Johnson's Russia List
#6605
18 December 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. Moscow Times: Andrei Zolotov Jr., Press Watchdog Sees Kremlin Crackdown.
2. Reuters: Kremlin knees buckle at power reform challenge.
3. Bloomberg: Russian Presidential Chief of Staff Voloshin Comments on UES.
4. BBC Monitoring: Russian national grid bullish on reform prospects
despite
MPs' delay.
5. RIA Novosti: RUSSIAN BUSINESSMEN ARE CALLED ON TO TAKE CIVILIZED
APPROACH
TO ELECTION CAMPAIGNS.
6. ITAR-TASS: Some parties to vanish after 2003 election - opinion.
7. AFP: Russian deputies seek to amend Russia-US disarmament pact.
8. Interfax: Russia to have trial by jury by 2005, except Chechnya.
9. St. Petersburg Times: Avery Johnson, Russian Bells Inspire Tug of War at
Harvard.
10. pravda.ru: Having Problems? Call Putin.
11. Jamestown Foundation Russia and Eurasia Review: Pavel Baev, A USEFUL
WAR?
(re Chechnya)
12. Eric Chenoweth: Re: Russia's Muslim Heritage: Kappeler (JRL 6596) and
Straus (JRL 6597).
13. Rosbalt: State Hermitage Refuses to Return Works of Art.
14. Asia Times: Sergei Blagov, Russian water on troubled soils.
15. Moscow Times: Yulia Latynina, Rail Reform and the Status Quo.
16. Time magazine: Anita Hamilton, The Beluga Blues. America's craving for
salty, sexy caviar has pushed an ancient sea creature to the brink of
extinction.
17. BBC Monitoring: Russia "doomed" to join US against Iraq, Iran - Chechen
web site.
18. ITAR-TASS: Loss of Iraqi oil contract could cost Russia 20bn dollars -
expert.
19. RIA Novosti: US WANTS TO PUSH RUSSIA OUT OF WORLD ENERGY MARKET.
20. AFP: Russia dismisses Powell's pressure over Iran.
21. ITAR-TASS: Russian Strategic Missile Troops mark 43rd anniversary.]
********
#1
Moscow Times
December 18, 2002
Press Watchdog Sees Kremlin Crackdown
By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
Staff Writer
Adding its voice to the simmering debate about the role of the
media in the theater siege, the Russian Union of Journalists' press freedom
watchdog said Tuesday that an assessment of media actions and government
response shows the Kremlin is still on a drive to control journalists.
"I would like to warn that the position of the Russian media remains
alarming," Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations head Oleg Panfilov
said at a presentation of the watchdog's report into the October hostage
crisis. "The authorities have not given up on their attempts to create new
constraints for the work of journalists."
The report -- which for the first time lists all journalists who were taken
hostage in the Dubrovka theater and names two who died, former Stavropolskaya
Pravda editor Tamara Voinova and Kaliningrad Public Radio director Mikhail
Maximov -- concedes that the media bear responsibility for some mistakes made
during the crisis. It spells out the initial confusion over crisis policies,
cases when hostage-takers were allowed or nearly allowed to speak on the air,
when derogatory comments that could have ignited violence in the theater were
aired or when journalists allowed themselves to be used as a mouthpiece for
the government.
However, the report is highly critical of the government backlash that
followed the crisis. The government lambasted the media for their coverage,
while parliament swiftly adopted amendments to the media law that, if
interpreted broadly, would have crippled the media's ability to criticize the
government's actions in crises and coverage of the Chechnya war. After a plea
from a wide group of national media managers and rival journalists'
associations, President Vladimir Putin vetoed the amendments last month --
but still castigated journalists, saying they had put a priority on ratings
rather than human lives.
Tuesday's report said that in addition to the backlash, the government had
demonstrated that it was not prepared to effectively interact with the media
during crises. "The tragic events appear to have fueled a new attitude in the
executive branch toward the media -- a stronger suspicion of media
activities, stronger controls on journalists' behavior and a readiness to
react in a swift and tough way even to the semblance of abuse of press
freedom," the report said.
The report lamented the lack of unity in the journalistic community and
media's lack of interest in adopting internal rules of ethics, which could
result in more government intervention.
Panfilov said he was concerned about the Media Industry Committee, a lobby
group that is dominated by state-controlled media managers and does not
include any representatives of the regional media. The committee, which is
developing crisis guidelines for journalists, met last week with top security
officials and they agreed to work on the guidelines together. The committee
is also drafting a new version of the media law.
Panfilov said the main problem for the media is the overall passiveness of
the journalism community. "Unlike journalists in Eastern Europe, Russian
journalists never fought for their freedom," Panfilov said. "The freedom was
granted to them, and it is being taken away from them. And they are
indifferent."
The report is posted on the center's web site, www.cjes.ru.
*******
#2
Kremlin knees buckle at power reform challenge
By Melissa Akin
MOSCOW, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The Kremlin has put the brakes on electricity
sector reform, and analysts said President Vladimir Putin's team had caved in
to stiff opposition and its own doubts about one of Russia's most politically
charged reforms.
On Tuesday, the Kremlin showed itself unready to exploit any of its vast
political support to face down opposition in parliament and push through the
potentially unpopular reform of the heavily regulated, creaking power sector.
"(The reform) must be more carefully thought through and a higher degree of
consensus must be achieved in society, the legislative corps and the
shareholders of the company," Putin's chief of staff Alexander Voloshin said.
Voloshin was addressing a conference on the 10th anniversary of power
monopoly Unified Energy System, of which he is board chairman. His remarks
coincided with a decision by parliament's leadership to put off a crucial
second reading of laws which would clear the government to free power prices
and break up UES, called a last bastion of socialism by its own CEO.
Market sources spoke of opposition from a mystery buyer who appears to have
scooped up a large chunk of UES in recent months, possibly one of the
'oligarchs', a powerful group of businessmen who built up energy and metals
empires in the 1990s.
"You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain this," UFG chief strategist
Christopher Granville said.
"There are still deep doubts in the top leadership about proceeding with this
liberalisation, about the risk of electricity prices running out of control.
Those doubts and hesitations are felt by the political class."
Voloshin acknowledged months of delays in the reform, a radical plan to end
the current system of huge energy subsidies to industry and especially
households through regulated rates.
ELECTIONS NEXT YEAR
But this could prove highly unpopular both with Russia's powerful industrial
giants and consumers voting in parliamentary elections next year.
"There is certainly evidence that electioneering may be beginning now, an
indication that reforms could be slow next year, particularly in the natural
monopoly sector," Roland Nash of Renaissance Capital said. "It's a hint, a
sign that that could be the case."
The State Duma lower house of parliament has become the main theatre for
political battles over power reform. The electricity reform plan is to be set
in stone in a packet of bills that has already received initial approval.
That approval, in a first reading in October, came at the cost of heavy
amendments to what the government had conceived as some of its most radical
reform legislation yet.
An industry source said the government had been spooked by a sudden schism
over the power laws in its once stalwart centrist coalition made up of
staunch Putinites, leftists and lawmakers with strong power bases in
far-flung regions.
"It was the first time the coalition split," he said. "The Kremlin is not
ready to rock that boat."
Even that coalition only accounts for 40 percent of the Duma, often just
enough to overpower the Communists and their allies and allow the Kremlin to
push through its initiatives.
Hesitation now could pay off later. The Kremlin could win an outright Duma
majority next year, but to do so it must avoid pinning unpopular measures on
its people, Nash said.
"The investment to get a majority is potentially a good one. If they really
concentrate on reforms the way they seem to have in the last couple of years,
but with a Duma majority, that could be very positive starting from March
2004," Nash said. "There are other reforms they can concentrate on, like
banking, domestic capital markets reform. It's just the ones...that can
adversely hit a voter's pocket that are going to be right down low on the
agenda."
*******
#3
Russian Presidential Chief of Staff Voloshin Comments on UES
Moscow, Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Alexander Voloshin, the chief of
Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration, made the
following comments on the breakup of RAO Unified Energy System, the
world's largest electricity company.
Voloshin, who is also board chairman at UES, spoke at a
conference organized by the company.
The following is an unofficial translation from the Russian.
On the breakup:
``The working out of the program of reform does not mean the
cancellation of reform.
``All these delays do not mean the cancellation of reform, but
rather the need for more consideration of the consequences, the need
to reach a higher level of consensus in society and in the deputy's
corpus and among shareholders of the company.''
On what should happen to UES:
``Society is above all interested in the stable development of
the electricity sector, and so for us, the quality of UES reform is
more important than the tempo of reform.
``The aim of reform is the creation of an effective,
competitive market and it's essential to move toward this, not
looking at the fact that not everything is going as fast as would be
liked.
``The aim of reform is the formulation of an effective,
competitive market and at the final level the creation of the
essential conditions for the boosting of the economy of modern
Russia.''
On how the company is being split up:
``That the reform of UES is going on in a regime of openness
for all interested parties -- for the majority shareholder, the
state, and minority shareholders, large investors and simple
citizens -- is vitally important not just for the electricity sector
but for all of our society.''
*******
#4
BBC Monitoring
Russian national grid bullish on reform prospects despite MPs' delay
Source: RTR Russia TV, Moscow, in Russian 1400 gmt 17 Dec 02
[Presenter] The State Duma has clearly dropped its original plan to debate
the main issues of the electricity reform tomorrow. The debate has been
postponed for at least a week. The decision was taken by the Duma council
today.
Some MPs believe that the electricity reform law should be sent back to the
first reading. Others think the debate should wait until the spring session.
Still others want the second reading to take place at the final plenary
session in December.
The proposal not to rush the process was tabled by the centrist groups'
coordinating council.
[Oleg Morozov, leader of Russia's Regions Duma faction, member of One Russia
party general council, captioned] This is a decision coordinated between four
Duma groups, the so-called centrist ones. We decided yesterday. There are two
reasons for it. The first is that we think there are several substantial
issues that remain unresolved to the Duma's satisfaction. The second is our
condition, which we made when the budget passed its third reading, that there
has to be an agreement between the Duma and the government on electricity
tariffs. So we'll return to the issue on the 23rd at an extraordinary session
of the State Duma council.
[Presenter] All this was going on as [national grid operator] Unified Energy
System was holding a conference to mark its 10th anniversary. The leitmotif
here was that the quality of reform is more important than its speed.
Yevgeniy Popov reports on the conference, which is taking place under the
slogan of Unified Energy System - an open company.
[Correspondent] Soviet imagery abounds in the hall in the hotel where the
company is holding its celebratory conference: electrification of the entire
country, collective farms, villages and electricity. But UES's plans are far
removed from communism. They are the most market-oriented of all. This is
borne out by the reform of the industry, which was the main topic of
discussion.
The news that parliament has postponed the package of reform laws came while
members of the UES board were speaking, but that didn't spoil the party.
[Aleksandr Voloshin, head of the presidential administration, chairman of the
UES directorate, captioned] To us, the quality of the reform is no less
important and probably more important than its speed. And I would like to
note that this further work on the reform programme does not in any way mean
cancellation of the reform. The delays testify to the need for more
consideration of the consequences and for the achievement of more consensus.
[Correspondent] Work on the legislative underpinning for reform of the
electricity industry has been in hand for nearly a year. The essence of the
reform is to create the environment for competition on the electricity
market. To that end, UES will be turned into ten shareholder companies:
independent wholesale and generating companies based on power stations. Each
will independently control its output. That is, consumers will be able to
choose where and from whom to buy their electricity.
[Anatoliy Chubays, UES chairman of the board, captioned] The laws will be
passed. The situation regarding the amendments is in fact very positive.
True, there's a fantastic number of them, 1,800, but in the time available we
and the government have gone through literally all of them.
[Correspondent] UES has managed to not only reach a compromise on reforming
the electricity industry this year. A problem with the tax authorities has
also been sorted out. The company now pays all its taxes without delay. The
threat of bankruptcy has been lifted from several holding companies. The
consumer payments crisis has been removed. Most of all, for the first time in
years new generating capacity is under construction: a geothermal station in
Kamchatka and a thermal heating plant in Chechnya.
The UES board is confident that the company will not live to see its 20th
birthday. The most they give it is 15 years. According to the reform plan,
UES will die by 2007. That will be the end of the monopoly and the birth of a
market for electricity.
*******
#5
RUSSIAN BUSINESSMEN ARE CALLED ON TO TAKE CIVILIZED APPROACH TO ELECTION
CAMPAIGNS
MOSCOW, DECEMBER 17, 2002. / RIA NOVOSTI /- Aleksandr Veshnyakov, Russia's
Central Election Commission chief, has called on Russian businessmen to take
a "civilized" approach to election campaigns. When addressing, Tuesday, a
Moscow conference devoted to election practices in Russia, Mr Veshnyakov said
the members of the business community involved in election campaigns must
abandon methods of "wild, barbaric capitalism." The Central Election
Commission chief regretted the fact that the Russian business community is
not as of yet ready to discuss in public its role in election campaigns. Yet,
Mr Veshnyakov was positive certain breakthroughs are in the offing. Dirty
money in business is no less dirty for election campaigns, he said.
Russia's election legislation has been updated, recalled Mr Veshnyakov. It
now contains "civilized rules of businessmen's participation in elections and
in forming power bodies." The new law On Election of State Duma Deputies
brought the election fund from 40 up to 250 million roubles, he recalled.
*******
#6
Some parties to vanish after 2003 election - opinion.
December 17, 2002
ITAR-TASS
Some of Russia's political parties are likely to suffer political and
financial bankruptcy after the next parliamentary election, scheduled for
December 14, 2003, Alexander Veshnyakov, chief of Central Electoral Board,
said Tuesday.
A mere four or five parties will get seats in the State Duma, the lower house
of Russian parliament, in that election, and it is those parties that will be
shaping the country's political destiny in the near future, Veshnyakov told a
conference on State Power, Parties and Business in Russia.
He said the number of parties that were in the phase of reorganization under
a new electoral law and could aspire for getting into the election race was
limited to 40. The reform of the national electoral system aimed to enhance
the role and responsibility of political parties in state affairs, public and
political life, and the new system of laws contained a set of clear unified
rules for election campaigns, he said.
These laws provided a solid foundation for fair competition during the
election race, Veshnyakov said. "It is political programs and concepts, not
personalities, that must compete in the elections," he said.
The new electoral legislation gives understandable preferences to the parties
that get over the five percent qualification barrier allowing them to have
seats in the State Duma, Veshnyakov said.
Apart from the opportunity to voice their views in parliament, those parties
will have fiscal support from the government according to the number of seats
in the Duma, and will be able to promote their candidates to elected agencies
of all levels without voter signup lists, he noted.
Some of old electoral rules will stay, though. One of them is the requirement
that the parties failing to get 2 percent of votes in the election reimburse
the costs of radio and television airtime they received for free promotions,
Veshnyakov said.
As he addressed business people attending the conference, he said the law
gave them a legitimate opportunity to take part in election races, but it
also envisioned more responsibility for breech of election rules.
*******
#7
Russian deputies seek to amend Russia-US disarmament pact
MOSCOW, Dec 7 (AFP) - Russian deputies moved Tuesday to amend a
landmark disarmament treaty signed by Russia and the United States in May,
allowing Moscow to withdraw from the agreement should "exceptional
circumstances" threaten its national security.
The proposed amendments would allow Moscow to withdraw from the pact should
Russia feel threatened by the proposed US missile defense shield, whose
construction was formally launched by US President George W. Bush on Tuesday.
The State Duma or lower house of parliament, which must still ratify the
pact, will set up a working committee to amend the treaty, the head of the
chamber's defense committee Andrei Nikolayev told reporters.
Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the disarmament treaty
during a historic summit in Moscow in May.
If ratified by Russian and US lawmakers, the arms deal would cut nuclear
arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads from their current level of
around 6,000 by 2012.
Nikolayev said he would propose that US or NATO military decisions
threatening Russia's national security, and serious Russian economic
difficulties would also be viewed as "exceptional circumstances" allowing
Moscow to walk away from the agreement.
Nikolayev did not say when the deputies would examine the proposed amendments.
******
#8
Russia to have trial by jury by 2005, except Chechnya
Interfax
Moscow, 17 December: Russian Supreme Court Chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev said
that judges have received all the necessary qualifications to conduct trial
by jury.
Lebedev said the Supreme Court has organized adequate training, developed the
relevant recommendations and even made an educational film.
The chairman said he expects trial by jury to be introduced in 70 Russian
regions starting from 1 January 2003, and in another 14 areas from July 2003.
By the end of 2004, Russian citizens will be able to have their cases handled
by jury trials in all Russian regions, except Chechnya, where they will begin
in January 2007.
Lebedev confirmed that this step will automatically extend the moratorium on
the death penalty until 2007. A Constitutional Court ruling imposed the
moratorium on the death penalty pending the introduction of jury trial all
over Russia.
******
#9
St. Petersburg Times
December 17, 2002
Russian Bells Inspire Tug of War at Harvard
By Avery Johnson
STAFF WRITER
COURTESY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
MOSCOW - Every Sunday, at the Lowell House dormitory on Harvard University's
Cambridge, Massachusetts campus, a klappermeister climbs to the top of a red
brick tower and creates a sound that has become almost as central to dorm
life there as all-night study sessions or fast food.
The klappermeister (Harvard's name for a bell-ringer) rings 17 bells -
Russian bells, originally from Moscow's Danilov Monastery.
When the Soviet government threatened to destroy the Danilov Monastery's
bells in the late 1920s, American industrialist Charles Crane saved them by
purchasing the entire set of 18 bells, and it was installed at Harvard in
1930. But the further fate of the bells would prove as uncertain as their
past - because at Harvard, no one could stand the sound of them.
In his 1936 history of the bells, "The Lowell House Bells," unofficial
klappermeister Mason Hammond described the Danilov bells' first concert in
their new home.
"At once the horrid truth became apparent - this zvon was no carillon or set
of chimes on which each note could be played independently with some
semblance of a tune ... . Invariably the undergraduates reacted with
cat-calls, alarm-clocks, saxophones, tin-pans, etc."
Although the students eventually grew to appreciate the bells, the Danilov
Monastery has always been home to dozens of listeners who long to hear their
zvon, or ring. And this year, Patriarch Alexy II and several priests at the
Danilov Monastery, where the offices of the patriarch are housed, launched a
campaign to return the bells to the monastery's bell tower in time for the
700th anniversary of St. Daniel's death in March 2003.
"The patriarch wants to return the bells in order to restore historical truth
and correct a historical mistake," Father Alexei Polikarpov, the vicar of the
Danilov Monastery said last week.
The monastery's bell tower is not empty today: It was rebuilt in 1985 and
outfitted with bells taken from razed churches in northwest Russia, but
Father Roman Ugrinko, the current ringer at Danilov, said the substitutes'
sound doesn't come close to the original bells' distinctive ring.
"The bells have a weak sound, and they don't play well together because they
come from different churches," he said. "But to ring the original bells -
that would be a pleasure. They are the bells Gogol heard, they are the bells
that called our forefathers to worship."
But fulfilling the patriarch's request to return the bells would require
closing the Harvard dormitory for a year, dismantling the Lowell House bell
tower and shipping the cumbersome copper bells - the largest of which weighs
13 tons - halfway around the world. Former Lowell House dormitory directory
William Bossert said last week in a telephone interview that the effort would
cost tens of millions of dollars. Despite the price tag, current Lowell House
director Diana Eck said that she and Harvard president Lawrence Summers are
considering the Russian patriarch's appeal, which comes 14 years after a
similar move in 1988.
"Ronald Reagan was at the monastery and there were discussions. He promised
to help the church talk to Harvard," said the Russian Orthodox Church's
official bell-ringer, Igor Konovalov. But follow-up negotiations failed.
Subsequently, in 1990, Bossert received a letter from the Orthodox Church via
the Harvard president's office and helped the university's general counsel
draft a reply. At the time, Bossert said he suggested returning the 18th bell
- it hangs alone in Harvard's Business School - as a compromise, but this was
never done.
"They [the Russian patriarchate] were just hoping that moving the bells would
be an easy thing, and that we [Harvard] didn't want them," Bossert said.
"They said 'thank you for being a wonderful steward for the bells during a
difficult period, but now we want them back.' But now the bells are a part of
Harvard history, too."
In an e-mail interview last week, Harvard's current official klappermeister,
Alex Healy, said any attempt to move the bells would prove to be "an
architectural and engineering feat" complicated by the fact that the tower
was actually constructed around some of the bells. He added that the
dormitory "is very proud of its Russian bells. They have been with the house
since it was built, and despite the occasional complaints, I cannot imagine
the house giving them away," he wrote.
Polikarpov, however, has no trouble imagining the bells in Danilov's tower.
"To transport the bells will be difficult but, if people can fly to Mars,
then it's possible," he said.
Polikarpov is currently preparing the monastery's arguments for returning the
bells, which will be presented to Harvard early next year. Church leaders
disagree, however, over what exactly their approach ought to be.
Konovalov has suggested that Harvard foot the bill for returning the bells,
without compensation from Danilov, arguing that the church didn't sell the
bells, so it shouldn't pay for their return.
"Lenin and Stalin were gangsters," he said. "The church couldn't defend
itself."
But Polikarpov is more moderate. "It was a sale. No one took the bells by
force," he said, adding that the church is willing to pay for the bells'
return, although it would have to solicit donations in order to do so.
At present, neither side is considering filing suit but, if the case ever
gets that far, the history of the Danilov bells will certainly play an
integral role in making a judgement.
The sale of the bells was finalized in the late 1920s, before the Soviet
government closed the Danilov Monastery in 1930. To remove the bells, the top
third of the Danilov bell tower was removed. It was rebuilt in 1988 in time
for the 1,000th anniversary of Christianity in Russia.
Although the 18 bells shipped to Harvard were cast as a set intended to be
played together, the making of the set occurred over a period of several
centuries. Tsar Fyodor Alexeyevich commissioned the set's largest bell - the
13-ton bell, which is called "Mother Earth" by Harvard students - in 1686.
Another three were cast over the next 50 years. Later, in the late 19th
century, 14 smaller bells were cast to match the older bells.
When the bells arrived in Cambridge in the fall of 1930, the tedious process
of hanging, tuning and playing them proved too difficult for Harvard's
experts, so the Soviet government sent its own bell specialist to help:
Konstantin Saradyev supervised the installation and tuning of the Danilov
bells and taught bell ringing to a select Harvard few.
But, within a few months, Lowell had caught Saradyev drinking ink as an
antidote to the poison he believed the Americans had slipped him, and sent
the Russian ringer back to the Soviet Union, where he died in a Moscow mental
hospital in 1942.
The bells have not been tuned since, although a $1.7-million renovation of
the tower in 1996 and 1997 confirmed that their pedestals and cables still
function properly.
Proper tuning or no, however, in Healy's opinion the bells' sound isn't as
important as that of other instruments - since their traditional function is
to call the faithful to prayer rather than produce music for entertainment's
sake.
"Many of the higher bells are 'out of tune' in the sense that there is a
natural Western scale to which several of the lower bells have been tuned,
and the higher ones do not quite match," Healy wrote. "This can often be a
little disturbing to Western ears, but, for me, the distinctive sound of
Russian bells comes from the sound of a single bell and its overtones and not
the tuning of the entire set of bells."
During their first several decades at Harvard, the Danilov bells received far
less attention than they have since the 1960s, when a group of undergraduate
ringers began meeting once a week and on special occasions (Halloween, the
Harvard-Yale football game, the springtime performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's
"1812 Overture") to play the bells for 15 minutes.
Today, including the Danilov bells, only five complete, intact sets of
pre-revolutionary Russian bells remain in the world.
"In that respect, we're glad that the bells weren't melted," Polikarpov said.
*******
#10
pravda.ru
December 17, 2002
Having Problems? Call Putin
Starting with the noon, December 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin will
answer questions of the population on the air of Russia's TV channels ORT and
RTR, radio stations "Mayak" and "Russia's Radio". A similar action was
organized in Russia last year; it seems that the president liked the idea.
The time format of the previous appearance was insufficient to answer all
questions asked by the population (there were several thousand questions
received during the previous action, but Vladimir Putin had time to answer
only 47 of them). He promised that remaining questions would be answered
later; in any case, he said that sufficient attention would be paid to those
problems. Those lucky people who had a chance to talk to the Russian
president, reasonably believed that their problems were settled. The whole
action of the president's live appearance could be considered a success but
for one snag: Putin's order to correct mistakes or improve the situations
mentioned in the questions of the population was carried out by those who
were guilty of those disorders, Russian officials to be more precise.
Everybody remembers the situation which the population of the hamlet of
Kazachi-Malevanny in Russia's Krasnodar region had to experience. When the
Russian president appeared on the air of TV and radio programs last year,
population of the hamlet had a lucky chance to talk to the president and they
complained that although a gas pipeline was laid just close to the
settlement, no gas was installed in the houses. By the end of the live
program, president's aides prepared special information on the problem for
the president. And Vladimir Putin cited that information: "I just got
information from Gazprom. I would like to inform you that the level of
gasification with natural liquefied gas is 76.4%; the level of gasification
in the Krasnodar region is 83.2% which is higher than on average in the
country. Within the whole period of gasification in the Krasnodar region, 188
gas pipelines of 1271 kilometers in length were built and put into operation.
Six gas pipelines are under construction. Gasification of the hamlet of
Kazachi-Malevanny will be completed in January 2002." That could be
considered a happy end.
As the president promised, gasification was done in the hamlet, but nobody
told the local population that they would have to pay individually for
connection to the gas pipeline. The connection costs one thousand rubles (it
is a bit more than 30 dollars), which is by the way a considerable sum for
poorly-paid villagers. That is why the people have to heat their houses with
firewood, in an old habitual manner. It may sound an absurdity: a gas
pipeline goes along the hamlet, but the villagers have to heat their houses
with firewood, as this is the only fuel they can afford.
By the way, there are happier stories connected with the live appearance of
the Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yesterday, Russian news agencies
reported that last year Pavel Shvedkov, a pupil from the school #9 from the
city of Ust-Kut in Russia's Irkutsk region, called President Putin during his
previous live appearance on TV; he complained that the school wasn't heated
in cold weather at all. After the call, heating of the school was recommenced
and mayor of the city was dismissed. This year, on December 19, the boy plans
to call Vladimir Putin once again.
Today it was also reported that teachers from the school #18 in the
settlement of Beloyarsky in Russia's Sverdlovsk region decided to follow the
example of the schoolboy from Ust-Kut. Russian website Regions.Ru informs
that the teachers called the Presidential administration and told about their
miserable situation. The teachers from Beloyarsky are still not paid wages
for October; in this connection, they organized a protest action on November
3. However, the regional administration didn't pay attention to the action.
At first, the administration ignored the teachers strike; then they paid
wages for October only to teacher who worked with school leavers and
technical staff of the school. And the teachers don't even hope to get more
money. The Presidential administration registered the teachers' complaint,
the address of the school and promised to help in the situation.
The above mentioned facts reveal that Russians have found a new way of
solving problems connected with arrears of wages and unheated apartments.
They just call the president. And Russians are not completely satisfied with
answers of the president to pressing questions. They plan to use the
opportunity of "direct connection" with the Russian President more
effectively.
Dmitry Chirkin
PRAVDA.Ru
Translated by Maria Gousseva
*******
#11
Jamestown Foundation
www.jamestown.org
Russia and Eurasia Review
Volume 1, Issue 14
December 17, 2002
A USEFUL WAR?
By Pavel Baev
Pavel Baev is a senior researcher and the leader of the Foreign and Security
Policies program at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO).
Last week Vladimir Putin issued orders for a constitutional referendum to be
held in Chechnya, paving the way for presidential and parliamentary elections
there. However, fighting in the secessionist region continues, and President
Putin's efforts to portray a return to normality are unlikely to succeed.
In the pronounced trend of Russia's stabilization and recovery, Chechnya
appears to be an aberration. It is certainly a drain on resources, slowing
the country's economic growth, and posing a high hurdle on the track of
military reforms. It is poisoning Russia's relations with Europe, and
spoiling Moscow's cherished dreams of civilizational "belonging." It requires
effort to shake off the habit of accepting that there was, is and will be a
"Chechen problem," and see anew how much greater is the scale of the problem
compared to the modest size of territory at stake between the Great Caucasus
Ridge and the River Terek--some 4,000 square miles [about the same size as
Connecticut].
The durability of this huge discrepancy calls for an explanation that goes
deeper than presenting Chechnya as the "original sin" of Putin's regime: a
gimmick--or, as the Russians say, an "electoral technology"--used to win the
State Duma and then the presidential election, but now stubbornly refusing to
go away long after its political expediency has expired. On the other hand,
it is also not that tempting to subscribe to the claims of frustrated
liberals in Moscow that Chechnya is just a micro-model of Russia that
reflects the violent nature of the dominant political culture.
WHERE SHADOWS LIE...
A partial explanation is perhaps to be found in the psychological pressures
in Russia's society. Before diving into those, however, it might be useful to
note the gradual but steady disappearance of strategic goals in the war.
Russia's territorial integrity--which seemed so precarious in the
mid-1990s--can now pretty much be taken for granted. This is, after all, one
of Putin's most serious and substantial achievements. Analysts sometimes
continue to postulate the "domino effect," especially with respect to
neighboring regions of the North Caucasus, but the possibility that any other
republic inside Russia would be tempted to reproduce the Chechen case looks
rather theoretical.
Caspian oil was a significant factor in the first Chechen war, a conflict
launched just three months after the "contract of the century" was signed in
Baku. Both parties to that conflict tried their best to keep the oil
infrastructure out of harm's way. However, by now the brouhaha around the
Great Game has subsided, the decisions about the strategic pipelines
bypassing Chechnya have been taken--and the refineries and pipelines on its
territory have been thoroughly destroyed.
More generally, the first war was a big money-making machine, with Moscow
pumping enormous funds into reconstruction projects, and those funds duly
disappearing into bottomless bureaucratic pockets. The second war runs on a
much shakier economic foundation. There are still profits to be made, to be
sure, and some oil is still produced locally, but compared to the monies now
circulating in Moscow the profits are loose change.
Putin's personal political capital invested in Chechnya is certainly a
serious factor, though not quite a strategic goal, but the deadlock does not
seem to be having any negative impact on his stratospheric approval ratings.
And that may be directly linked to the peculiar effect of anxiety on public
psychology. Chechnya does generate a lot of uncertainty and tension in the
society--and that creates an urge to see a strong leader who would translate
all the worries and doubts into a determined course of action.
With all the quest for "normalcy," everyday life in Russia throws upon its
citizens all sorts of stresses and personal disasters. And Chechnya has
become a common mental place for dumping all the fears and anxieties, a
hypothetical Mordor that concentrates all the evil. Besides being a useful
psychotherapeutic exercise, this also serves an important political function
by re-directing irritation towards one particular spot, thus reducing the
scale of the potential "protest vote" in future elections.
BALANCING THE POWERPLAY
A different approach to explaining the continuing conundrum of the conflict
in Chechnya is to leave the postmodernist imagery aside and instead examine
the intricacies of power relations in Moscow. It has by now become
sufficiently clear that Putin's "power vertical" has only a superficial
resemblance to a bureaucratic pyramid, and is better compared to an overgrown
family tree.
The omnipotent executive is not restrained in any meaningful way by the other
branches of government, but it is sharply and bitterly divided within itself,
and it connects in complex and obscure ways with three key sources of power:
the business empires, the regional fiefdoms and the "armed bureaucracies" (or
"power structures"). This system, while having only limited capacity for
development, is remarkably stable, so that experts specializing in
risk-assessment are now focusing their prognostic powers on what happens at
the end of Putin's second term (in 2008).
Not only President Kuchma in Ukraine but even Nazarbaev in Kazakhstan might
envy this stability, but it is achieved by special means that they do not
have at their disposal--among them the war in Chechnya. Perhaps the most
telling illustration of the instrumentalization of this war can be found in
Putin's uneasy relations with the "power structures," which constitute,
simultaneously, one of the key foundations of his power and an autonomous
part of the executive branch. Being himself a product of this milieu, Putin
has filled the ranks of his administration with the special services cadre
and relies heavily on information and advice supplied by the Federal Security
Service (FSB) and other "armed bureaucracies." At the same time, the
president is aware of the risk of becoming overdependent on the masters of
the "power structures." (Many Western analysts, in fact, originally expected
him to become a puppet in their hands.)
Putin also recognises with growing clarity that the security "heavyweights"
have no clue about how to advance Russia's modernization by speeding up
economic growth. He needs an instrument that would keep their ambitions in
check--and Chechnya fits this function perfectly. The "power structures" are
engaged there in performing an impossible task, and Putin subtly but
efficiently keeps them responsible for the failures. But for Putin it is the
threat of punishment that best serves his purpose of asserting control. Hence
the fact that no one in the FSB or the Ministry of Interior was punished
after the October terrorist attack in Moscow, despite the public
outrage--which polls indicate focused on the failure of the security services
to prevent the attack, rather than on concern that they were irresponsible in
the means used to free the hostages.
Chechnya comes into Putin's relations with the oligarchs and regional barons
in more subtle ways, but no less effectively. The need to prevent future
Chechnyas was used as an excuse by the federal center when it wrestled
control over law enforcement--including the special police units, OMON--from
the governors and republican presidents, and when it appointed new federal
inspectors in the regions (themselves mostly drawn from the FSB pool of
cadres). The same need is used as an excuse for inserting "managers" from the
special services into business empires, a widespread but little discussed
practice, whose net damage to the business often outweighs the profits. The
"big stick" of Chechnya has been applied persistently to demonstrate to the
independent media what its appropriate role should be, and the tragedy in the
Nord-Ost theater is being used as an excuse to shorten the leash still
further. Former Defense Minister Pavel Grachev may have looked forward to
Chechnya as a "small, victorious war," but even as a
"small-and-not-victorious" war, Chechnya serves as an important
counterbalance in the complicated system of power relations over which Putin
is presiding so impressively.
A "MANAGED WAR"
Chechnya, therefore, is not an anomaly in the otherwise positive direction of
Russia's general development--but a core element of Putin's regime. Two
consequences might be drawn from this conclusion. The first concerns the
elaborate argument about the international connections of the Chechen
"freedom-fighters/terrorists." The evidence produced in its support can be
seen as more or less convincing (the proof is always in the eye of the
beholder), but in essence the whole argument is redundant, despite the fact
that it achieved a new lease on life after September 11 and Russia's
enthusiastic participation in the U.S.-led international "war on terror."
The second involves both the plans for resolving the Chechen conflict and the
strategies for ending it on Russia's terms. Whatever their idealism or
pragmatism, both are in fact equally unrealistic, because this war is not
about winning or losing--but about having. It is clear from this perspective
that the goal of the recent initiatives with a constitutional referendum and
new elections is not so much creating a political framework for settling the
issue, as minimizing the risks of not settling it. "Chechenization" of the
war might appear to be a cost-efficient strategy, but smart ideas of this
sort have a long record of failures from Algeria to Vietnam to South
Africa--and hardly any examples of success. "Managed democracy" might work
for Putin but "managed war" shows the worrisome tendency for risk escalation.
Putin may yet come to regret the use of Chechnya as a tool to consolidate his
regime.
******
#12
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002
From: Eric Chenoweth
Subject: Re: Russia's Muslim Heritage: Kappeler (JRL 6596) and Straus
(JRL 6597)
In the wake of the Nord-Est events, Russian leaders, and especially
Vladimir Putin, have used the tragedy to again reject any negotiations with
Chechnya's legitimate representatives and have quite clearly revealed their
true hatred and fear not just for Chechens but for Muslims generally. Putin
has contradicted George Bush's justification for the war on terrorism by
declaring that Islam itself poses a threat to Russia, the West, and
"civilization."
Mr. Andreas Kappeler, in JRL 6956 ("Russia's Muslim Heritage"), quite
rightly points out that the war against Chechnya is a reflection of
Russia's imperialist and often bloody history of subjugating nations and
peoples, and not its other general heritage of tolerance for Islam and
Muslims. The history is complex, however, as Mr. Kappeler certainly knows.
Indeed, imperial policy was not always one of tolerance once victorious on
the battlefield; tolerance, in fact, was generally connected to the degree
to which the local elites supported Moscow and accepted Russian domination
and Russianization. At the same time, Mr. Kappeler is right that under the
empire Moscow often displayed surprising tolerance. As an example, Cyrillic
was not absolutely imposed as it most recently was by Putin and the Duma.
Certainly, though, Mr. Straus's contention in response to Mr. Kappeler
(JRL 6957) is not, as he claims, "logical." Mr. Straus states that
Russia's post-Soviet arrangements with Tatarstan and Bashkortostan that
provide wide autonomy to these predominantly Muslim regions means,
therefore, that it must be the fault of Chechnya's leaders that Russia felt
it necessary to declare war on one of the Federation's republics.
Presumably, in Mr. Straus's view, if Chechnya's leaders had not been
secessionist, Russia would have accepted autonomy for Chechnya. And, if
Chechnya would not accept Russia's version of autonomy, Russia therefore
must be justified in its brutal war.
But these are the arguments of the Russian government. It assumes ---
contrary to international law --- that indigenous people have no right to
determine their own fate. (The world did not take this view in East Timor,
much less, in an earlier time, Algeria.) It also assumes that Russia's
imperial conquests must be immutable; if this were the case, though, there
would be no restored or "new" independent states.
To see how flawed is Mr. Straus's logic, one need only look at the case of
Tatarstan. This republic has been granted wide autonomy powers in exchange
for the fealty of its leader Mintimer Shamiyev, a neo-communist who has
built one of the Russian Federation's most corrupt and dictatorial regimes
with approval from Moscow and in doing so repressed legitimate Islamic and
secular movements for greater autonomy and independence. Tolerance towards
Islam or Muslims, again, has been tied strictly to whether the local elites
and leaders in power are loyal to Moscow.
In the case of Chechnya, however, Russia never even attempted this
approach, treating the Chechen national leader Dzhokhar Dudayev as a
conscript runaway from the Russian army or as a thug and organized crime
leader, instead of as the elected leader of a national movement or
republic. Dudayev, while certainly secessionist and erratic, also just as
certainly provided many signals to Moscow that a solution short of
independence was possible. Even with the terrible destruction of the first
war and the assassination of Dudayev, Chechen leaders proved their
willingness to negotiate the 1996 agreement. That willingness has continued
in numerous written declarations of President Maskhadov and his legitimate
representatives (such as Zakayev and Akhmadov).
Oddly, Mr. Straus charges Mr. Kappeler with "bias" for not coming to his
simplistic logical conclusions (a=a, b=a). Rather, Kappeler has drawn the
proper conclusion that something terribly wrong has taken hold of the
policy of the Russian government that carries out such a savage war against
Chechnya. But it is Mr. Strauss's biases that allow him to justify this
terrible policy and to argue that Chechens should simply have followed the
compliant policy of Shamiyev. Mr. Kappeler does not go far enough, though,
in my view: The reasons for Russia's different treatment of Chechnya are
clear: Russia chose violence, war, and genocide for the simple reason that
Chechnya's leaders -- and people -- would not pledge absolute fealty to the
Russian state.
What is also clear is that no democratic state today would be allowed to
get away with such a policy of bloodshed, murder, torture, economic
displacement, general destruction, cultural annihilation, pillaging, and
rape, among other gross violations of international law. Every European
power has been forced to divest itself of colonialist holdings. Russia,
however, is being allowed to keep by force, against a people's will, its
colonial and imperial conquests. Here the logical conclusion might be:
Russia is no democracy.
Sincerely,
Eric Chenoweth
Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe
2000 P Street, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20036
Tel.: 202-466-7105 / Email: eric@idee.org
*******
#13
State Hermitage Refuses to Return Works of Art
Rosbalt
SAINT PETERSBURG, December 17. The State Hermitage has declared that it will
not return works of art to their countries of origin. As a Rosbalt
correspondent reports, this was announced on Monday, December 16, at an
ITAR-TASS press conference by Director of the State Hermitage Museum Mikhail
Piotrovsky.
In Mr Piotrovsky's opinion, various countries' demands that works of art held
in museums abroad be returned to their countries of origin amounts to
"stealing stolen property", an old Bolshevik slogan. 'We are not talking
about those works of art that appeared in museums after the Second World War
or which are now being smuggled out of their countries of origin,' said the
director of the museum. However there are a lot of 'foreign' works of art
located in museums, which were acquired in different circumstances.
Mr Piotrovsky said that if we were to 'globalize the problem' then the whole
of the Louvre's Egyptian section would have to be returned to Egypt, all
Greek works of art, scattered across the globe, would have to be returned to
Greece and the Hat of Monomakh, which is kept in the Kremlin, would have to
be returned to Kazan as it was made by Tatar craftsmen. 'It is only worth
talking about restitution when works of art have special national value,' he
emphasised. However, he is sure that there could be different interpretations
of this: the Parthenon did not have any special value for Greeks of the
Middle Ages, their work has "returned" to them via Europe, after the
Renaissance.
'In large museums like the Hermitage, the Louvre and others which don't
specialize in any area of art, there are many works of art that have been
removed from their historic and territorial origins. At the same time the
collections of these museums display culture that is common to all
humankind,' he emphasised.
*******
#14
Asia Times
December 17, 2002
Russian water on troubled soils
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW - All of a sudden, an influential Russian politician, Moscow Mayor
Yuri Luzhkov, has moved to revive a bold plan to build a 2,225-km
Siberia-Central Asia Canal to divert Siberian rivers into Asian deserts.
However, other Russian officials and experts warn that the project's economic
viability is far from certain.
Earlier this month, Luzhkov sent an official letter to President Vladimir
Putin, suggesting construction of a 16-meter-deep and 200-meter-wide canal
from Khanty-Mansiisk to Central Asia through Kazakhstan.
The Siberian river diversion plan involves the construction of a huge canal,
which would bring additional water from the Siberian Ob river (subsequently
the Irtysh) to the Central Asian Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. The canal
project would involve diverting about 6-7 percent of the Ob's waters or some
27 cubic kilometers a year.
Luzhkov argued that selling excess fresh water to Central Asia could prove a
lucrative project for Russia. According to Luzhkov, the canal would enlarge
the amount of arable land in Central Asia by roughly 2 million hectares, and
by 1.5 million hectares in southern Siberia.
The project has an estimated price tag of between US$12 billion and $20
billion, an exorbitant amount for impoverished Central Asian states. It is
not a small amount even for Russia, currently awash with petrodollars.
However, Luzhkov suggested forming an International Eurasian Consortium
funded by loans collateralized by future proceeds from fresh water sales to
Central Asia.
Some Russian experts, though, are pessimistic. The plan to divert Siberian
rivers is a "wicked idea", argues Alexander Nazarov, head of the Northern
Affairs committee of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian
parliament. The waters of the Ob river are too polluted by nearby oil fields,
Nazarov announced on December 16. This opinion was echoed by Nikolai
Glazovsky, head of the Moscow-based Institute of Geography. "Such an idea
should not be nurtured by any normal-thinking person," Glazovsky told
journalists on December 16.
Russian media outlets have also ridiculed Luzhkov's proposal, and the
Kommersant daily quoted one government source as suggesting that the idea be
checked not by economists but by mental health experts. However, it is
understood that the mayor is lobbying in favor of Moscow's huge complex of
municipal construction companies, which could get lucrative contracts in the
course of the canal project.
Normalization and eventual peaceful development in Afghanistan would mean
growth in the Amu Darya's water consumption there by some 10 cubic kilometers
a year, according to Luzhkov's estimates. That would mean that Uzbekistan's
fresh water supply could be halved, Luzhkov's draft suggests.
Both Central Asian rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, flow to the Aral
Sea - the Syr Darya from Kyrgyzstan through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and the
Amu Darya from Tajikistan through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In recent
decades, irrigation has so depleted both rivers that in most years no water
has reached the Aral Sea.
No big wonder, then, that Central Asian governments back the plan to divert
Siberian waters. The on-going environmental disaster around the Aral Sea,
which affects some 50 million people, should not be viewed as an internal
problem of any state or Central Asian region, Tajik President Emomali
Rahmonov reportedly told a meeting of donors for saving the Aral Sea in
Dushanbe, Tajikistan, earlier this month. According to the RIA news agency,
the meeting concluded that the Aral Sea could not be saved without the
Siberian river diversion scheme.
By 2020, according to United Nations experts, the shrinking Aral Sea may no
longer exist. UN Environmental Program specialists estimate that the Aral's
surface area is now just 25 percent of that before Soviet central planners
began diverting the rivers that feed the sea for ill-conceived agricultural
irrigation schemes. There is little that can be done at this stage to save
the sea from extinction, the UN experts say.
The revival of the Siberia-Central Asia Canal plan comes as yet another page
in the project's longish saga. Through the 1970s and the 1980s, the water
resources ministry of the former Soviet Union sponsored a water diversion
blueprint, and nearly succeeded in launching actual construction.
However, the project was condemned by Russian scholars, who argued that
diverting river waters could upset the global environmental balance. These
protests became the roots of Russia's homegrown environmental movement. The
Soviet government also found the project not feasible economically, hence in
the mid-1980s the plan was abandoned.
However, the project is being revitalized at a time when Central Asian states
are struggling to share water resources, and Uzbekistan faces serious
problems. Agriculture is the cornerstone of the country's economy, and
thirsty crops such as cotton and rice require intensive irrigation.
Uzbekistan's agricultural infrastructure is dependent on irrigation, which
consumes about 90 percent of the country's water resources. In 2001, the
country's rice crop reportedly plunged by over 50 percent as compared to
2000, due to lack of water.
In recent months, Uzbekistan has sponsored a number of conferences to support
the canal project. One gathering in Tashkent suggested the establishment of
an international consortium to develop the project and sought support from
leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Russia. The gathering
specifically argued that the canal could help to supply more water to
Russia's Tyumen, Kurgan and Orenburg regions.
The Russian government is yet to come up with any official reaction relative
to the canal project. However, some officials have indicated that Russia
itself may face water shortages. Increasing deficiency of clean fresh water
is among Russia's most urgent macro-economic and geopolitical problems,
Russia's natural resources minister Vitaly Artyukhov announced last November.
Brazil tops the list of big players in fresh water, with 12.7 percent of the
world's renewable supply, while Russia is second with 10.2 percent and China
trails third with 8.3 percent, according to the Washington-based World
Resources Institute.
In the meantime, competition for water is increasing in Central Asia at an
alarming rate, adding tension to what is already a volatile region. During
the Soviet era, water and energy resources were exchanged freely across
Central Asia, and Moscow provided the funds to build and maintain
infrastructure. Water use has increased since the Central Asian states became
independent in 1991 and is now at an unsustainable level. Due to lack of
funding, irrigation systems have decayed and half of all irrigation water
never reaches crops.
The problem is that the five Central Asian states have largely failed to come
up with a viable multi-lateral approach to replace the Soviet system of
management. Therefore, disputes over water and energy have been second only
to Islamic extremism as a source of tension in Central Asia, according to a
recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think
tank.
Shortly after independence, the five countries agreed to maintain the
Soviet-era quota system, but this has become unworkable. In the wake of the
civil war in Tajikistan and the decay of Kyrgyzstan's economy,
water-monitoring facilities have fallen into disrepair.
Moreover, an annual cycle of disputes has developed between the three
downstream countries - Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - which are
all heavy consumers of water for growing cotton, and the upstream nations -
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, according to ICG. The downstream countries require
more water for their growing agricultural sectors and rising populations,
while the economically weaker upstream countries want to use more water for
electricity generation.
Moreover, Turkmenistan is using too much water to the detriment of
Uzbekistan, which in turn has been accused by Kazakhstan of taking more than
its share. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan say that the three downstream countries
are all exceeding quotas. Even within Uzbekistan, provinces have accused one
another of using too much water.
Moreover, a multilateral agreement between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and
Kyrgyzstan on how to divide the Syr Darya's waters between them expires in
2003, while these countries are yet to agree on a new deal.
The ICG has warned that disputes over water and energy have contributed to a
growth of tension in Central Asia. For instance, Uzbekistan has carried out
military exercises that look suspiciously like practice runs at capturing by
force the Toktogul water reservoir in Kyrgyzstan. Last February, when
Kazakhstan stopped supplying electricity to parts of Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz
prime minister threatened to leave parts of Kazakhstan without water for
irrigation. Hence experts warn that competition for water can only increase
in the region.
Therefore, the Siberia-Central Asia Canal could be instrumental in easing
tensions over scarce water resources in the volatile region - all that is
needed is the political will - and the little matter of about $20 billion.
******
#15
Moscow Times
December 18, 2002
Rail Reform and the Status Quo
By Yulia Latynina
Last Friday, a package of reforms aimed at overhauling the Railways Ministry
passed its second reading in the State Duma. It's a curious thing: Reforming
Unified Energy Systems, the national power monopoly, has been like pulling
teeth; but railways reform has passed like a hot knife through butter. It
makes you wonder.
For some reason the railroads are considered to be state property. But in
fact that's not quite true. The rails, ties and roadbed belong to the state,
as well as most of the rolling stock.
But Russia also has private freight agents. Some own their own rolling stock,
while others have nothing but a license to ship goods by rail.
The main advantage that such private operators enjoy is the discount rate
they receive from the Railways Ministry. Think about it. It would never occur
to a factory owner to rent out his factory, cover the tenant's gas and
electricity costs, and demand that in return the tenant sell the goods he
produces in that factory 40 percent cheaper than the owner sells his own.
Yet this is exactly how the Railways Ministry does business. It allows
freight agents to use its rail network, trains and cargo handlers -- and it
cuts 40 percent off their bill. Occasionally the ministry camouflages the
discounts somewhat by giving them not to shipping companies but to the
factories that produce the goods -- on the unspoken condition that the
factory use a particular shipper. If the producer should go with an
independent shipper, the ministry makes clear that "unexpected" problems
could ensue -- a shortage of rail cars, cargo sent to the wrong destination,
delays in unloading, and so on.
To cut a long story short, the government bears the costs of maintaining the
rail network and the rolling stock, and private companies reap the profits.
Back in 1992-96, during Gennady Fadeyev's first stint as railways minister,
the leading freight agent in Russia was a Swiss-based firm, TransRail, which
was directly accused of corruption and connections with top officials in the
Railways Ministry. According to documents now on file at the Prosecutor
General's Office, TransRail owes the ministry $535 million. The company not
only received discount rates, it also neglected to pay its bills.
When Nikolai Aksyonenko took over at the Railways Ministry, TransRail was
demoted, and the freight market was dominated by two companies, Yevrosib and
Iriston. Yevrosib was run by the minister's nephew, Sergei Aksyonenko.
Iriston nominally belonged to an offshore company, Mercury Financial Ltd.,
but rumor linked it to the minister's son, Rustam.
When Aksyonenko was sacked for corruption, the railways portfolio went to
none other than former minister Fadeyev, although this time a member of the
Vladimir Putin's St. Peterburg elite, Vladimir Yakunin, was appointed to look
after him. And Yakunin is tipped to take over the ministry once he has
learned the ropes.
So what will the planned reforms actually change? The sign on the door. The
Railways Ministry will be called Russian Railways, a Russian joint-stock
company. This new company will still own the rails and rolling stock, and the
same private freight agents will still dominate the shipping market. The
reforms pose no threat to anyone's vital interests and offer no guarantees
that the newly formed company will not funnel its profits into the pockets of
freight agents. And, as a result, the reforms are sailing through the Duma.
Ten years into the era of privatization in Russia, we are witnessing the
birth of yet another company whose finances are entirely nontransparent, very
much like Gazprom. Gazprom also has its hands in everything: production,
sales and delivery. It produces natural gas at the cost of $4 per 1,000 cubic
meters, sells it in Russia for $25 per 1,000 cubic meters and abroad for $80.
It borrows hundreds of millions of dollars -- and operates at a loss.
Yulia Latynina is author and host of "Yest Mneniye" on TVS.
******
#16
Time magazine
December 23, 2002
The Beluga Blues
America's craving for salty, sexy caviar has pushed an ancient sea creature
to the brink of extinction
By ANITA HAMILTON
Some people spread it on lightly buttered toast as a holiday treat. Others
wrap it in blinis with a dollop of sour cream. But purists insist that the
best way to eat beluga caviar is straight off the spoon, followed by a shot
of vodka or a sip of ice-cold champagne. For those who can afford to shell
out $100 or more an ounce, these precious salted sturgeon eggs are a taste of
what life was like for the Russian czars and czarinas who feasted regularly
on fine caviar.
Better get your last licks in soon, however. The beluga sturgeon that produce
the world's best caviar are under enormous pressure from overfishing, dam
building and pollution by the former Soviet republics that ring the Caspian
Sea. Most species of sturgeon are in decline -- some as much as 90%--and
those
native to the Caspian appear to be doomed. Environmental groups have
petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to put beluga on the
endangered-species list -- a move that would cut off supply to the U.S., the
world's largest consumer (Americans swallow up to 80% of the annual beluga
harvest). The agency held public hearings on Dec. 5 to consider the matter; a
final recommendation is expected next summer.
"People are going to have to live without beluga caviar for a while if we are
going to have any hope of rescuing the species," says Lisa Speer, senior
policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council and a spokeswoman
for a sturgeon-hugging coalition that calls itself Caviar Emptor.
Part of the problem is due to the nature of the beast. Sturgeon are ancient
creatures that have swum the world's rivers and seas for millions of years.
Clad in bony plates, they are fierce-looking fish that can grow to enormous
lengths -- measuring up to 20 ft. from snout to tail and weighing more than
2,500 lbs. But they mature slowly: some don't begin reproducing until they
are 15 to 25 years old. When a female sturgeon does start ovulating, she can
be quite valuable, producing over a million eggs worth hundreds of thousands
of dollars in the U.S.
Until the early 1990s, the sturgeon supply in the Caspian Sea was tightly
regulated by the Soviet Union and Iran. But when the Soviet regime collapsed,
so did governmental control. The black market for caviar exploded. Today
poachers supply 10 times as much caviar as legal traders -- some 300 tons per
year. The temptations are great in a region where economic opportunities are
scarce. A single suitcase filled with caviar, exported via courier, can net
more than $100,000. In a typical bust, smugglers in Astrakhan managed to load
a Russian air force cargo plane with 770 lbs. of sturgeon roe before it was
seized by the Federal Security Service.
Anatoli Vlasenko, deputy director of the Caspian Research Institute of
Fisheries, disputes reports of the beluga's demise. "The 90% depletion figure
is a gross exaggeration on the part of the nervous media," he says. Still,
the Russians have worked hard to sustain the remaining population with
hatcheries and export quotas. Banning imports "would be the catalyst for a
new round of poaching and illegal trade," says Armen Petrossian, head of the
International Caviar Importers Association. Tariffs collected from the legal
trade pay for the hatcheries that produce 97% of beluga swimming in the
Caspian. Without revenues from the legal trade, says Petrossian, there would
be no incentive to maintain the hatcheries or to police poachers.
In the U.S., the demand for beluga caviar has led not just to illegal imports
of what some call black gold but also to a rash of false labeling. Arkady
Panchernikov, whose Caspian Star Caviar handled some 60% of the caviar
imported into the U.S., pleaded guilty last month to six counts of fraud and
trafficking without permits for falsely labeling inferior grades of caviar as
beluga. "Most of the caviar in the country has been brought in illegally,"
says Edward Grace, the Wildlife Service special agent who investigated the
case.
As Caspian caviar gets harder to come by, all sorts of alternatives are
popping up. Scientists can't get their hands on enough beluga sturgeon to
start breeding them in the U.S. (there are fewer than five in the 50 states),
but America does have its own natural population of sturgeon and
sturgeon-like fish. Roe from native white sturgeon and its close cousin, the
paddlefish, is becoming increasingly popular. Stolt Sea Farm, near
Sacramento, Calif., has boosted production of its Sterling-brand caviar from
farmed white sturgeon from 50 lbs. in 1995 to more than 12,000 lbs. a year.
Persuading customers to give up the real thing has not been easy. Even at $30
to $75 an ounce, "it's perceived as cheaper and not as good," says Chuck
Edwards, Stolt's sales and marketing manager. That perception is changing. As
caviar snobbery gives way to environmental concerns, some top chefs are
giving up not only on beluga but on the closely related osetra and sevruga
caviars from the same region. More than 100 U.S. chefs and retailers have
signed a letter to Interior Secretary Gail Norton supporting a beluga ban.
Among them is Rick Moonen, former chef of New York City's Oceana, who
recently opened a new seafood restaurant called rm.
"I always had Caspian caviar on my menus," says Moonen. "It was the benchmark
of what caviar was supposed to be." But when Moonen noticed a decline in the
quality of Caspian caviar a few years ago, he started shopping for
alternatives. His menu currently features Blue Island oysters with cucumber
sorbet and paddlefish roe. He also offers patrons sea-urchin custard with
champagne foam and rainbow-trout caviar. Next up: buckwheat waffles with
Sterling caviar. Purists would be appalled, but if that's what it takes to
ensure the survival of an ancient sea creature, it may be worth it.
With reporting by Andrea Dorfman/New York and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow
*******
#17
BBC Monitoring
Russia "doomed" to join US against Iraq, Iran - Chechen web site
Source: Kavkaz-Tsentr news agency web site in Russian 17 Dec 02
17 December, Kavkaz-Tsentr correspondent Serazhuddin Akhmadov: Preparations
for the war against Iraq are gathering speed. First reports have come in on
the incursion of the US occupation corps on the territory of this country.
That is why we can consider the UN inspectors' work and their reports purely
symbolic.
[Passage omitted: details of US preparations]
Meanwhile, Russian political scientists express concern that the attack on
Iraq will actually become the beginning of a NATO incursion in the
Transcaucasus.
The NATO expansion to the north will obviously be more painful for Russia
than its expansion to the east. This operation will probably be implemented
by Turkish forces. Russian analysts presume that Azerbaijan's transfer under
NATO's direct control is necessary to start military operations against Iran
after Iraq. The USA has been itching for this for a long time.
In this case, as the USA's partner in the "anti-terrorist" coalition,
Russia's "moment of truth" has to come. This will happen when Washington
appeals to Moscow and demands support for its aggression and use of military
bases by US aircraft on the territory of occupied Chechnya and in Mozdok,
Makhachkala, Krasnodar and Rostov-na-Donu.
Many Russian politicians believe that Russia is doomed to become a member of
the new ANTANTA [military bloc in World War I]. If Moscow refuses to fulfil
Washington's demands on the use of bases, the USA will start the process of
its dismantling, directly supporting occupied Chechnya and a number of other
major ethnic regions which want secession from Moscow.
Some reports say that the NATO chief and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin
"secretly" discussed this during their recent meeting in Moscow.
In the Kremlin's new political deadlock Putin is urgently seeking allies in
China, India and the Central Asian countries (Kyrgyzstan). Despite public
smiles and hand-shakes, relations between the USA and Russia are becoming
quite tense. Moscow's actual non-fulfilment of the plan to destroy chemical
weapons has become one of the reasons of this tension. The USA has spent 230m
dollars on this plan.
[Passage omitted: USA Today report on this]
Critics claim that the sluggishness in destroying its chemical arsenal
demonstrates Russia's unwillingness to deal with this issue. They say that it
is simply inexpedient to continue rendering assistance in the implementation
of this project in the town of Shchuchye.
The Americans are especially concerned about this chemical weapons depot
because this ammunition is portable and ready for immediate use for military
purposes. As against containers with toxins kept in the other Russian depots,
this fact makes this depot attractive to those who would like to use it
against the USA. In addition, the "Shchuchye" arsenal is vulnerable because
this impoverished region is located near the traditionally Islamic
Kazakhstan. That is why theft committed by an impoverished employee could go
undetected, if this has not already happened.
*******
#18
Loss of Iraqi oil contract could cost Russia 20bn dollars - expert
ITAR-TASS
Moscow, 17 December: The damage Russia may incur if Iraq insists on
terminating a contract with LUKoil to develop the West Qurna[-2] oilfield,
may reach 5bn to 20bn dollars, prominent experts have said.
LUKoil analysts said if the International Arbitration Tribunal in Geneva
recognizes the contract as invalid, Russia will lose at least 1bn dollars a
year in tax revenues, according to the most modest estimates...
Konstantin Reznikov, an analyst with the Alfa-Bank, told ITAR-TASS that the
size of the lost profit might range between 10 to 20bn dollars.
"There are no precise data on West Qurna, but assuming the project is similar
to the ones LUKoil made in Azerbaijan, the company may lose some 12bn
dollars," he said.
However, much depends on such factors as oil prices and the time of works,
Reznikov added...
*******
#19
US WANTS TO PUSH RUSSIA OUT OF WORLD ENERGY MARKET
MOSCOW, 17 December, 2002. /RIA Novosti corr. Alexander Smotrov, Daniil
Nizamutdinov/-During a RIA Novosti press conference on Tuesday, General
Director of the Russian Centre for Modern Iranian Studies, Razhdab Safarov,
said that the US was trying to discredit Russo-Iranian co-operation by means
of statements alleging that Tehran is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
Safarov said that Russia's interaction with Iran was for "exclusively
peaceful purposes." According to him, "under pressure from American and
multinational companies specializing in the construction of nuclear power
stations, the US leadership has not given up hope of pushing Russia out of
this market." He reminded those present that in 1976, the USA concluded a
major trade and economic agreement with Iran that, in particular, stipulated
that the American specialists would build eight nuclear power stations in
Iran. However, these agreements were declared null and void after the change
of power in Iran in 1979.
The expert pointed out, though, that Tehran had not given up on plans to
produce cheap electricity and concluded a "nuclear contract" with Moscow in
1995. The deal is worth $2.7 billion over 84 months.
The USA, according to Safarov, is using any chance to "throw a shadow over
the strategic policy of interaction between Russia and Iran." Evidence of
this, in his opinion, comes in the form of recent allegations that two major
nuclear facilities in the cities of Natanz and Arak could be used to produce
nuclear weapons.
However, Radzhab Safarov stressed that "neither the USA, nor any other
country, had any real proof that Iran is designing nuclear weapons;
everything is on the level of statements, suggestions and guesses." The
Russian expert said that Russia had to reject these provocative statements
toughly.
*******
#20
Russia dismisses Powell's pressure over Iran
December 17, 2002
AFP
Russia's atomic energy ministry on Tuesday brushed aside US Secretary of
State's Colin Powell latest accusations concerning Moscow's nuclear
cooperation with Iran, saying Washington still had shown no proof the
assistance was helpign Iran's military program.
"To this day, the ministry has received no firm information (from Washington)
that Iran had a nuclear program that contradicts" international agreements,
the Interfax-AVN military news agency quoted an unnamed atomic energy
official as saying.
"The technology that Russia supplies to Iran cannot be used for military
purposes," the ministry added. On Monday, Powell stepped up pressure on
Russia, which is refusing to break its 800-million-dollar contract at the
Bushehr plant in western Iran and mulling the signature of contracts for
several more power plants in Iran.
"We have had conversations with Russia that we are concerned about this and
that some of the support they are providing might well go to developing
nuclear weapons within Iran," said Powell.
"It will continue to be a matter of discussion with us and the Russians."
Russia said on Sunday that the nuclear power plant it was helping to build at
Bushehr had no connection to two sites that the United States identified last
week as part of a secret and nascent nuclear weapons program.
It said that the US claims, based on satellite photographs of sites at
Natanza and Araka, were groundless.
Iran has denied pursuing secret plans for nuclear weapons.
The issue has complicated warming relations between US President George W.
Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who focused on the dispute during
a summit in Moscow in May.
Meanwhile Russian analysts accused the United States of trying to muscle
Moscow out of lucrative energy contracts for Washington's own commercial
gain, arguing that Moscow had no interest in seeing neighboring Iran obtain
nuclear weapons.
"The prospect of nuclear weapons getting into the hands of its southern
Caspian neighbor goes against Russia's interests, as nuclear weapons are a
means of pressure in international relations," said Radzhab Safarov, head of
the Russian Center for Contemporary Iranian Studies.
"Russia and the United States control nearly 70 percent of the nuclear energy
market," he told reporters.
"The US administration is still hoping to oust Russia from the Iranian
market," he said.
*******
#21
Russian Strategic Missile Troops mark 43rd anniversary
December 17, 2002
ITAR-TASS
The Russian Strategic Missile Troops, which are marking the 43rd anniversary
of their foundation on Tuesday, will continue to be the country's reliable
nuclear shield. "Russia will not be left without its Strategic Missile
Troops," General Nikolai Solovtsov, the Strategic Troops' commander, told
Russia's First Channel television company in a live broadcast on Tuesday.
The Council of Ministers of the USSR passed a resolution creating the
Strategic Missile Troops as a new class of the Armed Forces on December 17,
1959. Over the last 43 years the Strategic Missile Troops have covered a long
way from the first formations and units capable of solving strategic tasks to
becoming one of the major components of Russia's strategic nuclear forces
ensuring nuclear deterrence. The Strategic Missile Troops were created in
response to the worsening military and political situation after World War II
and rapid development of offensive weapons by the United States and NATO
countries. That posed a real threat to the former Soviet Union's security.
Solovtsov noted that 1992 saw a fundamentally new stage in the development of
the Strategic Missile Troops. Uniform stationary and mobile Topol missile
systems are being created and deployed. In June 2001 the Strategic Missile
Troops were transformed from a type of the Armed Forces into an arm with
central command. "The existing grouping of the Russian Strategic Missile
Troops is in a state of combat readiness and is capable of performing any
tasks according to deadline and in any conditions," General Solovtsov went on
to say.
He explained that the high combat ability of the Strategic Missile Troops was
the result of strict central combat command, a well-established system of
combat duties, permanent control over the technical state of missiles and
other nuclear weapons, reliable protection and defense of areas where the
troops' positions are located and permanent care for the people who are on
combat duty.
Solovtsov said that the Russian Strategic Missile Troops would be cut
gradually as combat missile complexes are taken out of service. "No radical
reductions are expected. A missile division stationed near Aleisk, the Altai
territory, has been subject to reductions in the last two years under the
START-1 Treaty," Solovtsov stressed.
He noted that the Chita army command and one formation having Topol-M
missiles in military service near Chita have been cut in accordance with a
plan for reforming the Russian Strategic Missile Troops.
The command post and the communications center of the Chita army were removed
from combat duty on July 1 this year. One more division has been disbanded.
Two formations, in Kansk and Irkutsk, have been assigned to the Omsk army
group.
"All the other missile divisions are on combat duty. They continue performing
their combat tasks," the general stressed.
The Russian Strategic Missile Troops still have divisions armed with heavy
inter-continental ballistic missiles known as Satana (in NATO terms). These
missiles are equipped with individually guided separating warheads, General
Solovtsov said.
He stressed that a decision to preserve this ominous weapons in military
service, which was passed this year, was vitally important for the Russian
Strategic Missile Troops.
"Being part of the Russian Armed Forces, the Strategic Missile Troops are
solving their main task of ensuring Russia's security, sovereignty and
independence," Solovtsov said.
He noted that the Russian Strategic Missile Troops had successfully launched
several inter-continental ballistic missiles this year which proved high
reliability of the missile weapons and the high skills of the personnel of
the Strategic Missile Troops units.
Solovtsov added that stationary and mobile-based Topol-M systems would form
the backbone of the Russian Strategic Missile Troops in a short-term
perspective.
******
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