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"ACTION UKRAINE REPORT"
In-Depth Ukrainian News and Analysis
"The Art of Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion, Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World"

RUSSIANS' FEARS OF KREMLIN REEMERGE
Influence of Putin Is Discerned Behind Strong-Arm Tactics

By Peter Baker, Washington Post Foreign Service
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
Sunday, March 7, 2004; Page A16

MOSCOW -- If she hadn't stopped to fix her hair, she figures, she might be
dead. Yelena Tregubova had just told a taxi driver by phone that she would be right down. But, she recalled, she paused in front of the mirror before heading downstairs. A minute later, a small bomb exploded outside her apartment door, shaking both her building and her peace of mind.

While uninjured, Tregubova, the author of a best-selling book critical of President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin, took what she saw as an unsubtle hint and fled the country. "I just realized that until the election, I'm a walking target," she said by telephone from a country she declined to identify.

Little by little, in certain circles, fear is creeping back in Russia. Although ordinary Russians go about their lives without the sort of pervasive terror that characterized the Soviet Union, people in parts of Russian society are increasingly watching what they say and looking over
their shoulders. A week before Putin's almost certain reelection to a second term, scholars, journalists, reformist politicians, human rights activists
and even business moguls describe an atmosphere of anxiety that has left them wary of crossing the Kremlin.

"There's a broad spectrum of fear, and it's a new thing; it's just appeared during Putin's time," said Lev Ponomaryov, a Soviet-era dissident who now leads a human rights group and was arrested for leading an illegal protest
last month. "It would be wrong to say Soviet times have come back already, because I'm one of the fiercest critics and here I am in Moscow talking to you. But it's the tendency of these times coming back."

"People have a genetic memory of those years," added Konstantin Remchukov, a former member of parliament who is close to big-business leaders alarmed by the recent arrest of Russia's richest man, oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. "They're scared to death," he said.

The return of fear, while limited to certain circles, has accompanied what critics at home and overseas call a regression in democracy under Putin. As the former KGB colonel has concentrated more power in his hands during his
four years in office, those who might challenge him have often found themselves exposed to trouble.

A former parliament speaker running against Putin in the March 14 election briefly disappeared last month, saying afterward that he was abducted and drugged. A Russian who took a foreign journalist into Chechnya to report on
the war without government supervision was taken away by authorities and has not been heard from in weeks. A former federal investigator looking into allegations of government involvement in a series of apartment bombings in 1999 was arrested just before he was to bring his suspicions to court.

The imprisonment of Khodorkovsky was only one in a series of prosecutions against executives of his Yukos oil company after the tycoon challenged Putin's monopoly on power. When the Persian Gulf state of Qatar arrested two Russian intelligence agents for murdering a Chechen separatist living there, Russian authorities jailed two Qatari wrestlers passing through the Moscow airport on their way to a training session.

Tregubova had earned the Kremlin's wrath with her book "Tales of a Kremlin Digger," which depicted a control-obsessed apparatus around Putin. She is now working on a second book.

The bomb that blew up outside her apartment had the force of a grenade. Police said it was meant for neighbors across the hall, but Tregubova said no one had lived in that apartment for five years.

"Maybe they were trying to demonstrate that they had their hand on my pulse and to terrify me," she said. "It was obvious they were trying to create some sort of atmosphere."

Whether or not the Kremlin had any direct involvement with these incidents, they have sent a message. "Everyone knows if you personally attack Putin and he gets mad, you're going to get it," said Pavel Felgenhauer, a military
analyst often critical of the president.

Putin has said he will continue moving Russia along the path to democracy, but he has also expressed a wistfulness for the Soviet Union. He recently dismissed his human rights ombudsman in Chechnya and appointed a former tax
police chief, Mikhail Fradkov, as prime minister. Fradkov's résumé -- which has a one-year gap just after he attended school, followed by a stint in the Soviet Embassy in New Delhi -- has stirred speculation that he, like Putin,
was a KGB agent.

The response among many in Russia, especially Chechens and other ethnic minorities who feel threatened at home, has been to leave. The number of Russians seeking asylum in industrialized countries jumped by two-thirds last year to 33,000, vaulting Russia past every other country in the world, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

And other countries increasingly have been offering shelter to high-profile Russians fleeing prosecution. Britain last year gave asylum to tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a vocal Putin foe, as well as a partner of his and a senior
Chechen separatist leader. Three of Khodorkovsky's billionaire partners fled to Israel. And courts in Greece, Denmark and the United States lately have rebuffed extradition requests from Russia.

Some scholars increasingly shun contacts with foreign counterparts for fear they will be accused of spying, as several researchers have been during Putin's presidency. The owner of a movie theater in Moscow abruptly canceled
a Chechen film festival last year two nights before it was to open for fear of trouble. Many journalists say they try not to air criticism of Putin, particularly on national television, which has been controlled exclusively
by the Kremlin since it shut down the last independent network last year and gave the channel to a sports network.

A certain self-censorship has developed. After Khodorkovsky was arrested, his fellow business moguls offered no public protest for fear of being next. "Everybody understands they're vulnerable," said Remchukov, who has worked
for a major tycoon. "And feeling vulnerable they behave quietly."

"The situation has gotten worse," said Felgenhauer, who writes a newspaper column but is rarely invited by television producers to appear on air anymore. "The rule used to be that they knew they couldn't criticize Putin
and had to be cautious in what they said but they could report a fact as a fact. Now there are problems even with facts."

Neither of the two state-owned television networks even mentioned the failure of ballistic missile tests conducted last month right in front of Putin during a massive military exercise. A third network, NTV, which is
owned by a state-controlled energy company, reported the test failure and put Felgenhauer on to discuss it, but he said producers pleaded with him not to say anything to offend Putin.

Felgenhauer said he moderated his comments. "I saw they were so afraid so I decided I would not make big trouble," he said.

Sergei Ivanov, a Byzantine scholar, said he has noticed the changing tenor at his academic institute. Two years ago, a Swiss post-graduate student contacted him and asked to be accredited by the institute so he could do research in Russian archives and libraries, Ivanov said. A superior at the institute rejected the request. "He could be a spy," Ivanov recalled his superior saying.

"Then it looked much more outrageous than it does now," Ivanov said. "Now it looks normal." In fact, he added, when Federal Security Service (FSB) agents showed up at the institute a month ago demanding a list of scholars with
foreign contacts, everyone shuddered, even though the agents said they were merely helping research a Putin speech. "This is characteristic of today."

Even some everyday voters are more circumspect in what they say. Masha Volkenstein, a pollster who works for democratic reformers, said participants in her focus groups are more reserved now; after one such session recently, a voter fretted that the discussion had been videotaped.

"They behave in a different way than they did two or three years ago," Volkenstein said. "They understand things are changing, and they are more cautious than they were before."

Mikhail Delyagin, an economist and former adviser to fired prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, wrote in a column in the Moscow Times last week that "many young Muscovites are planning to go to the polls on March 14 out of fear"
that not showing up could cost them job opportunities.

Mikhail Trepashkin, a lawyer and former FSB investigator, was stopped by police in his car in October and arrested for having a gun. He insists it was planted. Trepashkin was supposed to go to court that week to press his theory that the FSB had a role in a series of apartment bombings in 1999
that the government blamed on Chechens.

His wife, Tatyana, said she had begged him not to get involved. "He realized that it was dangerous," she recalled. "We talked about it many times, and I
told him again and again I didn't like it." She added, "I guess he actually dug so deeply that he discovered some truth." (END) (ARTUIS)

NOTE: If Russian scholars, journalists, reformist politicians, human rights activists and even business moguls are becoming wary of the Kremlin then Ukrainian scholars, journalists, reformist politicians, human rights
activists and even business moguls should also be wary, even more so.