LINKS TO MOSCOW BOOST NIZHNIY NOVGOROD

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 001828 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/26/2018 TAGS: PGOV SOCI KDEM PINR RS SUBJECT: LINKS TO MOSCOW BOOST NIZHNIY NOVGOROD REF: 06 MOSCOW 13071 Classified By: Political Officer Bob Patterson. Reasons: 1.4 (b,d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Conversations with members of the regional government, journalists, NGO representatives, party members, and academics during a June 23 - 24 visit to Nizhniy Novgorod suggested that the city's economic fortunes were generally improving under Governor Valeriy Shantsev. Most observers acknowledged that Shantsev, a former Moscow Deputy Mayor, had succeeded in luring Moscow-based businessmen to Nizhniy Novgorod since his appointment in August 2005. The arrival of Muscovites had given the local economy a shot in the arm, but created resentment among those Nizhniy Novgorod businessmen who had been forced to relax their stranglehold on the city's economy. High-profile incidents, such as a crackdown on Other Russia-related elements in the last year, have gone hand-in-hand with a growing willingness, on the part of some in power, to work with some of their harshest critics. Local Yabloko representatives, freshly returned from the June 21 - 22 Congress in Moscow region, ironically likened party Chairman Yavlinskiy's decision to cede office to "clone," Sergey Mitrokhin, to Putin's decision to step aside in favor of Medvedev. Some interlocutors worried that the increasingly close economic links between Moscow and Nizhniy Novgorod, and the ever-larger number of Nizhgorodians working in Moscow, would inevitably turn their city into a satellite of the national capital. Promises by Shantsev to reduce the travel time between the cities from its current four to three hours and, eventually, to one and one-half, seemed to give substance to their fears. End summary. Governor Brings Moscow Ways to Nizhniy Novgorod -------------- ¶2. (C) Conversations during a June 23 - 24 visit to Nizhniy Novgorod suggested that Governor Valeriy Shantsev had used connections to Moscow, cultivated during his years as Deputy Mayor there, to lobby effectively for investment in Nizhniy Novgorod. Regional Union of Journalists Deputy Chairwoman Irina Panchenko joined political scientist Andrey Makarychev and others in confirming that Shantsev's years in power had seen a construction boom in the city, and walks around the fringes of the city center revealed much new high-rise housing and many new malls. The Moscow "invasion" had occurred at the expense of local businessmen who were, according to Makarychev, resentful of the big city interlopers. One by-product of the building boom, according to Stanislav Dmitrievskiy of the Tolerance Support Foundation, had been the disappearance of a significant number of "protected" buildings. Others also worried that the character of the city was threatened by the unbridled development. ¶3. (C) Shantsev's big city ways had reportedly pushed Mayor Vadim Bulavinov into the shadows. Bulavinov, who was elected Mayor in September 2002 after a stint in the State Duma, then re-elected in October 2005 had, before Shantsev's appearance, succeeded in protecting the interests of home-grown businessmen. Bulavinov's near total eclipse had only strengthened the impression that Nizhniy Novgorod was the object of a hostile takeover engineered in Moscow. Panchenko, while acknowledging that Shantsev had brought a number of Muscovites into his regional government and minimized the role of the Federal Assembly in regional politics, contended that the Governor was interested above all in recruiting capable people, regardless of provenance. She noted that Deputy Governor for Social-Economic Planning, Budgetary Relations and Investment Policy Vladimir Ivanov hailed from the regional city of Bor, which had been praised frequently for its excellent investment climate. The Deputy Governor for Social Policy Gennadiy Suvorov, similarly, had been plucked from his job as Vice President of the Gorkiy Automobile Factory (GAZ). Even local Yabloko Chairman Vyacheslav Tarakanov, after a glum recounting of the previous weekend's party congress, admitted that "Shantsov pries money (out of Moscow),and the city is improving." Tarakanov described Bulavinov as a "non-entity;" completely outclassed by Shantsev. SPS, Yabloko Sidelined -------------- ¶4. (C) Shantsev's prominence and the city's improving economic fortunes had the city's other politic parties on the ropes. Tarakanov and others noted that the city had been an SPS stronghold, thanks to the relatively successful tenure of Governor Boris Nemtsov, who had opened the formerly closed city of Gorkiy to the outside world and had introduced innovations, such as open competition for government jobs. The most recent SPS Chairman, the charismatic Aleksey Likhachyov, had been inveigled into United Russia. Former Nemtsov confederate Aleksandr Kotyusov had been rumored to be toying with the idea of becoming Chairman of the SPS regional organization, but his business interests: he is the owner of the company "Pir" which runs two restaurant chains in Nizhniy Novgorod, had made him too vulnerable. According to Makarychev, Kotyusov had in the end decided to stay out of politics. ¶5. (C) Tarakanov thought that Yabloko was poorly positioned to replace SPS. With little access to the regional media, all of the regional membership in United Russia, and Yabloko's internal struggle on-going, he saw little future for his party. Tarakanov laid part of the blame at the feet of Yavlinskiy who, he noted bitterly, had not visited Nizhniy Novgorod once in the last eight years. Many of the regional Yabloko leaders had extracted a promise from Mitrokhin at the June 21 - 22 congress that he would do more grassroots work in the regions beginning in the fall. "The problem," confessed Tarakanov, "is that Mitrokhin might be more active, but he lacks charisma, while Yavlinskiy is charismatic, but he has no energy." Incremental Improvement in Government Behavior -------------- ¶6. (C) Against the background of the region's largely inert political parties, two local NGOs appeared to be having some success in their efforts to reform the behavior of the Russian government. The "Committee Against Torture," in addition to two high-profile victories in the European Court of Human Rights had, according to Chairman Igor Kalyapan, also won an impressive 60 percent of the cases it had brought against Russian law enforcement in the local courts. More importantly, there were signs that frequent reversals in the courts were forcing law enforcement to examine its behavior. Among the positive developments cited by Kalyapan was the assignment to Nizhniy Novgorod of a "very accomplished" regional court chairman, Boris Konevskiy. Under Konevskiy's leadership, each of his judges had been supplied with a handbook that summarized the international conventions to which Russia was a signatory. Each judge had also been given a primer on the European Court of Human Rights. Kalyapan noted with pride Konevskiy's habit of returning, unopened, letters from regional Ombudsman Vasiliy Olnev that included well-meaning commentary on cases within his court's jurisdiction. Olnev had complained in the press that Konevskiy had refused to read Olnev's letters because he saw them, rightly in the view of Kalyapan, as an attempt to influence the outcome of cases. ¶7. (C) Kalyapan also argued that "in the last few years the local legal culture had improved." Decisions, he said, now occasionally included reference to international conventions and opinions. Judges were gradually becoming more sophisticated. "How can we complain of the absence of an impartial judiciary if we win sixty percent of our cases?" Kalyapan asked. He noted as well that his assistant, Olga Sadovskaya had been invited to teach classes on international law to employees of the Prosecutor's Office. Sadovskaya herself predicted to us that the sheer number of cases now in the pipeline at the European Court of Human Rights would in a few years produce an avalanche of negative judgments that would force the GOR to re-examine its practices, as had Turkey before it. ¶8. (C) Kalyapan and Sadovskaya noted that these positive developments had been partially offset by the refusal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to convene its Public Chamber since its second meeting on March 3, 2007. Kalyapan, who was a Chamber member, suspected that the Ministry was unhappy with criticism leveled during the previous meetings. Also, after years of testy cooperation, the prison administration seemed to be avoiding meetings with representatives of the Committee Against Torture." Kalyapan thought that might be traceable to his Committee's decision to observe the two "marches of dissent" staged earlier in the year by Garry Kasparov's Other Russia. Kalyapan was pursuing legal action against special forces troops because of their behavior during the first of the two attempted marches. He had also taken the cases of two members of the National Bolshevik Party under his wing. He suspected that his affiliation, however tentative, with "Other Russia" and the March of Dissent," might have been perceived by the authorities as an endorsement of street politics after years of attempting to work constructively with the authorities. NGO Law Not As Burdensome As NGO Whining About Law -------------- ¶9. (C) Sadovskaya dismissed the alleged additional burdens of the amended NGO law as "insignificant." Many of the NGOs who claim the law imposes "inhumane reporting requirements" are simply disorganized, she said. Sadovskaya claimed that compliance required that the Committee Against Torture spend only two workdays to assemble the necessary paperwork for the annual reports. A recent, planned inspection of the "Committee's" offices had gone smoothly, and had resulted in only one minor administrative problem. ¶10. (C) The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers Chairwoman Natalya Zhukova was also guardedly upbeat about prospects for change. Although the "inertia is enormous," she thought that a genuine awareness of the need to improve the treatment of soldiers was beginning to appear, "but we have a long way to go." As damaging as a general disregard for the lives of the young soldiers was endemic corruption in the Ministry of Defense, which drove continuing shortages in housing for officers and set the tone for too much that happened in the military. As interesting as Zhukova's dogged determination to continue her efforts to reform the military's treatment of its recruits and its officers, was her lack of patience for street politics and its advocates. The appearance of Stanislav Dmitrievskiy, formerly of the Russian - Chechen Friendship Society at the door of her office for a scheduled meeting with us prQced a heated exchange. Zhukova accused Dmitrievskiy and "the Kasparovs of this world" of needlessly endangering naive Nizhgorodians by seeking confrontation with the authorities. The correct path, Zhukova said, was to use the levers already present to induce change, step-by-step, and to set concrete goals. Slowing the process of change, she thought, was the continued unwillingness of Russians to get involved unless their interests were directly affected. "Once their children no longer have to worry about the draft, the parents stop contacting us," she lamented. "Only sustained pressure brings change." RUSSELL