Notebook

No sponsors for Pushkin

As a result of the financial crisis, the Moscow City government has seriously cut its program of year-long festivities to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of Alexander Pushkin’s birth. Federal coffers are empty and corporate sponsors have been forced to back out. Thus, the city is forced to rely solely on its own budget and will scale the festivities back to the essential.

Culture and Kalashnikovs

Academician Dmitry Likhachov, the unofficial Patriarch of Russian Culture, was the most logical choice as the first recipient of Russia’s new Award of Saint Andrei Pervozvanny {Russian Life, Oct/Nov 1998} – for performing great service to the Fatherland. The historian said he regards the award as an encouragement to continue his work. Later this year, Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the famous Kalashnikov rifle – became the second recipient of Russia’s new, highest honor.

Mandelshtam Remembered

One of Russia’s greatest poets, Osip Mandelshtam, was honored posthumously with a new monument in Vladivostok, not far from the site of the transit prison where he is believed to have died 60 years ago. The mass grave where the poet was buried is located on the territory of a naval base. Therefore, the monument had to be placed in a nearby residential area. Local sculptor Valery Nenazhivin designed the monument – made of cement – back in the mid-1980s. At that time, little of Mandelshtam’s true biography was known in Russia. Only in the late 1980s was it revealed that the poet was arrested and died in Stalin’s camps. 

Mandelshtam was a leading poetic voice in Russia from well before the 1917 revolution. He was a consistent advocate for human dignity and humanist values, and found the values of the Bolshevik Revolution to be repugnant. In late 1933, he recited a poem in which he called Stalin a “mountaineer,” whose “cockroach whiskers leer” and to whom “every killing is a treat.” He was arrested in 1934, exiled first to the Urals, then Voronezh. He was arrested again in 1938 and sent to the gulags, dying en route.

Nenazhivin sculpted the monument on his own initiative and with his own funds (interestingly enough, his last name literally means “profit-free”). Yet the monument languished due to opposition from city authorities – Mandelshtam, they argued, was not the only victim who died in the Vladivistok prison. Thanks to the efforts and solicitation of the Russian Pen Club, The Mandelshtam Society and literary scholars of Primorye region, was the monument finally realized. 

Swords are Plowshares

Russia faces one of its worst grain harvests in 30 years (see Facts, below). Yet, the financial crisis precludes the purchase of large amounts of foreign grain. One solution, said Agriculture Minister Viktor Semenov in an interview with Interfax, is barter. The news agency later reported that Russia is seeking a deal with Hungary to swap up to eight MiG-29s for wheat.

Pretty Bad Privacy

The Federal Security Service (FSB), heir to the KGB, is reportedly considering the installation of special equipment that will allow the agency to “control” (doublespeak for “monitor”) internet communications. Vremya MN newspaper reported that the FSB somehow foresees internet service providers installing monitoring devices on their servers as well as paying for them.

Media Woes

The Russian media has been hard-hit by the current financial crisis. Advertising revenue has fallen by over 60% and subscription income was devalued along with the currency. Yet printing and paper costs have increased by 60-70%. Many larger, more popular papers are cutting staff and radically raising subscription costs. But smaller papers don’t have this option, and are cutting print runs or printing fewer issues. As a result, only papers with strong financial support from one of the “oligarchs” or from a major political party are able to keep head above water. This will have serious repurcussions for the already weak independence of Russian media. The Russian Duma was set to take up the issue of state support for the media in October, yet the legislative body is itself in need of support. It is short on the two things basic to its continued functioning: money and paper.

Cold Kalmykia 

Two Kalmyk families which suffered political repression were granted refugee status in the US. The seven Kalmyks said they were threatened after they attended the funeral of their friend, Larisa Yudina, editor of the opposition newspaper, Soviet Kalmykia Today. The two families fled to Moscow in mid-June, where they applied for the status of forced migrants. Yet both the Federal Migration Service and the Moscow Migration Service turned them away. Then the Kalmyks turned to the US Embassy in Moscow. Human rights experts said refugee status was granted so quickly due to support from Russian Duma deputies and human rights activists, in particular Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky, whose party has been a vocal opponent of Kirsan Iyumzhinov’s regime in Kalmykia, especially since Yudina’s murder (which remains unsolved). One of the refugees, Lidiya Dordzhieva, had been forcibly committed to a psychiatric asylum and produced an assessment from the Independent Psychiatric Association condemning the hospitalization. Dordzhieva told the Moscow Times that, as long as Ilyumzhinov remains in power in Kalmykia, “there is nothing but cold death” waiting for them in Kalmykia. Meanwhile, the irrepressible Ilyuzhimov made the front cover of the influential business monthly, Russia Review, illustrating an article on the rising power of Russia’s regions.

Where are they Now?

Wondering where Russia’s former government ministers ended up after the recent shake up? Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov was appointed deputy chairman of the Local Self Government Council by President Yeltsin. But Nemtsov also has said he will run for the Duma in 1999. Sergei Dubinin, former head of the Russian Central Bank, is set to become deputy chairman of Gazprombank. Former Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko is speculated to be eyeing the presidency … of Transneft.  

Skillpolitik

Russia’s new foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, in a recent interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, said that Russian foreign policy faces a new challenge. Without the weight of a dynamic economy behind it, he said, Russia will have to rely more on “the skill of seeking compromises, of considering the interests of different states on different issues, of seeking allies.” Russia cannot dictate outcomes, he noted, but it is still “an important player on the very complex chessboard” of international diplomacy. Meanwhile, Ivanov (who is a graduate of a Suvorov school, see Calendar, page 10) has confirmed that Russia will move around a few of its chess pieces. Russia will soon appoint a new ambassador to the US, Yuri Uzhakov, who is presently deputy foreign minister. A second deputy foreign minister, Nikolai Afanasyevsky, is slated to become the new ambassador to France.

Story Updates

! Three months after the final burial of the last tsar’s family in St. Petersburg {Russian Life, Aug/Sept 1998} an archeological expedition led by the chairman of the Yekaterinburg-based Foundation Obreteniye (Recovery), Alexander Avdonin, claims to have found the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Princess Mariya, which were reputedly burned by the Bolshevik executioners. In addition to some bone fragments, the archeologists found some 150 items of jewelry, buttons and clothing which may have belonged to the children. No testing of the remains or the valuables has yet been conducted, and further archeological work has been hampered by an unusually early snow. 

! On October 3, 53% of Latvian voters approved amendments to the country’s citizenship law, which will reduce restrictions on the local Russian population {Russian Life PostScript, May 1998} and go a long way to healing inter-ethnic strife. The vote has been widely hailed across Europe and Russia. 

! Some religious groups in Russia are feeling the effects of the country’s 1997 law on religion {Russian Life, September 1997} Moscow prosecutors are trying to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses’ activities as unconstitutional. A similar move is afoot against Evangelical Christians in Magadan. In Anapa Krai, two Cossacks disbanded Adventists who were giving away bibles in a public park, confiscating the bibles and allegedly giving the leader 20 lashes with an iron-tipped whip. 

In Perm Oblast, a Pentecostal organization says that it is being pressured to register as a religious “organization,” while the congregation insists that is it only a religious “group.” According to the Keston News Service, Archimandrite Venyamin Trepalyuk said that legal ways have not yet been found to liquidate the “sect,” but that the local prosecutor is pursuing the matter.

! In a move with vast historical precedent {Russian Life, April 1998}, Russia is moving to reimplement a state monopoly on the production of vodka and strong alcohol. President Yeltsin signed a decree on October 6 that will tightly regulate the production and distribution of all alcohol over 28 proof (14% alcohol and higher), thus on all alcohol except wine and beer. Such alcohol will only be produced at companies with at least majority state ownership. The move, which reportedly will have no effect on alcohol imports, is driven by financial and health concerns. Stopping bootleg vodka operations could bring the state nearly $2 bn in additional revenue each year, plus help save some of the 22,000+ lives lost to alcohol poisoning in the last year. Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov has said that gains in revenues to the state from the new monopoly (which will also extend to tobacco) will be used to the benefit of pensioners and poor families.

! Ballet master Rudolf Nureyev {Russian Life, March 1998} has finally been officially  “rehabilitated,” though posthumously. ITAR-TASS news agency reported that the Russian Prosecutor’s office found no evidence to support a 1962 charge of “high treason in the form of non-return to the Fatherland,” filed after Nureyev defected while on tour with the Kirov ballet in France.  Nureyev died of AIDS in 1993.

“If we have mass unrest, Europe will be flooded by millions of refugees from Russia, and NATO won’t be able to help you then.” 

– Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel.

“There is no political crisis in Russia, we just have a certain socio-economic tension.” 

– Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov 

(Moskovsky Komsomolets)

“A demonstration for Russia is just like a carnival for Brazil” 

– Academician Selim Han-Magomedov, on the October 7 demonstration in Moscow (Kommersant daily). 

“If I see that the only [candidates] with a chance of getting elected are those who are not capable of leading the country sensibly and correctly, then I will enter the race.” 

– Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, 

on the 2000 presidential race.

In July, Russia recorded inflation of just 0.3%. In August, inflation was 15%, in September, it was over 45%. The Russian Central Bank estimated that inflation for the year will top 240%, while the population’s real income could fall as much as 24%. Inflation for all of 1997 was just 5.6%.  ! In September, President Boris Yeltsin ordered the reduction of MVD (interior affairs) forces by 20% by the new year. ! In a poll conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia (Moscow) 70% of members said their funds have been frozen in banks and 20% said they suffered losses in investments or other transactions. 26% reported full or partial collapse of their distribution network and 57% reported a decline in demand for their goods and services. Nonetheless, 96% reported they plan to stay in Russia. ! There are currently 794 persons missing in action in Chechnya since the end of the war there. Of these, 490 are military personnel, 199 are MVD troops, 22 are members of other security services and 83 are civilians. An estimated 200 Russian servicemen and civilians from several countries are being held hostage in the republic. ! Applications to Moscow’s employment office are up 30% vs. the same time last year. ! 75% of Russians polled recently said they support the impeachment of President Yeltsin. ! Due to a low harvest this year (37% lower than last year and Russia’s second worst harvest in thirty years), Russia will import at least 2 mn tons of grain and 100,000 tons of meat. Meanwhile, the area which farmers have planted with winter crops is down 5% versus last year, due to shortages of fuel and lubricants for machinery. ! Two years ago, Russia was ranked by Transparency International as having the second highest “perceived corruption” (based on polls of international business people), behind only Nigeria. This year, Russia has slipped to 10^th place. ! During the first eight months of 1998 the total number of violent crimes in Russian military units was 12% above the total for all of 1997. The most violent units are those in the Strategic Missile Troops. ! Capital flight from Russia in September alone was estimated at $2.5 bn, according to Viktor Gerashchenko, Chairman of the Russian Central Bank. ! Only 3% of Russians were in a good mood this fall (down from 5% on year ago). In a poll conducted by the All Russian Center for Public Opinion, 24% of respondents said they are in a normal mood (vs. 39% one year). 48% said they feel tense and irritated (up from 39% last year). 20% said they have feelings of fear and ennui (vs. just 9% one year ago). ! Sources: Noviye Izvestia and Interfax, Sevodnya, American Chamber of Commerce in Russia and BISNIS, Presidential Commission for Prisoners of War, Kommersant Daily, CIS Interstate Statistical Committee and Interfax, Interfax, Kommersant Daily, Trud, Sevodnya, Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion.

Zaripova’s Successor

Fifteen-year-old Muscovite Alina Kabaeva won the major NTV-Plus Grand Prix tournament in Moscow, besting competitors in all rhythmic exercises – Kabaeva received a perfect 10 for her performance with the ribbon. Yet the tournament ended on a bittersweet note, with an official farewell ceremony to Russia’s eminent rhythmic gymnast, Amina Zaripova (pictured at right on the cover of Russian Life, July 1996), who is leaving competitive sports to make a go at journalism. She has already worked as a freelance TV commentator on gymnastics for NTV-Plus channels.

Soccer Success

On September 30, Russia’s favorite soccer team – Spartak from Moscow – beat European champion Real Madrid 2-1 at Luzniki stadium. Coming back from 0:1, Spartak’s Ilya Tsymbalar tied the score with a superb free kick into the top right-hand corner of the goal. Encouraged by a raucous crowd, Spartak stormed Real’s goal time and again. Yegor Titov finally scored the winning goal just eight minutes from the final whistle. The victory took Spartak to the top of its group, Group C, boasting a maximum six points from two games.

Unfortunately Spartak fans were saddened when Spartak later lost 1:0 to Inter (from Italy), despite many impressive saves by goallie Alexander Filimonov. Still, Spartak remains Russia’s only hope in soccer – the club confirmed its high reputation by winning its sixth national championship in late October, defeating Shinnik (Yaroslavl) 3:1.

Meanwhile, in October, Russia’s national team was unable to match Spartak’s heroics. Led by its new coach Anatoly Byshovets, the Russian team came back from 0:2 against World Champion France and tied the score, but failed to score again. Instead, the French team scored a decisive third goal a few minutes before the end of the match, thanks to the technique of superstar Zinedine Zidan, who fooled a lax and nonchalant Russian defense. 

Later in the month, the Russian team lost to underdog Iceland. Sports commentators noted that the Russian national soccer squad has not lost five international matches in a row since 1912.

Game, Set …

The heavily favored Russian team won its Davis Cup qualification match against Japan to qualify for the final grouping. Playing in Tokyo, Russian team leader Yevgeny Kafelnikov and young star Marat Safin beat their Japanese counterparts easily, then teamed up and won in doubles, giving Russia a decisive 3:0 lead. The Japanese saved face by earning one point against Russian junior Kirill Ivanov-Smolensky, to make the score 1:3, but the last match was not played due to rainy weather. The Russian team will meet a much stronger rival – Germany – in their first Davis Cup match within the main draw, next April in Germany.

Pay for Play

Russian hockey sensation Sergei Fyodorov {Russian Life, Dec/Jan 1998} is now the highest paid player in the NHL. After prolonged contract negotiations, Fyodorov struck a deal with the Detroit Red Wings that pays him $14 million this year, surpassing his closest competitor in annual earnings by $5 million.