[Contents list of this issue of Johnson's Russia List
has been retained, as an example of what the List
offers. AJ ]
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Johnson's Russia List
#8250
11 June 2004
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A CDI Project
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[Contents:
   1. Moskovskii Komsomolets: Yulia Kalinina, A PALE COPY.
The impending reforms are worse than unfair - they're simply stupid.
   2. Moscow Times: Boris Kagarlitsky, Cracking Down on the Web.
   3. St. Petersburg Times: Vladimir Kovalev, Broken Promises Prompt
Public Anger.
   4. Financial Times (UK): Quentin Peel, Mistrust returns to disfigure
Putin's Russia.
   5. Rodnaya Gazeta: Alexander KRIVTSOV, THE FINAL DIAGNOSIS.
(re government and business)
   6. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Alexander Khramchikhin, CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT
IN THE MILITARY IS PURELY DECORATIVE. While it is restricted to the
search for dirt on generals.
   7. Voice of America: Stephanie Ho, Rights Group Says Situation in
Russia 'Worsening'
   8. Gideon Lichfield: Kafka in Moscow.
   9. The Economist (UK): Gazprom. Taming the monster.
Reforming Russia's gas behemoth.
   10. The Times (UK): Carl Mortished, Ruin of Yukos would restrict
flow of crude.
   11. RosBusinessConsulting: Government able to bankrupt YUKOS.
   12. The Hollywood Reporter: Nick Holdsworth, Curators fret for film
museum.
   13. Moskovsky Komsomolets: Alexander Budberg, PARTY DICTATORSHIP.
   14. Context (Moscow Times): William Flemming, Poker Face.
Two new books dig beneath the surface of Vladimir Putin the dictator --
or is it Vladimir Putin the democrat? (re Putin: Russia's Choice by
Richard Sakwa and Putin's Progress by Peter Truscott)
   15. RIA Novosti: IMPOSSIBLE TO DISCUSS MANY ISSUES WITHOUT
RUSSIA, SAYS PUTIN.
   16. Reuters: Putin takes Bush's side against Democrats on Iraq.
   17. BBC Monitoring: US ambassador gives interview to Russian Ekho
Moskvy radio.
   18. Los Angeles Times: Tom Lantos, Mr. Putin, for Democracy's Sake,
Tear Down This Wall of Censorship.
   19. CNSNews.com: Sergei Blagov, Russian Politicians Divided Over
Reagan.
   20. The Guardian (UK): Jonathan Steele, He lied and cheated in the
name of anti-communism. From Iraq, Reagan didn't look so freedom-loving.
   21. Seattle Post-Intelligencer: John Iwasaki, Former Soviets say Reagan
made new life possible.
   22. Washington Post: Robert Kaiser, Gorbachev: 'We All Lost Cold War.']

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#1
Moskovskii Komsomolets
June 11, 2004
A PALE COPY
The impending reforms are worse than unfair - they're simply stupid
Author: Yulia Kalinina
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
[If we accept that a primary requirement for Russia's development
is copying the West's structure for the social sphere, then the
regime is doing everything right. But there's another question: is
it really necessary to copy it so exactly?]

      For the past four years the regime has been busy clearing
away the rubble of perestroika. Now it is starting to set "truly
long-term goals" atop the cleared-away rubble - to borrow the
phrase used by President Putin in his annual address to
parliament. And that's true enough.
      The nature of the rubble-clearing is easy to understand. The
results are plain to see:
      - the oligarchs have been intimidated and scattered;
      - independent television broadcasting has been put through
the meat-grinder;
      - the war in Chechnya has been squeezed out of media
coverage;
      - political opposition has been smashed to pieces;
      - regional leaders have been turned into proteges of industry
groups;
      - Duma members have been turned into disciplined clones;
      - the Federation Council has become a dumping-ground for
unwanted friends;
      - the Cabinet has become a pasture for wanted friends.
      And to ensure that all these actions are correctly understood
and approved by the citizenry, the media are closely monitored by
the presidential administration.
      Now that the presidential election has been successfully
completed, conclusively confirming that the people approve of how
the rubble has been cleared, an entirely new stage is beginning:
the stage of addressing national tasks.
      As yet, we haven't understood exactly what is beginning - but
we can already hear an ominous rumble, heralding significantly
worse living standards and restricted opportunities for improving
them by political means.
      Can you hear the distant thunder? Soon they'll abolish
concessions and privileges for all recipients. They will reform
housing and utilities - with all the consequences this entails.
They will privatize health care, turning all reasonably effective
medical treatment into private enterprise. They will cut back
higher education opportunities; and those who do manage to get a
college degree will be forced to work in their designated field
for a specific period of time after graduation - in low-paying
jobs, of course.
      As a result, we'll be forced to spend much more on transport,
medicines, education, housing, and health care - with less and
less money left over for food, clothing, and recreation.
      But that's not all. To all appearances, even more surprises
of some sort lie in store for us - and they'll make the abolition
of privileges seem mild by comparison. For the sake of those
surprises, the Duma is hastily passing amendments to the law on
referendums which will make it impossible for anyone to organize a
referendum without the backing of the authorities. Just in case:
after all, what if some group of communists should seek to rally
citizens in protest against addressing national tasks? Well, now
they will face a barrier of unachievable referendum conditions,
thus closing the last remaining small window through which the
people could shout "No!" at the authorities.
      Because you shouldn't quibble over petty details, comrades.
Sit still and keep quiet; the regime knows what it's doing.
      And this is what the regime is doing: eliminating the
remnants of the socialist order in the social sphere and switching
it over to the capitalist track.
      So that everything in our state will be organized
economically, with no excesses - like in the developed nations of
Europe. Over there, for example, citizens pay the full cost of
gas, water, heating, and telephone services - not just a small
part of the cost, as we do.
      And no one over there gets any concessions or privileges,
since this is so uneconomical. After all, not all those in Russia
who are entitled to concessions take full advantage of them; so it
turns out that some of the state funding allocated for all those
entitled to concessions is wasted. This is unacceptable to any
prudent manager.
      And health care over there is structured much more
economically than it is here, without any of the extravagance and
generosity which the state of developed socialism could permit
itself to practise - a state where natural resources were used for
the benefit of all, not just five hundred people as is the case
today.
      So if we accept that a primary requirement for Russia's
development is copying the West's structure for the social sphere,
then the regime is doing everything right. But there's another
question: is it really necessary to copy it so exactly?
      After all, the health care system in Western nations, for
example, is far from ideal. They are constantly working to perfect
it - and they are taking the experience of the Soviet system into
account, since it was by no means the world's worst system, and in
many respects it was more advanced than the economical Western
versions.
      Besides, there are a great many things that work in the West
but won't work in Russia. For instance, it doesn't make sense to
convert the Russian emergency medical aid system to focus on
ambulance services - because the poor condition of Russia's roads,
the distances involved, and the traffic jams mean that any
ambulance trip is bound to take hours. For some patients this
won't make a difference, but there are many conditions and
injuries which require immediate medical aid in order to save
lives.
      City streets in the West have a special lane for ambulances,
not used by other vehicles. Everything happens fast there -
because the roads are different, the distances are different, and
attitudes to people are different. And it would be stupid of us to
just blindly copy their medical emergency system.
      In fact, we shouldn't copy anything blindly. Our country's
distinctive features are too striking and too substantial for
that. What is happening in Russia now has never happened anywhere
else before. No other country has made a transition to capitalism
after seventy years of communist lethargy, so there is no
historical experience for us to draw upon. We have to think up
everything from scratch, develop everything ourselves, and be
flexible in adapting general approaches to our broken, twisted
realities.
      How can elderly people in Russia be compared with those in
capitalist nations?
      True, pensioners in the West don't get privileges and
concessions; but they do get decent pensions. And during their
working lives their wages were sufficient for them to buy homes,
acquire property, invest in shares and securities. But our elderly
people survived the war and devastation; they spent their whole
lives working hard for the great Motherland, not saving anything -
or even if they did save some money, it all disappeared during the
currency reforms and defaults, and they haven't managed to acquire
any part of the communal property into which they sank the labor
of their lives.
      Yet now they're being placed on the same footing as
pensioners in the West: since the elderly don't get concessions
over there, neither will the elderly in Russia.
      This is unfair. It's sacrilegious. Worst of all, it's simply
stupid. Social sphere reforms as dumb as the current privatization
of health care and abolition of concessions could only be
"developed" by irresponsible, incompetent people: freeloaders who
don't give a damn what becomes of the nation in the future, solely
concerned about their own well-being - figuring that since they're
in power, they should squeeze out every possible benefit for
themselves and then disappear.
      Reforms have to happen. But this should be done
intelligently, carefully, with some foresight - not in the sloppy
way it's being done now. The aggressive incompetence of the
authorities: that's the really big problem facing the nation as a
whole. It needs to be solved, urgently and radically.
      And another question: why is it necessary to start
economizing in the social sphere, rather than elsewhere?
      Why not start with state spending, kickbacks and
appropriations, non-targeted expenditures, embezzlement and
fraudulent tenders - all of which result in huge sums leaking from
state coffers into various pockets. After all, if order is
restored in those areas, at least a third of the state's annual
budget spending could be saved. Maybe even half.
      But no - that can't be done. Who appropriates state funds?
Who gets the kickbacks? "Our own people." Everyone is connected;
no one can be touched. Don't interfere with the system, God forbid
- you might be murdered for that. It's much better to economize on
spending meant for the citizenry. The people are meek; they'll
tolerate anything, especially if television broadcasts keep
showing them mountains of gold.
      Actually, from the state's point of view it doesn't matter
where reforms start, as long as these beginnings lead to the long-
term goal. But if the goal is indeed what the president has stated
- "a mature democracy, a developed civil society, and a
significant rise in prosperity" - then we can say at once that the
current reforms won't bring us one iota closer to that goal.
Abolishing concessions and privileges for our senior citizens
won't make us resemble a civilized state any more closely, since
the "economical" structure of the social sphere in a civilized
state is backed up by a strong economy, financial transparency,
and common human decency. But we don't have a trace of
transparency or decency; and instead of a strong economy all we
have is fraud, decorative elements, exaggeration and deception.
      These reforms to the social sphere will become yet another
decorative element. On the outside, everything will resemble a
civilized state - but it will be rotten on the inside.
      It's interesting how clearing away rubble has led to exactly
the same result.
      That's fate, apparently.
      Translated by Gregory Malyutin

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