Putin's Russia

POSTSCRIPT

July 10, 2004, is just another day in the calendar of Russia. It happens to be the cutoff date for making changes to this book.

Late yesterday evening, Paul Khlebnikov, editor in chief of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, was murdered in Moscow. He was mowed down as he left the magazine’s office. Khlebnikov was famous for writing about our oligarchs, the structure of Russian gangster capitalism, and the huge sums of easy money certain of our citizens have managed to get their hands on. Also last evening, Victor Cherepkov was blown up by a grenade in Vladivostok. He was a member of our parliament, the Duma, and a prominent champion of the weakest and poorest of this land. Cherepkov was running for mayor of his native city, the most important municipality in the Far East of Russia. He had successfully gotten through to the second round and looked to have a real chance of being elected. As he left his campaign headquarters he was blown up by an antipersonnel mine activated by a trip wire.

Yes, stability has come to Russia. It is a monstrous stability under which nobody seeks justice in courts that flaunt their subservience and partisanship. Nobody in his or her right mind seeks protection from the institutions entrusted with maintaining law and order, because they are totally corrupt. Lynch law is the order of the day, both in people’s minds and in their actions. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The president himself has set an example by wrecking our major oil company, Yukos, after having jailed its chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin considered Khodorkovsky to have slighted him personally, so he retaliated. Not only did he retaliate against Khodorkovsky himself, he went on to seek the destruction of the goose that laid golden eggs for the coffers of the Russian state. Khodorkovsky and his partners have offered to surrender their shares in Yukos to the government, begging it not to annihilate the company. The government has said, “No. We want our pound of flesh.” On July 9, Putin strong-armed his loyal supporter Muhammed Tsikanov into the post of vice president of Yukos-Moscow, the parent company. Nobody has any doubts that the former deputy minister for economic development has been parachuted in for one reason only: to coordinate the delivery of Yukos into the hands of those whom Putin favors. The market is in turmoil, investors are running for cover, and all the remotely successful business executives I know spent May and June looking for ways to move their capital to the West.

They were wise to do so. On July 8, 9, and 10, lines a mile long formed at ATMs. The authorities had only to hint that a crackdown might close some of the banks; the result was the withdrawal from Alpha Bank, one of the most stable, of funds to the tune of two hundred million dollars in seventy-two hours. Other banks also saw a run on deposits.

It took just a hint. Because everyone expects the state to play dirty, the withdrawal of those two hundred million dollars in three days tells us all we need to know about Russia’s current stability.

If we go by the official surveys of public opinion, conducted by polling firms that have no wish to lose their contracts with the president’s office, Putin’s popularity rating couldn’t be better. He has the support of an overwhelming majority of the Russian public. Everybody trusts him. Everybody approves of what he is doing.

On September 1, 2004, a horrible act of terrorism, one without precedent, was perpetrated in Russia, and from now on the name of the little North Ossetian town of Beslan will be associated with a waking nightmare beyond the imaginings of Hollywood.

On the morning of September 1, a multinational gang of thugs seized control of No. 1 school in Beslan, demanding an immediate end to the second Chechen war. The hostage takers struck during the annual lineyka, a celebration of the beginning of the school year that is observed throughout Russia. By tradition this is an occasion to which whole families come: grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, and especially the relatives of the youngest children, who are going to school for the first time.

This is why almost 1,500 people were taken hostage: schoolchildren, their mothers and fathers, their brothers and sisters, their teachers and their teachers’ children.

Everything that happened during the period of September 1–3, and in Russia subsequently, has been the predictable consequence of the Putin regime’s systematic imposition of the power of a single individual, to the detriment of common sense and personal initiative.

On September 1 the intelligence services, and after them the authorities, announced that there actually were not that many people in the school: just 354 in all. The infuriated terrorists told the hostages, “When we have finished with you, there really will be only 354.” The relatives who had gathered around the school said the authorities were lying: more than a thousand people were trapped inside.

Nobody heard what the relatives were saying, because nobody was listening. They tried to get their message through to the authorities by way of the reporters who had converged on Beslan, but the journalists went on echoing the official tally. At this point, some of the relatives started beating up some of the journalists.

The authorities spent September 1 and the first half of September 2 in an unforgivable state of shock and disarray. No attempts were made to negotiate, since such a move had not been sanctioned by the Kremlin. Anybody attempting to lay the groundwork for negotiations was subjected to intimidation, while those whom the bandits called upon to come forward and negotiate—President Zyazikov of Ingushetia; President Dzasokhov of North Ossetia; Putin’s adviser on Chechnya, Aslambek Aslakhanov; and Dr. Leonid Roshal (who had mediated in previous sieges)—kept their heads down or fled the country, displaying cowardice at the very moment when courage was essential. Each of them subsequently had his excuses ready, but the obstinate fact remains that none of them entered the building.

Against this background of official cowardice, relatives of the hostages were terrified that there would be a repetition of the government’s tactic for ending the Nord-Ost siege at a Moscow theater in 2002, when they mounted an assault that resulted in the loss of an enormous number of innocent lives.

On September 2, Ruslan Aushev, the former president of Ingushetia, entered the beleaguered school. Reviled by the Kremlin for constantly calling for peace talks and a political settlement of the Chechen crisis, Aushev had been forced to “voluntarily” resign in favor of the Kremlin’s candidate, FSB general Zyazikov.

Arriving in Beslan, Aushev had found a deplorable situation, as he later recounted. He discovered that, one and a half days after the school had been seized, none of those in the headquarters of the operation to free the hostages was at liberty to decide who should take part in negotiations. They were waiting for instructions from the Kremlin and paralyzed by the fear of losing favor with Putin, whose displeasure would signal the end of their political careers. Evidently this consideration took priority over concern for the predicament of the hundreds of hostages. The deaths of hostages could always be blamed on the terrorists, whereas running afoul of Putin would be political suicide.

Let me state unambiguously that all the top Russian government representatives in Beslan at that time were more concerned to work out what Putin wanted than to work out a way of resolving the monstrous situation in the school. When Putin did speak, no one dared to contradict. Dzasokhov, for example, told Aushev that Putin had personally telephoned him and forbidden him to enter the school if he didn’t want to face immediate criminal charges.

Dzasokhov stayed put. Dr. Roshal fared no better. Although a pediatrician, he failed on this occasion to save anyone other than himself, having been warned by an unnamed intelligence source that the terrorists were calling for him as a negotiator only in order to kill him. He, too, stayed put.

The officials in the operational nerve center succeeded in saving their careers but failed to save the children. Even before the showdown on September 3, it was obvious that Putin’s vertical system of authority, founded on fear of and total subservience to one individual, himself, was not working. It was incapable of saving lives when that was what was needed.

Faced with this situation, Aushev printed off the Internet a declaration by Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of the Chechen resistance in whose name the thugs claimed to be acting. Because Maskhadov had stated categorically that he was against the taking of children as hostages, Aushev took this declaration and went in to talk to the terrorists. In the course of the Beslan catastrophe, he was to be the only person to conduct negotiations of any sort.

For his pains he was roundly abused by the Kremlin and accused of collaborating with the terrorists.

“They refused to talk to me in Vainakh,” Aushev related afterward, “although they were Chechens and Ingushetians. They would speak only in Russian. They asked at least to have a minister sent to negotiate—for example, Fursenko, the minister for education—but nobody was willing to go in without the sanction of the Kremlin.”

Aushev was in the school for about an hour and carried three babies out in his arms. A further twenty-six small children were allowed to leave with him. At two in the afternoon on September 3, an assault was launched, and fighting continued in the town until late into the night. Many of the terrorists were killed, but many others broke through the cordons and escaped. Officialdom began counting how many hostages had died, and is still counting today. A field was plowed up on the outskirts of Beslan and turned into an enormous cemetery with hundreds of new graves. At the time of this writing, more than one hundred hostages have simply vanished: they are classified as having disappeared without a trace. Some people believe they were abducted by the terrorists who escaped; others, that they were incinerated by the incendiary warheads of the rockets with which the special operations units were equipped.

In the immediate aftermath of Beslan there was a further tightening of the political screws. Putin announced that the tragedy had been an act of international terrorism, denying the Chechen connection and blaming everything on al-Qaeda. Aushev’s courageous intervention was denigrated and the mass media, on instructions from the Kremlin, set about portraying him as the terrorists’ principal accomplice rather than as the only hero of the hour. That role was reserved for Dr. Roshal, since the masses need heroes to admire.

In political terms, Beslan did not prompt the Kremlin to analyze and correct its mistakes. On the contrary, the Kremlin went on a political rampage.

Putin’s favorite slogan after Beslan was “War is war.” His top-down authoritarianism must be strengthened. He knew better than anyone else who was responsible for what, and only if he held the reins would Russia be safe from terrorist acts in the future. The Kremlin introduced a bill in the Duma abolishing direct election of provincial governors; in Putin’s opinion, it only led to their acting irresponsibly.

Not a word was heard about the fact that throughout the Beslan hostage taking, it was Presidents Zyazikov and Dzasokhov, effectively Putin’s nominees, who behaved like cowards and liars. They provided about as much leadership as one can expect milk from a billy goat.

The proposed reform of the system for selecting governors was accompanied by a campaign of ideological brainwashing that asserted that the authorities had performed irreproachably throughout the Beslan catastrophe. Nothing could have been done differently, nothing could have been more effective. As a smoke screen, a commission of inquiry of the Russian Federal Council (the upper chamber of the Russian parliament) was set up to monitor the investigation into the hostage taking. The chairman of the commission, Alexander Torshin, was received in the Kremlin by Putin and sent off with some presidential advice: The commission has not been stepping out of line.

The people of Beslan got the distinct feeling that they were being disregarded. Television coverage concentrated on the good news: the help the hostages were receiving, the mountains of sweets and toys sent to them. The question of what had happened to all those who had disappeared without a trace was not looked into.

The traditional forty-day period of mourning passed and official memorial services were held. No air time was given to the heartbroken families.

Then it was October 26, the second anniversary of the Nord-Ost hostage taking in Moscow, when a band of terrorists seized the audience and the actors of a musical in the middle of a performance. Two and a half days into the ensuing siege, the security services mounted an assault using an unknown chemical gas that resulted in the deaths of 130 hostages.

After Nord-Ost, the only action undertaken by the authorities was to whitewash their behavior, award themselves medals, and preen. Not only were no attempts made to find a settlement to the second Chechen war, but the noose was drawn tighter. A campaign was launched to destroy or neutralize anybody who might be capable of bringing a peace settlement nearer, or of preventing the Chechen crisis from again spawning terrorism in the region. It was a predictable response to the state terrorism of Russia’s antiterrorist operation directed against the peoples of Chechnya and Ingushetia. Antiterrorist terror was the defining characteristic of life in Russia in the period between Nord-Ost and the Beslan atrocity. We are ground to dust between the millstones of terror and antiterror. The number of terrorist outrages has increased exponentially, and the path leading inexorably from Nord-Ost to Beslan is plain to see.

On October 26, 2004, at eleven in the morning, there was a gathering on the steps of the theater on Dubrovka of all those whose loved ones had died or whose lives had been blighted by the Nord-Ost events: the hostages themselves and the relatives and friends of those who died. Earlier that morning they had visited the graves of those dear to them, as is the tradition in Russia, and the service of remembrance at the theater had accordingly been scheduled for eleven. The Nord-Ost aid association of those affected by the tragedy publicized the event through the usual channels. The arrangements for the service were broadcast over local radio. Invitations were sent to the office of the mayor of Moscow and to the president’s office, and assurances were received that representatives would attend.

But now the priest was waiting as the clock ticked past 11:20, 11:30, 11:50. It was time to start. People began murmuring among themselves: “Surely they can’t just not show up?”

Then it was noon. The crowd was getting edgy. Many people had children with them, orphans of those who had died. “We want to talk to the authorities. We came to ask them questions face to face.” Finally, more angrily, “We need help urgently. We are being ignored. Our children are no longer receiving free hospital treatment.”

Still no sign of officialdom. There was no point in waiting any longer: nobody turns up that late. Were the authorities afraid of looking their victims in the eye? The investigation of the Nord-Ost incident had led nowhere. The truth about the disaster and about the gas used remained classified information. Or was something else going on here?

The square around the theater had been sealed off by police, ordinary young men who had been sent to ensure that any mob passions were kept under control. They could hear what people were saying, and they were not looking happy. Eventually, it was the police officers who explained to the Nord-Ost victims that the authorities had already been to the scene and had already left. They had come for their own cozy, official memorial service while the families were out at the cemeteries, so as not to confront the victims of their actions. At ten in the morning, representatives of the mayor of Moscow and the president’s office had come to Dubrovka to pay their respects to the dead for the benefit of the TV cameras. Official wreaths had been laid; a guard of honor had performed like clockwork; appropriate speeches, planned and approved by higher authority, had been delivered. It had all been highly dignified: no tears, no excessive displays of grief, and the sanitized charade was shown repeatedly on all the television channels on the evening of October 26. Russia could rest assured that the authorities were suitably mindful of this tragic incident and that everybody agreed they were doing the right thing. The official nationalization of Russia’s memory of the events was slotted neatly into just a few minutes.

Of course, nothing stopped the thousand-strong crowd of friends and relatives, former hostages, and numerous foreign journalists from honoring the dead. Candles were lit on the steps of the theater where those gassed had lain barely alive, and where many of them died before medical help arrived. One hundred and thirty portraits of the dead were illuminated by the flickering flames of lovingly placed candles. It was raining, just as it had been two years before, and the rain mingled with our tears, just as it had then.

The rain could not, however, wash away the bad feeling left by this ideological cynicism. It was a sorry reaction by the state to the immense grief of those who had suffered from its incompetence, at the very place where its victims had lost their lives. The authorities’ apparent contempt for citizens stems from their fear of us. They cannot face our grief; they cannot admit their shortcomings or acknowledge their responsibility for the many victims of so many terrorist acts, which they have no effective strategy for dealing with.

This, alas, is precisely the future awaiting those who have suffered at Beslan. The official version of the tragedy is likely to bear little resemblance to the unofficial one. Grief will be permitted, within bounds, but the truth will not be told. Few onlookers would wish to hear what those who were present have to say. Higher authority will decide what is appropriate. Spontaneous emotion is undesirable, just as it was under the Soviets. The ideological stance adopted by the authorities since the tragedy of September 1 is that nothing must indicate that the officials were incompetent (which they certainly were). Tears are admissible, but only in moderation—everything is, after all, under control. While the disaster should not be forgotten, excessive displays of emotion, which might suggest despair, should be discouraged. They have no place in the land of the Soviets, because Putin is watching over us and knows better than we how matters ought to be arranged. We are all fighting a war on international terrorism; we are, moreover, “united as never before.”

On October 29 the Duma voted by an overwhelming majority to enact Putin’s bill under which he would nominate candidates for the post of governor and the regional parliaments could rubber-stamp the name put to them. If a region’s MPs should be so impertinent as to reject Putin’s nominations twice, the recalcitrant parliament would be “deemed to have passed a motion of no confidence” and would be dissolved by a directive of, yes, Putin again.

The process, of course, makes a mockery of the constitution and demonstrates utter contempt for the Russian people, but the Russian people took the news only too calmly. Certainly the opposition held a few meetings, but they were quiet, local affairs and nobody paid any attention to them. Putin got his way. This is post-Beslan Soviet Russia in action.

So what is the situation after Beslan? “The Party and the People Are One,” the old Soviet slogan ran. In reality, the rift grows wider by the day, while the images on television convey the opposite impression. Soviet-style bureaucracy is growing stronger, and bringing with it an old-style political freeze. No evidence of global warming here. Russia, which swallowed the lies about how the Nord-Ost siege was ended, now makes no demands for justice or an objective investigation of the Beslan atrocity. For two years after Nord-Ost, most of the population slept peacefully in their beds, or went out dancing at discos, occasionally rousing themselves long enough to turn out and vote for Putin. It is arguably we ourselves who allowed Beslan to happen as it did. Our apathy after the Nord-Ost events, our lack of concern for the ordeal of its victims, was a defining moment. The authorities saw they had us, once again, under their thumb and relapsed into the complacency that brought about Beslan.

We cannot just sit back and watch a political winter close in on Russia for several more decades. We want to go on living in freedom. We want our children to be free and our grandchildren to be born free. This is why we long for a thaw in the immediate future, but we alone can change Russia’s political climate. To wait for another thaw to drift our way from the Kremlin, as happened under Gorbachev, is foolish and unrealistic, and neither is the West going to help. It barely reacts to Putin’s antiterrorist policies, and finds much about today’s Russia entirely to its taste: the vodka, the caviar, the gas, the oil, the dancing bears. The exotic Russian market is performing as the West has come to expect, and Europe and the rest of the globe are satisfied with the way things are progressing on our sixth of the world’s landmass.

All we hear from the outside world is “al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda,” a wretched mantra for shuffling off responsibility for all the bloody tragedies yet to come, a primitive chant with which to lull a society desiring nothing more than to be lulled back to sleep.