A Russian Diary Page 15

  Zyazikov in Ingushetia copies his big boss in Moscow in all things, but particularly in his basic approach. What matters is not solving the problems, but controlling what gets reported on television; not reality but virtuality; censorship as a way of not having to tackle difficult matters. The downside is that ubiquitous censorship and constant duplicity mean you have no visible opposition with which to debate the issues on a daily basis. Where are the dissenting voices, all those who might criticize and come up with alternative ideas? You can't listen to them because they are not there. Neither in Moscow nor in Ingushetia.

  For a long time the only open oppositionists in Zyazikov's republic were Musa Ozdoev and a number of people close to him. Musa used to be on Zyazikov's team and was even his adviser at one time.

  Oppositionist Musa Ozdoev tried to challenge the election results to the Duma. In court he produced records from electoral districts where votes had been written into the record, a bizarre electoral roll in which people with different names had the same passport, or where one person voted several times using the same name but different passports. Here are a few examples that explain how the opposition came to be “routed” in the December election and how Putin's party, United Russia, came by its imposing victory.

  Electoral Ward 68 is in the village of Barsuki on the outskirts of Nazran, the home village of Murat Zyazikov. This is where his relatives live, and it is here that, on the highest hill, the president's “lettuce castle” is being built. It is a hulking, clumsy great building of feudal aspect, but the green color works surprisingly well, and he is expected to move there shortly. Naturally, in accordance with the worst Caucasian traditions, those supervising the voting in the polling stations of Barsuki were relatives of Zyazikov, his vassals, those building his castle, its suppliers and staff.

  I studied the electoral register, which has been officially certified and bears all the requisite signatures and seals. It tells us who received ballot papers on December 7 in Ward 68. We find that at least three different citizens voted using passport No. 26 01010683: Timur Khamzatovich Balkhaev of 15 Alkhan-Churtskaya Street; Tamerlan Magomedovich Dzor-tov of Zyazikov Street (a different Zyazikov); and Beslan Bagaudinovich Galgoev of 5 Kortoev Street.

  Here again, the same passport No. 26 01032665 apparently belongs to four citizens of Barsuki, three male and one female. Three of them live at 13 Yuzhnaya Street. There are dozens of examples of such double, treble, and quadruple voting using the same passport. Next we come across a column of identical signatures in five, six, or ten boxes in succession, one under the other, purporting to certify the identities of different people.

  Comparing the Barsuki registers for the elections of December 7 and March 14 (when Putin was elected), we find that the same person has two passports. In the register for the parliamentary elections of December 7, passport No. 26 02098850 is held by Akhmed Tagirovich Azhigov from the farmstead of Tibi-Khi (part of Barsuki), but on March 14 the same person is voting using passport No. 26 03356564. So who is Azhigov? Does he exist? It proved impossible to track him down in Tibi-Khi, a tiny place where everybody knows everybody else, and even remembers their parents and grandparents. Nobody had ever heard of him.

  There are any number of similar Azhigovs because the electoral commissions were shamelessly creative in their efforts to ensure the right result. The outcome of all this, however, is nothing to laugh about: it has brought about the downfall not only of Russian democracy, but also of Russian society. In Ingushetia, Musa Ozdoev protested about this, and in every town you will find one, or at most two, Musa Ozdoevs. They are usually considered mad. Wiser people pat them sympathetically on the shoulder and say, “Go on, give it a try. We will watch and see what happens.”

  If the town madman were suddenly to kill the dragon, millions would flock to share his glory and enjoy the fruits of his victory. It is an old, deplorable Soviet custom: do nothing yourself, lie still in the mud on the riverbed, and wait for a wonderful new life to float down to you from above.

  But to return to the ballot rigging. Why was it necessary?

  The answer is simple: because not enough people actually voted for Putin on March 14, or for United Russia on December 7. The West fervently believes in the results, but the percentages are inflated. Ingushetia's “98 percent for Putin” just tells us how desperate Zyazikov was to show off to the Kremlin.

  That's all there is to it. That is why Zyazikov's accomplices broke people across their knee; twisted the arms of members of the electoral commissions; perverted, threatened, tortured, and ensnared people in a conspiracy of lies. And they went along with it.

  Most members of electoral commissions to whom I managed to speak said they were afraid. They had families, children who could be kidnapped. It was easier to add false votes than lose those dearest to you. Who can say we are not returning to Stalinist ways under Putin? A hereditary memory is at work, reminding people how to live if they want to survive. Swim with the tide.

  This whole system of thieving judges, rigged elections, presidents who have only contempt for the needs of their people, can operate only if nobody protests. That is the Kremlin's secret weapon and the most striking feature of life in Russia today. That is the secret of spin doctor Surkov's genius: apathy, rooted in an almost universal certainty among the populace that the state authorities will fix everything, including elections, to their own advantage. It is a vicious circle. People react only when something affects them personally: old Judge Boris Ozdoev when his son Rashid was abducted, the same as the Mutsolgovs. Until then, if my hut is out of harm's way, why worry? We have emerged from socialism as thoroughly self-centered people.

  And that is the background to the attempt to assassinate Zyazikov.

  April 7

  Today Igor Sutyagin, a military expert and scholar at the U.S.-Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the author of hundreds of scholarly articles on strategic weapons and disarmament, has been sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment for “betraying the Motherland.” Putin had personal charge of the case when he was director of the FSB.

  Sutyagin was arrested in October 1999. He was accused of passing secret information to foreign intelligence services. In fact, Sutyagin's work consisted solely of analyzing publicly available information and drawing conclusions based on nonclassified sources. He didn't even have security clearance for access to state secrets. The FSB only demonstrated that, by making use of publicly available data, Sutyagin came to secret conclusions. This was obviously a trial concocted to make an example of someone.

  “Making an example” is becoming increasingly common in the courts, as is demonstrating loyalty to the Kremlin. Since the instigator of the Sutyagin case is now in the Kremlin as president of Russia, it was impossible not to find Sutyagin guilty. In addition, the Sutyagin case is being used to instill in the public mind the notion of “justifiable repressions,” that the authorities know better than anyone else who the enemy is and, accordingly, have the right to persecute particular individuals even if their crimes are unproven.

  Instill it they duly did. Society accepted the idea of justified repressions. Apart from human rights campaigners, few came to Sutyagin's aid. Some time ago the public demanded that another “spy,” the naval officer Grigorii Pasko, be released, but he supposedly replied from solitary confinement that he had no wish to be shown clemency. Now, however, with the guilty verdict in this latest, typically Stalinist show trial, the FSB has won the battle for its own future.

  The Sutyagin case revealed another of our problems, trial by jury. In Russia everything civilized seems to become subverted or perverted into its own opposite. Our juries are ordinary citizens who don't mind going without bread so long as “enemies of the Motherland” get put away for a long time. It was Judge Mironova who determined the length of the sentence, but it was the jury who found Sutyagin guilty despite the absence of any evidence. Why? Because it is etched into their brains that the KGB/FSB is always right. The Sutyagin jury demonstrate
d the extent to which, as a society, we still carry within ourselves a repressive way of thinking. We have learned nothing. Harshness is more respected than mercy and understanding. It is better to cut down the forest than to worry about the wood chips. It is better to condemn than to think.

  Committee 2008 denounced the verdict: “Trial by jury is becoming purely ornamental, used only to disguise minimally the profoundly undemocratic nature of the state machinery of repression. Today's unjust verdict is an attack by the authorities on the very foundation of a democratic constitutional system.”

  That is not actually true. It is a typical little democratic fib. The jury is not a screen: the jury is the problem. The jury is us.

  The Duma passed a stunningly draconian law banning all protest meetings in the vicinity of state institutions. That is, they could be held only where nobody other than their participants would hear or see them. Those voting in favor included former trade union leader Andrey Isaev, who more than once led the people out into the squares in the mid-1990s, but has now become a busy functionary of the United Russia Party and interpreter of Putin's ideas on television. In contrast, Alexey Kondaurov, a deputy of the Communist Party and former KGB general, voted against, describing the law as “an attack on citizens’ rights and freedoms.” The Communists are becoming the most progressive party.

  How is one to live in Russia between the Scylla of Putin and the Charyb-dis of the Communists?

  (Interestingly enough, Putin waited for the right moment and then said of the law against protest meetings, “That's going too far! We need something milder.” The Duma promptly reconvened and softened the law, all live on television, under the eyes of the entire nation. It is once again permissible to hold meetings near state institutions and in central squares.)

  April 12

  I work at Novaya Gazeta, and published frames from a video, made in March 2000 by a Russian soldier in Chechnya, that somehow found its way to me.

  The video shows fighters who have surrendered. The assault on the village of Komsomolskoye in February-March 2000 was, after the siege of Grozny in the winter of 1999-2000, the second largest operation of the second Chechen war. At that time, retreating from Grozny, the field commander Ruslan Gelaev led more than 1,500 men to his home village of Komsomolskoye.

  A terrible siege began, using all manner of military technology and leading to the deaths of most of the people in the village. When Komsomolskoye had been almost completely destroyed, Gelaev and some of his fighters miraculously escaped through the several cordons of besiegers. Those remaining were promised an amnesty if they surrendered; seventy-two men, as the high command officially announced in March 2000, were given amnesty by the federal government.

  They were “amnestied” but immediately arrested. Since then the families of only three of them know where they are: the rest did not return. The video shows these “amnestied” men being unloaded from two prison vans into a goods wagon at the Chechen railway station of Chervlenaya. The transfer was recorded by officers of a special operations unit of the Russian Ministry of Justice.

  The video is like a feature film about a fascist concentration camp.

  This is precisely the way the guards behave, their assault rifles at the ready lined out down a hill, at the bottom of which is the railway track with the waiting wagon. The soldiers keep their guns trained on those being thrown from the vans. Among the fighters we see two women. They are clothed and, unlike the men, have not been beaten up. They are immediately taken to one side.

  The remainder, men and boys (one is clearly fifteen or sixteen years old), are flung from the vans or themselves jump to the ground. They are all in bad physical shape, some being carried by their friends. All are wounded. Some are without legs, some without arms; the ear of one of them is hanging off, half severed. The soldiers can be heard out of frame commenting, “Look, they didn't take that one's ear off properly.” Many are completely naked, barefoot, and covered in blood. Their clothing and footwear are tossed out of the vehicles separately. The fighters are completely exhausted. Some do not understand what is required of them and stumble about in confusion. Some are insane.

  On the video the soldiers beat them in a routine, automatic sort of way, as if they are doing it only out of habit. There are no doctors to be seen. Some of the stronger fighters are ordered to pull from the vans the bodies of those who have died during the transfer and drag them to one side. At the end of the video there is a mountain of corpses of the amnestied prisoners by the railway track.

  The federals do not physically touch the fighters, using only their boots and the muzzles of their rifles. They are plainly revolted by them. They use the toe of their boots to turn the faces of the dead in order to stare at them. This seems to be purely out of curiosity. Nobody is writing anything down, registering anything, recording deaths. No documents are being compiled. At the end there is a discussion between the federals, accompanied by laughter: “They said there were seventy-two of them, but we've got seventy-four. Okay, never mind, a couple of spares.”

  What happened when the frames from this record of our own Abu Ghraib were published? Nothing. Nobody turned a hair, neither the public, nor the media, nor the procurator's office. Many foreign journalists borrowed the video from me, and in Poland the headline over the pictures was “The Russian Abu Ghraib.” In Russia there was silence.

  What happens in Ingushetia reflects what happens in Moscow. After Putin's reelection there has been a complete purge of all sources of information, mirroring the purge of the political arena. Now anybody who doesn't want to know doesn't need to know. The majority prefer not to.

  April 14

  In Ukraine Prime Minister Yanukovych has been declared the successor of President Kuchma. He will be the authorities’ candidate in the presidential election. Will Putin really support this Yanukovych? It is beyond belief.

  The lawyer Stanislav Markelov was attacked at midnight in the Moscow Metro by five youths. They shouted, “You've made a few speeches too many!” and “You had this coming,” as they beat him up, stole his documents and his lawyer's ID, ignoring his valuables.

  Markelov is a young, very active lawyer. In the case against ex-Colonel Budanov he defended the interests of the Chechen family of Elza Kun-gaeva, whom Budanov raped and murdered. For this he has been subjected to constant attacks by “patriots.” He acted for the prosecution in “The Case of The Cadet,” against a federal soldier, Sergey Lapin, whose code name in Chechnya was “The Cadet.” For the first time in our recent history, an officer was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment for the abduction of a Chechen in Grozny who subsequently “disappeared.”

  The militia refused to open a criminal case following the attack on Markelov. Who beat him up, and who ordered them to, remains unknown.

  April 16

  There is new evidence about the abduction of the senior assistant procurator of Ingushetia, Rashid Ozdoev, just before Putin's reelection.

  A letter has been sent to the procurator general of Russia, Vladimir Ustinov, from one Igor Onishchenko. It was received and registered as Item 1556 by the secretariat of the procurator general's office for the southern federal district on April 16, 2004.

  This letter is addressed to you from an agent of the Stavropol Regional FSB. I have been working for the FSB of Ingushetia on a special mission. The period of my commission has ended and I have returned home. I worked as an agent of the FSB for almost twelve years, but never imagined I would be so tormented.

  Koryakov, director of the FSB of Ingushetia, is a dreadful person to have in our system, although he claims to have been sent to work there by Patrushev [the national head of the FSB] and Putin personally. This contemptible louse destroys people solely because they are Ingushes or Chechens. He has some grudge and hates them.

  Koryakov forced me and my colleagues—there were five of us working for him—to systematically beat up everybody we arrested, while pretending to be agents of ROSh. Everything was planned: special clothin
g, masks, false documents, camouflage, vehicles (which usually belonged to those who had been arrested, but with the number plates changed), special passes. While pretending to take the victims away from [Nazran], we would usually circle and return in different vehicles to our building, where we carried on beating the people. All this was done at night. During the day we slept. Koryakov had to report to Moscow that the work was proceeding and to justify the title of general, which he had recently been awarded. For this there was a plan requiring processing of at least five persons per week. In early 2003, when I had just arrived, we really did arrest people who were up to something. But after Koryakov went ape over what he called “some procurator,” we started pulling in people without any grounds, just going by their appearance. Koryakov said what difference does it make, they are all lice. Personally Sergey and I crippled more than fifty people. We buried about thirty-five.

  Today I have returned home. I have been rewarded for irreproachable service because of the last operation to take out the local procurator, because he had compromising material on Koryakov. I destroyed the ID and personal weapon of the procurator and broke all his limbs. That night Koryakov gave orders to some different people to get rid of him.

  I am guilty. I am ashamed. This is the pure truth. Igor N. On-ishchenko.

  (Even after this monstrous document was published, nothing changed. There was no popular protest, and the procurator's office just let it slide.)

  April 22-23

  A meeting between Kuchma and Putin in the Crimea. This is the moment Putin decides whether or not to support Yanukovych. So far it looks as though he will not, thank God. Yanukovych was not invited into the meeting, although he was waiting in the wings the whole time.