This article was written before the first presidential
election. Russian oligarchs, led by Berezovsky and Gusinsky, replaced the
degenerate Yeltsin with Putin, believing that the executive security officer, a
crony of Anatoly Sobchak, was the best option as a puppet. However, as it later
turned out, they were gravely mistaken, failing to discern the patriot beneath the
formal exterior.
Alik Bakhshi
Chechnya and the Road to Power, or
the Revival of Empire According to Putin
“The villages are burning, they have no defence,
The sons of the fatherland are defeated by the enemy,
And the glow, like an eternal meteor,
Playing in the clouds, frightens the gaze.
Like a predatory beast, into the humble abode
The victor bursts with bayonets;
He kills the elderly and children,
Innocent maidens and young mothers.”
...............
“Two years have passed, and war still rages;
The barren tribes of the Caucasus
Fed by robbery and deceit;
And on a scorching day and under the night fog
Their courage is terrible for a Russian.”
“Izmail
Bey” by M.Yu. Lermontov
170 years have passed since the
great poet wrote these lines, but time has not diminished their relevance in
the least against the backdrop of the bloody events unfolding in the Caucasus
today. The military actions in Chechnya and Dagestan can be seen as another
episode in the Caucasian War—a war waged by Russia in the 19th century and
which flared up again at the end of the 20th century. The war in the Caucasus
didn't begin today or yesterday; it began 200 years ago, when the Russians
decided to seize this heavenly corner of the earth. Note that it wasn't the
highlanders (read: bandits, terrorists) who descended from the mountains onto
the Russian plain; it was the Russians who came to them, and not with bread and
salt, but with superior weapons, bringing death and destruction to the
rebellious infidels. That the Russian classic did not exaggerate for the sake
of rhyme is evidenced by the equally eloquent letter of the tsarist general
A.P. Ermolov to Alexander in 1819 during military operations in the Caucasus: “I
marched into the mountains, taking advantage of the general terror and flight,
destroyed several villages, all the grain in the fields, and did not encounter
a single person along the way; the enemy had dispersed to such an extent.”
Also: “The order was to destroy the villages, and, among other things, a
beautiful town of up to 800 houses, called Ulu-Aiya, was devastated. The
inhabitants fled from here with such haste that they left behind several
infants. The devastation was necessary as a monument to the punishment of a
proud people who had never before surrendered to anyone; it was necessary as a
warning to other peoples, for whom examples of terror alone are convenient to
restrain.” (Notes by A.P. Ermolov, during his administration of Georgia).
Of all the colonial peoples of
the Russian Empire, the Caucasians suffered the most for their love of freedom.
Even then, the Russian authorities understood perfectly well that the desire
for independence could only be destroyed along with the people, so they
embarked on a systematic, historically unprecedented extermination of the
highlanders, comparable to the Holocaust of European Jewry. Condemning the
highlanders to starvation, all the fertile lands of the Kuban and Terek Rivers
were confiscated and distributed to Cossack villages. This is where the Kuban
and Terek Cossacks emerged, who today demand the revival of the Cossack army.
Huge masses of highlanders were forcibly deported from their homes to
settlements deep in Russia—or rather, not to settlements, but to death. What
could be more telling than the following fact: In 1859, 159 people were sent to
settle in the Novouzensky district of the Samara province. A year later, only
81 remained alive. (Central State Military Historical Archive, Moscow). In addition
to forced deportation, highlanders were also disposed of by deception, namely,
under the pretext of a pilgrimage to Mecca. According to the plan of the
tsarist minister Milyutin, those wishing to make the pilgrimage were
transported to Turkey free of charge on state-chartered steamships. Five
hundred thousand people were deported from the Caucasus in this way. None of
them were destined to see their homeland, as their return would be fraught with
bureaucratic difficulties. Many of their passports expired during the
pilgrimage, leaving them with no choice but to accept Turkish citizenship.
Those who escaped the bureaucratic hurdles were sent in a convoy, bypassing the
Caucasus, to the Ural steppes for settlement, under the pretext that returning
to their homelands would inevitably result in clashes with the Cossacks. The
fact is that during the highlanders' absence, their land and property had been
confiscated in favor of the Don Cossacks resettled in the Caucasus. Even in
Soviet times, the "father of all nations" continued the physical
extermination of the mountaineers, ordering them to be deported in packed
trains to Siberia and Kazakhstan like cattle. It's not hard to guess what fate
awaited them there. Moreover, Stalin carried out this deportation of the
peoples of the Caucasus twice: before and during World War II.
No matter how beautiful the
ideology behind which the Evil Empire disguised its predatory nature, its end
came. Stuck for eight years in another mountainous country, to which the
Kremlin ideologists wanted to bring prosperity, By ploughing its soil with exploding bombs and
shells, Russia suffered a crushing defeat. An Afghan bandit, a mujahideen, a
spirit—in short, a terrorist—with a homemade machine gun and a donkey instead
of an armoured personnel carrier, defended his freedom, prevented his homeland
from being turned into another cotton-growing appendage of the Russian Empire,
and buried the Kremlin's long-held dream of reaching the Indian Ocean. After
all, two tank marches through Pakistan remained, and the Russian soldier would
have been rinsing his footcloths in the waters of the Indian Ocean with a sense
of fulfilled international duty.
A vast country with the world's largest army,
armed with supersonic aircraft, powerful tanks, artillery of every calibre, the
world's best Kalashnikov assault rifles, homing missiles, and other electronic
gadgets, was unable to cope with the Afghan people. Afghanistan turned out to
be that last extra piece that gave the dragon, suffering from internal
diseases, indigestion. It turns out that Alexander Nevsky's words,
"Whoever comes to us with the sword will perish by the sword," are
true not only on Russian soil.
The failed military adventure in Afghanistan
had far-reaching political consequences. The undeclared, shameful war exposed
all the lies and hypocrisy with which the Kremlin communists had buried their
citizens. It was impossible to seal the truth, along with those who died, for
unknown reasons, into the zinc coffins that were arriving in ever-increasing
numbers in response to the all-out war unleashed by the Soviet Union against
the Afghan people. The very first democratic reforms that Mikhail Gorbachev was
forced to introduce to give a civilized face to the Soviet system so shaken the
patchwork empire that it began to disintegrate. Moscow did attempt to drown
this march toward freedom in blood—events in Tbilisi, Riga, Vilnius, and
Baku—but as Mikhail Gorbachev, the architect of perestroika, aptly put it,
without realizing what it would lead to, "the process has begun."
The collapse of the Russian colonial empire did
not end with the independence of the former Soviet republics, as demonstrated
by the example of Chechnya. But while freedom for the Soviet republics cost
little bloodshed, it cost Chechnya 100,000 lives. Following a well-known
tradition, having labelled the Chechens bandits and the people's militias
gangs, Russia is once again unleashing a war in the Caucasus, arguing that this
is inherently Russian territory and that it wants to avoid setting a precedent
for other peoples it has conquered. Frankly, it defies rational explanation to
explain how, for example, Chechnya or Dagestan differ from Azerbaijan or
Moldova, which have now achieved independent status. Can anyone answer the
question: why did Georgia have the status of a union republic, while
Ingushetia, Tuva, and Chechnya are autonomous republics? How was this
distinction determined? Georgia supposedly asked to join Russia—or so the
legend goes, at Moscow's instigation. Ukraine even signed Bohdan Khmelnytsky's
famous "Together Forever" treaty. Belarus, which had never known
statehood, suddenly received independence as a gift and still doesn't know what
to do with it. The peoples of the Caucasus, who fought for hundreds of years
against the Russian presence on their land, were not granted such a privilege
of freedom. Two years of war completely destroyed the oil production and
refining industries. The ruins of Grozny are reminiscent of Stalingrad during
World War II, and the razed towns of Bamut and Samashki differ from the
tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki only in the scale of the devastation and
the absence of radiation. But just as in Afghanistan, despite the fact that
Russian troops had complete control of the operational space, they suffered
defeat. A small nation of 1.5 million, challenging the empire, forced Moscow to
initiate peace negotiations, which culminated in the Khasavyurt Agreement.
Although Russia did not officially recognize Chechnya's independence, the
Chechen people effectively gained independence at the cost of incredible
hardship.
However, after a flurry of prime ministers, the
Russian government was led by former Chekist Vladimir Putin, who differs from
his liberal, intelligentsia predecessors in his formal, gray appearance,
typical of KGB officers, and, as soon became clear, in the crude speech of a
repeat offender. What, then, is the reason for the rise to power of such a
figure—a sort of Russian version of Augusto Pinochet? But unlike the Chilean
general, who seized power himself, V. Putin is still a protégé of Russian
oligarchs, who, fearing a communist victory in the upcoming elections, brought
him to power to replace the progressively deteriorating and ailing President B.
Yeltsin.
Yeltsin, who considered himself the guarantor
of a Constitution that is a hollow phrase in Russia, was in fact the guarantor
of the oligarchs' financial well-being. It was under Yeltsin that the symbiosis
of power and money reached its peak. The new regime that replaced the
communists offered opportunities for easy enrichment, so corruption instantly
permeated all levels of power. Under the current circumstances in Russia, money
and power acquired unlimited possibilities. Oligarchs used money to buy seats in
the State Duma and positions in the government. Boris Berezovsky, the richest
man in Russia and an Israeli citizen, became Secretary of the Security Council.
True, Berezovsky later renounced his Israeli citizenship after becoming
Secretary, but this fact only underscores the uniqueness of the situation. Can
you imagine a similar position in Israel held by someone of Russian descent,
let alone Russian citizenship? The oligarchs saw Putin, as a traditionally
executive KGB official, as a weak-willed puppet who would allow them to further
enrich themselves by selling the country's raw materials without establishing
any production facilities. This economic trend could have left Russia in the
position of being a raw materials appendage of the West and Japan. Russia, a
former dictatorship of the proletariat, could have transformed into a
dictatorship of oligarchs. The new nouveau riche did not associate their future
with Russia. Above all, they did not see it as their homeland. They had all
prepared their rear areas in advance in Israel and other countries,
transferring their capital there whenever possible. For them, Russia was merely
a means of enrichment. However, they failed to recognize the other side of
Putin's nature in time. Like a true security officer, he managed to conceal his
future ambitions, steeped in intense patriotism. At that time, the oligarchs
did not foresee the danger Putin posed to their financial empire.
Undoubtedly, there are many opponents in Russia
to relinquishing Chechnya, even among the intelligentsia, Putin, in order to
secure popular support in the upcoming presidential elections, is banking on a
new war with Chechnya. To this end, immediately after the nationalist Putin
took office, a war was launched in Dagestan. Suddenly, the rebellious Wahhabis,
who had been defying Moscow's protégés in Makhachkala for two years, were
remembered. The Wahhabis were supplied with weapons from Chechnya and supported
by volunteers there—not, mind you, from official Grozny. But for the Russians,
this was enough to start a war in Chechnya. Accusations are being levelled at
Georgia and Azerbaijan, through whose territories military aid to Chechnya may
be flowing. So, if necessary, neither Georgia nor Azerbaijan is immune from
encroachment by Kremlin politicians. A similar situation comes to mind: Afghan
guerrillas had camps in Pakistan, but the Russians didn't dare bomb the
territory of a neutral state. Or another example. Volunteers from Russia fought
in Bosnia on the side of their co-religionists, but the Bosnians didn't declare
war on Russia for this.
Furthermore, apartment buildings in Moscow
itself are blown up at the right moment. Hysteria against Chechnya is whipped
up across the country. Immediately, literally in the first hours after the
terrorist attacks, dozens of Chechens involved are caught, and hundreds of
kilograms of RDX are found. However, in Ryazan, the FSB suffered a blunder:
residents of the building the terrorists allegedly wanted to blow up discovered
that the sacks contained ordinary sugar instead of RDX. To smooth over their
blunder, the FSB explains that it was a vigilance test. Russian investigative
agencies, having failed to solve a single one of a series of high-profile
contract killings—such as those of Kholodov, Menya, Listyev, and
Starovoitova—are suddenly displaying such alacrity. All this seems, to say the
least, rather strange. Chechen President A. Maskhadov, while denying Grozny's
involvement in the bombings, not without reason mentioned Berezovsky's name,
emphasizing the danger this man poses to both Chechnya and Russia. For some
reason, Maskhadov's account is more credible, especially given Berezovsky's
well-known ties to Chechen criminals.
By
occupying Chechnya, Putin certainly didn't solve the Chechen problem. Quite the
contrary, Russia has reopened a bleeding wound that brings suffering to both
peoples. But Putin, on the other hand, appeared triumphant, a sort of rallying
cry for the "Russian land," which is what allowed him to enter the
Kremlin gates as such. From this moment on, the countdown can begin for
oligarchs, freedom of speech, and Western-style democracy in general, for all
of this is detrimental to the Russian Empire, which Putin wants to preserve, if
not restore, within its former borders. During his four years as president,
Putin has achieved much: by persecuting the oligarchs, Putin has deprived them
of their ability to influence Kremlin policy. Moreover, the oligarchs have been
stripped of their possessions in Russia, and most importantly, the media has
fallen into the hands of the president. Putin has gradually, effectively
eliminated freedom of speech in the media. Television has become as mendacious,
overregulated, and uninteresting as it was under communism, as the coverage of
the Nord-Ost events vividly demonstrated. Freedom of speech, which brought down
the totalitarian communist regime, is now preventing a specialist in
"outhouse soaking" and, as it unexpectedly turns out,
"circumcision," from successfully combating international terrorism
and extremism. Using television, Putin is turning the Duma elections into a
farce, and now, having secured an absolute majority in parliament, he can amend
the Constitution. It's noteworthy that this absolute Duma majority is held by
the pro-presidential Unity party, which has no program whatsoever, and, no less
noteworthy, the president himself is not a member. It's important to note here
that instead of the utterly failed democrats, who have nothing but ambition in
their hearts, the current Duma is filled with deputies from openly nationalist
parties. In the current political situation, it's entirely believable to hear
President Putin claim that the upcoming elections will be his last, because
they could be his last ever. This is all very reminiscent of the circumstances
under which Hitler came to power in Germany.
Global
democracy must understand that Russia was and remains a prison of nations, and
that the rise to power of people like Putin indicates a trend toward reviving
the former glory of the Soviet Union. The restoration of a totalitarian regime
in Russia would once again bring the world to the brink of nuclear danger. The
West's leniency toward what is happening in Chechnya unties the hands of
Russian Nazis and poses the greatest danger to the world. Lermontov's lines
could be relevant not only for the peoples of the Caucasus:
"Are
they waiting for a Russian detachment,
To the
point of bloodshed of the dainty guests?"
"Hadji
Abrek" by M.Yu. Lermontov
The
19th-century Russian poet was a far greater democrat than Russia's current
president.
October
14, 1999
