Save the Chechens, Save Democracy

There is no love lost between me and the Chechens. I am a Greek Orthodox Christian; they are Muslims. I am a Georgian and the Chechens invaded my country for many centuries, abducting children and selling them at their picturesque bazaars. Just recently, the Chechens helped the separatist Abkhazia to secede from Georgia. The Chechen volunteers, armed by Russian generals, were the most brutal in the Georgian-Abkhazian war. But despite all of this, I say: Save the Chechens. Hands off Chechnya.

Russia’s behavior in Chechnya is first-degree murder compared with Chechnya’s second-degree murder in Russia. The war that Russia has waged in Chechnya is not merely brutal, it is genocidal. The whole Chechen nation of 1.5 million people is in danger of annihilation. This war of genocide actually started more than a century ago when the Czarist armies drowned the independence of Chechnya in blood. It continued under Stalin, who deported the whole nation in cattle cars to Soviet Central Asia in a 24-hour period.

Strangely enough, these hair-raising facts do not reverberate in the political or moral climate of the United States today. I remember a time when the arrest of even one Soviet dissident would create a storm of indignation here. Soviet embassies were picketed, Soviet goods were boycotted, Soviet crimes were condemned from all international podiums and forums.

And what happens now? “The Russian government is entirely correct in resisting this hostage-taking effort and resisting it very strongly,” says Defense Secretary William Perry. His only objection is that the whole affair is a little bit messy: “I would have chosen a surgical operation.”

Secretary of State Warren Christopher is (as his job demands) more diplomatic. He says that the Russians must play by the rules of international law. This kind of resonance reminds me of the dispute about which form of execution is more humane: injection, electrocution, hanging or firing squad? The end result is the same: death.

No law justifies genocide, but genocide at least explains the desperate hostage-taking. The Chechens are in danger of losing their lives, country and future. For them it means a national catastrophe.

But the main hostage of the Chechen war is Boris Yeltsin. It is he who transformed the Kremlin into the besieged towns of Budyonnovsk and Pervomayskoye. Without freeing this hostage, it looks almost impossible to end the war in Chechnya. Of course, it depends mostly on Yeltsin himself, but a little help from America would be very timely. There is mutual need, and the cause of democracy in Russia needs Yeltsin. The bitter fact of real politics is that the only person in today’s Russia who can perhaps stop communists and ultranationalists in June is Yeltsin.

The conventional wisdom of American politics dictates: Don’t put all the eggs in one basket. Washington did it with Mikhail Gorbachev and almost lost Russia. But even conventional wisdom has exceptions. This time, there is no other basket for America or Western “eggs” except Boris Nikolaevitch. And this brings us to more hostages of the Chechen war--Washington and other Western capitals. The domino effect of this hostage-taking is unmistakable. To break this cruel but strong chain we must start with its first link: the war in Chechnya. Only free and independent Chechnya can free Yeltsin and his reluctant Western supporters. My appeal to save the Chechens translates into an appeal to save democracy in Russia.