The academy was founded in 1978 when the national policy was for equality
between all ethnic groups in Yugoslavia. Unlike the Soviet-style academies,
with their huge research infrastructures, the academies of the former Yugoslavia
were learned societies whose members represented the intellectual elite.
Kosovo’s academy, which is based in the provincial capital, Pristina, had
both Serbs and ethnic Albanians among its members. Scholars from Kosovo
who want to belong to an academy must now apply to the Serbian academy in
Belgrade.

Kosovo was an autonomous region until 1990, when the Serbs imposed direct
rule in an effort to put down the growing independence movement. The Serbs
also clamped down on Albanian cultural and educational institutions. In
1992, all ethnic Albanian lecturers were dismissed from the University of
Pristina, and a Serb was installed as rector. Albanian lecturers now run
an illegal ‘alternative’ university from makeshift premises.

The Serbian authorities in Pristina claim the seizure of the academy’s
building is long overdue. They maintain that the academy was legally closed
in 1992, and that they have simply been ‘tolerating’ the presence of the
staff since then.

The unnamed victim was director of a new Western-style company manufacturing
various kinds of packaging. He fell mysteriously ill and was admitted to
hospital. When his deputy visited him, he overheard a doctor remark that,
unlikely as it seemed, the case looked remarkably like radiation sickness.

When other staff members began to fall ill as well, the deputy bought
a cheap over-the-counter radiation dosimeter and toured the building making
measurements. The readings went off the scale. Investigations by the civil
defence department revealed high levels of radioactivity in the 12 rooms
nearest the director’s office, and a lump of radioactive material implanted
in the director’s chair at neck level.

The police say the material could not have got into the chair accidentally,
and have launched a full-scale investigation.

‘If the mafia are really using radiation, it’s a horrible thing,’ says
Alexander Lutsko of the International Sakharov College of Radioecology
in Minsk. ‘Can’t they stick to traditional methods – guns and knives and
so on?’

Last month, some 5000 litres of water a minute began pouring into the
mine in an area 200 metres below the surface. The inundation was not entirely
unexpected. Wieliczka has a long history of flooding, but over the years
there has been no money for flood prevention measures. It is estimated that
up to 40 billion zlotys ( £1.7 million at the official rate) is needed
for emergency work, and a further 200 billion zlotys annually to protect
the mine in future. The mayor of Wieliczka has appealed to UNESCO for help.

Salt has been mined at Wieliczka at least since the 9th century . Devout
miners carved chapels, crucifixes and figures of saints out of the salt
– and for extra protection sculpted ‘mine gnomes’, the protectors of folklore.
As early as the 15th century, tourists began visiting the mine. This spurred
the miners on to greater artistic efforts, and there are now 2600 chambers
and more than 300 kilometres of galleries.

Under communist rule, a deep-level clubroom for VIPs was built in the
mine. According to popular belief, the increased air pressure there made
it possible to double or even triple one’s intake of vodka without ill effects.

By the beginning of last week, the flow of water into the mine had stabilised
at between 200 and 300 litres a minute. The pumping system at the mine
is supposed to be able to cope with this rate. Construction of two cofferdams
has begun 300 metres below the surface, to protect the pumping station
and some of the best-known galleries.

The inhabitants of Wieliczka, however, are not primarily interested
in the loss of the mines. They are more concerned about their houses, some
of which have started to subside since the onset of the flooding. Contingency
plans for evacuation have been posted around the town.

When the observatories were built, the law did not allow the Academy
to own property. Instead it had to lease the churches from the local authority.
For almost 25 years researchers from the Academy’s Institute of Earth Physics
carried out their observations undisturbed. But as communism began to collapse
in the 1980s, there was a religious revival across the country. New parishes
sprang up and began to demand the use of former church buildings. Their
demands were backed by a new Freedom of Conscience law.

The mayor of Moscow, Gavriil Popov, promised that all churches would
eventually be handed back, but only those standing empty could be returned
immediately. Outside the city, local officials took a different line. In
the new parishes of Izmailovo and Mosrentgen, the local council ruled that
the academy must hand the churches over immediately.

This leaves the research teams two options: to scrap the programme or
to find new homes for the observatories. But if the physicists are to make
continuous observations, any move must be well organised. The parishes,
however, are not prepared to wait while new sites are found.

In a passionate plea in Izvestiya, two scientists, Viktor Osika and
Viktor Pohelintsev, ask to be allowed time to transfer their work in ‘a
civilised manner’. They point out that there are other churches open in
the district. Osika and Pohelintsev call for the Freedom of Conscience law
to be amended, to allow scientific or cultural institutions in churches
time to find alternative accommodation.

Vladimirov had provided the Academy’s Institute of Theoretical Astronomy
with the money to buy computers and other equipment they required. In return
the institute agreed to name a planetoid which they had just discovered
after their ‘patron’.

The astronomers probably saw this as the type of industrial sponsorship
they had been told to seek to supplement the academy’s shrinking budget.
As a well-known philanthropist and owner of a company called

Planeta, Vladimirov seemed eminently suitable as a sponsor. Planeta,
however, was not really Vladimirov’s property. Formally it was owned by
the state, although the state’s stake was a nominal 50 roubles. The remainder
of the several billion roubles the company had acquired since it was set
up two years ago, had come from a wide variety of cooperatives and private
agencies.

This rapid growth attracted the notice of St Petersburg’s organised
crime squad. On investigation, they found that Planeta was a front for a
protection and extortion racket. According to Izvestiya, Planeta also did
a flourishing trade in black market military equipment.

Just two months after the planetoid was named, Vladimirov was arrested.
Sadly, he cannot console himself with the knowledge that a heavenly body
bears his name. The Names Committee of the International Astronomical Union
rejected the name. ‘The committee felt it was too blatant an attempt to
reward someone for financial support,’ says Gareth Williams of the IAU’s
Minor Planets Center.

The precise cause of Beria’s downfall, until now a closely guarded secret,
is of more than historical interest. The poisons and assassination techniques
developed in Beria’s secret laboratory were used long after his death. And
the Russian government has promised to expose the crimes of the KGB and
its predecessor, the NKVD.

One famous product of Beria’s research programme was the umbrella which
carried a pellet loaded with the deadly poison ricin. This device, used
by the Bulgarians in 1978 to assassinate the outspoken emigre Georgi Markov,
was not among its initial successes. According to Bobrenev, the research
team took more than a year to determine the correct dose and were worried
that Beria would lose interest.

The head of the laboratory, Grigorii Mairanovskii, had been given the
task of finding poisons which would simulate natural death. Initially he
hoped to use the Zyklon gases which were invented by the Nazis for their
gas chambers, but found that they left telltale signs in the victims.

Mairanovskii turned to less exotic poisons. In one early trial he tested
a derivative of mustard gas together with massive doses of amphetamine.
According to laboratory records, the ‘patient’ spent several days in agony
before dying. In another trial, he administered large doses of the powerful
heart stimulant digitoxin during ‘medical checks’ on condemned prisoners.
They died within a few days.

Mairanovskii’s team also worked on novel ways of delivering the poisons,
says Bobrenov – weapons disguised as pen- holders, walking sticks and umbrellas.
Another technique tried on prisoners was to shoot a poison bullet into soft
tissue, so that it lodged there, killing the victim later. Mairanovskii
was said to be particularly proud of a walking stick which could kill with
a scratch.

The success or otherwise of Beria’s programme will emerge only if the
promised public inquiry into KGB crimes takes place. As the aim of the research
was to eliminate ‘enemies of the people’ by what would appear to be natural
causes, only a few cases have ever been established, and these depended
either on the victim surviving long enough to tell someone or confession
by the assassin.

Whether any living former employees of the KGB or its sister services
in Eastern Europe will be charged with experimenting on prisoners is unclear.
Bobrenev insists that all the research was done long ago, while Stalin was
alive.

Hungary’s government announced last week that it will formally revoke
its troubled treaty with Czechoslovakia over the half-built Gabcikovo/Nagymaros
hydroelectric scheme. From Monday, 25 May, the Hungarians will cancel the
1977 interstate agreement which authorised the grand project on the Danube.

The project has a troubled history. It was conceived as a towering example
of socialist cooperation between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. But in the
1980s the perceived environmental consequences of the dams became the principal
focus of the Hungarian dissident movement. Disagreement between the two
countries has since been further confused by Slovakia’s growing rift with
the Czechs.

What Hungary’s withdrawal from the project will mean is not clear, even
to the Hungarians. Two days after the announcement, Ferenc Madl, the Hungarian
minister responsible for the dam, was still speaking of possible further
talks. From the Slovak side, Premier Jan Carnogursky sent Madl a letter
saying further negotiations were ‘useful and necessary’. Carnogursky had
earlier said that his government considered the Hungarian move to be ‘legally
invalid’. The Slovaks have been determined to complete their part of the
project.

The plan originally envisaged a huge reservoir above a barrage stretching
between the two countries near the Hungarian village of Dunakiliti. From
here, the water would be diverted in a concrete-lined canal north of the
Danube’s natural course to power turbines at Gabcikovo in Slovakia. This
plant would work only when demand was at its peak, sending forceful surges
of water downstream. The Nagymaros dam, 100 kilometres downstream in Hungary,
was essential to break the flow and prevent flooding.

But Hungarian environmentalists warned that the scheme would cause untold
damage to the Danube wetlands in northwest Hungary and Austria, flood scenic
areas, dry other watercourses and spoil the country’s water supply. In
1989, the final socialist government of Hungary bowed to public pressure
and stopped work at Nagymaros.

Despite Hungarian calls for a moratorium on building, the Slovaks went
ahead with what became known as the C-variant of the original plan. Without
the dam at Nagymaros, the Slovak dam will never be able to operate at full
capacity. So not all of the Danube would have to be diverted between Dunakiliti
and Gobcikovo – some water would remain in the original course – and the
reservoir above Dunakiliti could be smaller. These factors, argued the Slovaks,
would pacify Hungarian environmentalists. Because the locks and sluicegates
at Dunakiliti were all on the Hungarian side of the river, the Slovaks began
building a barrage reaching out from their bank.

By doing this, Balazs Fekete, a researcher at the Ister independent
environmental institute in Budapest, says the Slovaks threw away the chance
of a compromise. ‘Many people in Hungary would have accepted a compromise,’
he said, ‘if only the Slovaks had stopped work.’ Many experts, Fekete said,
doubt the C-variant will be ‘enough to save the environment’.

Whatever the outcome of the present deadlock, some matters will have
to be negotiated eventually. Problems of navigation and flood-prevention
must be solved jointly. The Hungarians want to destroy the temporary coffer
dam at Nagymaros. This cannot legally be done so long as the treaty is in
force. A decision must also be reached whether to complete the Dunakiliti
dam or pull it down. And time is pressing. In the Slovak C-variant plan
the river is due to be diverted for the first time at the end of October.

This means changing the course of the Danube so that ships will navigate
the canal above Gabcikovo. The present controlling body – the Danube Commission
– gave its approval for the diversion in 1977, but is unlikely to exist
much longer in its present form: political changes and the creation of new
countries lower down the Danube make a new treaty necessary. Slovakia is
on the eve of elections which could result in a declaration of independence
from Prague. This could also end with a withdrawal of support by the Austrian
financiers at present willing to underwrite the cost of finishing Gabcikovo.

Independence for the Baltic states was hard won. Their peoples struggled against Red Army tanks in Vilnius and Soviet commandos in Riga and many were killed in the process. In the autumn last year Moscow finally ceded control. But while the three republics are now their own masters politically, this is not true economically. The ties that bind the republics to the Commonwealth of Independent States have not yet been cut clean.

The republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are in many ways uniquely placed for a swift and successful transition to a market economy. They enjoy a prime location on the Baltic Sea, and have historical ties with neighbours such as Sweden and Finland which share an interest in developing the region. Under Soviet rule they enjoyed higher living standards than the other 12 republics, and were leaders in several high technology industries, including electronics and computing.

But the republics have a huge disadvantage. They all use more energy than they produce and their supplies are integrated into the old Soviet network. All three governments would like to change this. The ties leave them vulnerable. In 1990, after Lithuania declared independence, Moscow imposed an oil and gas embargo on the republic. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, supplies have continually been interrupted. In February, the Estonians had to turn off the ‘eternal flame’ at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Tallinn.

Earlier this year, during a conference in London called ‘Opening Up Russian Oil’, the post-Cold War atmosphere underwent a sudden chill. The Russian energy minister, Vladimir Lopukhin, told his Lithuanian counterpart, Liaonas Asmantas, that Russian oil supplies to Lithuania had been cut off because of a technical hitch. Asmantas observed drily that if supplies were not swiftly resumed, a similar ‘hitch’ might interrupt electricity supplies from Lithuania to the isolated Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Since then, however, ‘hitches’ in the oil supply from Russia, sometimes lasting three days, have become virtually routine.

Confused contacts

The presence of Asmantas was significant at a conference on Russian, as opposed to ex-Soviet, oil. The main thrust of the meeting was to attract Western investment and know-how for Russia’s poorly equipped oilfields. Asmantas, however, saw it as a chance to make contacts with some of the new leaders of the Russian oil industry.

One of the biggest problems for the Baltic states is the confusion that has accompanied the birth of the CIS. Last November, Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin decreed that all supplies to the Baltic states would need export licences. He failed, however, to specify who would issue licences and how to apply for them.

As a result, Russia’s newly privatised oil production companies were unable to negotiate new contracts with their Baltic customers. According to one Estonian official, even when licences are obtained, authorities in the oil-producing areas try to divert supplies earmarked for the Baltics to customers who can pay in Western currency.

Bureaucracy apart, there is no guarantee how long Russian supplies will continue. The oil and gas industries are beset with labour production problems. Much of the gas and oil produced in the Russian Federation comes from non-Russian enclaves such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, where secessionist movements are strong and unrest could break out at any time. In addition, right-wing Russian politicians such as Vladimir Zhirinovski, leader of the Liberal-Democrat Party and third in last year’s Russian presidential elections, speak menacingly of bringing the Baltic republics back under Moscow’s rule by force. For all these reasons, the Balts think it prudent to find alternative supplies of energy.

Electricity, however, is not the solution. The old Soviet grid paid no attention to the republics’ borders. The Baltic states, Belarus (formerly Byelorussia), the Kaliningrad enclave and the St Petersburg area form a single region of the supply network.

All three republics have some generating capacity. But all of their power stations have come under fire from environmentalists. Estonia uses local oil shales, obtained by opencast mining and burnt in outdated and polluting plants. Lithuania has a 2500-megawatt nuclear power plant at Ignalina with RBMK graphite/water reactors of the type which exploded at Chernobyl and caused a scare last month at Sosnovy Bor, near St Petersburg (This Week, 28 March).

Latvia’s plans to build a huge hydroelectric plant at Daugavpils on the Western Dvina river roused a huge joint protest campaign from Latvians and Byelorussians upstream. The scheme, mooted in the mid-1980s, was cancelled even before independence. But the problems of improving safety at Ignalina and finding less environmentally damaging technologies for exploiting Estonian shales are still unresolved. Foreign help is now being sought and an international task force has been assembled to carry out safety audits of all the RBMK reactors in use on former Soviet territory (This Week, 4 April).

With the Estonian shales, the problem is mainly one of money. Both Israel and Canada have expertise in mining and exploiting shales. The Canadians have also had success in obtaining liquid fuels from the tar sands which accompany the shales. If the Estonians could afford the proper technology, the shales could be made considerably less polluting. One suggestion is that Finland, which receives much of its acid rain from the shales, might be willing to help finance new plant if the Estonians pay them back with electricity. But this touches on another delicate subject.

Until recently, Estonia exported part of its electricity to the St Petersburg region which, in turn, allowed the Sosnovy Bor power station to sell some of its output to Finland. As the Estonians see it, their electricity brought in hard currency from the Finns, but the dollars ended up in Moscow and the Estonians were paid in roubles.

At the beginning of the year, Russia stopped buying Estonian electricity. The Estonians, keen to earn Western currency, are now thinking about laying an undersea cable from Tallinn to Helsinki to supply the Finnish grid directly.

Among the Baltic states, Latvia is the worst off for electricity. Fifty per cent of its electrical energy is imported. According to Juris Ozolins, head of the international department of the Latvian Ministry of Energy and Industry, there is a ‘severe necessity’ to build new power stations in Latvia. There is little remaining unused hydro capacity, but the Daugavpils scheme could be revived on a smaller scale.

Latvian planners, Ozolins says, are considering building combined heat and power (CHP) plants and erecting wind turbines. The latter would involve cooperation with Denmark, although the capital outlay could prove prohibitive. Another possibility is ‘energy woods’: that is, the cultivation of fast-growing trees for fuel. The Finns have experience here. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Finnish Conservative party launched a campaign to create energy self-sufficiency through energy woods and CHP.

A small but useful contribution in all three republics might be made by recommissioning small hydroelectric stations of the pre-Soviet period that powered small rural settlements. After the Soviet takeover in 1940, these towns and villages were linked up to the grid and the hydroelectric plants shut down.

In spite of Latvians’ fears of another Chernobyl disaster, the government in Riga is increasingly drawn to the nuclear option. Soviet plans envisaged a nuclear power plant on the coast near Liepaja. This was cancelled on economic grounds before Chernobyl exploded. Ozolins says ‘green’ sentiments have declined after the energy shortages of the past winter. Two years ago, no one dared mention the possibility of a nuclear power station in Latvia. Now energy experts discuss it openly.

Energy solutions involving oil and gas supplies also present problems, even if the three republics decide on a joint energy network. Lithuania has a huge refinery at Mazeikiai which can handle up to 12 million tonnes of crude oil a year. Latvia has an oil terminal at Ventspils, with a capacity of 30 million tonnes. But there is no link between the two.

Estonia was, until this January, dependent on road and rail links to bring in its oil. Under Soviet rule an oil port was started near Tallinn, but it was abandoned on environmental grounds. This terminal has now been completed in a joint venture with the Finnish company Neste Oy. For six weeks last winter, the Finns used it to ship emergency oil supplies to Estonia.

But the Estonian coast is icebound during winter, whereas Ventspils is normally ice-free. According to Bo Lindfors of Neste Oy, cooperation between the Baltic states is therefore essential if the region as a whole is to secure its oil supplies.

Lithuania has a small oilfield of its own that was discovered during the 1980s. It came on stream in May 1990 during the Soviet oil embargo. The extent of the reserves are treated as a state secret, although at the time of the embargo, Eduardas Bendoraitis, the general director of the prospecting company, quoted a figure of 5 million tonnes. This could not provide more than a fraction of Lithuania’s needs and the Lithuanians do not want to use it for fuel. It is high-grade, low-sulphur crude, excellent for making lubricants. They see it as a source of hard currency rather than of energy.

Gas is another energy source that the Baltic states could exploit. Latvia, for example, has underground salt caverns capable of storing 14 billion cubic metres of gas, which is enough to supply all three republics for 18 months. Norway has gas to spare. It also has plans to build a pipeline from Norway to Sweden but has stuck fast for the past five years because the Swedish market is too small to justify the expense. ‘You have to sell the gas before you build the pipe,’ says Lindfors. If, however, the pipeline could be continued from Sweden to the Baltic states it could make economic sense. The pipeline could even be extended to Poland, although the Poles are at present planning their own undersea gas link to Scandinavia.

For the moment, the main energy problem is day-to-day survival for individuals. At times, for example, people have resorted to swapping food for petrol at Red Army bases. In the long term, however, major modernisation will be needed both of hardware and of the attitudes of managers, who were educated to deal with the command economy of the communist system.

Perhaps most important is that the three countries agree a common energy policy. Until a few weeks ago, most commentators took this for granted, as the republics had pledged to coordinate economic reforms. Then, in early March, the Estonians announced a twelvefold increase in the price of electricity exports to Latvia. According to the Estonian energy minister, Aksel Treimann, this is close to the world market level. But the Latvians found the rise too high. Ozolins says that Latvia has considered buying its electricity from Russia, which is prepared to undercut the Estonians.

He made clear, however, that this would only be a short-term measure. In the long run, a coordinated energy policy for the three republics is the only hope.

The centre was to have been built in Homiel (Gomel) province in Belarus,
which suffered the heaviest fallout from the explosion just across the frontier
in Ukraine. The $28 million needed for the centre was raised last year
by the sale of oil from the small oilfield in the province.

At that time, individual Soviet republics had to sell their oil abroad
through a central agency in Moscow. Usually, the Western currency from such
sales went into the Soviet treasury, which then paid the republics in roubles.
But the Soviet government made an exception in this case, allowing the Belarussians
to have the dollars. The money was paid into a special account in the External
Trade Bank of the USSR.

Last autumn, the provincial government of Homiel signed a contract with
Smelt-Intag, a joint Yugoslav-Swiss firm, to build and equip the centre.
In November, the provincial government instructed the External Trade Bank
to transfer an initial $12 million to the Bayerischer Vereinsbank in Germany,
which was handling the deal.

The following month the Belarussians were informed that the External
Trade Bank could not carry out their instructions, because it had no funds.
Shortly after, like all Soviet institutions, the bank ceased to exist. A
new Russian External Trade Bank took over as its successor, but also refused
to transfer the money.

Mikalaj Vajciankai, head of the provincial council, went to Moscow but
could not persuade the bank to release ‘so much as a single dollar’. The
government of Belarus then applied to the Russian finance minister, Yegor
Gaidar, stressing the importance of the clinic and asking for at least the
$3 million which Smelt-Intag required to begin work. After some delay and
several more appeals from the provincial government, Gaidar eventually replied
that since Belarus had negotiated a credit of $100 million from the West
in January, Moscow would not transfer any money to Germany on their behalf.
These credits, however, were earmarked for other urgent needs.

If the province is to have its clinic, it must sell more oil. The local
authorities have asked the government of Belarus to allow them to sell 150
000 tonnes a year for four years to raise the money.

The policy, instigated by the country’s disgraced communist leader Todor
Zhivkov, compelled Bulgarian citizens with Turkish names to replace them
with Slavonic equivalents. According to the then political doctrine, Bulgaria
had no Turkish minority. People who considered themselves to be Turks were
mistaken. They were, the communists argued, descendants of Bulgarians who
had been converted to Islam during the centuries when Bulgaria formed part
of the Ottoman empire.

The Academy of Sciences as an institution played no obvious part in
the campaign. But some members of the academy published anthropological
and ethnographic articles of doubtful scientific validity to support the
official theory. The commission of inquiry is intended to uncover the part
played in the policy by its members.

The rights of ethnic Turks to choose their own language, religion and
names were reinstated in late 1989 after Zhivkov’s fall. By that time more
than 300 000 Turks had abandoned their homes and fled across the border
to Turkey.