Johnson's Russia List
#6556
17 November 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. Reuters: Putin warns on risk to anti-terror coalition.
2. New York Times: Michael Wines, National Styles of Insult.
3. Interfax: Overwhelming majority of Russian citizens consider themselves
patriotic.
4. Moscow Times: Victoria Lavrentieva, IMF Calls Oil the Country's
Achilles'
Heal.
5. RIA Novosti: RUSSIAN ECONOMIST DOUBTS RUSSIA'S ENTRY INTO WTO IN NEAR
FUTURE. (Illarionov)
6. Boston Globe: David Filipov, As Moscow rounds up Chechens, bias issues
arise. Dozens held; reprisal is seen.
7. Toledo Blade: Mike Sigov, Leaders must learn from their mistakes for
Russia to change.
8. UPI: Martin Walker, The Troubled New NATO.
9. Reuters: Kuchma to go to summit in defiance of NATO.
10. Los Angeles Times: Robyn Dixon, President of Ukraine Sacks Government.
Critics say Kuchma's shake-up is a ploy to deflect attention from scandals
such as his alleged sale of a radar system to Iraq.
11. Washington Times: Natalia A. Feduschak, Ukraine's critical period.
12. Washington Post: Linton Weeks, A Life That Gained In the Translation.
Tatiana Kudriavtseva, Bringing Russia The Best of American Literature.
13. Detroit Free Press: David Lyman, Backstage at the Bolshoi.
Change is afoot in the legendary Russian ballet troupe as it balances
traditions with modern artistry.
14. New York Times: Janusz Glowacki, A Tale of Two Moscows. and
Chekhov All Week.
15. Los Angeles Times: Lewis Segal, The Russia we don't get to see.
The classical ballets are exported, but Moscow audiences are treated
to charged work in a thriving contemporary dance scene.]
********
#1
Putin warns on risk to anti-terror coalition
MOSCOW, Nov 16 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin, speaking after
European Union criticism of Russia's Chechen policy, warned on Saturday
that attempts to "justify terrorism" could undermine the U.S.-led
anti-terror coalition.
"I am very concerned about a situation in which someone here or there tries
to put forward the thesis, or bring into the public consciousness, that
there may be something that can justify terrorism," he told Ukrainian
President Leonid Kuchma in remarks broadcast on Rossiya state television.
"This is absolutely unacceptable, not only because it could lead to the
destruction of the anti-terrorist coalition, but it would also almost
certainly provide support for people with inhuman aims who use terrorist
methods."
After last year's September 11 attacks on U.S. landmarks, Russia provided
staunch support to the United States in its campaign against the Taliban
militia in Afghanistan, and in its search for members of Osama bin Laden's
Al Qaeda organisation.
Putin made no mention of any individual or state. But his comments came
five days after a Russia-EU summit at which he made a strongly worded and
impassioned defence of his military drive to crush separatists in Chechnya.
Since Chechen guerrillas seized a Moscow theatre last month, Russia has
said it has cancelled a policy of gradually pulling troops out of the region.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country holds the EU's
rotating presidency, told Danish radio on the sidelines of the summit with
Putin that military action could not provide a long-term solution to the
Chechnya problem.
Other EU leaders have also called for peace negotiations.
Russia refuses to negotiate with the Chechen elected leadership, forced
into hiding by the Russian military campaign, and has long said that its
fight against Chechen separatists was connected to the U.S. anti-terror
campaign.
"It is extremely important to strengthen the international coalition
against terrorism. We must not under any circumstances allow any double
standards," Putin said.
*******
#2
New York Times
November 17, 2002
National Styles of Insult
By MICHAEL WINES
MOSCOW
IN Britain, insults are an art, arrows of ill intent so beautifully made
that even their targets have to admire them, while being impaled.
Sir Winston Churchill's assessment of Clement Attlee is but one famous
example among many: he was, Sir Winston said, "a modest man with much to be
modest about."
National styles of insult are in the news just now, thanks to President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who took exception recently to a French
journalist's suggestion that the Russian Army's use of land mines in
Chechnya was killing civilians.
In response, Mr. Putin launched into a scathing attack on the Islamic
extremists who he said are behind the war there, then threw a verbal
haymaker at the reporter.
"If you are determined to become a complete Islamic radical and are ready
to undergo circumcision, then I invite you to Moscow," he said. "We are
multi-confessional. We have experts in this sphere as well. I will
recommend to conduct the operation so that nothing on you will grow again."
A Russian insult is a broadax, or maybe just an ax handle. It is definitely
not an arrow. Russians use arrows for toothpicks.
Take Lenin. "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang
them," he said. Vivid, unambiguous use of imagery there.
Or Boris N. Yeltsin. "I think Americans in general are bad cooks and don't
know how to eat," Mr. Yeltsin said. Granted, he doesn't want to hang
Americans for being bad cooks. But there is no mistaking what the man thinks.
So it is with Mr. Putin. When the president of Russia offers a medical
procedure to a journalist, the journalist is in no doubt whatsoever as to
how the procedure will be performed. Probably with a broadax, in fact.
The journalist should be grateful that he is not a Chechen guerrilla. Mr.
Putin pledged in 1999 that Russian forces would "rub them out in the
outhouse."
Imagine Sir Winston saying that.
*******
#3
Overwhelming majority of Russian citizens consider themselves patriotic
MOSCOW. Nov 17 (Interfax) - Seventy-seven percent of Russian citizens
consider themselves patriotic; 20% do not refer themselves as such and 3%
are undecided, Monitoring.ru sociologists told Interfax following a
November poll involving 1,500 respondents.
Entrepreneurs are more patriotic than servicemen (79% to 76%.) Most
pensioners (82%) consider themselves patriots. Eighty-four percent of
citizens with a higher education and 69% of the unemployed are patriots.
*******
#4
Moscow Times
November 15, 2002
IMF Calls Oil the Country's Achilles' Heal
By Victoria Lavrentieva
Staff Writer
Three years after the country received its last loan from the International
Monetary Fund, the organization Thursday warned Russia it remains too
dependent on revenues from oil.
The IMF said in its first quarterly report on Russia that the government so
far has been largely unsuccessful in steering the economy toward
noncommodity sectors.
"We don't see any immediate problems in the economy, but the country
remains highly dependent on the natural resources sectors, primarily oil
and gas," Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF's Moscow office, said at a news
conference. "Some of the reforms which are important for the investment
climate still lie idle," he added.
The IMF said in the report that the government needs to push forward
reforms in the banking and finance sectors, restructure its natural
monopolies, streamline the civil service and liberalize trade in the
context of entering the World Trade Organization.
The government cut off its lending program with the IMF in 1999, but the
fund has continued to issue annual economic reports.
Thomsen said Russia's economy is unstable in the long term because "output
now is mainly driven by consumption, which is supported by significant wage
increases and investments in the oil sector."
High consumption levels cannot be maintained without investments into
manufacturing sectors, he said. "So far, investments in noncommodity
sectors remain very low or even show signs of declining."
Furthermore, while high oil prices have helped increase wages and
accumulate more than $47 billion in hard currency reserves, they have also
created problems for the ruble and inflation.
The IMF said inflation is expected at 14 percent in 2002, well above most
other former Soviet republics.
"Current exchange rate policy, aimed at preventing the fast appreciation of
the real ruble exchange rate, makes it difficult to control monetary base
and bring down inflation," Thomsen said.
The IMF said it supports the government's plan to liberalize foreign
currency policy in the coming years.
The Cabinet on Thursday gave preliminary approval to a bill that lowers the
mandatory amount of hard currency revenues that exporters must sell to the
Central Bank. The mandatory sale of a portion of exporters' currency
revenues is to remain in place until 2007.
The Central Bank reserves the right to introduce account regimes that would
require keeping 20 percent of currency earnings on special accounts at the
Central Bank.
"We generally support the effort to liberalize the rights of Russian
residents to hold foreign assets," Thomsen said. "But we also agree with
those who say that there is a need to ensure that uncontrolled inflows [of
capital] do not overwhelm Russia's economic health."
Thomsen said the experience of Asian countries has shown that inflows of
foreign capital can be highly destabilizing and that the government is
correct in installing some measures to control these inflows.
"As long as the banking system is fragile and the capital market is
underdeveloped, it is important to have measures that prevent significant
capital inflows," he said, adding that extra money pouring into the county
might create additional pressure on the ruble.
*******
#5
RUSSIAN ECONOMIST DOUBTS RUSSIA'S ENTRY INTO WTO IN NEAR FUTURE
BOSTON, NOVEMBER 17, 2002. /RIA Novosti correspondent Dmitry Klimentov/ --
Russian presidential adviser for economic issues Andrei Illarionov doubts
Russia's entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the near future.
He expressed his opinion to RIA Novosti Saturday in the course of the
Russian investment symposium in Boston, Massachusetts. Proceeding not only
from the discussions during the forum, but also from the situation as a
whole and the negotiations being held on Russia's accession to the WTO,
there is still a lot of unsettled problems, approximately four blocs being
under discussion, he noted. "Judging by the pace of settling the previous
issues it seems to me that the rest issues won't be settled in the near
future." Speaking earlier to participants in the forum Illarionov noted the
complexity of WTO talks in issues related to opening Russian markets to
foreign goods and services, as well as energy prices. According to him, the
political decision on the necessity of Russia's entry into the WTO has been
made and the need of this step is being realised by both the executive and
legislative branches. The point at issue is how "to protect our own
interests" balancing them with the interests and demands claimed by western
partners, the presidential adviser stressed.
Participants in the symposium named different terms for Russia's entry into
the WTO - from one to seven years.
*******
#6
Boston Globe
November 17, 2002
As Moscow rounds up Chechens, bias issues arise
Dozens held; reprisal is seen
By David Filipov, Globe Staff
MOSCOW - Police are rounding up ethnic Chechens in a widespread operation
that human rights groups and ethnic Chechen officials say is a reprisal for
the theater hostage crisis three weeks ago.
Chechens in Moscow say police come to their homes, conduct illegal
searches, plant drugs and weapons, then haul in the occupants as part of an
undeclared campaign to rid the city of Chechens.
Russia's interior minister, Boris Gryzlov, has said that police have
detained dozens of accomplices to separatist guerrillas from Chechnya who
seized more than 800 captives on Oct. 23 in a brazen raid on a Moscow
theater. Gryzlov also said that he had warned all police chiefs that they
would be held responsible if they used the dragnet to propagate
anti-Chechen sentiment.
But a Russian rights group, the Committee for Civic Assistance, says the
crackdown has snared many Chechens who have no connection to the hostage
crisis. It has also led to detentions of migrants from other Russian
regions in the Caucasus and citizens of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan,
who tend to have darker features than ethnic Russians.
If there were a campaign against Chechens in Moscow, it would be the latest
example of the difference between official policy on Chechnya and the way
law enforcement officials act on the ground.
The Kremlin officially distinguishes between ordinary Chechens, whom it
considers Russian citizens with full rights and privileges, and the
separatist militants, whom it describes as terrorists.
But human rights advocates and civilians assert that Russian police and
troops in Chechnya often do not make that distinction. Now, Chechens say,
relations with the authorities are not much better in Moscow, which is home
to about 100,000 ethnic Chechens, many of them refugees from the two wars
that have left thousands dead in the region since 1994.
The police ''come up to you, plant drugs or bullet shells in your coat,''
said Adnan Ibragimov, a Chechen who has lived in Moscow for seven years. He
said he came home recently to find several men in civilian clothes leaving
his apartment. The place had been ransacked, and $3,000 was missing, he said.
Ibragimov went to the police. And, he said, he was told: ''What did you
expect? You are a Chechen.''
''In Chechnya,'' Ibragimov added, ''at least you know where the shooting is
coming from and how to avoid being hit.''
The tense 57-hour siege at the theater, and the tragic climax, have stirred
anger toward the separatists that had been dormant in Moscow, where the war
in Chechnya had ceased to be front-page news. At least 128 of the hostages
and 41 of the guerrillas died on Oct. 26 after counterterrorism commandos
pumped a narcotic gas through the theater's ventilation system and came in
shooting.
In the emotional aftermath, President Vladimir V. Putin shocked European
leaders with angry and crudely worded responses to questions about the
conflict with Chechen separatists. Putin suggested that one French reporter
come to Moscow to be circumcised, and said he would ''recommend that they
carry out the operation in such a way that nothing grows back.''
At home, Putin has been more circumspect, warning Russians against
launching reprisals against all Chechens. Kiril Mazurin, a Moscow police
spokesman, denied that police have sought out Chechens. He said they were
looking for accomplices of the hostage-takers, as well as everyday criminals.
''It is the media that is putting the accent on Chechens,'' Mazurin said.
But Yakha Elmurzayeva, an aide to Aslanbek Aslakhanov, Chechnya's
representative to the Russian Parliament, said she has received 10 times
the usual number of complaints about police harassment and unlawful
detention of ethnic Chechens.
Adding to the troubles of Chechens in Moscow, authorities have stopped
issuing them residence permits, which the city requires. This has made them
even more vulnerable to random document checks by police.
Magomed Khayauri, a senior official in Chechnya's loyalist administration,
said police had told him that they had orders to ''expel Chechens from the
city in any way possible.''
Khayauri works in Chechnya's war-devastated capital, Grozny, but for safety
reasons he lives with his family in the neighboring region of Ingushetia.
He was in Moscow to find out about his son and nephew, who were detained on
charges of possessing heroin the day after the hostage crisis ended.
Khayauri said the police had planted the drugs on his son, Akhmed, 20, a
distinguished student who had transferred to a Moscow university from the
Caucasus to get a better education, and on his nephew, Khussein, 24, who
had come to help Akhmed get settled in Moscow.
''These boys have never smelled cigarette smoke, much less drugs,''
Khayauri said of the young men, who are in a pretrial prison. ''Now I don't
know what to do.''
Other Chechens who have been detained say that officers have given them a
choice: Leave Moscow or face charges.
Zelimkhan Nosayev, 36, who has worked as a driver in Moscow since a mortar
shell destroyed his apartment in Grozny in 1999, said he cooperated when
police came to his house on Oct. 30 and asked him to come to the precinct
briefly to be fingerprinted. But he said that when they reached the
precinct, one of the officers produced a small bag of white powder and
said, ''This is heroin, and it is yours.''
When he protested, Nosayev said, the officers showed him a gas-powered
pistol and then a car radio, which they said had been stolen. They offered
him a choice of which illegal item to claim. Finally, he said, they brought
a pin from a hand grenade, wiped it free of fingerprints, and put it in his
coat pocket.
''They told me, `If you don't sign these documents admitting that this pin
was yours, we'll search your apartment and find the second half of this
grenade,''' said Nosayev, who spent two days in jail and is awaiting trial
on an illegal weapons charge.
''We are afraid to open the door to anyone anymore,'' said Nosayev's
mother, Ramzat. ''We are miserable. Where am I supposed to look for justice?''
*******
#7
Toledo Blade
November 17, 2002
Leaders must learn from their mistakes for Russia to change
By Mike Sigov
Mike Sigov, a Russian-born journalist, is a staff writer for The Blade.
If there is one maxim that can be safely applied to Russia, here it is:
Things there do change for the better - but very, very slowly.
I realized last week that my old hopes for generational change were wishful
thinking.
Here’s the rub: He was speaking just days after Russian President Vladimir
Putin lost his cool at a Brussels summit meeting with European leaders when
a reporter asked a provocative question about indiscriminate use of
military force in Chechnya.
Mr. Putin, who is 21 years younger than Mr. Gorbachev, told the journalist:
"If you want to go all the way and become a Muslim radical and are ready to
be circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. We are a multiconfessional country
and we have experts in this field too."
The above was said in comments left not translated, according to Reuters.
Then he added something that not only went not translated but was also
absent in the official Kremlin transcript, the agency reported: "I will
recommend that they carry out the operation in such a way that nothing
grows back."
So much for hopes for generational change.
I remember discussions of Russian politics with my Russian colleagues and
visiting U.S. reporters in the mid-1980s. The usual conclusion of those
discussions was a fuzzy feeling that change could be possible in Russia
once a new generation of political leaders and bureaucrats came to power.
Those wishes for generational change seemed to start to come true in the
late 1980s when the then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev initiated
democratic changes in Russia. He was so much younger than three of his
predecessors, who died in a rapid succession before he took over in 1985.
Then the Soviet Union fell apart. This gave rise to Russia’s quick
elevation to a civil society, complete with hopes for democracy, peace, and
relative prosperity.
That was before the free-for-all thievery under former Russian President
Boris Yeltsin and before the first murderous war in Chechnya, 1994-1996,
left the country in economic and political ruin, dashing this hope.
But leaders are just like regular people and not too smart either. They
only learn from their own mistakes.
That’s if they learn at all.
This at least seems to be the case with Mr. Gorbachev, who - despite his
push for transparency of decision-making and accountability of Communist
Party bureaucrats - sent troops to quell separatist movements in Georgia in
1989 and Lithuania in 1991, which then were still part of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union fell apart later that year anyway, and Mr. Gorbachev was
kicked out of the Kremlin by more radical reformers. But at least he
learned from his mistakes. Change does come slowly.
Let us hope that Mr. Putin eventually learns from his.
*******
#8
Walker's World: The Troubled New NATO
By Martin Walker
UPI Chief International Correspondent
PARIS, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- President George Bush the Elder ought to be in
Europe this week, an honored guest at the NATO summit in Prague that will
see the triumphant fulfillment of that mission he defined for the West in
those critical months of 1989 before the Berlin Wall came down.
"A German whole and free in a Europe whole and free" was the phrase he
coined in a speech in Mainz, Germany, to make it clear beyond peradventure
to Mikhail Gorbachev's tottering Soviet regime that the 50 years of Cold
War could end only on Western terms and by Western principles.
And in Prague this week, hosted by Czech President Vaclav Havel who as a
dissident knew the inside of Soviet jails, the mission is complete.
Stalin's wretched spoils of World War II, the four remaining Warsaw Pact
satellites and the three Baltic states that were forced into the Soviet
Union in 1940, will join NATO.
In the time of President Bush the Younger, Europe at last will be whole and
free, just as Bush the Elder promised. The family of Europe owes much to
the family of Bush. But this new Europe may not be entirely secure, because
two shadows hang over this week's formal celebration of the enlarged NATO
alliance.
First, there will be the presence of some 12,000 Czech police and troops,
on guard against both al-Qaida and the kind of anti-globalization riots
that ravaged the World Bank and IMF meeting in Prague two years ago. NATO
is not universally popular in Europe, and nor is President Bush himself,
despite last week's ringing 15-0 endorsement of his Iraq policy by the
United Nations security council.
Second, and far more serious, is the awareness that the new NATO of 26
nations, will be less a military alliance than a political club, an
institution that is meant to embody the diplomatic and political community
of the Atlantic nations, while resting on a fragile military base. The fear
is that NATO is degenerating into a talking shop, a miniature United
Nations, with all the frictions and weaknesses of the United Nations, but
lacking the legitimacy that comes from the presence of every nation on earth.
The new NATO includes several countries who will consume much more than
they produce of the common security that is the core of the alliance's
traditional identity.
Countries like Bulgaria have little more to offer than their air space and
landing fields and ramshackle Black Sea ports. The three Baltic states,
their combined populations of barely 5 million squatting perilously along
the Russian border, offer a modest 'Baltic battalion.' The Czech hosts have
put off their purchase of modern jet fighters, preferring to spend the $2
billion on restoration work after the summer's devastating floods. The
Hungarians have done little to modernize of reshape their armed forces. The
Germans continue to spend just 1.5 percent of their wealth on their
under-equipped and hollowed-out military, less than half what Americans
invest in defense.
The two European countries that are serious about defense are France, now
embarked on its biggest peacetime rearmament program since the construction
of the Maginot Line in the 1930s, and Britain, which is building three new
aircraft carriers. Britain, preparing to deploy an armored division and
possibly its new Air-Mobile Brigade to fight in Iraq, is the only ally
whose military skills are respectfully valued in the Pentagon.
But even with France and Britain, and the 2 million troops in the uniforms
of the European NATO allies, the alliance remains seriously unbalanced.
NATO is almost wholly dependent on the United States for its mobility, its
secure communications, its smart weapons and its ability to wage a
sustained air campaign. For the Kosovo operation in 1999, it was only by
the most desperate exertions that those 2 million troops were able to
deploy and sustain a modest expeditionary force of just 40,000 soldiers.
It is for that reason that the most important test of this NATO summit will
not be the solemn and doubtless moving admission on the remaining Cold War
orphans. It will be the success or failure of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld's plan for a new NATO rapid reaction force of some 21,000 troops,
trained and equipped to U.S. war-fighting standards and available to swift
deployment far beyond NATO's traditional boundaries.
If the new force is a success, NATO will remain militarily useful and
relevant. If not, the irony will be cruel; the Eastern Europeans will be
joining an institution that no longer seems very valuable to the Americans,
the essential and powerful ally on whom NATO's military credibility depends.
*******
#9
Kuchma to go to summit in defiance of NATO
By Elizabeth Piper
KIEV, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma will attend next
week's NATO summit in Prague, his spokeswoman said on Saturday, but the
military alliance repeated its contention that he would not be welcome.
Kuchma, beleaguered by U.S. charges he approved the sale of an aircraft
detection system to Iraq in breach of U.N. sanctions, had challenged NATO
on Friday by saying Ukraine would boycott the meeting entirely if he was
not allowed to go.
The Foreign Ministry in fellow ex-Soviet Belarus denounced Czech
authorities' decision to deny a visa to its increasingly isolated
president, Alexander Lukashenko, to attend the summit but gave no hint of
any retaliatory action.
The rows with NATO's eastern neighbours have cast a shadow over a summit
intended to celebrate the expansion of the Cold War-era bloc, with seven
more ex-Communist nations being invited to join. They will follow former
Warsaw Pact states Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the Western
fold.
"Kuchma will go," spokeswoman Olena Hromnytska told Reuters by telephone
from Moscow, where the Ukrainian leader was meeting Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
She said that he had been invited to attend a 46-nation meeting of
countries that have partnership agreements with NATO along with the 19
members of the bloc itself.
But a spokesman at NATO headquarters in Brussels said that neither Kuchma
nor any other leader had been sent a personal invitation. Ukraine, like all
other nations involved, had been told of the date and time of the meeting
during the NATO summit.
"Our position has not changed. We still think it would be very unwise for
President Kuchma to come to Prague. No invitation has been sent to him
personally to come to Prague," alliance spokesman Yves Brodeur said.
A meeting of Ukraine's Security Council earlier on Saturday voted in favour
of Kuchma attending a session of NATO's 46-member Euro-Atlantic Partnership
Council.
Council head Evhen Marchuk told Interfax-Ukraine news agency Foreign
Minister Anatoly Zlenko would represent Ukraine in bilateral talks with the
alliance.
Marchuk said the Council had voted unanimously to send both men to Prague
for the meeting on the sidelines of the November 21-22 summit, a compromise
which will allow Kuchma to save face.
NATO had already downgraded the bilateral talks from presidential to
ministerial level.
SUSPICION OVER IRAQ SALE
NATO has warned Kuchma would not be welcome at the meeting after Washington
said it believed the leader had approved the sale of a "Kolchuga" early
warning system to Iraq on the basis of taped conversations it said were
authentic.
Kuchma has repeatedly denied the charges.
His decision to travel came a day after Lukashenko was denied a visa from
the Czech Republic because of alleged human rights abuses in the ex-Soviet
state.
The Belarussian Foreign Ministry described the ruling as an "unprecedented
decision...and yet another measure of open pressure on Belarus which
exposes the lack of independence of the Czech Republic's foreign policy."
It said the failure to issue a visa violated the Partnership Council's
principle of each member being able to choose how it wished to be represented.
Belarus, situated between Russia and candidates for European Union
membership, had vowed to cut ties with the Czech Republic over the snub,
certain to further isolate Minsk.
Lukashenko has made the creation of a new union with Russia his main policy
plank, but has irritated Moscow with statements on several issues. He has
not yet commented on the ruling.
Western countries have accused Lukashenko of cracking down on his
opponents, curbing media freedoms and securing re-election last year in
fraudulent circumstances.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov criticised the Czech decision.
"We believe that refusing someone a visa or attempting to isolate someone
is a remnant of earlier times, of the Cold War period," he told Rossiya
state television. "We do not agree with or support such an approach."
*******
#10
Los Angeles Times
November 17, 2002
President of Ukraine Sacks Government
Critics say Kuchma's shake-up is a ploy to deflect attention from scandals
such as his alleged sale of a radar system to Iraq.
By Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writer
MOSCOW -- MOSCOW -- Beleaguered Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma,
accused by the U.S. of approving the sale of early warning radar to Iraq,
on Saturday fired his country's prime minister and government.
Kuchma has been embroiled in successive political scandals in recent years.
His decision to replace the prime minister, Anatoly Kinakh, with a tough
regional governor was seen by analysts as an effort to stave off his
current political problems and regain control.
Kuchma has dismissed other prime ministers or prominent ministers amid
similar crises.
The Ukrainian leader told Russia's Interfax news agency that Kinakh and his
government were incapable of solving the country's social problems.
He named a powerful regional governor, Viktor Yanukovich, as his candidate
to head the government. Yanukovich, 52, is governor of Donetsk, Ukraine's
heavily industrialized eastern region, the site of huge Soviet-era coal
mines, steel smelters and chemical plants.
After Saturday's move, analysts were speculating that Yanukovich is now
well placed to succeed Kuchma as president in elections due in 2004. Kuchma
is not eligible to run.
The government's removal was widely expected after parliamentary factions
last week put forward Yanukovich's name for the job along with those of
several other candidates.
Critics characterized the Kinakh government as weak and indecisive, while
Kuchma attacked it last week for inadequate funding of Ukrainian culture.
In an earlier speech, in August, the president had called on the government
to increase wages, pensions and medical assistance.
"Time has gone by but practically nothing has been done," Kuchma told
Interfax on Saturday.
Yanukovich, a close Kuchma ally, is regarded as a tough and ruthless leader
who will boost Kuchma's ailing position.
The president was severely damaged when U.S. officials accused him of
approving the sale of a Kolchuga radar system to Iraq for $100 million in
breach of U.N. sanctions, an accusation he denies.
The accusation was based on tapes allegedly made by a former Kuchma
bodyguard in the president's office.
The U.S. accepts the tapes as genuine and has suspended $54 million in aid
to Ukraine. Kuchma had already been hurt by allegations that he played a
role in the murder of a Ukrainian investigative journalist several years
ago. Allegations that he ordered the journalist's killing also surfaced in
the secret tapes.
Kuchma has recently faced mass protests calling for his dismissal, while
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization snubbed him last week, declining to
invite him to a key meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission at this week's
alliance summit in Prague, the Czech capital.
Kuchma acknowledged Friday that U.S. officials had pressured him to stay
away but announced Saturday that he would attend anyway.
One prominent Ukrainian opposition figure and Kuchma critic, Yulia
Timoshenko, contended that Kuchma had dismissed the government in order to
deflect attention from his problems.
"Kuchma is trying to create a decoy to distract the public's attention from
the scandal connected with the illegal arms trade and the fact that world
leaders shun him," Timoshenko said in a statement. "If there is a
resignation that could improve the situation in Ukraine for the better
today, it is only the immediate, voluntary and unconditional resignation of
Kuchma himself."
Political analyst Yulia Mostovaya, who is based in Kiev, the Ukrainian
capital, maintained that Kuchma, under severe political pressure, is trying
to consolidate power by forging an alliance between two powerful political
clans -- one headed by Yanukovich, the other by a popular opposition
politician and former prime minister, Viktor Yushchenko.
"It is quite possible that Yanukovich may succeed in splitting the
opposition ranks and winning Yushchenko and his faction over to his side, a
political and economic tandem which could become virtually invincible in
Ukraine," she said.
Mostovaya said Yanukovich is associated with one of the most powerful
political and financial clans in Ukraine, known as the Donetsk clan.
"Kuchma decided to drop Kinakh -- who has always been pretty weak as a
politician and as an economic manager -- and replace him with Viktor
Yanukovich, a man who proved many times that he is capable of pursuing a
very tough, unscrupulous and even ruthless line as a politician and
regional governor," she said.
She said Yanukovich has a reputation as a man who would not hesitate to
take tough measures to resolve the country's problems.
*******
#11
Washington Times
November 17, 2002
Ukraine's critical period
By Natalia A. Feduschak
KIEV — After two years of scandals and accusations of government
corruption, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and the country he leads have
entered what many here say is the most critical period in Ukraine's 11-year
post-Soviet history.
At stake is whether Ukraine evolves into a full-fledged democracy that
successfully integrates into Europe or moves toward authoritarian rule.
"Ukraine doesn't have a healthy political model," said Victor
Yushchenko, the reformist former prime minister who is the country's most
popular politician. "We have a crisis of authority that has turned into a
parliamentary crisis. The government can't understand it is the people who
choose the government. This is extraordinarily dangerous, and leads to an
oligarchic and clannish form of government."
In the past two years, Mr. Kuchma, who was elected in 1994, has been
plagued by charges that he approved the sale of a high-tech radar system to
Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions, called for the death of an Internet
journalist on secretly recorded tapes and allowed government corruption to
flourish.
"The first condition of finding a way out of the crisis is that all
political forces should sit down and begin a political discussion," said
Mr. Yushchenko, who leads Ukraine's largest political grouping in
parliament and is the leading contender for the 2004 presidential
elections. "What Ukraine needs are systemic changes," he added. "Everything
else is details."
When Ukraine broke from the Soviet Union, its future looked bright.
With a strong industrial and agricultural base, the country was expected to
shift from communism to democracy and integrate into Europe.
Unlike those of many of its neighbors, though, Ukraine's leaders made
the mistake of not introducing systemic changes that would allow democracy
to flourish. So though the economy has continued to grow, an independent
press and fair elections have not taken root, allowing government, as Mr.
Yushchenko put it, "to work under the carpet."
This situation has given rise to a parliamentary stalemate, calls for
Mr. Kuchma's resignation, and Ukraine's further isolation from the West.
The president's most immediate challenge is to disprove that he gave
the go-ahead for the sale to Iraq of the early-warning Kolchuga radar
system. On recordings secretly made by a former bodyguard who was given
political asylum in the United States, Mr. Kuchma is said to be heard
approving a $100 million sale of four radar systems through a Jordanian
intermediary.
The Kolchuga system silently tracks aircraft and ground vehicles by
detecting and triangulating their radio signals. Western officials worry it
could threaten aircraft in the event of military action against Iraq.
The 90-second recording, purported to have been made July 10, 2000,
also disclosed a method of shipment: hiding the radar equipment in crates
typically used to export Ukrainian trucks.
Mr. Kuchma has repeatedly denied that he authorized any such sale.
Ukrainian officials say the tape is a fake. The FBI has certified the
conversation as genuine. Washington recently suspended $54 million in
direct government aid until the Kolchuga question is resolved.
Seeking to prove his innocence, Mr. Kuchma opened Ukraine to a team of
13 inspectors from the United States and Britain who visited the sites
where components of the Kolchuga system are produced. Their report, issued
two weeks ago, was inconclusive.
Investigators could neither prove nor disprove that the system was in
Iraq but indicated that Ukraine had not been as forthcoming during the
investigation as had been promised.
Washington and London have requested more information about the system
and want to question several more people.
Mr. Kuchma said he was willing to accept officials from other
countries, such as Russia and Austria, for further investigation. "Anyone
else is welcome," Mr. Kuchma said. "Ukraine wants a 'period' put on this
problem."
Appealing to the presumption of innocence, Victor Medvedchuk, the
president's chief of staff, who is also a lawyer, told parliament last week
that Ukraine did not have to prove it is not guilty. Ukraine has asked the
United Nations to widen the scope of the inquiry; the U.N. has refused for
now.
A growing number of politicians here have become frustrated by
Washington's stance toward Kiev, saying the Americans have been quick to
accuse Ukraine of illicit sales without having enough supporting evidence.
Mr. Kuchma's national security adviser, Yevhen Marchuk, said part of the
brouhaha over the Kolchuga system could be attributed to the West's not
wanting to let Ukraine into the lucrative weapons market.
"This is a highly competitive market," Mr. Marchuk, a former KGB
chief, told reporters. "The entry of Ukraine with its serious potential
hasn't been greeted with applause. Competitors will use all methods" to
ensure Kiev is kept out of international arms market, he said.
Even Mr. Kuchma's critics worry that U.S. policy is only pushing
Ukraine further from the West and dangerously personalizing politics.
"In this situation, Ukraine needs the support of the West," said
Andriy Shkil, leader of an opposition nationalist party, who has called for
Mr. Kuchma's resignation.
"In this case, the West needs to understand we're not just dealing
with the question of Iraq. The mentality of Ukrainians is absolutely close
to the West. We don't need to go anywhere. We are in Europe. Ukrainians
aren't anti-Western."
Even Mr. Yushchenko, who has tried to compromise with Mr. Kuchma on
several political issues, indicated in an interview that if the radar sale
is proven, the West should seek a "political" solution rather than imposing
direct sanctions against Kiev.
Ukraine, however, is already feeling the negative effects of the
Kolchuga scandal. Even before the U.S. and British team submitted its
report, Western leaders uninvited Mr. Kuchma from next week's NATO summit
in Prague, where the alliance will offer membership to several former
Soviet bloc countries, including Romania and Bulgaria.
The summit was supposed to celebrate a closer relationship between
Ukraine and the West. A timeline for Kiev to begin submitting a plan for
entry into the military alliance was to be on the agenda.
A Ukraine-NATO meeting is still expected to occur but at the foreign
minister level. Mr. Kuchma, however, has asked his security council to
determine whether it would be appropriate for the foreign minister or
anyone else to attend.
Mr. Kuchma had indicated he would go to Prague as a member of the
Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, a NATO-affiliated group that will meet
during the summit.
The danger of personalizing the relationship between Washington and
Kiev, politicians here say, is that as international pressure on him grows,
Mr. Kuchma is feeling increasingly cornered. Consequently, the president is
turning more often to Moscow for diplomatic support.
"There is a tendency in American foreign policy to overemphasize the
personal dimension at a cost to the strategic dimension," said Zbigniew
Brzezinski, national security adviser under former President Carter.
Although there have been problems in the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship
in the past, Mr. Brzezinski said, they shouldn't be personalized to the
detriment of long-term strategic relations.
Many Ukrainian politicians fear that a warmer relationship between
Moscow and Kiev would pave the way for closer economic and political ties,
undermining Ukraine's independence.
"Ukraine has found itself in the shadow of Russia," said Borys
Tarasyuk, a former foreign minister who leads the parliamentary committee
for European integration. "It is finding itself pushed away to the margin
of European policy."
Russian companies already have a significant stake in Ukraine's
economy, including the important energy sector. Kiev and Moscow have
established a consortium to transport Russian energy sources across
Ukrainian territory into Western Europe. Germany was to be part of the deal
but has been reluctant since recent elections.
So much secrecy has surrounded the deal that political insiders said
even high-ranking officials don't know its details. Opposition figures
worry that Kiev will give up its last economic trump: its transportation
corridor.
"The West has no economic leverage by isolating Kuchma," said Myron
Wasylyk, vice president of the PBN Co., a U.S.-based public relations firm
with offices in the former Soviet bloc. "An isolationist policy will allow
Russia a free hand in furthering its economic interests in Ukraine."
Rep. Bob Schaffer, Colorado Republican who recently wrote President
Bush asking him keep Mr. Kuchma from the Prague summit, said he thinks U.S.
assistance should focus on helping Ukraine's people and institutions.
"At this point, as I have suggested in my letters to President Bush,
America should increase and concentrate its foreign-aid efforts on
nongovernment programs to promote education, public health, a free press,
democracy and economic expansion," he said.
What has worried many observers in Ukraine is how the tapes secretly
recorded by the former bodyguard, Mykola Melnychenko, are being used.
The tapes were made public two years ago, after the headless body of
an Internet journalist, Georgy Gongadze, was found in a forest 90 miles
outside Kiev. Mr. Gongadze had written stories accusing the government of
corruption. Mr. Kuchma is reportedly heard telling aides "to get rid" of
Mr. Gongadze.
Their disclosure at the time caused Ukraine's worst political crisis
since independence.
Mr. Melnychenko said last year that he recorded Mr. Kuchma because he
could no longer stand the corruption in the Kuchma administration. He also
said he worked alone in taping the conversations.
Most observers here said they find that assertion dubious. Given the
tight security within the presidential quarters, no one could have recorded
Mr. Kuchma without help.
They also wonder about the timing of public releases of segments from
the tapes. For instance, although Washington knew of the purported
conversation about the Kolchuga sale when it was made public in Ukraine in
May, the Bush administration only announced its belief in its validity on
the eve of September street demonstrations planned by Kuchma foes in Kiev.
U.S. officials have maintained that they wanted to be certain the
tapes were real. Many Ukrainian insiders suspect more sinister motives.
The latest accusations of wrongdoing by the president, however, have
only raised political tensions. Since its election in March, Ukraine's
parliament has been paralyzed by the split between pro-Kuchma and
opposition forces. Mr. Yushchenko's bloc, which won the popular vote and
has the largest faction in parliament, has effectively been shut out of
decision-making.
Pro-Kuchma factions recently put together a parliamentary majority,
which is expected to vote in a new government as early as this week.
Mr. Yushchenko said that although he believes the present parliament
is more democratic than its predecessors, it is becoming a political
vehicle to fulfill the will of the Kuchma administration, steered by Mr.
Medvedchuk, the president's chief of staff. Mr. Medvedchuk's political
party, the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United), placed last among
the six parties voted into parliament.
Many politicians, including those who initially supported Mr.
Medvedchuk, say they have become disillusioned with him. They say he has
sharply curtailed access to the president, and is promoting his own
political agenda and business interests.
Lawmakers, political observers and business people said many of the
current political problems stem from the time when Mr. Medvedchuk was
appointed Mr. Kuchma's chief of staff in June.
"Prior to Medvedchuk, the doors were open to all various political
parties," said Mr. Wasylyk of PBN, the American public-relations firm. "The
president needs to hear different points of view. Right now, Medvedchuk has
cut that off."
Businessmen with the wrong political orientation say they are
beginning to feel pressure from the government, including tax inspectors.
"Today the country is divided into two camps," said Yevhen
Chervonenko, founder and honorary president of Orlan, one of Ukraine's
largest soft-drink and transport companies. "This is our Boston Tea Party."
Orlan is embroiled in a tax problem the company said was initiated by
Mr. Medvedchuk's brother, who leads the tax authority in the western
Ukraine city of Lviv.
"In one camp is the old 'nomenklatura' [Soviet-era big shots] like
oligarch Medvedchuk. They have nothing to show Arthur Andersen," said Mr.
Chervonenko, who was a minister in Mr. Yushchenko's government. "We want
equal rights for everyone."
Mr. Medvedchuk's office declined repeated requests for an interview.
*******
#12
Washington Post
November 16, 2002
A Life That Gained In the Translation
Tatiana Kudriavtseva, Bringing Russia The Best of American Literature
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Literary feudists Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal were having a vodka in the
Moscow home of Tatiana Kudriavtseva in 1989 when Mailer asked Vidal
point-blank: "Do you think, Gore, that you are a better writer than me?"
"Why?" Vidal replied.
"Because they publish you and not me," Mailer said, referring to the Russians.
Kudriavtseva, who has translated some of America's finest literature into
Russian, recalled that long-ago evening with devilish pleasure. She was in
town on Thursday to receive an award from the American-Russian Cultural
Cooperation Foundation at the Russian Embassy.
Before the soiree, Kudriavtseva, 82, sat in the sunlit lobby of the Savoy
Suites telling stories. In brown sweater and brown skirt and a little pink
lipstick, she was gray-haired and compact and packed with energy.
The conversation that night between Mailer and Vidal, she said, veered
toward America's support for Israel. "They argued for more than an hour."
Kudriavtseva said she just sat back and listened to the lions roar on.
That's the secret to being a good translator, she said. "I like to know the
author. I hear his voice. I know the intonation. Then you can render the
real style of the writer." She eventually translated several of Mailer's
books.
American literature "is very close to Russian literature," said
Kudriavtseva, who has been spinning English into Russian since 1949. "Your
great works correspond to what we know."
She got her start as head of the contemporary foreign literature department
at Artistic Literature, the Soviet Union's largest publishing house. Her
first translation was Charles Dickens's "American Notes."
From 1962 until 1982, she oversaw the prose department of Foreign
Literature, a magazine with a monthly circulation of 700,000. She recalled
the struggles she had persuading the cultural gatekeepers of the Communist
Party's Central Committee to publish works of Americans. Russians, she
said, "were not allowed to read anything dealing with sex and, especially,
overt sex."
The committee also objected to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind,"
because they believed it distorted the realities of the antebellum South.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, publishing restrictions were lifted
and certain writers -- like Mailer -- were suddenly fair game.
Over the years, she has rendered the works of dozens of American authors --
from Mark Twain to Theodore Dreiser to Joyce Carol Oates -- into her native
language.
"John Updike is the most popular American writer in Russia," she said.
When Updike wrote his trilogy about the life of Rabbit Angstrom, "he was
writing about the Russian man in the street" as well, she says. She has
translated several Updike novels. Her favorite is "The Coup," about
contemporary Africa.
Her own greatest coup, she said, was the publication of "Gone With the
Wind" in 1982. She said she was only able to publish it because she broke
down in tears in the office of a high official. Now there are 4 million
copies in print.
Kudriavtseva is also extremely proud of two other books: "Sophie's Choice"
by William Styron and "Harlot's Ghost" by Norman Mailer.
There have been some American novels that she could not conquer.
Kudriavtseva wanted to translate "The Wind Done Gone," Alice Randall's
controversial retelling of "Gone With the Wind." But the dialect confounded
her. "I found that without help, I could not do it," she says. "There are
no dictionaries for that."
She is stymied by Stephen King. "I can translate about emotions, ordinary
life, political life," she says. But she is not as secure with King's
language and concepts.
And she found Vidal's "Creation" too difficult because "I didn't know
enough about the history of India and Egypt."
She has translated some grocery-store bestsellers, such as Arthur Hailey's
"Airplane" and Mario Puzo's "The Sicilian."
The party was at the Russian Embassy. Mailer was on hand. So was Styron.
Nearly 300 people in black tie were seated around tables. Most of them paid
$250 apiece to sup on roast duck and asparagus, hear the balalaikas play
"Lara's Theme," and celebrate the life's work of Kudriavtseva, who,
according to the program, "has opened the door of American literature and
literary traditions to the Russian people, preparing them to understand the
American experience."
The sponsoring foundation was celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
Founded by Pamela Harriman, Howard H. Baker Jr., J.W. Marriott and other
Washington bigwigs, it arranges cultural exchanges with Russia. The group
brought the Romanov jewels to town in 1997 and a melodrama broke out when
Russian officials tried to end the exhibit's touring schedule prematurely.
The foundation's chairman and the evening's emcee was James W. Symington,
former congressman from Missouri.
Mailer, using silver-headed canes to walk, told everyone that the warm and
inquisitive Kudriavtseva is a rarity among translators, most of whom "are
bitter, secretive people."
Styron recalled that Kudriavtseva handled "the naughty aspects of my work"
with grace. He once asked her what would happen to her if a certain
sexually explicit passage of "Sophie's Choice" was published. She told him
she would be executed.
The book was published without the passages, Styron said, but today "the
juicy scenes have been restored."
*******
#13
Detroit Free Press
November 17, 2002
Backstage at the Bolshoi
Change is afoot in the legendary Russian ballet troupe as it balances
traditions with modern artistry
BY DAVID LYMAN
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
CHICAGO -- It's chaos in here.
More than 60 dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet are crammed into a tiny studio
intended for half as many. Around the periphery of the room, small groups
of performers carry on conversations that make the soft and soothing voice
of instructor Tatiana Golikova almost inaudible.
All this mayhem would be unforgivable, except for one thing: The dancing is
exquisite. But then, what else would you expect from the legendary company,
which opens a six-performance engagement Wednesday evening at the Detroit
Opera House?
It's a mystery how this daily class can be in such disarray and yet result
in such extraordinary performances.
But the little drama being played out in this cramped studio is a microcosm
of the larger drama being played out by the company itself.
Onstage, the current company is indistinguishable from the glorious Bolshoi
Ballet of old. The ensemble is massive -- 240 dancers -- confident, wildly
dramatic and usually performing some balletic chestnut from the 19th
Century repertory. Here on opening night in Chicago, it's "La Bayadere."
When the company opens in Detroit, it will be "Swan Lake."
Don't let the image of stability deceive you, though. There is a current of
change bubbling under the surface, change that is every bit as radical for
the company as was the ouster of Communism for the Soviet Union more than a
decade ago.
"I haven't changed the style," insists Boris Akimov, the longtime Bolshoi
performer and ballet master who ascended to the artistic directorship in
October 2000. "I'm just trying to keep the tradition."
And to a certain extent, that's true. The flawless technique and bravura
dancing that have defined the company for most of the last century are
still there.
But Akimov has set into motion changes that will inevitably reshape this
celebrated group, changes that will take its repertory -- jam-packed with
choreographic warhorses and Soviet-era bombast -- and breathe new life into
it.
Consider this: Last year, Akimov added British choreographer Frederick
Ashton's light-hearted classic "La Fille mal gardee" to the repertory. And
he's negotiating with Mats Ek and Nacho Duato, European choreographers
noted for their raw, spare and highly contemporary ballets.
And, if Akimov has his way, that is just the beginning of an overhaul more
extensive than at any time since the overthrow of the czars.
But to pull it off, he's going to have to employ every bit of political and
business acumen he can conjure up.
There are formidable forces in Russia that are loath to abandon old ways,
whether they have to do with the government or education or, in this case,
the arts. Some of the movement stems from nostalgia, from a longing to
return to what many regard as the good old days.
But some of it is more pragmatic. In times of extreme economic uncertainty,
people draw a certain measure of comfort from the immutability of large
public institutions.
Redefining tradition
And in Russia, there are few keepers of the old ways so revered as the
Bolshoi Theatre, the umbrella for the Bolshoi Ballet and the Bolshoi Opera.
Of course, tradition is a relative thing. Remember, this is a company that
was founded in 1776, making it more than three times older than any dance
company in the United States.
While much of the Bolshoi's repertory is made up of works like "Swan Lake,"
"Snow Maiden" and "Giselle," ballets whose roots go back to the days of
Imperial Russia, many of the current productions are the result of hefty
makeovers during the Soviet era.
So Akimov isn't trying to abandon tradition outright. Rather, he's trying
to redefine it.
"This is the job I was born to do," says Akimov matter-of-factly. "I grew
up in the Bolshoi. I'm not an outsider. I know all the situations that
exist here."
And, in many ways, he is probably the perfect person to try to negotiate
all those incredibly complex "situations."
For one thing, he is far more worldly than any Bolshoi leader before him. A
much-admired pedagogue, his guest teaching has given him familiarity with
dancers, repertories and choreographers all around the world.
He is also regarded as a peace-maker, a conciliating force within Russia's
often divisive dance world. Unlike many of his predecessors -- particularly
the autocratic Yuri Grigorovich, who led the company from 1964 to 1995 --
Akimov is regarded by much of the Bolshoi community as a thoughtful mentor
rather than a politically motivated leader.
And because of his active teaching schedule, he knew more than 80 percent
of the current company members when they were students.
Most important is that he has quickly elevated the quality of the company,
which had come to be regarded as a tired and overblown remnant of Soviet
ballet.
"When I joined the Bolshoi in 1990, there were dancers who were 48 who were
dancing major roles," says prima ballerina Galina Stepanenko, recalling the
inevitable result of the Soviet era's job-for-life philosophy. "Today, the
company is much, much younger. But more than that, the dancers are very
talented and very gifted, too."
It all sounds so rosy. And it would be, except for one major hurdle: money.
During the Soviet era, the company operated on what amounted to a blank
check.
"If we needed money, the premier would just sign a paper and we had it,"
says Akimov.
He won't say exactly what today's budget is nor how much of it comes from
the government. And outsiders' estimates vary so wildly as to be useless.
But in 1999, it was estimated that the company's government funding was
$7.9 million. It sounds generous, but it represented a decline so
precipitous that then-artistic director Aleksei Fadeyechev described the
situation as "catastrophic."
The matter of size
To understand what Fadeyechev meant, you've got to try to grasp just how
big this company is. Remember, "Bolshoi" means "big" in Russian. And this
company is not just big. It is mammoth.
There are a staggering 240 dancers on the roster. Compare that with three
of the world's other major companies -- American Ballet Theatre has 74
dancers, the Royal Ballet 82 and the New York City Ballet, 87.
Another dilemma is that because of the company's size, its principal
dancers -- one of its primary selling points -- dance very infrequently.
When the company is in Moscow, principal dancers perform just once a month.
For dancers at the peak of their careers, this is far from ideal. They have
an option, of course. They can leave. And, in increasing numbers, many of
them have.
The enormity of the company doesn't end with dancers. There is also a small
army of conductors, masseurs, teachers, designers, seamstresses, carpenters
and stagehands.
The primary solution to the economic pinch has been to send the company --
or large chunks of it, at least -- on the road. With so many dancers, it is
easy for the Bolshoi to simultaneously field complete companies on tour and
at home.
Saturday night, for instance, while the 102-member touring contingent
performs "Swan Lake" at the Detroit Opera House after its stop in Chicago,
another complement of company members will be performing "La Sylphide" back
in Moscow.
Though the logistics of such a large touring ensemble are extraordinarily
demanding, the benefits to the company are inestimable: more than $700,000
in western currency per week.
But even this solution comes with complications.
The value of mystique
The Bolshoi's ability to draw enthusiastic crowds around the world is only
partly based on the excellence of its dancers.
There's the all-powerful Bolshoi mystique, as well.
For decades, the Bolshoi was an elusive presence in the dance world. Unless
you were fortunate enough to catch the company on one of its rare tours,
you had to travel to Moscow to see it. The fame of the various Ballet Russe
companies that toured the world in the first half of the 19th Century also
helped elevate Russian ballet to a near-mythic level.
But there's nothing like accessibility to eat away at that fabled
reputation. The more the company tours -- and it needs to do it several
months every year -- the more it becomes familiar to audiences around the
world.
No longer will the Bolshoi be that seldom-seen artistic gem from an
unreachable and mysterious country. It will still be a company packed with
exceptionally good dancers. But that could describe the Netherlands Dance
Theater, too, or the Frankfurt Ballet or Paris Opera Ballet or any of a
dozen world-class ballet companies.
But Akimov says he isn't concerned about the Bolshoi being regarded as
commonplace.
"I think the world will still want to see us," he says. "The Bolshoi is . .
. " He pauses for a moment, struggling to find the right words to describe
the enormity of emotion he feels for the company with which he has spent
his entire adult life.
"You know, people go to the academy together for 8 or 9 years," says
Akimov. "And then they come to the company and spend 20 or 25 years. It is
their life, their family. No other company has this."
Finally, he finishes the sentence he began moments earlier.
"The Bolshoi is the Bolshoi. That is all. There is nothing like it in the
world."
*******
#14
New York Times
November 17, 2002
A Tale of Two Moscows
By JANUSZ GLOWACKI
Janusz Glowacki is a Polish playwright who moved to New York in 1984. His
plays include ``Cinders,'' ``Hunting Cockroaches'' and ``Antigone in New
York.''
ALONGSIDE the Moscow River, near Gorky Park, positioned several feet above
the highway, stands a cutout of a life-size man in a business suit, hands
forward, ready to jump. Under him reads an inscription: "Before you jump,
think again. Take a Stresstab."
In our age of globalization, perhaps the one thing that truly connects the
whole world, more than the Internet, pop culture or so-called free trade,
is that sinking feeling, that urge to jump. Russia has been depressed for
centuries; today, with terrorism, a sputtering economy and cultural anomie,
America is catching up.
My new play, "The Fourth Sister," was inspired by Chekhov's "Three
Sisters," but it is neither a fictional continuation, nor a new version,
nor a pastiche of Chekhov. It's merely an ironic allusion to his play and
points out a few depressing steps the world has made since Chekhov gazed
upon it.
The underlying conviction of Chekhov's characters was that, although their
own world was filled with trials and suffering, their children's would be a
better one. It was easier for Chekhov to have some hope for the future at
the end of the 19th century, when the concepts of truth, honor, commitment
and love were seriously embraced. (Sometimes too seriously, since Russian
officers at that time had duels when they offended each other, and shot
themselves in the head when women rejected them.)
But today's Moscow has very little to do with Chekhov's Moscow. There are
no more troikas and very few lofty dreams. I was in Moscow about four years
ago, when Russia was preparing for war with Chechnya. I walked through the
center of Moscow with Svetlana, the 14-year-old daughter of the driver from
the Ministry of Culture who was chauffeuring me around the city. We passed
a disco called Hammer and Sickle; Giorgio Armani's store; a Mafia-looking
restaurant, Up and Down; a dealer for Rolls-Royces; and Afghan vets lining
the streets, panhandling. These war heroes had medals but no legs. They
gloomily looked on as policemen, who used to chase criminals, saluted
Mafiosos lounging in black stretch limos. In the 21st century, a fifth
substance, money, triumphs over the four ancient elements of fire, water,
earth and air.
The day before, a bomb exploded in Moscow. The Chechens were blamed. But
people whispered that it was actually the K.G.B., since it wanted to
justify the impending war and deflect attention from the nation's poverty.
Svetlana shook with anger. As several ambulances and armored cars passed
us, she furiously told me that she read recently that the greatest artist
of the 20th century was Yves St. Laurent. She said: "No way! Any idiot
knows that Versace was the one."
Maybe Nietzsche was right when he said that humor is the epitaph on the
grave of a painful memory. I wrote this play out of despair — maybe that's
why it's funny. One of the fathers of the theater of the absurd, Samuel
Beckett, after surviving both wars, decided that Godot will never come and
that nothing is funnier than misfortune. Though Chekhov lived in the 19th
century, this sentiment wasn't foreign to him, either, except his laughter
has always been filled with compassion.
During Communist times, when I still lived in Warsaw, the Minister of
Culture censored a comedy I wrote. When I asked why, he explained that he
realized that laughter was necessary, and that he himself laughed every day
for 10 minutes — with a stopwatch in hand — for the purpose of mental
hygiene. But he professed that there are only two kinds of laughter:
constructive (or pro-Communist) and destructive (or anti-Communist). I hope
"The Fourth Sister" falls into a third category.
In "The Fourth Sister," which opens on Thursday Off Broadway at the
Vineyard Theater, the most recurring line is "I'm depressed," a seemingly
strange line for a comedy. In fact, I'm not sure if my play is a comedy or
a tragedy, but the difference between them is sometimes nettlesome to define.
You see, one character in the play, a retired general who once fought in
Berlin and Kabul, tries to get work as a model to pay for his youngest
daughter's dance lessons. The oldest daughter is the sex-pet of a married
politician who hates Jews, though he himself is half-Jewish. The middle
daughter finished law school and now feeds animals in the circus. Just a
few years earlier, they knew what to expect from life. Now, they are at a
loss.
The third and youngest daughter, Tania, has a better setup. Although she
confuses Dostoyevsky with Versace and Bulgakov with Britney Spears, she has
a moral guiding force in her life: the movie "Pretty Woman" with Julia
Roberts. Back in the old days, prostitutes pretended to be virgins. In our
times, virgins pretend to be prostitutes.
Tania once went to a museum and the only painting that caught her attention
was one by Marc Chagall in which a boy hangs upside-down with one shoe.
Perhaps it reminded her of something. Tania doesn't get emotional over the
death of 30 women and children burned alive by a car bomb. But that doesn't
mean she's callous. She just probably already used up all her tears by
crying for five days, along with the entire planet, over the death of
Princess Di. I read in one newspaper that 9/11 yanked at the hearts of
Europeans almost as tragically as the death of the Princess. In "The Fourth
Sister," naturalism blends with surrealism, and here too, the difference
between them has become rather impossible to define.
Chekhov had doubts about whether he had the moral privilege to write, since
he couldn't even answer the basic question: "How should we live?"
In my play, the retired Russian general asks far simpler questions: "Who
rules here? Where is the money? How will it all end?" And no one is in a
hurry to answer him.
I decided that my play about Moscow would begin in Hollywood, at the
Academy Awards ceremony, which is broadcast all over the world, and has
become part of our new global inter-connectedness, along with CNN. CNN is
watched by those who blow up embassies and those who protect embassies,
those who take hostages and those who rescue them. An Egyptian writer I met
in New York said he was addicted to American television. He knew more than
I did about O. J. Simpson and Washington interns, but he was truly amazed
to find out that there were some religious New Yorkers.
Others have no access to television, like the children of Moscow who live
in sewers and soiled public restrooms. Those kids are usually missing all
their teeth, but they know how to use guns. Today, kids all over take aim
at an early age. Those in Moscow shoot to get a pack of Marlboros. At the
Mafia's request, they kill people they have never seen before. Since they
are children, they sometimes make mistakes, killing the wrong people. But
actually, the Mafia itself also messes up on occasion because it is
overworked.
In Moscow, many photographers and film directors roam the streets,
documenting stories about the Mafia and child prostitution. I put one of
these directors in my play. He received an Oscar for the gripping
candidness of his documentary, "The Children of Moscow," about child
prostitution in Russia. Only, in today's times, the difference between
truth and falsehood has become almost impossible to define.
I brought back home the two most popular toys in Russia. One was given to
me by my driver, Svetlana's father. It was Wanka Wstanka, a kind of Russian
superman. Push him to the side and he always springs back into his
standing, ready position. "Watch out," the driver said, "nobody'll beat
Russia." The second one I bought on my own. It was the famous Matrioshka, a
colorful doll that holds inside of her another smaller version of herself
but with a different face. Inside that smaller version, another face
appears, and yet another one, and so on. I wonder what kind of face Russia
will show in the coming years.
At the end of the 19th century, Chekhov wrote that Russians love the past,
hate the present and fear the future. They don't realize when the future
becomes the present that they hate so much and, a moment later, the past,
which they miss.
For Chekhov's "Three Sisters," the magical place that gave them hope of a
better life and happiness was Moscow. For me, when I lived in Warsaw during
Communist times, the promised land was America. In "The Fourth Sister," the
characters don't know where to go.
------
Chekhov All Week
JANUSZ GLOWACKI has said about his new play, "The Fourth Sister," that it
is neither a version of nor a continuation of Chekhov's "Three Sisters,"
but rather an ironic allusion to Chekhov.
The life and works of the man himself are being celebrated this month in
the fourth annual Chekhov Now Festival at the Connelly Theater, 220 East
Fourth Street, in the East Village. Performances are in their final week,
through next Sunday. In addition to productions of "The Cherry Orchard" and
"Three Sisters," there is a "sequel" to "The Cherry Orchard" and a gay
musical adaptation of "Three Sisters."
The LITE Theater Company (Laboratory for International Theater Exchange) is
presenting the festival. Here are some of the productions:
• "The Ghost of Firs Nikolaich," a sequel to "The Cherry Orchard," by Sam
Mossler. A Dream Out Loud production directed by Tim Herman. What happens
to those trees. 2 p.m. today and 5 p.m. next Sunday.
• "Moscow," a musical adaptation of "Three Sisters" by Nick Salomone and
Mary R. McIntyre in which three gay men are trapped in a deserted theater
with a script of the Chekhov play. 8 p.m. tomorrow and 10 p.m. Friday.
• "Gull," an Ellen Beckerman & Company production, directed by Ms.
Beckerman. A hit at the festival two years ago, it focuses on the text of
"The Seagull," and has minimal movement and design. 8 p.m. today and
Thursday; 5 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. next Sunday.
• "Rothschild's Fiddle" and "The Lady With the Dog," a double bill.
"Fiddle," based on Chekhov's novella of the same name, is an adaptation by
Judythe Cohen and the festival's artistic director, Adam Melnick, set in
pre-revolutionary Russia among peasants and their Jewish neighbors. "Lady"
is adapted from a Chekhov short story about a married woman who has an
affair while on a holiday in Yalta. 8 p.m. Tuesday and 8 p.m. Friday.
Information: 212-414-7773 or, on the Web, chekhovnow.org.
*******
#15
Los Angeles Times
November 17, 2002
DANCE
The Russia we don't get to see
The classical ballets are exported, but Moscow audiences are treated to
charged work in a thriving contemporary dance scene.
By Lewis Segal, Times Staff Writer
Lewis Segal is The Times' dance critic.
Moscow -- The first notes of a recorded rock score by Peter Gabriel
generate happy squeals throughout the theater as the curtain rises on
Dmitry Bryantsev's "Salomé." One of two steamy Bible stories being
performed tonight by his company, the 75-member Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet,
the dance drama represents a display of both the company's classical
training and its contemporary sensibility.
Replete with simulated nudity, the costumes by Vladimir Arefyev mediate
between the fashion extremes of ancient, upper-class Judea and millennial,
urban Russia. In the same way, Bryantsev's choreography fuses a narrative
about the murder of John the Baptist with the flash, danger and compulsive
hedonism of contemporary late-night Moscow.
An English weekly here rates the city's bars and nightclubs on the basis of
money (how many rubles you need to spend per hour), threat (the likelihood
of being attacked by flatheads, the new breed of Russian thug) and sex (the
chances of scoring) -- and "Salomé" drips with all three. Focused on a
power- and sex-mad family, it culminates in an eerie trio showing Salomé
and her mommy dearest, Herodias, gloating over the Baptist's severed head
while a lustful, drugged-out King Herod reels away in disgust.
Created in 1998, "Salomé" was not included in the Moscow Stanislavsky
Ballet's repertory at the Kodak Theatre this summer. Instead, there were
multiple performances of the full-evening "Swan Lake," "Don Quixote" and
just a single night of mixed repertory with only one piece by a living
choreographer (Bryantsev's "Spirit Ball"). Reports suggest that the
company's return engagement next spring also will be dominated by familiar
classics, and that pattern holds for virtually every Russian company that
visits Southern California. The big exception: St. Petersburg-based Boris
Eifman, with his intense historical dance-dramas.
So what we see on our stages creates the illusion that Russian dance
audiences spend all their time at hoary tutu ballets. And that means the
reality of Russia's exciting, multifaceted contemporary dance goes
virtually unrecognized.
Not tied to the classics
Besides being a new Sodom, Moscow offers a dazzling performing arts scene.
In one recent week, you could have chosen from two adaptations of Victor
Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris" (one a musical, the other a ballet), two
stagings of Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac" (one traditional, the other a
brilliant modern-dress production), performances at two Moscow Art Theatres
(one a monument to Chekhov, the other Gorky), a world-class "Turandot" at
the Bolshoi, and "Lord of the Dance" at the Kremlin. Meanwhile, satirical
revues undermine official views of the world and contemporary work of all
kinds relishes the freedoms of the post-Communist era.
In the middle of this activity, Bryantsev runs a ballet company that tries
to cover all bases. Each month, his company dances about 12 performances,
sharing the Moscow Stanislavsky Music Theatre with a resident opera. Five
ballets are usually classical, five contemporary and two aimed at children.
A new theater complex will open in 2005, he says, and a planned second
stage will allow ballet performances to take place on nights that now
belong to the opera. He's even planning a second company to dance
small-scale and riskier new works in another Moscow venue.
"I'm looking forward to being part of the 21st century, doing different
things," Bryantsev says, and his varied body of work supports that
statement. In addition to "Salomé" and its equally macabre companion piece,
"Shulamite" (about the doubly fatal adultery of King Solomon), his work
ranges from the nostalgic, dreamlike "Spirit Ball" to a two-act "Taming of
the Shrew" full of sunny, Mediterranean humor, and a completely
re-choreographed, neoclassical "Le Corsaire" that just may be the most
dramatically astute version anywhere.
He's also known for a series of experimental short pieces that Russians
call "miniatures," some of them extremely daring thematically. In 1987, for
example, he choreographed "The Road," a duet for dancers portraying Christ
and the woman taken in adultery -- but it was kept off the stage for two
years by government authorities until the downfall of Communist
restrictions (and, soon after, communism itself) freed it.
Veteran company member Dmitry Erlykin, who dances such character roles as
Herod in "Salomé," says that "when Bryantsev came to the company in 1985,
it became something new, combining what we already had -- 'Esmeralda,'
'Snow Maiden,' 'Swan Lake' -- with innovative choreography from the modern
point of view." And that combination has become the company's chief
distinction.
"I do not feel anything bad about the classics," Bryantsev says. "It is our
heritage. But I try not to be tied only to classical style. Whatever story
or character or image I want to create, I do it. I use anything. Our
movements must be as free as our emotions."
Foreign companies' influence
Bryantsev's experiments are only a small piece of the Russian picture.
"There's a powerful movement toward contemporary dance now," says Sergei
Korobkov, artistic director of Nations State Theatre in Moscow, which
organizes dance festivals throughout the country. "Even in small towns,
people are no longer living in ballet fairy tales."
The entrenched repertories of official, state-supported theaters often
result in seasons that are 70% classical and only 30% contemporary,
Korobkov says, "but when you look at the number of premieres, it's vice
versa: 70% contemporary and only 30% classical."
Like a number of Moscow critics and dancers, Korobkov resents the fact that
Eifman is the only contemporary Russian choreographer who is recognized in
Europe and America at a time, he says, when "there are 10 to 15 very good
contemporary dance companies in Moscow, Petersburg, the Urals and the far
east" of Russia.
To Moscow dance critic and editor Anna Galaida, this new "explosion of
contemporary dance in Russia" can be credited to the influence of foreign
companies appearing in a series of festivals, beginning in the early '90s.
"They educated and nurtured the audience," she explains. She also draws a
distinction between modern dance and modern ballet, believing there is more
serious interest in Moscow in the former right now than in the latter.
By consensus, Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet -- the best known dance institution
in all of Russia -- plays no important role on the contemporary dance
scene. Blame artistic conservatism, limited dancer versatility and recent
managerial upheavals, plus ticket prices that are sometimes so high, critic
Alexander Firer says, "that only tourists and flatheads can afford to go."
The dancers make news
At the Young Peoples' Theatre, across the street from the Bolshoi, a
chamber ensemble misnamed Ballet Moscow is performing a two-part program
confirming that Russian modern dancers are no less impressive than their
classical counterparts. There are no traces of ballet in Paul Selvin
Norton's "The Rogue Tool," which plays with cyclical structure,
discontinuity, tricks of scale and ironic new vaudeville moves, while
Natalia Ficksel's more conventionally focused "Don Juan Rehabilitated" uses
contrasting duets to explore current gender attitudes.
Merce Cunningham technique, Pina Bausch dramatic strategies, Pilobolus
gymnastics and a tradition of sophisticated Moscow stagecraft loom large
here, but the dancers themselves are the big news: so accomplished and
committed that they make even hand-me-down ideas compelling.
The choreography tonight may not merit international exposure, but when the
next big thing comes along, they'll be as ready to dance it as any company
anywhere. And, who knows? The next big thing could be taking shape in their
minds even now.
As many of the dancers, critics and administrators repeatedly mention in
interviews, Russians such as Sergei Diaghilev, Mikhail Fokine and Vaslav
Nijinsky changed ballet forever early in the 20th century. Afterward, only
the imposition of an oppressive political system kept dance in Russia from
following the modernist trends prevalent in Europe and America -- or
developing home-grown alternatives.
"We were considered to be in the forward ranks of world dance and suddenly
we found ourselves locked in one style," Moscow Stanislavsky dancer Erlykin
says. "We have lagged behind and we're trying to catch up. And now we're
making huge leaps, even if those leaps do not always take us where we want."
********
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