THE LEVELLING to the ground of Pervomaiskoye, a Chechen-occupied village in neighbouring Dagestan, sums up the Russian government's bitter campaign to suppress the nation aspirations of the Chechen people.
In 1991 Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev declared independence from the Russian confederation. In doing so the tiny republic was breaking free of decades of national and cultural repression by the Moscow bureaucracy — during the second world war more than one million Chechens were deported to Siberia by the Stalin's dictatorship. Today, there are just 1.2 million Chechens.
Fearing a upsurge of independence movements across the mainly-Muslim Caucasus region, Yeltsin ordered the suppression of Chechenya.
Over 30,000 people have died in the war — most unarmed civilians — in order to fool Yeltsin's Western backers that a unitary capitalist market can be created by Yelstin which can dominate the former Soviet Union.
The 40,000 Russian troops who invaded 13 months ago have not yet defeated the independence movement there.
The brutality of the military campaign is a show of strength following the lurch — forced on Yeltsin's government in 1995 — away from economic austerity policies.
In Pervomaiskoye most of the occupying 320-strong Chechen guerrillas were murdered by tanks, missiles, artillery and helicopter gunships: "Mad dogs should be killed" pronounced Yeltsin after the four day siege.
At least 25 civilians had been killed. The village had a population of just 870. The indiscriminate assault polarised Russian public opinion, and developed fears that the war could spread beyond Chechenya.
Fascist leader Vladimir Zhirinvosky has sought to gain from the war. He calls for the widespread napalming of the country and the rapid conclusion of the invasion.
The carnage followed a successful attack on a helicopter base located in Dagestan by Chechen guerrillas who went on to take refuge in a local hospital — taking 3,400 hostages in order to secure safe passage home.
Passing by Pervomaiskoye on their return journey the guerrillas were fired upon by Russian helicopter gunships, forcing them to hole up in the tiny village.
In a subsequent attempt to force an end to the Russian siege, rogue Chechen gunmen took hostage 114 Russian ferry passengers sailing in the Black Sea.
Later pursuaded by Chechen leaders to surrender to Turkish forces, the partisans brought the ferry to port at Istanbul to be greeted with crowds chanting anti-Yeltsin slogans.
These reflections abroad of the Chechen struggle for national freedom indicate the tenacity of national sentiments in the face of Great Russian chauvinism.
By forcefully defending new, if limited, rights to national, religious and political expression the Chechen people fight in the interests of all the oppressed nations of the former Soviet Union.