A man of two presidents By Andrei Babitsky, special to Prague Watchdog
It is said that Vladimir Putin was once shown a video that caught Ramzan Kadyrov at the moment when, in proprietorial fashion, he was inspecting s certain bank of which he is unofficially the owner. Two rooms stuffed from top to bottom with cash – millions, billions of roubles.
Rumour has it that all these unimaginable sums of money became the Chechen leader’s personal property as a result of withdrawals from the state budget or, in plainer terms, the manipulation of funds sent from the federal centre for the republic’s restoration.
In fact, this video had long ago spread in thousands of copies, having been put into circulation by an ill-wisher from Kadyrov’s closest personal entourage. The rumours also say that the video was very nearly brought to Putin by the head of the FSB himself, with the aim of demonstrating the free and easy way in which the presidential favourite handled public money.
Taking a quick glance at the movie, Putin reacted harshly and rudely and sent the very strictest instruction that Ramzan Kadyrov was to be left alone.
There are several reasons why this story may be entirely true. In the first place, as some who were close to him at the dawn of his career but who subsequently moved to the opposition claim, Putin always regarded public service as a business. There is still evidence that when he invited them to work in the Kremlin, he openly tempted some of the candidates with the chance of acquiring a fortune by exploiting the official status of civil servant.
In the second place, Ramzan Kadyrov came to power drawing in his wake such a train of criminal acts, most of which belong in the most serious category of the Federal criminal code, that even the most banal thievery could have no impact on his reputation. On the contrary, by comparison with the deeds for which the young Chechen politician was famed, embezzlement of public funds could simply be regarded as yet one more stage in the evolution of Kadyrov Junior.
But most importantly, Kadyrov is the name of Putin's success, the content of his public mission, the meaning of his presidential power. It is not even a question of the pacification of Chechnya, in so far as that is a special task which even Yeltsin tried to deal with in his day. There were also sufficient military and government reserves back then. Kadyrov is a symbol of Russia’s new state policy of centralization, subordination of the regions, and the building of a ruthless and all-embracing vertical in there is no unification, but only the supreme will of a President who has usurped the right to punish and pardon. It was precisely Chechnya that became the region which contributed most to the forming of Putin’s regime, having demonstrated throughout long years the steadfastness of the monarch’s will – cold, cruel and unforgiving of disobedience.
Were it not for Chechnya, the process of the “gathering of Russian lands” would have been delayed for years, since it was only the weak regions that the Federal centre was able to keep under relative control by purely economic means. Chechnya, however, was developed into a kind of showcase where the tools – political and military – that the authorities had at their disposal and knew how to use were on display. The importance of such an exhibition cannot be overestimated. It is quite unnecessary to drive tanks and artillery across the whole of Russia, to carry out abduction and torture in those parts of the Federation which continue to insist on retaining some autonomy, to put rebellious provincial governors in filtration camps, and so on. It is enough to show that not only can the state make use of murderers and criminals, but it can also, contrary to custom, grant them protection as social allies and absolve them of responsibility. In other words, it accepts the value system of these people, who will not hesitate to commit any bloody action.
But of course, it took the government elite time to gain trust in Putin’s support for the Chechen Tonton-Macoutes. Indeed, war crimes in Chechnya are nothing new. The military was guilty of them in the Yeltsin era, too. Back then, however, they were not the result of deliberate policy – rather a consequence of the low extent to which the army could be controlled, of the government’s moral game-playing, of its inability to formulate a clear strategy for the law enforcement bodies.
After issuing the appropriate command, Yeltsin would immediately tighten the leash and pull out of the way the victims on whom he had set the dogs in the first place. Putin is another matter. He started out in the style of cold, deliberate murder and kept to it during all the years he was in power. With the qualities of a machine, the steely flavour of his intellect spread throughout Russia’s expanses gradually, like an echo of the Chechen nightmare, making officials at various levels feel their vulnerability in the face of a terrible force that was devoid of any hint of humanity.
The use of Chechnya as a pivot for the forming of the Putin regime was a stroke of genius, since Putin (unlike the Soviet authorities, for example) did not actually have at his disposal the repressive apparatus necessary to bring the whole of Russia into line. There was an absence of police, military forces, money, mechanisms of government, laws. It was necessary to stage a small but convincing demonstration of absolute, medically pure inhumanity, to make the others tremble. He succeeded. The regions fell.
An important component of his success was the talent of those who carried out the task, the brilliant work of executioners of various calibres, who – albeit within the confines of a single entity – reduced the price of human life to the sought-after values of the Stalin era.
Thus the Putin regime was built around Chechnya, drawing from it not only legitimacy but also the terror the regime was able to inspire in its opponents. It is precisely for this reason that Kadyrov, in the Putin view, is not merely a good military commander. He is, above all, the ideological axis around which it has been possible to affix a system of power which, either by ingenious design or by some method accidentally discovered, possesses no independent or long-term state ideology. It was with Kadyrov’s help that it became possible to consolidate a Russian society which had become fragmented, and which because of its exposure to foreign influences had lost the ability to submit.
It was Kadyrov whom Putin supported in the very nasty conflict with President Alu Alkhanov. Kadyrov behaved like a real bandit in full view of the whole of Russia, drawing into armed conflict a man who occupied a more senior position. At the time, the Kremlin’s refusal to help Alkhanov was linked with a serious risk to its reputation, because it was clear that most of Russian society expected the president to rebuff the insolent upstart who had exceeded all bounds, and that Putin would extend his hand to the state official, the careerist, the man of the system, which Alkhanov represented.
But the Russian president made a different choice, because Alkhanov, precisely by virtue of his official qualities, had been programmed to resist the use of blind and ugly force. And only such force, applied as a graphic example, would be able to control the situation in Chechnya, and, more importantly, in Russia itself.
So the consolidation is now complete. In the words of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, “the [Russian] presidential election marked a transition from a phase of consolidation to a period of modernization.” There are serious doubts that the new President will need Ramzan Kadyrov as a binding force. Medvedev’s legitimization is the return of the rule of law, at least in limited quantities, while Kadyrov was needed for something else entirely – to show that any rule of law was conditional, that the authorities had a stock of methods that that took account neither of law nor of the norms of morality.
Medvedev needs institutional control, while Kadyrov was used in order to frighten people. Ramzan’s stock will gradually fall, though the process will not be too conspicuous. The end of this story – when the number of victims Kadyrov has claimed is considered – will prove to be sad and instructive for those who believe in the permanence of the sources of life guaranteed by the Kremlin.
Moreover, it is said that while Dmitry Medvedev finds Kadyrov deeply unsympathetic, there is nothing he can do about it, either now or in the foreseeable future. But Medvedev is not alone. There are many both in the United Russia Party and in the Kremlin who wish to permanently erase from the national annals the shameful page of collaboration and mutual sympathy between the country’s president and the Chechen embodiment of the barbarian, Attila the Hun.
Many have already noticed that as he looks with apparent satisfaction on the activities of his successor, Vladimir Putin does not seem to be in any hurry to give up power. If that assumption is correct, Ramzan Kadyrov ought to keep a close watch on the eyes of his patron, so that he may catch in good time any look of fastidious non-recognition.
Russkii zhurnal archive photo (Translation by DM) (P/T)
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