But there are some ominous signs. The unprecedented violence used by the Moscow government's forces of repression against the mainly conservative demonstrators on February 23 (many were beaten and a retired Lieutenant-General died of a heart attack after a verbal scuffle with the police) is being widely seen, in left and liberal circles, as part of a plan aimed eventually at dissolving the soviets and sharply reinforcing executive
On February 12, the usually wellinformed Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that a decree on the introduction of martial law for eight months had already
According to the Russian Minister of Security, Viktor Barannikov: "The only real force that can defend the reform in Russia is the armed forces and our apparatus... The people are sick of perestroiguarantee the success of the reform". As for the Russian parliament: "These are good-for-nothings. They should be dis-
Barannikov has certainly grasped the logic of the situation. But it is far from certain that he will get his way soon. The main reason for this is not any lingering attachment on the part of the liberal reformers to democratic values or concern with world opinion. The only world opinion that counts is that of world capital and the IMF is not overly obsessed with democracy and human rights.
The problem is that, whatever Barannikov might claim, there is no confidence in ruling circles that the forces of repression presently at the disposal of the Russian government are indeed capable of maintaining order in the face of active popular opposition to the reform. This does not augur well for the "revolution from above". * 19. NG, February 27, 1992. 22 20. Soveskaya Rossiya, January 22, 1992; NG, JanuI ary 10, 1992.
A
situation
of chaos
EVERYBODY knows January in Russia was a bad month. But just how bad? The figures are now coming in.
According to the Russian
State Committee on Statistics, retail trade turnover during January, measured in physical terms, fell by a staggering 63%. In a survey conducted in St.
Petersburg, only 15% of respondents reported that they were eating as well as last year. Fifty-nine percent said that their diet had deteriorated markedly.
### RENFREY CLARKE*
FFICIAL calculations put the rise in average retail prices during January at 350%. However, this figure includes the farmers' markets and private "cooperative" stores, where prices were already astronomical and where few Russians could afford to shop. According to a widely quoted estimate, the rise during January of a typical "market basket" was
Even on official figures, wholesale prices quintupled on average during January. In specific cases, the rises were much greater; the wholesale tyres for example, rose 23 times.
The overall volume of industrial output fell during the month by 15%. This decline seems certain to accelerate, since the government's "shock therapy" is expected to have its main impact on factories during February and March.
Production of tractors fell during January by 49%, with alarming implications for agriculture. Oil output declined by 14%. The volume of milk that was processed for sale fell by 46%.
Still, Russians had been warned: shock therapy was a "painful but necessary" corrective. The freeing of prices to find their own levels was supposed to end the shortages and help bring about economic stabilization — a prerequisite for renewed growth and eventual prosperity.
It is true that since price liberalization, the shelves of Russian shops have gradu-
If shoppers are patient and resourceful, they can now buy goods such as refrigerators, washing machines and TV sets for 15 to 17 times last year's price. In general, however, the hope that low-prices scarcity would be replaced by high-priced abundance have not been borne out.
Consumer industry fared badly during with output of various product lines falling by as much as 20%. Countless small, necessary items, from tap washers to lightbulbs, remain impossible Boris Yeltsin continues to assure the public that an improvement in the economic situation will be evident "before the end
However, the January figures lend weight to mounting suggestions that the economy will not even "bottom out" during 1992 and that real stabilization will be years off. Price liberalization has set off a powerful inflationary dynamic, which the Russian government shows no sign of being able to rein in by limiting growth in
Tax income plummets
The state taxation service reported recently that, in nominal terms, tax revenues in January were up by 4.1 times on the January 1991 figure. However, inflation during the twelve months to the end of January was in the region of 2000%. In real terms, the government's tax income
This is confirmed by a report that revenue during January from the new 28% Value Added Tax (VAT), on which the government had pinned most of its hopes of curbing the state deficit, was only 25% of the expected figure.
These facts, which have received little publicity in the liberal-dominated media, point to a situation of chaos in state finances. Self-financing state firms and their privatized counterparts appear to be evading taxes on a gargantuan scale.
While inflation impoverishes the bulk of the population, the state budget deficit remains out of control, pumping fresh purchasing power into the hands of a favoured minority and creating still more inflation.
At a certain point, millions of Russians who have accepted the government's strategies as the price of future prosperity will realize that their sacrifices have been in vain - that in the new capitalist Russia, the impoverishment of the masses is meant to be permanent. When that realization dawns, it will take more than Yeltsin's charisma to save him. * * Renfrey Clarke is the Moscow correspondent of the Australian socialist newspaper Green Left.
The new
enemy
within
DEPUTIES to the Moscow
Soviet on February 26 were petitioning for an emergency sitting of their assembly to consider a motion condemning the city government for its handling of the February 23 opposition demonstration.
### RENFREY CLARKE
T HOUGH widely misreported as a
provocation by "Communist conservatives", the Army Day march and rally was planned as a peaceful and orderly affair.
Clashes developed only after the "democratic" city administration, in a move which has brought sharp criticism even from within the liberal camp, denied marchers the right to proceed to their announced destination.
The February 23 action was called by the Officers Union and the Trudovaya Rossiya ("Toiling Russia") group around demands for the defence of the Soviet army.
The city soviet deputies passed a motion stating that the demonstration should been allowed to go ahead. However, virtually all of the deputies' powers have now been transferred to the mayoral administration, and resolutions of the soviet are little more than expressions of opinion.
Limited publicity for demonstration
Publicity for the demonstration was limited, and the total attendance was only a few thousand. Many of those present
The demonstrators intended to march from Mayakovsky Square in the northern part of the city centre, down Iverskaya Street to the Manezh Square. After listening to speakers, they were then to lay wreaths on the nearby Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
For years now, the Manezh has been the major rallying point for political demonstrations in Moscow. It is difficult to recall any violent incident at these gatherings. As recently as February 9, a Trudovaya Rossiya demonstration in the square passed off without trouble.
Nevertheless, by eight o'clock in the morning of February 23 a total of 450 vehicles, mainly buses and heavy trucks, were parked across the entrance to the
The closure of some of central Moscow's busiest streets threw traffic into fierce tangles. The exits of 11 metro stations were shut. Long lines of grey-coated police, as many as 10,000 in all, marched into position.
Explaining why the Manezh had been sealed oft, the city government claimed that allowing the demonstration to go ahead on the square would have created major problems in keeping public order, and would have impeded the flow of transport and pedestrians.
Why was this decision taken? In deputy Khramov's view, the city government aimed at making a show of strength, and also at avenging the blockade, by the same police, that prevented Communist demonstration on the Manezh in March last year.
A weak and ineffective dictatorship
Another deputy, Boris Kagarlitsky of the Party of Labour, was more forthright. "What we have in Moscow is a weak and ineffective dictatorship. The city government is constantly looking for extra powers. To try to justify this, it is doing all it can to provoke violence."
Mayor Popov's strategies seem likely to deepen the divisions in the "democrat" camp between real supporters of democratic rights and would-be capitalists for whom "democracy" has never been more than a flag of convenience.
This prospect was lent weight by a report on the demonstration in the February 25 issue of Nezavisimaya Gazeta ("Independent Newspaper"), the leading organ of Russia's liberal intelligentsia. Uncharacteristically, the paper's analysis coincided on major points with the views expressed by leftists.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta noted that the organizers of the demonstration were claiming a victory, on the basis that the city government had recognized Trudovaya Rossiya as an important danger.
"However," the paper continued, "it is entirely possible that the authorities laid on the clubs not because they were scared themselves, but in order to convince society that there is a 'red-brown threat'.
"Since the collapse of the Communist Party, the place of the 'enemy within' has
RUSSIA / NAGORNO-KARABAKH
Tension
mounts in
Nagorno-
Karabakh
THE conflict in the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh has entered a new phase with the break-up of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh issue, which has led to big popular mobilizations in the Caucasian republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan (the region is inhabited by Armenians but has been administered by Azerbaijan since 1923), is now the subject both of attempts at a political solution and of military escalation on the ground. VICKEN CHETERIAN
N September 22 last after mediation by Russian president Boris Yeltsin and his counterpart from Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev, the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan reached an agreement to start negotiations for a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Two days after this agreement, serious fighting restarted in the enclave, when for the first time Azeri artillery shelled Stepanakert, the capital of the "autonomous republic", while Armenian forces bombarded the city of Shusha and launched armed attacks on Kokjan, the Azeri suburb of Stepanakert.
Military clashes continue
Military clashes, involving artillery and tank attacks, have continued since; in the single month of October 1991, seven helicopter "accidents" were reported in the region.
The tension reached its height after November 20, 1991, when a helicopter carry and Russman aakhodAver medi 23 ators and statesman was shot down.
NAGORNO-KARABAKH
Azerbaijan accused Armenian "terrorists" of responsibility, while the Armenian republic presented its condolences and asked for an investigation to be opened The immediate reaction of the Azeri parliament was to abolish the status "autonomous republic" Karabakh' and to step up the blockade of
Talist
GEORGIA
ARMENIA
Gendzhe•
O Miles 50
RUSSIAN
•FEDERATION
Yevlakh
AZERBAIJAN
Baku°
(Kirovabad) •Shaumyan
The Karabakh problem has reached a point where Armenia and Azerbaijan are NAGORNY in a state of undeclared war. It is also true KARABAKH that the political rulers in Baku and Yere- •Stepanakert van are not in complete control of the situation, although they have an interest in calming the situation down. After each new diplomatic agreement between the two capitals is signed, the situation on the ground gets worse.
Azerbaijan's president Aiaz Mutalibov is seeking investment by Western oil companies like Texaco, BP and Chevron? in the republic's obsolete oil industry. However, such investment is unlikely given the state of war.
On the other hand, the Armenian economy, with the exception of its agriculture, is in a much worse state. The republic has been under a strict blockade imposed by Azerbaijan, from where it used to receive most of its oil and gas. 85% of Armenian industry has ground to a halt as a result of this blockade, while reconstruction of the cities destroyed in the 1988 earthquake has been frozen.
### Army withdrawal creates
Another reason for the resumption of the fighting is the power vacuum created by the withdrawal of the Soviet army from
A few months before, the Soviet "buffer forces" numbered 11,000; now less than 2,000 remain, awaiting departure. In the Gorbachev era, the Karabakh issue was manipulated to fit the needs of the centre and the preservation of the union.
For example, in spring 1991 Soviet interior ministry troops cooperated with Azeri police units to attack and deport Armenians from Getashen and Martunashem, villages north of the enclave
This was after Azeri leaders had expressed their intention of voting for the treaty prepared while it was expected that the referendum planned in Armenia for a few months later
Now the republics that have inherited Soviet troops have no actual ambitions in a conflict that could turn out to be costly. As the troops leave the two sides are trying to take over their positions.
The war on the ground has long since taken on its own dynamic. Although some of the fighters are local villagers who are trying to defend their own territory from the "enemy", most of the fighters are vol24 as ters as, Armenian refuges from Baku unteers coming from Yerevan and Baku, International Viewpoint #224 • March 16, 1992
Yerevan TURKEY
NAKHICHEVAN:*
Makhkhevan IRAN or Azeri refugees originally from villages in the east of Armenia.4 There are around 500,000 refugees on both sides as a result
The two countries' devastated economies cannot integrate these who, in their turn, attribute their tragic fate to the other ethnic group. There are practically no Azeris left in Armenia, while Armenians are still left in enclaves in and around Karabakh.
At the beginning of the century, these countries were not ethnically homogene-
The Armenian bourgeoisie based in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and Baku, while Yerevan was nothing more than a small provincial town.
With the Sovietization of the Caucasus, government. The bureaucratic system had created local national elites that ruled over the internal affairs of the republic, "planning" the distribution of investments, the location of industrial projects, and also local cultural policy.
Repression causes slow migration
While enjoying significant cultural and autonomy, the local national elites with their repressive policy towards minorities caused a slow migration that tended to turn each republic into a national state. This trend seems to be confirmed with the present war.
The opposition in both countries is trying to profit from the situation to attack their respective governments from an ultra-nationalist angle.
The Popular Front of Azerbaijan has on several occasions in the last three months organized mass demonstrations in Baku that brought out around a hundred thousand people to call for the resignation of Mutalibov for being unable to put an end to the "Armenian intervention in the internal affairs of Azerbaijan".
Halabad y Caspian Sea • Lenkoran
Similarly, on the Armenian side, the nationalist leader Parour Airikiyan, who stood against current president Levon Ter-Petrossian, has called on the latter to stop any negotiations with Azeri officials since "they have violated all previous agreements," as he puts it. His alternative is the maximum "internationalization" of
The Armenian republic seems to be ready to compromise by stopping its interference in support of the Armenian popugovernment stops its "genocide" of the
This distancing by the Armenian govemment was also reflected in the voting that has taken place in Nagorno-Karabakh to decide the enclave's status. The vote was on "Do you agree that the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous republic should become an independent republic?", not that it should be linked to Armenia.
On the other hand, Mutabilov declared on February 4, 1992 that he will agree to the deployment of UN observers in the region.
It is hard to imagine at the moment that the Armenians of Karabakh will agree to live under rule from Baku.
On the other hand, if the internal pressures in Azerbaijan, with the struggle between the remnants of the still-ruling Communist Party and the Popular Front, were to lead to the mobilization of the country with its seven million people, the fate of the 160,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh could turn out to be tragic indeed. * 1. Armenopress, November 28, 1991. 2. Les Nouvelles du Moscou, December 3, 1991. 3. International Herald Tribune, May 2, 1991. 4. Note here the role played by refugees in other wars, like in Lebanon and more recently in Yugoslavia. While local fighters are more moderate towards their neighbours, refugees involved in fighting are characterized by their extremism. 5. See the article by R. Suny in New Left Review (London), no. 184.