IF SOME reckless analyst had suggested a year ago that admirers of Yegor Gaider would be joining on Pushkin Square with followers of extreme nationalist Victor Anpilov to shout "Put the Yeltsin gang on trial!", he or she would have been dismissed as delirious. But Russian life is stranger than any kind of delirium.
Beginning on December 11, columns of tanks and 40,000 troops burst on to the territory of the mutinous Chechen Republic, along the way shooting up peaceful villages and killing the health minister of neighbouring Ingusheita. Aircraft and artillery dumped tonnes of bombs and shells on the Chechen capital, Grozny.
Despite a television propaganda campaign, the anti-war movement quickly began to gather strength. Nor were the government's hopes of exploiting the racist prejudices of Russians against Chechens borne out.
On the contrary, surveys showed that the attitude of Russians towards CENTRE Chechens, who had become the victims of aggression, became more favourable. Press reports of the bombing and shelling, from which the Russian population of Grozny suffered as much as anyone, played a considerable role.
The weakest spot in the authorities new scenario was the lack of combat readiness of their own army — demoralised, poorly trained and without the slightest idea of why it was supposed to fight against citizens of its own country.
The war on Chechnya was still more absurd for the reason that the Russian government had spent three years allowing the Chechen regime of General Dzokhar Dudaey to do whatever it liked. After proclaiming independence from Moscow, Dudaev had done nothing to make independence a reality.
Russian laws continued to be enforced on the territory of Chechnya and the Russian rouble remained in circulation. There wese no border checks and the Chechen government did not set up its own customs system. The inhabitants of Chechnya remained Russian citizens, dealing with their problems through the structures of the Russian federation. Chechnya did not pay taxes, but other regions of Russia also refused to forward tax revenues from time to time.
The only thing that Dudaev did that was at all out of the ordinary was to set up armed formations under his personal control, just as Yeltsin and the Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov have done. In addition, he delighted philatelists by issuing a series of Chechen stamps bearing his portrait, and with a quality reminiscent of matchbox labels.
It is quite clear that Dudeav was not so much seeking independence as aiming at winning special status for Chechnya within the framework of Russia or of a future Eurasian Union, the need for which the Chechen general stressed repeatedly.
The Moscow politicians for their part watched events in Chechnya without particular alarm. The semi-independent republic was an ideal place for laundering millions stolen in the capital and for cutting deals in smuggled weapons.
However, the crisis of the Russian regime, the economic collapse and unrelieved failures in all spheres of domestic and foreign policy, forced Yeltsin's associates to look for a way out. While the Yeltsin government had bungled any attempts it made at constructive activity, it had invariably emerged victorious from political crises.
A victorious little war seemed like an attractive way to increase the popularity of the authorities, to crush the opposition and at the same time, perhaps, to postpone the elections and get rid of the faint hearted within the governments own ranks.
As military actions began in the country for a second time in little more than a year the nerves of many democratic" politicians gave way. Gaidar and the majority of the Russia's Choice parliamentary fraction began to protest. Against all their expectations, they found themselves in the same camp with the left.
The social democratic politicians generally preferred to remain silent, and did not show up at demonstrations. The leadership of Russia's largest trade union federation, the FNPR, limited itself to expressions of "concern" over the bombing of Chechnya.
It is paradoxical that this time, unlike 1993, Yeltsin has acted strictly within the framework of his constitutional powers. The leading defenders of these powers once included people like Gaidar. They, of course, imagined that these provisions would be used only against leftists. But "justice" triumphed. The time has at last arrived to recognise that to a police baton all heads are equal.
It has been striking to observe how Gaidar and other liberals from the President' scircle, who themselves took part in preparing earlier provocations, have proven so helpless when the provocations have been directed against them. They have been driven swiftly and unerringly into the same trap in which earlier
parliamentary oppositions became enmeshed.
The need for a constant struggle against internal and external enemies is part and parcel of authoritarianism. This is why former allies and fellow travellers of the regime have become its victims. The circle has continually contracted. First the Communists were defeated; then wavering democrats were thrown overboard; now the turn has come of the privatising "Westernisers" themselves.
The task of seizing property has been fulfilled. The ideology of liberalism, which allowed the regime to create a mass base for itself, has been totally exhausted and discredited. This has made the ideologues themselves unnecessary ballast for the regime.
"Serious people" understand that the time for seizing property has come to an end, and that the era of consolidation has begun. It is therefore time to replace liberal slogans with conservative ones. The idea of change is being replaced with the idea of order, and human rights by a police state.
The situation is complicated, however, by the presence of democratic institutions. On the one hand, the new social order is incompatible with democracy, while on the other, open dictatorship is impossible as well. Moreover, a certain heed must be paid to the West. The organs of repression, meanwhile, are unprepared for really broad and systematic work. They are capable only of episodic SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.77. 11 February 1995, Page 9 Getting heavy. masked Russian Interior Ministry troops police a checkpoint in Grozny