Johnson's Russia List
#7003
3 January 2003
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A CDI Project
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#12
Moscow News
January 1-7, 2003
Chechnya: Critique of Sloppy Talk
By Sergei Roy

Some of my recent articles on the Dubrovka hostage-taking and its aftermath
have generated a flurry of e-mail activity, with friends in the U.S., U.K.,
Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere raising questions and expressing
opinions on what they term "Russian-Chechen relations." Throughout this
correspondence I had a nagging sensation about the various snags in
communication that were due to the very terms in which my Western colleagues
are accustomed, or rather have been trained by their media, to think and
debate (the two processes being, regrettably, not always concurrent) on these
matters. The trouble with such terms is that they are "slanted" - in the true
sense in which this concept was used by Hayakawa and other general
semanticists: The very choice of words is not neutral and objective but based
on certain presumptions about the state of affairs in question. Use such
words, and what do you get? At best, a break in communication instead of
meaningful dialogue. At worst, a screaming match in place of the "luxury of
human intercourse," if you will pardon the expression.

You take this curious habit of referring to Chechnya as a "breakaway
republic" - which, say, BBC World and CNN, to name just two TV channels,
invariably do. Personally, I cringe whenever I hear that expression. It is a
funny kind of "breakaway republic" in which the entire educated and
well-to-do elite up and breaks away from its beloved native land and heads
for the land from which their people are supposed to break away, mostly for
the capital Moscow, but also elsewhere. I'd say it was the clearest instance
of voting with their feet, and if that is a vote for independence, then it is
a bit left-handed, to mix a couple of metaphors. Those who so glibly use the
phrase "breakaway republic" should visit Moscow's south-west, Yugo-zapad. It
is a veritable Chechenland, with Russian kids in the first grades heavily
outnumbered by the newcomers. I've had occasion to point out that between
100,000 and 200,000 Chechens, no one knows exactly how many, have settled in
Moscow alone - enough to form a breakaway republic of their own. Those who
cherish the term "separatist" ought to study closer the question of who chose
to be physically separated from what.

These separatists knew very well what they were running away from: the rule
of the Kalash, instituted by Dudayev's edict No.1 - the right of every
Chechen to bear arms. That's when the educated ones started running, in 1991,
long before the federal authorities' ham-fisted attempts to restore
constitutional order there. The escapees knew better than to call the
territory ruled by Dudayev and his cohorts a "republic." You say "republic,"
and you have a mental picture of a political organization capable of
implementing some set of laws, no matter how harsh or unjust. If that term is
used to cover a conglomerate of armed, clan-based bands recognizing no law
other than jungle law, and no pursuits other than some form of crime, that's
a misnomer to end all misnomers.

Another funny one is "Aslan Maskhadov the popularly elected president of
Chechnya." Even if he had been popularly elected (which he wasn't, with just
about one tenth of the Chechen population taking part in the voting, I was
reliably informed at the time), his term of office expired God knows how long
ago. But to call those elections free and fair is in itself a typical bit of
propaganda eyewash. What with that Edict No.1, it was arms-bearing Chechens
who voted (those who bothered to), not the unarmed non-Chechens who were
fleeing for their life - those who could, of course. More than 200,000 of
those "Russian speakers" - Russians, Armenians, Jews, Ukrainians, Kurds,
Greeks, Ayssors, Ossetians, Dagestanis, you name them (they are all
"Russians" in the Western book, which is yet another semantic joke) - settled
in Stavropol Territory alone; just ask Stavropol governor Chernogor, who has
to feed them, find them jobs, and keep them out of mischief. Many more
scattered throughout the vastness of Russia, unnoticed either by the
international community or even by their own self-absorbed government. They
have tales of Chechen atrocities to tell that no one hears, while "Russian
troops' atrocities in Chechnya" is everyday Western media fare.

If that exodus wasn't the result of Nazi-type ethnic cleansing, I wonder what
is. You can read Dmitry Pushkar's story in MN's issue No.49 on the subject,
and I can tell you that it is a pretty superficial account: Mr. Pushkar was
discovering for himself things that had been common knowledge down south for
years. My mother still lives in a little house at the foot of Mount Beshtau,
and until recently I used to go there every three or four months. I will
never forget a trip back to Moscow in about 1992: There was this woman from
Grozny in the same compartment, and she kept crying all the 34 hours the
train ride takes. Her husband and son had been killed by the Chechens, just
for fun and to take away their apartment, herself and her 16-year-old
daughter gang-raped, the daughter subsequently died, she had to leave her
flat and all her possessions, and flee for her life into the unknown. Who was
she to appeal to? That degenerate Yeltsin? Or Lord Judd? But that was quite a
few years before his lordship appeared on the scene, and I don't think it
would be any use appealing to him now. He seems to me to be the sort of man
who can proudly say, with Lord Highcastle in a Bernard Shaw play: "Nothing
ever penetrates our heads." I don't think he has read much, not Walter
Scott's "Waverley," anyway. Otherwise he would have recognized some of the
problems staring him in the face: They are much the same as England had to
deal with at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries on the
Border.

Actually, I don't think it takes all that much erudition - just a little
imagination might help. Remember what a couple of Washington snipers did to
America recently? Right now, it is a few hundred, if not thousand, snipers
with various grudges that are terrorizing Chechnya - and even Moscow on
occasions. Do we invite them to a roundtable discussion of "post-war models
of Russo-Chechen coexistence," as various Western do-gooders are pressing us
to do? Head of the left-leaning party Yabloko, Grigory Yavlinsky, our most
prominent "stop-the-warrior," grumbled in disgust, after his failed
negotiations with the Dubrovka hostage-takers: "There's no one there with
whom you could talk politics." I guess he said more than he thought he did.
You can't discuss politics or anything else with terrorists and
hostage-takers, but neither can you discuss anything with those who provide
political cover for them: They are just two sides of the same coin. One side
has all the muscle, the other some semblance of shabby political
respectability - in the eyes of the beholders, those double-standard experts
whom it suits to see respectability where there is none.

There is also intermittent talk about a "post-war model of Russo-Chechen
coexistence." I, too, was asked to come up with some such model. Well, I
could only say that the least of my concerns and aspirations was to create
some "model" that would please everyone and that would miraculously lead to a
Switzerland-type peace, orderliness, and serenity for all. Actually, the
things that rile me, as a human being and journalist, are above all the
ignorance and arrogance with which various model-creators both in the West
and over here in Moscow approach a problem which, at a serious estimate, will
take several generations to resolve. If I were to speak of models, I'd again
refer to those tried and found effective in the past - say, the way England
tamed the various Highlander Rob Roys by forbidding them to wear arms - and
even kilts, if I remember rightly. But, I repeat, that sort of thinking or
rather playing God with countries, constitutions, interventions, etc. from a
safe distance and from a high moral ground appears to me to be a futile and
not very intelligent occupation. If any accommodation is found, it will be
found by the people on the ground driven by the need to survive - for what
are eternal war and terrorism if not a road toward annihilation? And it must
be clear to anyone with a grain of sense in their head that it will not be
Russia that will be so annihilated.

To conclude, I can only repeat what I wrote seven years ago, after Basayev's
raid on Budyonnovsk: Tragedies have no happy endings, and the Chechen tragedy
is no exception. We must be prepared for a very long pull, for advances and
reverses, for a lot of enlightenment effort. Talking less balderdash about
the whole problem and cleaning up the language in which it is discussed would
be some help, however minuscule.

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