Newsgroups: biz.americast.samples
From: usa-post@AmeriCast.Com
Organization: American Cybercasting
Subject: Sample Moscow News art.212 Sat, Aug 22 1992
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 92 22:04:19 EDT

This is an actual portion of the electronic edition of the Moscow News as
distributed by American Cybercasting.  For more information, send e-mail
to usa@AmeriCast.com or write to POB 575, Aurora, OH 44202.

    
    
    =================================================================
    =========== M O S C O W   N E W S   F A X   D I G E S T =========
    =================================================================
    ========================= 18 august 1992 ========================
    === Moscow News Weekly | 16/2 Tverskaya St.| Moscow,RUSSIA ======
    ========= Tel.(7095)229-68-73; 209-05-25| Fax 200-02-67| ========
    =========== Electronic mail:root @ mosnew-news.msk.su ===========
    ================== mosnews @ sovamsu.sovusa.com =================
    ================ Editor in Chief,Len Karpinsky ==================
    ============= Editor, MN Fax Digest:Vladimir Brodetsky ==========
    =================================================================
    
    
           Contents:
    
                                    Leaders
    1. Vice-President refuses to bear responsibility for the
       government   (4 pages)
                                    MN exclusive
    2. Gorbachev's last vacations  (2.5 pages)
                                    Investigation
    3. Radioactive slick in St. Petersburg  (2.5 pages)
                                    Privatization
    4. State turns its factories into corporate property (1.5 pages)
                                    Real estate market
    5. Foreigners can now buy real estate in St. Petersburg
                                    (0.5 page)
    
    
    
                     Alexander Rutskoi
    
    Vice-President refuses to bear responsibility for the
    government..."
    Tatyana Yakhlakova of 'Moscow News' talks to Alexander Rutskoi,
    Vice-President of Russia.
    
    Boris Yeltsin made an accurate choice: the candidate for the
    vice-presidency added to the presidential candidate quite a
    number of votes from the army, unorthodox communists and an
    anxious society in general. They won, and the first political
    "duet" at the summit of Russian authority braved the test of
    August 1991.
    Then a "cooling-off period" set in. Rutskoi's views, which he
    never bothered to hide, obviously cut against the grain with
    many. Society still willingly heeded the reformers' promises, but
    the "dissident" Vice-President was already given to understand:
    isn't it time to resign? The whole winter Rutskoi was a target
    coming under the heaviest fire. Incidentally, he himself elected
    to go through thick and thin, yet he parried strikes in a worthy
    manner, to his credit.
    MN: Don't you feel lonely on the state "Olympus"?
    A.R.: I am an ordinary, normal person and very sensitive to acute
    situations. But I have many friends who do not forget me. And I
    am not bitter. I have not been in conflict, either with the
    President or the government -- I only criticized and still
    criticize them for the methods they use.
    MN: Have your relations with the President been normalized?
    A.R.: We have normal working relations. Of late, I would even
    say, friendly relations.MN: Do you still believe there is a need
    to impose an emergency
    economic situation?
    A.R.: Yes, and immediately. Commodity circulation has dropped by
    40 per cent, production by 30, the national income by 18,
    agricultural output by 27 per cent. Isn't that an emergency
    situation? It will now take us eight years to reach the 1990
    level.
    MN: An emergency will call for a rigid system of execution.
    Recently I attended a conference you called to discuss the
    harvesting campaign. Excuse me, but somehow it did not inspire me
    with hope that the ministries and government departments would
    work any better in an emergency.
    A.R.: Nor could it have inspired you. Did you hear what the
    acting Minister of Fuel and the Power Industry said? That two
    million tons of his fuel had been pilfered, and that for this
    reason he asked to purchase it abroad. And the situation with
    salt? They say production has fallen by 50 per cent in the past
    half year. Everybody writes letters to each other, but no salt.
    Or take the resolutions of the government and Supreme Soviet on
    agriculture. One instruction runs counter to another...
    MN: But, after all, you are the chief "commander"
     on agriculture...
    A.R.: There is the Ministry of Agriculture which is responsible
    for it. What I am responsible for is the reform. A package of
    documents on a land bank -- this is my job.
    MN: And yet you are the second dignitary in the state. And you
    complain about "bad" ministers, as if you can't do anything with
    them.
    A.R.: Take a look at the Constitution: the Vice-President is an
    orderly. He carries out orders from the President, that's all. In
    this sense, I hope, Boris Nikolayevich has no claims to make in
    my respect: 25 years in the army have taught me that an order
    must be carried out, and the President's instruction is an order
    for me.
    MN: Does it mean you are not free in decision-making?
    A.R.: Don't confuse different things. I take decisions on my own,
    even when I carry out the President's instructions. He sets the
    task and I pass a decision on how to fulfil it. Military people
    have an excellent formula, which civilians dislike for some
    reason. There are five conditions which must be met to secure
    progress in tackling any job. The first is sizing up the mission:
    you must understand how it should be carried out. The second is
    that you must estimate your capabilities. Then comes taking a
    decision. And, lastly, the system of execution and control over
    execution. If our ministries and government departments learned
    how to follow these conditions the reform would proceed with
    clockwork precision. There is a need to think first, then act. If
    a pilot acts conversely he will simply crash. So much the same
    for any other job. If in agriculture the losses annually come to
    45-52 per cent of the crop, what must be the first leg of reform?
    Evidently, not disbanding collective farms, but eliminating
    losses: normal storage, processing and delivery to the consumer.
    Had we succeeded in reducing losses by 30 per cent the sown areas
    would have been reduced by the same 30 per cent. And this means
    cutting down fuel, energy, technical and manpower resources, and
    releasing money for the development of the infrastructure and the
    social sphere.
    But what do we have now? As many as 130 food industry enterprises
    have been frozen, another 169 operate in a "stop-go" situation.
    Upwards of 2,500 are in need of modernization. What kind of
    reform can there be?MN: When you, a military person, were
    committed to agriculture,
    many appraised this as "exile". It looks, however, that you have
    found your own interest in this occupation, haven't you?
    A.R.: I like to work, do you understand? If you go in for reform
    you must find your bearings and priorities with regard to the
    concept, and size up your capabilities. I took a pencil and
    compiled a list of all the agrarian reforms in Russia beginning
    with the abolition of serfdom and tried to understand where their
    mechanisms didn't work and why. And I must tell you the
    following. We have scrapped the State Planning Committee and the
    State Committee for Material and Technical Supplies -- the
    planning and distributive bodies. But such agencies exist in any
    market-geared state.
    MN: But we have been distributing for 70 years now -- nothing
     has come of it.
    A.R.: That's because 20  wholesale depots used to stand between
    the producer and consumer. And at each depot there was a person
    with a family, each family had friends... The system worked on
    bribes. And what I suggest is a direct producer-consumer
    connection.
    MN: This was also tried out. But depots used to spring up by
    themselves between them.
    A.R.: They won't if normal processing has been organized for
    every 5-6 farms. But what good is it if we spawn 152,000 private
    peasant farms? Let us calculate: to organize profitable
    production every private farmer must have at least 20-30 million
    roubles in present-day prices. We multiply this by 152,000 and
    get 4.5 trillion. Where will the government get these trillions?
    A mere two per cent of private peasant farms, i.e., 3,000 are
    more or less normally provided with machinery. The remaining
    149,000 are playing the fool -- they are forced to because they
    have nothing to contend with. But then these farms' land is no
    longer suited for the arable on which crops used to grow.
    MN: You give no credit to the existing government, even for
    breaching the wall of the old economic system, do you?
    A.R.: There was no need to breach anything. It was necessary to
    lay down priorities -- the experiment was being staged on people.
    For example, have you personally begun to live any better?
    MN: I would say that I live better than last December, when the
    shops were absolutely empty.
    A.R.: It is cynicism to say that something has appeared in the
    shops when the overwhelming majority of the population cannot
    afford to buy this "something". It was impossible to start the
    reform with liberalizing prices when 99.9 per cent of all
    property belonged to the state. Now everyone has come to his
    senses, but remember the things that were said to vilify me: I
    wasn't an economist, I was misguided... But look what strange
    things happen. Deputies return from their electors: hurray, the
    people support the reforms. I go -- the people only abstain from
    using invectives when speaking about these reforms. But no matter
    who may go -- Yeltsin, Khasbulatov or Rutskoi -- people see them
    as the government. As Vice-President I want to bear no
    responsibility for this government.
    MN: By your status you are the President's "right hand". But
    today there is serious opposition -- the Civic Union bloc. As far
    as I know it will propose a newly composed cabinet of ministers
    at the autumn session. Apparently if the President refuses to
    accept their replacement he may have to resign. How far are you
    prepared to go in these demands?
    A.R.: The Civic Union was set up to formulate the general
    ideology of reforms. As far as resignations or overthrows
    areconcerned, these questions have not been examined and are not
    being examined by the Union.
    MN: But will a new composition of the government be offered?
    A.R.: I shall put it this way: the present government was unable
    to foresee the situation. Otherwise how could it happen that we
    do not have enough "cash" to pay pensions and wages or that we
    have had to send 60 per cent of state-owned enterprises on leave?
     Those who now calculate the real reform programmes are prepared
    to replace those who are unable to do this. But we have no plans
    to set up a "shadow" cabinet and we won't send the President into
    retirement. After all, can a Vice-President afford such actions?
    MN: That is why your opposition has attracted so much attention.
    A.R.: Look, I am 44. I will gladly work two terms with Boris
    Nikolayevich. By that time I shall be 53. For a politician this
    is still a young age. Then I will perhaps consider whether or not
    I should offer my candidature for the presidency. As far as the
    government is concerned I am prepared to work with it, but on
    condition that it starts to take account of the effects of its
    actions.
    MN: Let us return to the Civic Union. The impression is that you
    did not find political support at once. Very great expectations
    were pinned on you by, shall we say, more patriotic forces.
    A.R.: I don't know what forces you are talking about, but I read
    the newspaper Den and see how they count on me.
    MN: But don't you think that the ideology of Den may prove
    stronger than that of the Civic Union, so that the "true
    patriots" will be able to come to power on your account?
    A.R.: In the periods of reforms Russia was always faced with an
    option: either to follow the reformers, i.e., centrists, or the
    radicals -- the extreme left or the extreme right. I hope very
    much that this time people will follow the centrists; we already
    know where other roads lead. But liberal reforms need a strong
    government.
    MN: We have been scaring each other with putsches, creeping coups
    and dictatorships... Can you predict the turn developments will
    take?
    A.R.: Volsky and I have long been described as new "State
    Emergency Committee" members. But I'll tell you this. The
    strategy of reforms is definitely correct. Yet in the sense of
    sequence our government has been doing everything vice versa,
    thereby reinforcing extreme left-  and extreme right-wing forces.
    Both of them see only one way to solve problems -- in toppling
    the regime. Society's politicization is becoming inflammable. And
    God forbid it turning into tragedy.
    
      MN File
    Alexander Vladimirovich Rutskoi was born in 1947 in Kursk.
    Graduated from the Barnaul Higher Military School for Pilots, the
    Yu. A. Gagarin Air Force Academy and the Military Academy of the
    General Staff. Has been with the army since 1965 and holds the
    rank of Major-General. Took part in combat operations in
    Afghanistan. In 1990 was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet
    Union. Was elected a people's deputy of the RSFSR and became
    chairman of the Communists for Democracy group of deputies which
    served as the basis for forming the Democratic Party of the
    Communists of Russia, later renamed the People's Party of Free
    Russia. Since June 1991 -- Vice-President of the Russian
    Federation. In February 1992 President Yeltsin authorized him to
    take care of agrarian reform in Russia. Rutskoi is married, with
    two children. His hobbies -- drawing and sculpture.
    
    
                                        MN exclusive
    Gorbachev's last vacations
    By Yan Kasimov
    
    The author served for five years as Mikhail Gorbachev's
    bodyguard.
    Below we offer fragments of his book which is being prepared for
    publication. Its author's name and surname have been altered at
    his own request.
    
    There was a striking change in the Gorbachev who came to Foros in
    1991: he had turned grey, grown pinched, and no longer ventured
    to go to the mountains. In short: he had grown old. M.S.
    (Gorbachev -- Ed.) had not a single day for relaxation, and not a
    single evening of real escape from politics.
    On Sunday, August 18, M.S. and R.M. (Raisa Gorbacheva -- Ed.)
    were taking a rest after lunch. And I, conversely, took up the
    watch at the main post at 4 p.m. No visitors were expected.
    All the greater was my surprise when four Volgas drove up to the
    guest house at 16:30. To immediately clarify the situation, I
    picked up the internal telephone -- it was silent. I tried using
    the urban communication network -- it was disconnected. The
    intercom connecting me to the duty officer produced no result
    either. What remained was the walkie-talkie. Using it, I told the
    duty officer: "My telephones don't work." "Wait, I have no time
    for you. Everything I've got is also silent." "And special
    communication?" "I am telling you: absolutely everything."
    Suddenly Medvedev (chief of Gorbachev's guards) darted out of the
    "general's" cottage at bullet speed: "Yan, be more attentive",
    and galloped to the mansion, an envelope in his hand. Five
    minutes later he returned, frowning and silent.
    And then at last I saw the faces of the uninvited guests.
    Baklanov with an agent, Shenin, Boldin, Varennikov and Plekhanov
    (chief of the 9th Department of the KGB) walked out of Medvedev's
    room. They marched past me without saying hello (which is in
    general considered rude) and not speaking to one another. They
    formed a line and stood. "Now," I thought, "it seems to be more
    or less clear: they've come to announce that someone has died.
    Maybe it's M.S.'s mother?"
    Thus, in silence, with long faces, still in line, they moved
    towards the dacha. Hardly had five minutes passed when Plekhanov
    came out of the mansion: "And Mikhail Sergeyevich, did he leave
    the house?" "No," I replied, "he did not." He repeated the
    question. Evidently he had looked in the study, but found no one.
    A quarter of an hour passed, and again: "Are you sure he has not
    gone anywhere?" On the surface Plekhanov was so well-bred, with
    noble grey hair ... but one of his eyes squints. This became all
    too visible now.
    I immediately asked the man on duty at the radio station: "Has
    someone died?" The reply came like a bolt from the blue: "I don't
    know anything, but it looks like a coup." In the meantime loud
    invective was heard from the house. Half an hour later the
    "guests" left the dacha in the same dead silence and entered the
    "general's cottage".
    Medvedev and Plekhanov were the first to leave. Medvedev had
     been requested to leave Gorbachev and go to Moscow. On the way
    Plekhanov scribbled a pertinent order. On a moment's notice my
    chief packed up his suitcase, came up to me: "It's all right,
    Yan, think kindly of me", and entered a black Volga.Generalov
    (deputy chief of the 9th Department of the KGB)
    undertook to explain the situation. He was not too verbose: "I
    take over command over the bodyguards. The situation in Moscow is
    unfavourable now. Preparations are underway for the signing of
    the Union Treaty, but there are plans to torpedo it. Therefore
    Gorbachev has decided not to go to Moscow, though previously he
    was going to. Because of this he is excited and upset.
    M.S. appeared only at 11 p.m. He was accompanied by Chernyaev
    (president's aide -- Ed.). For two hours they circled round the
    territory  in animated chatter. R.M., Anatoly (son-in-law -- Ed.)
    and Irina (Gorbachev's daughter -- Ed.) went out after them. They
    tried to wedge into the conversation, but Gorbachev simply didn't
    react to them.
    On the 19th, after breakfast, Generalov gathered us into the
    cinema. Only this time he was specific: "Due to his illness
    Gorbachev has signed a document on his resignation. Therefore you
    may guard him, but you are no longer the president's bodyguards."
    Now there was clarity. And there was a choice: either we stick
    with Gorbachev as if nothing has happened or we obey Generalov.
    No one had ever given us any instructions for such situations:
    the likelihood of a coup was ruled out as such. Therefore we had
    to decide for ourselves.
    We chose the first variant, and distributed personal weapons and
    ammunition. All in all we had only six submachine guns. But we
    had been trained for the eventuality of any unforeseen situation
    and trained well at that. Therefore we knew that we were not just
    strong because of the submachine guns. We decided: stay in full
    combat readiness and take up perimeter defensive positions around
    the mansion. If an attack had been launched against the Gorbachev
    family -- they would be defended till the last cartridge.
    In the meantime the gates of the dacha were closed. Those who had
    arrived with Generalov entered into silent, deaf confrontation
    with us. They took  control over the gates, refused to let in
    the van with foodstuffs, sealed the garages, and thoroughly
    occupied the helicopter landing ground with fire engines.
    As a matter of fact, there were not very many of them.
    Theoretically we could, of course, break through on our own and
    liberate Gorbachev from this blockade. Yet break through where?
    To the Belbek airport? We rehearsed this variant. But we had no
    information whatsoever. We did not know whether the semblance of
    a "weak blockade" had not been created on purpose to provoke us
    into a breakthrough operation and as an excuse to try to kill
    Gorbachev. And most importantly: M.S. himself issued no orders
    although he knew that we were on his side.
    On the 20th M.S. appeared on the beach for the first time.
    Together with him were Anatoly, Irina and his granddaughters.
    They went into water, but M.S. just stood on shore. R.M. did not
    leave the house: the terrible fright of the first day had
    developed into a disease.
                   x          x          x
    ...The upshot came quickly
     and unexpectedly. By the evening of
    the 21st we received information that we must be ready to receive
    visitors. it was already dark when I saw excited Rutskoi run into
    the territory of the dacha. He was clearly surprised to see no
    resistance being put up and understood that it would evidently be
    possible to do without shooting.
    At first M.S. refused to yield to Rutskoi's insistence that he
    return to Moscow that night. This could hardly be explained by
    any reason other than the monstrous nervousness among the family
    members. Ksyusha looked scared. Nastenka (Gorbachev's
    granddaughters) in general did not stop crying. R.M. was also
    crying.
    At the airport Rutskoi suddenly led everyone not to the
    presidential plane but to a TU-134 aircraft which was barely
    noticeable in the most distant corner. Takeoff was delayed for a
    long time. It turned out that Gorbachev had sent for Yazov and
    Kryuchkov. Both came. Kryuchkov took a seat in the same
    compartment with M.S. I was not far away. At last M.S. felt that
    tension was easing. Now he could allow himself to relax a bit and
    had a very substantial drink
    
    
                                       Investigation
    Radioactive slick in St. Petersburg
    
    Not long ago Alexander Yablokov, Russia's state counsellor on
    ecology and public health, told journalists that the scale of the
    republic's radioactive contamination was not precisely known.
    Nuclear departments stubbornly keep mum in response to all
    queries about the situation on the shoal of the Kara Sea where
    the reactor for the nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin was dropped.
    What is the contamination degree of the territories where nuclear
    blasts for so-called peaceful purposes were carried out? There
    were over 120 of them (in the Volga River basin -- more than 20,
    in Yakutia -- 12). There is but scattered information on
    radioactive dirt left behind from the production of nuclear
    weapons in closed cities:  Chelyabinsk-6, Arzamas-16,
    Krasnoyarsk-45 and Tomsk-7. But the most unexpected thing is that
    St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, has likewise been
    contaminated with this dirt.
    The next portion comes from Georgi Bronzov, a former naval
    officer, specialist on radiation safety.
    Right after the war, in a situation of the strictest secrecy,
    mass destruction weapons started being developed in Leningrad on
    the basis of highly radioactive aerosols. Spent uranium fuel was
    extracted from reactors and dissolved, and this solution was
    meant for the destruction of people. This work was done also by
    specialists from Leningrad's Military Unit 70170 under one of the
    Defence Ministry departments. Its curator was Lavrenty Beria,
    since all accounts passed through his outfit.
    People worked day and night, subjected to overexposure. And after
    tests and experiments, radioactive waste was dumped without any
    clean-up into ordinary pits or resorption collectors. This is how
    a powerful slick of radioactive dirt originated on the shore of
    the Shkiperskaya Channel on Vasilyevsky Island.
    It is only after the Chernobyl disaster that scientists, forming
    a radiation monitoring commission as a public body run by
    voluntary effort, rushed to measure the level of contamination in
    the city. And they found that the whole city had been covered
    with radiation dust which had no relation whatsoever to the
    Chernobyl accident. After several years of examination, 1,400
    sources were found. And quite often, on detecting yet another
    track, it was found out that it was leading either to a military
    unit located in the vicinity or to a classified factory, both
    facilities being carefully guarded.
    A small territory on the shore of the Shkiperskaya Channel was
    guarded with equal strictness. For example, to get there a
    physician of the radiation hygiene department of the city
    sanitary epidemiological station had to wait for permission from
    Moscow for a whole year. On the other hand, the institutes
    working for the military-industrial complex carried out the
    inspection of "Shkiperka" one after another. They tried to find
    out which volumes of its bottom and to what depth were
    contaminated with radionuclides. On several occasions, Georgi
    Bronzov had to deal with samples of such soils. Radioactive seams
    lay along the shore of the channel like ore bodies, stretched
    out towards the structural low. The question was approximately of
    tens of thousands of cubic metres of so highly radioactive ground
    that it was practically impossible to recycle it. All the
    findings of the inspections were immediately classified and
    passed over to the Command of the Leningrad Naval Base.
    In this sector beta-radiation was as high as 50,000 particles a
    minute per sq cm. It is soaked with "dirt" to the depth of six
    metres radioactivity is being "slurred" over all neighbourhoods?
    But temporization will have such an effect that once during a
    flood, water will flush here from the gulf and it's only 300
    metres away -- and turn radioactive infection into such a slick
    that it will require tens of millions of roubles to clean up.
    Five metres from this horrible site stands a two-storeyed house,
    on the second floor of which live the Rashitov family -- husband,
    wife and two children. And how can they be kept back from
    climbing through a hole in the fence to a vacant lot, playing
    there and chewing some grass -- they say it's sour? For several
    years now, their mother has been trying to find out why her
    children fall ill so often, isn't it from radiation? But the
    doctors say in reply -- have you got any proof?
    There is no proof.
    Some 3 km from the Privetninskoye settlement, on the shore of the
    Gulf of Finland, there is a plot of land overgrown with trees and
    shrubs and fenced off with barbed wire. This plot is guarded by a
    small military unit subordinated to the department on which
    Georgi Bronzov once served. He heard that some secret operations
    had been carried out there in the past. The unit had a small
    subunit which was supposed to carry out radiation control over
    the base's territory, yet there was every indication that it
    didn't do that. High naval chiefs loved to come here to the bath-
    house with a sauna.
    But once boards from that military unit, where a joiner's shop
    was set up, were brought in. So Bronzov decided to check the
    wood, just in case. Instead of the natural background radiation
    of 15 beta-disintegrations a minute per sq cm the wood emitted
    500. By the rules of radiation safety the boards belonged to the
    category of hard radioactive waste.
    It is then that Bronzov came to understand that if the wood
    brought from the base was so radioactive, it meant that
    radioactivity in its soil had to be several dozen times higher.
    And at his own peril, he decided to examine the territory of the
    mysterious base. The very first measurement was staggering. A
    pile of willow branches were applied to a beta-radiometer, which
    responded with a reading of more than 10,000 beta-
    disintegrations. The willow had been sucking strontium from the
    soil. The ashes from such willow trees had to be buried in
    sarcophagi.
    Brickworks and little heaps of stones are scattered all over the
    technical territory of the base. There are also numerous numbered
    little posts. If you dig earth under such a post, you register
    enhanced gamma-background. You measure a rowan tree growing
    nearby -- you get 5,000-6,000 beta-disintegrations. Two concrete
    sarcophagi with the buried equipment of the nuclear-powered
    icebreaker Lenin have been found, and their cracks gave a reading
    of 1,500 microroentgen an hour. In one place, Bronzov found an
    underground concrete installation, but it was impossible to find
    out what had been hidden in it. He found wells and pits which
    once used to be a special sewage system. In one of the points,
    there was one more sarcophagus, but the quantity and radionuclide
    composition of burials in it remained unknown for Bronzov.
    With all these findings Bronzov came to his commander and tried
    to talk to him as a specialist, an officer and as a man. The
    reply was no. Bronzov was simply waved off like an annoying fly.
    He was knocking for a long time against this wall until he was
    finally kicked out of the navy. He didn't remain without work and
    serves in a specialized civilian firm in Pripyat. He happens to
    be in St. Petersburg occasionally, trying each time to find out
    from the bosses at all levels -- what are you waiting for, why
    are you keeping mum, will radionuclides evaporate somewhere from
    your silence?
    And the question is not only about the contaminated "Shkiperka"
    and Privetninskoye settlement. Lake Ladoga is under suspicion.
    Its islands are also known as the sites of nuclear testing. How
    many islands have been contaminated, how many have been cleaned
    up?
                                 Viktor Tereshkin
    
    
    
                                       Privatization
    State turns its factories into corporate property
    
    The amended and extended version of the Law of the Russian
    Federation on Privatization of Enterprises gives sweeping powers
    to property-management committees and makes their privatization
    decisions mandatory (and revocable only via court ruling) for all
    bodies concerned.
    Applications for privatization of state property are to be
    submitted to local branches of the Russian Federation State
    Property Committee (property-management committees).
    If the enterprise and the committee deem it worthwhile to involve
    foreign investors in a particular privatization project, it is to
    be noted in the related documents, because actual conditions of
    foreign participation in privatized fuel-and-power complex
    enterprises (as well as enterprises mining and treating ores of
    precious metals, radioactive and rare-earth elements, and
    precious and semiprecious stones) are determined during
    development of actual decisions on privatization. This is the
    only restriction. Local committees are authorized to make
    decisions concerning privatization of small factories.
    Lists are being made of enterprises earmarked for privatization
    before the end of 1992 and slated to be turned into corporate
    property after that. This category will embrace all railways (to
    be made corporate property on special conditions and after 1993)
    with related huge amounts of property, including railway cars,
    still not shared among the CIS members. The railways cross all
    the CIS republics and therefore need unification of economic
    conditions of their operation, as well as perfect coordination
    between regions.
    Privatization of the fuel-and-energy complex starts in 1992, also
    under special conditions, since the general procedure of
    privatization envisaged by the Russian President's Decree 721 is
    applicable only to enterprises selling their products on a free
    market. But under regulated prices reserved for the FEC
    production, entire classes of factories could go bankrupt upon
    being turned into corporate property. This will trigger a chain
    reaction, to the detriment of the nation's supply of power and
    fuels. Therefore, even large but unprofitable enterprises of the
    FEC will not be made corporate property but will be sold through
    auctions.
    Apparently, no enterprises even indirectly involved in the
    production of military weapons will be privatized before the year
    is out.
    As soon as the privatization decision is made the ministry turns
    over control over the enterprise on to the local property-
    management committee -- which will prevent misappropriation of
    the enterprise's property by means of creation of a closed
    corporation or a joint venture. Therefore, no body other than the
    property-management committee (not even central or local state
    authorities) have the power to institute new enterprises. The
    property-management committees come to control enterprises
    instituted by Soviets of People's Deputies, Mayor's offices,
    andother administrative bodies, as well as the administration's
    shares in the said enterprises.
    Among other positive effects privatization of the national
    economy will create conditions for competition. The Russian
    Federation State Property Committee is categorically against the
    creation of branch monopolies as well as vertically integrated
    holdings, or giant transnational corporations primarily using
    Russia's backward technologies. There's no real privatization of
    such structures, in order to prevent their managers from having
    boundless power, which could be worse than the former situation.
    (Exception however can be made for branches where continuation of
    the unified system is technologically necessary, viz.: power
    engineering, pipeline transportation systems, etc. One
    corporation or holding for all of Russia is acceptable here.) In
    line with this design, large enterprises will be splintered into
    bunches of smaller ones.
    Integral parts of production (or research-and-production)
    associations with their own legal status as a corporate body can
    change into a corporation of shareholders of their own accord,
    but only with the collective agreement of the staff.
                                    Olga Bereshnaya,
                                     MN Business
    
    
    
                                   Real estate market
    Foreigners can now buy real estate in St. Petersburg
    
    In former days the property was sold at auctions in St.
    Petersburg with the right to rent it for 15 years. Sometimes it
    was possible to buy a building if it was on the budget of the
    enterprise. It was banned to sell built-in facilities. But now a
    resolution of the small council "On Privatization of Buildings
    Other Than Dwellings in St. Petersburg" provides the owners of a
    privatized enterprise with the right to buy back the rented
    building. The only exception are the projects not subject to
    privatization, such as cultural and architectural monuments,
    churches and so on.
    Although property with the right of renting premises will again
    be put on auction in the next few months, a buyer is now
    guaranteed that in future he will be able to buy the building and
    the land.
    The small council in St. Petersburg also granted foreigners
    permission to participate in auctions selling partly privatized
    enterprises. Formerly this required  special permission from the
    Russian State Property Committee. In addition, Western
    entrepreneurs will be able to participate in investment
    competitions for the repair and reconstruction of housing and
    premises other than dwellings, as well as for the right to start
    building work, even in the city centre. The winner is granted the
    right to own the restored or repaired building.
    The property fund is planning to sell 110 premises in August and
    some 150 in September.
                                      Tatiana Pauk,
                                      Alexander Fishkov
                                        'MN' Business
    
    
    

This article is copyright 1992 The Moscow News. Redistribution to
other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American 
Cybercasting Corporation.  For more information, send-email to 
usa@AmeriCast.COM

This article is copyright 1992 The Moscow News. Redistribution to
other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American 
Cybercasting Corporation.  For more information, send-email to 
usa@AmeriCast.COM