Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [225]
Zyazikov, Murat: President of Ingushetia, a republic that borders and has close ethnic links with Chechnya. A member of the KGB in the 1980s, he was elected President (with heavy FSB involvement) in 2004.
Organizations:
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS): established in 1991 and loosely binding all the former republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics except for Georgia and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Duma: the Russian Parliament, which, under the Yeltsin Constitution, replaced the Supreme Soviet in 1993. Consists of 450 elected Deputies.
FSB (Federal Security Bureau): the present domestic state-security organization; successor to the Federal Counter-Espionage Service.
KGB (Committee of State Security): the Soviet secret police, replaced in 1991 by the Federal Counter-Espionage Service after its involvement in the attempted anti-Gorbachev coup.
Liberal Democrats: the first opposition party to be registered, in 1989, after the breaking of the Communist Party’s monopoly. A confusingly named, vociferous nationalist party led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, believed to have been subsidised by Yeltsin to draw support from the Communist Party.
OMON (Special Operations Unit of the Militia): first established in 1979 to protect the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow from terrorist attack. Subsequently used as riot police, a unit is to be found in every territory of the Russian Federation.
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE): the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization which called in 1999 for a political settlement in Chechnya and was henceforth regarded with increasing suspicion by Russia.
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE): the oldest international parliamentary assembly, composed of democratically elected members and established on the basis of an intergovernmental treaty, its recommendations on human rights issues in particular carry weight in Europe.
Russian Federation: successor state, from 1991, to the USSR, but does not include the USSR’s autonomous republics.
Union of Right Forces: liberal party formed in 1999 from a number of small parties dedicated to introducing free-market reforms and sharply critical of Putin’s curtailment of democratic freedoms. Officially polled 4 per cent in the 2003 parliamentary elections, depriving it of Duma representation, which requires 5 per cent support, prompting widespread suspicion of electoral fraud by the Kremlin.
United Russia: party created in 2001 by the Kremlin to support Vladimir Putin; holds a constitutional majority in the Duma.
Yabloko: liberal party set up in 1995 in reaction to infighting within the democratic camp; speaks out against infringements of freedom of the press and of democratic political practices, supports Russia’s ultimate integration into the European Union, opposes the war in Chechnya and has called for the removal of Putin’s regime by “constitutional means.”
Others:
Chechnya: situated in the eastern part of the North Caucasus and predominantly Sunni Muslim. Most of its economic potential has been destroyed in the two Chechen wars, together with huge loss of combatant and civilian life. According to the Russian Government, more than US $2 billion have been spent on reconstruction since 2000, though the Russian economic monitoring agency considers that no more than US $350 million were spent as intended.
Dagestan: located in the southernmost part of Russia, in the North Caucasus mountains. Ethnically very diverse.
Georgia: the first republic to declare its independence from Russia, shortly before the collapse of the USSR. Separatist problems with Abkhazia and South Ossetia in particular are fomented by Russia. Rich in natural resources, attractive to tourists and famed for its wine-making, Georgia is combating corruption, which holds back the economy.
Ingushetia: comprises mainly Sunni Muslims of various Sufi orders. It has many refugees