Chechen-Ingush defeat Yeltsin's first attempt at crackdown

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eXA Yeltsin during August coup attempt. The "democrat" wanted to use an iron fist against the Islamic mountaineers of Chechen-Ingushetia. 10 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1991 Of course, the Chechens and the Ingush have a combative tradition. During the Russian civil war, in which the Leninist national policy attracted them to the side of the Bolsheviks, they alone tied down a third of Denikin's counterrevolutionary army.

During the Second World War, these small Caucasus mountain peoples were expelled from their territories en masse by Stalin. In 1957, they were formally rehabilitated as a people. The Chechen-Ingush autonomous republic was reconstituted, although with less land, in the framework of the Russian Federation.

Nonetheless, these stubborn mountaineers, with their Islamic tradition, are few in number. There are about 611,000 Chechens and 134,000 Ingush. The total population of the autonomous republic is 1,227,000, of whom about 336,000 are Russians. It includes an area of about 19,000 square kilometers in the norther Caucasus.

A national movement of these mountain peoples took advantage of the disorganization of the Communist Party and the bureaucratic authorities after the failed neo Stalinist coup in August to carry out a veritable armed uprising against the local CP. Its leader was the only Chechen general, now retired, Johar Dudaev, who was stationed in Estonia, which set the pattern for the mass national-democratic movements.

Although official scribes in the USSR are fond of recalling that Lenin said that the high point of the revolution of 1905 was in Latvia because armed insurgent units appeared there, none of the official writers have cared to speculate whether ChechenIngushetia might be in the vanguard of the revolution against the bureaucracy for the same reason. But many have deplored its example as pointing to a breakup of the Russian Federation similar to that of the current breakup of the USSR.

A wide spectrum of small nationalities are included in the Russian Federation, rep- dissolving the Provisional Supreme Soviet and assuming full powers. resenting about 17 percent of its population and holding titular sovereignty On Oct. 8, the Russian Supreme Soviet over vast and valuable parts of its territory. adopted a resolution declaring that the ProPravda, which has been trying more and visional Supreme Soviet remained the only more openly to get a knife into Yeltsin, legal govemment. ran a headline Nov.12 on the Chechen- On Oct. 27, the OKChN held elections, Ingush crisis that seemed to be savoring and Dudaev was elected president. This was the Russian president's discomfiture: "The when Yeltsin showed his true colors. Soviet Union has been destroyed. Is it Rus- On Nov. 2, the Russian Congress of sia's tum?" People's Deputies declared the vote invalid.

Five days later, Yeltsin signed a decree The Pan-National Congress imposing emergency rule on the Like most of the goverments that rule autonomous republic. At a press conterover peoples of ISlamic tradition, who have ence, his vice president, A. Rutskoi, been subjected to the worst national announced that the measure had been made oppression under Stalinism, the Chechen- necessary by Dudaev's violations of legaliIngush government was notoriously ty and democratic rights. corrupt. However, the declaration of emergency In the fall of 1989, about a year after the rule followed the lines of previous rise of the mass national movements in the antidemocratic crackdowns by the GorBaltic, the Pan-National Congress of the bachev regime in Armenia and Chechens (OKChN) was organized under Nagorno-Karabakh. It imposed an adminisGen. Dudaev's leadership. (The smaller tration headed by Yeltsin's personal Ingush community has been much more representative in the autonomous republic, passive.) It began quickly to put pressure A.B. Arsanov. It banned "rallies, marches on the old Stalinist leadership of the and demonstrations, as well as other mass autonomous republic, which declared actions." It ordered the population disChechen-Ingushetia a sovereign republic in armed, even of knives. It imposed a ban on November 1990. travel in and out of the area under emergenThe old leadership tried to block a vote cy rule. And it demanded "suspension of for Yeltsin in the June 12, 1991, Russian the activity of all social organizations and Federation presidential elections. It failed. mass movements obstructing normalizaSome 70 to 80 percent of the population tion of the situation." voted for the Russian leader. The conflict There have been divisions in Chechenbetween the OKChN and the established Ingushetia over allegedly arbitrary and government then escalated. strong-armed methods used by Dudaev, but During the August coup, the locai rulers the declaration of emergency ruie seems io backed the neo-Stalinist putschists. The have united the entire population-most of Russian government appointed a Provi- all the Chechens-against Moscow-and sional Supreme Soviet, but a conflict Yeltsin. continued between this body and the In the Nov. 15 issue of the Paris RusOKChN. On Oct. 5, forces under the com- sian-language journal Russkaya Mysl', mand of the Executive of the Chechen Aleksandr Nekrich, an expert on the peoorganization seized the headquarters of the ples subjected to mass outlawry under KGB in Grozny, the capital of the Stalin, wrote "not only the population of autonomous republic. At the same time, the Chechen-Ingush republic but other the OKChN Executive declared that it was mountain peoples, especially those who Der Spiegel suffered from Stalin's deportations, declared their readiness to give armed support to Dudaev."

"Bandits and fundamentalists"

At the press conference of Russian government leaders called to explain the measure, the chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, R. Abdulatipov, complained of "large-scale interference by the Georgian republic" in Chechen-Ingushetia: "This interference is perceptible at all levels. There is also interference by our [sic!] Baltic republics." Such statements again were reminiscent of denunciations of "outside trouble makers" by Gorbachevite and neo-Stalinist "internationalists" in calling for a crackdown on the national-democratic movements.

Nekritch expressed shock at the chauvinist tone of the denunciations by the Russian press and politicians of the Chechen leadership. "The word "bandits, which was already used during the Caucasian war [when the area was conquered by Russia in the 19th century] and later at the time of the forced deportation of the Chechens and Ingush by Stalin, again flashed in the columns of Russian papers. Russian leaders did not shrink from words they inherited from recent times or from the methods used in conflicts in the Caucasus and in the Baltic in the years of perestroika." (Russkaya Mysl' Nov. 15)

Yeltsin, for example, accused Dudaev of being in league with Islamic fundamentalism. The question of the identncation of the peoples of Islamic tradition in the USSR with other peoples of similar tradition and their states is, of course, a complex question, and will likely become more so.

But it is striking that already in the USSR, as well as in Yugoslavia, any expression of national aspirations on the part of the oppressed peoples of Muslim tradition is being denounced by the rulers as evidence of "Islamic alist'influence.

Yeltsin's team pushed hard to make the Chechens an example. Thus, in the debate in the Russian Supreme Soviet, Sergei Shakhrai, the Russian president's chief lieutenant for legal matters, argued that if the legislature refused to ratify the declaration of emergency rule, it would mean "the ruin of Russia and a chain reaction" [presumably in the other autonomous republics]. He advocated appealing to all-Union armed forces, since those directly under the Russian Federation proved inadequate, and proposed a special defense for the Russian-speaking minority in ChechenIngushetia.

At the press conference, the editor of a journal called Khronika, who is a deputy in the Russian Congress of People's Deputies, posed a question to Rutskoi that was couched in clear Russian nationalist terms: "Does the government of Russia have the means and forces to cut short these separatist inclinations, these attempts to wreck the historically constituted Russian state, and what in this direction are you doing in the former autonomous republics?"

Rutskoi did not rebuke his questioner for his Russian chauvinist outlook. He said instead: "Today, in the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the question is being considered of demanding fulfillment of the decree of the Russian Federation on the transfer of the USSR internal troops to the jurisdiction of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, with the taking of an oath to faithfully serve Russia. Otherwise these forces will not carry out their tasks. ... And Russia has no other forces."

This revealed a basic dilemma of Yeltsin. The Russian Federation, as such, does not have an effective repressive force, and appealing to the all-Union bodies is politically very difficult for him.

This incident also points up an ambiguity about Yeltsin's identification with Russian nationalism. Up until now, his Russian nationalism has been populist and anti-expansionist. He rejected the impersonal apparatus of the Soviet Union and the cost of maintaining a sort of empire (which the Russian people considered an unprofitable expense) and he made an alliance with the national democratic movements.

However, ever since the Second World War, the Soviet bureaucracy has more and more pandered to Great Russian chauvinism. Outright chauvinist candidates got about 10 percent of the vote in the Russian presidential elections. As Yeltsin has assumed greater power as the ruler of Russia, the darker side of his nationalism has more and more emerged.

Yeltsin's nationalism first turned openly threatening when he said, at the time of the wave of declarations of independence following the failure of the neo-Stalinist coup, that maybe parts of other republics with Russian-speaking majorities should be incorporated into the Russian state. The attempted crackdown on the Chechens and the chauvinist noises that accompanied it were further warning signs that Yeltsin's Russian nationalism is taking a sinister direction, toward the congenital Great Russian chauvinism of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

As it turned out, the few Russian troops that Yeltsin sent to Chechen-Ingushetia were overwheimed by Dudaev's militia, and had to withdraw. The USSR troops in the republic pledged not to intervene.

The Russian leaders wept crocodile tears about the_Chechen militia hiding behind civilians. That apparently reflects the fact that the Russian troops faced mass opposition, as well as determined armed forces. Only a blood bath could have "restored order." In parliament, Shakhrai explained (continued on page 11, in “With the Cold War over is peace now at hand?”)