According to a fresh Moscow anecdote, President Boris Yeltsin comes out of the banya feeling energetic. Over the protests of his driver, he insists on taking the wheel of his limousine.

But he drives too fast, and unable to stop in time for a red light, he crashes into another limousine. That one is occupied by gangsters. They tell their driver to get out, and go check who is driver the other car. “If we are kruche (tough guys),” they say, “we’ll collect a lot of money for the damage. If they are kruche, we’ll drive away.”

The gangsters’ driver goes over to the car, takes one look, runs back, and hits the accelerator. “Hey, what happened?” his pals ask. “I don’t know who was in the back,” he replies. “But Yeltsin is their driver.” (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, June 11th, 1999
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Not long ago, at a luncheon meeting of foreign businessmen in Moscow, the question was asked: Does anyone believe his business would be better off if Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov was sacked?

The answer was unanimous. Primakov was viewed as the most stable, and also the most honest, candidate for leadership of Russia today.

Now that he has been dismissed by President Boris Yeltsin, most western businessmen believe the instability that will follow, and the lack of commitment to rooting out corruption, are going to be bad for their business. (more…)

by John Helmer - Wednesday, May 12th, 1999
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It’s just as well Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov will appear for his meetings in Washington next week clean-shaven.

A recent history of the human face came to the conclusion that, at least in the earliest systems of human government, men with beards did well, because it was thought they could negotiate better, conceal their real feelings, and get away with telling more believable lies.

But since 1991 there have been few beards on the faces of Russian officials. The goatee that former Central Bank chairman, Sergei Dubinin, used to display never improved the credibility of his claims. The moustache on the face of Finance Minister Mikhail Zadornov hasn’t made him more believable either. It’s a fitting symbol of the half-truths he’s in the habit of uttering. (more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, March 18th, 1999
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Suppose, just suppose, that the real reason for running $50 billion in Russia’s Central Bank cash reserves through the accounts of a shelf company registered in the Channel Islands, was not to hide the money from foreigners intent on seizing state assets, but rather to hide from Russians trying to steal them.

And suppose, just suppose, that those Russians were high officials of the state.

How awkward indeed it would be for Victor Gerashchenko, current and former chairman of the Central Bank, to write a letter to Michel Camdessus, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to explain what he’d been doing in the Channel Islands. (more…)

by John Helmer - Saturday, February 20th, 1999
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Until the thunder strikes, the Russian saying goes, the peasant won’t cross himself.

Neither cross nor double-cross is what the Russian government claims it did when the Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan, most recently flew from Athens to Russia, then back to Athens, and then towards Minsk, only to be turned back.

According to the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service Vladimir Putin, the question of admitting Ocalan to Russia, or refusing him, was never directly considered by the President nor the Prime Minister of Russia. They, Putin seemed to be saying, have no responsibility for what has happened to Ocalan. (more…)

by John Helmer - Saturday, February 20th, 1999
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What leads fine performers of Bach cello sonatas, Rachmaninov piano concertos, and Chekhov plays and stories to imagine they can enter Russian politics as nimbly as they move their fingers over their instruments and scores?

One answer Rostropovich the cellist, Petrov the pianist, and Mikhalkov the film-maker have given is that they have the right, and also the duty, to their country and to their countrymen, to speak the truth to power. In the revolutionary times we’ve been living through, and in a democracy, it’s not just artists who have this right. Everyone does, there are fewer Who feel and implement this duty, but artists are hardly exceptional.

Just so, when Russian artists speak to power as they do, using their reputation as their platform, they are not necessarily better equipped than anyone else to know the truth of which they speak. Rostropovich probably didn’t mean to demonstrate how little equipped he was, when, not long ago, he pronounced President Yeltsin to be in vigorous good-health. (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, February 19th, 1999
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For years now, officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), of Russia’s Finance Ministry, and of the Central Bank of Russia have been conducting a discreet conversation among themselves they intended no-one else to hear — at least not in Russia.

Mikhail Zadornov — who complained this was unprincipled and undemocratic when he was a member of parliament — defended the practice, once he joined the conversation. “It’s really not worth being discussed publicly,”Zadornov claimed last week, speaking to the Duma as Minister of Finance. That was a little echo of Victor Gerashchenko, the Central Bank chairman, who made his remark, also to the Duma, the week before.

The topic of the conversation that has embarrased the officials by being disclosed to Russia’s chief taw enforcement officer, its chief auditor, and its parliament, is what the Central Bank has been doing with its reserves. (more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 16th, 1999
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As the well-known Engish screenwriter, Dennis Potter, was in his last days, dying of pancreatic cancer, he agreed to an interview on television.

There he said: “I call my cancer Rupert. I would shoot the bugger if I could.”

Potter was speaking of Rupert Murdoch, the media proprietor. Five years after Potter’s death, in a meeting in Moscow between Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Boris Berezovsky, Primakov took some of Potter’s advice.

In Moscow, Murdoch has his foot stuck in one of the most malodorous of influence-peddling scandals. The outcome of that is likely to be new parliamentary legislation banning foreign shareholding in Russia’s state-owned television networks; and maybe new limits On the airing of American-made films and television entertainment, like those produced by Murdoch’s Twentieth Century Fox division. (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, February 12th, 1999
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By answering questions the way he’s been doing, the Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia, Viktor Gerashchenko, has unfortunately aroused people to ask whether he’s a good man, or bad.

A good man is good inside, they say in Russian villages — a good horse is good outside.

No one investigating the Central Bank at the moment is able to find out, and no auditor or prosecutor need care, whether Gerashchenko is good on the inside. What concerns us all is whether he’s good on the outside — whether, like the village horse, he is carrying the burdens that are his duty, or not.

In the case of the Central Bank, the legislation that governs its operations was enacted in such a way as to make the Bank accountable on many matters to itself alone. Gerashchenko told a television interviewer last week that he and his bank report to the Duma. He didn’t elaborate on all the topics, records, transactions, and accounts which are not reported to the Duma, or withheld from the Accounting Chamber, according to the interpretation of the law which the Bank holds. (more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 9th, 1999
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What kind of bird is russa’s prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, or is he a fox?

Aesop once tried to explain the difference with the fable of a jackdaw, who was sitting on the branch of a fig-tree. Hungry though he was, the bird could see the fruit was still green. So he decided to wait.

A fox came along, and seeing the jackdaw sitting and waiting, he asked him why. When the jackdaw explained he was waiting for the figs to ripen, the fox replied he was mistaken. “You’re just living off hope. Hope feeds the illusions, not the stomach.”

There are many people in Russian politics, who, believing Primakov is the best alternative among the current flock of candidates to rule Russia, say they are waiting for the figs to ripen. It’s their view that Primakov is obliged to do the same. (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, February 5th, 1999
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