BY BORIS KAGARLITSKY
ROSTOV — Among analysts, there is general agreement that the affair of Colonel Budanov should have split Russia. It should have split it into people who are sure that their country's army is always in the right, and that the war in Chechnya must be won at any cost even if this means practising genocide, and people who disagree with this proposition.
The analysts' view, however, has only been partly borne out. The trouble is that Hero of Russia Colonel Yuri Budanov, whom our "national-minded" intellectuals and professional worshippers of the authorities flock to defend, has proven not to be on their side at all.
The colonel was arrested on charges of murdering a peaceful Chechen woman, and has spent about a year in prison.
During this time he has had the chance to think. Not only about what he himself did, but also about what his bosses and subordinates, politicians and soldiers, are continuing to do on a daily basis. In court in the city of Rostov we saw a man who has not only come to understand a great deal, but who is also ready to defend his positions.
The affair is turning out to be almost Tolstoyan. It is not a matter of repentance, but of comprehension. The colonel has simply had the chance to think through to the end things that are troubling other people besides him. This is why what has happened in Rostov is so important not only for the participants in the court case, but for the entire army and country.
The colonel confessed to murder. He personally compared himself with the Chechen field commander, nicknamed "the Tractor Driver", who had earlier been convicted of murdering Russian prisoners of war. "I'm not a tractor driver", said the colonel. "I'm a tank commander."
Then he unexpectedly concluded, "The Tractor Driver at least defended his homeland, but it's quite unclear what I was defending".
The ordinary Rostov citizens who had gathered at the door of the court, the play actors in Cossack costume, the fascist youths from the Russian National Unity and the other "defenders of the hero", were on the opposite side of the barricades from Budanov.
The colonel demanded that his trial be shifted from Rostov to Ingushetia or Moscow, where the court proceedings would not take place against a background of racist hysteria.
War crimes
All wars are accompanied by war crimes, committed as a rule by both sides. People at the front are brutalised.
The question is how the military command and the state regard this. Do they try to stop acts of savagery toward peaceful civilians, or do they conceal these acts, and so encourage them? The actions for which Budanov is on trial happen constantly during wars, and at times far worse crimes are committed. All this is usually hushed up.
In reality, no-one seriously denies the barbarities that are being inflicted on the Chechens. But the "national-minded" section of our society is mortally offended if anyone talks of this out loud, since the fact that the atrocities are concealed is an essential precondition if they are to continue.
And continuing these crimes is in turn seen as essential for victory since, in the conditions of guerilla warfare, distinguishing between fighters and peaceful inhabitants is virtually impossible. Consequently, all peaceful inhabitants, including children, have to be treated as the enemy.
Meanwhile, public condemnation of the army's atrocities creates discomfort even among people who in principle approve of what is going on. The Nazis in their news releases did not talk about the gas chambers or discuss the technology used for turning Jews into soap. This was not because the population secretly sympathised with the victims of the holocaust, but because the Nazis were sparing the nerves of the anti-Semites.
In these circumstances, the very fact that criminal charges have been brought against Budanov is extraordinary, though in its way understandable.
Scapegoat
In the Russian conditions of semi-freedom, totally concealing lawlessness is as impossible as stopping it. The compromise solution settled on by the authorities has been to find a scapegoat — to take a single soldier and punish him, thereby proving the state's concern for human rights. And at the same time to open the way for patriotic actions in defence of the accused, thereby showing that the atrocities enjoy broad popular support.
Everything would have come off perfectly had the tank commander not overturned the whole scheme. The object of the ploy was chosen unwisely. Hero of Russia Budanov turned out to be capable of making his own decisions.
Budanov's defence is based on an understanding of the real essence of what is occurring. The trial of the colonel is being turned into a trial of the system, whose victims ultimately include not just the Chechen woman and her family, but also the colonel himself and, ultimately, the entire Russian army.
Even the Nazis knew that punitive functions cannot be entrusted to army units. These functions were the province of the SS. In exactly the same way, Stalin had his dirty work done by special units of the NKVD [People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs]. The army was allowed to retain its honour and reputation.
In President Vladimir Putin's Russia, where specialists from the state security organs share power with thieving oligarchs, no-one pays attention to such trifles. When the regime lives according to bandit-police rules, everyone else is supposed to live by these norms as well. But it is not working.
Tank units are not formed in order to fight peaceful civilians, and not even to fight guerillas. The soldiers are trained to fight another army. When regular troops are used in punitive expeditions, they get demoralised, and their units begin to disintegrate. Telling the truth about the prevailing outrages is necessary in the interests of the army itself.
During the opening days of the trial the "nationally-preoccupied" journalists managed to trumpet abroad the message that the entire country was on the side of Colonel Budanov. Unfortunately, they turned out to be wrong.
The bulk of the population were neither for the colonel, nor against him. Most Russians are indifferent to what is happening in Chechnya, at least so long as their own children are not sent to serve there.
All the same, the truth has been uttered, and the colonel will find more than a few supporters. Among them will be people in epaulettes. This means that the future of Russia and its army is not hopeless.