Johnson's Russia List
#6557
18 November 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. Reuters: Russian ballet dancers perform 24-hour marathon.
2. Moscow Times: Andrei Zolotov Jr., Schools To Teach Orthodox Culture.
3. Rossiiskie Vesti: Sergei Fedotkin, NTV TELEVISION NETWORK UNDER
PRESSURE.
The "family" clan is trying to subdue NTV.
4. Rossiiskaya Gazeta: Oleg Chernov, Yury Brazhnikov, WHY IS IT IMPOSSIBLE
TO DEFEAT TERRORISM WITHOUT RUSSIA? Fighting terrorism requires international
coordination.
5. Wall Street Journal: Guy Chazan, Russian Delegates Air a Feud Over
Electricity at U.S. Panel.
6. Baltimore Sun: Douglas Birch, One's science, another's sham. Claims:
Scientists scramble to turn the tide of quackery that has flooded
post-Communist Russia.
7. David Brandenberger: re: Davis & Ware: Did Maskhadov Know?/6554.
8. Helena Goscilo: Igor' Yakovenko.
9. Ekspert: Iskander Khisamov, FIRST WE NEED TO WIN. It is possible to
resolve the Chechnya problem through force.
10. Moscow Times: Matt Bivens, 10-Year-Old Nunn-Lugar at Crossroads.
11. Los Angeles Times: John Daniszewski, Skeletons of History in Russian
Graves. Despite a lack of official data, activists say thousands of Stalinist
purge victims are buried at the site.
12. The Guardian (UK): Ian Black, Inside Europe.
13. Harvard Crimson: Elisabeth Theodore, Gorbachev Reflects on Economic
Change. Former Soviet president tells Sanders his reforms were successful.]
*******
#1
Russian ballet dancers perform 24-hour marathon
November 18, 2002
ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - More than 200 dancers, cheered on by
thousands of spectators, danced into the early hours on Sunday to complete
Russia's first 24-hour ballet marathon.
The dancers, many from the St Petersburg ballet school which gave the world
such greats as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, performed some 20
arrangements, both classical and modern, at the city's celebrated Mariinsky
theatre.
Thousands of spectators quaffed beer and munched snacks in an atmosphere
more reminiscent of a rock concert than a classical ballet performance,
undertaken as part of celebrations for the 300th anniversary of the city's
birth next year.
"It is not important whether you dance in the daytime or during the night.
The most important thing is the dancing and the public," said soloist Anna
Fokina.
"The atmosphere is great...the audience is perfect."
One of the organisers of the ballet marathon said it was now set to become
an annual event.
********
#2
Moscow Times
November 18, 2002
Schools To Teach Orthodox Culture
By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
Staff Writer
With the apparent blessing of the Kremlin, the Education Ministry has
defied resistance even from within its own ranks and taken a major step
toward introducing an Orthodox Christian component into the public school
system.
Education Minister Vladimir Filippov last week released a 30-page
description of an optional course called "Orthodox Culture," which can be
taught in public schools as a part of the basic curriculum if regional
education officials or a school's principal decides to do so.
Filippov said he was submitting the course, developed by Orthodox
educators, only for "consideration." But one of the authors said it gives a
green light to those who have balked at introducing such a course and
attempts to provide a framework for the wide variety of courses already
taught in about 60 of Russia's 89 constituent regions.
"It means the ministry does not mind if such courses are introduced," said
Hierodeacon Kiprian Yashchenko, dean of the pedagogical department at St.
Tikhon Orthodox Theological Institute and one of the authors of the course.
"You know our bureaucrats -- they use their offices according to their
worldview. Most of them are atheists and they say it is impossible because
the school is separate from the church. Yes, we are separate from the
state, but we can cooperate, can't we?"
Yashchenko, who has a doctorate in pedagogical science, said he led the
group of educators who compiled the program from what is already being
tested in the Noginsk district of the Moscow region, Smolensk, Kursk,
Belgorod and other regions of Russia. Although the intention is to immerse
children in the Orthodox worldview, the course is taught by regular
teachers and does not include any church ritual. "Priests may be
consultants," he said.
The 30-page document is a vast catalogue of themes, including Biblical
subjects, Orthodox tradition, asceticism, liturgy, literature and art. By
the end of the course, a student could be asked to write a paper on one of
64 subjects, such as "Faith and Science," "Moscow as the Third Rome" or
"Orthodox Understanding of Freedom."
The ministry says the course, which it recommends teaching once a week in
primary school and twice a week in secondary school, is to be part of the
main curriculum but with attendance to be voluntary.
"Russia is a multinational country, and even within one subject of the
federation there are places where there are practically no Orthodox,"
Interfax quoted Filippov as saying in Novosibirsk. On the other hand, he
said, Orthodox culture has existed in Russia for more than a thousand years
and there is an "objective need" to learn it in school.
The program does not spell out how the decision to teach the course is to
be made, whether a certain percentage of parents, for instance, has to
request the course. And if the course is taught, there is as yet no
provision for children who choose not to attend.
Religious education in public schools is a highly sensitive and
controversial subject anywhere in the world and especially in Russia, where
interpretations of the constitutional principle of separation of church and
state vary greatly, and a system of church-state relations is being
painfully developed after decades of Soviet atheism.
The program appears to have bypassed the Education Ministry apparatus,
which Orthodox Church officials have described as among the most reluctant
to cooperate with the church.
"We have not produced, ordered, reviewed or issued any such program! We
have a [secular] religion studies program, but no 'Orthodox Culture!'"
Tamara Tyulyaeva, an official with the Educational Ministry's department of
general education, said angrily in a telephone interview Thursday. "There
were such attempts, but we have a simple answer: We are a secular school
system and will never introduce any confessional program -- neither Moslem,
nor Jewish, nor our dear Orthodox. Otherwise we'll get such a mess!"
Opponents of religious education in public schools -- who at various stages
included State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, Deputy Speaker Irina
Khakamada and the Yabloko party -- say it will divide people and sow
xenophobia.
"This document smacks of the Middle Ages and obscurantism," government
spokesman Alexei Volin was quoted in Friday's Gazeta as saying. "If the
Education Ministry considers it necessary to introduce studies in religion,
the course should include the basics of all religious world views and the
history of atheism in addition."
The Orthodox Church has argued that secular religion classes do not offer
students a choice of worldview, because religion is taught from a
nonreligious perspective. An Orthodox class, however, would add a moral
dimension otherwise missing in the post-Soviet school system and would help
reverse the proliferation of crime, drug-addiction and alcoholism, the
church said.
"The moral disorientation of many young people, their loss of a meaning in
life, becomes the soil for various vices and threatens Russia's future,"
Patriarch Alexy II wrote in an address to a state-church conference on
education in October. "That is why all of us -- religious leaders, [state]
authorities and society -- have to realize that school should give not only
a sum of knowledge, but also an upbringing."
The conference, which took place Oct. 10-11, appears to have played a
pivotal role in the Education Ministry's paper, which is dated Oct. 22. In
addition to Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist leaders, the conference
was attended by presidential envoys Georgy Poltavchenko and Sergei
Kiriyenko, State Duma members and Educational Ministry officials.
Izvestia quoted Poltavchenko -- the presidential envoy to the Central
Federal District who is a practicing Orthodox Christian -- as saying at the
conference that it is time for an "Orthodox Culture" course across Russia.
Kiriyenko, from the Volga Federal District, also named education as one of
the fields where the state should cooperate with "traditional" religions.
With most post-Soviet school programs still permeated with atheism, a
religious course would offer students an alternative, he said.
A former employee of the Moscow Patriarchate's department of education and
catechism, who did not want to be named, said the decision was likely made
on the sidelines of that conference. He also said the government's program
to help Muslim education in Russia, aimed at preventing Russian Muslims
from traveling to the Arab world's often radical schools, played a role in
the Moscow Patriarchate's lobbying efforts.
That perhaps explains why official Muslim leaders did not protest the
Education Ministry's decision. "We are not against our Orthodox brothers
finding out as much as possible about their culture," said Mufti Ravil
Gainutdin, chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia. He stressed,
however, that the voluntary aspect is crucial and complained that Russia's
Muslims and other religious groups are unable to reach all schools because
they "suffered even more than the Orthodox Church during the Soviet
period," Interfax reported.
Nafigulla Ashirov, the Mufti of Siberia who is seen as a more radical
Muslim leader, strongly opposed the Orthodoxy course. "Russia is living
through one of the most complicated moments in its history, and raising
this issue when the Chechnya wound is bleeding in the south of Russia, when
skinheads are walking the streets of Moscow, is a direct violation of the
Constitution," Ashirov said in a telephone interview Friday.
Human rights activists are among the fiercest opponents of the program. The
For Human Rights group led by Lev Ponomaryov complained to the Prosecutor
General's Office earlier this year about a textbook titled "The Basics of
Orthodox Culture" by Alla Borodina, but the complaint was thrown out.
"The textbook's authors help the growth of xenophobia and nationalism in
our society," Interfax quoted Ponomaryov as saying. "This textbook, which
is already used in state schools, imposes the views of one confession on
schoolchildren and thus violates the principle of a secular state."
Yashchenko said the second edition of Borodina's textbook will be corrected
to take into account human rights activists' complaints.
"We in the Church are first and foremost against violating the will of
children and their parents," he said by telephone Friday. "If it turns into
the Divine Law [the doctrinal course taught in tsarist Russia], if we don't
take into account that most children are not church-goers, if it does not
create a field for thinking, then we will definitely kill the cause. Then
it will turn out like before the Revolution, when everybody went to the
Divine Law, knew the prayers and holidays, but lived differently."
The Education Ministry's program can be found at
www.ed.gov.ru/sch-edu/prkult/let.html
********
#3
Rossiiskie Vesti
November 13, 2002
NTV TELEVISION NETWORK UNDER PRESSURE
The "family" clan is trying to subdue NTV
Author: Sergei Fedotkin
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
ONE OF THE MAIN OUTCOMES OF THE RECENT TERRORIST ACT IN MOSCOW IS
THE CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED BY THE GOVERNMENT AIMED AT SUPPRESSING THE
MEDIA. AMONG THE MEDIA THAT ARE ATTACKED BY THE KREMLIN IS NTV, WHICH
TOOK AN ANTI-PRESIDENTIAL STANCE IN ITS COVERAGE OF THE TRAGIC EVENTS.
The problem of the role of media in the recent events in Moscow
has become one of the central topics in discussions about these
events. The Kremlin is actively working on the issue of the media. For
instance, it has initiated the adoption of amendments to the law on
the media directly in the third reading. According to our sources,
Chief of the Presidential Administration Alexander Voloshin has
reprimanded General Director of NTV Boris Jordan because his channel
was working without reference to requirements of journalists in a
situation when people had been taken hostage. Jordan reported this
conversation to his subordinates, including those who talked to
terrorists. He noted the government's displeasure with the fact that
NTV acted independently not only of the Kremlin but also the main
shareholder on NTV, Gazprom. Meanwhile, managers of the channel did
not understand what position Gazprom had, so journalists did their
ordinary business: tried to inform people about what was going on
inside the theater, simultaneously boosting the ratings of the TV
company.
Besides, the Kremlin is displeased with the program "Namedni"
("the other day") hosted by Leonid Parfenov, in which a video record
of the conversation between Vladimir Putin and FSB Director Nikolai
Patrushev and Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov was accompanied by
attempts to lip-read the conversation.
As a result, according to confidential sources, Voloshin has
announced that it is necessary for anchormen Leonid Parfenov and Savik
Shuster to be taken off the air, and it is advisable that Tatiana
Mitkova should be dismissed from the position of NTV editor-in-chief.
The authorities of NTV have proven not to be ready for this scenario,
and many journalists are still sure that the conflict may be resolved
without any radical measures. NTV had covered events in similar
situations from an anti-presidential point of view before (like in the
case of the Kursk), but the Kremlin only rather politely criticized
the programs.
The Kremlin discerned some lessons from the "black anti-PR" of
NTV and has made up its mind to interfere in the information policy of
the channel.
The recent events may seriously affect the destiny of not only
NTV but also the new information holding set up by Gazprom and
Eurofinance. According to some sources, Eurofinance has already
allocated the money guaranteed by the transaction to Gazprom. The $500
million on account of NTV's debt to Gazprom have been transferred by
bills, and $100 million on development of the channel have been
allocated in cash.
The most real threat connected with personnel changes concerns
Jordan himself. Besides, in the new information holding, current
employees of Gazprom-Media are running the risk of losing their
positions.
The Kremlin's point of view has been elaborated by Voloshin and
Media Minister Mikhail Lesin. On October 29, they showed Putin a
special compilation of news and current affairs programs from NTV. The
compilation showed that the channel took an anti-Kremlin position
during the hostage-taking.
According to the same source, it has been made clear to Jordan
that if requirements of the Kremlin and the Media Ministry regarding
the information policy of NTV are not met, the general director may be
dismissed. Factually, the "family" (the Yeltsin clan in the
Presidential Administration - translator's note) is taking advantage
of the tragic events because it is trying to return NTV to the sphere
of its direct control. The "family" is displeased with the fact that
it was not given an access to privatization of NTV. It is fair to
state in this connection that the pressure on the channel will not
slacken in the near future.
(Translated by Kirill Frolov )
********
#4
Rossiiskaya Gazeta
November 16, 2002
WHY IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO DEFEAT TERRORISM WITHOUT RUSSIA?
Fighting terrorism requires international coordination
Author: Oleg Chernov, Yury Brazhnikov
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
OLEG CHERNOV, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF THE RUSSIAN SECURITY COUNCIL, AND
YURY BRAZHNIKOV, RUSSIAN DEPUTY MINISTER FOR EMERGENCY SITUATIONS,
EXPLAIN THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPING COOPERATION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND
WESTERN COUNTRIES IN THE CAUSE OF COMBATING TERRORISM.
Oleg Chernov, Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council:
In my opinion, the cooperation in the cause of combating terrorism has
been started well: I mean the work of the "twenty", the Russia-NATO
Council, and so on. There is cooperation in nine areas.
There has been an exchange of opinions within the framework of
the working group of the "twenty" on terrorism. Corresponding basic
documents on estimation of threats by the strongest terrorist
organizations are being prepared. Therefore, I believe that it is
quite possible to elaborate a uniform approach to mechanisms for
counteracting terrorists. In this connection, unification of national
laws is very important. In the future it is possible that a uniform
European arrest permit will be introduced. Besides, it may be allowed
blockading bank accounts of organizations and people suspected of
assistance to terrorists. It is necessary to deprive those having dual
standards of any ground. Dual standards are when different states have
different interpretations of the same actions. Those who conduct an
anti-terror operation should be properly informed about the situation
at the stages of its preparation, performance, and liquidation of
outcomes of terror acts.
In this connection, I think we should achieve clarity in all
issues connected with fighting terrorism. We should be able to answer
whether it is legal to make dot missile strikes on terrorists' bases
as Americans recently did in Yemen, to attack a building where
terrorists have taken people hostage like it was in Moscow, to keep
imprisoned Talibs in such conditions as they are kept in on the
American base in Guantanamo, etc. There should be no dual or triple
standards here: everything should be distinct and clear.
Yury Brazhnikov, Russian Deputy Minister for Emergency
Situations: Potentially Russia can cooperate with NATO in the field of
emergency situations. This statement may be proven by the joint
exercises conducted this year in Bogorodsk.
For instance during these exercises, terrorists attack on a
chemical plant was imitated.
The current negotiations are only the beginning of the path, and
we can only guess how long it will take us to agree on further joint
actions. One of the barriers is the issue of making decisions, which
is too bureaucratic in NATO. This is natural, since NATO was set up
for military actions, and such bureaucratic methods of making
decisions are correct when the matter concerns involvement of arms.
But this scheme works badly when it is necessary to act in an
emergency regime. Therefore, it is easier for us to coordinate our
activities with the EU, the UN, or cooperation with some countries
bilaterally. In these cases we can work more operatively on prevention
of catastrophes, rescue of people, etc.
But the NATO-Russia Council makes it possible to make decisions
more efficiently. Besides, we gain experience from each other. The
exercises in Bogorodsk showed that rescue workers are very well
trained regardless of what country they were from. The question is how
soon actions will become coordinated.
(Translated by Kirill Frolov)
*******
#5
Wall Street Journal
November 18, 2002
Russian Delegates Air a Feud Over Electricity at U.S. Panel
By GUY CHAZAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MOSCOW -- A Harvard University-sponsored conference in Boston designed to
lure investors into Russia was dominated by a heated row among the Russian
delegates over plans to overhaul the country's electricity sector.
Conference participants looked on bemused as a discussion on Russian power
restructuring descended into bickering and name-calling between a top
Kremlin adviser and a senior manager of electricity monopoly Unified Energy
System of Russia RAO.
At issue is a plan to break up UES over the next few years into a monopoly
power grid and competing generating assets, paving the way for a
liberalized market in electricity and the freeing of state-regulated prices
by 2005.
Opponents of the change, including Andrei Illarionov, an aide to President
Vladimir Putin, have been emboldened by reports that the Russian parliament
has delayed further consideration of a package of laws underpinning the
restructuring. UES officials say the delay is technical.
Speaking at the Boston symposium, UES Deputy Chairman Sergei Dubinin
unveiled a plan to allow international energy firms to take part in tenders
for management contracts to operate two of 10 wholesale generating
companies formed in the UES carve-up. He said five utilities had already
expressed an interest in taking part, including Italian Enel SpA.
UES says it needs a bare minimum of between $10 billion and $15 billion
(€9.94 billion and €14.9 billion) in investment over the next 10 years to
modernize its aging power plants and build new capacity. Company executives
say Russia could suffer power shortages by 2007 if levels of investment
continue at the present level of about $2 billion a year.
Mr. Dubinin also said UES and the government were planning to create a
special "guarantee fund" to encourage investment in new or uncompleted
power stations. The fund, which would be drawn from a surcharge on all
consumers, would compensate investors if the market price for electricity
was lower than that required to give a return on their investment.
But management's proposals were fiercely attacked in Boston. Alexander
Branis, head of Prosperity Capital Management and an independent UES board
member, said the new management companies would be able to wrest control of
the wholesale generation companies, or gencos, from existing UES
shareholders, and potentially divert their cash flows.
-- Gregory L. White contributed to this article
********
#6
Baltimore Sun
November 17, 2002
One's science, another's sham
Claims: Scientists scramble to turn the tide of quackery that has flooded
post-Communist Russia.
By Douglas Birch
KOZENKI, Russia - Acrid clouds of smoke drift through the sky from stubborn
peat fires smoldering here northwest of Moscow. But standing in a stubbled
field next to the New Riga Highway, Alexander Golod claims that the air is
healthier than anywhere else in the region.
It's because, he says, of the 144-foot pyramid towering behind him. The
53-year-old former guitar-string manufacturer says his pyramids - which can
be ordered from a Canadian firm - don't just purify the air by somehow
concentrating the "energy" of the space around them. They can cure cancer,
detoxify chemical weapons, prevent terrorism, and even reduce the power of
tornadoes and earthquakes.
To at least one visitor, the air smells just as smoky as elsewhere. But
Golod, who sells jewelry and crystals stored in his 55-ton Fiberglas
edifice, says it has sweeping powers. "Visiting the pyramid, it's like
going under a shower," he says. "It takes all the diseases away, like
grease washing off your body."
Russians find such ideas, which stray into the fringes of science and
beyond, irresistible. After the fall of the Soviet Union, interest in the
supernatural flourished like weeds in a vacant lot - perhaps because, with
the collapse of communism, so many of the society's basic beliefs were
mowed down.
To some, Golod's claims might seem too fantastic to take seriously. Not
here. The lanky "pyramidologist" counts influential bureaucrats,
top-ranking military officers and even some scientists among his friends
and supporters.
Russia's mammoth state-owned gas monopoly, Gazprom, confirms that it built
one of Golod's 144-foot pyramids - which, according to news accounts can
cost $1 million - in an oil field near the Caspian Sea. Other agencies have
gone beyond pyramids.
A staff of 60 specialists in extrasensory perception works for the Ministry
of Emergency Situations, predicting natural and man-made disasters, the
weekly magazine Kommersant Vlast reported in January. (Their record for
forecasting was dismal, the magazine noted.)
Russia's Defense Ministry established a State Center for Extreme Medicine
at Moscow State University, Russia's most prestigious institution of higher
learning. The center's director told the reporters he would test "auras,"
energy fields that supposedly envelop the body, and "charged water," which
New Age theorists say can purge illness.
Golod claims that a cosmonaut carried crystals grown in one of his pyramids
to the International Space Station last year - although Russian space
officials say that, if that happened, they weren't told about it.
Disturbed by the rise of belief in paranormal phenomena, the Russian
Academy of Sciences, founded by Czar Peter the Great, has launched a
campaign against pseudo-science, denouncing quack cures in interviews,
articles and lobbying sessions with top politicians.
Increasingly, they say, people seem willing to listen. "The ice has started
to move," said Eduard Kruglyakov, a prize-winning physicist and chairman of
the academy's Commission Against Pseudo-Science and the Falsification of
Scientific Studies, in a telephone interview from his office in Siberia.
Kruglyakov, the chief of one of the most prestigious scientific institutes
in Russia, is soft-spoken but blunt about his view of paranormal claims.
They consist, he says, of "swindles" and "frauds." He calls their promoters
"crooks."
Many people in Western countries, of course, believe in the power of
pyramids, crystals and astrology. But in Russia, these views are often
treated respectfully by the media, academic institutions and government
bureaucrats.
"I call this phenomenon 'corruption,'" Kruglyakov says.
What other explanation is there, he asks, when - as happened two years ago
- Russia's deputy chief of public health claims in newspaper ads that a
boxlike device, called "Vita," could prevent injury from electromagnetic
radiation?
The product, Kruglyakov says, defied all scientific logic. It doesn't work
and uses misleading technical information and advertising, he wrote in
Skeptical Inquirer, an American magazine dedicated to debunking paranormal
claims.
Russia's health care system lies in ruins, and people here on average die
10 years earlier than other Europeans. Yet Russians squander $1 billion
each year on questionable medical devices, Kruglyakov estimates, encouraged
by testimonials by scientists. "It is incomprehensible why the Academy of
Medical Sciences keeps silent about such fraud," he recently wrote.
Valentina Deradze, a spokesman for the medical academy, said the group
doesn't investigate fake medical claims, and referred questions to the
Ministry of Public Health, which told a reporter to ask the medical academy.
Dr. Yuri Lopukhin, a cellular biologist and chief of the ethics commission
of the medical academy, says he has done his best to fight pseudo-science
within his field. One medical researcher claimed to cure several diseases
by injecting bits of fruit into his patients, supposedly boosting the
immune system - a preposterous assertion. "I was furious," Lopukhin says.
He attacked the procedure in a book he wrote on immune therapy, appeared on
television and wrote an article for Moscow's Komsomolets newspaper. He was
determined, he said, "to block the road for charlatans."
But, he says, there is simply too much bogus medicine in Russia, and too
little time to fight it. "We cannot examine everything and everybody," he
says. "That's why there is so much of this delirium."
The Communists were not immune to the allure of pseudo-science. A Soviet
physicist, Anatoly E. Akimov, told military officials he could harness the
untapped energy potential of the vacuum to create a weapon powerful enough
to scatter an army "like a flock of sheep," Kruglyakov says. Akimov's
secret weapons program received $500 million from the Kremlin during the
1980s, a time when the Soviet economy was in its death spiral.
When the existence of the research became public in March 1991, the
U.S.S.R.'s leading physicists were dumbfounded. Soviet leader Mikhail S.
Gorbachev ordered a halt to it.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, occult beliefs and dubious
science flourished - even in the highest levels of government. President
Boris N. Yeltsin's circle of advisers included an astrologer who claimed to
be able to use the stars to predict the fate of ships, submarines, tanks -
and the president's aircraft.
Kruglyakov took his case against pseudo-science to the top last year,
during a visit by President Vladimir V. Putin to the Budker Institute of
Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, where Kruglyakov is deputy director. If no
effort was made to curb crackpot science, the physicist warned Putin, "in a
few years, we will have a country of wild people."
Putin, the physicist says, pledged his support. Gone are the presidential
astrologers and mystics. But, Kruglyakov says, many practitioners of the
paranormal remain embedded in the Russian bureaucracy.
"It seems to me that the group surrounding the president is much better
now," Kruglyakov says. "Nevertheless there are many crooks in the vicinity
of government."
Kruglyakov says he is considering writing a separate article on Golod's
growing pyramid empire. "This is a swindle," the physicist said bluntly.
"There is no kind of phenomenon inside a pyramid."
Meanwhile, a steady stream of visitors find their way to Golod's property.
A battered white bus filled with pensioners from the Moscow Society for the
Disabled arrived in front of the pyramid one recent morning. About 20
heart-disease and cancer patients shuffled inside, where the sun filtered
through the lightweight panels, filling the structure with honey-colored
light.
The slender, tranquil Golod offered the disabled free sips from a plastic
jug of water stored in the structure. "It helps any disease, even cancer,"
he assured them. The security guard's desk doubled as a souvenir shop,
where visitors could buy a $4 jug of the water, a $3.18 bracelet or a $143
miniature marble pyramid.
Golod lives in a sprawling, brand-new country home a quarter-mile from his
Moscow-area pyramid. In his back yard, he is building a new barn-sized
building to house an indoor swimming pool, in-law apartments and squash
court.
He says he earns his living by running a company that produces maps for the
military. His pyramids are, he says, a philanthropic "hobby" that has cost
him $2 million.
Critics scoff at this. "He's building these pyramids only to get a lot of
money," says Dr. Lopukhin of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Many of the hundreds of visitors who stream into the pyramid every day,
meanwhile, seem eager to believe Golod's claims.
"Maybe it will help me," says Svetlana Shulyakutskaya, a 64-year-old member
of the Moscow Society for the Disabled, who was considering buying a jug of
water.
She has high blood pressure and recently suffered a heart attack. "I would
like to try it," she said. "I'm an optimist, and I hope it would help. At
least, I would like it very much if it helped."
*******
#7
From: David Brandenberger
Subject: re: Davis & Ware: Did Maskhadov Know?/6554
Date: Sunday, November 17, 2002
Ralph Davis' and Robert Bruce Ware's recent posting (JRL #6554 "Did Aslan
Maskhadov Know?") only reinforces my sense that it is premature to accuse
the Chechen president of complicity in the Nord-Ost tragedy. Sergei
Yastrzhembsky and other Russian officials have thus far aired a case
based solely on ambiguous and circumstantial evidence, and this seems
insufficient in light of their clear interest in compromising Maskhadov as
a potential negotiating partner and their long record of misinformation
regarding Chechnia as a whole.[1]
Davis and Ware are of course correct that Maskhadov has failed to
effectively control radicals in the loosely-organized Chechen resistance.
They are also right to note that there are indications that Maskhadov was
recently forced to cede new powers to Shamil Basaev's faction.[2] But
even if true, these details do not link Maskhadov directly to the Nord-Ost
debacle.
Davis and Ware find much of their evidence implicating Maskhadov in the
statements of the Nord-Ost hostage takers themselves, chiefly Movsar
Baraev (to NTV and by telephone to Zelimkhan Yandarbaev) and Abu Said (by
telephone to the Azeri news agency Zerkalo). In each case, Baraev and
Said seem to be saying exactly what Davis and Ware claim: that Maskhadov
had authorized the attack and left it to Basaev to work out the details.
But upon closer reading, the situation appears much less clear.
Although Baraev claims to be subordinate to Maskhadov in his interview
with NTV, he describes himself as acting on Basaev's orders. In his
conversation with Yandarbaev, Baraev initially claims that the attack
had been jointly planned with both Basaev and Maskhadov, but then
clarifies--in a statement that Davis and Ware ignore--that he wasn't
exactly sure "whether Aslan had been informed or not." Basaev was in
charge, and because Basaev was subordinate to Maskhadov, Baraev assumed
that the Chechen president also knew about the plot.[3]
A close reading of the Zerkalo interview with Abu Said is no more
conclusive. Partly because of the clumsy way that the Azeri correspondent
phrased his questions, and partly because of the brevity of Said's
inarticulate answers, it is impossible to determine whether Said's mention
of Maskhadov's involvement in the attack was based on personal experience
or whether he was merely paraphrasing what he had heard from Baraev.[4]
Perhaps the only genuinely "new" information that Said reveals in this
interview is that he and Baraev were apparently in contact with both
Maskhadov and Basaev during the siege by mobile phone. If this is true,
then the FSB should release their tapes of those conversations. It
is well known, after all, that the Russian security services were
eaves-dropping on Baraev's phone communications. Moreover, FSB
officials signaled their willingness to publicize such recordings when
they aired the Baraev-Yandarbaev tape. Were the FSB to release a
recording of Maskhadov speaking in approving terms about the raid, that
would certainly prove his complicity.
But the FSB has yet to produce such a smoking gun. And without it, there
does not seem to be sufficient evidence to implicate Maskhadov in the
Nord-Ost fiasco. Basaev has admitted to planning the attack without
Maskhadov's authorization; it may turn out that Basaev deceived Baraev and
Said as well.[5] In any case, it would seem premature to agree with the
Kremlin's decision to disqualify Maskhadov as a potential negotiating
partner on the basis of such circumstantial and inconclusive evidence.
Notes
[1] Curiously, Davies' own Russia list, RMSMC (Russian Military
and Security Media Coverage), thoroughly details the ambiguity
surrounding Maskhadov's supposed role. See, for instance:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RMSMC/message/1559
[2] During the summer of 2002, the principle Chechen "news agencies,"
Kavkaz Tsentr and Chechenpress, contradicted each other over the extent
of the changes made to the Chechen command structure. Aspects of Kavkaz
Tsentr's coverage, especially concerning Maskhadov's apparent
"radicalization," may well be true. Alternately, this reportage may
have been part of a calculated attempt to revive Chechen fundraising in
the gulf states.
[3] See: http://www.gazeta.ru/2002/10/31/baraevdejstv.shtml
[4] Search Zerkalo's "archive" for the lead article from Oct. 26, 2002:
http://www.zerkalo.az
[5] Kavkazcenter.com, which first publicized Basaev's admission, has
since been silenced, apparently by Russian authorities. See
http://www.kafkas.org.tr/russian/Ajans/2002/kasim/
16.11.2002_fsb_kafkascenter_ile_oyun_oynuyor.htm
*******
#8
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002
From: Helena Goscilo
Subject: Igor' Yakovenko
As a follow-up to the piece by Igor' Yakovenko that you recently included
on the list: Yakovenko will be participating in a roundtable titled
"Journalism in Russia Today" at the AAASS conference in Pittsburgh. The
roundtable is slated for Sunday, 24 November, at 10:15 A.M.
******
#9
Ekspert
November 11, 2002
FIRST WE NEED TO WIN
It is possible to resolve the Chechnya problem through force
Author: Iskander Khisamov
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
IT WILL ONLY BE POSSIBLE TO TALK ABOUT A REFERENDUM, A CONSTITUTION,
AND ELECTIONS IN CHECHNYA AFTER THE MAIN CENTERS OF ARMED RESISTANCE
AND TERRORISM THERE HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED. FORTUNATELY, CHANGING
CIRCUMSTANCES AROUND THE WORLD HAVE MADE IT EASIER FOR RUSSIA TO TAKE
RESOLUTE ACTION IN CHECHNYA.
"The Chechnya problem cannot be resolved through force alone."
These words are so often seen in media comments that they have lost
all meaning. Firstly, the statement appears to imply that until now,
only force has been used to resolve the problem; but this isn't true -
a great deal more is being done there besides clean-ups and special
operations. Secondly, everyone has their own interpretation as to what
a solution to this problems entails: ranging from full independence to
wholesale deportation, or even both at once. Those favoring the latter
option don't mean deporting everyone out of Chechnya, but deporting
all the Chechens now elsewhere in Russia back to Chechnya. The only
outcome no one seriously expects is that Chechnya could become an
ordinary autonomous republic in the Russian Federation. But if we have
no consensus on the basic issue - what "solving the problem" means -
then how can we assess methods of solving it?
At one point in history, the problem of Germany was resolved
through force; now everything is fine there. More recently, the same
methods were used to solve the problem of Afghanistan, and the problem
of Yugoslavia. Preparations are now underway to resolve the problem of
Iraq. On the whole, throughout human history it has been fairly rare
for problems to be resolved other than from a position of strength and
methods of suppression. As a rule, peace talks start when neither side
has any chance of a conclusive victory, nor any will to continue
fighting; when the price of victory becomes unsustainable.
But Russia is in a different situation at present. Firstly, the
Russian political elite and the citizenry have understood the danger
inherent in Chechen-Islamist extremism. It has also been proved that
granting Chechnya independence only serves to increase the danger.
Secondly, it has become clear that this enemy can be defeated. The
defeats suffered due to our incompetence during the first war in
Chechnya and our inability to fight an anti-partisan war led many to
the false conclusion that our opponents were all Rambo-figures -
fearless, merciless, indestructible and uncatchable - and backed up by
the even more mysterious and horrifying Al Qaeda, headed by the
nightmarish Osama bin Laden. This image remained intact even when
people saw footage of a quiet, cowed Salman Raduyev in detention at
the prosecutor's office. This image was only shattered on October 26,
when the theater in Moscow was stormed.
It turned out that all those Chechen militants and suicide
terrorists were simply amateurs. They had the numbers to defend that
theater for many hours - but Russian professional commandos dealt with
them in a matter of minutes. The militants didn't manage to kill a
single commando; the women suicide bombers didn't manage to set off a
single bomb. And these people were the cream of the Chechen terrorist
army, hand-picked for the job. Yes, that army does well enough when it
comes to shooting at helicopters, planting landmines, mounting sieges
and taking hostages - but only when they are opposed by even greater
amateurs. They can defeat an incapacitated state with a run-down army:
the kind of state Russia was in 1995-96; but now our state and our
army have changed somewhat.
What's more, under these new circumstances - now that the United
States has also set about opposing terrorism - it has become possible
to cut off the enemy from material assistance coming in from the East
and moral support from the West. This won't happen soon, but the trend
is there. Denmark is unlikely to extradite Akhmed Zakaev to Russia;
but the very fact that he has been arrested there says a great deal.
Chechen missions have been shut down in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and some
other countries; in the Baltic States and Ukraine, streets once
renamed in honor of Djokhar Dudayev will soon have their old names
restored. Even the Arab emirate of Qatar, acting on its own
initiative, has started talking of the possibility of deporting former
Chechen commander Zelimkhan Yandarbiev to Russia. The United States
itself is preparing to include the Chechen guerrilla army on the
blacklist of terrorist organizations - and then even Denmark will have
no other option but to hand them over.
Undoubtedly, we will not be able to live a completely calm life
until all the "swamps of terrorism" around the world have been
drained; and doing so will take many years. However, it is possible to
use force to pacify Chechnya, in particular - to eliminate the main
centers of violence, and fairly rapidly, at that. Only then - once the
enemy has surrendered - will it make sense to talk of a referendum, a
constitution, elections, and other matters of which people are now
speaking so often and so prematurely.
(Translated by Kirill Frolov)
*******
#10
Moscow Times
November 18, 2002
10-Year-Old Nunn-Lugar at Crossroads
By Matt Bivens
Special to The Moscow Times
WASHINGTON -- In October 2001, U.S. government officials were told that
terrorists had acquired a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb and planned to smuggle it
into Manhattan and detonate it. If they succeeded, the intelligence reports
said, they could kill hundreds of thousands of people and destroy New York
City.
"This intelligence report, thank God, was later judged to be false. But it
was never judged to be implausible or impossible," said former Senator Sam
Nunn. "This should focus our attention on two fundamental questions. First,
if the report had been accurate, and the bomb had been real, and had gone
off, what would we wish the day after, and the week after, and the months
after -- what would we wish that we had done to prevent it? Second, why
aren't we doing that now?"
Nunn was speaking Thursday at the start of a two-day conference in
Washington devoted to stopping the spread of nuclear, biological and
chemical weapons.
Organized by the nongovernmental Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, the conference covered broad ground -- with presentations on
everything from what happens if a war with Iraq sees chemical or nuclear
weapons used to exactly what kinds of weapons the Bush administration wants
to deploy in outer space.
But a major focus was on the Nunn-Lugar programs, launched by the U.S.
Congress a decade ago to help secure or destroy stores of dangerous weapons
and materials across the former Soviet Union.
The programs -- named for Georgia Democrat Nunn and his Republican
colleague in the Senate from Indiana, Richard Lugar -- are at an important
crossroads.
Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and also of October in Moscow,
it would seem more relevant than ever to secure or destroy sarin nerve gas
shells, anthrax, plutonium and other potential tools of mass murder.
Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin have themselves asserted as much
at two summit meetings -- in November 2001 and May 2002. Standing with
Putin at the White House last November, Bush said, "Our highest priority is
to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction."
But according to a report presented and discussed at the conference, the
Nunn-Lugar programs nevertheless remain political orphans and are "at risk
of stagnation."
Written by academics and experts from the Carnegie Endowment and another
nonproliferation think tank, the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory
Council, or RANSAC, the report says that "as the 10th anniversary of the
[Nunn-Lugar] threat reduction effort passed, it is clear that much of the
agenda has lost its urgency and that many fundamental problems persist with
no clear plan for solving them."
The report says Nunn-Lugar programs are scattered across various U.S.
government agencies; they have never had more than superficial political
support in either America or Russia; and "the overall effort is not guided
by any integrated or comprehensive strategy."
American taxpayers have been spending more than $1 billion annually on the
programs, but many of the easiest and most popular tasks -- cutting up
Soviet-made ICBMs, for example -- have been accomplished. Far thornier
projects -- such as occupying the idle hands and minds of tens of thousands
of Russian nuclear scientists, and perhaps 7,000 biological weapons
scientists -- are what remains.
In June 2002, at a G-8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, the United States
pledged to continue spending that $1 billion a year for another decade --
and also won a commitment from other industrialized nations to collectively
put in their own $1 billion a year.
But there has been little action on that pledge since, and it is unclear if
or how the G-8 nations will follow up on it by the time they meet next June
in France.
That leaves the status quo, with a reluctant United States in the driver's
seat. No American president has ever embraced the persistent calls for
putting the Nunn-Lugar programs into the hands of one top-level U.S.
official, the report said; while no Russian president has ever provided the
sort of financial transparency, bureaucratic enthusiasm and physical access
necessary to properly and efficiently do the work.
The report also offered a snapshot of the Russian weapons of mass
destruction complexes:
"Roughly half of the nuclear weapons-grade material in Russia remains
inadequately secure."
That's enough material to build thousands of nuclear bombs. Moreover,
previous U.S.-funded security improvements focused on protecting plutonium
or highly enriched uranium from theft by employees. There has been far less
attention focused on holding off 40 or 50 heavily armed Chechen fighters,
such as the band that stormed the Moscow theater last month.
"There is a particular concern about the former Soviet biological weapons
(BW) complex. The security of existing pathogen libraries, the past scope
of work, the current whereabouts of [biological weapons stocks] and
BW-related experts ... are all critical concerns."
"The destruction of chemical weapons is just starting ... many [chemical
weapons] bunkers sit above ground, vulnerable to attack."
Russia has the world's largest chemical weapons arsenal -- 40,000 metric
tons of various warfare agents, from sarin and VX nerve gasses to blister
agents like mustard gas and lewisite.
The United States has the second-largest arsenal, with about 31,000 metric
tons of chemical weapons.
Both Russia and America have pledged to destroy their arsenals, and the
United States has offered Russia financial help to do so. But critics
within the Bush administration derailed that pledge for most of this year.
Under the Nunn-Lugar Act, each year Russia must be "certified" by the U.S.
government as serious and committed to the joint work before the money can
be sent. This summer, the Bush administration declined to certify Russia as
serious -- but immediately after doing so begged Congress for a special
"waiver" to that rule. Only last Wednesday did Congress finally provide
that waiver.
For supporters of Nunn-Lugar, there is one bright spot: For the first time
in 16 years, Lugar is again chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. He regained the post after Republicans won the Senate
this month, and his more senior colleague, Jesse Helms, retired.
A representative from Lugar's office promised congressional hearings on how
to breathe new life into the Nunn-Lugar agenda would be held as early as
January.
******
#11
Los Angeles Times
November 18, 2002
Skeletons of History in Russian Graves
Despite a lack of official data, activists say thousands of Stalinist purge
victims are buried at the site.
By John Daniszewski, Times Staff Writer
TOKSOVO, Russia -- Mikhail Pushnitsky, his long gray hair hanging down the
side of his head, jiggled the steel rod in his hand and pressed it down
into the brown soil again and again, until he heard the tell-tale thump.
Like a beating heart in a horror story, the hollow echo of the rod striking
bone lingered in the air: an accusation.
Gingerly using a shovel and the kind of brush for getting snow off a
windshield, he soon exposed a skull, femur and shin bones, all of which had
taken on a rusty hue. For some reason, however, the enamel of the victim's
teeth still shone white.
"As any normal person, the first time I saw this I was shocked," said
Pushnitsky, 55, part of a small team investigating what it says is a newly
discovered Stalinist killing field outside St. Petersburg. "But when you
get to your 20th skull, you get angry. We understand that this is a crime
scene, and through this we have come close to a hideous crime."
"The perpetrators should not be able to get away," added Fyodor Drozdov,
Pushnitsky's colleague rooting in the dirt of the forest. "If we cannot get
the killers, at least let's bring the crime out into the open."
What drives the two men to anger is the tendency of many of their fellow
Russians, and the wider world, to rationalize, doubt or somehow excuse the
state-sponsored killing of tens of millions of Soviet citizens from the
earliest days of the Bolsheviks until the death of Josef Stalin in 1953,
and some even later.
Even as Memorial, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to uncover
crimes of Communist terror and win redress for victims, was announcing its
find of the Toksovo execution grounds after a 14-year search, politicians
were calling for the reinstatement of a monument to one of the chief
killers, Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the first Bolshevik secret police.
The forest near Toksovo, Memorial estimates, could hold the bones of 32,000
people executed from the late 1920s until the late 1930s, on the eve of
World War II. That would make it perhaps the single biggest grave of
Stalinist victims found in the former Soviet Union.
And yet a monument that Memorial erected in St. Petersburg to the victims
of a Communist campaign of terror was defaced in September with the words:
"They should have killed more."
Eleven years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the FSB -- the successor
agency to the NKVD, the KGB and other Soviet secret police agencies -- is
still stonewalling about how many people were killed and exactly where they
are buried, said Irena Flige, head of Memorial's office in St. Petersburg.
It took Memorial 14 years of deduction, investigation and detective work --
initiated by Flige's husband, Veniamin Iofe, a former political prisoner
who died in April -- to find the first remains. They were unearthed Aug. 20
in these woods controlled by the Ministry of Defense and used as an
artillery firing range since czarist times.
The very secrecy of the killings proves that the Stalinist regime knew the
executions were a crime, something to be kept hidden, Flige said.
Prisoners were loaded into Black Marias in the middle of the night from St.
Petersburg's Kresty Prison and the NKVD's "Big House" headquarters and
driven over a bumpy dirt track to a small access road that led into the
forest. The appearance of this road to nowhere in aerial photographs dating
to the 1920s was the first clue that led Iofe to believe that graves would
be found in this area, said Flige, 42, an anti-Soviet dissident since age 18.
Now that more than 50 graves have been found, she said, there can be little
doubt that this was the NKVD's main graveyard in St. Petersburg during the
1937-38 period known as the Great Terror. In its work there, Memorial has
dug down only about 3 feet. The group presumes that there are many layers
below, but it says it is not interested in disturbing the dead by doing a
complete excavation.
Memorial's knowledge about the grave site is "fragmentary," according to
Flige, because FSB authorities in the region are refusing any detailed
discussion with her group. The FSB is saying only that it has no written
records of a graveyard or of mass executions near Toksovo.
"We interpret this as a problem of crimes against humanity," Flige said.
"Since the FSB is the direct legal heir of both the KGB and NKVD, we
believe their categorical denial of assistance to us should be considered
as concealment of information."
Official Denial
Although she does not know who all the victims are, she strongly suspects
that one is Father Pavel Florensky, a pre-revolutionary Russian theologian,
writer and scientist who refused to surrender his philosophical opposition
to Bolshevism. Documents from government archives show that he was to be
executed in the vicinity of Toksovo in December 1937.
The Defense Ministry, which has jurisdiction over the woods, said it, like
the FSB, knows of no grave site from its records. And now, Flige said, the
military is saying it will not renew a permit for access to the site until
Memorial provides archival evidence for the graves' existence, something --
according to Flige -- that it knows to be impossible.
Meanwhile, an explosion has left a huge crater on the road to the site. Now
it can be reached only by foot or bicycle, she said.
Although Flige suspects that the FSB asked the military to blow up the
road, she says she is not discouraged.
"Nothing will stop us," she said. "We have not stopped our excavations."
Memorial's estimate of 32,000 victims in Toksovo is based on subtraction.
About 40,000 people in what was then Leningrad and its surrounding region
were killed in the Great Terror, but the one known grave of the victims is
believed to hold only about 8,000.
The discovery of the graves has electrified sons and daughters of victims,
now in their 60s and 70s. Their lives were permanently changed after
nighttime visits of the secret police, which meant that their fathers or
mothers -- or both -- were to be consumed by the Stalinist killing machine.
"I want to go to Toksovo and go down on my knees there and take a handful
of earth home in a little bag and keep it on my desk, where I can always
look at it, touch it and maybe talk to it," said Mela Lyubavskaya, 75, who
lost her father -- a devoted party member -- on the night of Feb. 19, 1937,
when she was 10.
Her father, Pavel Lazarevich Bulat, 36, was executed a few months later.
His wife, Nina, was sent to a camp. Mela and her sister, 3, went to
orphanages, where they were raised to detest their disgraced father and
worship Stalin, the constructor and master of the apparatus of terror. It
was an experience shared by millions, none of whom could speak openly about
their pain until decades afterward.
Andrei Dybovsky, a St. Petersburg forensic crime expert, said he examined
12 skeletons from the Toksovo site. Many of the skulls had bullet holes
ranging in diameter from 9 to 11.43 millimeters in the back, which he said
would match the killing style and weapons of NKVD executioners of the time.
The excavations and search for more graves would continue until the first
freeze, then resume in the spring with the aid of archeologists and
geophysicists, Dybovsky said.
The remains that are unearthed are photographed, studied and then put back
into the ground.
Personal Interests
Both Pushnitsky and Drozdov, the volunteer excavators, had personal as well
as historical interest in bringing forth the truth. Pushnitsky's
great-uncle was executed during the Great Terror. Drozdov was born in a
Stalinist labor camp.
Drozdov, 55, a mathematician, said that at the least he would like to see a
sense of shame develop in Russia, where even today prominent people are
often slain but the killers are rarely brought to justice.
"We should make sure that a person asked to do this in the future would
think about how his children and grandchildren will feel about him someday.
"Nobody is shocked that the government ignores this," said Drozdov, who
wants those perpetrators still alive to be prosecuted. "They do not want to
deal with the people who committed this crime."
The difficulty of getting Russia to deal honestly with its past was shown
by the recent proposal, by Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov, to re-erect the
statue of Dzerzhinsky, and by the defacing of the memorial to victims of
Communist terror.
The vandals also drew a swastika and a Star of David on the stone and
painted over verses by Anna Akhmatova about Soviet-era repression.
Memorial's monument to the victims was put in place in early September. It
was formed from a large rock from the Solovetsky Islands, site of one of
the first Communist labor camps beginning in the 1920s.
"We ... felt it was the right time," Flige said, "because the rumors of
having Dzerzhinsky put back up were already circulating."
The toppling of the Dzerzhinsky statue in 1991 outside the KGB headquarters
in Moscow after the failed hard-line Communist coup against Mikhail S.
Gorbachev symbolically heralded the victory of Boris N. Yeltsin, the end of
one-party Communist rule and the demise of the Soviet Union a few months
later.
The fact that Moscow's mayor now wants the statue put back -- purportedly
for its artistic merit -- is seen by many here as a clumsy attempt to curry
favor with President Vladimir V. Putin, who served as a KGB colonel and has
installed many of his former colleagues in important political posts.
As Flige sees it, nothing fundamental has changed in Russia over the last
decade, and the Gorbachev-Yeltsin era was simply one of the periodic thaws
in an overall Russian political climate of repression.
"And that seems now to be coming to an end," she said. "First we get a
president who is an ex-KGB colonel, then we move on to [restoring] the
Dzerzhinsky monument."
Victor L. Masaytis, 76, the son of a Great Terror victim in St. Petersburg,
said he has difficulty understanding what is happening.
"This is blasphemy," he said of the push to reinstall the Dzerzhinsky
statue. "This is utter blasphemy."
Masaytis recalled the night they came for his father: Dec. 5, 1937. His
father was a prominent engineer working on Leningrad's water system.
But in the mad logic of the Great Terror, the father, an ethnic Lithuanian,
was singled out to die for an alleged anti-state conspiracy by Latvians.
Masaytis was 11, and he recalls that he could not keep his eyes open all
night while strange men searched their apartment, standing around, taking
notes and seeking evidence.
"I fell asleep. I did not see my father being taken away," he said, 65
years after the event.
Instead, Masaytis recalls only "the shadow of a soldier, with a rifle and a
bayonet, standing behind our matte glass door. That image I can remember
very well."
******
#12
The Guardian (UK)
November 18, 2002
Inside Europe
By Ian Black
Vladimir Putin did not really seem to be out to win friends at last week's
EU-Russia summit. The good news from Brussels was that a serious obstacle
to the imminent enlargement of the union was overcome by the deal done on
the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad: Russians living in the former East
Prussia will be able to travel elsewhere in the Fatherland with transit
documents from surrounding Lithuania and Poland, which are poised to join
the club in 2004. Sealed trains, conjuring up memories of Lenin's famous
journey in 1917, are to be the subject of a feasibility study.
The bad news was that it is hard to see how Europeans are to have any
influence over the appalling situation in Chechnya. Putin simply resorted
to abuse when asked by a journalist about the use of anti-personnel mines
in the Caucasian republic. Non-Russian speakers were baffled because the
interpretation (thoughtfully provided by the Kremlin) mysteriously packed
up at the crucial moment. It took the combined efforts of Russian TV and an
unexpurgated transcript from the European Commission to clarify that the
president had in fact wittily suggested that the circumcision available for
Muslims in tolerant multicultural Russia should be extended to castration
for people who have the temerity to raise such issues.
With the horrors of the Moscow theatre carnage fresh in everyone's minds,
no one on the EU side was going to give Putin too hard a time. But Chris
Patten - worried about access for humanitarian workers - was stung into
insisting that exchanges had been "vigorous". And as Anders Fogh Rasmussen,
the Danish prime minister, defended his decision to permit a Chechen
congress in Copenhagen, the Russian leader wore a mask of Brezhnevite
impassivity, while, delightfully, Romano Prodi winked approvingly at the
plucky Dane.
No one doubts that Europe needs to work on its relations with Russia:
trade, energy, the environment, nuclear safety and other issues will become
even more important when it is right on the borders of the union -
amazingly, in less than 18 months.
But the whole episode was deeply troubling, leading some to wonder out
loud, not for the first time, why it is that nice Tony Blair is so
infatuated with the uncouth ex-KGB man. It's only to be hoped, in any
event, that the tone is a tad more elevated next time the partners in this
important strategic relationship get together.
Talking of strategic relationships, it's fingers crossed that the new
Turkish government will not over-react to Valery Giscard d'Estaing's
carefully timed bombshell, in which he declared that Turks could never join
the EU - weeks before the Copenhagen summit is set to give them a coveted
date to start accession negotiations.
VGE, busily consulting the Pope, didn't actually say it was a Christian
club, but it was hard to avoid the conclusion that that's what he meant.
Europe badly needs Turkey's help over Cyprus - another cliffhanger in the
enlargement endgame - and over defence.
As long as Ankara blocks EU access to Nato equipment, Europeans are not
going to be able to mount even limited peacekeeping missions, like the one
they want to run in Macedonia. With Nato flaunting its transformation into
a global anti-terrorist alliance at the Prague summit, it would be good if
the EU could finally do something to advance its efforts to be a modest
player in its own backyard, let alone on the world stage.
If it did it might win a bit more respect - even from Putin. Sharp
reminders then, in short order, from Russia and Turkey, that Europe needs
to think harder about how to handle the difficult partners beyond its
expanding frontiers.
******
#13
Harvard Crimson
November 12, 2002
Gorbachev Reflects on Economic Change
Former Soviet president tells Sanders his reforms were successful
By ELISABETH S. THEODORE
Crimson Staff Writer
In a widely anticipated campus appearance—his first in a decade—former
Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev looked back yesterday on the era of
perestroika that he had engineered.
Through an interpreter, Gorbachev told a packed Sanders Theatre that he
believes the restructuring, which involved limited privatization of the
Soviet economy, was a success even though economic problems plagued Russia
throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
He argued those who criticized his economic reforms as coming too slowly
failed to recognize the difficulty of effecting change from within the
repressive party structure.
“If you insist on an unrealistic pace of change, it is reckless,” he said.
“When I was being accused of not being resolute enough, I said we would
need at least 20 or 30 years to put perestroika on track,” he added.
During six years as head of the U.S.S.R. Communist Party, Gorbachev
instituted economic and social reforms that eventually led to the
dissolution of the Soviet Union and the introduction of capitalism.
In response to questions following his speech he said he had neglected to
ensure that the increased money flow from the partially decentralized
economy actually led to a stable consumer market.
“People tend to make their judgments based on what they see in the stores,”
he said. “The result was that people were wondering, they were asking,
maybe Gorbachev was not the best leader.”
He recalled one opponent telling him, when he resigned as president in
1991, that “the era of Gorbachev is over.” But Gorbachev said he thought
then—and now—that the “era of Gorbachev is just beginning.”
“The choice in favor of freedom, democracy, market economics, in favor of
political pluralism—this is something we are still mastering,” he said.
A 1995 poll by the Gorbachev Foundation, which the former president heads,
found that 42 percent of Russians thought the economic reforms were
necessary in retrospect, while 45 percent did not. These results were “very
positive,” he said.
“The poll was happening in 1995, when people had been badly affected by the
breakup of the country,” Gorbachev said. “When most of the people in Russia
lived in poverty and hardship, 42 percent said perestroika was necessary.”
Support for political reforms such as democratic elections and freedom of
religion were far higher, he said.
“I believe this is an endorsement and grounds for hope that after a period
of hardship and difficulty, people will build a new Russia, a free and
democratic Russia,” he said.
He said that it was too early to evaluate fully the impact of perestroika.
But he said reforms under his successor, Boris Yeltsin, that moved the
country further toward a market economy came with “too high a
price”—rampant poverty.
Gorbachev also took a shot at the international community—and Harvard—for
its mistakes in attempts to assist his country in decentralizing its
economy during the Yeltsin years.
“I’m not blaming Harvard, but a few people from Harvard imposed a model
that was too radical for Russia,” he said.
He alluded to the efforts of the Harvard Institute for International
Development, which received $50 million from the U.S. Agency for
International Development to advise Russian economists during the 1990s but
is the basis of a suit against the University filed by the federal
government for conflict of interest policy violations.
Prioritizing “universal human values” and international cooperation should
be the focus of political leaders today, said Gorbachev, who won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1990.
He also said that “no nation should try to govern the world from one
center” and framed the United States’ tensions with Iraq as a conflict
between employing “military force” or “international law” to resolve
disputes.
“I welcome the agreement in the Security Council,” he added, referring to a
resolution on Iraq weapons inspections that was approved unanimously last
week.
In response to a question on Russia’s three-year war with Chechen
separatists, Gorbachev said, “If I were president of my country, there
wouldn’t have been this war in the first place.”
He said he thought Chechnya should “be a republic within Russia but it
should have a special autonomous status.”
In the first part of his speech, the 71-year-old Gorbachev outlined the
political philosophy that he followed throughout his lengthy career.
“I am a person willing to compromise, but compromise should not be at the
expense of values and goals,” he said. “In all situations, I remained cool.”
“My creed has been to select a team of strong individuals, not to be afraid
one would be a competitor,” he added.
He said that he had been shaped by living through Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, the Nazi occupation of his home district
during World War II and the country’s rebuilding period following the war.
He also cited Nikita S. Khrushchev’s celebrated “Secret Speech” of 1956, in
which he criticized Stalin for an overly repressive regime. Gorbachev said
this set the youth of the time on the path that eventually led to reform.
“This was for us a breath of fresh air, a breath of freedom that remained
with us,” he said. “Those who started in politics at that time had a
critical approach and retained a critical approach to everything.”
The speech, sponsored by Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian
Studies, was the first by Gorbachev at Harvard since he spoke at the
Kennedy School of Government’s ARCO Forum in May 1992.
The Davis Center made a donation to the Gorbachev Foundation to secure the
former president’s visit to Harvard, although University spokesperson Chris
Ahearn said he did not know the amount.
Free tickets for the event, handed out last week, were gone in just an hour
and a half.
University President Lawrence H. Summers and Davis Center Director Timothy
Colton, Feldberg professor of government and Russian studies, introduced
Gorbachev.
“I thought it was exciting to hear the perspective of the man who was
there,” Summers said after the speech.
******
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