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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 2 (October 2000)
SUMMARY: A bomb blast in the Pushkin Square recalled the series of bomb blasts in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinaksk last autumn. Then, 300 people were killed and the official propaganda of Russia blamed the Chechens - yet any credible evidence has still not been presented. The Buinaksk bomb in Dagestan was strangely forgotten. In Ryazan, the Russian security service FSB was caught installing yet another bomb - it was later claimed to have been a practice aimed at testing the alertness of the inhabitants of the targeted apartment block. Conspiracy theories stretching from Chechens to Circassians and Dagestani groups, from the FSB and other Russian security structures to the Russian mafia, are still running at large, and the bomb blasts remain unsolved - like every single one of the bomb blasts in Moscow since 1995 (in total over 40). Already the bombs of autumn 1999 seemed very unlikely to be blown up by Chechens. The new bomb came in a situation where Putin no longer needs a war in Chechnya to seize power - it is no wonder that this time Putin himself warned not to blame automatically Chechens for the bomb blast. Paul Starobin’s conclusion is to grant Chechnya with independence, although Starobin repeats some of the classical prejudices of the Russians at Chechens (and other Caucasians) as "troublesome warrior nations".
By Paul Starobin
Moscow Bureau Chief Starobin covers Russian politics and business.
Source: Business Week: August 28, 2000
Pushkin Square in central Moscow, so named for Russia’s greatest poet, is a favorite meeting spot for young lovers. On Aug. 8, it was splattered with blood. A bomb placed in an underpass instantly killed seven people and gravely wounded dozens of others. The temptation for strongman President Vladimir V. Putin to lash out will be powerful—perhaps irresistible.
But lash out at whom? At the "bandits’’—the code name for Chechen rebels—whom federal security police blamed within hours of the explosion? Chechen terrorists may indeed be the culprits; they are widely believed to be behind the bombings of several Moscow apartment buildings last summer. But even if they are responsible for the recent explosion, for Putin to widen Russia’s ongoing military campaign against Chechen forces would compound a policy that has already proved to be folly. It is time for a radical shift in approach: For Russia’s own sake, it should grant Chechnya independence.
As America demonstrated in Vietnam, nations all too often cling stubbornly to policies that run counter to their own self-interest. But Russia’s Chechnya blunder is even deeper and more intractable than the Vietnam mistake. Moscow’s effort to subdue this small country—populated largely by fiercely clannish Muslims who are skilled at arms—is more than 150 years old, and it has never worked. Pride mixed with imperial ambition and racial and religious bias has blinded generations of Russian leaders—from Nicholas I in the 19th century to Joseph Stalin, Boris Yeltsin, and now Putin—to this unconquerable reality.
Putin says granting independence to Chechnya, now a republic of the Russian Federation, could rip Russia apart at its multi-ethnic seams. True, post-Soviet Russia is an intricately woven religious and ethnic tapestry, especially in the mountainous region of the North Caucasus, where Chechnya lies. But nowhere but Chechnya has such a determined movement for secession taken root. This is because no other ethnic group within the borders of today’s Russia feels so massively aggrieved. During World War II, Stalin deported almost the entire population—men, women, and children—to Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, for supposed German sympathies. They were exiled for 13 years. That sparked the secession movement that flared anew after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Yeltsin invaded Chechnya in 1994 in a futile two-year war, and Russian troops went in again last year after Chechen rebels tried to establish a new base in neighboring Dagestan—a plan that had little support from the native population, despite their Muslim kinship.
If Putin’s rationale for keeping Chechnya in the Russian fold is flawed, so too are his means. He aims to eliminate the Chechen guerrillas as a fighting force. "We must take what we are doing in the North Caucasus to the end, finish off the terrorists in their nest,’’ he declared in an Aug. 9 statement. But green Russian troops are no better masters of Chechnya’s mountain passes than American boys were of Vietnam’s rice paddies. Russia lost at least 6,000 troops in the 1994-96 Chechen war; some 2,500 more have died in the current one. Frustration, inevitably, has spawned barbarism against a civilian population whose rebel sympathies are plain—just as it did in Vietnam when American troops massacred the village of My Lai.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS. His uncompromising rhetoric notwithstanding, Putin may feel trapped in a political box of his own making. He was, after all, elected in March on a platform of muscular action against the rebels. But such boxes must sometimes be flattened, and Putin has no powerful political rival anyway. He can find other bases of popular support, such as his crackdown against the hated oligarchs. As for Russian honor and credibility, America recovered from the indignity of Vietnam, and France from Algeria. Chechnya is the unfinished business of an empire that must make a final disinvestment.
Ninety minutes after the bombing at Pushkin Square, the acrid smell of explosives still hung in the air. One scene was predictable: A band of supporters of Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the fringe right-wing nationalist, unfurled a blue banner that read "The Only Good Chechen Is a Dead Chechen.’’ But a trio of Russian teenage girls just a few paces away had a quite different reaction to the day’s horror. "Of course’’ the war should be stopped, said Olga Mayorova, a 15-year-old Muscovite. "Russia doesn’t need Chechnya.’’ For the good of Russia’s future, Putin should heed that wisdom.
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