Valley Interview : Panorama City Congressman Cites U.S. Stake in Russian Solution

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) recently traveled to Russia and Ukraine for six days as part of a congressional delegation that will help shapS. aid to Russia. The group met with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, among others. It was the first visit to the former Soviet Union for Berman, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs international operations subcommittee. Berman was interviewed April 13 in his Panorama City office by Times staff writer Alan C. Miller .

Question: What did you learn from your visit?

Answer: That there’s still a fundamental struggle going on there. While no one claims to want to return to the bad old days, there are very well entrenched elements in the Parliament, out in the regions, that, in reality, are resisting Yeltsin’s reforms.

We met with Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi. He is a former Air Force pilot who was a hero in Afghanistan. Yeltsin put him on the ticket in 1991. Since that time, the two have split and now they are really fighting. We met with him for 1 1/2 hours. He was really criticizing Yeltsin.

My eyes were wandering around this big room. On the top of it was a map of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Here’s a map of the Soviet Union in the vice president’s office a year and four months after the Soviet Union has dissolved.

As we were leaving, I pointed to the map and said, “Why do you still have a map of the former Soviet Union?” He said, “Why not?” I said, “You’re vice president of Russia, not the USSR.” He said: “The forces of economic, political and social integration will bring all these countries back together. And I don’t see any reason to change the map.”

Q: Based on what you saw, did you find any reason to think he’s right?

There is no way they are coming back together without the bloodiest war possible. There’s no way that the people of the Ukraine, for example, are willing to go along with the re-establishment of the Soviet empire. In fact, the clearest impression I got from our day in Kiev was that, to the Ukrainians, more important than establishing democracy or moving to open markets and privatization was their independence.

Q: What sense did you get about how strong Yeltsin is at this point?

The Russian people are going through some very difficult times. But I came away with a sense that they do not want a return to the old days, that Yeltsin will win a majority vote.

If Yeltsin wins a good majority, he will have strengthened himself. And he really needs early elections for a new Congress. That is one of the questions on the ballot.

Q: You met with Yeltsin. What frame of mind did you find him in?

He was in a good frame of mind. He was happy with the Vancouver summit. He indicated that every moment of every day between now and the 25th of April would be spent campaigning on behalf of a yes vote for the referendum, which includes not only a question of confidence in his leadership but whether there would be early elections for the president and the Parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies. If he didn’t win the referendum, he would resign.

In the end, he thought that even though the Russian people were going through hard times, that a no vote would mean a return to the kind of system they had for 75 years and they wouldn’t want that.

Q: What is the biggest problem that Russia faces?

A very high rate of inflation which approaches a hyper-inflation. In part this comes from the fact that the central bank there is controlled not by the executive branch but by the Parliament, and the director of the central bank keeps printing rubles and giving credits to old-line state enterprises as a political payoff or to curry favor.

It renders direct government-to-government aid or any efforts that the U. S. and its allies want to make to stabilize the Russian currency a total waste of money unless the chief executive can control the central bank and get it to stop this essentially unrestricted printing of rubles.

Q: What did you learn about how thS. should structure its aid to maximize its impact?

First, we should be helping them dismantle their nuclear weapons, since they pose a direct threat to our security, and providing markets for their uranium so they won’t be tempted to sell it to countries like Iran and thereby contribute to the proliferation of nuclear states.

There’s a tremendous amount of assistance we can give by way of sending people with banking expertise and accounting expertise, auditors to help their emerging private industries to learn how to structure themselves and to develop a banking industry that’s founded on solid principles. Some of that is already being done.

Q: You mentioned nuclear weapons. How concerned are you that they might fall into unstable or unfriendly hands?

Jack Collins, our acting ambassador there, has two different nightmares about Russia. The first is the re-establishment of authoritarian rule, which will only come through bloodshed. But he thinks the odds of that are pretty low.

The second, and much more likely, nightmare is the erosion of government authority, the rise of lawlessness, a condition where your tribe or your locality or your enterprise draws more allegiance than the country. There becomes a widespread loss of faith in the currency and you get warlords springing up over 11 time zones and some, in effect, get control of some of these nuclear weapons.

Q: Why should Americans care about what happens in the former Soviet Union?

I do think we have a high stake in this. We’ve spent trillions of dollars over the last 40 years trying to protect our security from Soviet nuclear power. And now to spend a tiny fraction of that to try to solidify the end of that rivalry and the reduction in the nuclear risk and the ability to transfer those resources into making life better for Americans to me is not even a close call. There’s just a compelling logic for it.