The New Republic

November 29, 1999

[for personal use only]

Editorial

Grudge Genocide

"You and I live in the East, not the West," Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin jingoistically told a Russian audience recently. "We have to decide for ourselves what we want: to get credits to buy lollipops or agree to an annexation of our territory from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea." Putin was defending the Russian war on Chechnya against Western criticism. It was more than a little unsettling to hear the cheap vocabulary of reactionary nationalism from the leader of Boris Yeltsin's government--the same government that has been protesting for most of a decade that it lives in the West, not the East. The long-suffering suits at the International Monetary Fund will be interested to hear of the Russian government's loss of interest in lollipops.

In truth, Putin's belligerent outburst was nothing but the rankest cynicism. It is not lost upon the prime minister that he is profiting politically from the atrocity in the Caucasus (he scored a magnificent 29 percent in last week's poll about presidential candidates); and it is not lost upon anyone else that he is now at the mercy of Russia's generals. The new Russian assault on Chechnya has brought together many of the most alarming traits of the new Russia, and one of them is the increasingly agitated state of the Russian military. The "officer corps of Russia will not stand for another slap in the face," the commander of the Russian forces in western Chechnya resentfully told a Russian newspaper. He was referring to the Russian army's defeat in Chechnya in 1994-1996, when 6,000 Russian soldiers were killed and Russian forces were driven ignominiously out of the land of the Chechens by warriors straight out of Tolstoy. The Russian generals explain that defeat (which also killed 50,000 Chechens) with a st

ab-in-the-back theory about the Russian politicians. The soldiers could have won, but the Kremlin lost its nerve. This time, the general in western Chechnya warned, the consequence of an order from the Kremlin to "stop the army ... would be a massive defection of officers of all ranks from the armed forces, including the generals."

This is a situation, then, with all sorts of foul historical odors. And the wasting of Chechnya--for that is what is taking place before our eyes--is something new in the annals of modern atrocity: a grudge genocide, or something close. "We're not going to let the brotherhood down," a Russian soldier in Chechnya ominously announced on television. "The [Chechens] have a blood vendetta. So do we." The objective of the Russian campaign is total victory. Chechnya is to remain in Russia no matter how many Chechens have to die. Savagery is the Russian strategy: the slow Russian advance into Chechnya was prepared by a vicious air and artillery assault. At first the Russians pretended that the campaign was designed to prevent the loss of civilian life, but Putin admitted on October 31 that there "might have been some mistakes" during the bombings. Grozny--the capital of the Chechen republic, where the democratically elected government of Aslan Maskhadov sits--is now besieged. The Russians have opened and closed and

opened the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia capriciously, producing 200,000 refugees. On November 9, Russia banned foreign trade with Chechnya and suspended foreign flights to the region, isolating the bloodied republic even more. The area has long been too perilous for humanitarian workers, but the reports from the refugees describe a terrible slaughter. With the exception of Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the liberal Yabloko Party, the actions of the Russian government have provoked no Russian dissent. And negotiations are out of the question, according to the Kremlin. "While he supports terrorists," the Russian prime minister said of the Chechen president, "it is unlikely that anyone will talk to him." By "terrorists," Putin means Chechens.

"The Chechen people have huge hopes that the United States will use its authority to defend human rights." That melancholy sentence was uttered by Maskhadov on November 7, as reported by the Interfax news agency. The poor president had better reconcile himself to low hopes. For the Clinton administration does not defend human rights in big countries. It has protested this and that about the Russian depravity in Chechnya: the State Department objected that the Russian attacks have been "indiscriminate," and also that they violate the Geneva Conventions. But foreign policy, remember, is not social work. Also, the Clinton administration has a near-mystical belief in the Yeltsin government, even though it is headed by a near-dead man. There is no evidence to date that the United States will respond to the Russian crime by curtailing any aid or cooperation at all. Is the Russian offensive in Chechnya an internal Russian affair? Of course it is, in the way that the Yugoslav offensive in Kosovo was an internal Yugo

slav affair. But this time Milosevic-like deeds by Milosevic's allies will provoke only scolding followed by winking. Even if we do live in the West, not the East.