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KREMLIN CHIEF OF STAFF WARNS OF POTENTIAL DISINTEGRATION By Jeremy BranstenRussia's presidential chief of staff is the ultimate "eminence grise," as the French would say -- the man behind the scenes who sits at the center of power but is rarely seen or heard by ordinary people.

That is why Dmitrii Medvedev's extensive interview, published on 5 April in the magazine "Ekspert," is drawing such attention. It is the first time since his appointment in 2003 that Medvedev has aired his views so publicly.

Medvedev covers a lot of subjects in his lengthy interview. But the most interesting part by far is his call on Russia's regional elites to unite behind the Kremlin to preserve the territorial integrity of the country. Medvedev says this is the No. 1 challenge facing the country. Failure to meet it, he says, could bring catastrophe.

"If we do not manage to consolidate the elites, Russia could disappear as one state," he said. By comparison, he said, the disintegration of the Soviet Union would look like a "kindergarten party."

Russia has lately enjoyed relative stability and an economic upswing, so such a scenario seems unlikely. Commentators have been wondering what prompted Medvedev's warning at this particular time.

Sergei Mitrokhin, deputy head of the opposition Yabloko party, sees events outside Russia weighing heavily on the Kremlin -- especially the recent Orange Revolution in Ukraine:

"Right now, the Kremlin is disoriented," Mitrokhin told RFE/RL. "The series of failures it has suffered in recent times, both in foreign and domestic policy, have created a sense of nervousness. So, this [interview] may be linked to events in Ukraine. The Kremlin sees that it is not capable of controlling the situation and greatly fears a Ukrainian scenario [in Russia]. Of course, these are baseless fears. But every fear acquires a life of its own. And I think the Kremlin has these fears and it is trying to demonstrate that it is ready to meet the challenges confronting Russia."

The recent demonstrations by pensioners and other groups angry at government social-benefits reform showed the Kremlin that popular discontent can be rapidly mobilized in Russia. And events in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan have demonstrated just how far public anger can go.

Nikolai Petrov, of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, told RFE/RL this prompts the Kremlin to project unity and demand the same from its regional governors. But he is not convinced by Medvedev's smooth words.

"One can think that it was done to put people at ease, to show that there are no conflicts in the Kremlin about current policies and the country's future course. But the general impression one gets is of a smooth but empty package," Petrov said.

While Medvedev calls for greater unity and preventing instability, many commentators note that it is in fact the Kremlin that has done the most recently to destabilize the country.

The social reforms were just the start. The business community is also upset by what it sees as the government's determined persecution of Yukos.

Putin himself had to meet with business leaders last month to reassure them that most privatizations will not be threatened, and that the government is committed to creating a predictable climate for entrepreneurs. But speculation still continues that the government may consider renationalizing strategic sectors of the economy.

The government has put through some political reforms, such as the elimination of popularly elected governors and the creation of a new institution -- the Public Chamber -- to assume part of the duties of the current parliament.

But Petrov said these changes have received a mixed response and threaten to undo the checks and balances of Russia's young democratic system.

"What is surprising is that the Kremlin as a whole, and Medvedev in part, have done everything to dismantle this system's mechanisms," Petrov said. "Now, according to Medvedev, we are waiting for the Public Chamber to function finally and ensure a dialogue between society and the government. But the fact is that it was parliament that used to play this role and should fulfill this role. Now it has stopped playing this role. But on this point Medvedev stays silent."

Yabloko's Mitrokhin said he believes the Kremlin's obsession with centralization -- at the expense of democracy -- is what in fact poses the greatest threat to Russia's stability and territorial integrity.

"When the Kremlin destroys the institution of federalism, for example, it destroys the only institution that is capable of preserving the territorial integrity of the country," he said. "One gets the alarming feeling that all problems will be resolved by the Kremlin. One can appoint all the smartest people to all the important posts. One can wisely take away the people's right to choose their own government. This speaks to the fact that the Kremlin is pursuing totally inappropriate policies. It is losing feedback from the country."

Mitrokhin said he fears Medvedev's words may be a signal the Kremlin may try to further pressure an already-weak opposition.

"When we are told we all have to unite to prevent the collapse of the country, I see a threat addressed to the opposition. It is another label that is being pinned to the opposition and this label will be that the opposition is contributing to the country's collapse," Mitrokhin said.

Many experts consider the continuing war in Chechnya to be the greatest potential threat to Russia's territorial integrity, especially if violence spreads in the northern Caucasus. But Medvedev made no mention of the war. Instead, he said Russia must address the depopulation of Eastern Siberia and the Far East or risk losing those territories to possible foreign development.

NOTE TO READERS: Youth movements played a critical role in recent revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, while new groups are appearing in Russia and Central Asia, much to the dismay of leaders there. "The Power of Youth" is an ongoing RFE/RL webpage that looks at the rise of political youth movements. See http://www.rferl.org/specials/youth/

GOVERNMENT FEELING THE PINCH OF LOST LAWSUITS. Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Zhukov on 11 April chaired a government meeting at which ministers discussed the problems the government faces in coping with a wave of lawsuits against it, "Izvestiya" reported on 12 April. Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov told the meeting that the government paid out 523 million rubles ($17.5 million) in judgments in 2004 and that this year the figure will reach at least 1.2 billion rubles. The government expects a wave of lawsuits from veterans of the effort to cleanup the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear-power-plant disaster, since the government increased benefits to them by 8 percent as of 1 January and many analysts predict the courts will demand a greater increase. There are an estimated 1.5 million Chornobyl veterans in Russia. RC

When Kyrgyz President Askar Akaev visited the United States in May 1993, President Bill Clinton promised U.S. assistance to Kyrgyzstan in that country's transition to a democratic system. A White House spokesperson said at the time that President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore "singled out Kyrgyzstan as a model for the other new independent states, praising President Akaev for his government's bold pursuit of macroeconomic stabilization and democratic reform," according to AP.

Less than 12 years later, on 24 March 2005, President Akaev fled his country amid protests that began over alleged improprieties in parliamentary elections but quickly focused on a key demand: the ouster of President Akaev. As Kyrgyzstan's opposition celebrated the end of what it condemned as a corrupt and undemocratic regime, observers looked to similar events that felled long-ruling regimes in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004 and asked: Is a wave of democratic change sweeping through the former Soviet Union?

The White House's optimism about Akaev and Kyrgyzstan in 1993 was not unfounded; it rested on encouraging signs and genuine hopes. But the eventual failure of those hopes to come to fruition -- a failure sealed by Akaev's ignominious fall and flight on 24 March -- serves to warn us against undue exuberance in the face of the latest changes. Once again, we encounter encouraging signs. But we should be wary of concluding that democracy is finally on the march, much as we might hope for that outcome. Instead, we should take a hard look at the one indisputable lesson to be drawn from events in Georgia, Ukraine, and now Kyrgyzstan: The post-Soviet political systems in each of those countries failed a crucial test. What was the test, why did they fail, and what lessons do their failures hold for other countries in the former Soviet Union?

In Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, the test that the existing political system faced and failed was the test of free and fair elections. In all three countries, allegations of electoral fraud sparked protests that eventually led to political changes so significant that they call to mind the word "revolutionary."

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights monitored all of the elections in question and produced detailed reports. An OSCE postelection interim report on Georgian parliamentary elections in late 2003 stated that "the election process was characterized by a clear lack of political will by the governmental authorities to organize a genuine and democratic election process." The OSCE's assessment of the second-round Ukrainian presidential election in November 2004 was similarly harsh.

The OSCE's evaluation of first-round parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan struck similar notes: "The 27 February 2005 parliamentary elections in the Kyrgyz Republic, while more competitive than previous elections, fell short of OSCE commitments and other international standards for democratic elections in a number of important areas. The election displayed some limited improvement, including the fact that voters were offered a real choice among contesting candidates in many constituencies. However, the competitive dynamic was undermined throughout the country by widespread vote buying, deregistration of candidates, interference with independent media, and a low level of confidence in electoral and judicial institutions on the part of candidates and voters."

Managed "democracy" is what happens when a ruling elite feels obliged to hold elections but does everything in its power to control their outcome. In the post-Soviet world, managed democracy is the brainchild of a political elite that grudgingly accepts elections as a precondition for legitimacy yet retains a Soviet understanding of politics as a dark art of manipulation. The practice of managed democracy amounts to a grab-bag of dirty tricks and a playing field that is anything but level -- state-controlled media serve up puff pieces to promote favored candidates and smear campaigns to denigrate undesirable ones, election commissions ignore gross violations and punish minor ones, duplicate candidates confuse voters. The list is long and sordid. But its purpose is short and sweet: to reduce the necessary evil of elections to a predictable exercise that allows elites to devote the bulk of their time to more pressing pursuits, mainly the exploitation of public office for private gain.

Though it has its roots in a Soviet idea -- that politics is at once material and ethereal, administered with payoffs and adjusted with propaganda -- the managed democracy we find in post-Soviet states should not be confused with the system that came before it. Through all its permutations, the Soviet system had a strong totalizing streak that led it to try to control all things in society. Its successors are, in at least one sense, genuinely more democratic, for they focus on the majority. They jealously guard state-run television, with its nationwide reach and demographically average viewers, but are not overly concerned if the numerically insignificant chattering classes air their discontent in newspapers with limited readership. (Managed democracy comes in a variety of forms, however, and some regimes -- in Central Asia, for example -- "manage" the political process so closely that they reduce the role of "democracy" to window dressing, producing systems more accurately described as "authoritarian" or even "dictatorial," although they contain elements of managed democracy.)

But while this system offers undeniable advantages to elites more concerned with the perquisites of power than the perils of accountability, it is fatally flawed. The flaw is twofold -- first, the lack of accountability reduces the incentive for the elite to communicate with constituents and base governance on the electorate's real concerns; and second, as issues properly treated in the public political realm are left to fester or are resolved through back-room deals, the inevitable popular dissatisfaction creates an incentive for the elite to intensify its management of the political process. The result is a vicious cycle in which the political process becomes dysfunctional. In other words, managed democracy is not democracy at all.

Sooner or later, something has to give. Elections are a flashpoint because they put the spotlight on the machinery of managed democracy even as they raise the very issues the dysfunctional political system has neglected. The particular course of events in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan was in each case a product of local circumstances. However, the unifying thread was that a virtual political system that maintains the appearance of democracy but disdains its essence collided with the real political concerns of millions of citizens. The collision revealed that the emperor had no clothes, and he was soon forced to exit the scene.

The causes of Kyrgyzstan's revolution are not difficult to divine. They include a widespread perception that the Akaev government was massively corrupt, that the distribution of whatever economic benefits had accrued to Kyrgyzstan in the post-Soviet period was grossly inequitable, that the Akaev-led ruling elite was actively manipulating the mechanisms of democracy in order to prolong its rule, and that state-controlled media were distorting the real situation in the country. The specific grievances that gave rise to protests were election-related. But the government's refusal to respond to demonstrators' concerns, and the decision to bring into play pro-government provocateurs, exacerbated an already critical situation and opened the floodgates for an outpouring of popular dissatisfaction that brought down the regime.

(Part 2 will explore the outcome of the Kyrgyz revolution. Excerpted from RFE/RL analyst Daniel Kimmage's testimony on 7 April before the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe [Helsinki Commission] on the causes and consequences of Kyrgyzstan's revolution.)

UKRAINIAN REGIONAL GOVERNMENT REOPENS ISSUE OF RELOCATIONS NEAR CHORNOBYL. The Homel Oblast administration has submitted to the republican government a plan for resettling residents of sparsely populated rural areas with radioactive pollution above one curie per kilometer, Interfax-Belarus reported on 12 April citing Halina Akushko, head of the radiation safety department for the oblast administration. The contaminated areas include 188 small villages with 410 families. Most of the residents are elderly people who refused to be evacuated after the 1986 blast at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Last month, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka called for a revision of the relocation program adopted following the 1986 disaster, because many people demanded relocation for the sole purpose of improving their material position (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 18 March 2005 and 22 April 2004). Meanwhile, opposition activists announced on 12 April that they will depart from the years-long tradition of commemorating the 26 April anniversary of the disaster with a march in downtown Minsk because the authorities oppose such demonstrations and end up dispersing them, according to Belapan. JAC

UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT PROMISES HANDS OFF DONETSK CRIMINAL CASE. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko told reporters in Warsaw on 12 April that he will not intervene in the legal case against Donetsk Oblast council head Borys Kolesnykov, UNIAN and Interfax reported. The Prosecutor-General's Office on 11 April charged Kolesnykov with extortion accompanied by a threat of murder, prompting complaints from his political allies such as former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 12 April 2005). Yushchenko said that he will never tell the court, prosecution, or other legal bodies how to do their work. Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko said the government is not taking much interest in the case, adding that all those who are guilty of "robbing the country must be punished." UNIAN reported that organizers of the tent city established in Kyiv to show support for Kolesnykov said that 100 more people arrived in Kyiv from Kharkiv, Odesa, and Dnepropetrovsk. The encampment is decorated with the flag of the Party of Regions and signs saying "Boldedan, Kolesnykov, who's next?" On the same day, "Ukrayina moloda" reported that the tent city had no more than 100 participants. JAC

CASE CONNECTED TO DONETSK JOURNALIST'S MURDER REOPENED IN UKRAINE. Deputy Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokhin has confirmed the reopening of the investigation of the death of a homeless man, Yuriy Veredyuk, who had been convicted and then later acquitted for lack of evidence of murdering opposition journalist Ihor Aleksandrov in July 2001, "Segodnya" reported on 12 April. Veredyuk died on 19 July 2002 a month after he was acquitted from what was then deemed a heart attack, but some sources have later suspected was poisoning. According to glavred.info on 11 April, President Yushchenko held a news conference in Donetsk in which he promised to take personal control over the investigation of Aleksandrov's murder. In an interview with glavred.info, Aleksandrov's wife, Lyudmila, said that Yushchenko sent her an attorney to represent her family's legal interests at the beginning of March. JAC

UKRAINIAN INTERIOR MINISTRY HAS QUESTIONS ABOUT KUCHMA CHARITY. Ihor Surkis, president of the Dynamo joint stock company, spent four hours on 12 August in the office of the Interior Ministry's Directorate for Fighting Corruption and Organized Crime, "Ukrayinska pravda" website (http://www2.pravda.com.ua) reported. Ihor is the younger brother of Hryhoriy Surkis, head of Ukraine's football federation and a political and business partner of former presidential administration chief Viktor Medvedchuk. Surkis was asked about his transfer of 6 million hryvnyas (more than $1 million) to the foundation of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Surkis told journalists outside of the directorate's office that the foundation has either returned or intends to return the money. According to Kanal 5, some 42 million hryvnyas were transferred from offshore accounts to the fund, and the Interior Ministry is conducting an audit of what happened to this money. JAC

EU ENVOY SAYS BRUSSELS READY TO HELP IN TRANSDNIESTER... The EU's special representative for Moldova, Adriaan Jacobovits de Szeged, said on 12 April that Brussels is prepared to assist in the settlement of the Transdniester conflict, although he offered no details, Infotag reported the same day. "We are ready to help in this," said Jacobovits de Szeged, who was concluding a two-day visit to Chisinau. "I will not be present here permanently but will be coming to Chisinau frequently. Besides this, I will be in consultations to learn the opinions of Moscow, Kyiv, Bucharest, Washington, the OSCE, [and] European Union member states." Jacobovits de Szeged, who plans to return to Chisinau on 26 April, said that while the EU currently has no plan for settling the dispute, it expects to formulate proposals. BW

MOLDOVA'S PRESIDENT ACCUSES TRANSDNIESTER OF PROVOCATIONS... President Vladimir Voronin accused the breakaway Transdniester region of "systematic provocations" that he said are part of an effort to legitimize the Russian military presence, ITAR-TASS reported on 13 April. "The Moldovan leadership won't be dragged into this escalation of tensions," Voronin said during a meeting with EU Special Representative Jacobovits de Szeged the previous day, according to the president's press service. Voronin said tighter monitoring of Moldova's border with Ukraine according to EU standards will help settle the dispute. "Moldova is counting on the help of the European community on this issue," Voronin said. BW