Russia and the CIS News Digest
Russian Monthly Features LaRouche on Morality in Economics
The September 2004 issue of Russky Predprinimatel (Russian Entrepreneur) leads with a translation of one of Lyndon LaRouche's remarks to a March 2002 seminar, held by Iniziativa Italiana in Milan. Presented under the title, "On the Moral Mission of Economics," this speech was on the creative principle in national economy, specifically the machine-tool principle, in the work of small and medium-sized, innovative manufacturing companies.
In an introduction, Predprinimatel's editors call LaRouche "one of the most extraordinary and brilliant public figures and thinkers of our time." It continues, "In our country, Lyndon has many true friends and co-thinkers in scientific and political circles. He looks with great hope at Russia's moral and constructive role in the worldat the role of our fellow citizens who are enterprising and engaged, realizing their responsibility for the fate of the world entrusted to us by the Creator. Our journal also sees Lyndon LaRouche as a great friend and strategic ally. It seems to us that the speech published here (in abridged form) ... is extremely timely for the Russian business community, which faces the task of developing ethical principles for the conduct of business."
Izvestia Turns to LaRouche for Debate Analysis
The Moscow daily Izvestia, in Oct. 2 coverage of the first U.S. Presidential campaign debate, featured Lyndon LaRouche's assessment. The author's interview with LaRouche came under the subhead, "Bush's Hands Were Trembling." Identifying LaRouche as an economist and former Presidential candidate, Izvestia quoted him as saying, "The discussion of relations with Russia will be postponed, certainly, until after the general election. The same applies to other key questions of foreign policy. Kerry's immediate objective is to reach out for the votes of undecided voters.... Kerry came off a clear victor in the first round of the debates. He took the initiative from the start, replying to each question as precisely as possible. The television audience saw how Bush's hands sometimes trembled, and he was visibly distressed, often unable to begin to speak." (The quotations given, are actually paraphrase.)
Izvestia continued, "LaRouche's opinion that Kerry won the debate, was strongly backed up by the TV audience. According to interactive polls, 89% of CNN's audience was sure that Kerry has won, and CBS gives an even more optimistic figure91%." Thus, Lyndon LaRouche was presented by Izvestia as the real voice of America.
Trail from London to Beslan?
The London Observer of Oct. 3 and Russian media reported a statement by Gen. Maj. Ilya Shabalkin on the arrest of one Kamel Rabat Bouralha on the Russia-Azerbaijan border, on "strong evidence of his involvement in a grave crime"namely the Beslan, North Ossetia hostage-taking and massacre of Sept. 1-3, 2004. Shabalkin is a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officer in Chechnya. Bouralha, initially called an Algerian-born British citizen (later corrected by FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev to an Algerian citizen with British residence permit), is identified as a "key aide" of Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev, the North Caucasus radical who trained in "Afghansi" camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the mid-1990s.
The reports cited Russian investigators, who said Bouralha had come to Chechnya from London in 2001, along with two others involved in the Beslan attack. The Observer report linked them to the Finsbury Park mosque in London. The web site Strana.ru ran the report under the dramatic headline, "British Track Discovered in Beslan Tragedy." In an Oct. 5 TV interview, Patrushev said that at least 10 key foreign operatives, from the milieu known as al-Qaeda, are functioning in the Russian North Caucasus. He mentioned field commanders Khattab and Ab al-Walid (both killed in recent months, Khattab in an internecine struggle) as exemplary, and confirmed the recent detention of Bouralha.
The Sept. 17, 2004 EIR cover story, reprising Lyndon LaRouche's "Storm Over Asia" analysis of 1999, recalled EIR's January 2000 memo to the State Department, "Put Britain on the List of States Sponsoring Terrorism," which cited Russian demands, already then, to shut down the recruitment of Muslims in England to go to Chechnya and fight against Russia.
Are Mysterious Deaths Warnings to Putin?
Two strange deaths, those of Baltic Escort security company head Roman Tsepov and St. Petersburg journalist and imagemaker Yan Travinsky (a consultant to the Rodina Party), were in the focus of St. Petersburg and national Russian media at the end of September. Coverage of Tsepov's funeral made clear the political significance of the businessman's death, while some commentaries suggested that the two assassinations had something in common, though one took place in St. Petersburg, and the other in the East Siberian region of Irkutsk.
Tsepov died in the hospital Sept. 24, of acute poisoning. His business interests included bodyguard services, gasoline retail, the chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and telecommunications industries, as well as mass media. He was also known for his intelligence ties, including to investigators of the St. Petersburg criminal scene. His funeral was attended by top political, business, and security figures, including Victor Zolotov, head of the Presidential Security Service, Northwest Policy Authority head Andrei Novikov, and other law enforcement leaders.
Some press noted that Tsepov had been close to the team of Vladimir Putin, which later rose with Putin to top positions in Moscow. In July, Tsepov was mentioned in the media as a possible negotiator between the Kremlin and the management of Yukos Oil. Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that the businessman was going to play a significant role in "supervising governors" in the newly changed Russian political system. Moreover, that report said, he was seriously expected to be appointed deputy director of the new "super-intelligence body," which Putin may establish.
The murder of Travinsky and his colleague Marina Murakhovskaya took place in Irkutsk, where they were working on a Rodina electoral campaign. Smena newspaper quoted Rodina leader Dmitri Rogozin, who said that Travinsky was also researching organized crime.
Surkov Presents 'Wartime' Russian Power Reorganization
A rare interview by Deputy Chief of the Russian Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov, appearing in Komsomolskaya Pravda of Sept. 29, set out the motives for Russia's latest government reform in brutal terms, and provoked hysterical responses from liberal commentators. Surkov is a key behind-the-scenes operator and power broker for the Kremlin under President Putin.
Summarizing the situation in Russia after the Beslan school hostage-taking and massacre, Surkov said in stark language: "All of us have to realize that the enemy is at the gate." Therefore, he argued, the Kremlin had to move ahead with "adapting the machinery of state to cope with the extraordinary conditions of an undeclared war." With the appointment, rather than election, of regional governors, Surkov said, "The competition between the center and the regions for the evasion of responsibility for political errors, will cease." He also asserted that a "fifth column" of "left-wing and right-wing radicals," was operating in Russia.
Asked why Russia is under attack, Surkovlike Putin in his Sept. 4 address to the nationpointed the finger at strategists in the West: "You know, the people making decisions in America, Europe, and the East can be divided into two basic groups with different opinions of our country. The people in the first group believe that our democracy has a future.... The second group, it seems to me, consists of people still suffering from 'Cold War' phobias, regarding our country as a potential adversary, and preventing a total financial blockade of the terrorists and their political isolation. They take credit for the almost bloodless collapse of the Soviet Union and are trying to build on this success. Their goal is the destruction of Russia and the establishment of numerous ineffectual quasi-states in its vast expanses."
Surkov said that the North Caucasus was a stomping ground for that global faction, which took advantage of corruption and a bad socioeconomic policy in the region. "There is nothing new about their methods, however," he added. "The detonation of our southern borders for the purpose of weakening Russia as a whole was already practised repeatedly in the 19th and 20th Centuries. We should bear this in mind." He repeated that the electoral reform was meant to achieve "unity of government," as "an essential condition for national unity" in the face of "interventionists," whose objective "is the destruction of the Russian state."
'National Security Concept' To Be Revised
Former Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, now secretary of the Russian Security Council, said Sept. 29 that the country's official National Security Concept will be rewritten, since the current one dates from 2000. The "new reality," to be addressed in the forthcoming document, includes "international terrorism," he said. On Oct. 1, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also took up current security needs. Announcing that the Russian military will take delivery of four new land-based ICBMs next year, Ivanov said, "We will purchase as many as is necessary to maintain genuine nuclear parity."
Russian Scientists Denounce Privatization Scheme
Scientists will protest throughout Russia on Oct. 20, against a Ministry of Education and Science plan to cut the number of state-funded science institutions from several thousand, to between 100 and 200, by 2008. Under the so-called National Concept of Participation in Managing State Scientific and Research Organizations, the rest are supposed to sink or swim in the commercial market, as state spending for science is cut in half. The St. Petersburg Times reported Oct. 5 that programs like the Medical Industry Development Plan and the Development of Methods of Protection of Population From Dangerous Pathogens, will be suspended indefinitely.
Zhores Alfyorov, Nobel Laureate in physics and member of the State Duma, said at a late-September press conference, "If the government accepts the plan, it means Russian science will soon be dead and buried." According to the Times, this month, the St. Petersburg Scientific Center, which groups 60 institutions from the country's second-biggest city, will present a counter-proposal for developing Russian science.
Students Protest Commercialization of Education
Some 4,000 university students rallied outside Russian government headquarters on Friday, Oct. 1, according to a report in Moscow News Oct 6-12. They protested the institution of fees for higher education, as well as implementation of already adopted cuts in student benefits (through conversion to small cash payments; like pensioners, students have lost their rights to free holidays, medical care, and transportation). Among their slogans were, "Youth is Russia's future"; "No to paid education, yes to social guarantees." Oleg Denisov, head of the Russian Association of Student Unions, told Interfax that the announced cuts are seen as just a step towards a situation where all higher education is for-fee only, putting it out of the reach of most Russians.
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