Hurriyet, Turkey
Jan 19 2005

VAT MEETING CANCELLED, RUSSIA WANTS TO ACT AS A MEDIATOR BETWEEN
TURKEY AND ARMENIA

The Viennese Armenian-Turkish Platform (VAT) yesterday announced that
it would not carry through its starting initiative “The First
Viennese Armenian-Turkish Round Table” originally planned for spring
2005. The reason is that the Armenian side has failed to provide the
platform with the necessary confirmation as agreed in August 2004.
The Turkish side accepted to participate in the dialogue, in which
each part was supposed to present 180 documents on the year 1915
showing their understanding of the so-called Armenian genocide. In
July 2004, the first 100 documents each from the Armenian and Turkish
side were exchanged to get the dialogue started. The VAT was founded
by four Austrian historians as a neutral platform serving as an
intermediary for Turkish and Armenian researchers scientifically
investigating the Armenian-Turkish Question. In related news, the
Moscow radio yesterday announced that the Russian Federation is ready
to act as a mediator between Turkey and Armenia as well as the
guarantor of any possible agreement to be signed between the two
countries. /Hurriyet/

NBC-4, California
Jan 19 2005

Armenian Quake Victims Linger In Poverty

Thousands Remain In Substandard Housing After 1988 Disaster

by Associated Press

GYUMRI, Armenia — The sliding doors of the battered Soviet railroad
car that Artak Akopian calls home reveal a small space almost as icy
as the outdoors. The makeshift quarters are decorated by little but
an old photograph of his mother, who was killed in the earthquake
that devastated Armenia in December 1988.

Akopian, then age 4, was at nursery school when the quake struck,
killing 25,000 people and leaving half a million homeless. Like the
tsunami that devastated southern Asia last month, the disaster
focused the world’s attention on the region and brought forth an
outpouring of aid.

“The aid was colossal, unexpectedly massive,” said Fadei Sarkisian,
who headed the government of Armenia at the time of the quake, when
it was a Soviet republic.

A look back at the aid effort shows successes and failures: More than
$1.2 billion of domestic and foreign aid was given for medical needs,
clothing, food and new housing. But thousands, like Akopian, remain
in substandard housing — 2,000 families according to government
estimates, some 7,000 families according to journalists who have
studied the problem.

The quake shook the mountains of northern Armenia just as Mikhail
Gorbachev was opening the Soviet Union to the West. He cut short a
summit with outgoing President Ronald Reagan — where he had
announced military cuts and pledged support for human rights — to
rush home.

The international aid effort “wouldn’t have been so big without
Gorbachev. It was a milestone in the history of the Cold War,” said
John Evans, who is now U.S. ambassador to Armenia and was involved in
the earthquake relief effort. “The initial response — there was no
question about it — was all-out.”

Less than two weeks after the quake, Soviet authorities said they had
received $100 million in aid from 77 countries. An Armenian official
in the Central Committee of Armenia’s Communist Party at the time of
the quake said on condition of anonymity that earthquake-related aid
through 1992 totaled $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion. About 40 percent
came from abroad.

The United States sent heating stoves and search-dog teams. Britain
sent ultrasonic listening devices and fiber-optic cameras for
searching the rubble. Clothing and medical equipment came from around
the world.

Sarkisian recalled standing by rubble and hearing cries for help; but
he knew the powerful cranes needed to lift the concrete slabs on top
of them would take days to assemble. Two days after the quake, cranes
arrived from Italy and Germany, saving, he said, thousands of people.

Akopian’s mother was not among them. Along with his younger brother,
she was killed when the 6.9-magnitude quake destroyed their
apartment. Akopian’s father survived but became mentally unbalanced
and later died.

Now 20, Akopian lives with his aunt, her two children and his wife in
the cramped, corroding railroad car — part of a jumble of cargo
containers and other tiny shelters huddled in a hollow in Gyumri,
Armenia’s second-largest city, which was called Leninakan in the
Soviet era.

The hard-scrabble neighborhood illustrates the desperation that
persists despite the recovery effort that has restored a semblance of
normal life to Gyumri and even Spitak, a town where the quake left
only a handful of buildings standing and killed about half the
population of 20,000.

Gorbachev pledged to rebuild the devastated area, but the 1991 Soviet
collapse scuttled that effort and plunged Armenia into an economic
crisis.

As Armenians across the newly independent country chopped down trees
in parks and chopped up furniture to heat their homes, the
quake-stricken area become just another region where residents
struggled to survive. Into the early 1990s, the earthquake zone was
still shattered and demoralized.

Karlen Ambartsumian, who was deputy mayor of Gyumri when the quake
struck and now advises the current mayor, put part of the blame on a
decrease in foreign aid following the initial, emotionally-driven
interest.

“It should have been more prolonged — not just to aid at the time
when the whole world is talking about it and then forget, but to
continue, step by step, doing what is needed at each stage,”
Ambartsumian said.

He said what’s needed most in Gyumri, where dozens of factories are
idle and unemployment is staggering, is aid in the form of job
creation.

“When a U.N. official asked me how much flour we needed, I told him:
Send us fishing rods, not fish,” said Simon Ter-Simonian, head of the
government’s humanitarian assistance department.

While Sarkisian said the aid effort in the quake’s wake was
well-coordinated, Ambartsumian said distribution was badly flawed and
that people who suffered the most missed a lot of the aid, which was
handed out while they were looking for loved ones’ bodies.

“Everybody sent aid, but nobody was able to organize its fair
distribution,” Ambartsumian said.

Sofia Airopetian, a 73-year-old Spitak resident, though, tells a
different story. She says the world never forgot the earthquake
victims and that she still receives food aid. Last year she moved out
of a cargo container and into one of several new apartments built
under a program funded by Armenian-American Kirk Kerkorian.

The new housing beneath the mountains that shadow Spitak augments
homes and hospitals built by foreign countries following the quake.

A U.S. Agency for International Development program has enabled more
than 7,000 families to move out of temporary housing, ridding Gyumri
of many of the metal shacks that survivor Gayane Markarian called a
constant reminder of the quake that killed her brother.

After 15 years in a temporary home near Akopian’s railroad car,
Markarian and her family of five are preparing to move back to their
old building, finally renovated after the quake. But her 18-year-old
son Vigen fears the lack of jobs will force him into the army.

Across the dirt road, 30-year-old Ella Voskanian said she, her mother
and 12-year-old daughter have no hope of leaving their dilapidated
metal container because they are not eligible for other housing for
bureaucratic reasons. At the time of the quake, they were registered
at a home that belongs to relatives.

“We have nowhere to go,” she said.

RIA Novosti, Russia
Jan 19 2005

RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER TO TOUR SOUTH CAUCASUS IN FEBRUARY

MOSCOW, January 19 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov announced at a press conference in Moscow on Wednesday that he
plans to visit Georgia on February 18.

The minister stated that during the visit he would discuss with
Georgian leadership the so-called “grand treaty” between Russia and
Georgia and a variety of other bilateral issues. “One of the issues
on the agenda is the creation of anti-terrorist centers with the use
of existing infrastructure, including Russian military bases,” the
minister said answering the questions posed by Georgian journalists.

“Unfortunately, the talks on the “grand treaty” have been stalled for
several months. In the near future, we will resume the discussions
with the Georgian side on the entire range of bilateral relations in
order to expedite the work on the treaty,” Mr. Lavrov noted, adding
that the contacts between Russian and Georgian representatives would
start even before his visit to Tbilisi.

According to Mr. Lavrov, the interaction between Russian and Georgian
frontier guards must continue to prevent terrorists from using the
Pankisi Gorge for accomplishing their goals.

He reminded that Russian and Georgian frontier guards recently
established cooperation in this area, which brought concrete results,
but could not solve all problems.

“This cooperation must continue to prevent terrorists from using the
Pankisi Gorge as their base and recuperation area,” he said.

The problem of re-establishing railroad transportation between Russia
and Armenia can be solved in the context of the development of the
entire range of Russian-Georgian relations, Mr. Lavrov believes.

“The re-establishment of railroad transportation does not depend on
Russia but rather on some of our neighbors,” he stated. “It can be
solved in the context of general development of relations with
Georgia,” Mr. Lavrov said.

Speaking about his February visit to Yerevan, the Russian foreign
minister announcedthat he would discuss with Armenian leadership the
issues of bilateral relations in the context of their participation
in the CIS and CSTO. In particular, the sides will touch upon the
reforms of the CIS following the results of the consultations
conducted with the Armenian leadership in Yerevan.

Mr. Lavrov also plans to visit Azerbaijan on February 2 to discuss
the preparation of the upcoming visit of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev
to Moscow. “We will focus on the preparation of the Azeri President’s
visit to Russia in the second half of February,” Mr. Lavrov said.

In addition, he noted that during his visit to Azerbaijan, the sides
would discuss issues of bilateral cooperation and CIS reforms.

Mr. Lavrov did not disregard the possibility that the sides might
also touch upon the issue of Nagorny-Karabakh settlement.

“Recently, we had certain positive developments in the situation
after the meeting between Armenian and Azeri presidents in Astana
(Kazakhstan) mediated by the Russian president Vladimir Putin,” Mr.
Lavrov emphasized.

The Russian foreign minister reiterated Russia’s attitude toward the
situation around Nagorny-Karabakh and pointed out that Russia is
interested that the sides find the fastest and mutually-acceptable
solution of the long-lasting conflict.

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Jan 19 2005

INT’L `KARABAKH’ CHARITY FUND SET UP IN MOSCOW
[January 19, 2005, 19:01:50]

Recently, in Moscow, on the initiative of the Congress of World
Azerbaijanis (CWA), was held a constitutive assembly of the
International Charity Fund `Karabakh’. Representatives of the Federal
National Autonomy of the Russian Azerbaijanis «Azerros», the Moscow
Society «Azerbaijan», other Diaspora organizations, intelligentsia
and businessmen attended the gathering.

In the information received by AzerTAj, it is stated that goal of
creation of the Fund is to promote settlement of the
Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorny Karabakh conflict, as well as help
refugees and IDPs in Azerbaijan. The Fund will allow activation of
Azerbaijanis with great potential, and unification of all efforts in
settlement of the number problem of the country.

The compatriots attending the action spoke of importance of the
structure, stressed necessity of activation in the direction of
comprehensive informing the world community on the true reasons of
the conflict, its historical roots, attempts of the Armenians to
annex the indigenous lands of Azerbaijan, on the facts of
falsification which they use to achieve their goal.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenian National Committee – Eastern United States
PO Box 1066
New York, NY 10040
917 428 1918
718 478 4073
[email protected]

PRESS RELEASE
January 19, 2005
Contact: Doug Geogerian

KENTUCKY DEMOCRAT BEN CHANDLER JOINS ARMENIAN CAUCUS

— Second term Congressman Serves on House
International Relations Committee

NEW YORK, NY — Representative Ben Chandler (D-KY) today became the
newest member of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues,
reported the Armenian National Committee of America Eastern Region
(ANCA ER). Representative Chandler’s entrance into the Caucus
brings its membership to one hundred forty-five.

Congressman Chandler was first elected to the U.S. House in a
special election in February 2004 to replace Rep. Ernie Fletcher,
who left his seat to successfully run for Governor of Kentucky.
Chandler was re-elected to office in November 2004, with 59% of the
vote. Congressman Chandler serves on the Committee on Agriculture,
the Committee on International Relations, and the Select Committee
on Homeland Security.

“We welcome Representative Chandler joining the Armenian Issues
Caucus and look forward to working with the Congressman on a number
of issues of special concern to his Armenian American
constituents,” stated Doug Geogerian, Executive Director of the
ANCA ER. “As a member of the Committee on International Relations,
we look forward to his support on gaining official recognition of
the Armenian Genocide, working to foster stronger U.S.-Armenia
bilateral relations, and obtaining a just settlement for the people
of Nagorno-Karabagh,” said Geogerian.

Founded in 1995, the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues is a
bipartisan forum for the discussion of policies to foster increased
cooperation between the United States and Armenian governments and
to strengthen the enduring bonds between the American and Armenian
peoples. Its two co-chairs are Congressman Joe Knollenberg (R-MI)
and Congressmen Frank Pallone (D-NJ).

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) is the largest
and most influential Armenian American grassroots political
organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices,
chapters, and supporters throughout the United States and
affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCA actively
advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad
range of issues.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Gazette (Montreal)
January 19, 2005 Wednesday
Final Edition

Other ethnic groups funded: Greeks and Armenians benefit from similar
arrangements, prominent Jews say

JEFF HEINRICH, The Gazette

Smarting from charges that their community bought special status for
its school system with payoffs to the Quebec Liberal Party, prominent
Jews yesterday chastised critics and also each other over the way the
affair has been “spun” in the news media.

Jews are not the only ethnic group to get 100-per-cent funding for
secular studies at their privately run schools; Greeks and Armenians
in Quebec also enjoy similar arrangements, and have for many years,
some noted.

It’s also no secret that Jews have long wanted full funding for their
schools – and almost got it a decade ago under another Liberal
government, others said.

“This is not the first time that this has been attempted,” said Barry
Rishikof, a former president of the Quebec Association of Jewish Day
Schools.

It’s also well established that the Jewish community has always been
a strong financial supporter of the Liberals, and raised campaign
cash for Jean Charest at numerous fundraisers before his party’s
election in 2003, others said.

But to imply that the Liberals agreed to better school funding only
after getting cash in their coffers is cynical and naive and feeds
old stereotypes of rich Jews buying their way to political privilege,
they said.

“The criticism is painful, and some of the sentiments implicit to the
criticism are troubling,” said Reuben Poupko, rabbi at Montreal’s
Beth Israel Beth Aaron synagogue.

“Jews exercise their right like all citizens to participate in the
political process through voting and supporting their candidates.
It’s a healthy expression of their involvement.”

Added Jack Jedwab, a past executive director of the Canadian Jewish
Congress in Quebec: “It’s perfectly natural for individuals to raise
issues (with politicians) that they believe to be important to their
constituencies.”

In a terse statement, the philanthropic organization Federation CJA
said it “neither contributes to, nor raises money on behalf of, any
political party.”

Its president, Sylvain Abitbol, did not respond to a request for an
interview.

Some Quebec Jewish leaders yesterday privately expressed exasperation
over how poor salesmanship of the idea of taxpayer-funded Jewish
schools led to the public-relations fiasco it appears to have turned
into.

The Liberals and their Jewish supporters blundered, they said, when
they sold the change from partial to full funding as a way to help
Jewish schools reach out and get involved with non-Jewish schools – a
“rapprochement fig leaf” that didn’t fool anyone, as one put it
yesterday.

Instead, they said, the change should have been touted for what it
really is: simply a way to reward schools that churn out some of the
most productive members of Quebec society.

Little wonder the approach was rejected, however, for that flattering
self-appraisal grates other Quebec ethnic groups who feel left out in
the bargain, including Muslims who don’t benefit from the same
privileged subsidies for some of their schools.

“I support the 100-per-cent funding of the Jewish schools, but the
government should be funding our schools in the same way,” said
Muslim community member Abdul Muttalib, who like many others gives
private donations to the non-subsidized Ecole musulmane de Montreal
private high school.

Allison Lampert of The Gazette contributed to this report

La Padania, Italia
martedì 18 gennaio 2005

Arrivano soldati armeni in missione umanitaria

EREVAN – Un gruppo di 46 militari armeni ha lasciato ieri Erevan per
il Kuwait, da dove proseguirà per una missione a carattere
`umanitario’ in Iraq, sotto il comando del contingente polacco. «E’
un giorno molto importante per le forze armate armene. Non possiamo
restare fuori dal processo internazionale per stabilità e pace nella
nostra regione», ha detto il ministro Serge Sarkissian. Il parlamento
aveva approvato a fine dicembre la decisione del governo di inviare
per la prima volta dei militari, non combattenti, in Iraq, anche se
l’opposizione e le organizzazioni della gioventù armena hanno
protestato, preoccupati che la diaspora armena in Iraq, circa 20.000
persone, venga esposta a vendette della guerriglia.

Prospect
January 20, 2005

Opinions: Truth aid

by Sebastian Mallaby

In the first days of January, George W Bush summoned his father (the
ex-president), his brother (the future president?), and even Bill
Clinton (the ex-president and maybe the future ex of a president),
directing them all to assist revving up America’s response to Asia’s
tsunami. Seldom has so much star power been so superfluous. Even
before the stars were activated, a spontaneous emotional earthquake
had occurred somewhere deep within the western psyche, and a tsunami
of money had begun rolling towards the Indian ocean. By 3rd January,
one week after the disaster, private US donations amounted to over
£87m; Britons had given £100m; Germans had come through with £107m.
On 6th January, the New York Daily News, a gossipy tabloid not known
for its interest in global poverty, plastered the number $ 103,474
across its front page-the amount the paper’s own appeal had raised in
a 24-hour period.

Why this incredible response? There has been much talk of Christmas
spirit, and of westerners’ ability to identify with a tragedy that
killed western beachgoers. But there was something deeper at work
here, and something quite ironic too. For the generosity reflected
the unspoken feeling that this crisis stood apart from other crises
in poor countries. The tsunami was unlike Aids, which seems to spread
relentlessly because developing country leaders won’t challenge
sexual taboo and social prejudice. The tsunami was unlike the
murderous wars in Sudan or Congo, for which the blame can be laid
even more clearly at the feet of local leaders. The tsunami was not
even like the general problem of global poverty, which most people
reasonably believe is tied up with corruption and bad policies,
making it at least partly impervious to western assistance. Instead,
the tsunami was a simple act of nature. It bubbled up from the sea,
and laid waste to half a dozen countries; it had nothing to do with
human greed or cowardice or corruption. And so westerners responded
generously, confident that an uncomplicated, unpolitical disaster
could be swiftly remedied with charity.

This was a return to a simple vision of disasters, one that has been
mostly absent since the first postcolonial relief effort in Biafra in
the late 1960s. Bob Geldof conjured the same vision in Ethiopia
briefly in the 1980s: the simple images of starving children swept
away the complicating political context, and the money flooded in.

But for the most part, the political view has dominated. Ethiopia’s
famine is now understood as a consequence of the Mengistu
dictatorship’s crazy agrarian collectivism, and disaster relief is
understood to have prolonged its grip on the country. Floods in
Bangladesh are viewed not only as natural disasters but as the
consequence of reckless logging; Caribbean hurricanes are understood
to cause more damage than they should because governments refuse to
prepare for them. Of course, these understandings kill the charitable
impulse. You would not give to a beggar if you think he has chosen to
be homeless, still less if you suspect your money will subsidise his
choice.

If the public view of disasters has grown weary and worldly, disaster
relief professionals have travelled even farther down this road.
Interviewing the veterans at American relief agencies in the
aftermath of the tsunami, I heard anguish as well as delight at the
outpouring of generosity: had people taken leave of their (political)
senses? And how would they react to the discovery that translating
their gifts into humanitarian progress is very hard? However touching
this moment of innocent giving, successful emergency efforts are
almost as much about fending off untutored charitable impulses as
about raising charitable money; relief workers have learned to
install incinerators at warehouses to dispose of unhelpful donations.
Julia Taft, a veteran of USAid and of the UN development programme,
told me how after the Armenian earthquake of 1988, the Armenian
diaspora in America was asked not to send anything initially. Relief
professionals feared that mountains of stale food and unwanted cuddly
toys would clog the distribution system. The instruction worked:
Armenians in the US waited, listened, and then gave just what was
wanted.

Moreover, there has probably never been a time when the public’s
open-walleted innocence could have been more awkward than now. For
the disaster-relief profession has evolved more or less in parallel
with its first cousin, the development business-many leading players,
from Oxfam to the World Bank to governmental aid agencies, are
involved in both disasters and development-and each of these
professions has grown wiser and humbler. They have come to an
understanding of what they cannot do as well as what they can. This
is why the prospect of millions of bright-eyed first-time
givers-supporters who donate dramatically in the expectation of
dramatic field successes-produces mixed emotions.

The path to humility for the development business began in the 1950s,
when development thinkers believed that capital would trigger
economic take-off in the ex-colonies. When capital transfers failed
to unlock progress, development agencies experimented with other
types of transfer. From the 1960s, they began to provide not just
physical capital (dams, roads, water systems) but human capital
(health, education). When that did not work as well as hoped, the
development people went after the next apparent bottleneck: they
spent the 1980s and early 1990s attaching ever more policy conditions
to their loans. But by the late 1990s, a new consensus was emerging.
Developing countries’ policies were indeed crucial, but aid
conditionality was too weak an instrument to affect them; Pakistan
signed 22 loan agreements between 1970 and 1997 promising to cut its
budget deficit, and failed to do any cutting throughout the period.
So the new development consensus acknowledged development aid’s
limited influence. Poor countries themselves were now said to be “in
the driving seat.” Development agencies focused on identifying the
best performers and concentrating money on them so as to accelerate
their progress.

The disaster relief business has followed a similar trajectory. In
the early days, charities responded with supplies, almost any
supplies: food, blankets, tents, medicines. Then, in the 1970s, they
began to reflect on the consequences: aid in kind could destroy local
merchants who supplied the same commodities, and who would be needed
to keep life going long after the aid agencies pulled out. Pretty
soon, this insight about the dangers of displacing local systems was
applied more broadly. Feeding camps, regarded by most agencies as a
logistical necessity, came to be seen as dangerous: they lured people
off their land and away from what little food there might be left to
harvest; they crowded people into unsanitary settlements where they
easily fell prey to cholera; they delayed a return to normal
subsistence agriculture when the rains returned. In Ethiopia in the
1980s, the US branch of Save the Children broke new ground when it
refused to work through feeding camps, investing in donkey trains to
bring food to remote villages.

Like the development business, however, the disaster business has
come to defer ever more devoutly to the role of locals. This is
partly because the long slog of post-disaster reconstruction depends
on local management. Last year a World Bank study of Hurricane Mitch
reconstruction in Honduras emphasised this point. Since the Honduran
economy is beset by overdependence on coffee, chaotic urban planning,
large debts and mistrusted rulers, it has been almost impossible for
donor-assisted reconstruction efforts to pay off. But the deference
to locals also holds for the immediate aftermath of a disaster. When
the hurricane or earthquake hits, it is local organisations that will
be there, and locals who will mount the first effort. It will be days
before foreigners jet in, and even then they will rely on local staff
to learn the ropes.

And so, to borrow the development jargon, locals are in the driving
seat. When I asked an old hand at Care, a leading American relief
charity, what struck her about the reports from the tsunami region,
she told me she had heard journalists complaining about the absence
of foreign relief staff-an absence she regarded as a hopeful sign,
given the unintended consequences of heavy-handed foreign charity.
When I called Michael Wiest, the chief operating officer at Catholic
Relief Services, he launched into a speech about his relationships
with foreign partners. In India, Catholic Relief has long-standing
relationships with local charities, and it quickly underwrote their
procurement of relief supplies. In Aceh, by contrast, a lack of local
counterparts was forcing it to fly in foreigners as a second-best
option. Even in Aceh, Wiest was pleased to have discovered a local
Jesuit with a relief operation that could benefit from extra cash.

The last thing any relief agency wants to do these days is to arrive,
as Wiest puts it, “like a triumphant invading army.” And yet a
triumphant army-or, more precisely, navy-has been one of the dominant
television images of the tsunami coverage: US naval helicopters have
been buzzing the remote portions of northern Sumatra, air-dropping
supplies to desperate villagers. It seems likely that this image of
brave western charity has fuelled the extraordinary giving: it has
made the fruits of generosity appear certain and tangible, brushing
away the normal doubts about aid’s effectiveness. But the helicopter
image is misleading. When relief agencies figure out a way to spend
the tsunami millions, they will do so through Indonesians and Indians
and Sri Lankans, and the results will depend on the competence of
these partners.

Bit by bit, the true nature of the relief effort will become
apparent. The tsunami region is not some sort of film set for heroic
western masters of disaster. Rather, it is what it always was before
the crisis: a collection of prickly, independent nations muddling
their way towards prosperity. India has a tendency to put its
national pride before its people’s welfare, which is why it refused
western assistance that could have saved lives on the remote Andaman
islands; Sri Lanka and Indonesia each face insurgencies, which were
brutal before the tsunami and will doubtless be brutal again now.
Western money will flow into these bubbling, imperfect societies and
some of it will be wasted, lost or stolen, and it will not usually be
possible to know exactly how or why. When this is generally realised,
the outpouring of western generosity will face its true test. Is it
premised on the illusion that the relief business is easy? Or can we
permit ourselves to hope that it is more durable than that?

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
January 19, 2005, Wednesday

THE COLLEGIUM OF THE ARMENIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY HELD A MEETING IN
YEREVAN

The Armenian Defense Ministry held the final collegium in Yerevan.
Colonel Seiran Shakhsuvaryan, press secretary of the Armenian defense
ministry, stated that the collegium concerned the army’s mobilization
and combat readiness in 2004, and the results of combat training. The
Armenian defense minister set up prior tasks for 2005. He noted that
every commander and officer is responsible for strengthening combat
readiness and establishing law and order in the Army.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Moscow News (Russia)
January 19, 2005

FEAR AND LOATHING IN MOSCOW

By Anna Arutunyan The Moscow News

UNPOLITICALLY INCORRECT

There seems to be a myth circulating around Moscow’s service sector
that goes something to the effect of “raising your voice won’t make
me do my job any faster.”

I’m sorry to betray the ideals of good cheer and love for all mankind
so soon after Christmas, but try commuting in a crowded Moscow subway
in a fur coat when a thaw has taken hold outside and turned all those
magical snowflakes into dark brown liquid goo. That’s when you start
to wonder: are Russians really rude, or is it just living in a
gigantic, sprawling megalopolis like Moscow, with a population
topping 11 million, that magically inserts a broomstick into the
posterior?

Russian rudeness, or russkoye khamstvo, has taken on the proportions
of a national attribute. Russian emigrants returning home recall it
with a masochistic nostalgia, and wax euphoric upon being cussed out
at the local cheburek stand for the first time in years.

And take that telling instance from the much-loved bastion of
national stereotypes, Mimino, a 1970’s film about a warm-hearted
Georgian pilot trying his luck in cold-blooded Moscow. After being
stood-up twice by a would-be girlfriend just for sport, losing all
his money and even landing in prison, our Caucasus highlander still
tries to retain his sense of human decency, leaving his last kopecks
for a tip to the waiter at the airport.

“I don’t need your change,” she tells him off curtly.

There seems to be an unspoken rule in Moscow: don’t try to be nice to
people it signals that you’re trying to be better than they are. An
acquaintance of mine once helped out a store-clerk by picking up a
bunch of cans. The clerk, apparently shoc-ked by such unusual
behavior, muttered a forced “thank-you”… and demonstratively
ignored the customer afterwards. You know that bored look: eyes
rolled up contemplating her excessive mascara…

Maybe there’s some truth to the stereotype after all. I haven’t heard
a lot of foreigners complaining about Russian rudeness, but Russian
emigrants seem to flaunt the words russkoye khamstvo along with the
disclaimer: “you try living in such harsh conditions for a while, see
if that doesn’t turn you into an animal.”

Apart from rudeness, there’s also a self-perpetuating cliche about
how hard it is to live in Russia, hence the khamstvo. If Russians
suddenly start being nice to everyone, that would mean that their
living conditions have improved. So to show everyone and themselves
how excruciatingly difficult their lives are, Russians are rude.

Granted, that’s a pretty racist generalization. But, considering my
own mix of Russian and Armenian blood, I’ll take this a step further.

You see, over the holidays I visited Armenia. Besides communism, this
tiny, landlocked, mountainous rock (something God dug out of his
pockets at the last minute, the Armenians say), has survived raids by
Tartars, Mongolians, and Turks, being conquered by Byzantines, and
Persians. and a genocide. Today, take a drive out of capital Yerevan,
and you’re steeped in dire poverty. Some people still live without
electricity. There’s no central heating. Ever.

That’s pretty harsh.

But that didn’t stop a cheery postal worker (I’m not making this up),
who was busy being flooded by a burst pipe from the second floor,
from wishing us a happy holiday and selling us two stamps one minute
after closing time.

What does it take to get a Moscow bank clerk complaining of buggy
computers as though it’s your own fault to make a withdrawal during
office hours? Try raising your voice. Despite what the clerk tells
you, the raised voice seems to have a mysterious medicinal effect on
the computer system.

But on a kinder, gentler note, where else can you yell at a clerk and
then both laugh about it a minute later?MN