#11 - JRL 7283
Providence Journal
August 10, 2003
Russia's open wound
By Philip Terzian
Philip Terzian, The Journal's associate editor, writes a column from Washington.
MOSCOW

RUSSIANS HAVE an interesting way of referring to their country as "the other superpower." When I first heard the phrase, I was not sure if it was meant ironically, or in earnest. But after hearing it again and again, I assume that they mean it.

The only appopriate response, of course, is a proper smile. In the years after World War II, Russia may have been one of two superpowers, but there's only one now. Russia has lost much of its empire, including all the Warsaw Pact nations of Central and Eastern Europe and the borderline
states: Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, the countries of the Caucuses and Central Asia. It is even losing people. There were 148 million Russians a decade ago; today the population is 145 million, and there are suggestions that the number may drop below 100 million in 50 years.

That may or may not happen, of course; but what it means is that the shadow cast by "the other superpower" is not what it was, say, 30 years ago. You cannot travel around the former Soviet Union -- indeed, around any onetime communist state -- without being struck by its Oz-like qualities: Huge industrial/military establishments supported by an evolving economy. The Russian infrastructure is decayed, and the cost of rebuilding it will be colossal. While Tiffany's now boasts a branch in Moscow, and the streets of the capital are clogged with cars, the service economy is only marginally improved from Soviet days. One senses that Russia's "superpower" status derived from its nuclear weapons, and not much else.

Still, the glass is half-full as well. Corrupt it may be, but the Russian economy is booming: The money flows in and out, the cranes are everywhere, and regulation consists of periodic crackdowns on capitalistic excess. And while the states along the western and southern borders are independent, they look to Russia (as they have historically) for protection and, to some degree, leadership.

NATO and the European Union now share borders with the Russian Federation, and it is not entirely absurd to wonder when and if they might close ranks. By virtue of geography as much as power, Russia looms over the Balkans, the Muslim states of Central Asia, and the Mideast, and shares a huge, heavily defended border with China. The Russian army may not be what it was, but those nuclear weapons remain. And as always, the country's resources -- human and non-human alike -- are vast.

So what shall it be? President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit President Bush in Washington next month, and while much can happen between now and then, the omens are good. While Russia dissented from the invasion of Iraq, it did not actively seek to undermine American plans, and has shed no tears for Saddam Hussein. Putin has offered his support for Bush's "road map" for Mideast peace and, not least, the war against terrorism. A dozen years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia is neither friendly adversary nor strategic ally. But everyone knows it is in the interests of the United States to encourage Russian democracy and promote its market economy, and Russia benefits from American patronage and partnership.

And yet, this is not quite the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Despite the superpower talk, the Russians are acutely aware of their diminished status in the world, and it weighs heavily on public opinion. As always, America is the model of freedom and development, but the focus of resentment and, perhaps, rivalry as well. And over it all hangs Chechnya, the tragic Muslim province to the south.

Moscow is currently in the thrall of "black widows," young Chechen women who travel to the capital as suicide bombers, and have killed 165 people in the past several months. Few are actual widows or Islamists or direct victims of the conflict in their homeland: The mystery of what prompts them to kill themselves and innocent Russians adds to the horror.

And yet it is not so very mysterious. The war in Chechnya -- what one human-rights scholar describes as "a round-the-clock slaughterhouse" -- is the great unspoken open wound in Russian life. Officials in the Putin government have grown adept at referring to any and all manifestations of Chechen discontent as "terrorism" which, of course, lets them justify all forms of repression.

In the Republic of Tatarstan, where the Christian population is a little less than the Muslim majority, the local regime is justly proud of the two groups' peaceful coexistence, and likes to advertise what the local mufti calls the "mutual affection" that binds them together. But the war in Chechneya, while attracting Muslim fundamentalists, is not religious in nature; it is about the breakup of the old empire, the Chechen thirst for independence, and Russia's ability to keep the threads from unraveling. It's a problem any superpower, even ours, can understand.