A Russian Diary (14 page)

The code contains allusions to Khodorkovsky, and to Berezovsky and Gusinsky “There should be separation of political from economic power. The involvement of business in politics and its influence on public opinion must always be transparent and open. All material assistance given by business to political parties, public organizations, and the mass media must be publicly known and monitored. Clandestine support of this nature deserves to be publicly condemned as immoral.”

In that case, of course, the entire election campaign of United Russia was immoral, as is the fact that Putin's oligarch is a senator.

All this is intended to reinforce the idea that it is right and honorable to be a “good” businessman in Putin's pocket, but that if you try to be independent you are bad and must be destroyed. The code is manifestly anti-Yukos. Although it is supposedly voluntary, it is, like everything in Russia nowadays, “compulsorily voluntary.” You don't have to join United Russia, but, if you don't, your career as an official is going nowhere. Metropolitan Kirill, tipped as the successor of the rapidly declining and constantly ailing patriarch, conducted the session when the code was discussed. He said quite openly, “We will go to everybody and invite them to sign. If any refuse to sign, we shall make sure that their names become known to all.” Some priest!

In any case, who is preaching this morality to us? That same Russian Orthodox Church that gives its blessing to the war in Chechnya, to arms trading, and to the fratricide in the North Caucasus. The adoption of this code of moral principles for businessmen is an extraordinary bid by the Russian Orthodox Church, which is disestablished, to involve itself in internal and foreign policy. The RUIE commented that “The Church itself needs to be reformed. Its own stagnation is the reason that it comes out with such bizarre fancies.”

Viktor Vekselberg, one of the oligarchs rumored to be next in line for imprisonment by Putin, has suddenly announced he is buying the collection of Fabergé Easter eggs that belonged to the family of our last emperor,
Nicholas II. Nobody doubts that Vekselberg is simply trying to ransom his way out of trouble by demonstrating that he is “on the side of Russia,” which the administration accepts as a coded way of saying “on the side of Vladimir Vladimirovich.”

Vekselberg insists that “the return of these treasures to Russia is something personal to me. I want my family my son and daughter, to have a different understanding of their place in life. I want big business to participate intelligently in public works. I am not seeking advantage, proving anything to anybody, or whitewashing anything.”

The oligarch doth protest too much, methinks.

February 5

In Cheremkhovo, in Irkutsk Province, seventeen workers of the No. I Sector Communal Residential Services Office have gone on hunger strike. They are demanding payment of their wages, which are six months in arrears. They are owed a total of about two million rubles [$70,000]. They are following the example of their colleagues in another sector who had to go on hunger strike at their workplace for only three days to get their wages paid.

In Moscow, there has been a meeting of Open Forum, an event attended by political analysts; not necessarily the main ones, but reputable people who have been involved as political advisers in all the national and regional elections. They agreed on one important matter: in the four years of Putin's rule, the modernizing of Russia has been sidelined by the goal of strengthening the power of one individual. Those associated with him are neither a class nor a party, just people who are “in step with Putin.” The analysts also agreed that the model of a managed democracy does not work.

February 6

8:32 a.m. Three months after the terrorist attack outside the Nationale Hotel, there has been an explosion in the Moscow Metro, at the interchange between the Paveletskaya and Avtozavodskaya-Zamoskvoretskaya
lines. The train was heading into the city center during the rush hour when a bomb exploded beside the first door of the second carriage. The device had been placed 6 inches above floor level in a bag. After the explosion the train's momentum carried it a further 330 yards and a fierce fire broke out. Thirty people died at the scene, and another 9 died later from their burns. There are 140 injured. There are dozens of tiny unidentifiable fragments of bodies. More than 700 people emerged from the tunnel, having evacuated themselves in the absence of any assistance. In the streets there is chaos and fear, the wailing sirens of the emergency services, millions of people terrorized.

At 10:44 the Volcano-5 Contingency Plan for capturing the culprits was implemented, more than two hours after the explosion. Who do they think they are going to catch? If there were any accomplices they will have fled long ago. At 12:12 the police started searching for a man aged thirty to thirty-five, “of Caucasian appearance.” Very helpful. At 1:30 Va-lerii Shantsev, the acting mayor of Moscow while Luzhkov is in the USA, announced that the victims’ families will receive 100,000 rubles [$3,479] in compensation, and the injured will be paid half that amount.

Terrorists with explosives can move around Moscow without hindrance, despite the extraordinary powers granted to the FSB and militia, and still the people support Putin. No one suggests a change of policy in Chechnya, despite the ten terrorist acts involving suicide bombers in the past year. Red Square is now almost permanently closed to visitors. The Palestinization of Chechnya is obvious. An hour after the explosion a statement was issued by the “Movement Against Illegal Immigration,” an organization created by the security forces. Its leader, Alexander Belov, declared:

Our first demand is to forbid Chechens to travel outside Chechnya. To this day in the USA and Canada there are special reservations set aside for awkward peoples. If an ethnic group does not want to live like civilized human beings, let them live behind a barrier. Call it what you like: a reservation, a pale. We need somehow to defend ourselves. We can no longer pretend that the Chechens, of whom the majority are linked in one way or another with the Chechen resistance, are citizens in the same sense as Chuvashes, Buryats, Karelians, or Russians. For them this is a continuation of the war. They are taking revenge. The Chechen diaspora in Russia, including Chechen businessmen, are a hotbed of terrorism. I am only saying what 80 percent of Russians think.

He is right. That is exactly what the majority thinks. Society is moving toward fascism.

Only a few members of the state authorities continue even trying to think. Gen. Boris Gromov, the governor of Moscow Province and a Hero of the Soviet Union for service in Afghanistan, spoke out: “When I heard about the explosion in the Metro, my first thought was that all this began back in Afghanistan. The decision of the leaders of the USSR to send troops to Afghanistan was irresponsible in the extreme, as was the later decision of the leaders of Russia to send troops to Chechnya. These are the fruits of those decisions. They said they were going after gangsters, but entirely innocent people are now suffering as a result. This will continue for a long time into the future.”

On the state television channels they keep drumming into people that terrorism is a disease of liberal democracy: if you want democracy, you must expect terrorist acts. They somehow overlook the fact that Putin has been in power for the past four years.

Putin, despite the explosion, is having talks with the president of Azerbaijan, Ilkham Aliev, who is in Moscow. Putin merely mentioned in passing, “I wouldn't be surprised if this were to be exploited in the runup to the election as a means of putting pressure on the current head of state. There is a marked coincidence between the explosion and the fact that plans for peace in Chechnya are again being put to us from abroad. Our refusal to conduct negotiations of any kind with terrorists …”

What negotiations? Suicide bombers blow themselves up. He was anxious, his eyes flickering around, betraying a hysterical man who does not know what to do next.

In the next few days there is to be scrutiny of the lists of signatures of the nonparty presidential candidates: Ivan Rybkin, former head of the security council of the Russian Federation; Sergey Glaziev, leader of the
Rodina Party; and Irina Khakamada. The authorities’ actions betray the fact that the person they are most worried about out of these three is Ryb-kin, even though his opinion poll rating is virtually zero. The head of the Central Electoral Commission, Alexander Veshnyakov, has stated in advance of the scrutiny that a preliminary check of Rybkin's lists has shown that 26 percent of the signatures are invalid. Precisely 26 percent—not 27 and not 24.9—because the law says that if the number of invalid signatures exceeds 25 percent, they can refuse to register the candidate. People are laughing and saying that at least it's not 25.1 percent.

Where, actually, is the election campaign? So far there is nothing to be seen. The would-be candidates were in no hurry to stand, and most of them are in no hurry to win. Nobody seems worried by this, neither the candidates nor their supporters. As for Candidate No. 1, he makes no attempt to fight, argue, and win. Irina Khakamada is convinced that the Kremlin has succeeded in persuading everybody that they can't beat a conspiracy. “There is no open struggle. Nobody believes it will help.”

The Rodina Party continues its internal feuding. They do not want to win the election, either. Dmitry Rogozin, who is also the deputy speaker of the Duma, has even announced that he will support Putin in the election, not Glaziev, the cochairman of his own party. They seem a very odd lot. Do they ever give a thought to their supporters? They give the impression that what the electors think is of no concern, and that everything will be decided without consulting them. Rogozin even calls for the presidential election to be canceled and a state of emergency declared because of the terrorist acts.

February 7

Five new blood donor centers have been opened in Moscow. There is an urgent need for all blood groups for the 128 bomb victims who remain in the hospital.

But where are the explosives detectors in the Metro? Where are the patrols? We Russians are innately irresponsible, always seeing conspiracies against us. We never bother to push anything through to completion, just hope for the best. The militia check passports in the Metro, but no
doubt terrorists make sure their documents are in order. The militia catch some hungry Tadjik who can't find work in his homeland and has come to dig our frozen soil because we don't want to do it ourselves. They shake him down for his last hundred rubles [$3.50] and let him go. Where are the security agencies who should answer for the fact that the attack was successful? Where are the security people on the ground? Thousands of half-starved conscripts of the Interior troops have been brought in to guard Moscow. That's good. At least they will be paid and be able to eat. At least they are not in their barracks.

But “measures” like these are ineffective, mere reaction. As soon as people start to forget this nightmare, everything will return to how it was. The writer and journalist Alexander Kabakov comments, “We are still alive only because those who commission these acts are short of people to carry them out. But why those who commission terrorist acts are still alive is quite another question.”

Putin has not fired Patrushev, the director of the FSB. He is a personal friend. How many more acts of terrorism have to succeed before Putin realizes his pal is no good at his job?

The Memorial Human Rights Center has issued a statement:

We grieve for those who have died, and sympathize deeply with the injured. There can be no justification for those who planned and executed this crime. The president and law enforcement agencies are confidently asserting that this was the work of Chechens, although no evidence of this has yet come to light. If their speculation should prove correct, the present tragedy will unfortunately have been only too predictable. The refusal of the country's leaders to take any steps toward a real, rather than a decorative, political settlement of the conflict has only strengthened the position of extremists. These are people who set out no sane political goals on the basis of which compromise might be possible. Over recent years human rights associations and many public and political representatives have warned repeatedly that the brutal acts of the federal forces in Chechnya spell danger for every person living in Russia. For a long time now hundreds of thousands of people have been living out every day in a lethal environment. They are being forced out, cast beyond the limits of civilized life. Thousands of humiliated people whose relatives and friends have been killed, abducted, physically and psychologically crippled, represent, for the cynical and unconscionable leaders of terrorist groups, a source from which to recruit their followers, suicide bombers, and those who commit terrorist outrages. Peace and tranquillity for the citizens of Russia can be achieved only by a resolute change of policy.

Ivan Rybkin has disappeared. A bit of excitement in the election at last: one of the candidates is nowhere to be found. His wife is going crazy. On February 2, Rybkin criticized Putin in very harsh terms and his wife believes that did it for him. On February 5, Kseniya Ponomaryova, the coordinator of the support group that put Rybkin forward, warned that “massive sabotage” was being prepared against him. His headquarters have been receiving reports from the regions for a week about unauthorized interrogation of his supporters. The militia visited the homes of people collecting signatures, questioned them, and took statements. They wanted to know why they were supporting Rybkin. In Kabardino-Balkaria students gathering signatures were threatened that the militia would inform the university administration and consider whether it was appropriate for them to be allowed to continue their studies.

February 9

No details have yet been established of the type of bomb used in the Metro or of the composition of its explosive. Putin keeps repeating, as he did after
Nord-Ost,
that nobody inside Russia was responsible. Everything was planned abroad.