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One after the other, conflagrations are erupting in different parts of the
globe after the end of the "Cold War" and the beginning of a new era of peace
and stability'. First there was the Persian Gulf, then came Yugoslavia, Bosnia'
Kosovo, East ~mor and now it is Central Asia, where the regions from Afghanistan
to the Caucasus in Russia are in turmoil and Chechnya is on fire. Central,
Southwest and the Horn of Africa continue to be ripped apart by contending
armies. But, for the present, the attention of the whole world is focussed on
Chechnya (Ichkeria) where an ex-super power is out to crush a tiny enclave,
which has rebelled against it since 1991, using the most modern weaponry and the
ruthlessness of a hardened criminal. Russia's war on Chechnya reminds us once
again that the revisionists of the erstwhile Soviet Union had converted the land
of Lenin into a prison of nations ruled by the elite bureaucrat capitalist class
in Moscow.
When the revisionist empire collapsed in 1991 there came into being 18 countries
whose respective bureaucrat capitalists acquired state power under new social
democratic names and tried to continue their hold on the people and natural
resources of their respective lands. Most of the newly formed countries had
distinct national compositions while a few still had pockets or regions of more
than one nationality. While Kazakbstan, Kyrghystan, Uzbekistan etc. had a single
national population; others like Armenia, Georgia had more than one. Russia's
case is more complex as it is a federation of many national formations. Whereas
the bourgeoisie of various exrepublics of the Soviet-Union became the master of
their own 'independent" countries those of the nationalities within the Russian
Federation did not have the option to secede from Russia. Many among these
nationalities aspire to be free from their Russian masters. Although Chechnya
declared itself independent of Russia in 1991 and fought and won a war with the
Yeltsin regime in 1994-96, yet the Russian rulers did not accept its independent
status at the time of the peace agreement brokered by the Russian General, Lebed.
Russia, conceding defeat, had agreed to initiate a process, which would have
granted Chechnya independence within five years, but even after a lapse of three
years the Russian regime did not start that process and maintained a calculated
silence on the matter. The Yeltsin regime, in fact, never wanted to grant
independence to Chechnya and was looking for an opportune time to strike at it.
THE BACKGROUND
Russia's present Chechen war is not concerned with Chechnya alone but involves
bigger questions. Ever since the degeneration of the Socialist Soviet Union into
a revisionist bourgeois empire it had once again become a prison on nations.
Prior to this, in the Socialist Soviet Union, all the republics and various
autonomous national minority regions were not only treated as equals but the
more backward national groups were encouraged to develop their own national
cultures and languages which had remained suppressed for centuries under the
reactionary Russian Czars. During Czarist times many a national group in Russia
were unheard of, but during socialism many new nationalities emerged and
developed into nations. In Czarist Russia the Great Russian nation dominated the
area while the Chechens, Tatars and Daghestanis and many more were always
considered sub-humans and naive. They were always referred to in a degrading
manner and were required to serve their Russian masters. The Bolshevik Communist
Party had to vigorously fight against the Great Russian Chauvinist mentality so
that the Russian communists and masses be educated to treat all nations as
equals and respect the right of other nations to self-determination including
secession. Lenin considered that the proletarian revolution in Russia could
succeed only if the Russian proletariat was steeled in a true proletarian
internationalist sprit and if it considered the national question as a part of
the overall class struggle for state power ensuring self-determination for all
the nations. After the October Socialist Revolution Finland was granted the
right to secede although it was led by reactionary bourgeois forces and which
also meant that the Finn proletariat would lose much ground if the secession was
effected. But the secession of Finland was to steel other nation's confidence in
the Communist Party (Bolshevik) which further consolidated the voluntary unity
of different nations in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
But Khrushchev's revisionism reversed all that, and the new Czars turned Russia
and the Soviet Union again into a prison of nations. The coming into being of
"independent" nation-based regimes is the outcome of state capitalism, which was
established by the revisionists in the Soviet Union. Capitalism broke the unity
of the working class and rejected the unity of nations based on the free will of
its people, thus giving rise to the national question on a renewed basis. Now
the class conscious proletariat was no longer on the scene and the national
question was taken up by bourgeois forces which sought to limit it within the
boundaries of bourgeois logic by pushing the working class to accept the
leadership of the bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie immediately turned itself into a
reactionary force after capturing state power. The establishment of nation-based
bourgeois states after the collapse of the revisionist empire, on the one hand,
indicates that different nations cannot be united in a single state through
coercion, while on the other, brings out once again the truth that peace among
nations cannot be established without socialism which guarantees no-national
oppression and no-exploitation of the people of a nation. Bourgeois forces who
rule in all the ex-soviet federation countries are not only out to exploit their
own working people and the national resources to their own advantage but are
also ready to collaborate with one or the other imperialist country to ensure
their grip over the people and make way for unbridled imperialist exploitation
of the national resources in return for getting commissions. The working people
of these new nation-states have, in this way; become fodder for various kinds of
exploiters and a victim of imperialism and their own bourgeois governments. The
conflict in Central Asia in general and that of Chechnya in particular depicts a
wide range of forces competing for the enhancement of their own interests.
RUSSIAN REGIME OUT TO PRO'UECI' ITS SHATTERED EMPIRE THROUGHTHE CHECHEN WAR
The Yeltsin Regime in Russia inherited the vast Russian federation after the
collapse. Though it lost its control over the ex-republics of USSR it reserved
the right to exploit the Russian people and those of the minority national
groups within the Russian federation. One thing that should be remembered here
is that it was none other than the revisionist ex-chiefs of the various
republics who had assumed the leadership of their respective countries in the
new political scenario. Yeltsin and Chechen leader Dudayev were both
high-ranking party officials who clashed vehemently when Dudayev challenged the
Russian bourgeoisie's right to rule and exploit Chechnya. He had declared
Chechnya's independence as far back as 1991. Later, he died during the first
C.hechen war and Maskhadov assumed the leadership of the Chechen nationalists.
On the part of the Russian regime the present Chechen war is not only against
the alleged Muslim fundamentalist forces and the rebel Chechen republic but is
also against any outside attempt to challenge Russian rights throughout the
Central Asian countries, which were once part of the Soviet Union. If Chechnya
goes out of Russian hands not only will its grip over Central Asia be lost but
Dagestan, Ossetia, Ingushetia, Tatarastan and others may also follow suit thus
endangering the very survival of the Russian federation itself. For the Russian
imperialist mafia regime, the Moscow blasts in September 1999 have come as a
providential boon to go on the offensive.
The first threats to Russian domination in Central Asia emerged when Muslim
fundamentalist forces started growing in these countries. The countries of the
CIS in Central Asia are mainly Muslim; barring Armenia and Georgia. Decades of
pseudo socialism in these c6untries had eroded the proletarian outlook of these
peoples and prepared the ground for all sorts of alien and feudal ideologies.
Most of these countries had remained economically backward due to revisionist
rule and the social-imperialist practice of "Socialist Division of Labour" (theorised
during the Brezhnev years in the sixties and seventies) that encouraged lopsided
development of their economies. These regions were rich in natural resources,
particularly oil, which fact was exploited by the revisionist rulers in Moscow
while no attention was given to the all-round economic development of these
republics, which would have made them self-sufficient. As a result their
economies remained lop-sided and societies backward. The resurgence of
fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan as a rebound to the Soviet military
intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 and supported and abetted by the Western
imperialist powers (mainly USA) and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, exerted a
powerful influence over the Muslim population of these countries. Encouraged by
the Taliban victory in Afghanistan and the leverage gained through huge stocks
of oil, the fundamentalist forces started growing there. Combined with the
incursions from Afghanistan these religious forces set up their strongholds in
the rebel province of Chechnya and, in late August 1999, struck at a Japanese
exploration team of scientists and engineers in Kyrghyzstan. These engineers
from Japan who had come to explore and map out new sources of oil in Kyrghyzstan,
were kidnapped and held hostage by Muslim forces. Kyrghyzstani authorities asked
for help from a number of Central Asian countries and also from Russia to
salvage the hostages from the Islamic guerrillas. Russian warplanes struck
heavily at the Islamic guerrillas and pushed them out from their Kyrghyz
strongholds. This episode clearly showed that the Kyrghyzstan authorities wanted
to expand their trade and industrial relations with the imperialist powers other
than Russia, while the Russians wanted to show them that only Russian forces can
ensure the safety of their rule as no other power in the region can combat the
rising threat of the Muslim forces. The ferocity of the Russian attack was a
clear signal to accept Russian domination and superiority and not to invite
rivals from the Western world or Japan. But after a few days, Islamic guerrillas
struck again, this time in Daghestan, which is a Russian province. Guerrillas
captured four villages and a town, Novolaksky, in Daghestan and declared that
they would establish an independent Muslim State in Daghestan. An Islamic state
in Daghestan would mean the beginning of a disintegrating process in the Russian
federation. Also, oil links with Central Asia would get closed because the
Russian oil pipeline from Central Asia passes through Chechnya and Daghestan.
In Daghestan, Russian forces, utilising the ruthlessness of their superior
firepower, destroyed most of the rebel Muslim forces within two weeks, while the
rest had to take refuge in Chechnya. Then came the bomb blasts in Moscow and
other cities in Russia and Islamic guerrillas announced that these were in
response to the devastation and the killing of the Muslim population in the
guerrilla-held villages of Daghestan.
When the bomb blasts in Moscow ripped the apartments and killed about 300
people, a conference was going on in Kazakhstan for confidence building in Asia
where about sixteen countries, including Turkey, Palestine, China, Iran,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, all the Central Asian republics, Russia and America, were
participating. This conference had been called to bring the Muslim countries of
the region together to chalk out a strategy to contain the growing clout of
Muslim fundamentalist forces in the wake of the Taliban's victory and Osama Bin
Laden's growing influence. The real issue involved though, was the question of
control of the rich natural resources of the region with the various ruling
cliques and their imperialist patrons contending for control. Central Asian
rulers and Russia felt particularly threatened by the growing Islamic forces,
while Russia also feared the loss of control over Central Asian oil. China
feared Uighur Muslim discontent in Sinkiang while Afghanistan's Talibans wanted
to counter the Russian-backed Ahmad Shah Masood by putting pressure on Russia in
its own backyard while, at the same time, looking forward to gain more from the
Central Asian fundamentalist forces. Iran wanted to provide the West with an oil
route from Central Asia thus securing huge commissions and a greater influence
in Central Asia. Presently it is Russia which mainly stands to lose in Central
Asia, and again, it was Russia which was most vehement i~condemning terrorism
and threatening to wipe out Muslim rebels from Daghestan and Chechnya. Though
Russia accused Chechnya of harbouring Muslim rebels and, had the take over of
those villages not happened, Russia would have invented other pretexts to invade
Chechnya, the main problem was not of the Muslim rebels, but the seceding away
of Chechnya,
Daghestan, Ingushetia, Tatarastan and Ossetia. While Russia fears losing control
over the natural riches of Central Asia, America is particularly interested in
making inroads into the Central Asian oil-rich regions. America is working on a
number of channels at the same time. The war in Chechnya has given it and its
European allies an opening to deal directly with dissenting forces in Russia.
When Russian forces started tightening the noose around Chechnya in Sept.1999 in
the alleged bid to destroy terrorists, the Chechen president Maskhadov appealed
to Yeltsin a number of times to restrain himself and sort out the matter through
negotiations. But Yeltsin remained adamant. Yeltsin had two goals in his
strategy in Central Asia. One, he wanted to settle the question of the rebel
Chechen province in such a way as to never allow it to become an independent
country and for that purpose it tried to crush all resistance with incessant
bombardment of Chechnya with least risk of its own human casualties — a la
America in the Gulf in 1991 and Serbia in 1999. For almost two months it avoided
any direct confrontation with the Chechen resistance, while at the same time
occupying areas which have been completely devastated and forcing the population
to migrate to adjoining Ingushetia and Daghestan. Chechnya has only 12 lakh
inhabitants, which is just the population of a moderate Indian City. About 3
lakhs have taken refuge in Russian-controlled territories. Neither Chechnya nor
the Muslim rebels have the means to fight back the attack from the skies. Russia
has taken over dozens of villages and a number of cities and is now
concentrating fire on and around Grozny, the Chechen capital. The war is not
head-on. It is unilateral, where Chechnya stands to lose in a high-tech war.
Russia has made it clear that it intends to form a government with its own men
from Moscow who are of Chechen origin and are ex-members of the Russian
parliament (who were rendered powerless in the 1994-96 war and have remained in
Moscow since then). They will make a good puppet provincial government after the
Russian take-over.
Two, Yeltsin wants to tell the world (imperialist) powers that for the defence
of Russian interests in Central Asia it will resist all interference from
outside. Whether Russia will be able to achieve both these objectives is
questionable. Having lost the Middle East, Afghanistan, Africa and Eastern
Europe, not only are its interests now threatened in Central Asia, but it is
even struggling hard to keep its own state boundaries intact. It is therefore
not without reason that it has resorted to the barbaric method of devastating
every inch of Chechnya to make it kneel down.
There is another important short-term aspect that the Russian regime wants to
achieve. Prior to the war in Chechnya the Yeltsin regime had become highly
unpopular among the Russian people. Its corrupt ways and squandering of billions
of dollars worth of State property and state exchequer money, and its links with
the Mafia bosses, had created acute problems for it at home. The presidential
elections in the year 2000 may have proved to be a waterloo for his proteges.
But with the unleashing of war in Chechnya, Yeltsin and his Prime Minister Putin
have whipped up national chauvinism and acquired some popularity among the
Russian people. Even the so-called hard-liner parliamentarians who were ready to
impeach him have fallen behind him. History has gone a full circle backwards,
and the Great Russian mentality, which proletarian politics had combated
successfully in Lenin's times, has again gripped the minds of common Russians.
Russia vividly illustrates what a harvest of flies and filth revisionism brings.
Like ordinary chauvinist Americans, Russians too have been brainwashed to
believe that glory comes through suppressing other peoples, as long as no body
bags return containing their own sons and brothers.
ATTITUDE OF NATIONAL MINORITY REGIONS:
Though the people belonging to the Great Russian nation have been hoodwinked
into believing the justness of Yeltsin regime's criminal attack on Chechnya, the
brutalities will further propel the minority national groups away from the
federal government in Moscow. By refusing to accept Asian Maskhadov's appeal for
solving the issue through talks, the regime has exposed its fascist and barbaric
character. Maskhadov, it appears, really wanted to have an understanding with
Yeltsin to contain the Islamic guerrillas. It seems Maskhadov had little control
over the guerrilla forces and wanted to co-operate with the Russian regime while
at the same time wishing to maintain Chechnya as an independent entity. But
Yeltsin and his Prime Minister Putin had other things in mind, so they rejected
his constant offers for talks. Later, Maskhadov invited the "International
Community" to intervene, on humanitarian grounds.
The Russian federation's republics of Ossetia and Daghestan offered to mediate
between Yeltsin and Maskhadov but Yeltsin rejected their offer. Obviously those
republics were distancing themselves from Moscow and wanted to help Maskhadov in
this hour of crisis.
The government of the Tatarstan republic told the Moscow rulers that the Tatais
would not be sent to fight against Chechnya. In India such a position by some
Indian states seems an impossibility for the present, but in Russia the national
minorities have started asserting themselves.
Ingushetia, which is finding it difficult to accommodate the more than 2 lakh
refugees from Chechnya (with its own population just 3 lakhs), has appealed for
international aid from the UN. But the Russian authorities, knowing well what
kind of a role the UN plays, have not allowed it to intervene. Clearly, all
these republics of the Russian federation do not feel secure in Russian hands.
All these four republics have aired their views on the war in Chechnya and feel
that it will be a disastrous war for Russia.
Although Asian Maskhadov poses himself as a champion of Chechen nationalism,
yet, given an opportunity, he may opt for collaboration with the western
vultures to sell off Chechen wealth and resources. In the present times, when
socialism has suffered setbacks in all the erstwhile socialist countries;
bourgeois nationalist forces are unable to sustain for long, and finally barter
away their political independence for dollars from the imperialist powers,
plunging back into national slavery. The only viable next step is socialism,
which is unthinkable without the leading role of the proletariat in the national
struggle.
Moreover, as the war continues, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan have
concluded an agreement with Turkey for laying a pipeline which will carry
Central Asian oil to Europe. It has come as a big blow to Russia. On the very
next day of this deal the Russian foreign minister rushed to Iran to workout a
joint counter-strategy as both received a shock at the "hands of Turkey and
America". Again, Azerbaijan, along with Georgia and Uzbekistan, has refused to
renew their membership of the Collective Security Treaty with Russia and five
more of the concerned countries. Georgia even wants to join NATO. The West as a
whole stands to gain while Russia is losing one bastion after another. These
Central Asian countries may, in future, opt for NATO to control opposition
within their own countries in the name of maintaining internal security', and
NATO will most happily come forward to defend Western interests there. These
countries want capital and technology and an infrastructure to market their
produce. With Russia in economic crisis the leaders of these countries are
turning to the West in order to build their capitalist economies and exploit the
huge mineral resources. All these rulers indulge in exploitation and suppression
of their own people while prostrating before Western imperialism.
The people of Russia and those of the national groups which are part of the
Russian federation are now tasting the bitter fruits of the farce which was
called democracy by the imperialist countries, and which, in essence, is the
inhuman rule of the capitalist class. The West was all praise for Yeltsin in
1992 and he was hailed as a great champion of democratic values. Chechnya and
Daghestan are today experiencing that dreadful democracy and the sort of
democratic rights the Yeltsin regime has given to various national groups inside
the Russian federation. Yeltsin and his ilk in the post-collapse countries of
Central Asia are proving to be the worst tyrants.
THE WAR IN CHECHNYA AND THE US, THE EU AND JAPAN.
The US, the EU and Japan are already seeking ways to penetrate into
resource-rich Central Asia. Many of the Central Asian countries have started
looking towards the West and Japan to exploit their natural resources as the
Russian regime is in economic crisis ever since it started its honeymoon with
free market economy. So, Kyrghyzstan invited Japan. Iran exhorted the E.U. to
make Iran an exit point for Central Asian oil. And in the wake of the war in
Chechnya the Turkinenistan government has decided not to renew its border treaty
with Russia which required Russian soldiers to patrol and man the
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan and Turkmenistan-Iran borders. By and by the Central
Asian countries are distancing themselves from the Russian hold and their
present rulers are beginning to expand ties with the West. For the Western
imperialists whichever nation opposed Russian domination was encouraged in order
to open the way for western imperialist penetration at some future date. The
West never forgets to avail any opportunity when it comes to making inroads into
hitherto closed lands. After losing Iran in 1979 to Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic
revolution it won back Afghanistan from the Russians and tried to use the
Taliban regime and Pakistan to make forays into Central Asia. With the Osama Bin
Laden phenomenon and the coup in Pakistan, that channel has run into some
trouble for the time being, but the war in Chechnya has come as a handy tool.
The USA, which has many a nation's blood on its hands, which has almost daily
pounded Iraq with bombs and missiles after the 1991 Gulf War, and which has
devastated Serbia with more than sixty days of heavy bombing, has hypocritically
called on Russia to use "restraint and wisdom" in Chechnya. Now its state
department spokesman James Rubin warns that Russia's war in Chechnya will
"further threaten stability in the region".
The EU also asked Russia to stop the war in Chechnya and "seek other channels"
so as to "avoid a humanitarian catastrophe". The European Union and American
utterings were to make sounds to Maskhadov and the Ingushetia's leaders that
they share their concerns. Soon after, Maskhadov asked the notorious NATO to
"help end the fighting in Chechnya."
Here we see butchers of the world's people asking and advising another butcher
to show 'restraint' and 'avoid a human catastrophe' and in this way laying their
own trap for besieged Chechnya. Anybody can understand that these imperialists
have nothing to do with the sufferings of the Ichkerians but have their own
dirty schemes up their sleeves. These are the same hypocrites who are always
quick to brand every genuine armed struggle of the people as terrorist and who
have bombarded the media with stories of Osama Bin Laden and Muslim
fundamentalism and of the need to crush them. Initially Yeltsin sought to play
the Islamic fundamentalist card to get the support of the West. When this did
not work he labelled the Western leaders as hypocrites and double dealers and
said that they had "no right to intervene in the internal affairs of other
countries."
The British imperialist mouthpiece "The Economist" has advised Russia to seek
the help of the European Security Summit as a mediator and also argues for
Chechnya's secession as a rightful solution although it does not propose this
"rightful solution" for Northern Ireland. If the Chechen people go by the spoken
words of the US administration and the EU leaders they will easily take them as
their friends, but if they go by their motives and practices the world over,
they will equally easily understand that there are no friends either in the US
or in the EU or amongst the Russian rulers. There are only enemies. Some hidden,
others open. If the bear gets out, the tiger gets in. Salvage lies only in
breaking through this vicious circle of equally dangerous enemies and in
reversing the verdicts and deeds of the revisionist ex-rulers and getting back
on the socialist road with proletarian politics in command. Every other road
leads to a blind alley where there is no light. While supporting the just
struggles of the oppressed nationalities against Great-Russian chauvinism, the
peoples of Chechnya and other Central Asian republics must beware of the
intrigues of the other great imperialist powers.
15.12.99
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