DOSH-journal

Maryam
YANDIEVA

Chairman
Ingush
"Memorial"

This word of the remarkable Russian writer of the twentieth century, Yu. Trifonov, like no other, defines the political, social and moral state of modern Russia, in which we are all trying to survive.

Without “lack of feeling” would it have been possible to systematically destroy the main foundations of human life - private property, faith in God and national identity - during the Soviet period? And was it not this that, after the collapse of the USSR, paralyzed the state with cancerous metastases, dooming it to troubles, if not death?

It was the political “lack of sensitivity” of the authorities that led to the resuscitation of the Stalinist version of the so-called national policy in the Caucasus at the end of the 20th – beginning of the 21st centuries, the same one that has now reached a dead end in Chechnya; the entire state government system is essentially based on total suppression, the military-police component of power prevails over the civilian one, and therefore the “Africanization” of the entire North Caucasus is our near future. I will try to explain in more detail what I mean by this.

The Chechen crisis is a direct consequence of the political reluctance (or perhaps inability?) to part with the complexes of the Stalinist empire. Having lost its hegemonic position in the world, losing it in the CIS area, Russia with all its might is pressing on the southern subject of its geopolitical influence in the Caucasus. Chechnya is the main point of application of this pressure, but the entire North Caucasus is a zone of chronic destabilization and tension.

Being, in fact, a single organism, the Caucasus cannot (and will not!) exist in different coordinate systems. In turn, Russia in its old capacity (the new one is still unknown when it will be acquired) in principle cannot, having left the South Caucasus, remain in the rest of the region. Therefore, Russian generals and security officials at all levels are asleep and see that “preventive strikes” become an everyday reality not only for the residents of Pankisi and the Chechen gorges, but for the entire Caucasus.

Unfortunately, the worst possible scenario is being realized before our eyes. Let us remember the events of this summer: extremist raids in Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Grozny and Beslan. They showed that the Chechen bloodshed has no tendency to stop, and terrorist attacks are quite expected in other republics of the North Caucasus. Professor S. Arutyunov, not without reason, believes that the next militant raid is possible in Dagestan, where pre-election tensions are running high and there is a prospect of it turning into an “interethnic clash” similar to what is already brewing after the tragedy in Beslan: one must be wary of an Ossetian-Ingush massacre under the slogan to sweep.

The man-made Chechen hell overflowed its banks and ceased to be local, as the Russian authorities really wanted, convincing the whole world that the situation was under control and could not go beyond the borders of Chechnya.

After Beslan, it is no longer possible to be mistaken: this is still happening. The trend is obvious and extremely dangerous for the North Caucasus, which they intend to “set on fire” seriously and for a long time: Ossetians will fight with the Ingush, Avars with the Dargins, Karachais with the Circassians, etc. In general, “Hello, our dear Stalin!” After all, it is the ominous figure of the “father of nations” that looms at the origins of the main North Caucasian conflicts; from him come both the main slogans for “population” and the methods of governance with which we are dealing today (not only in the North Caucasus). It was the flawed traditions of the imperial arrogance of the Stalinist government that prompted the current government to commit atrocities, which began not in 1994 and 1999, but in the Prigorodny region of North Ossetia in 1992. Then it became clear to many in the North Caucasus: from now on, our world will be war and terror, our freedom will be obedience and fear of the all-powerful government, our truth will be a total lie.

We are convinced that the ethnic cleansing of the Ingush in the fall of 1992 - the first ethno-geopolitical conflict in the North Caucasus and post-communist Russia - is today perceived as a prelude to the Chechen Holocaust and, what is even worse, looks like the first rehearsal for a pan-Caucasian fire, to which the actions of the authorities are so steadily leading.

Ethnic tensions between Ingush and Ossetians are associated with the territory seized by Stalin-Beria in 1944 and not returned either in the post-Stalin or post-communist period of the state, which continues to be an empire! But this tension is only a consequence. As for the reasons, they will be revealed by the nearest historical retrospective.

The ethnic cleansing of the Ingush, which entered the modern history of Russia under the hypocritical name “Ossetian-Ingush conflict,” is closely linked to the Chechen tragedy. These crazy years were the first stage of repressive policies that revived Stalinist methods. The next two stages of this state terror - 1994 and 1999, respectively - were the time of destruction and dispersion of the Chechen people, again expelled from their ethnic territory.

Since the summer of 2004, we have embarked on a path leading directly to a severe crisis in the south of Russia, and ultimately to the secession of the North Caucasus from it. The empire can only reach total or partial deportations (with appropriate political and military support) in “fateful” periods of wars and geopolitical cataclysms.

Based on the nature of the 1992 conflict as an ethno-geopolitical one, its resolution by the current government is in principle impossible, because the political will of the country’s leadership in the person of Putin to revive the neo-imperial power does not give the slightest chance for peace in the region.

Today, after the nightmare in Beslan, we have to state with obvious certainty and regret that the national idea of ​​Russia at the beginning of the 21st century is becoming “the killing of all Caucasians.” Which, translated into the civilized language of international law, means only one thing - racism as a policy towards the peoples of the North Caucasus (Chechens in the first place), genocide and ethnic cleansing as a means of solving national problems rooted in the Stalin era (and again the Chechens are in the forefront in "Table of punishment ranks").

The Ingush after their bloody autumn of 1992 (405 people were killed, 184 people went missing, 65 thousand people were expelled from 17 villages and the city of Vladikavkaz, 3,200 households were destroyed and 9 out of 17 Ingush villages were completely razed to the ground), and the Chechens all of the last ten years (250 thousand killed, of which more than 40 thousand were children!). A ruined republic and refugees scattered all over the world. With “nostalgic” sadness they remember the “softness” of Stalin’s deportation of 1944, when on the same day and hour they were “organized” expelled from the Caucasus to Kazakhstan and Central Asia for 13 years.

The results of this Stalinist “organized and soft” deportation for the Ingush were catastrophic: from the 134,178 people evicted on February 23, 1944, according to the 1949 census, 76,100 Ingush people remained! The Ingush “Memorial” prepared a large study “Deportation of the Ingush people. Causes, circumstances, consequences”, in which the figures of demographic losses were calculated for the first time: the irretrievable losses of the Ingush from 1944 to 1953 (when the first very detailed census of each individual deported people was carried out) amounted to 50,660 people, which in percentage terms means 37.8 %; net losses (without military losses) in absolute figures - 15,500 people, in percentage terms - 12.4%; by 1959 (according to the All-Union Census of the USSR), there were 110,000 Ingush people, which means: by this time the number of Ingush people was 87.6% of the 1939 level!

The deportation of Ingush in “democratic” Russia has been going on for 12 years now, “mitigating” the fate of disadvantaged people with a cynical heap of papers of various levels “on the need to return Ingush refugees to their places of former residence.”

After the events in Beslan, it is absolutely clear that this “softness” will be dreamed of by the Ingush in their sweet refugee dreams: we are really facing new pogroms of the Ingush in the Prigorodny district (and there are almost 15-18 thousand of them, who returned to their “places of former residence”) and an outbreak of ethnic hatred between Ossetians and Ingush.

The Ingush were designated as the culprits, which means in the near future anti-Ingush pogroms in the border areas, and in the future – consolidation of the results of the ethnic cleansing of 1992. Those. all the talk about the “psychological unpreparedness of the Ossetian people to live together” in the Prigorodny district (this is in ethnic Ingush villages!) now automatically turns into the genre of “fiction” - Ingush people will no longer be allowed into “the places of their former residence” under any circumstances in the coming years, “tightening the fight against international terrorism” in the North Caucasus! Alas, in this sense I have no reason even, as it is now fashionable to say, for pessimistic optimism...

The Chechen execution, prolonged into the foreseeable future, is becoming more and more sophisticated, cruel and dangerous for everyone. The tragedy in Beslan legitimizes state war as the only way to resolve the crisis in Chechnya.

All the republics of the North Caucasus, now even more “coolly” packed with military and intelligence services of all kinds, will become a common territory for operational developments, operations, etc., after which the whole world will be notified about the next victories over “international terrorism.” This lays the foundation for the future indispensable presence and participation of the special services in all regional problems.

Perhaps in these current years, in such special operations, the future North Caucasian soldier of fortune, a kind of Bob Dinar, is tempered in battles, who will subsequently, with his troops of soldiers of fortune, “split” the peoples of the North Caucasus. Because the policy and practice of a controlled crisis in the region will certainly give its hellish result - all our peoples will be “Tutsis and Hutus” in a permanent mode of bloody fight of all against all.

For external “consumption”, the North Caucasus region is literally turning into a zone of absolute chaos before our eyes, in which poor Russia, led by Putin, is fighting to the death with “international terrorism”, and is also trying to bring reason to the natives fighting with each other. Muslims and Christians, Muslims of different nationalities, Muslims of the same nationality with each other, etc. The role of moderators, referees, arbitrators, etc. Russian representatives, therefore, will be guaranteed for a long time, because the West has an extremely negative attitude towards certain inter-ethnic “squabbles.”

For internal “use”, i.e. For the average Russian person, increasingly violent terrorist attacks (taking lives far beyond the North Caucasus) are a very convenient reason to recreate the new old Stalinist model of life in endless fear. Fear has already become the strongest social experience of Russian citizens, who precisely because of this will not be able to adequately respond to the social catastrophe prepared for them: the abolition of benefits, housing and communal services reform, etc. Millions of Russian marginalized people, dying of fear of terrorists and vigilant for each other, will not come out to any protests against the regime, which is driving them into even greater poverty.

Based on all that has been said, I am convinced that right now it is extremely important that the Caucasian and Russian liberal publics seek by any means (despite the new “freezes” under Putin’s rule) a convergence of positions on the situation in the North Caucasus in the regime of the permanent Caucasian Forum for the political settlement of the situation in the region as a complex one, and not just a Chechen one (but Chechen is the first of the problems). The delay is like death, because the remnants of Russian democracy are dying before our eyes in the North Caucasus.

...And we shouldn’t count on a new federal department for national-regional policy, even if not with a special services officer at its head, but with a kind of “strong business executive” who will receive precise and strict instructions every time in a straight vertical line. “to equip the North Caucasus” from a colonel of the active reserve of the special services, who is serving as the President of Russia.