Johnson's Russia List
#7196
27 May 2003
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. Reuters: McCartney Serenades Putin, Rocks Red Square.
2. St. Petersburg Times: Net Giants Open Site for Anniversary.
3. St. Petersburg Times: Irina Titova, Public Gets A Look at Revamped
Palace.
4. Rosbalt: Peter the Great's Dream Palace Restoration Cost USD 280 Million.
5. AP: St. Petersburg: More Communal Apartments.
6. Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Rebecca Santana, Russia's ex-capital tries
to regain grandeur. St. Petersburg marks 300th anniversary.
7. Moscow Time: Michael McFaul, How to Reinvigorate the Relationship.
8. Washington Profile News Agency: Russian-American Relations: The End of
an
Era. An Interview with Nikolai Zlobin.
9. Smysl: RUSSIA NEEDS A NEW KIND OF DIPLOMACY. An interview with Sergei
Karaganov, Chairman of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council.
10. Rosbalt: US Share of World Economy Almost Halved Since 1945.
11. RIA Novosti: 10 MILLION RUSSIANS MAY BETTER THEIR CONDITION IN 2 YEARS.
12. RIA Novosti: NUMBERS OF RUSSIAN ACADEMICIANS HAVE GROWN.
13. Dow Jones: Geoffrey T. Smith, Third Time Lucky For Auctioneer Chubais?
14. Moscow Times: Matt Bivens, Photo and Fingerprint Fun.
15. Richard Thomas: RE: 7195-Sieff/Satter.
16. John Wilhelm: Misunderstanding Russia.
17. RFE/RL: Jeremy Bransten, Chinese President Looking To Solidify Ties
With
Moscow, Central Asia.
18. Asia Times: Sergei Blagov, Russia to pay for Turkmenistan's largesse.
19. Zenit: Russian Orthodox Urged to Respect Catholics' Spiritual Needs.
Archbishop Tauran "Saddened" by Allegations of Proselytism.
20. Los Angeles Times: David Holley, Exhibit in Moscow Celebrates a
Soviet-Era Intelligence Agency. The short-lived but long-famous SMERSH is
romanticized in a museum show.]
********
#1
McCartney Serenades Putin, Rocks Red Square
May 26, 2003
By Clara Ferreira-Marques
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Paul McCartney has become the first Beatle to sing
inside the Kremlin walls, treating President Vladimir Putin to an impromptu
version of "Let it Be" before singing to thousands of Russians on Red Square.
Putin, who confessed to being a Beatles fan in his youth, told McCartney
Saturday the band had been an inspiration during Soviet times, despite
Kremlin efforts to discourage Western music.
"It was very popular, more than popular," Putin said when asked whether he
had listened to the Beatles when contacts with foreign music were
discouraged. "It was like a breath of fresh air, like a window on the
outside world."
McCartney met Putin in the Kremlin for tea and a guided tour, hours before
the first Russian show in the musician's 40-year career.
Putin told McCartney he knew of his plans to play in Russia in the 1980s --
ultimately quashed by Soviet authorities.
"It was considered propaganda of an alien ideology," Putin, a former KGB
officer, said of Beatles' hits.
Although not banned in Soviet times, Beatles music was hard to obtain. Some
albums were locally manufactured and many fans heard songs on the Voice of
America and BBC radio.
"The Beatles did make a lot of changes. We didn't set out to make changes,
but we did," McCartney said later.
McCartney, on a 14-month world tour, is not the first Beatle to sing in
Russia; Ringo Starr traveled to Moscow in 1998. But he is the only member
of the band and one of a handful of artists to be given permission to
perform in Red Square.
"(Putin) seemed to be a really nice guy," McCartney told hundreds of
reporters in the square. "I sang him a song -- he couldn't come to the
concert tonight."
He said later he had sung "Let It Be."
Ahead of Saturday's open-air show a group of nationalist Russian deputies
objected to plans to stage a pop concert meters from the graves of Soviet
leaders Lenin, Stalin and dozens of other communist-era heavyweights.
Thousands flocked to the concert. Tickets sold for hundreds of dollars in a
country where monthly wages are below $100.
McCartney, thronged by fans since arriving in Russia, said he would treat
20,000 spectators to three hours of hits, including "Back in the USSR."
Strolling through the Kremlin grounds, McCartney said his trip to Russia
had dispelled many notions he had held, including what he might have
thought when he wrote that song.
"I didn't know anything about it then," he said. "It was a mystical land
then. It's nice to see the reality. I always suspected that people had big
hearts. Now I know that's true."
********
#2
St. Petersburg Times
May 27, 2003
Net Giants Open Site for Anniversary
A new Web site, providing coverage of the St. Petersburg 300th anniversary
celebrations in real time, was launched on Monday. The site, which can be
found at www.flyway.ru , has been developed by telecommunications companies
Equant, Cisco, Comset and Intel. According to Ekaterina Ovchinnikova,
spokesperson for the project, the site features on-line video broadcasts of
the official jubilee programs and celebration events, which are now
available to visitors from across the globe.
Equant is also providing technical support for the International Press
Center for the duration of the 300th anniversary, according to Tatyana
Prokhorova, general director of Equant.
*******
#3
St. Petersburg Times
May 27, 2003
Public Gets A Look at Revamped Palace
By Irina Titova
STAFF WRITER
While thousands of workers toiled round the clock to prepare the crumbling
Konstantinovsky Palace for this month's grandiose summit of world leaders,
the 18th-century residence had been strictly off-limits to journalists and
curious onlookers.
Now that most of the $280 million renovation has been completed, the
presidential administration has proudly unveiled its masterpiece. And even
skeptics have to admit that the result is breathtaking.
The bluish walls and yellow marble pilasters of the central Marble Hall,
where President Vladimir Putin will host a Russia-European Union summit
this Saturday, give but an inkling of the imperial grandeur restored during
the past year.
The coffee-and-milk-colored palace of Italian baroque, with the Russian
national flag waving on top, stands prominently on a hilltop surrounded by
vast green lawns, ponds and freshly planted lindens. Its northern facade
overlooks the windy Gulf of Finland, connected to the palace by an
intricate network of canals landscaped with drawbridges and fountains.
Few people believed that the palace - the most neglected historical site in
the dazzling "necklace" of landmarks surrounding St. Petersburg - could be
renovated in time for the celebration of the city's 300th anniversary. But
Kremlin officials now tout the project as a miracle of speedy, high-quality
work.
"Just 1 1/2 years ago, the 200 hectares of the park's territory were a
swamp, and the palace itself was in such decay that it could have
collapsed," Vladimir Kozhin, head of the presidential property department,
told reporters Sunday.
The toughest part of the reconstruction was the foundation, whose ancient
oak piles had rotted away in the damp ground. Securing the palace on the
hillside required more than a million cubic meters of sand and soil, Kozhin
said.
Although most of the interior was restored using old pictures and
blueprints, the palace now mingles tradition with high technology. The
meeting rooms are equipped with monitors and discreetly hidden booths for
interpreters.
In addition to the Marble, Oval and Blue halls, the palace has some 50
rooms, each one unique and some already serving as museum expositions. The
decor includes impressive crystal chandeliers, painstakingly carved friezes
and gilded paintings climbing up the columned walls and across the arched
ceiling.
While there are some innovations - including an oak belvedere styled as a
ship's hold with a spiral staircase leading to the cupola's observation
deck - the emphasis was clearly placed on recapturing the palace's history.
One example is the grottos and re-opened wine cellar stocked only with
Hungarian Tokai wines.
"The wine has already arrived," Kozhin announced.
The palace, built between 1720 and 1750 as the brainchild of Peter the
Great, bears the name of the son of Nicholas I, who went on to become the
reformer of the Russian Navy.
The entire ensemble, including the grounds, will be completed in 2005, said
Gennady Yavnik, head of the foundation in charge of the work. But parts of
the territory will be opened to the public as early as June.
Meanwhile, 20 upscale guesthouses have been built to house some of the 45
heads of state expected at this weekend's summit. Each of the
2,000-square-meter cottages - which boast their own meeting rooms, swimming
pools, saunas and gyms - bears the name of a Russian city and is decorated
with gifts from there.
Like the area surrounding the palace, the guesthouses will also be
available for private individuals, but Kozhin declined to name the price of
such a sojourn.
Organizers of the press tour made it clear that security was no less a
concern than luxury. Military sappers would be seen combing the area for
explosives.
The entire territory, known officially as the Palace of Congresses complex,
includes a park, the four-star Baltic Star hotel and a helipad.
"Many ministries have already filled out applications to use the complex
for their conferences, meetings and celebrations," Kozhin said, adding that
various nongovernmental and private organizations also have shown an
interest in renting out the facilities.
Officials have said that the project was funded only with private donations
and not a kopek of government money.
********
#4
Rosbalt
Peter the Great's Dream Palace Restoration Cost USD 280 Million
ST. PETERSBURG, May 26. Constantinovsky palace opened after restoration on
May 25. According to Rosbalt Manager of Presidential Affairs Vladimir
Kozhin said that 'the restoration of Constantinovsky palace-park complex
was financed exclusively by fundraising.' He said funds totalling USD 280
million had been raised. Donations ranged from 3 dollars to several million
dollars.
Peter the Great dreamed of creating a 'Russian Versailles' at Strelna. The
new palace of congresses is intended for greeting foreign leaders and other
high-ranking guests. There is a unique system of canals and more than 40
bridges on the territory of the palace and park complex. The VIP-village
features 20 comfortable cottages and a helicopter pad. The halls of the
pavilion of negotiations, where the international summit will take place on
May 30-31, are equipped with state-of-the-art technology.
********
#5
St. Petersburg: More Communal Apartments
May 26, 2003
By IRINA TITOVA
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) - A short walk from Nevsky Prospect, the
stately avenue that epitomizes St. Petersburg's elegance, five families
share seven bedrooms, one kitchen, and one bathroom in a single apartment.
The long corridor is piled high with cardboard boxes, rusty bicycles and
two fir trees leftovers from New Year's celebrations almost six months ago.
``I've actually already gotten used to this life, and given up dreams of
having our own apartment,'' said Olga Kukushkina, who lives with her
husband, 5-year-old and 10-month-old sons in one of the bedrooms. Eleven
other people share the rest.
St. Petersburg is celebrating its 300th anniversary this week, but has a
less impressive distinction as well: It has more of these communal
apartments, known in Russian as 'kommunalki' than any other Russian city.
President Vladimir Putin grew up in one, but it's a side of St. Petersburg
he's unlikely to show President Bush and 46 other world leaders coming to
the city this week.
After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks seized large apartments belonging
to wealthy families and packed them with families, usually one to a room.
Moscow and other cities have gotten rid of most of their kommunalki by
selling the apartments to wealthy families that pay for the former tenants
to move out - usually to huge complexes that sprouted in the suburbs during
the last few decades of the Soviet Union.
Yet communal apartments linger on in St. Petersburg, where a dearth of
investment or construction has caused a severe housing shortage. About 12
percent of St. Petersburg housing consists of kommunalki. And 300,000
families - about one-fifth of the city's 4.7 million people - live in them,
according to the city's housing committee.
The Kukushkins put two double beds into their room, one for the parents,
one for the children, along with a refrigerator and dining table.
Ten-month-old Zhenya, whose hair is bright green from the antiseptic used
to relieve the itching from a recent bout with chicken pox, prances in his
walker in tight circles across the small space carved out for a play area.
Kukushkina, a housewife, says she has learned to live with the poverty and
inconvenience - but not with one of the neighbors. He has allegedly
defecated in the bathtub, threatened to pour boiling water on her children
and tried to attack her husband with a knife. A court is now weighing
whether the other residents have the right to evict the man.
There is little privacy here: individual rooms can be locked, but not the
communal areas like the kitchen.
Even so, the kommunalki continue to attract new residents. There are those
who have fallen on hard times like the brother of one of Kukushkina's
neighbors, who recently lost his factory job. Others want a cheap perch in
the center of one of Europe's loveliest cities.
One-room apartments rent for about $400 a month in the center of the city,
cheap by Western standards but far too expensive for most Russians.
Cosmetics vendor Natalya Simakhina moved here three years ago from the
Siberian city of Omsk, where she gave up a two-room flat, looking for a
change.
She seems to have become the apartment's resident amateur psychologist -
most of her neighbors, she says, are passive people just as averse to
cleaning the common corridor as they are to finding a better place to live.
At the same time, she said, only ``strong people can adapt and survive in a
communal apartment.''
For some residents, the kommunalki still have the nostalgic charm that
inspired a flood of books and movies about Soviet life. Despite the
crowding, residents say, they have advantages.
``I can always borrow money from someone or ask them to pick up some
medicine,'' Kukushkina said. ``And I never lack conversation partners.
Sometimes we can talk in the kitchen until 5 a.m.''
********
#6
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 27, 2003
Russia's ex-capital tries to regain grandeur
St. Petersburg marks 300th anniversary
By REBECCA SANTANA
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Vladimir Sorin spent the better part of two years
making sure a 600-ton column in St. Petersburg's Palace Square doesn't fall
on someone's head during the city's 300th-anniversary celebrations this month.
Standing next to the Alexander Column in biting wind and rain, Sorin
pointed to one side of the square where the Hermitage, home of one of the
world's greatest art collections, is located. He then gestured to the pale
yellow and white building curving around the opposite side of the square,
which in czarist times housed the General Staff headquarters.
All of it would have been destroyed, he said, if the massive column
commemorating the Russian victory over Napoleon in 1812 hadn't been
restored and had fallen because of neglect.
Examples like this abound in a city whose buildings and monuments have been
beaten down by 300 years of war, neglect and sometimes just plain bad
weather. During the past few years, city and federal officials have been
trying to combat those problems in a massive restoration effort. It has
included tearing up roads, throwing up scaffolding on seemingly every
building and constantly sweeping away dust and debris -- all timed to end
before the city's 300th-anniversary celebration this week.
The city sorely needed the face-lift.
These days, St. Petersburg enjoys the favoritism of Russian President
Vladimir Putin, who takes pride in showing off his hometown. But during
Soviet times, the city was a reminder of the country's czarist past. A year
after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the nation's capital was moved from St.
Petersburg to Moscow. And the city was renamed Leningrad from 1924 until 1991.
Soviet authorities neglected the city, possibly hoping it would slowly sink
back into the swamp on which Peter the Great built St. Petersburg in 1703.
The city's harsh weather also took its toll. According to Sorin, one of the
worst things for buildings and monuments is when the temperature drops to
just below freezing and water trapped in wood, concrete, bronze or other
building materials expands. While a city like Berlin has about 14 such days
a year, St. Petersburg experiences about 110.
Man-made events have also left their mark. While restoring the Alexander
Column, Sorin and his crew dug out bullets from the base of the column from
when Czar Nicholas II's troops fired on protesters massed in the square in
1905.
"We pulled out from here a big part of a German bomb which fell down over
there in that garden," said Sorin, pointing to greenery about 50 yards
away. "We took out more than 50 pieces of iron from these bronze surfaces."
But while all agree that the city's restoration projects have been much
needed, many projects are woefully behind schedule, and some residents are
wondering where the money went.
Dmitry Burenin is chairman of the St. Petersburg Control and Audit Chamber,
which monitors how city money is spent. He says city officials didn't set
clear priorities and deadlines so that no one could be held responsible
when projects weren't done on time. As for the work they did do, he has
some questions.
"One of their favorite pastimes is paving and re-paving streets and squares
with tiles," said Burenin. "There are lots of places that have been retiled
two to three times."
He said that despite repeated requests from his office, he has received no
word on how much money the city has spent preparing for the celebrations.
According to Burenin, the federal government has spent roughly 40 billion
rubles ($1.3 billion) on sprucing up the city.
Burenin's office filed a number of complaints with the city prosecutor's
office about possible misuse of funds and will be doing an audit when the
party's over.
City officials adamantly deny any wrongdoing or corruption. As to why some
projects won't be finished in time, they point to a factor outside their
control: the long Russian winter.
Sitting in his office a few stories above the din of jackhammers and
backhoes tearing up potholed streets, and leaving drivers sitting for hours
in traffic, the city's main architect, Oleg Kharchenko, said most
restoration work is impossible during winter.
"Finns and Swedes do the same thing," Kharchenko said. "They don't work in
the winter, because the result is just a throwaway day."
So, some ask, why not start the restoration earlier, to accommodate the
long winters?
Alexander Margolis is the head of the St. Petersburg Salvation Foundation,
which does restoration work, and the host of a popular television show
about the city. He says doing things ahead of time just isn't the Russian way.
"We were talking about the fact that we should begin working on the
anniversary program back in 1993. But for different reasons, it was always
put aside, put aside, put aside," Margolis said.
Thankfully for the heads of thousands of people expected to gather in
Palace Square during the 300th-anniversary celebrations to listen to music
and watch fireworks and laser light shows, restoration of the Alexander
Column is already finished.
********
#7
Moscow Time
May 26, 2003
How to Reinvigorate the Relationship
By Michael McFaul
Michael McFaul is professor of political science at Stanford University and
a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His
latest book is "Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from
Gorbachev to Putin." He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.
To most analysts of international affairs, whether based in London, Moscow
or Washington, President Vladimir Putin's behavior during the run up to the
U.S.-led war in Iraq was very predictable. From a classic realpolitik
perspective, Putin behaved rationally. Russia had concrete interests in the
preservation of the status quo in Iraq, and U.S. military intervention
threatened those interests.
More generally, from a realist perspective, Russia -- like France and
Germany -- had nothing to gain from another demonstration of U.S. military
might.
Even if Putin, at a pragmatic level, understands that he lives in a unipolar
world dominated by the United States, he would prefer to see the emergence
of a multipolar world in which Russia is one of the poles. His policy on the
Iraq war gave him an opportunity to stand with the so-called
anti-imperialists -- a cheap normative victory for Russia that has won few
normative points from the international community in recent years.
President George W. Bush, however, did not fully understand Putin's
behavior, because the U.S. president does not always view the world through
a realist lens. In addition to power and interests, Bush believes that
relationships between individual leaders also matter. Rightly or wrongly,
Bush believed that he had a "special friend" in the Kremlin. In times of
need, people expect support from their friends. In his time of need in the
debate before the Iraqi war, Bush was puzzled by Putin's decision to stand
together with the French and Germans, and not with his American friend.
Bush, it must be remembered, thought that he had established a special
relationship with his counterpart in Moscow. At their first meeting in
Slovenia in June 2001, Bush went out of his way to reach out to Putin on a
personal level. The U.S. president is not a scholar or strategic thinker --
he is a former businessman. And as a businessman, he understands the
importance of personal relationships in getting things done. Because he had
some important business with Putin at the time -- first and foremost the
abrogation of the ABM Treaty -- Bush deliberately tried to foster a personal
bond with Putin during their very first encounter. At this meeting, Bush
reported, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very
straightforward and trustworthy. ... I was able to get a sense of his soul."
Sept. 11, 2001, seemed to move the two presidents even closer. For the first
time since World War II, the leaders in the Kremlin and the White House had
a common enemy. In words, both Bush and Putin spoke in tough terms about
destroying terrorists wherever they may be. In deeds, the two presidents
cooperated in bringing down the Taliban in Afghanistan. As a result of these
experiences, Bush thought that real chemistry had developed between him and
Putin. Putin visited Bush's home in Crawford, Texas, and Bush traveled to
Putin's hometown, St. Petersburg. Although we do not know what Putin
actually thought about Bush as a person, we do know that Bush was very
impressed with Putin as an individual. "Friend" was a word used by him to
describe their relationship. Importantly, Bush had not developed any such
relationships with his counterparts in German or France. On the contrary,
well before the war in Iraq, it was widely known that Bush despised both
Gerhard SchrÚder and Jacques Chirac. While Bush tried to speak with Putin
frequently, he rarely spoke to SchrÚder or Chirac.
The Bush administration firmly believes that Putin made a major
miscalculation in not supporting the U.S. position on Iraq in the lead-up to
war.
Paradoxically, however, Putin's decision not to back the war in Iraq will
not have long-term negative implications for U.S.-Russian relations because
Bush is so eager to repair his friendship with Putin.
In coming to St. Petersburg on June 1 (and spending the night, unlike his
"stopover" in France at the G-8 summit, after which he plans to sleep in
Switzerland), Bush will be signaling his mending fences priorities as
regards the countries of the "coalition of the unwilling" -- Russia first,
Germany second, France third.
Why is Russia at the top of the list? Analysts and diplomats like to talk
about the common geostrategic interests that are pushing the two countries
back together -- controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction and
fighting terrorism top the list of U.S. foreign policy priorities. Russia
can be useful in dealing with these issues, Germany and France less so.
But there is another political and personal reason for Bush. He needs to
patch up the relationship with Putin and re-establish the fact (or even
illusion) that the two presidents have an intimate bond and have turned
around U.S.-Russian relations after the dismal years of the Clinton-Yeltsin
era. Bush has never claimed to have a special bond with SchrÚder or Chirac,
but he did make the claim with Putin. He has a real stake, therefore, in
getting things back to the way they were pre-Iraq crisis. Bush also needs a
few successes in mending fences with key countries after the war in Iraq,
since Democratic Party presidential candidates have already begun to
criticize him for doing too much collateral damage to U.S. international
interests by the way he conducted the war. A turnaround in U.S.-Russian
relations would serve as the perfect rebuttal to these presidential
hopefuls.
So, ironically, the context is ripe for improved relations. But to do what?
What is strikingly absent from U.S.-Russian relations is any new big ideas
which might actually signal that the relationship has recovered from Iraq
and is special. The current agenda -- Jackson-Vanik, chicken and steel
imports, visa regimes, WTO membership -- seems rather small. Moreover, the
Bush administration is totally consumed with Iraq and, more broadly, the
Middle East and therefore is unlikely to suggest any new big ideas for the
foreseeable future. Bush and his team have undertaken a lot of major foreign
policy initiatives in the past two years. They will be content to work these
marginal issues.
This creates another window of opportunity for Putin. Instead of waiting to
react to what the United States proposes -- the conventional Russian
approach to U.S.-Russian relations over the last decade -- Putin could
really seize the moment and put forward his own suggestions for grand new
initiatives. A real deal on North Korea? A creative trade halting Russian
transfer of nuclear technologies to Iran in exchange for a massive,
cooperative R&D program on missile defense?
Bush and his team will be receptive to new ideas for improving U.S.-Russian
relations. The real question is does the Kremlin have any.
*******
#8
Russian-American Relations: The End of an Era
An Interview with Nikolai Zlobin (nzlobin@cdi.org)
Washington Profile News Agency
www.washprofile.org
May 27, 2003
Nikolai Zlobin is the Director of Russian and Asian Programs at the Center
for Defense Information in Washington DC, and editor-in-chief of the
Washington Profile News Agency.
Q: What do expect of the upcoming meeting between Putin and Bush, their
first one since the Iraqi crisis?
I think it will be a polite meeting. Everyone will say just the right
things; there will be many smiles and embraces. But the real status of
Russian-American relations is much more difficult than we can imagine.
Neither country has the will to analyze this situation. Neither country is
ready to estimate the level of damage brought upon their relations by the
Iraqi crisis.
Our relations are currently at their lowest point in the past ten years.
Using the American terrorist warning system, our relations are on yellow
alert, nearing red. The development strategy for Russian-American relations
that has existed after the Cold War has entered a dead end. Moscow and
Washington both miscalculated each other's reaction on the Iraq issue. On
must admit that a fundamental and conceptual bankruptcy of Russian-American
relations has taken place.
From a tactical point of view, the Russian-American conflict over Iraq has
practically been resolved. The administrators should pat themselves on the
back but people concerned with strategy should not congratulate themselves
yet. This has not been a resolution of Russian-American relations, but a
resolution of just one of the problems. The successful resolution of the
Iraqi crisis does not touch upon the fundamentals of Russian-American
relations. One must see the forest for the tress, but one must also make
sure that there is a forest.
Putin calls the national interest, economic development and pragmatism as
Russia's chief priorities, and yet none of these issues seemed to figure in
the Iraq issue. Russia demonstrated a completely irrational, unpragmatic
approach, losing more than it could afford, worsening its economic
situation, and hurting its image in the eyes of the average America, which,
of course, doesn't help foreign investment.
Q: People in Russia think the crisis was caused by America's illegal actions.
The US foreign policy can and should be criticized. But Moscow must also
take responsibility for its choices. To blame Washington for its own
mistakes is not the right way to go. From my viewpoint, Moscow took a
deeply mistaken position on the Iraq issue and showed that it doesn't quite
understand what's happening in the world. The Russian Foreign Ministry
displayed an old-fashioned, heavily ideological, unrealistic approach to
the problem. And on the other hand, Russian policies looked
improvisational, as a reaction to Europe or the US. Such improvisation is
not fit for a nuclear power.
And lastly, Russia, as it turned out, had no specialists who knew what was
going on, much less chart a true course and pursue it effectively. Even the
position that Russia did take, it could not defend and, therefore, lost.
Russia lost trying to gain authority not from standing with America, but by
distancing itself from it, by giving in to the French line, by believing in
the efficacy of UN inspectors in Iraq, not realizing that the issue was not
about inspectors per se, but about some very serious changes in the
international arena.
Q: What about US relations with Europe?
With all the disagreements the US has with France and Germany, these
countries have an enormous historical, economic, and cultural experience of
cooperation. That experience has not disappeared. No matter how serious the
quarrel, it doesn't cancel that out. But Russian and the US have no such
base, and that's why the conflict over Iraq was able to so easily cancel
out any positive steps and intentions.
As it turned out, everyone was mistaken in thinking that after Sep.11,
Putin chose to turn his country Westward and conducted a revolution in
Russian foreign affairs. In the past 20 months, no concrete steps have been
taken in that direction. That is, there has been no strategic turning
point. If any foreign policy revolution did take place, it was ephemeral,
and did not leave the bounds of the Presidential cabinet. The strategic
choice was not made, and we must disappointedly admit this fact.
The US also bears some responsibility for this turn of events. There was an
impression that Bush did not need Russian support, an impression shared by
the American establishment. To a large extent, they believed they can solve
all problems themselves. That's why many actions after Sep.11 can be seen
as unfriendly and anti-Russian. One might recall Jackson-Vanick, the US
position on Russian-Georgian tensions over the Pankisi Gorge, quotas on
Russian steel, pushing Russia out of Afghanistan, the US exit from the
anti-ballistic missile treaty and so on. But I think that America simply
didn't consider how its actions look from the side, it wasn't part of some
plan to humiliate Russia. The US looks at things from a vastly different
perspective.
Today, neither Russia nor America have policies toward each other. In the
Us, for instance, policies toward Russia are part of a policy of a fight
against terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and ecology. And Russia has no
foreign policy line at all. If we have no conception for behaving toward
each other, then obviously any disagreement - such as over Iraq, grows to a
colossal size, because we have nothing to lean upon.
There are many conceptual issues where our countries disagree. Before, they
either tried to ignore them or thought they weren't very serious. Now it
turns out that these issues are important for both sides, and cannot be
resolved quickly. The US and Russia have very different views on the global
situation, on how the world should function, on the existing system of
international laws and institutions. Americans think that the current
system was created during the Cold War, an era that was fundamentally
different from today. Therefore, many things require extensive reforms. And
Russia knows very well that if the UN Security Council is reformed, then
Russian political influence will quickly diminish.
The world has changed. There are many non-governmental actors in world
politics, like al-Qaeda. You can't call bin Laden to a Security Council
meeting. You can't enforce sanctions against al-Qaeda, or sign agreements
with them. The UN was based on the functions of sovereign states. That's
why Americans think that international institutions should reform, while
Russia is certain that this shouldn't happen.
The same is happening in the field of international law. America has a law
of precedent - a law is created ex post facto. Russia, after turning into a
weak country, defers to international law, as do all weak countries, and
demands the upholding of law that is clearly spelled out beforehand. And
this contradicts American political tradition. As Putin said, each country
has their own axis of evil. Russia is worried about Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia, America has its own problems. In the near future, Iran may become
the next sticking point in Russian-American relations.
We can also bring up the issue of new nuclear states. The fact that North
Korea acquired a nuclear weapon has caused a serious international
incident. But if South Korea or Japan had done this, it probably wouldn't
have been such an issue. This has the patina of the Cold War; there is
still a view that the issue is not about nuclear weapons, but the good or
bad guys who control them. Bad guys should not have them, but the good guys
- Israel, India, Pakistan - are allowed. It's a system of double standards.
Q: Isn't it possible that time will vindicate the actions of Europe and
condemn the actions of the US?
That can happen, of course. But let's look at the question more widely.
Over the past ten years, we have ignored many problems in Russian-American
relations. We swept them under the rug and moved, leaving them to be solved
by future generations. This is not a rarity in international relations.
Russia has an analogous problems with Japan - the issue of the Kuril
islands will be dealt with by future generations of politicians.
For many countries, a change in the status quo is dangerous. Instead of
declaring war to new threats, many countries are prepared for a regime of
peaceful coexistence with these problems, thinking that everything may
change in the future or the problem itself will disappear. As the old joke
goes - either the king will die, or I will die. Europeans tried to find a
way to peacefully coexist with Communism, and even invented a special
theory of convergence. So if the world is convinced that problems should
not be resolved today, but left for future generations, then America might
lose - not in a military or economic sense, but in their influence upon the
world.
But we need to look truth in the eyes. Who wins by ignoring these problems
- obviously not Western civilization. In Iraq, America proved that it is a
superpower ready to use actions as well as words to accomplish its goals.
Besides the US, I see no one trying to deal with similar problems. Let's
take a sub-issue: who will control the process of rebuilding Iraq - the US
and the UK and someone else? The US approach is called neocolonialist and
imperial, and that has a lot of truth to it. But I don't think that
Russian-European control over Iraq would be better. Should they just be
given a try?
Where is the evidence, that a multipolar world is more safe for Russia than
a unipolar one? Multipolarity is less stable. There is no evidence that the
presence of many power centers would make the world more predictable and
less safe, especially for Russia. Unipolarity is not that great either, if
the rules of the game are not in your favor. But if Russia can agree to a
special relationship with America, than it has much greater chance of
profiting from a unipolar world and avoiding unpleasant compromises. I
don't think one should oppose a unipolar world seemly because you don't
govern it.
Yes, America could end up in the minority. It's a minority right now, as it
was a month ago. But it's not afraid of being a minority - whether that's
good or bad is a different question. There will be no new Vietnams because
there are now Soviet Unions standing behind Vietnam, no Brezhnevs behind
Arafats. The battle between the two systems is over.
Q: What's the proper course?
We should move away from trying to improve our relations, toward a new
model for relations. You can improve only to a certain extent. The steam
engine can be rationalized only so far - sooner or later, it will reach the
limit of its usefulness and you will need a new engine, like gas or
electric, because after a certain point you need a qualitative change, a
new conception and a new philosophy. Russia and the US spend almost 15
years trying to improve what we have inherited as a result of a
half-century opposition. Now we are no longer enemies, but we don't know
why we need each other. The new engine has not been invented, and the old
one is outdated.
As a result, America has the opinion that it doesn't need Russia. And
Russia believes that American can't live without it. This is a huge
misconception. Russia should abandon improvisation because, as is well
known, a predictable foe is better than an unpredictable friend. Russia
cannot be an unpredictable friend.
The conflict over Iraq became the end of an era in Russian-American
relations, an era that began with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The
epoch of searching for a strategic partnership is over. We have begun a
transition to a new period, which will be expressed in cooperation on
concrete, limited issues.
Russian foreign policy should be egoistic. But the problem is that Russia
doesn't have a high enough level of political analysis, or a mechanism that
would allow it to effectively realize its strategic choices. It's one thing
to decide to plant potatoes. But you also need people to plant them, gather
them, and clean them.
********
#9
Smysl
May 16-31, 2003
RUSSIA NEEDS A NEW KIND OF DIPLOMACY
An interview with Sergei Karaganov, Chairman of the Foreign and
Defense Policy Council
Author: Tamara Zamyatina
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
DUE TO POOR POLICY COORDINATION, VARIOUS RUSSIAN MINISTRIES ADOPTED
DIFFERENT COURSES OF ACTION DURING THE WAR IN IRAQ. NOW THERE HAVE
BEEN SOME SUCCESSFUL MOVES IN RUSSIA-US RELATIONS, BUT THEY ARE NOT
SYSTEMATIC. THE ST. PETERSBURG SUMMIT OFFERS AN OPPORTUNITY TO IMPROVE
MATTERS.
Question: How seriously do you think we have damaged relations
with the United States as a result of the Iraq crisis?
Sergei Karaganov: We caused some confusion, apparently, by first
promising not to protes too much over the coalition's military
campaign against Iraq. Moreover, we sent Yevgeny Primakov to Baghdad
on a special mission, apparently coordinated with Washington. The aim
of the mission was to make Saddam Hussein an offer - he could step
down and spare his people the war. However, it's quite clear that due
to poor policy coordination, various Russian ministries adopted
different courses of action.
The policy adopted by Russian intelligence agencies is
incomprehensible to me. Over and over, we were assured that the Iraqi
people's resistance to the American forces would grow and strengthen.
I think not only the Russian public was being told this, but top
Russian leaders as well.
The Foreign Ministry followed its usual line, threatening to use
Russia's veto power in the UN Security Council. I must emphasize that
it's a perfectly legitimate course of conduct. But the problem was
that our signals to the US were completely contradictory. Thanks to
measures taken by Putin and Primakov, and other diplomatic measures,
the situation was smoothed over at that stage, and Russia has not
found itself among the nations which have lost out completely.
Understandably, the issue of coordinating foreign policy has
become more acute now, since the modern world is growing ever more
complicated and dangerous. Foreign policy and security policy should
now take a much more important place on the nation's agenda, much as
we may prefer to focus on domestic problems.
In the 1990s, when it appeared that external threats were fading
away and the world was becoming a better place, we could permit
ourselves to have a different kind of foreign policy. But the world is
actually unpredictable.
Question: What do you think, overall, of the attempts to
counterpose the will of two nations of Old Europe, and Russia, to the
political will of the United States?
Karaganov: That intention had a sound ethical and legal basis,
but it was nevertheless based on unrealistic assessments. On the other
hand, while Russia was fighting for the United Nations, France was
fighting against the United States. The question is whether we should
have joined France in its fight against the US.
Question: So what are the prospects for Russia-US relations now?
Karaganov: At this stage, the US is taking into account Russia's
remaining geostrategic importance, and the fact that Russia can be
either a constructive or destructive partner. Hence, it will continue
to have a generally positive policy concerning Russia. Whether Russia
will be able to take advantage of the respite, and transform general
talks into definite agreements with the US, including agreements on
economic issues - that's another matter.
Question: Why do our leaders apparently consider it unethical to
defend our national interests in the course of negotiations with
Western partners?
Karaganov: When the president says he does not intend to "haggle
like at an Eastern bazaar", that is understandable from the viewpoint
of public politics. However, when we really refrain from bargaining
and do not have a list of interests and grievances, that is a clear
demonstration of the gross incompetence of our policies. This isn't
the foreign policy of a 21st century state, where the economy is the
major factor. We look like a state from centuries gone by, for which
theoretical speculations and considerations of prestige are the
primary factor.
The fact that we made no demands of our Western partners in the
lead-up to the Iraqi crisis made our position unclear. A leading
American analyst, someone who is close to the Bush administration,
told me in a private conversation: "If Russia still hasn't presented
us with a list of demands - then you are idiots, since then we have no
grounds for taking your complaints into account." Our foreign policy
is dissociated from the realities of the modern world.
Question: What agenda would you propose for the summit of Western
leaders during the St. Petersburg tercentenary celebrations at the end
of May?
Karaganov: I do not think it is possible to prepare anything
substantial: time is short. However, if I were organizing it, I would
propose to create a working group in the framework of the G-8 in order
to reform international institutions, including the UN. I am not sure
whether the US would agree to that.
Secondly, it is time to work out a joint policy - or at least a
common approach - to unstable regions of the world. There are many
states which we prefer not to notice. They are not developing at all,
or developing in a negative direction. This includes Africa, parts of
South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
Those are huge regions, dozens of countries that are sources of
instability, disease, drugs, and terrorism. What should we do about
them? We can say that they are the majority of the United Nations. But
if we identify ourselves with this majority, we run the risk of
becoming one of these countries. We have not yet made any effort to
ensure stable, effective development for our country. We are still
making no headway.
Question: Is there any hope that at the St. Petersburg summit
there will at least be some attempts to agree on a common line of
conduct in shaping the world order?
Karaganov: The best we can expect is that leaders will all gather
and decide to quarrel no further. That is already good - since only a
few weeks ago, against the backdrop of predictions of a drawn-out war
in Iraq, it seemed the St. Petersburg summit shouldn't go ahead at
all, for fear of arguments among European leaders.
But now it is obvious that the summit can be a success. St.
Petersburg could become the place where talks begin on a common policy
for the future. There is some real movement towards working out a new
economic policy for the whole world. The world is starting to swing
towards protectionism, and that could create new sources of tension.
If the St. Petersburg summit lays the foundation for talks about
a new global structure, new policies within the World Trade
Organization, further liberalization of trade with respect to poor
nations - that would be a huge step forward. Moreover, there will also
be bilateral meetings during the St. Petersburg tercentenary
celebrations - and under the circumstances, participants are unlikely
to contradict the host; rather, they will say something pleasant.
Thus, in terms of the general atmosphere, there should be many
constructive opportunities. It's important to take advantage of them.
(Translated by Arina Yevtikhova)
*******
#10
Rosbalt
US Share of World Economy Almost Halved Since 1945
ST. PETERSBURG, May 26. 'The economic strength of the US is not without a
limit, and its possibilities are not limitless,' said Politika Fund
President Vyacheslav Nikonov at a session of the 12th annual
Russian-American seminar, which is taking place at St. Petersburg State
Univeristy.
Nikonov said that the US share of the world economy at the present time is
about 22%, however, in 1945 it reached 40%. In part, he said that in the
middle of the 18th century, China had a 36% share of the world economy and
India had 28%, and the largest share among European great powers was Russia
with 5%.
However, Nikonov said that at the present time the military strength of the
US is unprecedented. He said that 'during the Vietnam war it took ten
sorties to guarantee the destruction of one target, but during 'Desert
Storm' it took only five sorties to destroy about 30 targets. The quality
of the military strength of the US has significantly increased.
Nevertheless, with all of this unprecedented power it is impossible to
imagine a situation where the US would use its military strength against a
nuclear power,' he said.
********
#11
10 MILLION RUSSIANS MAY BETTER THEIR CONDITION IN 2 YEARS
MOSCOW, May 26 /from RIA Novosti's Alevtina Shchepetina/ - By 2005, the
material conditions of 10 million Russians (some 22 percent of the
country's population) may improve, taking them to the right side of the
poverty line, claims a World Bank expert report posted on the official site
of the bank's Moscow office.
If so, the numbers of impoverished people countrywide would drop by a
quarter.
World Bank estimates the numbers of people living below the poverty line
now at 29 percent of the population, or more than 42 million. The most
recent 2002 census put Russia's population at 145.1 million.
********
#12
NUMBERS OF RUSSIAN ACADEMICIANS HAVE GROWN
MOSCOW, 26 May /RIA Novosti's Lyubov Sobolevskaya/ - The vice-president of
the Russian Academy of Sciences, Gennady Mesyats, said at a press
conference following the election, which took place at the Academy's
meeting, that the Russian Academy of Sciences had increased its ranks by 60
new academicians and 119 correspondent members.
He indicated that 50 correspondent members had been elected with age
limits: on the day of elections a candidate had to be not older than 50. It
is the second time the Academy held such an election.
According to the vice-president, the average age of newly elected
academicians is 63, of correspondent members 54 and those elected with age
limits - 46.
Under the Academy's Charter, new members shall be elected by the general
meeting of the Academy members by secret ballot every 2-3 years.
As of today, the Russian Academy of Sciences comprises 513 academicians (of
who 10 are women) and 739 correspondent members (including 27 women).
Gennady Mesyats said the meeting had also elected 45 foreign members of the
Academy from 14 countries, 5 of who are Nobel prize winners.
********
#13
THE SKEPTIC: Third Time Lucky For Auctioneer Chubais?
May 26, 2003
By GEOFFREY T. SMITH
A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES COLUMN
MOSCOW -- Anatoly Chubais' career has been largely defined by two
controversial episodes involving the sale of state property via auctions.
First there was the voucher privatization scheme of the early 1990s, which
he oversaw as head of the newly-formed privatization agency. Then, as prime
minister, he presided over the series of so-called "loans for shares"
auctions in the mid-1990s, at which well-connected insiders bought most of
Russia's mineral wealth for a song.
On both occasions, fear of a Communist return to power outweighed all other
considerations. The auction system offered quick, irrevocable, transfer of
ownership - even if they were rigged and even if they brought in far less
money as a result.
Now comes a third such episode. Strategic investors will be allowed to buy
the power stations they covet in the same way, using shares in Chubais's
company, Unified Energy Systems of Russia (R.UEN), as currency.
Once again, speed is of the essence. Chubais now, as then, believes that
private owners - however suspect, however short-sighted - manage better
than state ones. He also believes that investment will flow into Russia's
decrepit power sector faster, the sooner the state gets out of the
generating business.
Moreover, he obviously trusts the oligarchs who have snapped up over 30% of
UES' stock in the last eight months to provide that investment, at least
more than he trusts besuited portfolio investors in Moscow, London or New
York.
There isn't much sense in complaining about a new carve-up of Russian
family silver at bargain basement prices. Those without the stomach for
what will obviously be a bare-knuckle fight got out a long time ago.
Still, despite all the misery caused in the 1990s, history has at least
partly vindicated the auction approach. Some of the characters Chubais sold
to then are now respectable gentlemen, having learned to invest and pay
taxes just as soon as the need to be a bit on the shady side withered.
With the threat of the Communists gone and with Russian industrialists
themselves having become more aware of the benefits of good governance,
there is every reason to hope this carve-up will be a lot more remunerative
for the Russian state and a lot less traumatic for its people than the
previous two.
********
#14
Moscow Times
May 26, 2003
Photo and Fingerprint Fun
By Matt Bivens
"Russians entering the United States after Jan. 1 will have their
fingerprints and photographs taken, travel documents scanned and
identifications checked against terrorist watch lists, U.S. officials said."
-- The Moscow Times, May 23.
WASHINGTON -- Lord, can you imagine the lines? It'll be insanity. Homeland
Security chief Tom Ridge says the government will collect photographs and
fingerprints from every foreign national visiting on a U.S. visa, and will
use that data for an "electronic check-in, check-out system."
This is on top of the new rules demanding face-to-face interviews to get
those visas in the first place. About 23 million visitors to the United
States last year arrived on visas, The Associated Press says. Ridge says
that it will all be "in its first phase of operation" by year's end.
So ... in about seven months, we're going to have new machines and
computers up and running at dozens, maybe hundreds of locations; we're
going to have hundreds if not thousands of people trained in using them;
and visitors will be getting fingerprinted and photographed at arrival --
and then "checked out" at departure.
There's already a faux-welcoming name for this misery: U.S. VISIT, for U.S.
Visitor and Immigrant Status Indication Technology. Still missing is the
"indication technology" itself: After announcing the program in Washington,
Ridge said he would start soliciting proposals from the private sector in
about 60 days. That's right: In seven months this is supposed to be up and
running -- but they won't even start requesting bids on it for a month or
so. You do the math. It ain't happening, not on schedule anyway.
You American citizens out there: Think of what it's like getting your
driver's licenses renewed. The slow-moving lines to complete paperwork, the
slower-moving lines to have vision tested, the glacial speed with which
one's photo is taken. Now imagine having to get through post-Sept. 11
airport-style security to get into those lines. That's the future being
offered.
The fingerprinting will be the killer. My Russian wife has been
fingerprinted, repeatedly, by the Immigration and Naturalization Service
over the years, as part of her Sisyphean citizenship application. Believe
me, it takes forever. Let's hope the new technologies will get rid of the
ink, which doesn't wash off well.
Ridge's deputy, Asa Hutchinson, says this sort of vigilance could have
stopped two of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- because one didn't go to school
and so violated his student visa, while the other did go to school and so
violated his tourist visa. But that assumes a U.S. government so hard-ass
about monitoring 100 percent visa compliance that to come here on any kind
of visa would be to submit to unprecedented surveillance; to forever fear
the knock on the door, the demand for papers, etc. (Meanwhile, two FBI
field offices urged pre-Sept. 11 investigations of flight schools -- which
suggests we should reform our existing bureaucracies, not create creaky new
ones.)
In addition to America's visitors, there are about 33 million foreign-born
people living here -- or about every 10th U.S. resident. Among them are
547,000 university students. Tourists, students and investors are crucial
to our economy, our culture -- to our national character. Now, via the
mindless mission creep of the security bureaucracies, we're blithely
cutting ourselves off from the world. It's a lose-lose situation -- a
system likely to punish those who wish us well, and merely amuse those who
don't.
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, writes the Daily Outrage
for The Nation magazine.[www.thenation.com].
********
#15
From: Richard Thomas <Thomas@aton.ru>
Subject: RE: 7195-Sieff/Satter
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003
2. UPI: Martin Sieff, Review: Russia's darkness rising. (re David Satter's
Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State)
To anyone who has covered Russia or visited often over the past decade...
Or maybe... lived here since the summer of 1992, having spent a total of
less than two months "out of country" since then? And I never cease to be
amazed. By the apologists who cry out that Russia is now a civilized land.
By the doomsayers, who cry out that Russia is a terrible enigma waiting (and
eager) to explode. If you live here, day after day, month after mnth, you
understand that all of what they write is partially true, highly and
necessarily superficial, and, ultimately, not very useful. What matters most
about this place (always has, and it's the reason there is still a Russia)
is something that Paul McCartney apparently recognized instantly but that
everyone who "covers and visits Russia often" is loathe to admit: "I always
suspected that people had big hearts. Now I know that's true." Think about
that, then think about it again then think about it more. Perhaps the
meaning will begin to emerge.
********
#16
From: John Wilhelm <jhw@ams.org>
Subject: Misunderstanding Russia--Two Related Matters.
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003
While some people, like Jerry Hough, were unhappy with with my role in
initiating a debate on Abram Bergson, I thought that the debate did
play a useful role in bringing attention to an issue to which I have
been trying to bring attention for some time--the reasons for our
failure to have gotten the Soviet economy right and its impact on our
understanding and approach to the Soviet Union.
Although it may be true as Hough asserts in his response to my piece
(JRL 7177, May 11) that the "consensus analysis" followed policy, I
maintain, contrary to Hough's assertion, that the exaggeration of
Soviet economic strength did not begin with Sputnik. It began with
the techniques of Soviet national income studies which originated with
Bergson and his students and which, despite criticism from people like
Jasny, Nutter and Birman, did not get corrected in the course of close
to five decades. My own extensive examination of the evidence,
including outside assessments of the CIA procedures in this area, has
convinced me that the problem in the area of economics was
methodological, not political or ideological. If Hough or anyone else
has concrete evidence to the contrary, and not just assertions, I
would hope that they would share it with me and others so that the
problem could be better understood.
In my case, I would like to make it clear that I do not believe that
Hough's statement that "Paradoxically those criticizing the old CIA
views are usually in the forefront of the effort to make Russia even
more misunderstood than it was [in] the past" can legitimately be
applied to to myself. In saying this however, I would not be truthful
if I did not admit that all too often, based on what I have
witnessed and exchanges I have had, I have found Hough frequently to be
a major source of misunderstanding of the Soviet Union and Russia on
important matters. Despite this, I do agree with the thrust of his
observation about our misunderstanding of Russia which I believe has
often had pernicious consequences in terms of how it informs us in
our thinking about our policies toward post-Soviet Russia.
On this score, I would like to bring to the attentions of readers of
this list a marvelous piece which recently appeared in the New York
Review of Books (May 15, 2003) by Freeman Dyson titled "What a World!"
which I do not think was picked up on the list. The article, a review
of the book "The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics and Change"
by Vaclav Smil, gives a lot of attention to Vladimir Vernadsky, a
Russian scientist about whom I had known, to my great shame, nothing.
While the information which Dyson provides on Vernadsky is extremely
interesting, Dyson makes a statement in commenting on him about Russia
which, given the russophobic prejudices which govern so much of
Western thinking about the country and her history, astounded me a
great deal. The statement is as follows:
One of the great might-have-beens of history is the world that
would have emerged if the statesmen of Europe had had the wisdom
to deal peacefully with the Serbian crisis of 1914. If World War
I had never happened, the rapid economic growth that Russia
experienced from 1905 to 1914 would probably have continued. The
Bolsheviks would probably have remained a small group of outlaws
without any wide following, and would not have had an opportunity
to seize power. The Tsar's government might have evolved into a
constitutional monarchy, and the Kadet party might have emerged
as the leader of a liberal parliamentary regime.
While I might quibble with some points here--I would have included
Russian economic growth from 1880 to 1914 and would have put as much
emphasis on Nicholas II's abdication and the failure of Michael to
have taken the throne--this statement, which I regard as very
perceptive and correct, goes against the conventional wisdom about
Russia and her history which has so dominated our thinking. It says
something to me that one finds a noted physicist making such a
statement when, with the exception of perhaps a Martin Malia or a
Frederich Starr, one rarely finds such a view among our Russia/ Soviet
specialists.
*******
#17
Russia: Chinese President Looking To Solidify Ties With Moscow, Central Asia
By Jeremy Bransten
Chinese President Hu Jintao today begins a six-day visit to Russia. After
talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top officials in
Moscow, Hu will attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Council and
then travel to St. Petersburg for festivities marking the 300th anniversary
of Russia's former imperial capital. RFE/RL speaks to two experts about the
growing importance of Sino-Russian relations.
Prague, 26 May 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Hu Jintao has chosen Russia for his first
official visit abroad since becoming Chinese president. When he begins his
visit in Moscow today, Hu will be repaying a courtesy extended by Russian
President Vladimir Putin, who was the first foreign leader to meet Hu in
Beijing last December, after he assumed leadership of the Chinese Communist
Party.
But experts say there is far more driving the Russian-Chinese relationship
than politeness. Key economic as well as geopolitical issues will be
discussed during Hu's visit, among them possible agreement on the
construction of a 2,400-kilometer pipeline from eastern Siberia to the
Chinese city of Daqing.
Aleksandr Konovalov, head of the Moscow-based Institute for Strategic
Assessments, explained to RFE/RL why this is the case: "Very important
issues will be discussed such as the use of energy resources in Siberia and
the Far East, the construction of a gas pipeline to Daqin, and the
increasing of oil and gas deliveries from Russia to China. I think the
problem of Korea will figure prominently, although that is not a bilateral
issue. If you look at the issue, not only from the military point of view
and from the standpoint of the unacceptability of the nuclearization of
North Korea, I would [underline the importance of] the issue of a transport
corridor through both Koreas and China to link up with the Trans-Siberian
railroad."
Dmitrii Trenin, at the Carnegie Institute in Moscow, is the author of
"Russia's China Problem" and an expert on Russian foreign policy. He told
RFE/RL that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow has been forced
to come to come to terms with Beijing's rapidly growing economic might.
"For Russia, which borders China, this creates a new situation -- a new
reality. Russia used to look upon China as a backward, distant country. For
a time it even tried to dominate China. But these days, Russia has been
forced to acknowledge that China has surpassed it not only in terms of
population -- which was always the case -- but in the size of its gross
domestic product [GDP], which is now five times larger. China is developing
at a much faster pace than Russia," Trenin said.
That makes China an increasingly important economic partner. Both sides
have emphasized their desire to boost bilateral trade, which currently
stands at some $12 billion a year. China is especially interested in
imports of Russian military hardware and Russia, Trenin said, has been
relying on arms sales abroad as a key source of revenue.
"Russia needs to sell China weapons technology because the sale of
armaments abroad is the only way for industries in the military-industrial
complex to survive and receive some kind of profit. When Russia's
government is not placing orders for modern technology with these military
enterprises, they are dependent on foreign clients. And China is one of the
leading clients," Trenin said.
Critics say the policy is short-sighted. They warn that Russia, by selling
its superior weapons technology to China, will ultimately undercut its own
interests and help boost China's geopolitical influence, to Moscow's
detriment. But Trenin said the Kremlin is not worried.
"Russia's military and political leaders consider that in the near-term and
foreseeable future, China will not present a military problem for Russia,
because Chinese arms purchases and the whole structure of its armed forces
are oriented towards other tasks -- above all Taiwan and to a lesser degree
towards Chinese-American relations. So, they believe Russia can rest easy
on this issue," he said.
Geopolitical questions, especially in the aftermath of the Iraq war, are
expected to weigh heavily on the Hu-Putin meetings. After a period of
tension over Iraq, Moscow appears keen to repair its relations with
Washington. China, Trenin said, sees this as an opportune time to mount a
charm offensive.
"China wants to send a message to Moscow and other capitals. China wants
Russia to remain a dependable [partner]. China does not want Russia to
become part of some alliance whose aim could be to restrict China. China
believes that now, when Russian-American relations are emerging from their
crisis caused by the Iraq war, is the right time to look for new
opportunities," he said.
Those opportunities extend to Central Asia, where China has also been keen
to check America's post-11 September 2001 presence. Following his three-day
state visit, Hu will remain in Moscow for a summit of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, which groups together China, Russia, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Trenin explained the importance of the organization to Beijing: "I'd say
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is, for China, another name for
Central Asia. That is, thanks to this organization, China can take part in
discussions and the resolution of questions tied to security and
development in Central Asia as an equal to the countries of the region and
Russia. This is important for China, because new opportunities have been
opened for the Chinese to consolidate their position and raise their
influence in a very important region for them, without antagonizing Russia,
which has been the traditional power which has long dominated Central Asia."
Hu leaves Russia on 1 June, after attending celebrations marking the 300th
anniversary of St. Petersburg.
*******
#18
Asia Times
May 26, 2003
Russia to pay for Turkmenistan's largesse
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW - Turkmenistan, authoritarian and isolationist as it already is, is
becoming increasingly reclusive. Earlier in May, the Turkmen civil aviation
authority canceled two out of seven daily Ashgabat-Moscow flights per week
in the wake of the abolition of a dual citizenship agreement between Russia
and Turkmenistan. Moreover, due to the recent introduction of Turkmen exit
visas, the Ashgabat-Bangkok flight was skipped as well.
In an attempt to limit exchanges with the outside world, President
Saparmurat Niyazov reinstated exit visas beginning on March 1. A Cold War
Era relic, exit visas were required for travel abroad in the Soviet Union,
and were used to restrict emigration and monitor citizens' overseas
activities. In February, the Turkmen government set up a special state
service to register foreigners traveling to and from Turkmenistan.
Then, on April 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Niyazov agreed to
cancel a dual citizenship agreement signed in 1993. Since earlier this
year, Turkmen officials have insisted on ditching this agreement,
presumably so as to make it more difficult for Turkmen asylum seekers to
settle in Russia.
Niyazov interpreted this concession as giving him carte blanche and on
April 22 he signed a decree ordering the roughly more than 100,000
residents of Turkmenistan who hold dual Turkmen-Russian citizenship to
choose within two months which passport they wanted to keep.
Moscow argues that the Turkmen decree will not become valid until the
Russian Duma, the lower house of parliament, formally abolishes the dual
citizenship agreement. The Turkmen parliament has already ratified a
protocol revoking the dual citizenship.
Since late April, security officers began removing Russian citizens with
dual citizenship lacking a valid Turkmen visa from airplanes in
Turkmenistan. The Russian official RIA news agency commented that the April
22 decree deprived some 100,000 people from opportunity to travel to Russia.
Moreover, many teachers who graduated from foreign universities, including
Russian, have been reportedly fired from schools throughout Turkmenistan.
Those who want to retain their jobs must first pass a test on the Rukhnama,
Niyazov's opus on Turkmen history and culture, which is now officially seen
as an inspired Turkmen holy book "equal to the Koran", as Turkmen chief
Muslim cleric Kaka Galdyvafayev put it last April.
Now Turkmen residents who hold both Turkmen and Russian citizenship are
forced to choose one or the other. If a person cannot meet the deadline, he
or she automatically becomes a Turkmen citizen. Presumably, appalled by the
prospect of living forever in totalitarian Turkmenistan, many
Russian-speakers sell off their property in order to leave the country.
Subsequently, prices for apartments and houses in the capital Ashgabat are
going down. An apartment that would have cost US$10,000 early this year now
goes for less than a third of its previous price.
After a month of hesitation, Moscow finally lashed out Turkmenbashi's April
22 decree. On May 23, Dmitry Ragozin, head of international committee of
the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, accused
Turkmenistan of "preparing a mass deportation" of ethnic Russians. Ragozin
also announced that his Duma's international committee launched a probe of
"human rights violations" in Turkmenistan.
Ragozin, who often acts as the Kremlin's mouthpiece, also claimed that he
had "serious information about Turkmen authorities' support given to
Taliban militants" in neighboring Afghanistan. He also alleged that the
"Turkmen leadership was engaged in drug trafficking and supported
international terrorism". Ragozin's statements came as Moscow's strongest
verbal assault on Turkmenbashi so far.
It has been widely believed that Moscow agreed to cancel the dual
citizenship agreement with Turkmenistan in exchange for a major gas deal.
In April, Niyazov traveled to Moscow and signed a framework agreement on
gas cooperation with Putin as well as a 25-year contract on gas supplies to
Russia with Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom.
Niyazov pledged to supply up 100 billion cubic meters (bcu) of gas to
Russia from 2010 onward or a total of 2 trillion cubic meters in 25 years.
Russia would pay Turkmenistan $44 per thousand cubic meters, 50 percent of
the payment in barter and 50 percent in cash. Turkmenbashi claimed that the
deal would bring Turkmenistan $200 billion and $300 billion to Russia.
Russia has long been interested in Turkmen hydrocarbon resources.
Turkmenistan's gas is important to Moscow because Gazprom needs gas to make
up for the shortages created by its export commitments to Europe. Gazprom's
annual shortfall in supplying the Russian domestic market is estimated at
30-40 bcm. Turkmenistan has the world's third-largest natural gas reserves
- 22.5 trillion cubic meters, according to Niyazov - but current exports
are almost exclusively directed at former Soviet states supplied via
pipelines owned by Russia.
Moreover, Russia has already commenced to sell Turkmen gas elsewhere. In
mid-May, Gazprom chairman Aleksei Miller traveled to Kyrgyz capital
Bishkekand and pledged to provide "steady supplies" of natural gas to
Kyrgyzstan from Turkmenistan via existing pipelines.
Apart from the dual citizenship trade-off, Moscow arguably has made other
political concessions so as to secure the important gas deal. For instance,
last January, Russia publicly agreed with claims by Niyazov that alleged
assassination and coup attempts against him last November were part of
international terrorism. Therefore, Moscow distanced itself from a point of
view that Niyazov had staged the assassination attempt as a pretext to
crack down on opponents, reminiscent of Stalin-era purges in the Soviet
Union.
Russia got from Turkmenistan everything it wanted - massive supplies of gas
and eliminated Turkmenistan as potential competition on the international
gas market, argues Avdy Kuliyev, a Moscow-based Turkmen opposition leader.
In exchange, Russia seems to back the Turkmen regime and ignore the plight
of 100,000 of its citizens in Turkmenistan, he said.
Moreover, last April Putin and Niyazov signed an agreement on security
cooperation designed to "settle regional conflicts and crisis situations".
According to the agreement, "special services" of Russia and Turkmenistan
will boost cooperation "to combat international terrorism", including
extradition of suspected criminals.
It has been argued that by clinching the 25-year gas deal with Russia,
Turkmenbashi probably intended to make sure that Moscow would not be
interested in changing his regime. However, Moscow probably would not mind
keeping some pressure on Ashgabat. For instance, earlier in May, the
Moscow-based Erkin.net website speculated about alleged plans to remove
Niyazov and replace him with Dzhakhan Pollyeva, deputy head of the Russian
presidential administration. Pollyeva, an ethnic Turkmen, has long been a
high-ranking official at the Kremlin and she visited Turkmenistan with an
official Russian delegation in January.
*******
#19
Russian Orthodox Urged to Respect Catholics' Spiritual Needs
Archbishop Tauran "Saddened" by Allegations of Proselytism
VATICAN CITY, MAY 26, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican appealed to the
Russian Orthodox Church to recognize the spiritual needs of the country's
500,000 Catholics, who numerically pose no threat to Orthodoxy.
Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, Vatican secretary for relations with states,
made this appeal public in an interview Sunday with the Italian newspaper
Il Corriere della Sera. He was commenting on the charges of "proselytism"
leveled against Rome by the Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate.
"It is an attitude that very much saddens me," Archbishop Tauran told the
paper.
"First of all," he said, "because we have a considerable common heritage
with the Orthodox Church and, in the second place, because I am a direct
witness of the desire -- more than that, the longing -- of John Paul II to
be able to contribute to mend the tear of the schism that for centuries has
separated our two Churches."
Archbishop Tauran believes, in part, that the present situation is due to
the fact that Russian Orthodox Church leaders regard the Catholic Church as
a "church of foreigners."
Yet, there had long been consolidated Catholic structures in the territory,
such as the Archdiocese of Mohiley, erected in 1773, and the dioceses of
Tiraspol and Vladivostok, the archbishop said.
Catholics in Russia "are Russian citizens -- not foreigners -- and,
therefore, have a right to pastoral care, like all Catholics spread
throughout the world and like all Orthodox Christians in Russia and in any
other place," he explained.
Regarding the charge of proselytism, Archbishop Tauran said that in general
this word means "to win over followers of another religion, using deceitful
and fraudulent methods."
On the contrary, the pastoral activity of the Pope and of Catholic bishops
manifests "the great respect that the Catholic Church has for Russian
Orthodoxy," he stressed.
"I think the moment has arrived for the Pope to be given recognition of his
right/duty to secure for the children of the Catholic Church in Russia and
in bordering countries their own ordinary structures," Archbishop Tauran
said.
To achieve this, there might be an agreement in the future "between the two
Churches, in the territories in which history has put them in contact," he
added.
"This would also help to overcome that psychological attitude of 'besieged
fortress' that impedes the Orthodox Church, which suffered so much during
the years of Communism, to offer Europe and the world the contribution of
its great spiritual riches," Archbishop Tauran concluded.
******
#20
Los Angeles Times
May 25, 2003
Exhibit in Moscow Celebrates a Soviet-Era Intelligence Agency
The short-lived but long-famous SMERSH is romanticized in a museum show
David Holley, Times Staff Writer
In Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels, villains like Dr. No and
Goldfinger worked for SMERSH, a diabolical Soviet intelligence agency.
Readers could believe the organization was a real part of the KGB, or they
might assume it was fictional -- particularly because it bore such a
deliciously evil-sounding name.
SMERSH -- short for Smert Shpionam, or "Death to Spies" -- was real enough,
right down to the spooky name. But it existed only for three years, and
predated the KGB, according to a special Moscow museum exhibit celebrating
the 60th anniversary of its birth. As portrayed in the displays and by
guides, it had a glorious history outwitting Nazi intelligence during World
War II.
Organized at the initiative of the agency's elderly veterans, the exhibit
contains nothing to offend them. It received favorable coverage in Russian
media, including nationwide television news. Its very existence reflects an
increasingly tolerant view of the hard-nosed intelligence organizations
that once inflicted terror and political suppression — but also a degree of
discipline — on Soviet society.
This is, after all, a country whose highly popular president started out as
a career KGB man and later headed the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the
domestic successor to the Soviet-era KGB. After the tumultuous upheavals
and rampant corruption that followed the fall of communism, many Russians
think that maybe the old days of enforced order weren't so bad after all.
Also, it is easy to portray SMERSH as a more noble and patriotic
organization than either its predecessor or successor agencies.
According to the exhibit and Russian scholars, SMERSH — formed from a
security and counterintelligence directorate within the notorious NKVD
secret police — existed under its own name only from April 19, 1943, until
May 1946, a period of Soviet military glory.
"They're celebrating SMERSH deliberately," said Sergei Kozhin, head
researcher at the Russian Armed Forces Museum, which is presenting the
exhibit through the end of May. "That's a way to distance ourselves from
the political terror that was happening in the Soviet Union before World
War II and after World War II. The idea of this exhibit is to commemorate
those people who were fighting against fascism during the years of the war."
About 7,000 SMERSH agents were officially listed as killed in the war,
primarily in combat operations, and an additional 4,000 missing were
presumed dead, Kozhin said.
While the exhibit projects an impression of nonideological objectivity
mixed with patriotic fervor, critics say that it ignores SMERSH's darker
role in terrorizing citizens viewed as enemies of the Soviet state.
"SMERSH was not controlled effectively by anyone, and they could do
whatever they wanted," said Vadim Telitsyn, a scholar at the Institute of
Russian History, who wrote a book about the agency. "They could arrest
anybody of their own free will, from a simple peasant to an authority
figure. The word 'SMERSH' terrified even Soviet officers who had fought the
war."
The name "Death to Spies" was personally chosen by Soviet dictator Joseph
Stalin, Telitsyn said. "One of the leaders suggested it should be called,
'Death to German Spies,' " he said. "But Stalin logically replied, 'Why
only German spies?' "
Whatever its shortcomings, the exhibit still opens a fascinating window on
a once-secretive slice of Soviet history that through Ian Fleming and Bond
now has a place in Western pop culture.
Most of all, the displays celebrate SMERSH's "radio games" against the
Nazis' Abwehr military intelligence service, which Kozhin said parachuted
thousands of agents behind Russian lines. Items they were said to have
used, such as a cigarette bearing a coded message, are on display.
"At the beginning of the war, German spies who were caught were as a rule
shot on the spot," Kozhin said. "That was a big mistake." SMERSH soon
realized that it could use captured spies to lure more spies into traps, he
said.
"The captured German agents were forced to take part in these radio games,"
Kozhin said. "It was a game because these agents or double agents would be
sending messages to their headquarters as if they were at large, like
they're expecting new paratroopers to land, money and weapons. It was
really a game for SMERSH because the Germans usually fell for these tricks
and would send all that was requested — but SMERSH would be the final
destination."
Captured agents also sent false reports back to their headquarters,
claiming, for example, that the Russians were preparing an offensive in one
sector while the attack was really to come elsewhere.
Also on display are documents relating to the discovery of Hitler's remains
in his Berlin bunker and the destruction of all but a few key fragments.
Fragments of Hitler's jaw and a piece of his skull were sent to Moscow,
Kozhin said. But the rest of his remains, according to the exhibit and
Kozhin, were taken by SMERSH and held in East Germany by the agency or its
successors until 1970, when the Politburo authorized then-KGB Director Yuri
Andropov to carry out their destruction.
The remains were burned in a field, ground to powder and thrown in a river,
according to the exhibit. The jaw fragments are kept in the FSB's central
archive, and the piece of skull, bearing a bullet hole, is stored at the
Central State Archive of Russia, Kozhin said, and is not part of the exhibit.
The exhibit also praises SMERSH's role in fighting a Ukrainian nationalist
movement that Kozhin said was not defeated by Soviet armed forces until
1954. "Ukrainian nationalists managed to kill about 30,000 Soviet
administrators and party members, but they themselves lost about 100,000
people in the battles with the Red Army," he said.
On display, labeled as items used by Ukrainian nationalists, are devices
that could do James Bond proud: a pen that could fire a bullet, a finger
ring with a special compartment for invisible ink, and a comb broken in
half that could be matched up by two agents, each carrying one piece, to
confirm each other's identity.
Anyone sympathetic to Ukrainian nationalism — or even balanced history —
might well be angered by this part of the exhibit. Telitsyn, the history
scholar, said that SMERSH "acted very ruthlessly" in Ukraine, sometimes
destroying villages that had helped the nationalists and sending the entire
surviving populations to Siberia.
SMERSH used "terrorist methods" such as poison and bombs to kill Ukrainian
nationalist leaders in German and Austrian exile, he said, adding, "I don't
think the exhibit tells anything about that."
He also criticized its failure to touch on the mistreatment by SMERSH of
returned Russian prisoners of war, who were often treated as suspected spies.
SMERSH was also responsible for carrying on a practice begun early in the
war, when special "stop-retreat" units were placed immediately behind the
Russian front lines with orders to shoot any soldiers who tried to run from
battle, Telitsyn said.
During the Soviet era, "this entire story around SMERSH and state security
was not available to the public," Kozhin said. "Everything was secret. And
the attitude toward state security bodies in this country was very negative
for the first 10 years of Russia being a democratic state."
But now "democracy has degenerated into anarchy," with the result that
"society is less critical about the former regime in general, and its
leaders as well," he said.
********
Web page for CDI Russia Weekly:
http://www.cdi.org/russia
Archive for Johnson's Russia List:
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson
With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and
the MacArthur Foundation
A project of the Center for Defense Information (CDI)
1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington DC 20036