Spy who climbed into the coldBy Andrei Piontkovsky
At the beginning of January, somewhere in the center of Chechnya, stands an elderly man with the face of a simple Russian peasant, more good-natured than cruel. He'd likely make a good mate for a round of beer, or he'd be good company up in the stands, rooting for Spartak, or for CSKA. He's the chief Russian general in the Caucasus. Listen to what he has to say: "As of now, we will consider women, males under 10 and over 65 as civilians. We'll sort out the rest with the utmost toughness." Comrade Stalin had hungry boys from 12 up sent to labor camps for gathering ears of grain in the collective farm fields. Comrade Putin intends to torture Chechen boys from 11 up in filtration camps. All, without exception, and not even for taking ears of grain. Given the situation in Chechnya, the measure is justified and even logical from a purely military point of view , taken to its absurd extreme. On the threshold of the 21st century, we're busy declaring urbi et orbi that we are waging war against a hostile and criminal ethnic group, against the Caucasian untermenschen. Our great Reich needs this piece of land and needs it cleared of Chechen males over 10. "Why was no effective cleansing carried out?" ask the TV commentators, public indignation rising in their voices. "Cleansing, cleansing, cleansing, when will we see real cleansing?" chorus millions of everyday Joes glued to their TV screens. Cleansing? It's already over. The cleansing of what remained of your minds, the ranks of the public "rising from its knees" to enter the era of Russia's Renaissance ushered in by Anatoly Chubais. Our Renaissance is incarnated by a slight lieutenant-colonel who has been a universal soldier of the Party, the KGB, St. Petersburg mayor's office and presidential administration. In all his various missions assigned by his various bosses, he proved his worth: obtained NATO secrets for the Motherland, controlled the financial jungles of St. Petersburg, certified the authenticity of a disgraced prosecutor general's genitals and wiped Yury Luzhkov and Yevgeny Primakov out in the toilet. But today, he finds himself for the first time at the cold summit of power where there is no one to give him orders and no boss above him. He feels lost up there, like a spy who can't make contact with Headquarters. Both in university and at the KGB school, he always passed his "scientific atheism" exams with full marks. Now, he's suddenly become a religious man, sharing his thoughts on theological matters with the public and explaining to us all "why the Savior came into this world." He tries to meet more often with the church's top officials, probably in a subconscious attempt to re-establish contact through them with Headquarters. But the church officials can't help him. They feel a genetic fear in his presence. They know him too well. It was precisely his kind -- scrupulously polite, proper, cultivated majors and lieutenant-colonels with cold, harsh gazes -- who "oversaw" their church careers from the very beginning. He returns to the Kremlin and reads the latest reports on losses in the war. These are the real reports that we don't see. He recalls Macbeth and prophetically predicts new explosions in our cities. "I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more Returning were as tedious as go o'er." Andrei Piontkovsky is director of the Center of Strategic Research in Moscow. Related:
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