The Mises Institute monthly, free with membership
March 1995
Volume 13, Number 3
Chechnya Destroyed
Yuri N. Maltsev
When a people rebels and declares its independence, a central
state can let them go or beat them
into submission. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, we've
seen some of both. In Chechnya,
and adjacent Ingushetia, however, the Yeltsin government chose
mass murder to maintain its evil
empire.
Rather than solve its existing problems--continued socialism
primary among them--Russia has
chosen to create new ones. And this time, as at the end of World
War II, the Russians have done
so with the blessing of the U.S. government and the funds of the
U.S. taxpayer.
When Boris Yeltsin unleashed his imperialist war, he said he
was defending the welfare of
Chechens and Russians caught in an "inter-Chechen" conflict. It
was a lie. Foreign media reports
soon revealed that Russia's military was placing both groups in
danger. An old Russian woman
who lived in Chechnya her entire life told British Independent
Television that the Yeltsin
government is "a bunch of irresponsible, murderous alcoholics who
should be residing in prison,
not the Kremlin."
Indeed. Yeltsin saw war as a way to lift the morale of a
morally and financially bankrupt regime.
Goliath would kill David and the masses would cheer, or so he
thought. In winning a quick
victory, he reasoned, he could placate both the ultranationalists
and the communists. It was also
supposed to serve as a warning to the other fifteen national
republics to stay in the federation.
The Chechen economy, already at the bottom after 75 years of
Soviet control, was destroyed
during weeks of ferocious air attacks on industrial plants,
bridges, utilities, and residential areas.
The story of Chechen suffering is a long one. In the early
19th century, independent Chechnya
was conquered by Russia after a long and bloody war. The Chechen
religious leader Imam
Shamil led the resistance, and the young Leo Tolstoy, who served
in the Russian Imperial Army
in Chechnya in the 1840s, was so disgusted that he resigned from
the army and wrote a story
praising Shamil.
Vladimir Lenin referred to Chechnya as "the most backward
outskirt" of the Russian empire, and
he declared that the "development" of this region would be a top
priority of the Bolshevik
government. So a beautiful mountain country with a proud and
industrious people was destroyed
by the communists.
Josef Stalin, the "Great Father of Nations," sought to go
Lenin one better, with the religious and
ethnic cleansing of the Northern Caucasus. Stalin's 1944
deportation of all Chechens and Ingush
from their homeland to uninhabitable regions of Kazakhstan is one
of the most murderous pages
in the history of the Soviet Union. It was years before a
much-diminished people could return.
Former Speaker of the Russian parliament Ruslan Khasbulatov,
an ethnic Chechen himself, told
me that more than half the Chechen people were exterminated
during this transfer. Chechens I
met in Grozny told me blood-freezing stories of people crowded
into cattle cars without food,
water, or bathrooms; corpses traveling with children; the killing
of protesters at the railway
stations by KGB guards.
It is no surprise that this long-suffering people declared its
independence at the first opportunity:
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. So did fifteen other
nations, which are today recognized
by the U.S.
The case of the Chechens was different. According to Stalin's
1936 Constitution, only "sister
union" republics were granted a "right" to independence, not
"autonomous" republics like
Chechnya, and the Clinton administration regards Stalin's
Constitution, repealed even by the
Russian Parliament, as valid.
Along with the military destruction of the republic, the
Russian authorities unleashed a
disinformation campaign. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev
accused the Chechens of
having a "criminal character," and of "running organized crime
networks." Russian statists from
Aleksandr Barkashov to Vladimir Zhirinovsky endorsed the
bloodshed in anti-Muslim terms.
The poisonous fruits of this propaganda campaign ripened
quickly. In an incident witnessed by
visiting Russian legislators, nine Ingush civilians were murdered
by Russian soldiers, and an
ethnic Bashkir Muslim soldier, along with the Ingush minister of
health, were killed by drunk
Russian fellow servicemen. Russian soldiers were reported as
murdering, raping, and looting in
Chechnya and Ingushetia. In a candid moment, this was confirmed
by the Russian Ministry of
Internal Affairs.
But loyalty to Yeltsin began to wane among Russian troops.
They began disobeying orders,
fraternizing with civilians, and deserting (or resigning, as it's
known in the private sector). Top
Russian generals, including two deputy defense ministers,
condemned the invasion. One of these
generals--Boris Gromov--knew this sort of warfare first hand: he
was commander-in-chief of the
Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
The Clinton administration has frequently cited its good
relations with Russia as one of its few
foreign policy achievements. So Al Gore was on hand to give the
go ahead on the first day of the
war.
How could Clinton and Yeltsin cooperate so nicely after years
of Cold War antagonism? Perhaps
this isn't surprising. Strip away the pomp and pretense, and
superpowers can be seen as
centralized Leviathans that have grown rich and militarily
powerful by looting their own vast
populations. Sometimes their respective interests require them to
oppose each other, as they did
in the Cold War. Other times--when, for example, they face
"internal" independence movements
that threaten the superpower model itself--they work in tandem.
Americans are sophisticated about the nature of the U.S.
government. Yet they have trouble
thinking clearly about the Russian government, thanks to years of
pro-Gorbachev and pro-Yeltsin
propaganda in the U.S. media. In Russia itself, however, matters
are different. Parliamentary
deputy Sergei Kovalev and many others denounced the bloodshed,
renounced official
disinformation, and called for political dialogue with Chechen
President Dzhokhar Dudaev, who
was elected by his people.
But Yeltsin's entourage responded that civilian deaths are
"normal." Vyacheslav Bakhmin,
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister for Human Rights(!), calmly
spoke of "unavoidable" violations
of rights. The Chechens were even accused of blowing up their own
apartment buildings to make
the Russians look bad.
Another deportation may even be in the works. Chechens do not
want to live under Russian rule,
yet the Russian central state insists on controlling their
homeland. Officials of the Russian
Federal Migration Service have admitted to arranging
"accommodation" for Chechen refugees in
seven regions of central and southern Russia. A bureaucracy has
already been set up to arrange
the transfer.
The words "migration accommodation" are designed to cover the
forced ousting of Chechens
from their land, and the crushing of their dreams of
independence. The 400,000 residents of
Grozny are already victims to one of the most abominable forms of
statism. Where will these
people go? To a place where the Kremlin can ensure that secession
is impossible. But then the
"Russian Federation" will be proven a lie: there is no federation
unless people who want to be
free are allowed to go their own way.
-------------------------------------------
Yuri N. Maltsev, senior fellow of the Mises Institute, teaches Economics at Carthage College
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