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Mosnews.com
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September 10, 2004
Yet Another Turning-Point
By Yevgeny Kiselyov, Moskovskiye Novosti

The Beslan tragedy is yet another turning-point in Russia’s history. In the aftermath of Beslan we are living in a different country. What will Russia be like after Beslan? How will we live? And then immediately I say to myself ­ stop! What if a devil’s advocate poses the question differently? Will the tragedy become a watershed in our history? Will Russia become a different country after Beslan?

How many times have we seen it before! Remember, we used to say that the August 1991 coup was a turning-point in Russia’s history, that the October 1993 mutiny was a turning-point, the Budyonnovsk hostage drama was another turning-point. The August 1998 financial crisis: turning-point. The apartment bombings in the fall of 1999: turning-point. The Nord-Ost theatre siege: turning-point.

One turning-point after another and each time we believed life would never be the same again, ever. And yet, each time life soon resumed its normal course.

Good Lord, remember Chernobyl! Way back then we maintained the tragedy at the nuclear power station was a turning-point. Back then we predicted the country would change in the wake of Chernobyl. The authorities would never again get away with lies, dodging their responsibility, trying to hush up the scale of future dramas, tragedies, disasters.

And what came of it? Well, those forecasts only proved partially true.

The country changed for a while and then things fell back into place. The old tradition of shooting the messenger has been restored. The only dismissal to receive wide publicity in the wake of the Nord-Ost theatre siege was Boris Jordan’s dismissal as the top executive of the NTV television network, accused of ’inappropriate’ coverage of the hostage crisis.

The first to leave his post in the wake of Beslan was Izvestia’s chief editor Raf Shakirov. As the common wisdom goes, a new boss is always worse than his predecessor. One of my friends, well versed in the world of special services, has noted, of course [FSB chief] Patrushev may be sacked and that would be fair, but his deputies… God forbid!

I won’t be surprised, however, if none of the top security officials loses their job, at least, in the near future. A tradition of tendering resignations following an obvious failure has not been formed in Russia. And, after all, the president may well decide that firing one of his closest associates would emphasize his weakness.

We all know that Putin is terribly afraid of looking weak. That fear, in my opinion, has acquired a monstrous scale. To agree to a reasonable compromise ­ is weakness. To hear out a political opponent is weakness. To display magnanimity to a defeated adversary is weakness. And those who are weak… [are beaten], as the now famous quote from the president’s recent public address goes.

However, it transpires that it is not only the weak that are beaten, but the strong, too, or at least those who try their hardest to look strong. Meanwhile, time is being lost and Russia has gone too far in advocating the use of force, especially in Chechnya.

And today perhaps it is true that Maskhadov has little control over the situation, and hence, even hypothetical talks with him are meaningless. And maybe it is true that the Chechen rebels’ ties with the headquarters of international terror networks have grown so strong that al-Qaeda’s presence in Chechnya has ceased to be merely propaganda and turned into a vicious reality.

What the country will be like depends, of course, on us. But for the most part it depends on the president because such is the political reality of our times. The country, like it or not, is now ruled by Vladimir Putin alone.

And so far he is the only one who can change the existing state of affairs. If he decides that there are to be no real politics, no real dialogue with various political forces and no public debates on the key problems the country is facing, old mistakes will be committed again and again.

I will be glad if I am wrong. But it seems to me that the president is still far removed from such decisions. Something in his voice, in the firm assertions of recent statements and interviews, already widely quoted, tells me that a new crackdown is upon us. But, I reiterate, I will be very glad if I am wrong.