Johnson's Russia List
#6558
19 November 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. The Hindu (India): Vladimir Radyuhin, Russia may ban Barbie dolls.
2. AP: Bush Will Assure Russia Over NATO.
3. AFP: Russia sees expanding NATO as dying force.
4. AFP: Solzhenitsyn's time-bomb: "Ivan Denisovich", 40 years on.
5. The New Republic: Richard Pipes, Alone Together. Solzhenitsyn and
the Jews, revisited.
6. Luba Schwartzman: TV1 Review.
7. Newsweek: Eve Conant, Moscow Gets Fashionable. Purple jackets and
feather boas are out. Armani is in. Russians are toning down.
8. Japan Times: Russell Working Only bitter solutions remain in Chechnya.
9. The Russia Journal: Ekaterina Larina, The oligarchs' view of freedom
of speech.
10. The Russia Journal: Matt Taibbi, The double standards in explaining
hatred.
11. Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Vladimir Bogdanov, Not One Step Forward But Three
Steps Back. Once It Finds Itself in Central Asia, United States Will Never
Leave. (Moscow Daily Notes 'Diktat' in US 'Russian Democracy Act')
12. Robert Bruce Ware and Ralph Davis: Reply to Brandenberger JRL #6557.]
*******
#1
The Hindu (India)
November 18, 2002
Russia may ban Barbie dolls
By Vladimir Radyuhin
MOSCOW NOV. 17. Russian authorities may ban the famous Barbie dolls along
with a range of other toys suspected of damaging children's psyche.
The venerable Barbie doll is a prime target in a war declared by the Russian
Education Ministry against toys that "provoke aggression, fear and premature
sexuality'' among children.
Russian experts have found that Barbie affects the psychology of small girls,
making them pretentious, indifferent and sexually aware. ``Girls who play
with Barbie dolls start feeling like grownup women who buy fancy dresses and
posh furniture,'' said Natalya Grishayeva, psychologist.
"As they grow up the girls also tend to develop an inferiority complex if
they can't look exactly like the Barbie doll.''
Barbie has been a smash success in Russia since it opened its market to
imports ten years ago. Russian shops today offer a wide range of foreign-made
toys, some of which are feared to be harmful to children's tender souls.
The Education Ministry now wants to rebuild a system of stringent controls
over the quality of toys that existed in the Soviet Union but fell apart
after its collapse.
A special government agency will test all toys and computer games for their
social, psychological and pedagogical effects on children and ban those that
fail the test. The move comes amid growing concern over the onslaught of
Western mass culture on Russian society. Earlier this year the government
decided to support domestic film production to reduce the domination of
Hollywood movies in the Russian cinemas and on television.
*******
#2
Bush Will Assure Russia Over NATO
November 18, 2002
By TOM RAUM
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Monday he'll assure Russian President
Vladimir Putin this week that Russia ``has nothing to fear'' from NATO
expansion into territory once claimed by the Soviet Union.
Bush also said the alliance will play an increasing role in tracking down
international terrorists.
``Russia is not a threat, and therefore the military strategies of NATO need
to be changed to recognize that new reality,'' Bush said, previewing his trip
in a round-table interview with eastern European reporters.
On Iraq, Bush promised to consult with allies over possible strikes, even
though the United States is not directly seeking NATO's help in confronting
Saddam Hussein.
``The NATO alliance understands this issue,'' Bush said. ``One way or the
other, he is going to be disarmed.''
The president leaves Tuesday for Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic,
for a summit of leaders of the 19 NATO nations. He will also visit Russia and
soon-to-be NATO members Lithuania and Romania on the five-day trip.
The president offered support to Putin for his handling of last month's
hostage crisis in a Moscow theater that left 128 captives dead.
``He made some very tough decisions. People try to blame Vladimir, they ought
to blame the terrorists,'' Bush said. ``They're the ones who caused this
situation - not President Putin.''
The president noted that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in his recent
audiotaped message was ``praising these Muslim attacks,'' including the one
in Moscow, and mentioned Chechnya.
``To the extent that there are al-Qaida members infiltrating Russia, they
need to be dealt with, they need to be brought to justice,'' Bush said.
The Cold War-vintage North Atlantic Treaty Organization is bringing into its
fold three Baltic nations - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - once claimed by
Moscow as part of the Soviet Union, a claim never officially recognized by
the United States. Also joining are former Soviet bloc nations Bulgaria,
Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joined NATO in 1999.
After the Prague meeting, Bush flies to Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg -
his second visit in a year.
``I'm going to Russia to make it clear to Russia and to Vladimir Putin they
have nothing to fear from NATO expansion ... to explain why I think it's a
positive development,'' Bush said.
``The Warsaw Pact doesn't exist, but there is a threat to all of us in the
form of international and global terrorism, which we must be able to deal
with,'' Bush said.
Of the seven-year long battle between Russian troops and independence-minded
rebels in the small Caucasus Mountain republic of Chechnya, Bush said, ``I
hope Chechnya can be solved peacefully.''
``I will continue to talk to Vladimir about the need to protect and recognize
the rights of minorities in any country, and at the same time deal with
terrorism. I hope he can find that balance. I think he can,'' Bush said.
Several times, Bush referred to the Russian leader by his first name.
He also praised Russia for helping to draft the strong resolution on weapons
inspections in Iraq that was ultimately adopted by the U.N. Security Council.
U.N. weapons inspectors returned to Iraq on Monday.
``This isn't a free pass'' for Saddam, Bush said. ``We expect him to disarm.''
Bush will hold separate one-on-one meetings on the sidelines of the NATO
summit with Czech, Turkish and French leaders and with NATO Secretary-General
George Robertson - but not with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who
angered Bush by opposing U.S. plans toward Iraq during his re-election bid.
Administration officials sought Monday to play down the dispute.
``He'll certainly see Chancellor Schroeder during the course of the
meetings,'' said Secretary of State Colin Powell during a session with local
high school editors. ``They'll be in meetings together for two days. They
will have an opportunity to exchange greetings.''
Thousands of militant protesters have said they will converge on Prague
during the two-day meeting. ``I am mindful of what happens when a U.S.
president shows up at times,'' Bush said. ``There is going to be a lot of
noise and clamor.'' But Bush said he had confidence that Czech authorities
would maintain order.
*******
#3
Russia sees expanding NATO as dying force
November 18, 2002
AFP
Moscow is facing a daunting expansion of NATO to Russia's borders with
equanimity, after recognizing the alliance as a dying force that has little
bearing on its relations with Europe or the United States.
This pragmatic approach befits Vladimir Putin -- a Russian president who
abandoned the die-hard Soviet-style foreign policy of his predecessor Boris
Yeltsin which often seemed to have less substance than bravado.
Top Moscow officials admit the November 21-22 NATO summit in Prague will be
bruising for Russia's prestige. The three Baltic states and several former
Warsaw Pact nations are likely to be offered admission. But many here also
say the Prague summit is much less a slap in the face than an inconvenience.
"Everyone says NATO is so important -- but no one seems to be able to explain
why," Vladimir Lukin, the deputy speaker of Russia's lower house of
parliament and a former ambassador to Washington, told AFP.
"Relations between Russia and the United States, and Russia and Europe, have
developed very rapidly on their own terms in recent times," Lukin said.
"The problem of NATO is no longer an issue (for Russia). The more NATO
expands, the more useless it becomes."
Russian officials point to the US-led campaign to oust the Taliban in
Afghanistan and its planned campaign in Iraq to demonstrate how Washington's
consistent post-Cold War policy has been to make the Atlantic Alliance
irrelevant as the bloc expands.
"The Americans were the first to understand that NATO is no longer serious,"
Konstantin Kosachyov, deputy head of the Duma's foreign affairs committee,
told AFP.
"Before September 11, they were very careful about who made it in (to NATO).
Now, they let in everyone," he said.
"This means the Americans have abandoned it. NATO is no longer a military
organization. It has not been used in Afghanistan, and it will not be used in
Iraq."
NATO expansion -- along with US troop movements in the former Soviet
republics of Central Asia and in Georgia in the volatile Caucasus -- has
generally been viewed as Putin's concession for good economic relations with
the United States.
Some here argue those good relations never came, but Putin will still host US
President George W. Bush at a former imperial summer mansion in northwestern
Russia -- near the NATO border -- just a few days after the alliance expands.
The Russian leader is unlikely to have agreed to the talks with Bush if he
had taken expansion to heart, analysts here say.
"We hope that mutual military restraint and mutual confidence will serve as a
basis for future relations between Russia and NATO," Putin said earlier this
month in Brussels after talks with NATO chief George Robertson.
The general consensus among Western observers in Moscow however has been that
Putin exercises only limited authority over his military -- much of its
senior command a Soviet remnant taught to treat NATO with caution at best.
And the Russian military's response to the improvement in Russia-NATO ties
has been unenthusiastic. One top commander seemed at a loss when asked to
explain the new relationship.
"Right now, we are speaking to NATO like equals," Anatoly Kvashnin, head of
the Russian general chief of staff, told reporters.
But one of Kvashnin's phrases spoken moments later seemed to recognize that
his was wishful thinking.
"We want to be listened to -- and treated as equal partners" by NATO,
Kvashnin said in an apparent contradiction to his earlier statement.
One of Kvashnin's main worries is a Soviet-era agreement called the
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE). This limits the number of tanks and
other conventional weapons that can be stationed by Moscow and Western forces
across the eastern and southern edges of Europe that divide it with former
Soviet states.
To Russia's chagrin, the Baltic states have so far refused to accept the
agreement.
This means the three republics could station more NATO tanks and other
weapons near Russia than are positioned -- legally -- on the other side of
the frontline.
While maintaining their customary caution, some Russians politicians say this
is just Cold War talk, and US officials seem to agree.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked during a May Russia-NATO summit
in Italy that the two sides were heading to Prague "in a great deal more calm
an atmosphere than might have been expected."
*******
#4
Solzhenitsyn's time-bomb: "Ivan Denisovich", 40 years on
November 18, 2002
AFP
Russia paid tribute Monday to the publication, exactly 40 years earlier, of
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", an event
of seismic proportions setting off a chain reaction that led finally to the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
The novella, which appeared in the literary review Novy Mir and for the first
time revealed the conditions of life in Stalin's labour camps, had "the
effect of a time-bomb," the daily Izvestia wrote.
"Without Ivan Denisovich, there would have been no perestroika, no reforms in
the 1990s. We would not have recovered our true history," the paper's
literary critic, Alexander Arkhangelsky, said. "Since then we have wandered
for 40 years to pass from slavery to freedom," Arkhangelsky said of the book,
published with the tacit assent of then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Russian television was also due to mark the occasion with a broadcast about
the book.
Years later, in his three-volume "The Gulag Archipelago", Solzhenitsyn
recalled that his book "succeeded in introducing a chink of freedom through
the iron gates that were noisily reclosed afterwards."
"When the zeks (political prisoners) began to read my text, their reaction
was a mixture of pain and joy," he said.
Hundreds of former prisoners who had suffered agonies in Stalin's forced
labour camps wrote to Solzhenitsyn after the text appeared.
The 96,000 copies of the issue of Novy Mir containing the novella sold out
immediately, as did two subsequent editions of the magazine totalling 850,000
copies.
It was later estimated that if the Soviet planning system had allowed it, 8.5
million people would have bought the book.
Four decades on, it is difficult to appreciate fully the explosive impact of
Solzhenitsyn's revelations at a time when the Communist party and its
political police in the KGB kept an iron grip on what could be said and read
in public.
"There are three atom bombs in the world," one of Solzhenitsyn's friends told
him, weeping over the manuscript. "Kennedy has one, Khrushchev has another,
and you have the third."
Georges Nivat, Solzhenitsyn's biographer, told AFP that the book had
"shattered a taboo: it brough the existence of the gulag into the light after
decades of silence, and forced the West to believe in it."
The book's eponymous hero is more than just a downtrodden victim. "Even in
the camp, where he works as a builder, he takes pride in his skills, he
retains a certain spirituality, resulting in a mixture of denounciation and
hope," Nivat said.
The character's personal qualities were significant factors in persuading
Khrushchev to accept Novy Mir editor Alexander Tvardovsky's plea that the
book be published.
For a short while even the party applauded: "Our literature has gained a rare
talent," its official organ Pravda wrote, seeing in the text "a truth that
looks us in the eyes."
The truth could not be borne long as Khrushchev's thaw abrupted ended and a
new ice age began under Leonid Brezhnev.
"I still have that copy of Novy Mir," the review's current editor Andrei
Vasilyevsky told AFP.
"The pages 7 to 75, corresponding to the Denisovich story, were torn out in
the early 1970s on the censor's orders."
"Denisovich" also marked the resounding arrival of a world-ranking writer,
one who was to go on to win the Nobel prize for literature.
"Of all of Solzhenitsyn's books, it is the most important and the best,"
former dissident Vyacheslav Bakhmin said.
Forty years after its first appearance, "One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich" is a set text at the end of secondary-school studies throughout
Russia.
*******
#5
The New Republic
November 25, 2002
Alone Together
Solzhenitsyn and the Jews, revisited
By Richard Pipes
Richard Pipes is professor emeritus of history at Harvard University and the
author most recently of Communism: A History (Random House).
Recently alexander Solzhenitsyn published a long book called Dvesti let
vmeste, or Two Hundred Years Together, the first of two volumes devoted to
the history of Jews in Russia from the third partition of Poland in 1795,
when Russia, until then effectively without Jews, suddenly acquired one
million Jewish subjects. It covers the years between 1795 and 1916. The
follow-up volume will bring the story up to the year 1995.
One cannot help but marvel at the intellectual energy of a novelist who in
his seventies undertakes research on a vast and tangled historical theme with
which he has only the most superficial familiarity. In his introduction,
Solzhenitsyn says that during his work on the Russian Revolution he had
frequently run into the problem of Russo-Jewish relations but found no
history that illuminated the subject in a balanced matter. His book is an
attempt to remedy this lacuna. He makes a conscious effort to show empathy
for both sides, calling on Jews and Russians to display "patient mutual
understanding and an acknowledgment of their share of sin"--the ultimate sin
being the 1917 revolution that brought Russia untold miseries. Someone
familiar with Solzhenitsyn's treatment of Jews in his historical novels
cannot escape the feeling that, at least in some measure, this undertaking is
an effort to rid the author of the reputation for anti-Semitism. Although
Solzhenitsyn has always indignantly rejected this accusation, it was not
entirely unmerited. In Lenin in Zurich, he depicted the Russian Jew Alexander
Parvus-Helphand as a slimy, sinister, almost satanic figure as he attempted
to hire the exile Lenin to work for the Germans. In The Red Wheel, when
dealing with the assassination of his hero Peter Stolypin by Dmitry Bogrov
(whom he named "Mordka" or Mordechai, lest anyone miss his nationality),
Solzhenitsyn attributed to the assassin, without any historical warrant, a
desire to prevent Stolypin from reforming Russia, since what was good for
Russia was bad for the Jews. In fact, Bogrov came from a thoroughly
assimilated family--his grandfather was a convert and his father a member of
the Kievan Nobles' Club--and he had no Jewish interests in mind.
Solzhenitsyn's new book (which is not yet available in English) helps to
clarify the writer's attitude toward Jews. He draws a sharp distinction
between religious Jews and assimilated Jews, notably those assimilated Jews
who joined the revolutionary movement. For the former he has admiration that
verges on mystical reverence. "The preservation of the Jewish people for more
than two thousand years in diaspora," he writes, "arouses amazement and
respect": "The role of the small but energetic Jewish nation in the vast and
expansive history of the world is undeniable, powerful, persistent, and even
salient. Russian history included. But it remains an historical mystery for
all of us. For the Jews as well. This strange mission by no means brings them
happiness either." He also respects Zionists and expresses esteem for Israel.
But his attitude toward assimilated Jews is ambivalent, and he seems
uncertain about whether or not they contributed to Russia's well-being. His
difficulty is due to the fact that he is a nationalist; nationalism in
general--and Russian nationalism in particular--is not readily compatible
with tolerance toward Jews, partly for religious reasons, partly because they
refuse to dissolve without a trace in the ethnic community in the midst of
which they live.
This ambivalence is apparent in Solzhenitsyn's treatment of the Jewish
contribution to the pre-revolutionary Russian economy. He describes in
considerable detail the important functions that Jews performed in the
country's economy, thanks to their industry and their ability to put capital
to its most effective use. They were prominent in banking, and they launched
Russia's sugar and timber industries. They financed much of the country's
railroad construction. At one time they controlled the bulk of its grain
trade. These activities helped Russia to attain a spectacular rate of
economic growth at the end of the nineteenth century. Still, the czarist
authorities tended to regard the Jews as engaged in "unproductive" work, and
on more than one occasion they attempted to settle Jews forcibly on the land.
Solzhenitsyn recounts these economic activities, but in a manner intended to
convey how good Russia was to the Jews rather than how good the Jews were for
Russia.
To his credit, he disposes of the canard, widespread in late czarist Russia,
that the Jews exploited the peasants. He cites the historian I. Orshanskii to
the effect that Jewish traders opened markets for peasants by transforming
articles of consumption into commodities, in this manner enriching the
peasantry. The historical evidence indeed indicates that Russian peasants
fared better in the regions populated by Jews--that is, the so-called Pale of
Settlement--than in other parts of the empire where legal residence was
forbidden to Jews.
Solzhenitsyn reserves his hostility for those assimilated Jews who, from the
1860s onward, in large numbers joined the revolutionary movement. He cites
name after name, and he conveys the impression that Jews supplied the
leadership as well as the rank and file of this movement, adding naively that
his stress on Jewish radicals "does not mean, of course, that there were not
many and important revolutionaries among the Russians."
The subject is very complicated. Although Jews, especially converts, did play
a significant part in radical subversion, the ranks of the revolutionaries
were certainly dominated by Russians. At one point Solzhenitsyn asserts quite
wrongly (citing a Jewish writer) that Jews imported Marxism to Russia. In
reality, this was the work of Russians such as George Plekhanov, who
organized in Switzerland Russia's first Marxist party, and Peter Struve, who
popularized Marx's ideas inside the country. Statistics on this controversial
subject are scarce, and most of the evidence is impressionistic and
anecdotal.
Still, it cannot be doubted that the proportion of Jews in the ranks of
Russian revolutionaries significantly exceeded the proportion of Jews in the
population at large. This fact, previously played down by Jewish historians,
was confirmed a few years ago by Erich Haberer in his study Jews and
Revolution in NineteenthCentury Russia. But what sort of criterion is this by
which to measure the role of an ethnic group in public life? If Jews were
prominent in socialist ranks, they also stood out in capitalist circles: in
the judgment of the German historian Werner Sombart, they actually invented
capitalism. They were also over-represented among physicists, chemists,
mathematicians, medical doctors, chess players, university students, and the
many other occupations that called for intellectual distinction. Indeed, if
the standard is to be the share in the population at large, then it must also
be noted that Jews were disproportionately attracted also to fascism. "In
Italy there were innumerable Fascist Jews," Zeev Sternhell observed in The
Birth of Fascist Ideology. "Their percentage in the movement was much higher
than in the population as a whole." Conversely, they were under-represented
among Russia's murderers and arsonists.
So what are we to make of all this? Only that, as Solzhenitsyn likes to
stress, Jews are a highly dynamic nation: as such, they are over-represented
in most fields of endeavor in which they participate. Just to set the record
straight, let it be noted that in 1917, when they got their chance to vote
freely in national elections, the majority of Russian Jews cast ballots not
for the Socialists or the Communists but for the Zionists: thus, in the
All-Jewish Congress, they cast 60 percent of the vote for the Zionists. The
Communist Party census of 1922 revealed that less than one thousand Jews had
joined the party before 1917.
There is another aspect to this vexing issue. Virtually all the Jews who
joined the revolutionary movement broke with their religion and community:
they were apostates. Typical was the attitude of Trotsky when he was
approached by the chief rabbi of Moscow during the Civil War with a plea to
help fellow Jews victimized by the pogroms. "I am not a Jew," he angrily
replied. "I am an Internationalist." The high percentage of Jews in the ranks
of the revolutionaries only serves to demonstrate that Jews who abandon their
religion and turn their backs on their people become uprooted and hence
capable of the wildest excesses--which does not detract from Judaism, but
redounds, on the contrary, to its credit.
To be fair, for all his emphasis on their participation in radical ranks,
Solzhenitsyn absolves Jews of responsibility for the revolution: "No, in no
way can it be said that Jews 'made' the revolution of 1905 or 1917 as it was
not made by another nation taken as a whole." If there is a bias in this
book, it is in favor of the czarist government, which Solzhenitsyn strives to
acquit of its reputation for persistent hostility toward its Jewish minority,
and its subjecting the Jews to no end of discrimination and persecution. Up
to a point, he is right. The czarist government's treatment of its Jewish
subjects was inconsistent. It vacillated between the desire to draw Jews out
of their seclusion and have them assimilate and the contrary desire to
isolate them. The former trend prevailed in the first half of the nineteenth
century, the latter in the second half, when Jewish involvement in the
revolutionary movement persuaded the government that the Jews' assimilation
was dangerous. The result of these inconsistent policies was a legal
nightmare: in essence, Russian Jews could do nothing that they were not
specifically permitted to do, which necessitated the creation of a distinct
branch of jurisprudence. Constant exceptions were made to discriminatory
rules; and even when they were in force, such rules were overcome by bribing
the police.
What Solzhenitsyn almost entirely misses is the poisonous atmosphere that was
created by anti-Semitic propaganda emanating from the Orthodox church and
nationalist circles. Government censorship--which cracked down on liberal and
socialist publications whenever they called for political reform--gave free
rein to incitement against Jews in the daily and periodical press. If there
is a discussion in Solzhenitsyn's book of The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, a Russian forgery that for a century now has been fomenting murderous
anti-Semitism worldwide, including in Nazi Germany, I missed it. True,
similar hate propaganda flourished in contemporary France and Germany, but in
those countries, where there was freedom of speech and freedom of the press,
the government's blessing was not implied. Solzhenitsyn dismisses the
notorious Union of Russian People--which propagated the slogan "beat the
Yids, save Russia"--as an unimportant marginal group, but he ignores the fact
that it had hundreds of branches across the country, and incited pogroms, and
received government subsidies for such activities. Nor does he mention that
Nicholas II thought well enough of the Union of Russian People to accept its
insignia.
Still, Solzhenitsyn properly exonerates the czarist government from
responsibility for the terrible pogroms of the 1880s and the early 1900s.
Hearsay notwithstanding, no evidence has come to light that the government
instigated violence against Jews, let alone organized it. In not doing so, it
acted in its own interest, for it realized that riots against Jews could
readily turn first against Christian landlords and then against its own
officialdom. As he points out, the socialists/ revolutionaries of the
People's Will welcomed the pogroms for the same reason, seeing in them a
manifestation of "class consciousness." He himself interprets the pogroms as
spontaneous outbursts, which he blames, rather vaguely, on the "tragic
quality" of Russians and Ukrainians, "in moments of anger, to succumb to
blind passion ... unable to distinguish the guilty from the innocent."
For all his insistence that the record of czarism in its treatment of Jews is
much better than it has been customarily depicted, Solzhenitsyn shows
understanding for the hardships inflicted on Russian Jews. The Pale of
Settlement, introduced under Catherine the Great as a kind of Jewish
reservation, "cast a somber shade" (in his words) on Jewish existence up to
the very eve of revolution: it became increasingly unbearable as its
population exploded. Describing attempts to force Jews to turn to
agriculture, he acknowledges that farming is not a skill that can be learned
overnight: "agriculture is high art, inculcated in generations, and it is
futile to settle people on the land against their wishes or without their
cooperation." He describes the restrictions imposed on Jews as "vexing,
painful, even appalling." The coincidence between pogroms and the
celebrations of Christian Easter fills him "with bitterness and anxiety." The
Beilis trial of 1913, in which a Jew was accused of ritual murder (though
subsequently acquitted), he characterizes as a "debasement of justice." "How
not to understand their grief?" he wonders compassionately when Jews were
singled out for deportation from the frontier regions during World War I. He
notes that Jews who converted to Christianity enjoyed all the rights of
Russians of equal status, but asks whether it was "acceptable, morally as
well as practically, to give Jews access to life's bounties on condition that
they change their religion." (In this connection he makes an astonishing
error in asserting that Count Egor Kankrin, the finance minister of Nicholas
I, was the converted son of a rabbi, and Count Karl Nesselrode, Nicholas's
long-serving minister of foreign affairs, a convert from Judaism. In fact,
the former was born in the family of a German mining engineer, and the
latter's father was a Protestant count of the Holy Roman Empire.)
The source base of Solzhenitsyn's book is thin. He relies heavily on a few
secondary works, such as the sixteen-volume Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia, or
Jewish Encyclopedia, that was published on the eve of World War I, and Iurii
Gessen's standard two-volume Istoriia evreiskogo naroda v Rossii, or History
of the Jewish People in Russia, published in 1925 and 1927. Ignorance of
foreign languages has placed beyond Solzhenitsyn's reach the rich literature
on his subject in English, German, and French (not to mention Hebrew). These
lacunae, combined with his forceful interventions at each stage of the
narrative, make his history something more than a personal statement yet less
than a work of scholarship.
Still, Solzhenitsyn's book is a notable achievement in its attempt to place
the "problem" of Russian Jewry in political and social perspective, and one
that does credit to its author's reputation. If Solzhenitsyn does not quite
succeed in exonerating pre-revolutionary Russia of responsibility for
subjecting its Jewish citizens to uncivilized discrimination--after all, it
was the only Christian country that in the nineteenth century still subjected
its Jewish citizens to medieval disabilities--and even if he does not fully
understand the latter's predicament, at least he absolves himself of the
taint of anti-Semitism.
********
#6
TV1 Review
www.1tv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba_sch@hotmail.com)
Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information, Moscow office
HEADLINES
Monday, November 18, 2002
- Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov continues his trip to France. He
declared that the expansion of the European Union is certain to strengthen
the ties between Europe and Russia. This morning he arrived in Toulouse to
attend the session of a Commission for bilateral questions. The Russian
delegation will focus on questions concerning the energy and aerospace
industries.
- Musa Satushiev and Aleksandr Panov, the Red Cross drivers who were
kidnapped in Chechnya, returned to their homes in Nalchik today. The Red
Cross will continue its mission in Chechnya, but it will limit its activity
through the end of this month, while coordinating safe routes with Chechen
authorities.
- A Ukrainian man carrying 8 kilograms of trotile hexane was detained by the
Volokolamskoe Shosse McDonalds. A criminal investigation has been
initiated.
- Russia could become a member of the World Trade Organization by 2004,
Deputy Director General of the WTO Rufus Yerxa announced at an investment
symposium in Boston.
- 75% of Slavneft’s shares will be auctioned off in Moscow on 18 December.
- An international festival of Roma culture will be held in Moscow 11-14
December.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin held a number of working meetings at the
Kremlin. He met with Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin to discuss the
preparation of the 2003 budget for the third Duma reading; with Deputy Prime
Minister Viktor Khristenko to discuss the fuel and energy complex, as well
as preparations for the upcoming heating season and international
cooperation in the fuel and energy industry; and with Federation Council
Chairman Sergei Mironov to discuss the activity of the Federation Council
and its work on Russian national security issues.
- Chairman of the Duma Committee on International Affairs Dmitry Rogozin met
with the Chairman of the Lithuanian Sejm Arturas Paulauskas to discuss a
number of questions including the visa regime for Russian citizens traveling
between the Kaliningrad Oblast and the rest of the Russian Federation.
- The funeral of Lieutenant General Igor Shifrin, killed in Grozny last
Friday, was held in Moscow today.
- Representatives of the North Ossetian Interior Ministry declared that the
explosion at the Spartak stadium was acts of hooliganism rather than
terrorism.
- Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko declared that Belarus will not
change its political course towards Russia.
- The Russian Federation and South Africa signed a draft agreement on
cooperation in the development of the diamond industry.
- The house of one of Maskhadov’s field commanders was blown up by Basaev’s
men in the Achkhoi-Martanov region of Chechnya last night.
- Five ammunition caches have been discovered in Chechnya.
- Patriarch of All Russia Alexii II returns to his duties after the stay in
the hospital.
- A rebel fighter driving a car with a grenade launcher, several machine
guns and rifles, ammunition, communication devices, and maps of Georgia and
Chechnya, was detained in Ingushetia.
- Film director Eldar Ryazanov celebrates his 75th birthday today.
********
#7
Newsweek
international edition
November 18, 2002
Moscow Gets Fashionable
Purple jackets and feather boas are out. Armani is in. Russians are toning
down.
By Eve Conant
Inside Victoria Andreyanova's Moscow boutique, the decor as well as the
best-selling clothes are spartan and understated. Amid soft lighting, a
Sinead O'Connor disc spins on a chrome CD player. Andreyanova meets her
clients in the boutique's sleek underground cafe, where she shows them her
tailored blazers and skirts, made mainly of Scottish tweed. The 40-year-old
designer wears only the lightest of makeup, her hair cut in a simple blond
bob. In a scene that would have been unimaginable a few years ago, a group of
Italian cloth salesmen is gathered outside her door, suitcases full of
exquisite material in hand. She keeps them waiting as she ruminates on the
current state of Russian fashion. "Moscow's rich are tired of being
showoffs," she says. "Everyone gorged on whatever they could in the '90s, and
now they don't want to look like they're trying so hard. But don't get me
wrong: everyone still wants to be noticed." Not long ago the best way to get
noticed in Russia was to wear a purple suit jacket, gold chains or the
popular stiletto-miniskirt combination that endured even subzero windstorms.
But these days, feather boas and white knee-high boots are losing out to the
quieter charms of tweed and polished leather. In-your-face consumption is
passe, disdained as an excess of the high-rolling gaudiness that followed the
Soviet Union's collapse. Now prestige is marked by cool minimalism and
"class." "Style is a reflection on the values of your community," says
Levinson. "And what we see here is a high value on normalcy."
What's more, competition has finally hit the fashion marketplace. Muscovites
once again have money to spend, thanks to high oil prices and a bit of
distance from the 1998 financial crash. And they are spending it increasingly
in European boutiques, which seem to open in Moscow on a weekly basis. But
it's not just the wealthy "new Russians"--the elite group that made fast cash
as the Soviet state was falling apart--who are taking advantage of the
proliferation of Western shops. While chains like the Gap and Banana Republic
have not yet arrived, a number of stores--including Naf Naf, Levi's and TJ
Collection--have broadened access to Western fashions beyond the superrich.
Even secondhand shops selling chic European clothing are beginning to crop
up. In Moscow, the stilettoed, gangster-chic look is slowly fading away. "The
idea of the 'new Russians' is starting to vanish," says Alexey Levinson, a
sociologist and trend specialist with the Russian Center for Public Opinion
and Marketing Research. "They are dissolving and creating a sort of
upper-middle-class way of life." (Whether such a class even exists in Russia
is the subject of heated debate--but in Moscow at least, the term definitely
applies.)
The shift can be measured by the dramatic change in Russian tastes. When the
cash first started flowing in the early 1990s, the style of post-Soviet
capitalist cowboys was "pretty awful," says Levinson. "Take
[oligarch-in-exile] Boris Berezovsky. He had two higher degrees--but even he
didn't know how to wear a suit. How could he?" After all, Russia's nouveau
riche had no examples to follow. "Social circumstances changed overnight, and
those who got money created a new social class, where there were no rules
yet," says Levinson. Like the nouveau riche in any country, they were drawn
to flashy displays of wealth. Brands that were considered lower class in the
West were prized in Moscow, simply because they were Western and previously
inaccessible. The ravenous consumption of everything new, regardless of cost,
spawned the popular "new Russian" joke of the mid-'90s, in which two men
compare what they paid for an Italian tie: the one who spent $500 instead of
$1,000 was furious that he got ripped off.
It's getting a bit harder to make jokes about Russian style now. These days,
Muscovites want to--and can--wear the same clothes as Western Europeans and
Americans, whether they buy them at Yves Saint Laurent or at a used-clothing
store. Vladimir Kozhokaz, 25, is a coffeehouse hipster whose lime green cargo
pants are secondhand German, his combat boots British and, though he's not
sure where his corduroy jacket is from, "it's definitely not from Russia," he
says. Some see all this as boring homogenization, others as evidence that
Moscow has finally joined the West, culturally and materially.
Fashion is only the most visible sign of Moscow's lifestyle change.
Minimalist restaurants with brightly lit interiors and smoke ventilation have
replaced the meat- and-vodka dens of the early '90s. Green tea and espresso
are the new prestige drinks, the halogen lamp is pushing out the over-the-top
chandelier and the gym is the place to be at night. "The most fashionable
thing right now is to be fit," says Andrei Kutazin, a 28-year-old banker, on
a break from doing sit-ups with his personal trainer at an elite gym. "We've
finally got money now, and we want to spend it on ourselves."
Western firms are rushing to cash in. All around Moscow billboards advertise
Men's Health magazine, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor and the grand
openings of Europe's top boutiques--from Ferragamo and Brioni to Gucci and
Prada. The fact that import taxes can make Western designs as much as 30
percent more expensive than they are in Paris or Rome is no deterrent to many
Russians. Three-hundred-dollar loafers are flying off the racks like scarce
sausages did in the '80s.
The king of minimalist style, Giorgio Armani, is riding the wave. He opened a
boutique in Moscow about a year ago, and is now weeks away from launching an
interior-design store in his complex just below the old KGB headquarters. "I
believe the Russian customer is becoming increasingly sophisticated and
therefore more open to all kinds of fashion, particularly to cultivating
their own personal style," Armani says. "We sell more beaded evening dresses
in Moscow than in many other principal cities in the world." First Lady
Ludmilla Putin is even said to be an Armani fan.
A new breed of Russian designer is eager to take him on. Igor Chapurin, 34,
caters to the latest trend: new money trying to look like old money. He
favors dark sweaters, wool pants and tailored leather coats. "I'd say my
style is about aristocracy, delicate colors and a distinct intellectualism,"
he says. Though Andreyanova is more humble, one of her recent collections is
also titled "Travels of the Aristocrat." She's hoping Russian fashion will
soon win fans abroad; both she and Chapurin have shown their designs in
Europe, to positive reviews. She describes her basic style as Italian, but
with a "Russian soul"; some of her handbags are made from traditional Uzbek
cloth. But she's not expecting her swimsuits to sell in Nice: "Russia has a
cold image," she says. "Europeans only trust our warm, winter designs."
What sells at home in Moscow is simplicity and sportiness--but that doesn't
mean that showiness has entirely gone out of style. One of Andreyanova's
recent shows was modeled after a gymnastics competition. It's kind of a "play
at being democratic," she says. "No one wants to appear that they are hungry
for luxury, although everyone loves it." Just ask Muscovite Svetlana
Merkulova, the 32-year-old wife of a metals trader. "I need something to wear
when I take my child to play sports," she says, strolling into Moscow's Prada
boutique to ogle a $400 pair of black moon boots. She's dressed simply, in
jeans and a black blazer--but all of it, down to the accessories, is Dolce &
Gabbana.
Russians' confidence about their own style is still developing, says
Levinson. "Maybe in a decade you'll be able to describe Moscow fashion in as
clear terms as you would Paris or London fashion," he says. "But for now,
Russians are good pupils and can absorb a lot." A more deep-seated cultural
shift will take time. "We've got people coming in and buying our clothes
every day," says Armani manager David Kramberg. "But our client list is very
short. People are afraid to give their names and addresses." Fashion is
fluid; old habits, on the other hand, die hard.
*******
#8
Japan Times
November 18, 2002
Only bitter solutions remain in Chechnya
By RUSSELL WORKING
Special to The Japan Times
Russell Working is a freelance reporter based in Limassol, Cyprus. He lived
in Russia for five years until late last year.
LIMASSOL, Cyprus -- Europeans have a way of knowing what's best for other
peoples' conflicts but facing their own crises with ineptitude, and there is
no better demonstration of this than their attitude to the war in Chechnya.
There is something galling about Gauls lecturing the world on what The New
Republic's Martin Peretz has derisively called "the salvific power of
diplomacy." After all, the Europeans were feckless accomplices to genocidal
slaughters within their own continent in the past decade.
Consider the Dutch peacekeepers' willingness to hand over 7,500 Bosnian young
men from a U.N. safe haven, to be executed by Serbian forces. Or Germany's
recitation throughout the 1990s that "force doesn't solve anything,"
particularly in the Balkans. Only when the United States showed leadership
was the slaughter of Muslims halted.
Today, Russians have little patience with European criticism about Chechnya.
In Russia, as in Israel, a government weary of war gave as much as it felt it
could to a people fighting for independence. The result was that Chechens,
like Palestinians, launched a renewed war that negated their gains and
brought everything crashing down on their heads.
Of course, Russia, unlike Israel, is only a quasi-democracy. The Kremlin has
waged a brutal war in which human rights abuses have been widespread. Young
men have been rounded up, imprisoned and tortured, and a city of 393,000 was
bombed into a ghost town, its population turned out as refugees.
But even Russians who detest the war despair on what to do about Chechnya.
Consider the recent history. After a bloody two-year conflict, Chechens won
de facto independence in 1996. Russians had seen other areas of what had once
been the Soviet homeland secede, and a majority was happy to wash its hands
of the region. Elections were held in Chechnya in January of 1997, and Aslan
Maskhadov was chosen president.
Russians might be forgiven for expecting Chechnya would make a go of it,
having won every concession it could reasonably expect (though Moscow had not
gone as far as Israel, which offered Palestinians full independence in 2000).
After all, the Tatar Autonomous Republic has prospered within the Russian
Federation while flying its own flag, electing its own president and drafting
a separate constitution.
But Chechnya became a Lebanon of the north, a cesspool of kidnapping and
crime. Terrorists beheaded foreign aid workers. Slavery thrived. Sharia, or
Islamic religious law, was instated. In what had once been part of a secular
European nation, judges came from the Middle East to sentence adulterers and
thieves under a code drafted by medieval Arabian tribesmen (I interviewed one
such judge in Jordan last year). Russians in neighboring regions saw their
family members kidnapped and held hostage. Ransom payments became a major
source of foreign currency
I remember a particular news broadcast on Russian television in the late
1990s: A 5-year-old boy, held by Chechen kidnappers in a dark basement for a
year, had been released. There he was on TV, standing, for some reason, in
his underpants and T-shirt as his mother hugged and kissed him and told
reporters of her joy. He showed no reaction. He stared at the cameras with
hollow eyes. One wondered if he would ever recover psychologically.
Even in such a degraded conditions, Chechnya might have festered in isolation
for decades. But Russia was hit with a series of apartment bombings that
killed more than 300 in 1999. And a band of Chechen guerrillas invaded and
attempted to bring Islamic rule to Dagestan, a Muslim Russian region that had
no interest in independence.
The international news media (and Russians themselves) speculated that the
Kremlin had somehow concocted the bombings as a pretext for striking
Chechnya. Russia has a brutal enough history to fuel such accusations. But no
hard evidence of Moscow's involvement has ever been offered, and the Russian
Army later seized an explosives factory in Chechnya where it said the
apartment bombs were manufactured. In the West, where newspaper columnists
were reporting the conspiracy theory as fact, the news about the bomb factory
was scarcely reported.
One can believe the Kremlin or not on this matter, but the critics have
forgotten that the Chechen invasion of Russia alone was casus belli. The
second round of war flared up when Russian troops pursued the invaders who
had scurried back for cover in their failed state. The Chechen invasion of
Russia is not even mentioned in Time magazine's Nov. 4 story on the Moscow
hostage crisis or an accompanying timeline on recent history of the conflict.
Chechnya has simmered for centuries under Russian and Soviet domination.
Still, it is tempting to say that the darkest moment in Chechen history was
sparked as much by ancient Caucasian rivalries as by the historic clash with
Russia. News reports these days regularly mention that the Soviet Union
exiled virtually the entire population of Chechnya to Kazakstan in the 1940s
(they were later allowed to return); what isn't noted is that Joseph Stalin,
who ordered the deportation, hailed from the Caucasian republic of Georgia,
which borders Chechnya to the south.
The war in Chechnya is deeply unpopular among the Russian public at large.
But Chechens have shown a genius for turning the Russian public against its
cause, and following the hostage crisis in Moscow this has happened again.
President Vladimir Putin has vowed to subdue Chechnya through force. If that
policy fails, as seems to be happening, Russians may someday return to
negotiations with Chechnya. But they will do so with bitter hearts, knowing
what an independent Chechnya means: a lawless Islamic state whose biggest
growth industry is kidnapping for ransom.
In a Europe whose radicalized Muslim population is exploding, this kind of
diplomatic solution would surely be no cause for congratulations.
*******
#9
The Russia Journal
November 15-21, 2002
The oligarchs' view of freedom of speech
By Ekaterina Larina
The group of oligarchs and businesspeople who own the TVS television channel
are now locked in a conflict that may drive the channel into a dead end
unless some major changes are made to the ownership setup and founding ideas.
TVS began when the oligarchs realized that, by pooling their resources, they
could save Yevgeny Kiselyov and his team of journalists and defend freedom of
speech in Russia while, at the same time, rule out highly politicized
opposition to the state authorities. The fact that the various shareholders
had different views and interests was supposed to provide a guarantee of
objectivity and ensure that the channel's priority was to become an effective
media business.
Analysts immediately predicted the project wouldn't last long. And they were
right -- only eight months later, neither the shareholders nor the channel
have turned out as expected.
Two groups of shareholders, one headed by Anatoly Chubais, the head of
Unified Energy Systems (UES), and the other by Chukotka Gov. Roman
Abramovich, can't agree on who should be general director. Oleg Kiselyov, the
current general director, was appointed in September by Chubais and his group.
At that time, the shareholders couldn't even agree on a candidate. As the
story goes, Chubais called Alexander Mamut, one of his opponents among the
shareholders, and persuaded him to come to a shareholders' meeting by
promising that only various working questions and not the election of the
general director would be discussed. But, by coming, Mamut made up the number
needed for a quorum, and Kiselyov was immediately put forward and voted in as
general director.
Now Abramovich is calling for a change at the top. Abramovich, Mamut, Oleg
Deripaska and several other shareholders say Chubais is turning the channel
into a mouthpiece for the Union of Right Forces (SPS) and not taking the
interests of the other shareholders into account.
In October, Chubais agreed to look for a new candidate, and in response to
Abramovich's suggestion of Ruslan Terekbayev, proposed Alfred Kokh. This is a
provocative proposal, because it was Kokh who played such a controversial
part in chasing Yevgeny Kiselyov's team out of NTV, where they previously
worked. The TVS journalists immediately announced that, if Kokh is named
general director, they will leave the channel.
As a result of these conflicts, the channel is poorly financed and its
ratings are falling -- not exactly a good example of a successful media
business. Sources in the company say it needs another $60 million at the
moment, but no one knows where to get the money. Abramovich and his people
are refusing to give money for PR for SPS, while Chubais and his people can't
raise the required sum.
As it is, the ranks of the shareholders have thinned out considerably.
Authoritative businessmen such as Vimpelcom's Dmitry Zimin and Kakha
Bendukidze, head of United Machine-Building Plants, have long since departed.
Andrei Melnichenko, the head of MDM Bank, is also distancing himself from the
company. Melnichenko is rumored to have handed management of his shares over
to people close to Abramovich, though this doesn't change the balance of
forces, as Melnichenko was on Abramovich's side anyway.
Battle for Slavneft will be serious
The upcoming auction of 75 percent of the shares in the state-owned
Russian-Belarusian company Slavneft will see a new clash between two much
talked about political groups -- the "Family" and the "Petersburg group."
The Petersburg group already lost one battle for Slavneft when Yury Sukhanov,
a government-backed figure from Sibneft, was maneuvered into place as the
head of the company last summer. Sergei Pugachyov, senator for Tuva and head
of the supervisory council of Mezhprombank, which is considered the Kremlin's
bank, said the bank had no interest in Slavneft, but this was obviously an
attempt to put a brave face on things.
Pugachyov and his team lost, and Sibneft won. Having their own man in place
just before Slavneft was due to be privatized gave Sibneft an obvious
advantage. But, in the summer, it was not expected things would heat up so
much. The plan then was to sell a small stake that would have been, above
all, of interest to Sibneft, which already held minority stakes in a number
of Slavneft subsidiaries. But in September, the government decided to put
74.95 percent of the shares up for sale, a move that would attract the other
big oil players such as LUKoil, Yukos and Surgutneftegaz. The minimal price
of $1.3 billion was seen as very realistic.
Lobbyists from various companies immediately began trying to boost their own
chances and figure out what rivals were up to. It seemed that, this time,
Mezhprombank would be wiser not to stick its nose in. But news appeared at
the beginning of the week that a union of Mezhprombank, Gazprom and Rosneft,
another state company, all controlled by the Petersburg group, would bid for
the stake.
This union would certainly carry weight, but some analysts say it is a highly
cynical move. When two state companies get together to buy a third state
company, it's obvious that state and budget interests are not foremost in
their minds. But there's no guarantee this union would have any success,
because the auction's fate is to be decided in the government, and the
Petersburgers' positions are not as strong there as in the Kremlin.
*******
#10
The Russia Journal
November 15-21, 2002
The double standards in explaining hatred
By Matt Taibbi
Seldom has a national double standard been laid so completely bare as it was
in the coverage of the Moscow hostage crisis a couple of weeks back. While
Western officials -- and journalists -- rushed to condemn Chechen terrorism,
they almost all also made criticizing Russia for bringing this mess upon
itself an immediate priority.
In the view of most of the major Western dailies, as well as the television
networks, the Moscow hostage crisis was borne of a deeply ambiguous political
situation, one in which both sides shared blame. Terrorism of the sort
practiced by the Chechens was almost universally described as having an
understandable, if not supportable, cause: It was said to have been a
response to Russian brutality in what was often called the "occupied
territory" of Chechnya.
This is a far cry from the response to the 9/11 attacks, when Osama bin Laden
and his followers, with very rare exceptions, were described as murderous
zealots blindly "bent on destruction" who simply "hated our freedom," for
some mysterious and probably adolescent reason never clearly articulated.
Not once in our media -- though I have seen it in the Russian press -- have I
seen the obvious parallels between anti-American terrorism and Chechen
anti-Russian terrorism drawn anywhere. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from
Saudi Arabia, where a hugely unpopular U.S. military presence is forced upon
a population by an idiotic authoritarian regime propped up by the United
States. Other anti-American terrorist acts find their motivation in the
Israeli occupation of Palestine, for decades roundly condemned by every
member of the UN except for the United States and Israel itself; images of
Palestinians massacred by Israeli troops brandishing American weapons have
served as the primary fuel for terrorist recruitment in the Middle East for
many years. Islamic terrorists are not blowing up McDonald's franchises or
David Hasselhof concert venues (although maybe they should); they're
attacking embassies, warships, the Pentagon and, finally, the center of U.S.
financial power in lower Manhattan.
Not to say that this is right or commendable; it's just a fact. Anti-American
terrorism is in response to something, just as Chechen terrorism can
certainly be said to be in response to something. But you'd never know that
by reading our newspapers. The New York Times, in its Oct. 8 editorial "The
Slaughter in Moscow," made this explicitly clear when it went out of its way
to insist that there are no parallels between the two brands of terrorists:
"The international war against terrorism, and strong evidence that some
Chechen rebels have received training and support from al-Qaida, has
emboldened Mr. Putin to equate his struggle against the guerrillas with
America's campaign against Osama bin Laden and his followers. While there are
common elements, the Chechens have some legitimate grievances about a long
history of harsh Russian rule. Mr. Putin should recognize that he cannot end
their insurrection through force alone. If the United States wants to be
helpful, it should not give Mr. Putin a pat on the back after this debacle
and tell him we are all fighting the same enemy."
Then there is the response by the British paper of record, the Times of
London. An Oct. 29 editorial by Libby Purves, "Putin Is Forced into Human
Rights Limelight," goes as far as to make the primary response to the hostage
crisis an examination of Putin's human-rights record in Chechnya:
"Every cause embracing violence will always have these people among them. But
that does not excuse us from looking at the cause of their rage, and the
history which led men and women to strap explosives to themselves in a
crowded theatre, and shoot at fleeing children… Mr. Putin may have
committed
crimes last week against Muscovite theatergoers; but long before that his
federal troops were committing far worse crimes in the villages and towns of
Chechnya."
Purves certainly has a point, and there's certainly nothing objectively
incorrect about anything she wrote. But what is amazing is how quickly these
quite sane voices rose to the surface when the West was looking at terrorist
acts against Russia. It took far longer than that in the United States after
9/11, and even those few that did speak out were quickly marginalized.
The typical, actually the penultimate, explanation of "Why They Hate Us" back
then was a massive Oct. 15, 2001, feature in Newsweek, a full 11 chapters
long, whose first segment was titled, ridiculously, "The Politics of Rage:
Why Do They Hate Us?"
It's worth noting that even this question contains the answer to the question
of why Americans thought they'd been attacked. I doubt the North Vietnamese
asked why we "hated" them; the Russians certainly didn't ask why the Germans
"hated" them in 1941. Hate is an emotion; wars have reasons. Right from the
start, Americans cranked up an incredible series of psychological
justifications for the 9/11 attacks and scarcely ever mentioned our military
presence abroad, our lust for control over the world's oil, our meddling in
the internal politics of Middle Eastern puppet states over the years. A
typical explanation was that Muslims were "afraid" of the modernization our
culture represented, as explained in Chapter Three of the Newsweek spread:
"This disillusionment with the West is at the heart of the Arab problem. It
makes economic advance impossible and political progress fraught with
difficulty. Modernization is now taken to mean, inevitably, uncontrollably,
Westernization and, even worse, Americanization. This fear has paralyzed Arab
civilization. In some ways the Arab world seems less ready to confront the
age of globalization than even Africa, despite the devastation that continent
has suffered from AIDS and economic and political dysfunction. At least the
Africans want to adapt to the new global economy. The Arab world has not yet
taken that first step."
Later on, the article goes on to quote a Muslim who sneers at Asian progress
because cities like Singapore are pathetic "copies" of places like Houston.
In other words, the murderous hatred of America has it roots in a fear of --
looking like Houston.
Compare this with the response of Moskovsky Komsomolets in the days after
the hostage attacks:
"It defies belief that in his Saturday address to the nation, President Putin
declined to mention Chechnya at all, as if the war there has nothing to do
with what happened. If you refuse to accept the truth, if you treat the
consequences of the disease and not its cause, you will never be cured."
Sure, that's only one newspaper talking. But in the United States, even one
would have been nice after 9/11. On the eve of a new war in Iraq, we're still
waiting.
********
#11
Moscow Daily Notes 'Diktat' in US 'Russian Democracy Act'
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
14 November 2002
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Vladimir Bogdanov: "Not One Step Forward But Three Steps
Back. Once It Finds Itself in Central Asia, United States Will Never
Leave"
A few days ago the United States adopted the
"Russian Democracy Act," which, according to its authors, is designed to
implement humanitarian programs for the development of democracy and a
civil society and the strengthening of justice and legality for the
independent media in Russia. Around $1.5 million is being earmarked all
told, so to speak.
Washington planned the seemingly noble work. "In itself concern for
bilateral humanitarian cooperation can only be welcomed," a Russian
Federation Foreign Ministry spokesman said, "were it not for the
mentoring tone, which verges on interference in our domestic affairs."
Smolensk Square stresses that "certain US legislators... have failed to
notice Russian-US documents adopted at the highest level, which proclaim
the strategic partnership between two absolutely equal great democratic
states." For instance, in the opinion of US legislators, although
Russian parliamentary elections are deemed "free and fair," that is only
partially the case. They describe other aspects of Russian life in
roughly the same vein. The White House opus might have been ignored --
saying that people there are still unable to abide by the international
niceties -- were it not for one "but." The act was signed shortly after
one of the Pentagon's analysis units published the results of a poll on
potential armed conflicts in the world and the areas in which the US
armed forces are preparing for possible involvement in these conflicts.
The study predicts the situation that may take shape in the world
post-2015.
Military analysts highlighted six [figure as published] regions that
could potentially pose the greatest problem for international security:
US territory itself, South America, the Far East (China-Taiwan),
Southeast Asia (Indonesia), and Central Africa.
Particular attention is drawn in this list to the Caspian region where
there are huge oil and gas reserves, which are already beginning to be
developed by the countries here. The Caspian's distance from sales
markets (Japan, Europe, the United States) is making it necessary to lay
numerous pipelines (one of them being the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline),
which may become a potential target for terrorists, separatists, and so
on.
The region's oil reserves are already a stumbling block in relations
between the states of the Caucasus, Central Asia, Russia, and Iran, which
the US Defense Department believes could bring about armed conflicts
capable of influencing stability worldwide.
Oil, this "lifeline" that sustains any war, is the real explanation
for the Americans' military presence in Central Asia and Afghanistan
today. It is by no means any longer a military question and has nothing
to do with the war on terrorism -- that notorious shield behind which the
United States conceals its foreign policy. This question is solely
resource-based and is purely geopolitical.
Since the tragic events of 11 September last year in New York
Washington has received "major compensation" -- the opportunity to bring
to a conclusion an ambitious project that was planned immediately
following the breakup of the USSR, namely, to extend its influence to
Moscow's "back door," Central Asia.
In 2002 the United States occupies an advantageous position in an area
that US strategists have described since the mid-nineties as none other
than the geopolitical "reward" for victory in the Cold War.
Attention is drawn to the fact that although the military operation
against the Taliban is effectively over, there is no question of any
downsizing [svorachivaniye] of the bases in the former USSR. Concluding
his visit to Uzbekistan, Tom Daschle, leader of the Senate majority in
the Congress, said outright: "We will step up our presence here with a
view to upholding the interests of the United States in Central Asia.
Our presence in the region henceforth is long-term in nature and there is
already the requisite level of trust with the governments of the
countries of Central Asia on this score." The fact that Uzbekistan's
Khanabal Air Base has been handed over to the United States for 25 years
serves as confirmation of this, for instance. US legislators have lifted
their embargo on arms shipments to Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. The New
York tragedy has made it possible to realize fully and completely the
"Eurasia strategy" that was formulated by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President
Carter's former national security adviser, who still suffers from a
pathological hostility toward Russians and who describes the "social
status" of Europe as dull "social hedonism."
According to the former adviser's scenario, the future of the US
hegemony is dependent upon control of Central Asia and the Caucasus --
the "Eurasian Balkans," which combines the reserves of the United
States' two major economic rivals in the 21st century, namely, the
Asia-Pacific region (where China is ranked in first place) and the EU.
The possibility of exercising this kind of control has emerged as a
result of the war on international terrorism. Brzezinski proposed
sharing influence with Russia in this region so as to exercise joint
control over all the existing pipelines and the pipelines under
construction, on which the economies of China and the EU are so
dependent. The United States controls the Persian Gulf's oil reserves
not so much out of a need for hydrocarbons as because control of other
people's requirements means that the authority of the Soviet Union is no
more and the previously virgin territory of the Caspian basin is now open
for exploration by various countries. And this area and is also suitable
for solving the following geopolitical equation: Control of those who
are dependent on it.
And Washington needed the antiterrorist coalition itself as a screen
for its expansion into new regions. As US Undersecretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz said in February this year in Munich, "the creation of a broad
antiterrorist coalition is completely unnecessary" for the United States.
Let us recall the recent visit by US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham
to Azerbaijan. During the ceremony opening the construction of the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline he said that the blueprint for the
transportation of energy resources in the Azerbaijani sector of the
Caspian had been submitted to US President Bush and it was pointed out at
his level that the United States attaches great importance to this
project. Not a word was said about Russia.
We are hardly satisfied by that policy. The Russian-US declaration
signed in Moscow this May clearly acknowledges the existence of joint
geopolitical control. It asserts that "both countries reject as
unfounded relations based on rivalry in Central Asia and the southern
Caucasus region."
In any case such a statement and the presence of the US military in
Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia
heralds the third geopolitical setback for Russia of the entire
transitional period. The first occurred during Mikhail Gorbachev's rule
with the breakaway of Eastern Europe. The second occurred in Boris
Yeltsin's day when the countries of the Baltic left the former USSR once
and for all and NATO extended its influence to Eastern Europe. The third
setback, that is, the US military presence in Central Asia and Georgia,
is becoming a reality now.
It is necessary to realize that if the United States establishes a
firm foothold in these areas Russia will gradually lose its military and
then its political and economic position here, consenting to the fact
that US forward basing is moving into the territory of the former Soviet
Union, that is, effectively into the territory of "Great Russia." An
overly close alliance with Washington could mean a deterioration in
Russia's relations with both its eastern and southern partners and with
its former allies in the Middle East. In particular, if United States
continues its policy of acquiring a dominant role in the world under the
slogan of combating terrorism.
The new state of affairs in the region could mean certain
difficulties. One of the main issues is how it will affect Sino-Russian
relations. There is the view in Moscow, a view that is particularly
noticeable in Army, military intelligence (the Main Intelligence
Directorate), and Ministry of Foreign Affairs circles, that China is the
"main danger." If the Kremlin fails to prevent the "banana-ization" of
Russia, the country may quite well become the "assistant in Central Asia
of the United States," which wants to spite China. In this scenario
there is just one role for Russia and its desire to become part of the
West, namely, as an enemy of China, which is already starting to frighten
Washington with its economic, demographic, and military might.
It is perfectly clear that "once they find themselves in this region,
US troops will not pull out of Central Asia," an official at Beijing's
Center for the Study of the Problems of Peace and Development, pointed
out. In the future Washington will be able to control this region by
means of "aid," and if the policy of the Central Asian region countries
changes, it will have an opportunity to put pressure on them on the
pretext of "human rights violations" or "political openness."
Hence Washington's "Russian Democracy Act," which provoked natural
hostility from the Russian Foreign Ministry, enables the Americans to
take control of a number of independent Russian media and influence
public opinion in the way it deems necessary. And the White House
believes that it will now be possible to exercise diktat not only from
the territory of former USSR but also within Russia.
*******
#12
From: Robert Bruce Ware and Ralph Davis (...@brick.net)
Date: November 18, 2002
Subject: Reply to Brandenberger JRL #6557
While we are grateful to David Brandenberger for his interest in this issue
and for his stimulating views, we find him unduly selective and perhaps
inadvertently misleading in his response (JRL 6557) to our examination of
evidence that Aslan Maskhadov was complicit in the Nord Ost hostage
incident (JRL 6554). We pointed to evidence, including Maskhadov's own
statements: 1) that Maskhadov had undergone Islamist radicalization; 2)
that Maskhadov was responsible for reorganizing the militant command
structure last July in order to centralize operations and give himself
comprehensive oversight; 3) that Basayev acquiesced in Maskhadov's
centralization of operations; and 4) that Maskhadov ordered an increase in
the tempo and scale of militant operations outside of Chechnya that would
force Russia to end the war. Brandenberger attempts to dismiss all of this
with his statement "there are indications that Maskhadov was recently
forced to cede new powers to Shamil Basaev's faction." On the contrary, the
evidence is that Maskhadov acquired increased powers over Basaev, that he
had ultimate authority and oversight for all militant operations, and that
he planned new and larger operations outside of Chechnya this autumn. If
nothing else events since the hostage crisis provide further evidence of
Maskhadovs power over Basaev.
In our analysis, we examined three separate conversations in which key
perpetrators, Baraev and Said, clearly, uneqivocally, and repeatedly stated
that Maskhadov had advanced knowledge of the operation. In response,
Brandenberger offers a single phrase out of context, which is too vague to
support any conclusion whatsoever.
Moreover, we asked why, if he were not complicit, did Maskhadov fail to
condemn the hostage takers while the incident was in progress. This
question is ignored by Brandenberger, as it has been consistently ignored
by virtually everyone who has written on this topic. We asked this question
with the hope that someone would answer it.
Since the appearance of our contribution it has come to our attention that
an article in the Central Asia Caucasus Analyst for November 6, 2002,
titled "HOSTAGE-TAKING IN MOSCOW GAVE IMPETUS TO CLOSER AZERBAIJAN-RUSSIA
RELATIONS" claims that Maskhadov's representative in Baku knew how to
contact the hostage takers during the siege and was able to influence them
as a result. This claim deserves further investigation, since it suggests
additional evidence of complicity on the part of Maskhadov and/or his staff.
Brandenberger's opening and closing statements deserve special attention.
In his opening statement he claims, with reference to our analysis that "it
is premature to accuse the Chechen president of complicity in the Nord-Ost
tragedy." However, we examined evidence of Maskhadov's complicity without
making any such accusation. Our conclusion, which we clearly labeled as
such, stated that Maskhadov was either implicated or impotent, that his
leadership has been a failure, and that peace and stability in the Caucasus
require that the people of Chechnya must choose another leader.
Regarding Brandenberger's closing statement, we are not agreeing with any
Kremlin decision, nor are we particularly interested in any Kremlin
decision. We are examining evidence of Maskhadov's complicity, concluding
that it provides an independent basis for questioning Maskhadov's
leadership, and suggesting that, on behalf of themselves and their
Caucasian neighbors, the people of Chechnya must address this question.
Setting aside the present discussion, and with general reference to
commentary on the Nord Ost tragedy, it is sadly typical of Western
academics, analysts, and editorialists that attempts to examine antique
assumptions about the Caucasus are interpreted as support for the Kremlin.
The fact that so many writers interpret everything about the region in
terms of this north/south axis is indicative of a deplorable lack of
experience in the North Caucasus, and in some cases is indicative of the
fact that writers have rarely ventured beyond Russia's principal northern
cities. Chechnya appears from a significantly different perspective when
viewed from across its eastern and western frontiers. We offer our analysis
not because we are concerned about the Kremlin, but because we are
concerned about people of the Caucasus region. Efforts to paint such
concerns as supporting the Kremlins wretched policies in Chechnya are at
once misleading and hypocritical. There seems to be no end to those writers
who have never troubled themselves to set foot in the North Caucasus, and
yet also never hesitate to rehearse their tattered Russaphobia in the guise
of humanitarian concerns.
*******
#13
Financial Times (UK)
19 November 2002
The challenge of Russia's nuclear rubbish tip
By Andrew Jack
A communist slogan that promised to bring "atomic energy to every house" in
the Soviet Union has dangerous echoes in the Kola peninsula of Russia's far
north. At a site 35 miles from the Norwegian border, above the Arctic Circle,
the Russian navy guards 93 reactor cores with 35 tons of fuel in conditions
so bad foreigners have only in the past few months been allowed in to witness
them.
Scientists visiting Andreyeva Bay report radiation levels tens of thousands
of times normal. They have seen rusting containers of nuclear waste in the
open air, exposed to the extreme climate, and contaminated storage boxes
leaking water into the ground and sea.
The Kola peninsula is among the toughest challenges in the former Soviet
Union for nuclear clean-up experts - and Andreyeva is probably the most
dangerous place of all. "There is no other place in the world where such
large amounts of spent nuclear fuel are so improperly stored as at the Kola
naval bases," says Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group whose analyses
are used by both Russia's officials and its critics.
The region became a nuclear archipelago in Soviet times as home to a
substantial part of the nuclear-powered submarine fleet, the civilian
nuclear-powered ice-breaker fleet, and four nuclear power stations.
After a decade of sharp decline in state funding for military and
non-military purposes and bureaucratic fighting between the government and
foreign donors, many long-term problems of fuel reprocessing and storage
remain unresolved.
The worst fears have not been realised. The adjacent resource-rich Barents
Sea remains one of the cleanest in the world. But potential dangers are
enormous - not least after representatives of the rebel Chechen government of
Aslan Maskhadov last month warned that Chechen terrorists might seize nuclear
materials within Russia.
Only last week, Yuri Vishnevsky, head of the state nuclear energy
inspectorate, admitted that several kilogrammes of uranium, including several
grammes of weapons-grade material, had gone missing over the past 10 years.
In that time, says the PIR Centre, a Moscow-based non-proliferation agency,
while many alleged cases of theft have proved untrue, there have been at
least 52 incidents of illegal nuclear trafficking involving Russia.
At a time of heightened attention towards prevention, debate is increasingly
focused on the inadequacy of security measures. Mr Vishnevsky conceded that
the physical protection of nuclear plants "does not, to put it mildly, quite
measure up to the rules".
The Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council warned last week that,
despite considerable efforts - notably from the US Department of Energy -
about half Russia's weapons-grade material was inadequately secured. Measures
to protect thousands of lower-grade radioactive stocks, which could form the
basis for "dirty" bombs, were weaker still.
Nevertheless, there are signs of hope, reflecting fresh threats of terrorism
and the greater willingness of other countries to provide extra resources in
response, including a $20bn decade-long commitment by the G8 nations to
address the issue globally. Torbjorn Norendal, the Norwegian ambassador at
large for nuclear issues, says long-stalled discussions on a multilateral
inter-governmental agreement with Russia to ease the work of foreign nuclear
clean-up are close to resolution. The stumbling block, a willingness by
Russia to waive civil liability for foreign contractors in the event of an
accident during clean-up, was removed in principle by negotiators a few weeks
ago.
Pro-Russian observers put some of the blame for slow progress on poor
co-ordination among donors, bureaucracy, tough political demands and the lack
of close personal relationships.
Bellona has been active in highlighting for a decade "the Arctic nuclear
challenge" around Kola. Andrei Zolotkov, one of its activists and a former
Soviet parliamentarian and nuclear engineer, risked serious trouble 10 years
ago when he denounced the then Soviet Union's violation of international
agreements banning the dumping of nuclear waste at sea.
Bellona was frozen out by Russian officials during the second half of the
1990s as it fought an ultimately successful battle in the courts to clear
Alexander Nikitin, another activist, naval officer and journalist, of
espionage charges for reporting on nuclear abuses.
Yet today, the organisation has an office in Murmansk, and Mr Zolotkov is set
to participate in the next stage of dismantling the Kursk nuclear submarine
after it was lifted from the Barents Sea last year.
Frederic Hauge, Bellona's president, says: "Compared with the size of the
problem, there has not been too much progress. But we are not standing still.
Whoever said it was going to be easy?"
*******
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