Yeltsin's Chechnya Problem--and Ours

...If this is true, if the United States cannot rely on anyone except a man who countenances mass atrocities, refuses to acknowledge his responsibility, offers no apologies, and in addition likes to rule by decree rather than through Parliament, then we are really in a sorry mess...

...I know Matlock, and I respect him...

...Even the picture of Chechen pre-eminence in 1992-93 needs a corrective...

...Television screens in Russia and abroad were full of harrowing images of pain, death and destruction...

...Nevertheless, the argument he presented doesn't hold up...

...Over the past weeks, the polls have shown him to be far ahead of Yeltsin in popularity...

...A valuable source, incidentally, is The Sabers of Par-adise by Leslie Blanch, 1960...

...The war, he maintained, was prompted by the need to safeguard Russia's "territorial integrity" and to protect it against a rising crime wave—presumably instigated by Dzhokhar M. Dudayev's regime...

...Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Yeltsin's man in the State Department, who has said that "not all Chechens are criminals," appears to be an example...

...The only time "regret" was heard in the context of Chechnya, it was used by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev...

...It is also true, though, as the Economist has pointed out, that while Chechen gangs were prominent in 1992-93, they have since been replaced by others, the majority of them actually directed by ethnic Russians...

...But the man who ordered this mayhem, President Boris N. Yeltsin, said not a word about why, in the face of mounting criticism, the remarkably chaotic invasion was continuing...

...No argument for supporting Yeltsin is advanced more emphatically than the claim that, with all his flaws, he has been a firm reformist and represents the best guaranpushed through his authoritarian Constitution in December 1993, and has staunchly defended the war in Chechnya...

...Nothing in the speech showed how law and order could be restored in Moscow or Rostov-on-Don by the launching of an assault on Grozny, or why the assault— carried out largely by thousands of raw recruits—had to be so massive...

...Why were they more worthy than Chechnya...

...Still, since the democrats and centrists are thoroughly disenchanted with their former idol, he has no base of support other than the nationalists and part of the military...

...the Chechens were, in the end, only junior partners in the military's expanding commercial operations...

...rors of reducing a city to another Dresden and massacring an estimated 25,000 people...

...Ambassador to the USSR from 1987 to 1991, the answer is that the Baltic States, Ukraine and others struggled for independence for a long time, and their efforts were spearheaded by grass-roots movements, mostly known as "popular fronts...

...Many analysts have already pointed out that Yeltsin's economic reforms have hardly been successful...

...The "cancerous tumor of the Grozny regime" had to be removed, "in the course of which some violations of citizens' rights took place...

...Matlock made his case in the New York Review of Books (February 16...

...Instead...

...Over one-fourth of them— 240,000—perished in the process...

...Other democrats, such as St...

...According to Jack F. Matlock Jr., the U.S...

...Nor was there an explanation for the deployment of young, inexperienced soldiers whose ineptness had turned the expedition into a bloodbath for themselves no less than for their victims...

...The passage is purported to illustrate that the Chechens were, in Handelman's words, "the premier arms dealers of post-Communist society...

...Petersburg's Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak and former Minister of Finance Boris G. Fyodorov, have also announced that they are entering the race...

...The Mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Luzhkov, would not be my choice (not that anyone has asked me), but he may run too...

...There are several attractive possibilities...

...You cannot, at one and the same time, bemoan Serbian atrocities in Bosnia and condone the carnage committed by Russia's President because he says he is a democrat, an anti-Communist and a Godfearing citizen...

...First, it seems to have escaped the attention of Yeltsin's Western advocates that it is precisely the nationalists who have come to his aid and with whom he has reached at least a tacit understanding...

...Shortly before the parliamentary address, Russia's Security Council, composed of several Yeltsin cronies without any constitutional standing, congratulated the Defense Minister on his splendid performance in Chechnya...

...Furthermore, in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan opposition to Moscow was either nonexistent or at best sporadic...

...So has Aleksandr Barkashov, head of the openly fascist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic Russian National Unity Party...

...The President, one correspondent reported, could be seen "punching him playfully, if numbingly, on the arm...

...Nor should one minimize the resilience and importance of the Russian press...

...If a history of battling against foreign oppression legitimizes self-determination, surely the Chechens' demand is no less legitimate than were those of, say, the Baltic States and Ukraine...

...other thousands were desperately trying to get out of town...

...In 1944, the entire Chechen population of 800,000 men, women and children was deported to Central Asia on the specious grounds of having collaborated with the Nazi invaders...

...Yet again nothing of substance was forthcoming...

...The "no alternative" argument is a second myth...

...Then there is the charge that Chechnya is a nest of drug smugglers, hit men and extortionists who negotiate their grim business in Russia's cities, above all Moscow...

...And between now and the summer of 1996, when the presidential elections are scheduled to take place, more and better candidates may appear...

...There was not a word of regret or contrition, let alone an apology forthetoll inflicted by the Russian Army on the residents of Grozny...

...And it is considerably more legitimate than was that of Byelorussia (now Belarus), where vast segments of the population do not have any sense of how they differ from the "Great Russians" or "Little Russians" (Ukrainians...

...Moreover, important segments of American public opinion, among them such stalwart institutions as the New York Times, have generally approved Washington's stance...

...For nearly 200 years the Chechens have fought the attempts to incorporate their small country within Russia's—and then the USSR's—borders...

...But there was not a hint that he himself might be responsible for the "mistakes...

...It was supposed to explain the rationale for the war, and the government's plan for achieving a lasting peace...

...One should not exaggerate the strength of this new Rightist-Yeltsin alliance: Zhirinovsky, for instance, having his eyes fixed on his own presidential plans, thought the speech "forgettable...

...At the end of last December, after the hostilities began, Yeltsin delivered a brief radio address that was more notable for what he did not say than what he said...

...Withdraw support from Yeltsin, it is said, and you invite antidemocratic forces to take over—e.g...

...Turkmenistan's ruler, for example, is a tyrant who has appointed himself "President for life...

...its citizens, Chechens and Russians, were being killed by mortar shells, aerial bombardment and rifle fire...

...It had been widely expected that at least Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev would be shown the door...

...The notion that a tiny state of a little more than 1 million inhabitants directs most criminal activity, especially arms smuggling, throughout Russia is on its face absurd...

...A MATTER OF PRINCIPLES Yeltsin's Chechnya Problem --and Ours BY ABRAHAM BRUMBERG FOR TWO MONTHS a bloody war was under way in the tiny Caucasian state of Chechnya: Its capital, Grozny, was being razed to the ground...

...One notable attempt to uncover what was going on came to naught tee against economic backsliding and resurgent nationalism in Russia...

...What Matlock fails to quote, however, are the findings in Comrade Criminal making it absolutely clear that "without the collusion between the gun brokers and the Armed Forces across Russia the Chechens would have never succeeded in establishing their financial base...

...writing as a private citizen—but with the authority of someone involved in Soviet affairs at the highest levels throughout much of a Foreign Service career that began in 1956...

...thousands of people were cut off from food and water...

...To be sure, Yeltsin did concede military "failures, setbacks and mistakes in command" while speaking to Parliament...

...The Zhirinovsky danger is a myth: Regardless of how many Russians may like to hear his obnoxious rhetoric, I know of nobody in Russia who thinks he could win a presidential election...

...a longtime contributor to THE NEW LEADER, is an authority on Russia and Eastern Europe...

...There was no acknowledgment of the hideous human rights violations that had been decried by many of his own former supporters, including Commissioner for Human Rights Sergey Kovalyev...

...The reasons given deserve close examination...

...But what about the fear of resurgent nationalism...

...To begin with, we are told that Chechnya is "an integral" part of Russia, so Yeltsin has a legal and moral right to protect his country from disintegration...

...Yeltsin made it clear that he stands firmly behind the man who came to his aid in October 1993, during his initial exercise in employing tanks to settle disputes...

...There is a word for that sort of thing: hypocrisy...

...Sergei N. Baburin, former archenemy of Yeltsin and leader of the ultranationalist Russian Path group in the Duma, heaped praise on the President for his February address, describing him as a "truer President" than he was at the time of his election in 1991...

...At a news conference following Yeltsin's visit to Almaty on February 10, Nazarbayev said that "Russian leaders regret the bloodshed...

...Zhirinovsky was an ally when Yeltsin after several months when "a spokesman for the Russian Security Ministry [informed] the press: 'We were told that we were displaying an unhealthy interest in this case.'" In the opinion of Russia's leading sociologist, Yuri Levada, those who contend that the Chechens are assiduous criminals are indulging in a "species of racism...

...So much for the horAbraham Brumberg...

...To exclude any viable prospects from consideration would be absurd and morally obtuse...

...In his Review of Books article, Matlock quotes a passage from Stephen Handel-man's Comrade Criminal: The Theft of the Second Russian Revolution, published in London by Michael Joseph and soon to be issued in the U. S. by Yale University Press...

...supported them...

...We are told there is "no alternative" to Yeltsin, so for better or for worse the U.S...

...the idea that this threat can be eliminated by wiping out a whole city and killing tens of thousands of innocent people is monstrous...

...Gri-gory A. Yavlinsky, a democrat and leader of the Yabloko political faction in the Duma, is one...

...Chechnya's mafias have undeniably played a reprehensible role in the criminalization of Russia...

...must stick by him...

...The United States should stick to its principles (starting with democracy) and keep its options open...

...As for public opinion in the West, it should get its priorities straight...

...But the same can be said of all the leaders of the Central Asian republics...

...By then, it was impossible to disregard the evidence that military criminal enterprise was condoned, if not encouraged, by officials in the country's defense establishment...

...In fact, that piece of barbarism was simply Stalin's way of dealing with a recalcitrant nation...

...YET DESPITE all of Yeltsin's evasions and prevarications, the United States government has stood behind him and has barely expressed concern about his behavior in Chechnya...

...Next, we are told that Dzhokhar Dudayev is a dictator and has no valid mandate...

...When a number of integral parts of the Soviet Union similarly opted for independence in 1990-91, the U.S...

...In any event, if Dudayev lacked the requisite votes before, he certainly would have them now...

...He has become the almost undisputed symbol of the anti-Russian struggle, thanks largely to Yeltsin and his loyal generals...

...Vladimir V Zhirinovsky, or perhaps more die-hard xenophobic and reactionary leaders...

...They succeeded because Yeltsin was determined in 1991 to dismember the USSR and consolidate his position in Russia, not as a result of grass-roots backing...

...it has behaved admirably, and Yeltsin can take it on only at the peril of losing whatever popularity he retains...

...But the position has wider ramifications: In effect, it is an excuse for do-nothingness, for stubbornly denying obvious choices...

...On February 16, Yeltsin finally delivered his so-called State of the Union address to the Russian Parliament...

...Never mind that Grachev has proved to be an obscene liar (only about 600 Russian lives, he recently declared, have been lost in Chechnya), or that he has resurrected classic Stalinist terminology by calling Kovalyev a "traitor to Russia" and another prominent critic, Sergei Yushenkov, "a vile reptile...

...Indeed, Handelman concludes: "For all their money...

...Their "national independence" cries were largely a disguise for the ambitions of the local Party apparats, eager to rule on their own...

...There was no admission that the invasion was not, to put it charitably, a success...

...It is true that no "popular front" movement evolved in Chechnya, but the magnitude of Chechen resistance to Russia obviated the need for one...

...Today Yeltsin's brand of barbarism fuels Chechnya's resolve to go on resisting a hated enemy...