By John Helmer in Moscow
The soft-spoken general is wearing civilian clothes — a trim double-breasted suit, with a paisley tie discreetly knotted at
a pressed white collar.
It is not the uniform of the old nomenklatura, nor of the new entrepreneur.
The silver flecks in his thick hair convey photogenic authority. The high cheek-bones, grey-green eyes and chiselled jaw signal for the television audience an unmistakable Slav.
(more…)
By John Helmer in Moscow
The Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Kozyrev, will visit six Arab states of the Persian Gulf next month, in a move to obtain
economic support in return for Russia’s political re-alignment in the Middle East.
Mr Kozyrev will substitute for Mr Pyotr Aven, the Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, whose visit to the region had been planned earlier to return the Moscow visit in February of the Kuwait Minister of Finance, Mr Nasser Al-Roudan.
Russian strategy in the Middle East is undergoing rapid change, forced in part by Moscow’s re-orientation towards the West, including Israel, and in part by the practical difficulty of sustaining the cost of military alliances with Syria, Libya, and until its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, with Iraq.
(more…)
Analysis
By John Helmer in Moscow
In the final hours of the Congress of Peoples Deputies last week, President Yeltsin signed a letter urging Congress to grant him
unusual new powers to override parliamentary votes.
Attached to the letter was the President’s legislative proposal, a draft law entitled “On the Government of the Russian Federation”.
The document was so hastily drafted, noone in the Kremlin caught a large typographical mistake or careless language in some clauses that make poor sense.
(more…)
By John Helmer in Moscow
A month ago, the Russian Market Research Company released results of an unusual nationwide survey of householders, suggesting Russians are better off than they admit, and spend much more money than their official income. This has bolstered government claims that the economy has begun to turn around, and that prosperity — real already for some — is just around the corner for most.
The central piece of evidence is what the panel of almost 4,000 people, from 2,000 households, admitted about their income and spending. Two groups of the population were identified as wealthy. One, well-educated, middle-aged professionals, amounted to 4% of the sample. The second group, much younger and more entrepreneurial, were almost 6%. Together, they claim to be
earning at least $400 a month in salary, not to mention business-paid perks, like cars, dachas and foreign travel.
(more…)
By John Helmer in Moscow
The Peter Pan of Russian reform, Boris Nemtsov, went to battle this week with Captain Hook at the Railways Ministry. Reality won. Nemtsov proved petulance is not political magic.
The railways are as natural a monopoly as Captain Hook was a blackguard. They are also, as the new Railways Minister, Nikolai Aksenenko, told Nemtsov “more easily manageable.”
Nemtsov didn’t quibble with that. In a speech to more than 70 railway bosses from across Russia, the novice at the prime ministry lectured on the need for the rail monopoly to protect the government by managing itself better. What Nemtsov meant by that, he said, was “two tasks. The first is to decrease freight tariffs. The second is to pay salaries and taxes.”
(more…)
By John Helmer in Moscow
The Vice President of Russia, Mr Alexander Rutskoi, has defended the proposed constitution drawn up by the Constitutional Commission, and dismissed criticism that his differences with President Boris Yeltsin amount to a call for replacing the present government.
Mr Rutskoi, who was elected with Mr Yeltsin in Russia’s first presidential election last June, is also the leader of the largest
of the political parties, the Peoples Party of Free Russia (PPFR).
The Vice President set out his political principles and tactics in an interview ahead of the Congress of Peoples Deputies, the Russian super-parliament. The Congress meets next Monday to consider a new constitution and to vote on several moves to replace Mr Yeltsin’s cabinet.
(more…)
By John Helmer in Moscow
A new Russian trade strategy, announced this week in Tokyo, gives priority to the growth economies of Asia and the Pacific.
The Tokyo presentation by First Deputy Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, Dr Sergei Glazyev, follows the visit to Beijing earlier this month of the Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, Mr Pyotr Aven. Dr Glazyev’s trip to Tokyo preceded by a few days the arrival of the Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Kozyrev, who has already this week called on Beijing and Seoul.
The flurry of Russian activity in East Asia is the first product of the debate inside the Russian policy establishment over whether
to tilt the “new thinking” in the direction of Russia’s traditional enemies and large creditors in the West; or whether to target the “tiger economies” of Asia as the medium-term alternative to frozen relations with Japan.
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Russian food is to Russians as gypsy music is to gypsies — no-one wonders how it is done or whether it is authentic, so long as you can dance to it. This is one of the commo¬nest mistakes made by visitors to Moscow. In the evenings they look for restaurants with good Russian food. When they are greeted by a nyet at every door, they complain angrily. What they don’t realise is that the good Russian food was eaten at lunch. At dinner Russians prefer to drink and dance.
In time, Western fashion will reach Moscow. Dinner will become a precious and delicate exercise of no more muscle than the epiglottis and jaw. For this sort of work-out there is already the Savoy, just a stone’s throw from the KGB’s Lubyanka head¬quarters. If you have a vivid Cold War imagination, you might like to dress in black tie and tails, slick your hair back in the Sam Neill style, and pretend you are Reilly, Ace of Spies, taking a little Kamchatka crab and Georgian cognac, before crossing the square to match wits with Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, forerunner of the KGB.
If your espionage fantasy runs more to Alec Guinness and the mundane rather than the romantic, the National on Revolu¬tion Square is a better choice. This is where the hero of John Le Carrd’s Russia House stayed, though I am not sure that the Fred Schepisi film of the novel, recently shot here, has been faithful to the location. The windows give a fine view of everyone enter¬ing the hotel from the street, and the tablecloths are so freshly starched and white, they would show the slightest speck of blood. During the Second World War the US Ambassador and his fam¬ily were housed here; the dining has not been as good since. (more…)
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