Ukraine

Seems like lots of stuff still going on in Kyiv. Lots of chat earlier in the week at this Siberian Light post on matters Ukrainian and otherwise. I'll leave the pontificating to the pundits and the eyewitness accounts to the people who are actually there.

Tangerines, Moldovans far from home, and a river named Psou

This nearly five-year-old story definitely fits into the "truth is stranger - and sometimes more tragic - than fiction" category:

Tangerine Fever Grips Abkhazia By Inal Khashig on the Psou River
(IWPR Caucasus Reporting Service No.156, 21-Nov-2002)

The "yellow fever" season has begun in Abkhazia.

That is what Abkhaz call the time of year when the tangerine harvest is ripe and thousands of residents of the unrecognised republic flock to its northern border with Russia to trade them.

Since the end of the war with Georgia in 1993, the tangerine trade has become the main source of income for Abkhaz families. With the region's chronic lack of employment, the money they earn in the three months of the season must be enough to sustain them over the rest of the year.

With the border closed to the south, the tangerine traders all head north to the river Psou that divides Abkhazia from Russia. Here on either side of a narrow bridge, the respective customs services have set up posts. [...]

"I could trade my tangerines on the Abkhaz side too, but the price here is much lower than on the Russian side and my family badly needs the extra roubles," said Nadezhda, a woman in her fifties, standing in the long queue.

She said the salary she earned after 30 years teaching as a maths teacher was not enough to live on. Which is why she has to spend her weekends ferrying up to 50 kilogrammes of tangerines in a small cart, made out of an old child's pram. When she has sold her cargo, she generally uses the money to buy food, which is cheaper in Russia.

"My daughter-in-law used to come here," Nadezhda said. "But she developed health problems and the doctors told her that if she did not stop dragging heavy loads, she could not have children. So I took over the tangerines. Otherwise we would have nothing to feed the family." [...]

The most industrious of these traders earn up to 300 roubles (a little less than ten dollars) a day, which in Abkhazia is regarded as a good wage. Over the last two years, they have been joined by people from the North Caucasus and places as far a field as Moldova and Ukraine.

"When I was a child, tangerines were a fantastic treat, but now I can't bear the sight of them," said Svetlana Koditsa, from the town of Beltsy [Bălţi] in Moldova.

Svetlana makes three trips across the border a day before she has something left over from what she pays to cover her accommodation, food and bribes to the police, who, she complains, demand money even from those standing patiently in line.

"You try not to give it to them and they might not let you through," she said angrily. [...]

The whole story is worth a read, as it talks a bit about who profits from the trade and why the problem is intractable - an object study in corruption. I would imagine things have changed for the better since 2002, but perhaps not by much.

I found this story last fall while doing research on Russia's passportization campaign in Abkhazia. The article at one point mentions all of the Abkhazians* who had recently begun to receive Russian passports - and perhaps citizenship, depending on what you think constitutes citizenship. I decided to try to find the story once again and post the part about poor Svetlana from Balti, and it was easy to find - I just googled "Psou tangerine Moldova," and the article was, of course, the first result.

Incidentally, IWPR is a treasure trove of searchable, first-hand reporting by local correspondents. They even publish (online it's in pdf format) a locally oriented newspaper, Panorama, in Georgian and Russian, which turned out to be a good source of citations about Russian economic interests in Abkhazia (e.g., the Moscow Military District renting a Sukhumi resort for use by its personnel) and the local controversy they create; and about some of the ongoing debates in local politics. Of all of the post-Soviet secessionist statlets, Abkhazia seems to have the most developed political culture - elections which even Moscow can't fully control, for example.

For some stunning photos from Abkhazia, check out LJ user kunstkamera's recent set (HT Levan); this railway-themed set from cyxymu (who has many other photos from the region), recently featured at Registan; and of course the set I linked to earlier here.


*I prefer to use a non-ethnic term referring to people of all nationalities who live in Abkhazia, since the ethnic Abkhaz are still not a majority there - even after ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Georgians, they are but a plurality in their own land, which they share with Russians, Armenians, and some returned Georgians. And of course, statistics from the region are unreliable and disputed.

More on MGU SotsFak - in Russian

I've already written way too much about the turbulence at the MGU Sociology Department. Russian website RuleofLaw.ru (which I found thanks to Robert Amsterdam's blog) has a long and apparently original post interviewing some of the students involved.

Oleg Ivanov [RUS] has the very latest info, including news of two press conferences related to the scandal on Thursday.

Waiting for a miracle

St. Petersburg, July 23, 2006.

A "dead fish" precedent?

"There are some problems that, like dead fish, do not improve with age and neglect."

- Daniel Fried, Ass't Secretary of State for European & Eurasian Affairs, referring to the need to resolve the status of Kosovo sooner rather than later.

I heard this sound-bite at least twice on NPR this morning but was unable to find it online anywhere.

Burjanadze at CSIS

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a talk by Nino Burjanadze, Chairwoman of Georgia's Parliament and star of the Rose Revolution, at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. You can listen online to the whole event. Burjanadze spoke a great deal about the situation in Abkhazia, referring to the Georgian government's proposed roadmap for settlement, and to the fact that a new roadmap on settling the situation in South Ossetia would be forthcoming - and indeed, it was circulated in the Georgian Parliament just yesterday. One interesting talking point she had - Georgia is prepared to offer South Ossetia more autonomy than North Ossetia (which is part of Russia) has from the federal center in Moscow.

My favorite comment of hers was in response to a question from CSIS's Cory Welt, who was chairing the event. Welt asked about Russia's use of "soft power" instruments to try to convince the Georgian public that NATO accession will be detrimental to Georgia's attempts to resolve the so-called "frozen conflicts" in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Burjanadze had a long response, including the insight that "soft power is soft from here [DC] - it doesn't look soft from Ukraine and Georgia."

For more on Russia's use of "soft power" in its near abroad, see Fiona Hill's piece, "Moscow Discovers Soft Power," from last fall and Nicu Popescu's brief on "Russia's Soft Power Ambitions" from around the same time; see also this recent lecture by Andrew Wilson, and Ivan Krastev's article from a year and a half ago.

On a lighter note, I arrived a bit late and was seated at the very back next to one of Burjanadze's security guys (I can only assume, as he was a big guy who answered his cell phone in Georgian and had no interest in the talk whatsoever). Throughout the event, he was reading a well-worn copy of a Russian suspense novel - Akvarium, by Viktor Suvorov (full text available here).

I have to say that I was very impressed with Burjanadze. She spoke in English with practically no difficulties, sounded convincing about the reforms underway in Georgia, and managed to be unequivocal about Georgia's NATO aspirations without making it sound too much like the country wants or needs to suck up to the United States. My point of comparison for this was a speech by Eduard Shevardnadze that I attended back in 2001 at the Kennedy School of Government. At the time - just after 9/11 - I remember being almost alarmed at the degree to which Shevy seemed to be cozying up to the US. At the same time, the event summary still on the KSG website shows that the Silver Fox did still have some powers of prediction, even if his forecast was a few years off:

Shevardnadze, who has expressed hopes that Georgia will ascend to NATO membership by 2005, offered his endorsement of further NATO development and expansion, saying, "aspiration toward NATO membership is the inviolable right of every democratic nation in Europe."

Another interesting moment in that 5 1/2-year-old transcript/summary is a question from someone identified as "Paul Joyle," recently more famous under his actual name, Paul Joyal, as someone targeted by either carjackers or Chekist henchmen in suburban DC.

"Addicted to oil"?

An interesting article exploring the potential pitfalls of a petrodollar-addicted economy - and noting the discount to the RTS resulting from the uncertainty associated with the 2008 political succession:

Market Comment: The trouble with oil
Alfa, Russia (via bne)
Monday, April 2, 2007

[...] The focus today will be on oil. The trouble with the current rise is that Russian equities, on balance, no longer benefit from it. Quite the opposite - the rising price presents a clear threat to global equity markets at a time when investors are preoccupied with worries over the US economy and global growth.

Despite the more than 8% rise in the price of oil last week, the local bourses ended the week with sliding prices and only a small gain (the RTS rose 1.1% while MICEX ended 0.2% lower) for the week. The reason is because since mid-2006 the main driver of the local equity markets has been the trend in global emerging markets. Ever since the re-weighting of Russia in the GEM index (as a result of the removal of restrictions on Gazprom shares), the RTS has moved more in line with MSCI GEM. At the end of 2006 Russian equities accounted for 10% of the GEM universe, and the valuation of the market, based on 2007 earnings, was considered to have closed to an appropriate discount (10%) given the uncertainty associated with oil vulnerability and the political succession.

Hence the current rise in the price of oil presents much more of a risk to the market than it provides a favorable backdrop:

• Rising oil threatens economic growth in the global economy and causes inflationary pressures. Therefore while the US Fed may not be inclined to raise rates because of the threat to growth, it cannot easily start to cut either because of the inflation threat.

• This means that one of the optimistic assumptions that supported equities during last December's strong run, i.e. falling rates in 2007, is less sure and allows the more bearish investors to again focus on the poor growth indicators.

• Rising oil does not materially affect the earnings growth of either the oil shares or the market because of the high incremental tax take by the state.

• High oil does of course add to federal budget earnings and helps boost the Stabilization Fund. But since January the ruble is now much more highly correlated on a trend basis with the oil price (see later).

This means that higher oil also pushes the ruble higher and the broader effects (i.e. more speculative flows and greater liquidity) increase inflationary pressures.

• For export earners, i.e. mainly the extractive industries, that means a margin squeeze as dollar-based revenues are reduced and domestic costs are increased.

• If the price of oil spikes, or even creeps, much higher, it will add to the weight of worries already depressing international equity markets.

That could very easily result in another round of fund redemptions from nervous investors - especially if there is also some other negative indicator in the global economy (i.e. a bad US housing or payroll report this week) at the same time. [...]

Grozny photos

GVO - via A Step at a Time - links to a spectacular set of photos taken by LJ user kunstkamera (a blogger who has a username with an interesting origin).

New blog that's right up my alley

The good people at Transitions Online (TOL) seem to have set up a number of blogs. I was especially delighted to find one which was started relatively recently - Steady State, a "group blog about unresolved conflicts in the former Soviet space." So far, there seems to be just one person posting, but the content is good, especially since as far as I know there is no other English-language blog focusing on the post-Soviet conflicts (Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Transnistria). And while there's nothing as of yet on the blog's "about" page to tell us about the author, they seem to know what they're talking about.

I have actually thought about starting such a blog for some time - the so-called "frozen conflicts" are really fascinating as you learn more about them, as I've been doing during this academic year; and until the last year or so they had been almost totally forgotten by the English-speaking world. I could even just use this blog - "Scraps of Moscow" would in some ways be a perfect name for a blog about these territories, what with their close ties to Russia. But I didn't want to get such a narrow focus and have to write regularly about issues that are so very politicized. Anyway, I'm glad TOL is doing it and look forward to reading more.

One post I found at Steady State links to a riveting - to me, anyway - video documenting a dialogue between two men who had been colleagues before the war: a Georgian displaced by the ethnic cleansing to Tbilisi and an Abkhaz who remained in Sukhumi. They were connected with videoconferencing equipment and had a series of tense and emotional conversations. The first 20 minutes or so of the 48-minute video have English subtitles, including brief video tours of both Sukhumi and Tbilisi. Worth watching if you are interested in this conflict.

Begging for more

There's been a lot of talk about begging in the Russia blogosphere lately. Rubashov posted a thoughtful essay on how he handles Moscow's panhandlers; he then provided space for a response from LR; and Natalia Antonova took issue with LR's harsh words about begging babushki. I have decided to let Russia's beggars make the point themselves:

Underpass near Rizhskaya Metro station,
Moscow, Dec. 25, 2004.
The sign she is holding says "two motherless grandchildren."

At the foot of Tverskaya,
Moscow, Dec. 30, 2005

Near Nikol'sky Sobor,
St. Petersburg, July 23, 2006

Exit from Biblioteka Imeni Lenina Metro station
Moscow, July 15, 2005.

And while I know they aren't beggars, street musicians often compete with beggars for rubles from passers-by, so I thought these pics would also be relevant:

Underpass under the Garden Ring,
Moscow, Dec. 12, 2004.

On Stefan cel Mare,
Chisinau, Moldova, Aug. 5, 2006.

See also this earlier post with a photo of a homeless man sleeping in a metro entrance. And this recent one with a couple of photos of down-and-out Muscovites.