Anna Politkovskaya: Putin's Russia

The process, of course, makes a mockery of the constitution and demonstrates utter contempt for the Russian people, but the Russian people took the news only too calmly. Certainly the opposition held a few meetings, but they were quiet, local affairs and nobody paid any attention to them. Putin got his way. This is post-Beslan Soviet Russia in action.

So what is the situation after Beslan? “The Party and the People Are One,” the old Soviet slogan ran. In reality, the rift grows wider by the day, while the images on television convey the opposite impression. Soviet-style bureaucracy is growing stronger, and bringing with it an old-style political freeze. No evidence of global warming here. Russia, which swallowed the lies about how the Nord-Ost siege was ended, now makes no demands for justice or an objective investigation of the Beslan atrocity. For two years after Nord-Ost , most of the population slept peacefully in their beds, or went out dancing at discos, occasionally rousing themselves long enough to turn out and vote for Putin. It is arguably we ourselves who allowed Beslan to happen as it did. Our apathy after the Nord-Ost events, our lack of concern for the ordeal of its victims, was a defining moment. The authorities saw they had us, once again, under their thumb and relapsed into the complacency that brought about Beslan.

We cannot just sit back and watch a political winter close in on Russia for several more decades. We want to go on living in freedom. We want our children to be free and our grandchildren to be born free. This is why we long for a thaw in the immediate future, but we alone can change Russia’s political climate. To wait for another thaw to drift our way from the Kremlin, as happened under Gorbachev, is foolish and unrealistic, and neither is the West going to help. It barely reacts to Putin’s antiterrorist policies, and finds much about today’s Russia entirely to its taste: the vodka, the caviar, the gas, the oil, the dancing bears. The exotic Russian market is performing as the West has come to expect, and Europe and the rest of the globe are satisfied with the way things are progressing on our sixth of the world’s landmass.

All we hear from the outside world is “al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda,” a wretched mantra for shuffling off responsibility for all the bloody tragedies yet to come, a primitive chant with which to lull a society desiring nothing more than to be lulled back to sleep.

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages of your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Abramochkin, Detective

Abramov, Nikolai

Academy of Eurhythmic Art

Afghan wars

Akakievich, Akaky

alcoholism

Alexeeva, Olga

Alpha Bank

Alskhanov, Said Mahomed

Altshul, Yury

Amnesty International

Andropov, Yury

Antiterrorist Operation Whirlwind

Antonov, Yevgeny

Anuchina Island

APC (armored personnel carrier)

No.

No

of Yury Budanov

Argun Ravine

army

death of Misha Nikolaev

defection from Twentieth Division

live burial of Private Chesnokov

Nina Levurda suit against

officers, mistreatment of. See mistreatment of officers organizations surrounding

peculiarities of Russians

pursuit of Basaev

Putin’s influence on

soldier, mistreatment of. See mistreatment of soldiers

suffocation of Dmitri Kiselev

suicide of Yury Diachenko

Valerii Putintsev

Army Unit 13206

Army Unit 13815

Army Unit 42839

Army Unit 73881

Artemiev, Major

Article 222, Criminal Code of the Russian Federation

Artillery Academy

Aslakhanov, Aslambek

ATMs

Aushev, Ruslan

Award of Merit of Russian Federation

Bagreev, Lieutenant Roman

charges against Fedorov and Budanov

Ivan Makarshanov as witness for

Yury Budanov torturing

Baidukov, Judge Valerii

Bakriev, Abubakar

Balashika

Balashov, District Judge

Baraev, Movsar

Berg Park

Berlin Wall

Berlusconi, Silvio

Beslan

Blair, Tony

Bogorodskoe Department of Internal Affairs

Bogoslovskoe Ore Agency

Bolonina, Judge

Boronenkov, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander

Brezhnev, Leonid

bribing officials

Anatoly Krizsky

as condition for success

in hospitals, after Nord-Ost incident

of law enforcement agencies

Ministry of Defense on

Tanya, example of Neo-Soviet capitalism

Bryansk

Bryansk Committee of Soldier’s Mothers

Buchnev, Lieutenant Yury

Budanov, Colonel Yury

abduction and murder of Elza Kungaeva

Federov in case against

forensic evidence and acquittal

indictment of

Lieutenant Roman Bagreev, victim of

precedent of

psychiatric reports about

public opinion on

sentencing of

trial proceedings

witnesses against

Budanov Case II

Bukreev, Judge Vladimir

Bulgakov, Yuri

Bush, George W.

Cabinet of Ministers

cases brought

Case No. 142 114, stock market fraud

Case No. 229133, Nord-Ost tragedy

Case No. 474802, murder of Andrey Sosnin

Case No. 528006, murder of Yury Altshul

Case No. 76002, killings in Dai

Case No. 772801, murder of Andrey Yakushev

Central Agency for Combating Organized Crime (GUBOP)

Central Forensic Medical Laboratory

Central Intelligence Directorate (GRU)

Central North Caucasus Forensic Laboratory

Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

Chechen terrorists

Beslan

Nord-Ost

Chechen wars

first. See first Chechen war

General Shamanov in

second. See second Chechen war

Chechens, persecution of

Abubakar Bakriev fired

Aelita Shidaeva arrested

after Nord-Ost tragedy

Alihan Gelagoev, beating of

Aslan Kurbanov, drug charges against

death of Timur Khaziev

Isita Chirgizova arrested

Natasha Umatgarieva arrested

Sirazhdi Digaev, school discrimination against

state retribution in

Zelimham Nasaev, police harrassment of

Chechnya

Army Unit 42839 in

customary law in

Fifty-eighth Army in

fighting international terrorism in

Maria-Mariam as saint in

martyrs in

mass murder in

parents’ fear of

Rinat serving it

suicide of women

war criminals in. See war criminals

wave of war crimes in

Cheka secret police

Cherepkov, Victor

Cherepnev, Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly

Chernenko, Konstantin

Chernetsov, Danila

Chesnokov, Private

children, murder of

Chirac, Jacques

Chirgizova, Isita

Chkalov court

Chronicle of Current Events

Chukotka Province

Chupakhin, Sergey

CID authorities

Citizen’s Aid Committee for Assistance to Refugees and Displaced Persons

Code of Civil Procedure

Code of Criminal Procedure

Committee for Financial Recovery

Communal Services

Communist Party

holdovers from

nomenklatura

seizure of Uralkhimmash Corporation

Valerii Dorogin in

Copper King of the Urals

corruption

analysis of

bribing officials. See bribing officials

in courts

of institutions maintaining law and order

judges resisting

of legal system

of Pavel Fedulev. See Fedulev, Pavel

of Urals judiciary

Council of People’s Commissars

courts

compensating Nord-Ost victims