A Russian Diary (40 page)

After all that our people have learned about the superhuman brutality and vileness of Stalin, his moral and political rehabilitation could only mean that in our country any political immorality is permissible and any crime committed by the state can be justified if its enormity is sufficiently mind-numbing. We must never forget that the main victim of Stalinism was the Russian people.

The democrats have missed the boat again. Re-Stalinization is a reality.

May 4

In the Zamoskvorechie district court in Moscow, Judge Irina Vasina rejects an appeal by Svetlana Gubaryova. Svetlana was a
Nord-Ost
hostage and lost her thirteen-year-old daughter and her fiancé, Sandy Booker, a U.S. citizen, in the tragedy.

Svetlana was demanding that the procurator's refusal to respond to her questions as to where and when her family died be ruled unlawful; that the directives of the procurator's office refusing to review the provision of medical assistance during the
Nord-Ost
siege be ruled unlawful; and likewise that the decision of the head of the investigating team, Vladimir Kalchuk, not to press criminal charges against the agents of the special operations units that carried out the assault be ruled unlawful.

In a wavering voice, Svetlana read her complaints against the procurator. She noted that those who killed the hostages, including her family, received awards, and that every attempt is now being made to absolve them of blame for turning the Dubrovka auditorium into a gas chamber. The lack of accountability of the guilty has led to the even greater tragedy of Beslan.

After five minutes of this, the judge abruptly terminated the hearing. Svetlana had been hoping to create a precedent by getting the court to pronounce on the legal basis of the way the inquiry was being conducted.

May 9

The leaders of every imaginable country have come to Moscow to pay homage to Putin, not to Russia's victory in the Second World War. That is how it is being seen by the right, the left, and the apolitical.

Putin has hijacked this major patriotic celebration for his own purposes, in order to consolidate his position as one of the world's major
leaders. The whole business world has been coerced into contributing to the victory fund. All officials have been charged a levy. Even the humblest government employees have had no option but to pay up to celebrate “Putin's victory.”

One old man, Pavel Petrovich Smolyaninov, has written to me from the village of Pushkarnoye where his wife is the postwoman. She is paid a mere 2,000 rubles [$71] a month, but even she was forced to contribute. In his words, she was unable to resist the extortion because she has only three months to go before she retires, and didn't want to jeopardize her pension.

May 11

They are going to set up a Social Chamber from “the best elements of civil society.” These will be selected by Putin so that they can criticize decisions of the state authorities, including Putin himself.

The steering committee of the Citizens’ Congress has described this as “an attempt to manipulate civil society in the vested interests of those in power.” On the other hand, they added, they continue to consider it sensible to exploit any opportunity of influencing the authorities, “and we believe that individual participation of members of the National Citizens’ Congress in the Social Chamber should be regarded as a further practical opportunity to exert such influence.”

Are they really going to allow themselves to be bought in this manner?

They sure are.

May 12

In Novosibirsk, FSB agents have arrested two National Bolsheviks, Nikolai Baluev and Vyacheslav Rusakov. Baluev's apartment was searched, and the agents removed leaflets, issues of the National Bolshevik newspaper
Generalnaya Liniya,
twenty videocassettes, and a jar of saltpeter that Nikolai's mother, Yevdokia, uses at their dacha as fertilizer. Both party members are being charged under Articles 222, Part 2, “Possession of weapons,” and 205, Part 2, “Terrorism.”

May 14

The “Antiterror Festival.” The
Nord-Ost
siege victims staged a four-hour tour de force called “No to Terror!” They continue the fight under their own steam, but with little support. The large concert hall of the Cosmos Hotel in Moscow is only half full.

In the stalls and the circle are mainly the families of those who died at
Nord-Ost
and survivors. Somewhat to one side is a delegation from Beslan. The event is opened by Tatiana Karpova, the mother of Alexander Karpov who died at
Nord-Ost,
and who is now the driving force behind the association, defending the interests of those involved. The main theme of the evening is: where is the state's concern for the victims of terror? Where are the independent inquiries into terrorist acts? Where is the independent judiciary and the honest procurator's office? Are you listening, Mr. President?

An open letter to Putin is distributed. It has been written by Oleg Zhi-rov, a Dutch citizen whose wife died trying to save their son in the siege:

My main reason for writing this letter is the growing number of victims of terrorist acts in Russia, and the total disregard for their problems and their right to moral and material compensation on the part of the bureaucracy and judicial institutions, including the Supreme and Constitutional courts. To judge by their verdicts, everything that has gone on in Russia over the past five years of the struggle against terrorism has been in accordance with the Constitution, and the demands and lawsuits of the victims have been without legal justification. It seems at times that there are only two parties to this war: the heroic special operations troops; and, on the other side, terrorists and separatists.

In the wings I read Oleg Zhirov's letter together with Svetlana Gubaryova, who lost her daughter, Sasha, and her American fiancé during the siege. Her eyes are full of tears as she tries to hold back her inconsolable grief. She does not believe that writing open letters to Putin will
change anything about the way the Russian authorities currently “fight terrorism,” when it is Putin who is the main instigator of policies where those who come off worst are always the hostages.

The stage is taken by familiar faces, diehard supporters of the victims of terrorism: Irina Khakamada, who now heads the Our Choice Party; Garry Kasparov, who this spring retired from playing chess the better to work for political change; and Lyudmila Aivar, a lawyer who for more than two years now has been representing the interests of the
Nord-Ost
victims in the courts.

Many “new faces” had been invited, but have not appeared. Alexander Torshin, for example, who is leading the parliamentary commission set up to investigate Beslan. It was he that the people from Beslan had been hoping to hear. They believe that Torshin knows every last detail about the assault on the school, can't reveal it for the time being, but will tell the whole truth once he has plucked up enough courage. His absence from this festival evidently means he hasn't plucked up enough courage yet.

Putin is incapable of seeing the Russian people as an ally in the fight against terrorism. He doesn't like that kind of popular involvement, and the lackeys who carry out his orders merely ape the president's behavior.

The 2005 festival is already the second. It is becoming a tradition. We, hostages to an uncaring state, can only guess how many more terrorist acts there will be in 2006, and hope they may be few.

May 16

The churlish behavior of the OMON special operations militia outside the Meshchansky court where the trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev is drawing to an end is a clear indicator of the authorities’ attitude toward democracy. They broke up a group of those supporting the accused, but ignored the demonstrators opposed to Yukos, who had also materialized from somewhere. In total twenty-eight people were arrested, the militiamen just plucking people out of the crowd and shoving them into a bus when the demonstration was over, as if someone in charge had just woken up. The protesters were taken to militia stations and held there for seven hours. They included Kasparov.

May 21

Every year since 1990, the Andrey Sakharov Foundation and the Moscow State Philharmonia have celebrated Sakharov's birthday by holding a musical evening in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Over the last fourteen years the program has become traditional: a classical concert with brief speeches, by leading public figures and human rights defenders who were close to Sakharov, about the main problems currently facing us.

It was probably the speeches they were afraid of, because when it was time to arrange the fifteenth celebration this year, for the first time the Philharmonia suddenly told the foundation it wouldn't be possible. No reason, no explanations.

In order to continue the tradition unbroken, Sakharov's admirers, regrouping after their surprise at such an unexpected manifestation of managed democracy, held an open-air concert in the little square next to the Sakharov Museum and Social Center. The theme of the evening was “While Hearts Still Beat for Honest Life.”

There was a good attendance and the evening went well in a familiar, Moscow sort of way. Bards sang, poets recited, the Chechen singer Liza Umarova performed breathtakingly, a letter was read out from Vladimir Voinovich who was unable to attend. Sergey Kovalyov gave a speech, as did Grigorii Yavlinsky and Vladimir Lukin, Russia's ombudsman for human rights. The concert was hosted by Natella Boltyanskaya, an excellent songwriter, singer, and presenter on Echo of Moscow, almost the last free radio station broadcasting.

The sense of being embattled, left over from the cancellation of the evening at the conservatory, dissipated with the first words spoken and sung, to be replaced by a great sense of solidarity, and of being at one with the legacy of Sakharov.

The tricks were not over yet, though. Realizing they had failed to humiliate the human rights movement, the authorities did an about-face, and the Philharmonia started advertising a “Sakharov Concert” in the Grand Hall of the conservatory. They set up a doppelgänger, a parallel
concert to which, naturally, neither Sakharov's friends nor those who had been prisoners of the Gulag, nor members of the human rights movement, nor Sakharov's relatives, were invited.

“They” seem to have decided to try to privatize even the memory of Sakharov. Most likely the aim was to throw dust in the eyes of the West.

May 22

Sunday, and marches were called across the nation “for free speech, against censorship, violence, and lies on television.”

I supposed that most of the demonstrators would be members of the press corps, and that they would lead the parade. In fact, apart from journalists covering the event, there were only two representatives of the press marching: Yevgenia Albats, who has left journalism for teaching, and me.

The demonstration had been jointly organized by Yabloko, the Communist Party, the Union of Right Forces, the Russian Union of Journalists, the Moscow Helsinki Group, the Citizens’ Congress, Committee 2008, the Committee for the Defense of Muscovites, the Committee for the Defense of Civil Rights, the Human Rights Association, the Social Solidarity Movement, and the National Bolsheviks (in strength). Limonov made a speech.

Everybody assembled at the memorial to academician Korolyov on Cosmonauts’ Avenue and processed to the broadcasting center at Ostankino, blocking the road.

May 23

The National Bolsheviks held in the Pechatniki women's prison for the December 14 occupation of a room at the presidential administration's building have gone on hunger strike.

May 24

Yukos is no more. The company in its former incarnation has been done away with. Its main asset, Yuganskneftegaz, has been pried away with the
assistance of German capital. The holding company, Yukos-Moscow, has been liquidated.

May 28

The party conference of the Union of Right Forces. Nikita Belykh was elected chairman of the political committee and head of the party. He is a government man, the deputy governor of Perm Province, so the administration has taken over the Union of Right Forces too. It has promptly ceased protesting about the abolition of elections for governors, for example.

At the behest of the presidential administration, the Duma's main preoccupation throughout its spring session has been to expunge the last vestiges of democracy in the electoral legislation. Laws have been amended to ensure that those out of favor stand no chance of getting into power, no matter what the electorate might think. The main innovations are:

1. The electoral deposit required of political parties has been increased to $2 million.
   

2. The quorum for a valid election is being sharply reduced in order for them to continue taking place at all. Where previously the minimum turnout was 20 percent, there will now be no minimum requirement in local elections. It is a complete travesty: if even 2 percent of the electorate turn out to vote for a mayor, he will get in.
   

3. There is no longer to be a restriction on the number of remote or portable ballot boxes at polling centers. Machinations involving remote voting were the main tactic for falsifying the last elections, both parliamentary and presidential. They stuffed them with as many votes as were needed, away from the polling stations and hence outside the purview of observers. Indeed, in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg this system has proved its worth marvelously, the number of voting slips in remote ballot boxes exceeding those from electors who voted in person at polling stations.
   

4. The box for voting for “None of the above” is to be removed from ballot papers. Up to 20 percent of votes cast have been for “None of the above” recently, and this has greatly vexed the presidential administration. There will now be no way to register a formal protest vote in elections.
   

5. Observers may no longer be provided by public associations. No independent observers will be allowed, only those nominated by political parties. International observers will be allowed only if invited by the state authorities. The presidential administration will decide which observers to invite, and which to keep out.