JRL RESEARCH & ANALYTICAL SUPPLEMENT ~ JRL 8127
Issue No. 23 • March 2004
Editor: Stephen D. Shenfield,
shenfield@neaccess.net
RAS archive:
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/jrl-ras.cfm
POLITICS
1. Patrick Armstrong. The fallacy of neo-Kremlinology
2. Putin's relations with regional leaders
ECONOMICS
3. Bringing Western economics to Russia
SOCIETY
4. The developmental education movement
5. Daniil Granin on the decline of altruism
ECOLOGY
6. Soil erosion
7. Endangered tigers -- and endangering crabs
MILITARY AFFAIRS
8. Russia's new military program
9. The mouse flies high
RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS
10. Russia--Kazakhstan: border adjustments?
HISTORY
11. The man who disagreed with Stalin
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POLITICS
1. THE FALLACY OF NEO-KREMLINOLOGY
By Patrick Armstrong (Ottawa)
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one
begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
Sherlock Holmes, “A Scandal in Bohemia”
In the Cold War, when the Kremlin was pretty impenetrable to outside observers, it is said that the art of Kremlinology flourished. Perhaps the stories are apocryphal, but, on the assumption that the ritual line-ups at Communist festivals were a guide to a hidden power structure, scholars pored over photographs with callipers and rulers calculating who was closer to whom and who farther away. Editorials in the official newspapers -- and they were all "official" -- were scanned for word-usage.
The habit has re-appeared from time to time in the post-Soviet period, perhaps because the leadership still lives in the fortress of the Kremlin. This later version, which doesn’t use callipers, I term "neo-Kremlinology" -- the attempt to calculate what is really going on behind the "high Kremlin walls." Generally, under the more orderly administration of Vladimir Putin, neo-Kremlinology has featured less but the Yukos affair has brought it out again. Liliya Shevtsova of the Moscow Carnegie Center believes Kremlinology has re-appeared because "when politics is not formulated in the open, at independent institutions, and on the basis of clear and understandable standards and procedures, it is formulated in shadows, in the halls of power, and behind the scenes." (1) One might reasonably ask, however: where is it not?
In essence, neo-Kremlinology is the attempt to explain external events by postulating the activity of unseen, but deduced, cabals inside the Kremlin. Thus the Yukos prosecution is seen as really the visible effect of invisible machinations. Often the theories are very personalist and concentrate on the presumed influences of individuals. These days the theory usually holds that there are three cabals -- the "Family," the "Chekists" or "Siloviki" and the "St. Petersburg group" -- fighting each other for spoils and power.
However, the argument below is that the practice of neo-Kremlinology is fatally flawed and, therefore, a waste of time. It is, indeed, a violation of Sherlock Holmes’ dictum: it is the forming of theories in the absence of sufficient data.
Wrong Assumptions
Neo-Kremlinology, in the Putin era, makes two assumptions that are necessary preconditions for the theory. These assumptions may be true but there is insufficient evidence for either and, therefore, they remain assumptions. But without them, neo-Kremlinology is impossible.
The first assumption is that everything, or all important things, or at least some important things, qualify as subjects for Kremlinological analysis. Immediately we see a problem: how do we know which events are to be understood as visible manifestations of invisible reality and which are "ordinary" events? Which are meta-events and which mere events? Neo-Kremlinology theory offers no criteria for making the distinction. Another difficulty with this primary assumption is that it was a better fit with the USSR times than with a modern Russia that is in fact rather pluralistic there are many more decision-makers than just those in the Kremlin, or in the government apparatus.
The second fundamental assumption is that President Putin is either a referee in the cabal struggles or merely the pawn of one of them. And there is evidence that suggests the premise is wrong. Putin’s decision to support the USA after 911, his acquiescence to the US forces in Central Asia and Georgia were decisions that he took against much advice and that he took quickly. They were also a surprise to many observers (and probably to most neo-Kremlinologists). While either a puppet or a referee might have taken such decisions, it is highly unlikely that he would have taken them so quickly. Therefore, one fundamental premise of neo-Kremlinology looks improbable right away.
Time and space
But these are not the worst problems with the practice of neo-Kremlinology. Consider the difficulty of a forensic inquiry into any complex event. The point can be illustrated with the Hutton inquiry in the UK covering the BBC story that the government had "sexed up" the threat assessment about Iraq. In essence, this full-dress inquiry, which took several months, tried to get to the bottom of something not very complicated. A reporter interviewed a witness and wrote a story, the government reacted, certain things happened. Altogether a couple of weeks, a handful of actors and a few thousand words. The Hutton inquiry has taken much more time, involved many more people and produced a report of thousands of words. Even assuming it is agreed that it has produced a true and exhaustive answer, the point is that an exhaustive forensic inquiry is necessarily larger than the event. A complex and long-lived event like the Yukos affair would involve an even larger forensic inquiry. And, in the unlikely events of such an inquiry reporting, say six months from now, and its report meeting with general agreement, there would have been several other mysterious events for which the solution of the Yukos problem by this inquiry would not necessarily give any guidance.
Thus, a given neo-Kremlinological explanation will always suffer from the weakness that establishing its truth or falsity would take longer than the events it affected to explain, would never catch up with new events and would not be much use in explaining the next.
Insufficient data
But that’s still not the biggest difficulty. The biggest problem is sheer lack of information about which of the hundreds of potential actors were actually involved in the decision-chain of an event and what they said or did to whom. We know what comes out, but we cannot know what went in. There will never be enough data available and certainly not to outsiders to really know what’s going on. Consider our own countries -- numerous books are still written on, say, the Pearl Harbor attack, Churchill’s relations with the Free Polish forces, the death of Lady Diana, the Kennedy assassination, what really happened in the FLQ crisis in 1970 and so on. In short, in our own incomparably more open societies, some complex events still remain murky because no one really knows exactly what made something happen or not happen To say nothing of strongly-held politically motivated pre-assumptions which determine what are judged to be the relevant facts.
The attractions of neo-Kremlinology
Nonetheless, we still see innumerable reports and quotations about how Yukos is "really" a war in which the Chekists are fighting the Family, or Putin is indirectly doing this or that, or the “oligarchs” are trying to do something. Gideon Lichfield, a reporter in Moscow, in fact said that he could identify ten different theories. But, despite the fact that neo-Kremlinology has yet to produce any predictive successes or explain any past event to the satisfaction of a reasonable majority, it continues.
Essentially neo-Kremlinology is both fun and easy. One doesn’t really have to do much work to write a think piece about how “the Family” wants to keep its loot or stay in power and therefore wants to take a tax from the rich; or perhaps that it’s the "Chekists" who do, or whatever. No one will ever come back at you and no evidence is really necessary other than the weaving of a marginally consistent theory. And there has grown up an industry to service the demand: plenty of Russians who will provide the "inside" information. Thus the practice will continue as long as Russia is as mysterious as it is.
Conclusion
Neo-Kremlinology is fatally flawed: it assumes its conclusions; its theories cannot be verified short of virtually impossible knowledge conditions; its predictive and explanatory powers are effectively circular; and there can never be enough data to give even the loosest validity to its conclusions. In essence, most neo-Kremlinology is non-falsifiable.
But it will continue because it’s easy to do and satisfies pre-conceived notions.
Note
(1) "Russian Politics: No Peace behind the Scenes. Why the West is Reviving Kremlinology." Interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 12 Sep 2003
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POLITICS
2. PUTIN'S RELATIONS WITH REGIONAL LEADERS
Source. A. A. Mukhin, Piterskoe okruzhenie prezidenta [The President's St. Petersburg Entourage] (Moscow: Tsentr politicheskoi informatsii, 2003), pp. 17-25
The creation of the federal districts as an institutional buffer between the center and the regions has not greatly reduced the importance of direct relations between the president and regional leaders. (1) Most regional leaders try to establish such relations, though far from all succeed. Chances of success depend on both the economic and strategic importance of the region concerned and Putin's opinion of its leader. Thus Putin avoids contact with the leaders of some important regions whom he dislikes, while the leader of an unimportant region cannot expect to deal directly with the president even if Putin has nothing against him personally.
Three distinct subgroups can be identified (2):
A. Regional leaders on especially good terms with Putin, who values them as good managers and pro-state figures (gosudarstvenniki) or simply for their loyalty. Examples:
:: Mikhail Prusak (Novgorod)
:: Konstantin Titov (Samara)
:: Leonid Polezhayev (Omsk)
:: Viktor Kress (Tomsk)
:: Viktor Ishayev (Khabarovsk) (3)
:: Boris Govorin (Irkutsk)
:: Valery Kokov (Kabardino-Balkaria)
:: Alexander Dzasokhov (North Ossetia)
B. Regional leaders with whom Putin maintains friendly relations but with reservations
Putin judges it expedient to maintain friendly relations with some prominent regional leaders despite certain reservations or tensions. These include several figures formerly associated with the rival electoral bloc OVR (Fatherland--All Russia):
:: Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov
:: Presidents Shaimiev of Tatarstan and Rakhimov of Bashkortostan, whose aspirations to sovereignty are unpalatable to Putin.
:: Putin regards Aman Tuleyev (Kemerovo) as loyal but is repelled by his populism.
C. Regional leaders whom Putin dislikes and avoids
Under this category the author mentions:
:: the Lebed brothers--the late Alexander Lebed (Krasnoyarsk) and Alexei Lebed (Khakassia). Mukhin attributes Putin's alienation from them to the malign influence of the Federal Security Service.
:: Eduard Rossel (Sverdlovsk), too independent for Putin's taste
:: Sergei Sobyanin (Tyumen)
:: Vladimir Yakovlev (St. Petersburg)
:: Putin is also said to shun contact with governors too closely linked to oligarchic structures, such as Roman Abramovich (Chukotka), (4) Alexander Khloponin (Krasnoyarsk), and Yuri Trutnev (Perm), in order to avoid accusations of bias in favor of one or another oligarch.
The main institutional channel available to regional leaders seeking personal contact with the president is the State Council. The State Council, which meets every three months and is attached to the presidential administration, was created in 2000 to compensate regional leaders for the loss of their ex officio seats on the Council of the Federation (the parliamentary upper house).
The greatest opportunities for direct access to Putin go to members of the Presidium of the State Council. The Presidium consists of seven regional leaders, one from each of the federal districts, and its members are replaced every six months. The Presidium meets with Putin every month. Moreover, its members are the only regional leaders with whom Putin maintains telephone contact. Putin prefers to minimize his use of the telephone except on matters of urgency.
In 2002 a parallel body to the State Council was created for the heads of regional legislatures, who also lost their seats on the Council of the Federation -- the State Council of Legislators.
A regional leaders may also be invited to meet Putin in the Kremlin or Putin himself may come to visit his region. Such a visit is considered a special sign of favor, except when it is dictated by circumstances, as in the case of Putin's visit to Murmansk at the time of the "Kursk" submarine tragedy.
Notes
(1) By regional leaders I mean leaders of provinces, territories, and republics-- that is, subjects of the Russian Federation. For other pieces on the federal districts, see RAS No. 8 item 2, No. 10 items 4 and 5, and No. 18 item 4.
(2) These subgroups do not comprise all the regional leaders. They do not cover those whose relations with Putin are neutral or unclear or those who do not have relations with him because their regions are unimportant.
(3) For more on Ishayev, see RAS No. 2 item 1.
(4) For more on Abramovich, see RAS No. 11 item 6.
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ECONOMICS
3. BRINGING WESTERN ECONOMICS T0 RUSSIA
Source. Anders Aslund and Tatyana Maleva, eds. Ocherki o mirovoi ekonomike: Vydaiushchiesia ekonomisty mira v Moskovskom Tsentre Karnegi [Essays on the World Economy: Outstanding World Economists at the Moscow Carnegie Center] (Moscow, Gendalf, 2002)
Between 1997 and 2000, the Carnegie Foundation invited a series of "the most knowledgeable and authoritative" Western economists to lecture at its Moscow Center on topics not directly related to Russia but of interest to a Russian professional audience. This volume brings together Russian translations of pertinent scholarly articles by several of the guest lecturers:
:: Rudiger Dornbusch (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) on the experience of structural reform in Latin America
:: Asaar Lindbeck (Stockholm University) on the Swedish models of liberal and social democratic economy
:: Paul Collier (Oxford University and the World Bank) and Jan Willem Gunning (Free University of Amsterdam) on why economic growth has been slow in Africa
:: J. Bradford De Long (University of California at Berkeley) on the American "robber barons"
:: Michael Gavin (UBS Warburg) and Ricardo Hausmann (Harvard University) on the macroeconomics of banking crises
:: Alberto Alesina (Harvard University) and Roberto Perotti (Columbia University) on the political economy of budget deficits
It may be noted that the essays focus on various Western and Third World national economies, not on the world economy as such. I mean this as a criticism not of the contents but of the choice of title.
As Russia is not even mentioned in any of the essays, why am I writing about this book in a bulletin that is supposed to be about Russian affairs? However, Russia IS mentioned in the editors' introduction -- and also in the English-language summary at the back, which seems to be based on the introduction rather than the essays themselves. Here not only is the content of the essays summarized more or less accurately, but "lessons" for Russia are drawn from the foreign experience under discussion.
I feel that the editors (1) have fallen between two stools. The relevance to the Russian situation of the experience of various foreign countries can be properly assessed only by means of a more systematic comparative analysis. If this was not feasible, it would have been better to leave the matter to the reader. Adding to Russian specialists' knowledge of foreign economies would have been a worthwhile exercise in and of itself.
The editors very confidently assume that the theories of the school of economics currently dominant in the West are uniquely and universally valid. In the opening paragraph of the introduction we read:
"At the beginning of the 1990s few Russian economists had an adequate conception of a real market economy. A number of myths and amateurish theories arose and became widespread. It was thought, for example, that a high level of inflation promotes economic growth [so much for Keynesian demand management!--SDS] or that in Russia's conditions monetary emission does not lead to inflation. By the mid-1990s the majority of these theories had died out or fallen into oblivion."
But in an economy like Russia in the 1990s, with a large barter sector, monetary emission will NOT necessarily lead to inflation because it may be channeled into monetizing the barter sector instead. Why be so dismissive of the very idea? Perhaps it was not only Russian economists who had inadequate conceptions?
Most of the essayists also stick to the prevailing orthodoxies. It is taken as self-evident, for instance, that growth rate of GNP is an adequate measure of a country's economic performance, even though it takes no account of many of the benefits and costs that an economy generates. Thus Professor Lindbeck shows that the average growth rate of Sweden's GNP has been 1 percent higher during periods of liberal economic policy than during periods of social democratic governance and regards this as a decisive argument in favor of the liberal model. But might there not have been advantages extraneous to GNP that compensated for such a modest difference in rate of growth? Lindbeck notes that people worked less hard under the social democrats, though he seems to see this as a defect rather than a benefit.
Ultimately, there are no objective yardsticks or "correct" stances on economic issues. It all depends on one's value choices (subjective utilities, to use economic jargon). The task of the economist is to clarify connections and trade-offs so that citizens and politicians will be well-informed when making their choices. This is, in fact, the approach that Professor De Long takes in his essay on the American "robber barons," which he concludes by suggesting that there is a trade-off between the rate of technological advance and the social value of preventing excessive inequality. In the introduction and summary, the editors distort his non-committal position, attributing to him an unequivocally positive attitude to the "robber barons" and extending the favorable verdict to the Russian oligarchs on the grounds that they have begun to make productive investments.
I do not want to seem unduly critical of this book. It performs an important service by giving a broader circle of Russian specialists who lack a fluent command of English access to important insights about foreign economies. But they will hardly get a balanced view of Western economics if this is the only source on which they rely.
Note
(1) I say "the editors" because I have no way of judging the editorial contributions of Aslund and Maleva respectively. It is now de rigueur for a Western writer on Russia to recruit a Russian colleague as co-author, but the relationship between the two is not necessarily an equal one.
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SOCIETY
4. THE DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION MOVEMENT
Source. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology (JREEP): A Journal of Translations [published by M.E. Sharpe of New York], Vol. 41, No. 5, September-October 2003. Learning Activity. Guest Editor: Elina Lampert-Shepel. Translator: Stephen D. Shenfield
This issue of JREEP is devoted to the Soviet and post-Soviet educational reform movement known as "developmental teaching" (DT) or "developmental education" (DE).
What is DE?
I won't try to answer this question in any depth or detail; if you are interested, I recommend that you read the issue of JREEP. The basic purpose of DE is to turn the student into an active subject or agent of learning instead of a passive object of teaching. Traditional education stifles the young child's natural curiosity, while DE encourages it and makes it the foundation of a strong inner motivation: the student should learn because he (she) has a heartfelt need to do so, not in order to satisfy the demands of teachers and parents.
Moreover, she (he) should learn not only substantive knowledge and skills, but HOW to learn -- how to set goals and think out methods on the basis of a conceptual understanding of principles, not just to follow readymade recipes. This requires that he (she) acquire the ability to examine his (her) own mental functioning and development -- the mental activity that activity theorists call "reflexion."
The advocates of DE claim that their approach yields impressive results in terms of both academic achievement and personality formation. They say that the tables compiled by developmental psychologists of the old school to show what capabilities an average child can be expected to acquire by a given age are valid only for children taught in accordance with the traditional methods. Children educated by means of DT make much faster progress. And they mature into creative and self-confident young adult rather than alienated and frustrated adolescents.
To convey something of the flavor of DE, I can do no better than quote from the introduction to the issue by guest editor Elina Lampert-Shepel (now at Columbia University, New York), who was herself a student at one of the experimental schools in Kharkov:
"As a child, I remember the excitement of learning during every school day, the committed and passionately interested teachers and others who for some unknown reason were present at the lessons, the mysterious old laboratory building behind the school... Recollecting those days, it is hard to say what was more important for us -- the joy of discovery, learning how to work together as a group and to be appreciated by classmates, the feeling that we are mathematicians and linguists, learning the culture of professional discourse -- but somehow during those three years of elementary school, we internalized the value of a constant challenge to our own ways of thinking and doing, going beyond who we were, the value of human communication and interest in people in general, the value and joy of learning, the power of the human mind, and the value that thinking is the spiritual and emotional as well as the intellectual effort that makes one human."
The rise, fall, and revival of DE
The movement has its origin in psychological theories developed in the 1930s by Lev Vygotsky (in Moscow) and A. N. Leontiev and his "Kharkov school of psychology" -- theories generally subsumed under the heading of "the activity approach." (1) In the 1960s, D. B. Elkonin and V. V. Davydov applied these theories specifically to processes of teaching and learning ("learning activity") and experimental classes were established to try out their ideas at three schools in Moscow and Kharkov. (2) Later these schools switched over completely to the new methods.
The experiment would not have been possible had the innovators not won the support of officials in the Soviet establishment, especially the ministry of education and local education departments. By the late 1960s they were getting favorable coverage in the Soviet media. The Kharkov television studio shot a film about their work "2 x 2 = X" which was broadcast also by Central Television. (3)
By the beginning of the 1980s, the "developmental educators" were ready to bring their methods into general use throughout the country, initially for the teaching of mathematics and Russian language in elementary classes. They seemed to have a chance of accomplishing this, because they enjoyed the support of two key figures: the then minister of education M. A. Prokofyev and president of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences G. N. Stoletov. However, the opponents of DE in the field of educational psychology managed to win even higher-level political support, with the result that in 1983 the party's Central Committee decided to suppress DE completely. Academicians and ministers alike were powerless in the face of a CC decision. Research projects were terminated and research groups broken up, although a few individuals did manage to continue working on DE themes in a surreptitious manner.
Gorbachev's accession to power improved the situation, though not at once and not decisively. As the CC decision of 1983 was never formally rescinded there was no question of renewed state support for DE, but party officials did admit that the decision had been erroneous. In 1988, V. V. Repkin judged it safe to resume collective work on DE on a voluntary unpaid basis. He brought together in Kharkov a group of DE researchers who offered their services to schoolteachers. They were surprised at the lively response:
"Within a year several dozen classes were functioning in accordance with DT programs, and by 1990 such classes numbered in the hundreds. Many regions of Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic republics were involved."
Repkin's group was incorporated into the new Institute of Pedagogical Innovation of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, they decided to continue their work by setting up a network of independent (non-state) regional DT centers. Such centers now exist in Tomsk, Samara, and Lugansk as well as Kharkov.
The DT program for teaching Russian and mathematics in the first five grades has now been officially approved by the Russian and Ukrainian education ministries. The group's priorities are now the writing of DT textbooks and methodic handbooks for teachers and the extension of DE methods to the middle grades.
Reflections
I would like to know more about the CC decision of 1983, especially its motives and rationale. Were the CC officials merely objects of intrigue and manipulation by rival groups of educational psychologists, as Repkin implies? Or did they have reasons of their own?
Given the values of free and independent thinking that DE embodied, the hostile reaction of the CC is not all that surprising. What is more surprising to me is that the reaction should have come so late and that for two decades the DE movement should have been tolerated and even supported by Soviet officialdom. Surely even the existence of such a movement inside Soviet society forces us to reconsider some of our cruder conceptions of the nature of that society?
Perhaps it was no coincidence that the CC decision came just at the point when the movement was preparing to apply its ideas on a broad scale. Tolerating some research groups and a handful of experimental schools was one thing, transforming the education system as a whole in accordance with their ideas was quite another.
How successful will DE be if and when it is applied throughout a national schools system? Much less successful, I suspect, than the encouraging results of small-scale experiments lead its supporters to expect. DT, and "creative" teaching methods in general, require above all else talented, flexible, committed, enthusiastic, and hardworking teachers. For example, one of the articles in the issue of JREEP contains a fascinating explanation of how a teacher should mediate a class discussion with a view to enhancing the students' capacity for collective reflexion. But I could not help thinking: how many teachers are brilliant enough to do this?
Moreover, to succeed at DT a teacher also needs to have a certain kind of non-authoritarian personality. We learn from the source under review that many teachers dislike not only DE but also the children whose development has been shaped by it, regarding them as "arrogant and lacking in respect for adults." Supporters of DE would say, of course, that they are self-confident and seek to relate to adults as equals. Especially difficult situations arise when children who have had DT in their first few years at school move up to classes taught by traditional teachers.
In the second half of the 1970s, as a government statistician in Britain, I was given the job of monitoring educational research for the Department of Education and Science (as it then was). This was a very interesting assignment for me, and I took a particular interest in the new "creative" teaching methods. I remember reading about a comparative study of students' academic progress at two sets of schools in Lancashire. The schools in one set still used traditional teaching methods, while the schools in the other set used the new experimental methods. The results were striking: on average there was no significant difference between the two sets of schools, but the schools using the new methods showed much wider variation than the schools using the old methods. Some were much better than average, some much worse, depending above all on the quality of their teachers. (4)
That is why I think that so long as DT is the monopoly of enthusiastic volunteers it will continue to give marvelous results. Those teachers who are uncomfortable with such methods or find them too difficult will be free to stick to more familiar approaches. But if an entire education system is reorganized on the basis of DE, those teachers will have no escape. What they end up teaching will inevitably be an absurd and useless travesty of DE.
Notes
(1) The origin, nature, and prospects of the activity approach are discussed in a series of articles that I am now engaged in translating for publication in two forthcoming issues of the Journal of Russian & East European Psychology. The approach draws heavily on the German idealist philosophy of the nineteenth century and on the early Marx.
(2) Moscow School No. 91 and Kharkov Schools Nos. 17 and 62.
(3) A copy of the film is now available in the Library of Congress.
(4) Unfortunately I no longer have the book on this study and don't remember the title or the names of the authors.
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SOCIETY
5. DANIIL GRANIN ON THE DECLINE OF ALTRUISM
Source. Daniil Granin, Neizvestnyi chelovek [The Unknown Human Being] (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2002)
This little book, produced with the financial support of the International Bank of St. Petersburg, brings together several short stories and essays ("documentary prose") of the writer Daniil Granin. Also of interest is the introduction by Boris Nikolsky, chief editor of the St. Petersburg literary journal Neva, with which Granin has a close association.
Nikolsky points out that Granin has aloof from the recent fashion for "esthetic games" in literature. He remains loyal to the social realist -- as distinct from "socialist realist"! -- tradition of the classical Russian writers of the nineteenth century, such as Gogol and Turgenev, whose fiction was infused with compassion for the "oppressed and insulted."
(Nikolsky refers especially to these two writers. They were important in my own upbringing too. As a child I was given and encouraged to read some booklets in brown paper covers containing their stories, in Russian and English on facing pages and with funny little drawings that I can still see in my mind's eye. I was especially affected by Gogol's poor old Akaky Akakyevich, the clerk whose new coat was stolen by hooligans, and the serfs in Turgenev's "Mumu" whose marriages are arranged by their masters without regard to their own wishes.)
Granin's essays "Lost Mercy" and "Fear" are complementary explorations of the profound impact that life under the Bolshevik regime has had on the emotional and moral personality of the Russian people. The traditional popular value of "mercy," to which the classical Russian writers gave voice, fell victim to the terrible fear that gripped people in the Soviet period. Fear was cynically used as an instrument of governance, while mercy was officially despised and -- if shown to "enemies," i.e., victims of the regime -- punishable. Granin describes how he has tried to reintroduce the idea of mercy into Russian life by fostering charitable projects of various kinds and the misunderstanding that he encounters in the process.
Granin opens "Lost Mercy" by recounting an episode that happened to him in his native Leningrad in January 1987. Stepping out into the street to hail a taxi, he trips and falls flat on his face and breaks his nose. Weak and bleeding profusely, holding onto the walls of buildings for support, he somehow manages to get back to his apartment. His neighbors summon medical help. Worse than the physical shock, he says, was the emotional trauma caused by the fact that none of the many people he had passed by as he struggled to return home had shown any concern for him or offered to help. The expressions on their faces had registered indifference, disgust (presumably they thought he was a drunk) or at best curiosity.
He draws a contrast with the behavior of Leningraders during the wartime blockade of the city. This is a matter that he investigated in depth in connection with his preparation of "The Blockade Book," co-authored with the Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich. Under constant German bombardment and barely surviving on a meager daily bread ration, many people had gone to great lengths to help others. But the circumstances of the blockade led to a certain relaxation of the pressure on people from the totalitarian regime, and they were no longer afraid to help one another.
This contrast between the 1940s and the 1980s, I suppose, also has a lot to do with the succession of generations. In the early 1940s, a large proportion of the adult population had grown to maturity before the Bolshevik period. By the 1980s, of course, this was no longer the case. By then virtually everyone was a product of the Soviet system.
I would like to add, however, that the Soviet system is by no means the ONLY system that suppresses people's natural inclinations toward altruism and mutual aid. The story of Granin's broken nose reminded me of a similar though less extreme experience of my own. I slipped on some goose droppings in a park here in Providence, Rhode Island, USA and hurt my foot. For several minutes I was unable to stand up and a ring of people gathered round to look, but no one offered me help. To the best of my knowledge, a Bolshevik regime has never been in power in Rhode Island. In Russia too, as the years pass, it will gradually become less convincing to attribute all ills wholly to the Soviet legacy.
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ECOLOGY
6. SOIL EROSION
Source. Anatoly Greshnevikov, Ukhodit pochva iz-pod nog [The Soil Disappears from under our Feet] (Moscow: Zhizn' i mysl'; Rybinsk: Rybinskoe podvor'e, 2002)
In this pamphlet, Anatoly Greshnevikov, who is deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Ecology as well as a writer on environmental issues, discusses the rapidly progressing erosion of Russia's soils and his committee's unsuccessful efforts to secure a law to protect them. (1)
Russia's large area can create the impression that the country need not worry about having enough land for agriculture. This impression, however, is an illusion. Over half of Russia is permafrost (tundra); in the south large areas are (semi-)desert; and much land is too marshy or saline to cultivate. (2) Good arable land constitutes only 130 million hectares or 7.7 percent of Russia's area.
About a fifth of this arable land (19.3 percent) is already eroded, while two-thirds of it (67.5 percent) is at risk of erosion. And soil is being washed away from almost a million hectares a year. The annual loss of soil from the fertile layer exceeds 1.5 billion tons.
In addition to areas completely lost to erosion, large areas remain usable but with a decline in soil quality. The soils of the Black Earth Zone in southern Russia used to have a humus content of 10-13 percent -- the highest in the world. Their maximum humus content is now down to 7-8 percent.
Part of the eroded land (100-150,000 hectares a year) turns into ravines and gullies, the total length of which is increasing by 55 kilometers PER DAY. Over the last decade the area covered by ravines and gullies has grown from 5 to 6.5 million hectares.
But the biggest threat is desertification, which has already begun in 19 regions throughout the southern part of the steppe zone. While the process is furthest advance din Kalmykia, neighboring regions of the North Caucasus and southern Volga region are also affected, including northern Dagestan (the Kizlyar pastures), Astrakhan, Rostov, and Volgograd provinces, and Krasnodar and Stavropol territories. Parts of southern Siberia are also at risk.
In 1999 the Duma Committee for Ecology put forward a draft law "On the Fertility and Protection of Soils," but the initiative was defeated on first reading. The sponsors failed to win the support of the government or even of the Duma Committee on Agriculture, which feared excessive regulation of land use. Opponents appear to have been most concerned at the financial aspects of the draft law, which proposed to fund soil-protection measures by means of a land tax that would vary depending on how well landowners looked after the land from an ecological point of view. The government admitted that soil erosion was a problem and promised to put forward a financially sounder draft law of its own, but has not done so.
Notes
(1) For another piece drawing on the same author, see RAS no. 22 item 4 on forest fires. More summaries of his work will appear in future issues of RAS.
(2) Global warming will not necessarily increase the area available for agriculture. The permafrost will contract, but much of it will turn into impenetrable marshland, while desertification in the south will accelerate.
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ECOLOGY
7. ENDANGERED TIGERS
Sources. Josh Newell, The Russian Far East: A Reference Guide for Conservation and Development, 2nd edn. (McKinleyville, CA: Daniel & Daniel Publishers in association with Friends of the Earth--Japan, 2004), pp. 106-109 (Dale G. Miquelle and Dmitry G. Pikunov, Perspective) (1); and Kyodo News Service report, February 21, 2004. Taken from Russian Environmental Digest, vol. 6, no. 8, February 16-22, 2004
The Siberian or Amur tiger is one of five surviving subspecies of tiger. (2) Its original habitat covered northeast Siberia, northeast and east China, and Korea. It has now virtually disappeared from China and Korea: the occasional Chinese sightings are probably of tigers (transient dispersers) that have crossed the border from Russia. Tigers may be reintroduced from Russia into China's Chang Bai Shan Reserve.
The large tiger population of the Russian Far East in the mid-19th century was reduced by commercial exploitation (120-150 tigers shot annually) and the destruction of habitat by logging and forest fires to a mere 20-30 individuals at the end of the 1930s. Imminent extinction was averted by a ban on tiger hunting in 1947, followed in 1960 by a ban on the capture of cubs for zoos. International trade in the tiger is prohibited under the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. (3)
The most recent survey, conducted in the winter of 1995-96, indicated that Russia then had about 450 tigers. 95 percent of these tigers were in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains of Primorsky and southern Khabarovsk territories. The other 5 percent were dispersed among a number of smaller areas.
It is estimated that the number of tigers has now fallen to about 300. They have disappeared from some of the smaller habitats. Their fate depends on the effectiveness of the state system of nature reserves.
In August 2000, Sergei Shaitarov set up the NGO "Tiger Volunteer" to patrol the tiger reserves on contract with reserve directors. However, some poachers are influential locally -- in one case, a former governor of the territory -- and in these cases officials refuse to take action. And tiger parts still end up in stores in Japan selling Chinese medicinal products.
Notes
(1) This is a beautifully produced volume on the ecology and economy of the Russian Far East, with a mass of detailed information on each province and numerous maps and photos.
(2) The others are the Bengal, South China, Indo-Chinese, and Sumatran tigers. Three other subspecies became extinct over the last 70 years.
(3) The species is listed by the World Conservation Union as "critically endangered."
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-- AND ENDANGERING CRABS
Source. Julius Strauss, Stalin's Last Army: Hordes of Gigantic Crabs on Their Way to Invade Europe, The Daily Telegraph (London), February 28, 2004. Taken from Russian Environmental Digest, vol. 6, no. 9, February 23-29, 2004
Yes, at first I too thought this was a joke.
The Kamchatka or Red King crab, which has a claw span of over three feet and weighs up to 25 pounds, was introduced into the Barents Sea from the Pacific by Stalin to provide a new food source for northwest Russia. For some unknown reason its population has exploded in recent years and now exceeds ten million.
The crabs have advanced 400 miles west along Norway's northern coast and reached the Lofoten Islands to the northwest of Scandinavia. Some scientists think they like the cold and so will stay in the north. Others warn that they will go south, all the way to Gibraltar. But if they don't mind warm waters why should they stop there, when beyond lie the rich pickings of Africa and the Mediterranean?
The giant crabs have no natural predators and will eat almost anything. They destroy all other marine species, leaving an "underwater desert" in their wake. The Norwegian government is unsure whether to treat them as pests or a valuable resource. (They are both, surely.) The legs are considered a delicacy, with taste and texture like those of the finest lobster. Just take care they don't eat you first!
Eventually, I suppose, the crabs will devour every other living thing throughout their potential shoreline habitat. Then, being unable to eat one another, they will finally die off themselves. A similar fate probably awaits Homo sapiens (except that not having shells we shall be able to eat one another when the need arises).
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MILITARY AFFAIRS
8. RUSSIA'S NEW MILITARY PROGRAM
Source. Richard F. Staar, Russia's New Military Program, Insight (http://www.psan.org/), Vol. 4, Issue 1.
Professor Staar (senior fellow at the Hoover Institution) discusses a new document on Russian military planning that has recently become available. (1)
Armed forces personnel are to be reduced to one million by 2005. The number of generals, currently about 10,000, is also to be cut drastically.
Following a long period of ambiguity on the issue, military planning now excludes the possibility of a global or large-scale conventional war with NATO or any other USled coalition. Emphasis is placed on special operations, counter-terrorism, local conflicts, and other conventional military activity.
Professionalization of the armed forces will continue. The number of recruits serving on a contract basis is planned to rise fourfold by 2007 (from 15,700 to 60,600). These men are paid $1,000 per month for combat duty in Chechnya, where they comprise about 20 percent of all troops.
Up-to-date combat equipment is to constitute a third of stock by 2010, 4050 percent by 2015, and 100 percent by 202025, at which time over half of defense expenditure will be allocated to the modernization of equipment.
Pay of military personnel has increased by about 50 percent since July 2002 and pensions by 80-90 percent since the beginning of 2002, although some of this increase has been eaten up by inflation. The housing shortage will not be overcome before 2012-15.
By 2005 "patriotic education" will have been restored at all educational institutions. Such education is also to be part of the work of public organizations that prepare youth for military service. In both respects, Russia is returning to the situation that prevailed in Soviet times. Professor Staar doubts that the effort to re-inculcate the civilian population with patriotic sentiment will succeed.
Note
(1) The new document, entitled "Development of Russian Armed Forces: Goals and Perspectives," was introduced by defense minister Sergei Ivanov at a Ministry of Defense press conference in Moscow on October 2, 2003. It is available at http://supol.narod.ru/archive/official_documents/doctrine/war_doctrine.htm, 13 January 2004 (65 single-spaced pages).
Professor Staar is author of The New Military in Russia (Naval Institute Press).
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MILITARY AFFAIRS
9. THE MOUSE FLIES HIGH
Source. A. A. Mukhin, Vooruzhennye sily i ministerstvo oborony Rossii: Sovremennoe sostoianie i problemy [Russia's Armed Forces and Defense Ministry: Contemporary Condition and Problems] (Moscow: Tsentr politicheskoi informatsii, 2003), pp. 49-56
If my heading puzzles you, here is the clue you need: the flying mouse is the emblem of GRU, the Main Intelligence Administration of the General Staff of the Soviet -- now Russian -- armed forces.
Tsar Alexander I set up Russia's first military intelligence service in 1812. Military intelligence has always been subordinate to the General Staff. (1)
GRU gathers and analyzes agent, electronic, and satellite intelligence. For this purpose it controls military attachés in Russian embassies abroad. It spies on the Russian armed forces too: every motorized infantry and tank regiment in the army has an intelligence squad. It has a hierarchy of training institutions, headed by the Military-Diplomatic Academy, and at least two scientific research institutes.
Since 1993, GRU has infiltrated its agents into commercial firms. GRU also has its own commercial affiliates, both to provide cover for agents and to make money. For example, "Sovinformsputnik" was formed in 1991 to sell photos taken by GRU's spy satellites.
Many subdivisions of GRU perform functions that have little if anything to do with intelligence"
:: Special forces (Spetsnaz) numbering up to 25,000 men are organized into 24 "diversionary groups."
:: A scientific research institute develops special kinds of weapons. (2)
:: Group B stands ready to kill leaders of enemy countries.
:: When the armed forces' Main Political Administration (responsible in the Soviet period for indoctrinating the troops) was abolished, GRU took over its Special Propaganda Administration, which prepares psychological operations against enemy armed forces.
:: GRU controls the "Delfin" units in the navy that train dolphins for combat roles and implement countermeasures against the enemy's dolphins.
From 1963 to 1987 GRU was headed by General Pyotr Ivashutin. His successor, General Mikhailov, was forced to retire in view of his support for the attempted putsch of August 1991. An outsider -- General Yevgeny Timokhin from anti-air defense (PVO) -- was then put in charge to adapt GRU to the breakup of the Soviet Union and other new political realities.
In summer 1992, Timokhin returned to PVO and Colonel General Fyodor Ladygin was appointed head of GRU. Ladygin was an analyst who had headed GRU's Information Administration in the 1980s. Regarded as "Grachev's man," he was forced out in 1997 by the new defense minister Igor Rodionov. He was succeeded by his first deputy, Colonel General Valentin Korabelnikov, a specialist in operational work.
GRU has suffered some cuts. By 1998 its personnel abroad had been reduced by 20 percent, as the foreign ministry was allocating fewer cover positions in Russian embassies to GRU agents. However, GRU has been affected by cuts much less badly than the armed forces as a whole: it has been able to keep its most valuable personnel and even absorb the best of the specialists released by other parts of the armed forces.
In the immediate post-Soviet period, GRU's space-based optical and electronic intelligence gathering system was undermined by the loss of facilities in the former Soviet republics. The capacity of the system was improved in 2000 with the launching of two new military satellites. (3)
While GRU lacks the political clout of the Federal Security Service (FSB), its status within the military establishment has been preserved and enhanced. The defense ministry values GRU because (inter alia) it provides that ministry with means by which it can influence foreign policy. One sign of its high status is the fact that Korabelnikov has been seriously considered as a replacement for Anatoly Kvashnin as head of the General Staff. (4)
Notes
(1) The acronym GRU has been used since 1942, with the exception of the period 1947-53.
(2) Analysis of intelligence information is the job of another scientific research institute.
(3) The satellites "Neman" (in May) and "Yenisei" (in September).
(4) Mooted replacements for Korabelnikov as head of GRU are Anatoly Mazurkevich and Oleg Chernov, recently head of the International Security Administration of the Security Council.
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RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS
10. RUSSIA--KAZAKHSTAN: BORDER ADJUSTMENTS?
Source. L. B. Vardomskii and S. V. Golunov, eds. Prozrachnye granitsy: Bezopasnost' i transgranichnoe sotrudnichestvo v zone novykh pogranichnykh territorii Rossii [Transparent Borders: Security and Cross-Border Cooperation in Russia's New Borderlands] (Moscow--Volgograd, 2002), pp. 406-410
At about 7,500 kilometers, the border between Russia and Kazakhstan is the longest continuous land border in the world. (1) Most of the border passes through flat steppe (grassland) and semi-desert landscape with few natural obstacles. The only exceptions are 150 km of border that coincide with rivers and the mountainous section in the Altai region near the border's eastern end.
The border is crossed by 16 railroad lines and 75 roads, not to mention numerous dirt tracks. Rail and road routes were laid down in Soviet times with no regard to the zigzag administrative borders between union republics. As a result, quite a few roads and railroad lines repeatedly cross what is now the interstate border. This creates various discrepancies and problems: for example, several sections of railroad line on Russian territory belong to the Kazakhstan rail company and vice versa.
Thus even important routes connecting cities within the same country are dependent on the other country's transportation infrastucture:
:: To go by rail from Uralsk to Aktyubinsk, both provincial centers of northwestern Kazakhstan, you have to pass through Russia's Orenburg province. This section, including a railroad station at Iletsk, belongs like the rest of the line to the Kazakhstan company "Temir zholy." The situation in northeastern Kazakhstan is analogous. Even the line from the new capital of Astana to the northeast of the country passes through Russian territory.
:: The main trans-Siberian line passes through Kazakhstan territory for over 100 km between Kurgan and Omsk. The two branch lines to the south pass through 700 and 1,200 km of Kazakhstan territory respectively. The line from Magnitogorsk to Barnaul in southern Siberia passes through Astana! (2) The Volga railroad that links the Caspian area with central Russia also passes through Kazakhstan territory.
Each country is developing a few new routes to reduce its dependence on the other. However, in many cases this is not a practical solution. Border adjustments are in principle an alternative solution. In the course of the current negotiations between Russia and Kazakhstan on border delimitation, the Russian side has several times put forward proposals for the exchange of areas traversed by the other side's domestic railroads.
So far the Kazakhstan side has not consented to any such border changes. Why not? For one thing, by adjusting the border to solve one problem you are likely to create another. But that is not the only reason. Like Ukraine, Kazakhstan is very reluctant to contemplate even the smallest and (in local terms) most sensible border changes for fear of creating a precedent that might be used by nationalists in Russia to demand larger disputed territories. Better to leave this can of worms tightly sealed. (3)
Notes
(1) There is a short section of the border in the Caspian Sea.
(2) There is an alternative route further north, through Tyumen, that remains on Russian territory throughout, but its capacity is limited.
(3) One can easily locate other places in the former USSR where small exchanges of territory would appear to be sensible but have nonetheless not taken place. For example, along the border between southwestern Ukraine and Moldova there are a number of ethnically Ukrainian villages on the Moldovan side that might be exchanged for ethnically Moldovan villages on the Ukrainian side.
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HISTORY
11. THE MAN WHO DISAGREED WITH STALIN
Source. N. S. Khrushchev. Vospominaniia. Vremia, liudi, vlast' [N. S. Khrushchev. Memoirs. Times, People, Power]. Vol. 2 (Moscow: Moskovskie novosti, 1999), pp. 106-109, 112-114
There are many memoirs by surviving victims of the Stalinist purges. First-hand accounts by those directly involved in making decisions about who should be arrested are much rarer. The information provided in Khrushchev's memoirs (and the attached notes) about the case of L. D. Yaroshenko is of considerable interest in this regard.
Yaroshenko was an economic specialist in the State Planning Commission (Gosplan) and an Old Bolshevik. In November 1951, the Central Committee organized a closed discussion on a draft textbook of political economy. Stalin personally decided who should take part, and one of those invited was Yaroshenko. He was told that the discussion would be academic in character and naively believed that this meant he could express himself freely.
At the discussion, Yaroshenko took a highly critical view of the draft textbook and the general condition of the discipline of economics in the USSR. Stalin, who was present, took offence at his statements and responded with an article "On the Errors of Comrade L. D. Yaroshenko," which appeared in Pravda on May 22, 1952 and was then included in Stalin's booklet "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR."
If at this point Yaroshenko had meekly accepted Stalin's criticism he might still have saved himself. After all, despite his "errors" Stalin had referred to him as "Comrade." However, Yaroshenko persisted in his "errors" and took the perilous step of distributing to the members of the Politburo a long letter in defense of his views.
The Central Committee instructed the Moscow city party committee to discuss Yaroshenko's action. Khrushchev, who was Moscow party boss at the time, opened the session by reprimanding Yaroshenko for expressing an opinion that did not coincide with Stalin's. However, in his summing up Khrushchev declared: "We are a strong and united party. We shall be magnanimous. We shall not impose any penalties on Comrade Yaroshenko, but we propose that the Central Statistical Administration employ Comrade Yaroshenko somewhere in Eastern Siberia."
This proposal was adopted. The next day Yaroshenko left for Irkutsk. But when he arrived and went to the offices of the province party committee, he was shown an official decision of the Moscow city committee. In this document he was accused of "spreading hostile Bukharinite-Bogdanovite views" and failing to reveal his "collaborators" and given a severe reprimand with warning.
What had happened? Yaroshenko believed that Khrushchev had double-crossed him. Khrushchev says that he had tried to save Yaroshenko but was foiled by orders from above that forced the Moscow party committee to change its "liberal" decision.
Khrushchev describes the scene at which the decision was made to arrest Yaroshenko:
"It was one of Stalin's usual long and agonizing dinners. Suddenly [defense minister] Voroshilov ... says to Stalin: 'Koba, you haven't read the paper that Yaroshenko sent round, have you?' ... Stalin replies: "No, I haven't." And he looks to Malenkov and the others. They all say they haven't read it... Voroshilov begins to curse him: 'He should be arrested, the bastard, arrested!' And Stalin backs him up: 'Well, what kind of snake is this? Arrest him!'"
Khrushchev speculates that one reason for Stalin's suspicion of Yaroshenko was his belief that Yaroshenko was a Ukrainian. Khrushchev told Stalin that despite his Ukrainian-sounding name Yaroshenko was not from Ukraine but from Siberia. Stalin responded by pointing out that there were plenty of Ukrainians in Siberia. An attempt was also made to link Yaroshenko with Ukrainians in Khrushchev's own entourage, so in defending Yaroshenko Khrushchev was defending himself too.
Yaroshenko was summoned back to Moscow by Shkiryatov, chairman of the Party Control Committee. In Khrushchev's presence, Shkiryatov condemned his "anti-Soviet and antiparty acts." He was arrested as he left Shkiryatov's office. His brother and his wife were also arrested and other relatives expelled from Moscow.
By the time the Moscow committee considered the case, Yaroshenko had belatedly retracted his "errors." In a letter to Malenkov, he wrote:
"I put forward my own point of view, which differed from that of Comrade Stalin. This is, without a doubt, a crude error. For every party member the opinion of Comrade Stalin is and must be an inviolable law... The organizer and leader of the construction of a socialist society and inspirer of all our victories embodies in his thought and action all that is necessary to solve correctly any question... I ask to be forgiven this error."
After Stalin's death, in December 1953, Yaroshenko was released, readmitted to the party, and allowed to return to work in his field. However, at a party meeting in 1956 after the 20th Party Congress he denounced Stalin's personality cult in language that was considered too sharp. The Central Committee decided, without any objection from Khrushchev, to expel Yaroshenko from the party and fire him from his job. According to a document of the Central Committee dated December 19, 1956, Yaroshenko had "criticized the foundations of the party's policy."
But even that is not the end of the story. After the 22nd Party Congress in 1962, Yaroshenko, by now a pensioner, was readmitted to the party. So he had the distinction of being expelled twice and readmitted twice--all with Khrushchev's direct participation.
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