Programs - Round Table

Lev Roitman:

I have never been to Chechnya. I read about her in newspapers - in Russian, in the Western; I see shots shot in Chechnya by operators of all kinds of television companies; I hear about Chechnya on the radio. In other words, I belong to the gigantic majority that receives only negative information about the post -war Chechnya: murders, bloody raspings, showdowns, helpless government, defenseless hostages, and so on. Who is to blame that the picture of Chechnya is just that? Unscrupulous reporters, provocateurs from the outside, provocateurs in Chechnya itself or ...? Or there is simply no other picture of Chechnya, that is, there is no other Chechnya? I am addressing these questions to the participants of today's conversation, experts in Chechnya: from Grozny, our correspondent Hasin Raduev, from Moscow, is also our correspondent Andrei Babitsky and - also from Moscow - psychologist Leonid Kitaev -Symk.

What happens in Chechnya? How to understand how to perceive everything negative that you see, hear, read about this country?

Hasin Raduev:

You know, indeed, today's Chechnya, more than ever corresponds to the negative idea that you talked about. The fact is that after the end of hostilities, immediately after the war, many Chechens thought that Russian troops would withdraw and a wonderful life would come, that everyone would live in peace and consent, that the Western countries, Muslim brothers would help Chechens survive in the post -war period, and people would heal people with a happy life. In fact, these expectations did not live up to. Today it is uncomfortable to live in Chechnya: neither the safety of citizens is ensured - to move at night, rarely, and people disappear in the afternoon in broad daylight, and, in general, they disappear for one simple reason that people with weapons are now in Chechnya, and they rule the ball. As for reporting from Chechnya - in fact, there is nothing more to shoot here. Everything that is seen on the screen is the way it is. Although there is another Chechnya, Chechnya, who does not climb into the first pages of news reports, there are people who, in general, closed in themselves and live in their homes, waiting for better times. These people are not in power so far, they wait, wait for reassurance to come when the situation in Chechnya will fundamentally change. Well, on the surface, of course, gangster groups, which, having not found classes after the fighting, simply profit from crimes, due to the abduction of people, which are talked about in Chechnya.

Lev Roitman:

No one, probably today, will undertake to predict when those people who do not find themselves on television appear in the news who simply wait for this troubled time, will really be or appear in power, and this power will be responsible power. And now to Leonid Aleksandrovich Kitaev, a psychologist who was both in the mountainous and plain Chechnya during the war, and even after the war. Leonid Alexandrovich, how you explain the situation that has developed in Chechnya, whether it is somehow connected with the traditions of the people, with its history or only with the political and economic situation that we have today, and the economic situation, of course, is depressing, it is clear to everyone.

Leonid Kitaev-Smyk:

Of course, this is due to the traditions and the national characteristics of the Chechens, but also with the situation that is now. Generally speaking, I must say that in such a phenomenon as the capture of hostages, in Chechnya there were several different periods, even during the length of the time while the war was going on. At the beginning of the war, after a long Soviet regime, the seizure of hostages for the Chechens was absurd: after all, they still remember that the prisoners were simply released. Then the prisoners began to be used as labor in the construction of trenches, dugouts, even during the harvesting of firewood - this was so until the end of the war. But it is important that, during the war, gang clans also arose, about which Hasin Raduev spoke of. These clans robbed on the roads, basically took the cars, and they did not capture the robbed - they killed so that there were no witnesses. The Chechen militants warned me and said: “Beware of the“ wild ”! Μ Russian soldiers also warned, they called these bandits“ Chechen lawlessness ”, and no one could do anything with them, because the Chechens to remove the law of blood revenge prevented them, and the Russian military“ Wildled lawmakers said that “we do not touch us and you do not touch us.” But when the war ended, Hasin Raduev mentioned this too, “the period was surprisingly joyful, but, unfortunately, it was very short. It was a period when everyone felt absolute security. I was told about security by journalists, visiting Russians, foreigners. Why? Because the prisoners were no longer taken, but these "wild" were seized. But now in the destroyed Chechnya, there, probably, there’s simply nothing to live on, I think that there is hunger in winter - both last winter and this, and this, this is the hunger. And suddenly it turned out that a profitable article is hostages, and here, it seems to me, there was a merging of two such moments: on the one hand, the “wildness of the lawlessness” became profitable, that is, the capture of the hostages, and the fact that they are redeemed, it provokes new captures. And the second, revived from national memory, from the concepts of the X! Century such ideas that were characteristic of the Chechens: the presence of prisoners (they were called the Isses) and slaves (these were "Lai"), this was mixed and now became so extremely gloomy for the Chechens, and for everyone else.

Lev Roitman:

Well, in order to explain the systematic seizure of hostages for which, as we understand, giant, sometimes millionth amounts in dollars, the economic situation, it must be assumed that the bandits that capture them are “Robin Huda”, who then redistribute the resulting purchase. We don’t hear anything like this, however, about Chechnya (I, in any case). With the question of Andrei Babitsky: the Chechen government (you regularly, Andrei, you are in Chechnya), the Chechen government - why is it not able to put an end to these monstrous crimes that are committed there? After all, one of the recently liberated British hostages says that she was systematically raped, that is, there is also an element of incredible contempt for human dignity.

Andrey Babitsky:

I would like to first say about the causes of this phenomenon, about the reasons for the abduction of people. In my opinion, Leo, here you need to talk, of course, about the history of the Chechen people, because this phenomenon is not new. As we know, in the X! X century, the Chechens were seized hostage by Russian officers and subsequently on the subscription had to collect money in order to buy people who were captured. And, in particular, this problem found an expression in the documents that signed between the Chechen elders and the Russian government. According to several such documents, several such agreements, the Chechens took the obligations not to abduct people, and Russia took the obligations to solve all problems only in a political way, and not by the power of weapons. So, as we see, the history of the relationship between Chechnya and Russia goes into the distant past. I think that there is a special culture, the generic culture that the current Chechnya lives. For communal consciousness, a person has value only to the extent in which he is included in the clan, included in some larger team, some other relations. Why, say, we, people who live on the European part, are vast to the Chechens defenseless, weak and, in general, not completely embodied? Because for us the center of responsibility is a person itself. Among the Chechens, the center of responsibility for a person is a family, a clan, some kind of large team having communal memory. As for the government, in my opinion, the problem is that Maskhadov would like to be president for all Chechens, and he, in this attempt to find allies for himself, actually allowed representatives of various groups everywhere: the Zavgaevtsev, former field commanders, and representatives of the criminal business, which today controls the abduction of people, and robberies outside the republic. But he was not able to achieve consent, since within the authorities there were still claims to each other; And Maskhadov, as the security of a particular group was clarified, had to get rid of these people in the government, which he made himself new enemies. Today, in fact, Maskhadov does not have broad social support in Chechnya: he quarreled with his former comrades -in -arms in resistance, since they were in power in the powerful way, he quarreled with representatives of the so -called "Zavgaev" regime - among them there were claims, as we understand, another kind - they cooperated with the promotional regime and, accordingly, he declared a struggle with the struggle with The abductions of people, he has to somehow distance himself from criminal groups, from the criminal business. Therefore, Maskhadov today does not have a nearby people on whom he could lean and with the help of which he could exercise power in the republic.

Hasin Raduev:

You know, the threats of President Maskhadov to shoot abductors, intermediaries and accomplices do not scare criminal elements at all, because there was no case that someone was convicted of this type of crime, not to mention the fact that someone was put to the wall. I can give such an example: the law enforcement agencies of Chechnya detained two months ago, who were held hostage by the Ural journalists, one of them escaped, and the other journalist Olga Bagaudinova was in one of the apartments in Grozny, and now the special forces group left there, arrested these people, in general, their involvement in the abduction did not need special evidence, and these are these. Two employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs turned out to be bandits, they were detained, they were imprisoned, and after a couple of months the amnesty passed by a resolution of the parliament and these people were released, released, because they participated in hostilities, in general, they were someone else's people and so on ... and other examples show that those people who fall into the hands of law enforcement agencies, soon or late, go free to freedom Either under the pressure of some large officials, or by attacking these gangster armed groups, which in terms of number and equipment, in order to weapons, significantly exceed those units that participate in the release of hostages. Of course, those who turned the abduction of people into a second profession do not seriously take the threats of Maskhadov at all, any attempt to destroy such groups quickly acquires, as it were, an ideological or political color, and it seems that Maskhadov is not fighting with bandits, not with a gangster group, but, say, with adherents or with opponents, let’s say, “purely” Islamic, so called the so -called so -called Islam. "Wahhabis" and so on. That is, these people say that they are in a state of "jihad", they have the right to take hostages of people, demand money from them, and this money goes to the purchase of weapons for their own supporters to support other gangster groups, which reckon to certain religious organizations. And so Maskhadov to overcome such a "community" is very difficult. In a word, it is difficult to say when people will stop kidnapping in Chechnya, because besides foreigners-journalists, any resident of the republic, for which you can get at least some money, becomes a victim of abduction. So, however, it happens, only the world community monitors the loud abductions, follow the republic inside the republic, but there are dozens of people who are also in the basements of the bandits, but only their relatives are looking for about them.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Hasin Raduev. I understand that it would be appropriate to ask a question: is there any light at the end of this gloomy tunnel, that is, can this situation be changed, interrupted for the better? I understand that this issue is highly naive, it seems to be no one to address it, and nevertheless, I will risk conveying the line (what if there is an answer?) Leonid Kitaev-mirmin.

Leonid Kitaev-Smyk:

But before saying what to do, I will allow myself to say what should not be done: do not hope for the local authorities, at Maskhadov, for the organs of the fight against terrorism, neither Chechen nor Russian, nor Russian, we don’t need to hope for elders, because those precedents spoke about Babitsky, in the X! Century, these are, in general, such propaganda messages were quite insignificant, these are quite insignificant. Contracts of elders with the Russian tsarist power. Why? Because the Chechens are a very special ethnic group, they never had noblemen, princes, never had aristocracy, everyone has always been in their own way, a sovereign master for himself, and so there were many centuries. The Chechens are still preserved in national memory, so to say, a special form of the Ethnos organization is military democracy, while in most, in almost all other countries, this is a hierarchy of power. Here Chechens cannot be forced, the Chechens can be convinced, and even better, to be carried away. That's what you can captivate Chechens now? The benefits for him, prey. But the Chechens, I would call them (I was engaged in the analysis of their psychological characteristics), they can be called "intellectual pragmatists", and their sophisticated mind is aimed at achieving the greatest benefit: if the benefits of war means to fight, the benefits of hostages need to be captured, but if the benefits of labor, then you need to work non -stop. And what needs to be done at last? I think that you need to invest the latest production in Chechnya, best of all, a car fitting plant. That's when I, along with journalists during the war, traveled to different places in Chechnya, it was obvious that literally any Chechen, if the car broke, boldly climbs into the motor, and it passes for some time - the breakdown is eliminated. The Chechens are extremely trained, and even the first months of the war showed how quickly they learned to fight, at first they did not know how to. And so, when the prey, that is, the benefits of assembling cars will exceed the benefits, relatively speaking, from the capture of hostages, I think, literally a few days later, all the hostages will be released and no one else will take them.

Andrey Babitsky:

Regarding the propaganda stamps, the use of which Leonid Alexandrovich reproached me, I must say that in Soviet times in Chechnya and Ingushetia, slavery almost openly existed, however, as now. We all know that in Chechnya, people without a specific residence, alcoholics who work for free in Chechen, Ingush families are imported into Chechnya for construction or grazing - this phenomenon is characteristic of Chechnya and Ingushetia. Therefore, I do not think that those cases that we know from history are propaganda stamps. This is such a story. As for "intellectual pragmatism", it just seems to me that the Chechens of romance. This is very clearly visible if you look at the expectations that they associated with the end of the war. In fact, the belief was that the changes for the better would happen magically, that is, the people who defeated the war will suddenly be in completely new conditions, his life would change for the better without any effort. Freedom - this is such a wonderful form, as, apparently, the Chechens imagined it during the hostilities, there is such a wonderful form of paradise on Earth. As for the forecasts: it seems to me that the time should pass, this post-war period should end, a very difficult period, which now, except hatred, can give birth to some post-traumatic syndromes when a person with weapons became the only authority in Chechnya. The current politicians must leave, who became politicians in the wave of this struggle for freedom and independence from Russia; Then, I think, Chechnya will have a chance to somehow integrate into the environment, tie more even, calm relationships with neighbors, and then, of course, there may be a work market. And then, of course, the general dysfunction in Russia is another factor that worsens the situation in Chechnya. When it will be possible to work calmly in Russia, when in the cities of Russia they stop pursuing people only because they are natives of the Caucasus, and Chechens will be able to calmly find their jobs, then, I think, in the life of each specific Chechen, changes will occur for the better.