Our Life and Times
January-February 2000

Crisis in Russia in wake of Chechen war

by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes

Boris Yeltsin's surprise Jan. 1 resignation, which allowed the former KGB man, Vladimir Putin, to assume the presidency, has deepened the drift toward authoritarianism. Putin has not hesitated to form an alliance with the Stalinist Communist Party. His recent and very relative popularity has rested on a single issue, his appeal to the rankest Russian chauvinism against national minorities as he has conducted a brutal war against the tiny republic of Chechnya. Putin has also attempted to reassert Russian power with some nuclear saber rattling, admitting for the first time that Russia would conduct a first strike "if necessary."

The new Chechen war, on the heels of the 1994-96 one, has devastated Chechnya but done absolutely nothing to stem the deteriorating conditions of life and labor of the Russian people. Since September, Russian forces have mercilessly bombed Chechnya's towns and villages, following that up with looting and murder. They have driven hundreds of thousands from their homes and have not hesitated to machine-gun refugees. Their corrupt officers have also sold off military supplies, including thousands of arms to the Chechen resistance.

The tide of battle began to turn in late November, when Chechens began to ambush Russian patrols. By mid-January, strong Chechen counterattacks besieged several towns the Russians thought to have been behind the lines. These counterattacks are sure to continue even if the Russians succeed in taking Grozny.

Putin is discovering what Yeltsin learned in 1994-96: Although Russia's technological superiority allows it to pound civilians with impunity, when its demoralized and often unpaid ground troops try to hold territory, they are no match for Chechens fighting for the independence of their country. Inside Russia, courageous human rights activists such as Sergei Kovaliev and Yelena Bonner, widow of Andrei Sakharov, have been among the few to openly condemn this imperialist war. However, even some of these activists, including Kovaliev, have opposed Bonner's open support for an independent Chechnya. The Chechen people clearly demand this, although few of them support uncritically their current leadership which contains its share of Islamic fundamentalists, corrupt politicians, and gangsters. For their part, the Western powers, especially the U.S., have shed crocodile tears, but done nothing to support Chechnya. They have ignored the fact that Russian troop levels in the Caucasus now surpass the limits set by the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. They have refused to slow or cut off their massive economic aid which is financing the war. The Chechen independence struggle has a long history and will not be suppressed. In 1853, Karl Marx, a strong supporter of Chechnya, wrote that the failure of the West to support them in that period would "neither out-voice history nor silence the mountaineers, the clashing of whose arms proves to the world that the Caucasus does not...belong to Russia" (MARX-ENGELS COLLECTED WORKS, Vol. 12, 406).

Having suffered greatly under the Tsars, the Chechen people experienced even worse under Stalin, who in 1944 deported this entire people (and others) en masse to Central Asia. Hundreds of thousands died along the way. Inside Stalin's labor camps, the Chechens stood out among other oppressed nationalities for their absolute refusal to accept Russian authority. That spirit, still alive today, is haunting Russia.