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“It’s hard to discuss his political statements because he disavows them himself,” Pavlovsky said. “If we’re talking of a financial conflict, what have principles got to wholesale pearl earrings do with it? If we’re talking about principles, what’s double bookkeeping doing here?”

Yabloko’s Viktor Sheynis likened Berezovsky’s actions to those of a gambler banned from the table for cheating and swindling. Now, he said, Berezovsky was trying to get his place back by proving that everyone at the table played the same way he did. But, Sheynis added, the tycoon’s accusations were exaggerated and embellished to such an extent that they failed to make any impression.

“To some extent, Berezovsky has rightly noted the element of authoritarianism that is present in Russia now,” Sheynis said. “But it’s highly exaggerated. I don’t see the creation of the seven federal districts and the decrease in the Federation Council’s role as a threat to democracy.”

As the week wore on, the situation descended into a war of words between Berezovsky and Pavlovsky over a passage in Berezovsky’s letter that said: “I’m convinced that if Putin continues his destructive policy, his regime won’t last until the end of his first constitutional term.”

In response, Pavlovsky gave a newspaper interview in which he was quoted as saying that the reference to Putin’s regime not lasting was a political provocation that could lead to button pearl a “physical threat.”

Berezovsky, taking Pavlovsky’s words as the Kremlin line, responded that as an inconvenient figure, the authorities could decide to kill him.

Pavlovsky, however, told The Russia Journal that he was misquoted, that he had actually said that Berezovsky’s words could be interpreted as a threat to the president’s life.

“I said that if a politician makes such hints in his statements, then he must be very careful, because sometimes hints can be interpreted as a freshwater pearl bracelet physical threat,” Pavlovsky said.

Launching a movement to counter what he sees as Russia’s slide toward authoritarianism, financier Boris Berezovsky assailed President Vladimir Putin and his North Caucasus policies – and predicted Russia would face further terrorist attacks of the type that struck Pushkin Square on Tuesday.

“This [bombing] will happen again if the policy of ‘smashing the bandits in their lairs’ continues,” Berezovsky said, referring to Putin’s comments late last year that he would eradicate the terrorist threat in Chechnya.

“There is only one way of dealing with terrorists – through agreement. No other way exists,” he said.

But Chechnya was only one of the issues discussed at the announcement of the forming of Berezovsky’s “constructive opposition,” which also includes eight leading artists and intellectuals. The movement is united primarily in its opposition to the president’s reconfiguration of the branches of power, a move they believe is a prelude to authoritarian rule.

The movement’s planners are seeking to pearl jewelry wholesale rally support among the political elite and the wider public to safeguard the small democratic institutions Russia has thus far built, but analysts say the group’s chances of succeeding are slight at best.

“This plan is destined to fail,” said Nikolai Popov of the Agency for Regional Political Research (ARPR). “The average person will think it strange and unnecessary. People haven’t matured [to see the dangers of authoritarianism]. We are still recoiling from democratic values. We won’t go back to the democratic idealism of the ’90s for some time yet.”

Moreover, according to Popov, the authors have been cunning in using the term “constructive opposition,” setting a limit to their criticism and opposition.

“What is the use of a ‘constructive opposition?’ Is it meant to be friendly or something?” Popov asked rhetorically. “It’s the same as ‘cold heat’ – using inherently contradictory terms.”

An open letter titled “Russia at a Crossroads: An Address to Society,” signed by Berezovsky and the eight others, was made public Tuesday. The other signatories were writer Vasily Aksyonov; journalist and economist Otto Latsis; film director and member of parliament Stanislav Govorukhin; former first deputy head of the Presidential Administration Igor Shabdurasulov; former Politburo member and scientist Alexander Yakovlev; theater director Yury Lubimov; and actors Oleg Menshikov and Sergei Bodrov Jr.

The authors declared that “Russian society faces another choice: to live in an authoritarian state or in a truly democratic one.”

• ‘Vicious circle’

“Once it starts down this road [of justifying increased control through economic expediency], society will inevitably enter a vicious cycle of action and reaction which, in the end, will force the government to choose between admitting its failure or introducing a dictatorship,” the authors warn.

One of them, Latsis, deputy editor of Novye Izvestiya and a contributor to The Russia Journal, says it was Berezovsky’s idea and Berezovsky called the co-authors.

“I can’t say that my political views coincide exactly with those of Berezovsky,” Latsis said. “But in this case, I agree with him on one main issue: I feel it is dangerous that part of the state apparatus is trying to create a government that has no opposition.”

Latsis said the letter should be viewed as a warning to prevent a drift to dictatorship, which he said would be all the worse because Putin’s government is actually following a liberal line on the economy.

“Now, for the first time, we have a logical policy of supporting liberal reforms, but these reforms will have a social impact, they will affect everyone,” Latsis said. “That’s why society has to understand them and consciously accept them. We can’t opt for Pinochet-style reform – destroying democracy to build the market.”

In fact, analysts had been discussing the danger of Russia sliding into dictatorship even before former KGB officer Putin came to power.

ARPR’s Popov said that, in part, this was linked to the mood in society – one he said stemmed not so much from the public’s being unable to comprehend democratic ideas, as from the “incompetence, ignorance and irresponsibility of the democrats that came to power.”

“People don’t really care about power being divided into three branches,” Popov said. “They dislike the Duma, the Federation Council is a mystery, some sort of governors’ club. A good government with a president at the top – that’s what matters to people.”

Popov added that only a small section of society thinks in democratic terms. The remainder, he said, could be broken up into those who want a return to twisted pearl necklace the old system – most of them elderly – and those who don’t think about politics and simply have faith in strong authority.

• ‘Leave us in peace’

“The latter group are people who are tired of all these attempted reforms. They’re happy just to have a benevolent monarch. They say, ‘Leave us in peace. … We’ll work in the garden, bring up our children, work on our careers,” Popov said.

Many experts felt one of the possible bastions of an opposition movement would be the regional leaders, whose power Putin sought to curb immediately after his inauguration.

A week before the letter was made public, Berezovsky toured several regions and met with governors. He admitted at a press conference Wednesday, however, that the governors would not come out openly against Putin – despite their dissatisfaction.

“The governors are under colossal pressure,” Berezovsky said. “They are afraid of what might come next. … But they will take part [in the opposition]; it’s just a matter of whether they will do so openly or covertly.”

Experts said regional leaders appeared to make it clear they would not publicly oppose Putin when they agreed to a law limiting their power in the Federation Council.

“It’s obvious the governors will carry out covert opposition,” said political scientist Fyodor Shelov-Kovedyaev, a former deputy foreign minister. “They’ll hinder reforms where possible behind a mask of compliance. That’s a big danger for Putin.”

Latsis said that if the current authoritarian challenge went unanswered, it would reflect a lack of historical memory.

“We should remember the history of the 20th century. The Bolsheviks weren’t monsters to start with either, but it ended badly with great sacrifice in the name of bright ideals,” he said. “It grows like a snowball, faster than you can react.”

Popov argued that the letter might in the end have the reverse effect to that desired, because its instigator, Berezovsky, is such an odious figure.

“The name Berezovsky compromises the idea itself for many people,” Popov said. “A sensible person would probably suspect that Berezovsky had bought or tricked these respected figures into joining his cause.”

But while conceding the movement’s potential for success was not great at the moment, Latsis disagreed that Berezovsky’s name doomed the “constructive opposition” to pearl necklace failure.

“There have been a number of situations – specifically 1996 and 1999 – where it seemed impossible to alter the course of events,” Latsis said. “But in both cases Berezovsky’s intervention proved decisive in turning the situation around.”

Berezovsky told a packed press conference Thursday that Presidential Chief of Staff Alexander Voloshin had earlier told him that either he hand over his shares in ORT or experience the same fate as Media-MOST chief Vladimir Gusinsky, who was jailed for three days in July.

Berezovsky, who was a central figure in the rise and eventual election of President Vladimir Putin, has now taken to wholesale pearl jewelry criticizing the Kremlin, accusing Putin of undermining what has been achieved in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union and of taking the country back to authoritarianism.

But despite that, Putin gave cautious approval to the tycoon’s decision to transfer the shares to journalists and intellectuals.

“This [move] can only be praised. But it is important that these be independent people,” Putin told a press conference at the U.N. Millenium Summit, referring to those Berezovsky had transferred his ORT stake.

Berezovsky told the press conference Thursday that all thinking people knew that if a civil society was not built, then life would become impossible in Russia.

What I am doing [with the ORT shares] is just one small step toward building a civil society,” he said.

“We all understand the importance of the media today,” he added. “We know its significance is greater than we thought. The elections of 1996, 1999 and this year show clearly just how great the influence is, both of the media in general and ORT in particular.”

Monday, apparently in reply to Voloshin’s ultimatum, Berezovsky released an open letter to Putin vowing not to bow to Kremlin pressure over his ORT stake. He also flagged in the letter his intention to transfer the stake to “journalists and other representatives of the creative intelligentsia.”

Among the names of those who will sit on the new board of trustees controlling Berezovsky’s ORT stake are: writer Vasily Aksyonov; television anchors Sergei Dorenko and Vladimir Pozner; journalists Natalya Gevorkyan (a co-author of Putin’s book) and Otto Latsis; and high-profile lawyer Genri Reznik.

Berezovsky was also fiercely critical of the direction Putin had chosen to take the country, saying it represented a return to the past, though “not to communism, but to totalitarianism.”

“We need to set constant tests for the authorities,” he said. “We need to provoke the authorities, not to see what they will say, but what they will actually do.”

“At the moment, the authorities might see, for example, that young people are not afraid to speak their minds,” he added. “But if we wait too long, fear will grow to such an extent that we won’t be able to do anything.

One of Berezovsky’s chief weapons in bludgeoning the opposition during the 1999 parliamentary elections, ORT presenter Mikhail Leontiev, read little into the tycoon’s move other than that it was “a political act.”

“As a political move, it is effective because it is so noticeable; public politics has to be noticeable and elegant,” Leontiev said. “Moreover, if he is under pressure, then it is effective to counteract that pressure using authoritative figures from the ‘creative intelligentsia.’”

Leontiev said that, in general, he did not see a threat to freedom of speech in Russia. He characterized the struggle between the Kremlin and the media as “a private problem of ugly, unethical and impatient behavior on the part of one partner [the state], against another [business].”

“Since Gusinsky didn’t get sorted out, we need to hand out exemplary punishment to Berezovsky – this is the logic of ‘beat our own people so that others will be afraid,’” he said of the Kremlin’s moves against the media. But Leontiev said, unlike Berezovsky, he saw little threat to freedom of speech in Russia.

“It is his position, his views, which I have not been in agreement with of late,” Leontiev said. “And what is freedom of speech anyway? There are laws regulating competition on the information market. We don’t have these laws. We’ve been living through sponsorship and a political racket.”

Many observers said Berezovsky’s actions could have the reverse effect of that intended, as adding his name to any movement was enough to undermine it. That, and his past use of his media outlets to smear opponents, meant he had little credibility in relation to freedom of speech.

Asked by The Russia Journal whether being known as the “the evil genius” of Russian politics meant he would hurt the very causes he professed to pearl beads support, Berezovsky said: “I would be only too happy to hand over the job of creating an opposition to others.”

Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader under whose stewardship the Soviet bloc fell apart, now says the event wasn’t as simple as it seems in retrospect. “A lot had to button pearl take place for the Berlin Wall to come down,” he said last month while releasing his book on the wall’s demise, “How It Was.”

The poignant images of the wall’s physical crumbling are now fixed in global history as a spontaneous triumph of collective individual will over state tyranny. But the event followed a process that had taken years and was chiefly driven by a small number of reform-minded officials.

Before the wall could collapse, much was done in Budapest, Warsaw and Moscow.

Gorbachev’s accession to the Soviet leadership in March 1985 was a chief factor that paved the way for Europe’s reunification, even though his rule by no means guaranteed the wall’s collapse.

Gorbachev’s “perestroika” reforms replaced Stalin-era foreign policy that outlined the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence and saw notorious clampdowns on reform in 1956 Budapest and 1968 Prague. With Gorbachev came the notion that Soviet bloc countries should make their own decisions.

“We held elections in 1989, and after that, we couldn’t refuse other Warsaw Pact countries to do the same,” Gorbachev said. “After perestroika, each country had to sterling silver jewelry determine its own fate.”

But it was not immediately clear if and how reforms would come to Eastern Europe.

“Inside Eastern Europe itself there were three elements which pushed the region toward the drama of 1989,” writes Misha Glenny, a journalist covering Eastern Europe at the time. “The tenacity of reformers inside the Hungarian Communist party; the realization on the part of Polish communists that they could not govern their country; and finally people power – the profound frustration of ordinary East Germans compelled to live in Europe’s largest prison.”

East Germany and Czechoslovakia spearheaded opposition to reform.

But in Poland, thanks in part to Gorbachev’s policies, the beleaguered Solidarity trade union movement was able to recover from its brutal supression by the state from 1981 through 1983 and lead the way to the creation of a non-Communist government in September 1989 after the historic Round Table talks.

In Hungary – where relatively lax policies from Moscow following 1956 led to a slow process of gradual reform – the ousting of Communist leader Janos Kadar in 1988 led to a process of market reform.

It was indeed among the Hungarian Party leadership, headed by Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, that the fall of the Berlin Wall was first seriously advocated – at great risk to pearl earrings its members.

In the summer of 1989, streams of vacationing East Germans came to Hungary, sensing a change in the political winds, and first breached the Iron Curtain.

“After the last century witnessed the confrontations between the West and the East, today’s East is declaring its desire to turquoise necklace be part of the West, part of Europe,” Berlusconi said. “And this is also thanks to President Putin.”

He said that during Italy’s six month presidency of the European Union, “we will do all we can – everything in our power – to bring Russia closer to the European Union.”

Berlusconi called for the eventual removal of visa requirements between Russia and the EU – something that Putin has pushed for the past year. But Berlusconi spoke of it as a “final goal” and said it could not be rushed.

Putin and Berlusconi said they were working on making it easier for Russians and Italians to travel to each other’s countries, focusing at first on such groups as students, scientists and businessmen.

On Iraq, Putin and Berlusconi called for a new U.N. resolution that would allow for broader international participation. Putin said he and other leaders of the U.N. Security Council nations were working on a draft.

“We are witnessing an escalation of violence in Iraq,” Putin said. “The very first task is to stop this spiral of violence, and we believe the most effective way to do this is with a real participation of the United Nations.”

Berlusconi reiterated Italy’s support for the U.S. action in Iraq, but he said at this point “my personal desire is that the U.N. take a decision that would allow all countries of the West to make their contribution.”

The two leaders were mixing business with pleasure during their fifth meeting this year, holding talks Friday at the billionaire Berlusconi’s villa on Sardinia’s posh Costa Smeralda and visiting a Russian navy missile cruiser anchored offshore Saturday.

Putin is to visit Italy again in November for more bilateral talks and a Russia-EU summit that Moscow has said it wants to focus on its push for visa-free travel between Russia and the EU and Russia’s effort to join the World Trade Organization. The EU is to expand to Russia’s borders next year when 10 countries, mostly from Eastern Europe, join the group.

Berlusconi strongly supported Russia’s WTO aspirations in a visit to rice pearl Moscow last month, and he has sparked controversy in the EU by suggesting that Russia could become part of a “Big Europe” along with Israel and Turkey. Putin has said Russia is not pressing to join the EU, but Berlusconi’s backing for close Russia-EU ties is a morale boost for the Kremlin.

In a visit to Russia in February, Berlusconi said he would promote the creation of a Russia-EU consultative organ or possibly a permanent council, and last month he said Italy would help arrange regular meetings of such a council.

Putin praised the informal setting of his meeting with Berlusconi, who has called the Russian leader a personal friend. During a joint press conference against a seaside backdrop, Berlusconi playfully leaned his elbow against Putin’s lectern and made a show of listening intently to one of his answers.

Putin’s two teenage daughters spent some time at Berlusconi’s Sardinian villa last summer, but Putin stepped off the presidential Il-96 jet alone Friday, despite Russian and Italian media reports that his wife and daughters would accompany him.

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