#19 - JRL 8374 - JRL Home
From: "Yann Breault" <breault.yann@courrier.uqam.ca>
Date: Sat, 18 Sep
Subject: Comment on Fred Starr's article

Russians and the Chechen tragedy: A socio-psychological comment

As any proud people, Russians are often keen to consider seriously any theory which can elucidate their tragedies in a way that doesn’t tarnish their nation’s or their president’s image. This attitude probably explains why so few criticize Kremlin’s policies toward Chechnya, despite the terrible amount of deaths. It is indeed easier for them to believe that harsh critics towards Putin’s policies is nothing more than some frustrated oligarch’s machination to weaken an uncooperative Kremlin, that doesn’t want to give up state assets for a song anymore.

When they see Maskhadov’s men being granted political asylum in the West, they think it confirms what they long believed. Those terrorists are supported by some in the West in order to weaken Russia, a powerful country that is still feared abroad. This is at least the feeling I get form many ordinary Russians. I suspect that this way of thinking is popular among them because it provides some psychological comfort: Their country is neither responsible for the mess in Chechnya nor for what has happened in Beslan.

After having read Frederick Starr’s excellent paper in the Washington Post, “A Solution for Chechnya” (September 17, 2004), Russians would probably have two simple questions to ask the author. Answering those questions could help them to “come down to earth” and realize how they have been manipulated to the point where they believe Chechens rebels are indeed fanatic terrorists which have imperatively to be destroyed.

The first is an easy one: If Putin’s opponent Boris Berezovsky is indeed in no way connected with it, who then is sponsoring the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (and generally the rather powerful Chechen lobby in the United Stated and England), and why?

The second is a little trickier: Taken that Al Qaida and other “guerrillas” like the Contras have been sponsored in the past by Washington in order to weaken evil states like Soviet Afghanistan or Sandinista Nicaragua, how can we reassure our Russians friends that no one in the West is interested in weakening Putin’s “neo-imperialist authoritarian” Russia through indirect support to the Chechens rebels?

If we really want Russians to support our pacifist ideas about the best way to settle things in the North Caucasus (and I’m personally tempted to share Professor Starr’s ideas about it), It might be time to stop criticizing Russia and, instead, to start seriously debating empirically those two questions.

Unless we fear that doing so might harm our own peaceful-democratic-liberal westerners’ psychological comfort.