SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS World Monday, October 20, 1997

Philanthropist pledges $500 million to Russia

New York Times

NEW YORK - George Soros, the Hungarian-born American financier and philanthropist, said Sunday he would spend as much as $500 million in the next three years in Russia trying to improve health care, expand educational opportunities and help retrain the military for civilian jobs.

In a telephone interview from Moscow, Soros said he would announce the initiative, today. This latest gift would make him Russia's largest philanthropist and biggest individual Western investor, as well as a donor whose presence overshadows that of the United States, which gave Russia $95 million in foreign aid last year.

In the past decade, Soros, 67, has spent close to $1.5 billion promoting what he calls "open societies" -- the expansion of civil liberties, a free press and political pluralism -- at home and abroad. Since 1994, he has donated more than $350 million a year to his foundations in more than 30 countries, spending more than $259 million in Russia alone,. This new gift would make his foundation in Moscow, the Open Society Institute-Russia, his largest presence in any country, including the United States.

Soros' latest gift comes less than a month after Ted Turner, the billionaire founder of Cable News Network, announced that he would donate up to $1 billion, or up to $100 million a year- for 10 years, to benefit U.N. programs. When he made his gift, Turner identified Soros as the philanthropist he most admired, and his role model returned the compliment.

In a phone interview from Hong Kong at the time, Soros called Turner's gift "wonderful" and urged other wealthy people to emulate him.

Soros said that he had spent the past two weeks touring Russia and that the new program reflected the needs he identified during his trip as well as an evaluation of what his foundation has already accomplished. He said that while his tour was "rather strenuous and in some ways frustrating," he believed that the Russian government led by President Boris Yeltsin both needs and deserves Western confidence and aid.

"I think this government will be there for at least three years," Soros said, brushing aside reports that the government could face a no-confidence vote in the Russian parliament as early as Wednesday.

In addition to his philanthropy, his Soros Fund Management, the principal investment adviser to the Quantum Group of Funds, based in Curacao, has invested more than $2.5 billion in Russian business. Soros said Sunday that he intended to continue investing in Russia as a sign of confidence in the country's leadership, despite controversy among rival investors stemming from his decision to mix philanthropy and investment there.

Soros has emotional ties to Russia, where his father was imprisoned during World War I. As a child in Hungary, he said in a speech this month in Moscow, he came to know Russian culture and greatly respected its literary traditions and the determination of its people to survive all kinds of oppression. He began his philanthropy in Russia in 1987, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.