-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.larouchepub.com/lar_olympus_2537.html On the role of U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, see Jonathan Broder, "Who Lost Russia?" in Salon magazine, Sept. 1, 1998. Through his father, former Senator Al Gore, and his father's sponsor, triply "designated personality" Armand (e.g., named as "Arm-and-Hammer," as in baking soda, or Socialist Labor Party) Hammer, Gore has close connections to the creation of Russia's present financier oligarchy. Hammer, long a triple agent of the U.S.A., the British monarchy, and the Soviet apparatus, was a key connection to the faction of the late Yuri Andropov and Andropov's Hammer-linked prot�g�, Mikhail Gorbachev. The source featured by Salon, is Stephen Cohen, a specialist on the subject of one-time Soviet dictator N. Bukharin. Cohen et al., recognize that Gore's current Russia policies are a continuation of former President George Bush's; Cohen makes implicitly clear that he sees the onrushing doom of Chernomyrdin's policies as an echo of the downfall of the Soviet NEP, dictator Bukharin, and Bukharin's leading U.S. agent, Jay Lovestone, at the close of the 1930s. ======== from: http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1998/09/01newsa.html Who Lost Russia? - BY JONATHAN BRODER <snip> No one in Washington has yet publicly raised the question of who lost Russia, but scholars and experts who follow Russia for a living accept with a sort of weary resignation that such a debate is now inevitable and could claim victims in the administration. If it comes to that, some of these scholars say, the first to wear a scarlet "R" on his forehead will be Vice President Al Gore, the administration's most outspoken proponent of the reforms that have decimated the Russian economy and fomented the current political crisis. "The front guy in the administration is Gore," Cohen said in an interview with Salon, noting the vice president co-chairs the U.S.-Russia commission on reform with now-acting Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. "That's been his baby. Of course you can't find him now. He's hiding. This will hurt him in the presidential primaries when Democratic challengers say this policy was Gore's and he'll have to take responsibility." Other scholars reject the question itself. "Russia was never ours to lose," says Marshall Goldman, a Russian specialist at Harvard University. "It's the Russians who lost Russia. We worked on the margins. We gave them advice. But we didn't force them to adopt it. We always do this, torture ourselves about who lost Russia, who lost China. It's a mistake." Cohen says Russia probably will have to return to some form of state-controlled economy to weather the current crisis. During the Great Depression, he notes, President Franklin Roosevelt used the government to put Americans back to work, and it is not unreasonable for Russia to do the same. The problem today arises, he says, when these practical solutions run up against the "monetarist orthodoxy" that has become the ideological fashion of the times. "The danger is that the United States will start screaming, 'Communism! communism!'" Cohen says. "That kind of a debate will be completely dysfunctional. We have to open our mind and say to the Russians, 'OK, the policy that we recommended to you failed. Let us hear what you propose. We'll try to help you. We will not scream that this is a return to communism because we realize that the Russian state has got to reenter the world economy. It's got to come back from this crisis and stabilize things." But even as Cohen and other scholars warn against the dangers of an ideological debate over Russia, they cannot resist some finger-pointing themselves. The story of America's current involvement with Russia, they note, goes back to the Bush administration, which formulated the policies when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. In the wake of that historic moment, then-Secretary of State James Baker toured the former Soviet republics and got the leaders of those countries to sign onto a 14-point "bill of rights" that allowed them to qualify for American assistance. But American aid back then was counter-productive, says Barry Ickes, a Russian expert at Penn State. "It consisted of subsidies for imported food, which Russia didn't need," he says. "At that point, a ruble stabilization fund would have helped. But that would have had to have been combined with policies that closed down money-losing industries. And that simply didn't happen." While American champions of Russian reform like Harvard's Jeffrey Sachs argued strenuously for greater loans from the International Monetary Fund for ruble stabilization, experts like Goldman argued against it. "They couldn't have absorbed it," he said, reflecting on conditions in Russia back then. "They didn't have the institutions. There would have been even more capital flight." Joining Goldman were scholars like Cohen and Peter Reddaway at George Washington University, who warned against a cookie-cutter approach to transforming Russia's old command economy into a free-market system. In response to those who sought to pattern Russia's transformation after the Polish model, they warned that what worked for Poland would not necessarily work for Russia. "Poland's market system had been dormant and simply needed to be awakened," Goldman says. "Russia's market system had been decimated and you couldn't reawaken it with a prince's kiss." After Clinton took office in 1993, the Democratic administration launched a "missionary crusade to transform Russia into a copy of American's economy and junior partner in world affairs," Cohen says. While the administration waved fistfuls of money at Moscow and expressed its unqualified support for Yeltsin, the main industrial pillars of the Russian economy were being taken over by a small group of oligarchs, who managed to evade paying any taxes. As inflation soared and the lot of the ordinary Russian worsened, the only advice that the Clinton administration could provide the Russians was to "stay the course on reforms," Cohen says. "Why is the creation of a bunch of monopolies and corrupt bankers reform?" Cohen asks. "In America, reform was when we brought those types of people under control. "Every time Clinton and Gore say, 'Stay the course' to Russia, it provokes more anti-Americanism," he adds. "These policies have completely de-modernized Russia. Russia is full of more anti-Americanism now than I've ever seen in my life, and I've been in this business for 30 years." For Cohen and other scholars, the main question now is whether Clinton will use his visit with Yeltsin to deliver a message of "compassion and understanding" to the Russians. "It's an interesting moment," Cohen says. "Can we, America, be undogmatic? Can we revisit facts, revisit old ideas, be compassionate, not start screaming, 'The communists are back, the anti-reformers are running things?'" Even if Clinton delivers such a message, the other question is whether anyone in Russia will hear him. Last week, even when it appeared that the Russian parliament would accept Chernomyrdin as prime minister in exchange for a softening of economic reforms, a number of respected foreign policy hands called on Clinton to postpone his visit until the political situation in Russia clarified. Now, with the parliament's rejection of Chernomyrdin's appointment, Clinton's visit has been stripped of an operating government. To make matters worse, parliamentarians will be on vacation during Clinton's trip. "Last week, there didn't seem any point in going. Now, it makes no sense at all," says Ickes, who rejects the administration's explanation that Clinton is going in order to show support for Yeltsin at his time of need. "That's a ridiculous argument," Ickes says. "Yeltsin's weakness doesn't come from a lack of Western support. The forces arrayed against Yeltsin are anti-Western, anti-American, anti-IMF, who accuse Yeltsin of being a puppet of the West. So Clinton's visit isn't going to help Yeltsin. On substantive issues, there's not much Clinton can accomplish. The administration already has said they're not bringing any more money. So the question then becomes: What's the point?" The point, answers Goldman, is that a last-minute cancellation would have aggravated an already serious crisis. "If he doesn't go, it would be worse," Goldman says. "Then it's a vote of no-confidence. The Russians need to be encouraged to face up to their problems. The days when Clinton could come over and say, 'Do it this way' are over. But he can say, 'Come on, let's get together. It's important that the country pull itself together in this time of crisis.'" SALON | Sept. 1, 1998 DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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