Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda
Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2001

In January 1996 one of the authors published a book, The Growth of China and Prospects for the Eastern Regions of the Former USSR (New York: Edwin Mellen Press), based on his travels in Russia's Trans-Baikal zone and Far East and Northeast China in 1989-93 as well as materials assembled in 1994-95.

In this book, the author described the processes of China's establishment of control over the neighboring regions of Russia – from Vladivostok to Chita and the Buryat Republic – as well as over the Central Asian republics. Many predictions of this book came to be true in 1996-2001, although some current events are beyond the author's predictions.

In particular, recent events in the Sakha-Yakutia Republic belong to a nightmarish reality.

This republic, in the Russian Far East (RFE), stretches for about 2,000 km from north to south and from west to east, and occupies over 3 million square km. Its population is about 1 million – mostly Yakuts, speaking a Turkic language.

Cold Yakutia is fabulously rich with gold, diamonds, natural gas and timber (about 15 percent of the entire world's reserves!). The North Polar Ocean forms the northern border of this republic, while in the south a 200-km-wide section of Russia's Amur Region separates the republic from China's Heilongjiang Province.

Not surprisingly, resources-poor China is extremely interested in Yakutia.

The first Chinese business groups visited Yakutia in 1990. In 1996-97, at the very beginning of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership, then Russian President Boris Yeltsin awarded to the Chinese the rights to purchase small uncut diamonds in Yakutia.

In spring 1998, Moscow media published the first reports of Chinese settlements in Yakutsk (the republic's capital) and other towns of Yakutia. By this time, Yakutia had several thousand Chinese, including hundreds of "wanderer-traders" with large sacks of cloth, footwear and dry food on their backs.

Russian Default

Russia's August 1998 default was a real blessing for China: Prices for Western consumer goods skyrocketed and became unaffordable for the unhappy people of the RFE and Siberia. This consumer-goods vacuum was instantly filled by Chinese products – resulting in China's economic and consequently geopolitical control over most of the RFE and Eastern Siberia.

But this scheme failed in Yakutia, though Chinese influence here was increasing. The reason? The republic's president, Mikhail Nikolayev – a strong and experienced leader – definitely did not want his republic to be swallowed up by China.

In 1991-92, Nikolayev managed to tear away from then-weak Moscow many concessions to income sharing and taxes from Yakutia's diamond industry (the local economy's backbone), gold mining and other industries.

By the late 1990s, all the regions surrounding Yakutia had been devastated, as a result of Moscow's blood-sucking policy toward the Russian periphery, especially the RFE. In Chukotka Region (separated from Alaska by the Bering Strait), the population fell by over 50 percent, and in Magadan region (bordering the Sea of Okhotsk) by over 40 percent.

Moscow's plans – like China's – failed in Yakutia, whose population fell by only 5 percent. President Nikolayev managed to amass substantial funds and used them to develop the local economy and provide for the public welfare. Moreover, Nikolayev did his best to establish wide-ranging economic and political ties with Tokyo and Washington.

Japanese companies by 1995 had compiled a detailed project for the development of Yakutia's natural gas basins and construction of a gas pipeline to Japan, via the Sea of Okhotsk and Sakhalin Island. This was a good project, but it was terminated in 1996 because of Moscow's interference.

Simultaneously, Moscow tried to take back all the economic-financial privileges earlier provided to Yakutia. The real war – somewhat like that in Chechnya, but without firearms – between Moscow and Yakutsk took place in 1996-97. Moscow didn't make many gains and had to retreat while gnashing its teeth.

That's how Yakutia managed to survive the Russian default in August 1998 and the terrible months after that without tremendous losses.

Putin's Plans

In 1999-2001, the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin destroyed Chechnya and brought most of Russia's regions back under Moscow's "iron rule." In mid-2001 Yakutia's turn came.

Presidential elections are scheduled for Yakutia on Dec. 23, 2001, and Moscow has been trying to use all means available, including illegal ones, to replace President Nikolayev with some obedient puppet.

On Nov. 27, the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta published an article summarizing recent developments in Yakutia and surrounding areas.

The article stated that Pavel Borodin, a Kremlin insider and state secretary of Russian-Belarus Unity, is returning to Yakutsk, where he began his career, to become the new chief of the ALROSA Corp., jointly owned by Yakutsk and Moscow and concentrating all of the republic's diamond industry. ALROSA, in fact, provides about 70 percent of the revenues for the republic's budget.

Borodin would get this position, however, only if Moscow's candidate, Deputy General Prosecutor of Russia Vasily Kolmogorov, is elected president.

Person #3 in Yakutia, after the president and ALROSA chief, is the republic's representative in the Russian Federation Council. If Kolmogorov wins, this position would be occupied by Sergei Pugachev, president of Mezhprombank Bank, known to have close ties to the Kremlin and to Borodin. This "future Yakutian ruling team" is united by a strong desire to grasp power in the republic and to redistribute republican property in its own interests, the article states.

Yes, "Pal Palych" Borodin, twice mentioned in earlier articles by the authors, has become the Kremlin's main workhorse in the struggle for Yakutia, its properties and its resources. If the Kolmogorov-Borodin-Pugachev team is elected, the Kremlin and the Kremlin-backed Moscow oligarchs will have won a great victory.

Pugachev finances Kolmogorov's election campaign, Borodin pulls the strings in Moscow and Yakutsk, Izvestiya and other pro-Kremlin media criticize Yakutia's present system as "totalitarian." The Russian General Prosecutor's Office and Constitutional Court are looking for any possible pretext to undermine Nikolayev's election campaign or even to terminate it.

Russia's usual "democratic election system" is in full swing.

Doubtless, in case of a Kolmogorov win, Kremlin insiders would rake in several billion dollars – and Yakutia, very probably, would follow the sad fate of Magadan and Chukotka.

Some of the local people in Yakutia understand this. As stressed in another late-November article in Nezavisimaya gazeta, the Yakutian intelligentsia is against this looting of their republic. This article added that Moscow officials, "secretly deciding the fate of all Yakutians," are using all available tools to take control of the ALROSA Corp. away from Yakutia and to loot local coal, oil, natural gas, timber and gold enterprises.

China's Gains

And what about China's reaction to these events? Beijing-based China Daily (Business Weekly) in its mid-September issue published a semi-humorous map: A giant trailer filled with TVs, refrigerators, washing machines and other Chinese goods is connected by a "consumer goods delivery pipeline" to the Kremlin. Meanwhile, another pipeline, running from Yakutsk, supplies the Chinese trailer's engine with oil and gas.

The attached article explained that Moscow and Beijing had agreed to lay an oil pipeline from Yakutsk to Dalian (a major Chinese port on the Yellow Sea), and that Chinese oil imports (including those from Siberia and the RFE) are expected to surpass 100 million tons by 2005.

The aforementioned Amur Region – whose destruction is so severe that its power supply is half cut off – is in effect controlled by Chinese interests and obviously would be used by the Chinese as a bridgehead for a "great leap" to the north – to Yakutsk and the North Polar Ocean. A change in Yakutia's ruling team in favor of the Kremlin would leave no obstacles to this effort.

The final point: Control over Yakutia means – for China – effective control over the entire Russian Northeast. This could be a decisive card in China's geopolitical struggle with the U.S. in the 21st century.

Dr. Alexandr V. Nemets is a consultant to the American Foreign Policy Council. He is co-author of "Chinese-Russian Military Relations, Fate of Taiwan and New Geopolitics."

Dr. Thomas J. Torda has been a Chinese linguist specializing in science and technology with FBIS, and a Chinese/Russian defense technology consultant with the Office of Naval Intelligence.

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