Volume 10 Numbers 2/3

Spring/Summer 2001

Constitutional Watch
     A country-by-country update on constitutional politics in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR

Russia - As Russia emerged from its coldest winter in many years, President Vladimir Putin marked the end of his first year in office with a reorganization of personnel in key power ministries. But the news in the spring was dominated by the decisive battle over the media holdings of Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-Most Group, particularly the independent national television network NTV.

In April, Spanish courts denied the Russian government's request to extradite Gusinsky to Russia to face charges of corruption and financial mismanagement. Sidestepping the question of whether Gusinsky's prosecution was a matter of political persecution, as Gusinsky claimed, the Spanish court found that the crimes of which Gusinsky was accused were not punishable under Spanish law and rejected the extradition application. US State Department officials were less delicate in rejecting Russian requests for Gusinsky's extradition, declaring, on May 4, that the US considered the charges against him to be politically motivated.

Gusinsky's release from legal jeopardy triggered a decisive phase in the battle for his media holdings in Russia. Since July 2000, Gusinsky had been resisting attempts by Gazprom, the state-controlled natural-gas monopoly, to foreclose on loans it had made to Media- Most or guaranteed on its behalf. The struggle for control over NTV, the last remaining independent national broadcast network, reached a climax at 4 A.M. on April 14. American-born businessman Boris Jordan, selected by Gazprom to run NTV, took over its offices accompanied by armed security guards and police. Although Media-Most challenged the Gazprom-Media takeover in a number of courts, a ruling by a Moscow court on May 4 in favor of Gazprom-Media suggests that a radical change of course is unlikely. Attempts by NTV executives to involve a substantial western investor, such as Ted Turner or Rupert Murdoch, also appear to have been scuttled by Jordan's assumption of control. Indeed, Turner's potential involvement in the NTV affair led the pro-Kremlin political party, Edinstvo (Unity), to sponsor a bill in the Duma limiting any foreign holdings in media companies to 50 percent. The bill was adopted easily in its first reading.

NTV journalists and others working at the station attempted to block the Gazprom takeover with a protest that included suspending normal programming in favor of continuous coverage of the crisis and placing the word "protest" across the NTV logo permanently displayed on the screen. However, as the moment of decision came, the journalists split, with some taking the side of the incoming Gazprom managers and others following ousted General Director Yevgeny Kiselev to cable channel TV6, owned by another exiled oligarch, Boris Berezovsky.

Russia's political class also divided on the NTV question. NTV had formerly been an essential part of the alliance between the financial-industrial oligarchs and Boris Yeltsin's extended political "family" that had anchored his second term in office. NTV's expansion as a national network was reportedly built on loans funneled from Gazprom as a reward to Gusinsky for loyalty to the Yeltsin regime. Furthermore, NTV's financial vulnerability was a direct result of its mounting operating losses under Gusinsky, who may have seen himself as too powerful to be called to account for the loans he had received. On the other hand, NTV was associated in recent years with criticism of the Kremlin, particularly over the war in Chechnya and the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine. In the Duma elections of December 1999, the station was vocal in its support of the Fatherland-All Russia alliance headed by former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. The Unity Party, which supported Putin, dominated the remaining national television networks, which are now all under state control. Gusinsky and NTV thus face the consequences of being on the losing side of the scramble to succeed Yeltsin.

Advocates of free speech both inside and outside Russia took a firm stand on the NTV issue. On April 11, international media watchdog group Reporters Sans Frontières said the "Russian state's seizure of control of NTV television comes after months of continuous degradation of freedom of press across the entire territory of the Russian Federation," and that "with doubts cast over the freedom and pluralism of the media, one of the most fundamental guarantees of the future of Russian democracy is now very directly threatened." The group said that the situation with respect to coverage of the war in Chechnya is especially troubling because "accreditations for Chechnya are effectively impossible to obtain." Within Russia, Yabloko party leader Grigorii Yavlinsky was particularly vocal, condemning Gazprom's takeover as part of the construction of a dictatorship. Yabloko was influential in organizing a series of demonstrations over consecutive weekends in Moscow's Pushkin Square in defense of NTV, including the largest on March 31, with an estimated 10,000 participants. Yavlinsky also undertook a draft resolution supporting NTV's staff in their fight against Gazprom in the Duma. Although 226 votes Russia were needed to place the resolution on the Duma's legislative agenda, only 108 deputies supported the resolution with other deputies stating that the question was one of purely commercial import. This was the line repeatedly taken by the Kremlin, which denied that there was any threat to freedom of speech. Putin asserted that the matter should be dealt with in the courts, with the central question being Media-Most's outstanding debt to Gazprom.

As far as Gusinsky's other media holdings are concerned, the loss-making newspaper Segodnya was closed by Gazprom on April 16, while all the editorial staff at Itogi, including editor Sergei Parkhomenko, were fired as part of what Gazprom described as staff cuts. Newsweek magazine responded by terminating its jointventure agreement with Itogi. Gazprom Media also moved to consolidate its control over the final independent outlet in the Media-Most holdings, talk radio station Ekho Moskvy, which was 28 percent staffowned. Much of the station's staff walked out on July 5, after a Moscow court scuttled the staff 's bid to obtain a controlling stake.

While the NTV affair has drawn international attention, the progressive erosion of the independence of regional and local media across Russia has been less noticed. In March, for instance, the opposition newspaper Russki Obozrevatel in Bashkortostan, which had already been forced to look outside the republic for a publisher, lost 80 percent of its distributors and virtually disappeared from newsstands. The paper has been critical of Bashkortostan president Murtuza Rakhimov. Meanwhile in Omsk, the last independent television news agency, Novosti Konkretno (NK), was closed in March, following the collapse of its relationship with the television channel Agava. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, NK information programs were considered among the best in Siberia.

Another sign of Putin's increasingly firm grip on power in Moscow was a major cabinet reshuffle announced on March 28. After a year of few changes in the government's composition (according to Segodnya, Putin had promised Yeltsin no personnel shifts for one year), Putin's changes moved him closer to establishing his own power base independent of Yeltsin's "family." The most important elements of the reshuffle involved the placement of close Putin allies in the major power ministries. The most significant of these changes saw Sergei Ivanov move from his position as Security Council secretary to replace Igor Sergeev as minister of defense. A longtime Putin friend and associate from his days in the KGB, Ivanov has been charged by the president with carrying out military reform. In this, Ivanov will be assisted by the new deputy defense minister, Lyubov Kudelkina, the first woman to occupy such a high defense post in Russia. Sergeev had long been seen as a lame duck, following a public dispute with the chief of military staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, over the future of the Strategic Rocket Forces. Although a number of senior generals were moved around, Kvashnin retained his post, and he appears to have won his battle with Sergeev to have the Strategic Rocket Forces folded back into the main structure of the army. Boris Gryzlov, also a Putin associate from Saint Petersburg, and leader of the Unity faction in the Duma, was appointed interior minister, replacing Vladimir Rushailo, a holdover from the Yeltsin era. A third change, the appointment of Ivanov's deputy at the Security Council, Mikhail Fradkov, as the new head of the Federal Tax Police, reflects the growing political importance of this agency among the constellation of official paramilitary forces operating in the Russian Federation.

Officially, the reshuffle was termed a "civilianization" of the power ministries. Ivanov, Russian media reported, was the first civilian to be appointed minister of defense. This is not strictly true, however, since the Brezhnev-era defense minister, Dmitri Ustinov, had a civilian background in the defense industry before taking up the post. Moreover, Ivanov's claim to civilian status is weak since he was a two-star KGB general until last year when he resigned his commission to play a more prominent public role in politics. One Kremlin strategist, Gleb Pavlovsky, also argued that the reshuffle represented the Europeanization of Russian politics, moving from a situation in which ministers were branch specialists to one in which they are generalist politicians on the European model.

Also notably absent from Putin's annual address was reference to the controversial proposed law on political parties, designed to streamline the party system and restrict the number of political parties competing on the Russian scene. (See Russia Update, EECR, Vol. 10, No. 1, Winter 2001.) The Kremlin-backed law was passed by the Duma on June 21, and it cleared the Federation Council eight days later. The bill requires an organization to have over 10,000 members in order to qualify for political party status. Branches must exist in over half of the federation's constituent entities, with a minimum of 100 members in each branch. The bill also provides state funds for parties that receive over 3 percent of the vote and limits private contributions to 3000 rubles (approximately $100) per individual per year.

Other dramatic moves were made in the direction of party consolidation earlier in the spring. On April 11, it was announced that the main pro-Kremlin faction in the Duma, Unity, would merge with its principal "centrist" opponent, Fatherland-All Russia (FAR). During the Duma elections of 1999, Unity and FAR represented two different factions of the "party of power" that fought viciously for the mantle of leading Russia out of the Yeltsin era. With that battle now decided conclusively in Unity's favor, the merger reflects the return of FAR leaders Luzhkov and Primakov to the Kremlin camp. Moreover, following the announcement of the merger of the two political parties (which is to be completed at a conference in November), it was also announced that a "coalition of four" was being set up in the Duma to coordinate the Unity and FAR factions with two other Duma factions representing candidates elected in the single-member constituencies, Russia's Regions and Peoples' Deputy.

The merger created considerable uncertainty among Duma deputies. Boris Nemtsov, leader of the Putin-allied Union of Right Forces, declared on ORT television that "God himself is now prompting us to set up a powerful right-wing party to make sure that the country does not slide back." He went on to describe the merger as "a good signal to all democratic forces in the country to unite." Other observers took a more measured view. Primakov himself appeared reserved, stressing the continued separateness of the two factions in the Duma and characterizing the FAR faction as being committed to left-centrism. Primakov was apparently not directly involved in the merger negotiations and was thought by many to be lukewarm, at best, to the idea. Still others saw the merger as redolent of Soviet-style political unity forged through the discipline of a single party encompassing all officeholders and monopolizing access to power.

In the Duma, the Communist Party, previously the largest faction, is likely to see itself increasingly isolated following the creation of the "coalition of four." The party's weakness was demonstrated, once more, in a vote of no confidence in the government that it proposed on March 14. Failing to attract significant support from other parties, or even from all of its own deputies, the government's opponents were only able to amass 127 votes in favor of the motion, 99 votes short of the required number. Following the failure of the motion, Unity began to revisit the deal it had made with the Communists at the beginning of the current Duma term whereby committee chairmanships were divided between them. This deal, which gave the Communists eight committee chairs; Unity, seven; People's Deputy, five; and one each for the Liberal Democrats, the Agro-Industrial group, the Union of Right Forces, FAR, and Russia's Regions, seemed ripe for a challenge. Some schemes floated in the wake of the FAR-Unity merger called for reducing the total number of committees from 28 to as few as 12.

Away from Moscow, the battle continued to bring the regions and, in particular, the republics into line, at least formally, with the federal power structure. In his speech to the Federal Assembly, on April 3, Putin paid considerable attention to regional issues, outlining four tasks as a priority for 2001: defining more precisely the specific jurisdictions of federal and regional lawmakers, laying out new procedures for the operation of federal organs in the regions, bringing order to the different levels of budgeting, and paying increased attention to regions receiving high levels of federal subsidy. Meanwhile, the Office of the Procurator General was pursuing a tough line regarding the 23 regions the Justice Department listed, on April 10, as having laws in conflict with the federal Constitution. In particular, Procurator General Vladimir Ustinov reportedly asked President Putin to issue warnings to the governments of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Ingushetia. Such official warnings would represent the first step in dissolving regional legislatures under a new law passed last summer. In Sakha, deputies in the legislative assembly continued to block amendments proposed by Sakha president Mikhail Nikolaev that would bring the republic's Constitution into line with the Kremlin's interpretation of the federal Constitution. (See Russia Update, EECR, Vol. 10, No. 1, Winter 2001.) Sakha legislators also rejected a proposal by Nikolaev that the president of the republic be allowed to run for three consecutive terms rather than the present two.

In Chechnya, the Russian authorities continued to have difficulties implementing their plans to pacify the situation and reduce the military component of operations there. On May 5, the pro-Moscow Chechen administration moved back to the second city of Gudermes, just ten days after a much-anticipated move to Grozny. Security concerns were cited for the embarrassing reversal. Moreover, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was reported by Interfax, on May 4, as saying that no further Russian servicemen would be withdrawn from Chechnya for now. Only 5,000 troops have been withdrawn despite President Putin's January announcement that responsibility for operations was being shifted from the military to the Federal Security Services. (See Russia Update, EECR, Vol. 10, No. 1, Winter 2001.) On April 2, Human Rights Watch and six other groups, labeling Russian investigations a "charade," called for the international community to investigate mass graves in Chechnya. The EU, for its part, presented a resolution to the UN Human Rights Forum in Geneva, on April 12, strongly condemning Russia's continued use of "disproportionate and indiscriminate force" in Chechnya. The condemnation was part of a five-page text citing reports of executions, torture, and arbitrary detention, and criticizing Russian investigations of such allegations. The resolution, however, stopped short of calling for the international inquiry demanded by independent human-rights groups.

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