionated 41-year-old director of the
legendary Kirov Ballet, represents something of a break with the past. 

Unlike his recent predecessors, he was not a choreographer or a star
dancer, although he danced respectably in principal roles through the early
1990's. And unlike ballet directors of the Soviet era, he does not seek to
modernize the 19th-century classics, the Kirov's signature pieces. Instead,
he has stirred controversy at home and abroad by presenting reconstructions
of these ballets in virtually original versions, based on
turn-of-the-century choreographic notation. 

In Russia, some leading ballet critics and balletomanes have accused Mr.
Vaziev of restoring ``fossils'' in overlong, overstuffed spectacles. Those
raised on versions in the West argue that these 19th-century works have
survived precisely because they have been either changed by Soviet
choreographers or streamlined by balletmasters in Europe or the United
States, who have focused on dance rather than on the mime and lengthy
processionals of the original versions. 

To Mr. Vaziev, these arguments are moot. The Kirov opened its current
season at the Metropolitan Opera House, as part of the Lincoln Center
Festival, with ``La BayadÁere,'' a ballet by Marius Petipa from 1877, which
is familiar from Soviet-influenced stagings. The Kirov's new reconstruction
is based on Petipa's 1900 restaging. 

``This `BayadÁere' can elicit diverse reactions, but I believe time will
show that it is a production for today,'' Mr. Vaziev said in Russian during
an interview in New York. 

In his view, the accretions of Soviet choreography added to the Petipa
classics must be removed if these ballets are to be seen in their true
structure and context, all influenced by what Mr. Vaziev calls the
``culture'' of the time in which they were created. 

The new-old ``BayadÁere,'' as the current version is called in Russia, was
reconstructed by Sergei Vikharev, the Kirov principal who was responsible
for the ``Sleeping Beauty'' reconstruction, which was based on a 1903
production. Spectacular in its visual impact, this staging was seen in New
York in 1999 and in February in Washington. 

Mr. Vaziev concedes that he hears words like ``old-fashioned'' used to
describe the company's reconstructions and that he has kept some Soviet
interpolations in these ballets. One is the bravura solo that Rudolf
Nureyev made famous in the ``Shades'' scene of ``La BayadÁere,'' which was
drawn from the 1941 Soviet production by Vakhtang Chabukiani and Vladimir
Ponomaryov. This version has been the standard for later stagings in the
Soviet Union and abroad. 

Mr. Vaziev rejects the suggestion that the solo has been retained as a sop
to the audience. ``It was kept because it is artistically valid,'' he said.
``But now we can see the entire ballet as it used to be before it was
transformed into a showcase for male dancing. We considered inserting
another solo by Petipa from his ballet `The Talisman,' but we decided to
keep the solo choreographed by Chabukiani.'' 

Mr. Vaziev said that ``false patriotism in art'' motivated Russians who
want to keep Soviet versions of the classics as part of a national legacy.
``Tradition is one thing, patriotism another,'' he said. ``False patriotism
comes from those who say we should not touch these masterpieces. But if you
leave in what Chabukiani and Ponomaryov did and take out Petipa, would you
still have a masterpiece?'' 

Emphasizing his criticism of changes made in the classics, Mr. Vaziev
added, ``It was considered normal to change Petipa's choreography. What if
you changed George Balanchine's ballets?'' 

It is a good question for a century hence: Balanchine repeatedly said that
the ``spirit of Petipa'' was more important in his ballets today than his
actual steps. 

Balanchine is very much a hero to Mr. Vaziev. Just as he plans more
reconstructions (which he does not name), so he expects to present more
Balanchine ballets. The Kirov's 1999 staging of Balanchine's ``Jewels''
will end the Met season after performances of familiar versions of ``Swan
Lake'' and ``Don Quixote.'' 

Like the opera and orchestra directors in St. Petersburg at the Maryinsky
Theater, as the Kirov is now known in Russia, Mr. Vaziev reports to Valery
Gergiev, who was named artistic and general director of the entire theater
in 1996. 

``He is the leader of the theater; I have to discuss all my ideas with him,
'' Mr. Vaziev said matter of factly. 

Both were born to families from North Ossetia, a Russian republic on the
border with Georgia. Both have been the subject of bigoted remarks in
Russia by those who lament that a ``Russian'' theater is run by
``Southerners,'' a code name for people from the Caucasus. 

Mr. Vaziev says he does not pay attention to such talk, which was more
prevalent in 1995, when he was put in charge of the ballet's day to day
activities by Oleg Vinogradov, who was then the ballet company's artistic
director. Mr. Vinogradov resigned officially two years ago, but Mr. Vaziev
was, in effect, made ballet director by 1998. 

Born in the city of Alagir, Mr. Vaziev was, at 12, part of a group of
children sent to study in 1973 at the Vaganova Academy, the Kirov School.
He had no dance background, but, as he said: ``Where I come from, everyone
dances. It was my idea to study ballet.'' 

Placed in an accelerated six-year program, he joined the Kirov Ballet in
1979. He is married to Olga Chenchikova, who was one of its leading
ballerina's in the 1980's. Having grown up in the Kirov, he defines it,
unsurprisingly, as a classical ballet company. ``We have a history and we
don't want to become something new,'' he said. 

Nonetheless, he is commissioning works from novice Russian choreographers
and talking to Twyla Tharp, Jiri Kylian and William Forsythe about creating
ballets for the company. He has also recruited dancers from other companies
or their schools in Russia or the former Soviet republics. These include
young principals like Svetlana Zakharova (Kiev), Natalia Sologub (Ufa),
Igor Kolb (Minsk) and Irma Noiradze (Tbilisi). 

********

#10
Gulf News Online
July 14, 2002
Primakov urges 'quartet' to impose Palestinian state 
London 
By Mustapha Karkouti 
 
Former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov has called for the
"imposition" of a Palestinian state now "exactly as was Israel imposed on
the World community in 1948". 

Primakov, who was also Intelligence Chief of Russia, was visiting London
early last week to attend a symposium on the Middle East. He told Gulf News
that it is a "grave and dangerous mistake" to plan any strike against Iraq.

The only course which would lead to a final settlement of the Miseast
conflict is for the "quartet committee" - the U.S., the UN, the EU and
Russia - due to meet next Monday in New York on the invitation of Secretary
of States Collin Powell, "to declare the imposition of a full Palestinian
state rather than waiting for three years as envisaged in President Bush'
plan", Primakov said.

As a Russian expert on the Mideast for more than three decades, Primakov
believes that Israel's Premier Arial Sharon will never accept a full
independent state for the Palestinians.

"Let us face it and we must be blunt about it, Sharon has spent his entire
political life not only objecting to such a project, but also creating
obstacles for it in order it will never happen", he said. 

"We must understand that Sharon's policy is against peace because it is
against the creation of a Palestinian state. All his life and career is
proof of this.

"He demonstrated this when he was a minister of agriculture. He said then
that a Palestinian state already existed in Jordan.

"Now Sharon has a modified plan whereby he is prepared to give back about
42 per cent of the territories in the West Bank to the Palestinians who
could create some kind of autonomy to be joined with Jordan as the future
Palestinian state later", he declared.

Primakov preferred to see a "comprehensive settlement to the Mideast
conflict that would include Syria and Lebanon and not the Palestinians
alone". He said this is the only way to "guarantee permanent peace and
security". 

He recalled a conversation he had with the late Syrian President Hafiz Al
Assad who confirmed to him that Damascus "will not accept to be the first,
nor the last Arab country to sign an agreement (with Israel) and would
rather reach such a conclusion collectively and comprehensively with the
rest of the Arab parties". 

"Syria may not be able to master and lead the peace process to win the
peace, but it has the capability to destroy it if necessary", Primakov added. 

On reported plans to launch a strike against Iraq to remove its president
from power, Primakov said: "It is much more dangerous for a political
settlement in the Mideast if the U.S. launches a strike on Iraq or any such
countries of what they call the 'axis of evil', then the situation would
deteriorate quite sharply and the peace process would simply stop." 

******

#11
New York Times
July 14, 2002
book review
'Black Earth City': Russian Pastoral
By LIESL SCHILLINGER
Liesl Schillinger is on the staff of The New Yorker.

BLACK EARTH CITY
When Russia Ran Wild (and So Did We). 
By Charlotte Hobson.
210 pp. New York: Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $23. 

Trying to explain a passion for Russia to outsiders is like trying to
defend a lackluster boyfriend to a skeptical family. ''What is it you see
in him?'' they ask. No matter how ardently you insist that it makes perfect
sense when the two of you are together, they can't understand it, and
photographs only make things worse. Everyone is familiar with the totemic
images of Russia-as-monolith: grandfathers flashing golden teeth and war
medals in Victory Day parades; little girls whose sparse, silky ponytails
support tulle bows as big as their heads; babushkas toiling with
work-swollen ankles; soldiers with rough woolly caps, potatoey faces and
Tatar eyes; and lately, junkies, strippers and biznismeny. 

But candid photographs give no clue to the daily exhilarations and
deflations that the visitor to Russia feels. Against the backdrop of
Russia's Maalox-green walls and whitish northern light, faces wash out and
everyone, foreign and Russian alike, looks as if he's being surveilled.
There is only one way to convey the vividness of the place, and that is to
write about it with such deft observation, emotion and wit that a stranger
can experience by reading what he could not understand by seeing. And that
is what Charlotte Hobson has achieved in ''Black Earth City,'' a memoir of
the university year she spent in the remote industrial city of Voronezh in
1991-92, the winter that Communism died. 

While at college in Scotland more than a decade ago, Hobson decided to
study in the Soviet Union. She chose Voronezh mainly to avoid
sorority-sister types who were urging her to join them in Moscow, where
''we'll all be living in the same hostel'' and ''we're organizing a ball!''
Anticipating her isolation, she introduced herself to her adopted city by
leafing through a ''pompous, bossy document'' that boasted of Voronezh's
''famously fertile'' black earth and potato crops -- ''among the finest''
in all Russia -- then conceded Voronezh's muddy autumns, subzero winters
and baking summers. It warned, ''Prepare yourself for a year in a remote
and underdeveloped city.'' When a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev was
attempted on August 19, 1991, a few weeks before her departure, she was
undeterred. 

Once in Russia, she meets a Chekhovian aesthete who dreams of Paris and
introduces her to the cream of Voronezh society (such as it is). She drinks
toasts (''To life! To oblivion'') with near strangers in a steam bath in
the woods, and visits a forest where a mass grave of Stalin's victims had
been uncovered. As Orthodox priests chant prayers over stacked skulls,
''each with a neat round hole in the crown,'' Hobson watches children,
''scarlet with giggles,'' play hide-and-seek among the surrounding trees.
One little boy tries to take cover behind a slender trunk. She writes, ''He
kept very still and squeezed his eyes shut.'' 

As for her classes, one professor is ''so overwhelmed by cynicism'' that
''every time he lifted his hand to scratch his head one could see him
thinking, 'What's the point?' '' Another, a hippie-dippie ''musical
phonetics'' teacher, speaks mostly in melting diminutives. '' 'Let's sing a
dear little song,' she'd suggest. 'A tiny song in a chordlet of fah.' ''
But Hobson's chief lesson is learning to shift for herself in a communal
hostel, where stacks of rubbish rustle with roaches, and scores of men and
women live, study, cook and conduct love affairs with so little discretion
that whenever a closet door opens, a couple might tumble out, ''looking
rumpled and dusty and pleased.'' 

Soon Hobson falls in love with a handsome Russian named Mitya, who teases
her by stringing together participles to flummox her fledgling Russian.
''Hello, pink-cheeked, having-walked-through-the-cold-morning air,
still-sleepy-eyed girl,'' he would greet her. ''Come in and taste the
having-been-smelled-in-the-hallway coffee.'' Too bashful to pursue their
romance in the hostel, they conduct their courtship in the freezing cold.
''The only place to be private was out in the open,'' she writes. Sitting
with Mitya and his friends on hot water pipes by the reservoir, she watches
fishermen squat by the holes they had sawed in the ice, ''motionless, dark
and furry as otters.'' 

As the book and the winter draw to a close, spring arrives ''with the
frenzy of the habitually late.'' Taking a bus to a country house on an
early balmy day, Hobson smells an unfamiliar scent, ''as sweet and dark as
chocolate pudding'' and rejoices in it, along with the Russian passengers.
It turns out to be the famous loamy soil bruited by the pamphlet, now
redeemed from smirkworthiness. ''The black earth, freshly sliced and
turned, looked rich enough to spoon straight into one's mouth,'' she
writes. ''As the sun climbed, the wet soil began to steam and the bus was
filled with its smell. When the Nazis invaded the Ukraine, they were so
astonished by the black earth that they looted it. A whole convoy of trucks
was loaded up and sent back to Germany; even now there must be German
farmers, who, every springtime, lift their heads and sniff this same,
delicious scent.'' 

In a perfect world, Hobson might not have studied Russian at all. When she
was young, her Russian-descended mother, Tatyana Vinogradoff, took her
daughter along to her weekly Russian lessons outside Southampton, and
occasionally taught her a word or two. ''Snyeg idyot -- it's snowing --
sounded like little hoofs.'' As an adolescent, though, she grew weary of
hearing about her ancestral home, and resolved to study Arabic at college:
''Russia lodged itself firmly in the category of things that made my toes
curl,'' she says. When Hobson was 17, not long before she went to the
University of Edinburgh, her mother died of cancer. Reaching college,
Hobson told her Arabic professor that she had changed her mind. ''Oh
lord,'' he responded, ''Bang goes the funding for our language assistant.''
Nevertheless, Hobson writes, ''At last I did as my mother wanted, and began
to learn Russian.'' As the proverb goes that she uses as the epigraph to
one chapter, ''If you're a mushroom, you must jump in the basket.'' 

A rapture to read, funny and poignant without being mawkish, Hobson's book
is a small but rare thing: a memoir that is not egotistical. She has made a
private experience so shareable that there is no need to travel to Voronezh
to understand it for yourself -- and that may be a blessing of its own. 

********

#12
BBC Monitoring
Eastern Russian region suffers from aftereffects of nuclear tests - TV
reports 
Source: NTV, Moscow, in Russian 0600 gmt 14 Jul 02
 
[Presenter] Ecologists and State Duma deputies have conducted an inquiry
and published new materials on nuclear tests conducted on the territory of
our country. Their book, entitled "Atom Declassified", tells of underground
nuclear tests conducted in the Ust-Orda [Buryat] Autonomous Area, in
eastern Russia. Medics have recorded an increased number of cases of cancer
there and babies born with development disorders. Until recently, no one
knew what the causes of it were.

[Correspondent Vladislav Sorokin] Underground nuclear tests in the Ust-Orda
Autonomous Area ended 20 years ago. However, information on the (?Rift-3)
classified testing range was released only recently.

A group of scientists have published a book called "Atom Declassified"
where materials on nuclear tests conducted in 1982 appeared for the first
time.

[Sergey Kolesnikov, academician, captioned as member of the State Duma
health and sports committee] We were even accused of having disclosed
defence sensitive information when we published our book "Atom Declassified".

[Correspondent] In the meantime, tests and research conducted at the range
have suggested that there is a possibility that contaminated gases can leak
from under the surface of the earth. For all these years, they have been
trapped inside the so-called explosion chamber which, the experts believe,
has now been damaged. At any moment, a gas cloud may escape which will
cover all nearby villages.

At the same time local doctors have been registering an increasing number
of cases of cancer in people living close to the testing range.

[Nelya Timofeyeva, captioned as medical attendant of the settlement of
Obusa] The number of cancer patients has increased. Previously there were
none. Now children are born with physiological disorders.

[Correspondent] Physiological disorders mean that a baby may be born
without any fingers or with only one eye functioning, like Ira Khalmatova.
Her mother is now trying to get any compensation from the authorities - so
far without any results.

And there are dozens more children like Ira living in Irkutsk Region today.

[Video shows the book, some maps from it, local scenes; counter reading
0320-0450]

*******

#13
Russian Jews of the world unite, but new group already has dissidents  
By Lev Gorodetsky  
 
JERUSALEM, July 14 (JTA) — An unusual procession slowly moved along King
George Street in the downtown section of the Israeli capital earlier this
month. 

Some 200 people, mainly middle-aged, wearing white T-shirts with the
inscription “World Congress of Russian Jewry,” waved Israeli flags, carried
posters calling for the unity of the Jewish people, and chanted “Haveinu
shalom aleichem.”

At Kikar Zion, the heart of Jerusalem’s downtown, the marchers, part of a
new group dedicated to representing Russian Jews around the world, stopped
for a rally. 

Mikhail Chlenov, the leader of Va’ad, the oldest umbrella organization of
Russian Jewish groups, said the time has come for Russian Jewry to unite
and help Israel.

Israeli Deputy Absorption Minister Yuli Edelstein, a former Soviet
dissident, echoed that call during the Moscow portion of the conference,
saying “We need to organize the unique energy hidden in Russian Jewry.” 

Some of the groups speakers took a hard-line view of the Middle East crisis. 

Dmitry Litvak, an Estonian Jewish leader, drew significant applause when he
said, “We should help Israel throw the Arabs out of the West Bank.”

The group’s goals remain unclear to many participants, who said they
themselves didn´t fully understand what they want out of the new group
except the general idea of somehow unifying the roughly 4 million
Russian-speaking Jews now scattered around the world. 

“I can´t understand how from Moscow or Jerusalem they can help us integrate
in Boston. It all seems to be a P.R. action,” said Yelena Shur, 25, a
Moscow-born Harvard post-graduate student.

Despite her ambivalence, Shur attended the Moscow part of the conference.

The rally capped a four-day inaugural effort in both Moscow and Jerusalem. 

Some 350 people from 22 countries, including Russia, Israel, the United
States, England, Germany and Australia met earlier this month at a Moscow
Lubavitch-run JCC and then at a Jerusalem hotel to establish the World
Congress. 

The gathering was sponsored by the Federation of Jewish Communities in
Russia, the leading Russian Jewish umbrella organization, which is also
providing the initial funding for the group.

According to Valery Engel, a federation official who was appointed chief
executive of the new group, the congress will “support Israel, fight terror
and anti-Semitism, improve Jewish education and help FSU-born Jews
integrate into their new host countries.”

Engel dismissed the accusation that the new group is simply a public
relations effort, noting that the group already has concrete projects, such
as creating university and high-school textbooks of Jewish history in
Russian for Russian-speaking communities across the world and organizing
campaigns to fight anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe. 

At a reception for rally participants at the home of Israel’s president,
all of the speakers, including Israeli President Moshe Katsav, spoke about
the need for Jewish unity. 

But as is often the case, unity was more manifest in words than in actuality

The Russian Jewish Congress, another Russian Jewish umbrella group, ignored
the founding conference — as did some U.S.-based Russian activists. 

It is not clear why these people boycotted the gathering, but Engel
believes they are motivated by personal animosities.

And some communities in the Baltics — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — sent
representatives to the conference, but refused to join the group, arguing
that the Russian language shouldn’t serve as the main unifying factor and
that the title “Congress of Russian Jewry” has undesirable political
connotations for people who live in countries that were controlled by
Russia during the Soviet era. 

Yuri Shtern, a member of the Israeli Knesset from the Russian immigrant
party Our Home, Israel, addressing some of the criticism of the new
initiative, said: “It´s probably as impossible to unite Russian Jewry as
the Jewish world on the whole, but we must try.”

Both of the main Russian immigrant parties in Israel are backing the new
group.

To many conference attendees, the transcontinental gathering is a historic
event. 

However, Yakov Bondar, the leader of a 500-member community of former
Soviet Jews in the city of Hammeln, Germany, is more interested in
practical matters than soaring ambitions.

Bondar’s community is getting no help and no attention from German Jewish
leadership, he said, and he would be happy if the new organization creates
a center for consulting and for the distribution of Jewish books and
religious items for the Russian communities scattered across the world.

Whether the World Congress will satisfy him remains an open question. 

“Let’s wait and see what will come out” of the new group, Bondar said. 
 
******

#14
Chicago Tribune
July 14, 2002
Law lets Russians avoid combat duty
Critics say it's not meaningful reform
By Alex Rodriguez
Tribune foreign correspondent

MOSCOW -- Long before legions of police here embark on a yearly spring
roundup of draft-age conscripts, thousands of young men already have
vanished. At their apartments, mothers ignore the 6 a.m. rap on the door.
Or they answer it, lie and try to sound convincing.

"They visited us twice a week, without any warning," said Zinaida, who hid
her son, 18, at his grandmother's house 300 miles south of Moscow. She
would not give her last name. "I was horribly nervous. I said I hadn't seen
him in three days."

Whisking away young men to grandmothers or longtime family friends far from
home remains the only recourse for many Russian parents who cannot afford
to bribe draft commissars or buy falsified medical reprieves but
desperately want to shield their sons from an army notorious for brutality
within its enlisted ranks.

Serving their country

Last month, Russia's Duma, the lower house of parliament, passed
legislation aimed at giving draft-age conscripts an alternative to military
service. Draftees could serve their country by performing non-combat jobs,
such as working as orderlies in military hospitals. Russia's upper
legislative chamber approved the measure last week.

The bill's proponents called the legislation an important step in the
effort to reform Russia's military, which since the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991 has grown increasingly incapable of feeding, disciplining or
paying its troops.

Instead, the legislation has become a lightning rod for critics who
question the resolve of Russian lawmakers and the administration of
President Vladimir Putin to bring about meaningful military reform.

Conscientious objectors and others who oppose serving in the military on
ethical, moral or religious grounds would have to serve 3 1/2 years of
alternative service, compared to the 2 years conscripts now serve. Critics
say requiring additional time from alternative-service conscripts punishes
them for making that choice.

These conscripts also could end up being stationed at military barracks,
where they could become pariahs among the enlisted ranks and possible
targets for the kind of brutal hazing that in recent years has led to
suicides and a growing stream of desertions, critics argue.

"The law will be one of those many laws of which we say, `There is a law,
but it does not work,'" said Eduard Vorobiov, deputy chairman of the Duma's
Defense Committee.

Calls for military reform date to 1992 and the dismantling of the
once-vaunted Soviet military machine. Then, the military stood at 4.25
million; Russian armed forces are now about 2 million strong.

Today's military in Russia is poorly fed, underpaid and dangerously
undisciplined. For years Russian soldiers have been accused of the murder
and torture of Chechens in the ongoing civil war. Armed deserters have
killed 19 people so far this year, according to Russia's news agency,
Interfax.

Russian soldiers are paid about $150 to $200 a month, and it is not
uncommon to see servicemen begging for money. Yelena Denisova said her
son's officers gave him a two-day pass and ordered him to panhandle for
them outside Moscow subway entrances. Her son didn't collect enough money
and was afraid to return.

"The militia is calling us constantly," said Denisova, who lives about 100
miles east of Moscow. "I've already lost hope. Every day we're sitting and
waiting for the moment he gets arrested. It's useless to hide, because our
city is so small."

Then-President Boris Yeltsin urged a revamping of Russia's military in 1996
and called for the military to move from a draft-reliant force to one made
up solely of professional, all-volunteer troops by 2000. Putin has made the
same proposal, saying the switch should be completed sometime after 2010.

"Our world is far from safe--for this reason Russia needs effective armed
forces," Putin told military academy graduates last month. "We need an army
and a fleet which are respected in our own country and reckoned with by
other states."

Lobby affected legislation

Putin's aides and pro-administration legislators believed they could move
in that direction with the passage of the alternative-service bill,
designed to bring the government in line with the 1993 Russian
Constitution's guaranteed right to alternative service.

But as the legislation wended its way through the Duma, it became clear
that Russia's military perceived it as a threat to its already depleted
forces. Generals lobbied hard for provisions that made alternative civilian
service less palatable.

Young men seeking alternative service will have to appear before draft
commissioners and convince them that their faith or pacifist views prevent
them from taking up arms. The term of 3 1/2 years was included, said Igor
Dines, a Duma proponent of the bill, to prevent an onslaught of requests
for alternative-service work.

"If the terms for alternative service were equal to the terms for regular
service, the army would be ruined," Dines said.

Boris Nemtsov, a Duma deputy and head of the opposition party Union of
Right Forces, said 2 1/2 years would have been much fairer. "It just
doesn't work. Service for 3 1/2 years is absolutely impossible for a young
person," he said. "If you look at what the [military lobby] did, they
wanted to cancel all of the constitutional ideals of alternative service."

At the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia office in downtown Moscow,
where the daily line includes servicemen seeking back combat pay and
mothers desperate for ways to keep their sons out of the military,
officials believe the switch to an all-volunteer army is perhaps the best
and only answer, even if it takes years.

"The only reform we can suggest is the total cancellation of the draft,"
said Valentina Melnikova, the committee's executive secretary. "This law
does not represent a law about the alternative civilian service. It simply
establishes slave labor."

*******

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