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Victor KOGAN-IASNYT c ~~ "I :~r·. 1,! ~! ' ,S - --_; s CHECHEN­ R 0 s s Essays Articles Documents Moscow THE RIGHT TO LIFE AND HUMAN DIGNITY 1995 I f IN LIEU OF A FOREWORD The essays and articles we venture to publish here were written on the heels of events at different times since the outbreak oflarge-scale military operations in Chechnya. Much of what you see is in the nature of a sketch and requires additional material of a factual nature which we plan to provide in subsequent issues. Much of this may appear excessively emotional or declarative. We are fully aware that this publication in a way presumptuous and somewhat clumsy.· But we hope that our readers will understand our gesture. modest as it may be. We did not seek a place in the relevant events, and did not want involvement, but, to be sure, neither did we evade it. We stayed away from danger, we often fell behind, and were often wrong. But we were never indifferent. *** During my latest visit to Chechnya I was treated to tea by very calm and reasonable people from among those who had in the short period of hostilities lost absolutely everything, their families and homes, They were not aggressive. They were not embittered. They were not even suspicious, though they did take all the requisite security measures. To put it simply, they were ready fbr anything. In any case, they were not sony for themselves. And since they were not sorry for themselves, they were not sorry for anyone else either. We spoke of life in Moscow and about the Russian political scene. I maintained that Published under the auspices of the Right to Life and Human Dignity Association. quite a bit was being done against the war in Chechnya, that many of our people were taking Louchnikov lane, 4 #19, 103982 Moscow, Russia. risks by joining in the antiwar campaign, and that they should not expect Moscow's public leaders to show the degree of understanding and courage that they would have liked, that quite With gratitude to the European Human Rights Foundation and to the Danish Peace Foundation enough was being done, and that they should make allowances, and so on. They did not contradict me, and when I said that yes, Russia was at fault, they corrected me, "It's the Russian leadership ... " A seemingly quiet dinner, an almost Moscow-style political get-together © Victor.Kogan-Iasnyi that even resembled what we once called Moscow Kitchen Talk. I was allowed to relax and almost forget that they and me were in fairly disparate situations. © The Right to Life and Human Dignity Association Thereafter, almost imperceptibly, they changed the tenor of our conversation to give me to understand that they would be altogether in their rights if they shot me on the spot without any logical excuses and explanations, I was asked. In contrast to the preceding tonality of our conversation, I was asked: "We have no illusions about the government and the politicians, but what about the Russian people and you personally -- what have you done for the whole affair to end?" What could I say? Could I evade the issue? *** Our main purpose in publishing this collections of diverse material which may initate various quarters rather than be accepted with understanding, was to remind people of our collective responsibility, our national guilt for the aggression -- regardless of the regime and the nation, whether good or bad, against which we committed this aggression and against which the leadership, which, too, was installed not without our involvement, started a large­ scale war. The Russian soldiers and officers who went to war in Chechnya much against their will, are not guilty. They atoned for their guilt by suffering and death. The soldiers fought dutifully - - not for the Fatherland but for those who were at their side in the trenches. 2 3 We who took no part in the hostilities-- we are the ones who are guilty, We are guilty not regarding our passivity as guilt and, what is worse, for taking pride in it. We shut our and eyes to everything that might have helped to understand and accept the facts as they and thereby oped floodgate to slaughter and bloodshed. Even now, even criticizing the THE POLITICAL SIDE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERAL g0,,en:unl~nt. we are prepared to identify ourselves with it, our own, the Russian government, readily than with the victims of the war on either side. On television we prefer to see the AUTORITIES' RELATIONS WITH THE CHECHEN g;o'ver:nment rather than its victims. We are with the goven:unent. We steer clear of everything REPUBLIC IN 1990-1994 may to the last extent indicate our utter disagreement with it, we avoid the requisite and terms, and shin any sense than we dread bloodshed and death -- someone else's, of The Checheno-Ingush Republic became sovereign in short order, and at many levels. not our own. First, the will of the people, above all the ethnic Chechens who had suffered terribly and Will we finally understand and finally feel after it is too late, when words will lose tragically at the hands of the authorities of the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, to me:aru.ug, when attitudes will be meaningless, when gestures will by futile, when it is much too establish their special political status in order to overcome the tragic historical consequences and no choice will be left? Or will we reject truth to the end and simply accept our fate, the that are contrary to their national identity. Second, this was consistent with the political the situation? But what is the good of understanding when it is too late? declarations made by Boris Yeltsin, who was conceived by the mass of the people as leader of the struggle against the crumbling communist system. Third, whose who intended to politically *** resist Yeltsin's plans of enhancing the status of the RSFSR as a state, we able to use his own weapons against him: to promote the status of the territories within the RSFSR and redoubling One more thing. the direct influence on them of the Soviet Union's power structure, thereby weakening the At all times and in all things one must thing of the consequences. And we are afraid that none-too-powerfullevets of power of the leadership of the Russian Federation. sorne<me may misunderstand our intentions. It will be too late to remove the wrong word after It will not be amiss to make the following excursus. book finally sees light. It will be too late in the changed situation to cmnment on what was The Union Republics of the former USSR and the autonomous republics incorporated in and apologise for being misunderstood, Each of us bears full responsibility for keeping them were in very different positions both juridically and politically, thought the difference was and for whatever we happened to say, and likewise for our actions and our inactions, for not easily noticed. At the time when Stalin created the hierarchic structure of Soviet national daring as well as our caution. For all that we are responsible even though we do not know territorial formations, he and his "comrades-in-arms" quite simply overlooked the legal aspect consequences in advance. of the matter and accorded the legal definitions an easily forgotten ritualistic role under what As we venture to speak our we have only one thing in mind: to contribute, however little they thought was an indestructible mechanism of unitarian authority based on structures of the it may amount to, to the efforts of securing peace and concord in and around Chechnya. communist party and the unionwide and authoritarian bureaucracy. · If we cannot silently and inconspicuously do a real and selfless job, let words work for But when tl1e dictatorship weakened and everyone spoke of the Power ofLaw, about the us, clever and not very clever words, such words that denounce the use of bullets, mines, priority of law and human values, it turned out that no incontestable legal and political basis poisons and sticks of dynamite. We want our words to be accepted in that very context. existed for the maintenance of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a single state and that And we wish all our hearts that all those who assumed the burden of securing a peaceful the Union Republics and the judiciary bureaucratic system created in them on Stalin's personal outcome in Chechnya display patience, resolve and caution in overcoming all mistakes, even initiative, be it for ritualistic purposes and with highly restricted powers, but structurally the worst, and that they show their ability to forgive. mirroring the "central" system of the Union --that these Union Republics were inclined and wholly capable to act as independent political subjects, at least in terms of the formal attributes Victor K-Y. of international law. The conflicting and political duality of the legal situation gave rise to previously unheard-of innovations in the period from 1988 to 1991. These innovations amounted to various "partial" sovereignties -- economic, cultura~ even ecological -- and juggled with the word "sovereignty" in attempts to depict it as possession of all but complete independence or at times as something entirely different, whereas in terms of international law sovereignty and independence are indisputable synonyms -- a fact known to everyone with the least bit of common sense. The autonomous constituents of the RSFSR, too, as we have already said above, began I issuing their own declarations of sovereignty beginning with 1990, very much similar to those II II issued by the Union Republics.

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