Window on Eurasia: Moscow Winning in Chechnya in the Media But Not on the Ground

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 19 – Claims by pro-Moscow officials in Grozny that there are no more “major armed formations of militants” in Chechnya and promises by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov that he will shut down the underground resistance there by the end of this year now dominate Russian and Western media coverage of the conflict.
But these claims and promises, according to an independent Chechen journalist based in the republic’s capital, are completely contradicted by “daily reports on local television channels” about the latest attacks by militants and the support they still receive from the population (http://www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=13363).
In an essay posted online yesterday, Grozny-based writer Lema Musayev points out that pro-Moscow forces have succeeded in killing most of the major leaders of the Chechen resistance in the past and forcing pro-independence groups to organize themselves in smaller groups and attack smaller targets.
But he says, those obvious Russian “successes” should not obscure three other realities: First, the number of attacks by militants and the number of their supporters “is not falling” even if the targets of these attacks are no longer as large and mediagenic as they were in the past.
Second, because the pro-Moscow forces are claiming victory so frequently and are now “dizzy with success,” they have reduced their own numbers in many parts of Chechnya, thereby making it easier for the insurgents to operate and to win support from residents who are angry at the nominal authorities for failing to protect them.
And third – and this is far and away the most important development, according to Musayev – there has been a change in the make-up of the Chechen resistance, one that suggests the militants are likely to be even more unrestrained in the use of force against their opponents than independence forces were in earlier times.
Musayev suggests that “the lyrical quality and charismatic nature of leaders of the Dudayev period have disappeared into the past. Having begun their careers as public politicians, [those leaders] even when their were operating in the atmosphere of the underground continued to feel themselves to be leaders whom the people supported.
“In the hopes of recovering this public status,” Musayev continues, “these people thought about the sympathies of the population and attempted not to act cruelly and at odds with the norms of public morality.”
But “now, in place of these relatively humane and disciplined brigade generals have arrived pitiless and cruel young amirs-mujahids, who are not unknown to anyone and who do not recognize the need for support from others. Formed by war, they are pitiless not only to federal forces but also in an equal degree to their compatriots.”
Unlike Chechen President Jokar Dudayev in the early 1990s, “they are not concerned with winning broad sympathy” from the population. And because of that, these new leaders are prepared to act with precisely the kind of unrestrained violence that the Chechen independence movement in almost all cases avoided.
Moreover, these new leaders, who are driven more by religious than by ethnic motives, have little concern with the Chechen national cause. Instead, they are more interested in driving Russia and Russians out of the North Caucasus as a whole and thus move across borders in the region without giving it much thought.
And given this larger goal, the new mujahids are also preparing for a much longer fight than were earlier Chechen leaders, Musayev argues, a fight that could go on for “years” and in many places across southern Russia regardless of whether they gain a victory in one place or another – or even none at all.
But because Moscow and Grozny are winning the war in the media, Musayev concludes, they appear to have little interest in acknowledging these new realities and dangers. Instead, both the one and the other remain committed to proclaiming victory over Chechen separatism “so as not to darken the last year of Putin’s presidency.”

Window on Eurasia: Putin Regime Rewriting Russian History

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 19 – In yet another disturbing echo of Soviet times, Russian President Vladimir Putin is overseeing a massive rewrite of Russian history, one explicitly designed to portray Stalin’s crimes as less important than his contributions and to suggest that freedom and human rights now are less important than sovereignty.
This week, the Russian Federation’s Academic Educational Association of Humanitarian Knowledge approved two new textbooks to be used to retrain educators over the next several years about the country’s past and present, Moscow’s “Gazeta” newspaper reported yesterday (http://gzt.ru/education/2007/09/18/220222.html).
In contrast to most of the 27 Russian history textbooks now being used in teacher training institutions throughout the country, the two new ones – “Contemporary History of Russia, 1945-2006, A Book for Teachers” and “Social Studies: The Global World in the XXI Century” – contain major innovations in interpretation.
Indeed, Deputy Education Minister Isaak Kalin told the newspaper in words that recall commentaries on the constant rewriting of texts in the Soviet Union, the changes introduced by these next textbooks ”are much greater than in more stable areas of knowledge such as mathematics and physics.”
Two of the changes in interpretation, one about Stalin included in the first book and the other about the hierarchy of values in the Putin era featured in the second, are certain to generate controversy. The excerpts published by “Gazeta” are translated in full below:
On Stalin as a Leader: “Of course, the particular features of Stalin’s personality lent drama and tension to the Soviet period. … However, the impact of his personality on the political-economic development of the country was of only secondary importance compared to objective circumstances.
“The achievement of the acceleration of the modernization of the country required a corresponding system of power and the formation of an administrative apparatus capable of realizing this course. To a large extent, these causes explain the character of the massive revolution ‘from above’ that Stalin carried out.”
On the Hierarchy of Values in Russia Now: “ In recent times, sovereign democracy has become a significant element of the conception of state security. This means that Russia does not simply recognize such values as freedom, human rights, private property, elections and the subordination of the organs of power to the people but considers them as an inalienable aspect of the Russian multi-national state.
“However, it is a matter of principle that the organs of power are formed exclusively by the [non-ethnic] Russian nation. Thus, Russia refuses to yield even part of its national sovereignty for economic and technological preferences or in response to promises to include Russia in the semi-mythical ‘club of genuine democracies.’”
On the one hand, as “Gazeta” properly notes, it would be a mistake to make too much of this as far as Russia’s schools are concerned. There is still a long way to go before these ideas are in fact presented to students, and both other influences and a lack of money for such new textbooks are likely to delay any massive introduction.
But on the other, as the paper also suggests, these textbooks for teachers represent one of the clearest indications of the direction the thinking of the Russian leadership under Vladimir Putin is going, a direction that those appalled by Stalin’s crimes or hopeful that Russia will institutionalize democracy cannot but regret.