CIAO DATE: 02/02

Recoiling from Russia

André Liebich
Professor in International History and Politics,  Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva

Joint Workshop on Europe and Transatlantic Security: Issues and Perspectives
Kandersteg, Switzerland
August 25-27 2000

The Geneva Centre for Security Policy

Grozny razed, in all impunity. Villages burned, in all impunity. The wounded finished off, in all impunity. Bodies tortured, in all impunity. Women and men raped, in all impunity. A people crushed, in all impunity. International silence, in all complicity.

Neither lofty and rational condemnation, nor diplomatic pressure, nor financial sanctions, nor judicial prosecution, nothing. In opting for voluntary impotence Europe is repudiating itself. Yesterday, after 1945, Europe was born of a triple refusal. Behind it, Hitler. Beside it, Stalin. In front of it, colonial wars which it learned to forbid to itself.

Today, Mr Putin believes that all is allowed him. The torture that the Russian general staff inflicts upon Chechnya resuscitates and rehabilitates monstrous methods of universal scope. Tomorrow, our blind "moral" authorities, our "realist" politicians will go to repent. Too late for the Chechens. Too late for our children and for the Russian people.

Signatory of this appeal I call for respect of the antifascist, anticolonial, antitotalitarian contract. Without this, Europe is but an association of the small-minded and a community of shame.

(Le Monde, 23 March 2000)

 

The above manifesto, entitled "A Horror is Haunting Europe," was published on the front page of one of Europe's premier newspapers in the thick of this year's presidential campaign in Russia. It was signed by some two hundred intellectuals and public figures, the French being the most strongly represented but including signatories from fifteen other European countries and a number of Americans. Among the recognisable names are those of media and cultural personalities such as Costas Gavras, Jean-Luc Godard, John Le Carré, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jane Birkin, Vanessa Redgrave and Barbara Hendricks. Many of the others are widely known academics, such as Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky, as well as a minor galaxy of familiar Parisian personalities.

Notwithstanding the prominence of its publication and of its signatories, the manifesto is but a drop in the flood of words concerning Russia's war in Chechnya. At the same time, it offers particular insight into the complex web of perceptions that marks Europe's relations with Russia, and those of Russia with Europe. Occurring at a pivotal point in the formation of attitudes towards each other, this incident highlights three aspects of the underlying relationship between Russia and Europe: the persistent European inability to put aside the paradigms of the past, the growing estrangement of the Russian intelligentsia from its European counterparts, and the superimposition over old attitudes towards Russia of an ethics of virtue that bodes ill for Russia's integration into Europe.

* * * * *

Let me first situate within its specific context the manifesto quoted above.

The moving spirit of the manifesto is André Glucksmann, one of France's best-known "nouveaux philosophes." This group, which includes individuals such as Bernard-Henri Lévy (often referred to simply as BHL) and Alain Finkelkraut (known, somewhat derisively, as "Finkelcroate" for his once unstinting support for Zagreb), is no longer so "nouveau." It emerged in the 1970s, under the impact of what is known as the "Solzhenitsyn effect," as a school of antitotalitarian thinkers. The previous far-left affinities of most of this group's members appear to have only exacerbated their subsequent radically anti-left positions. At the same time, their appropriation of both Dreyfusard and Sartrian traditions of protest, critique and "contestation" have made the "nouveaux philosophes" the contemporary incarnation of that classical French figure, the committed intellectual or "intellectuel engagé."

The demise of the Soviet Union should well have marked the final triumph of the "nouveaux philosophes" long-standing anti-totalitarian campaign. In fact, the end of the Cold War multiplied the objects of their campaigns without fundamentally changing the structures of their thought and rhetoric. The struggle against inhumanity, moral pusillanimity, and totalitarian oppression continued unabated. Certainly, the literary and philosophical works which have recently flowed from André Glucksmann's pen - The Third Death of God (2000), Good and Evil: Immoral Letters from France and Germany (1997) De Gaulle where are you? (1995), to name but a few recent ones - convey the same sense of urgency and indignation as his well-known earlier work.

To be sure, the specific objects of involvement have changed. In 1993/1994, for instance, the Tibetan cause was prominent on Glucksmann's agenda. He participated in a French television programme with the Dalai Lama, co-organised a public meeting of support for Tibet (World Tibet Network News, 30 December 1993), and engaged in protests against the French visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin (Reuters, 9 September 1994). These events brought together a number of other luminaries, such as former ministers Bernard Kouchner (now UN Kosovo administrator) and Jack Lang (now again a minister), as well as show biz stars Johnny Hallyday and Françoise Hardy. Indeed, many of the names that reappear on the manifesto cited at the beginning of this paper crop up here too. For anyone interested in cultural variants of "radical chic" such continuities in the composition of petition lists and in the formal choreography of protest open a window onto a fascinating phenomenon.

Perhaps the foremost issue that mobilised this network of committed intellectuals and their kind in the last decade has been the question of ex-Yugoslavia and, more specifically, that of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Among the nouveaux philosophes, Bernard-Henri Lévy carved out for himself a dominant position as prime advocate of the Bosnian cause, writing books and articles, producing films, appearing on the media, publicising his own dramatic visits to Sarajevo and making passionate appeals to the conscience of the West. André Glucksmann, though obviously unflinchingly committed to the Bosnian cause (no one could otherwise remain a member of the group to which he belonged) stayed somewhat in the shadow. It was Glucksmann, however, who seems to have first broached the analogy between Serbia and Russia which was later to underpin his and others' perception of Russia vis-à-vis Chechnya. As far back as 1993, Glucksmann wrote:

At the heart of the old continent an ex-red army turned into a Serb army endeavours to prolong and finish off the Second World War, re-enacting its inhuman methods: massive exodus, slaughter of civilians, brutal prison camps, "ethnic cleansing" Tagged on, a couple of religious or historical-local fanaticisms. After Belgrade, Moscow? Will the plot drowned in vodka in August 1991 succeed in August 1993 in the wake and inebriation of Great Serb victory? (Le Figaro, 25 January 1993)

Glucksmann returned repeatedly to such comparisons. During the French presidential campaign of 1995 he worried "what [would] be the situation of France in the next seven years [i.e., the presidential term] if the green light given over the last three years to Great Serbian aggression bids upward Great Russian militarism?" (Le Monde, 15 April 1995). In the thick of the Kosovo campaign Glucksmann was again formulating such analogies, declaring that "Milosevic may prove to represent the future of Europe because Russia has entered a Weimar period of its history." (L'Evènement, 8 April 1999). Such statements hardly bear dissection in historical terms, any more than does his reference to "Great Slav bellicosity" (Le Monde, 24 January 1996), but they do function in an allusive way. As Glucksmann would have it, Milosevic's Serbia took its lead from those Russian neo-Stalinists who sought to restore the defunct Soviet Union and today's post-Soviet Russia takes its lead from Milosevic's Serbia. If Serbia imitates the Soviet Union and Russia imitates Serbia, the continuity between the Soviet past and the Russian present may be taken as proven.

Inasmuch as protest and activism are Glucksmann's profession it is only to be expected that he should also have stated his views publicly during the First Chechnya War of 1994/1996. At that time, in yet another manifesto published in Le Monde (24 January 1996) under the title "For whom does the bell toll in Chechnya?" Glucksmann complained of the universal indifference surrounding the "slaughterhouses of Chechnya" and he cast accusations of complicity in the crime of "non-assistance to a people in danger," explaining this "rampant pusillanimity" as dictated by fear of the world's "second nuclear power." Many of the terms of this appeal would be repeated in Glucksmann's later writings about the Second Chechnya War, notably, reference to "military fascisms" and rhetorical analogies with Corsica, Belfast, and Palestine. Typically, Glucksmann would ask his reader to imagine the "cry of indignation if the Tommies had applied to Belfast the treatment that Grozny got; five weeks to produce a field of ruins," concluding rhetorically: "would we accept that any other European power exterminate so brutally one of its provinces?"

There is, however, a significant difference between this 1996 declaration on Chechnya and the March 2000 manifesto that is the point of departure for this paper. Earlier, Glucksmann accompanied his imprecations with remarks such as: "Russia is our friend, she deserves our sincere criticisms rather than hypocritical accommodation" (Le Monde, 24 January 1996). These expressions of good will, accompanied by homage to opponents of the war, such as Russian human rights activist and sometime ombudsman, Sergei Kovalev, and to Russian anti war opinion ("30% to 50%," ibid.), have disappeared from more recent rhetoric. Clearly, among the casualties of the Second Chechnya War has been the confidence of Western intellectuals in the capacity of their Russian counterparts to assume a principled position (that is, the position of Western intellectuals) on the litmus-like issue of the war.

* * * * *

The immediate circumstances that led Glucksmann to write off the Russian intelligentsia date to December 1999. The Second Chechnya War was in full swing at the time, with Putin as an increasingly popular prime minister on the verge of being nominated as Yeltsin's successor. It was then that Glucksmann decided to take his case to Moscow.

At that early stage, Glucksmann had already signed at least one manifesto against the Second Chechnya War, a petition entitled "Halt to the Massacres" (Libération, 28 October 1999). It expressed shame for the silence of "our timorous chancelleries and of the UN, OSCE, EU, NATO;" it declared that "we have had enough of paying, via the IMF, for a colonial massacre;" and it called for conditioning all financial aid to Russia on an immediate ceasefire and on negotiations with President Maskhadov. Shortly thereafter, the appearance at the National Assembly in Paris of the Chechen foreign minister, invited by the French Green Party caucus, provided another occasion to carry the same message across in an overtly political forum. Speaking at the Palais Bourbon, the seat of the National Assembly, Glucksmann, Bernard-Henri Lévy and others exhorted the French foreign minister Hubert Védrine to receive his Chechen counterpart and to take a firm position against the war. The perfect coincidence of dates (9 November 1989/ 9 November 1999) inspired Glucksmann to write: "we celebrate the fall of the wall and, at the same time, witness the construction of a new iron curtain ... the demarcation of a Russian sphere of interest where all is allowed." (Le Monde, 10 November 1999)

In mid-December 1999, Glucksmann, along with Bernard-Henri Lévy and film producer Roman Goupil, made their way to Moscow to plead their antiwar position there, as guests of two human rights' associations: Memorial, presided by Sergei Kovalev, and the Andrei Sakharov Centre. The French visitors' greetings (which they obligingly transmitted to Le Monde for publication) mixed exhortation with condemnation

We come here, to Moscow, as Europeans desirous of speaking to Europeans. We come here as friends of a people which has been prey to the worst curses of the twentieth century: wars, concentration camps, communism, nazism, exterminations, miseries, mafias, corruption and lies. One owes a friend the truth, not flattery. We come to say that nothing excuses the martyrdom inflicted upon the Chechen people, by planes, artillery, tanks, and soldiers of the Russian army. No pretext of fighting against "bandits" or terrorism justifies the annihilations of populations, including babies, the sick, the old. In disregard of international conventions it has signed, Russia is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity ... Cease fire immediately, negotiate officially with the legitimately elected president, Aslan Maskhadov. The elections [forthcoming in Russia - AL] are henceforth soiled with the blood of the Chechens. Do not reproduce the exterminations of Stalin. (Le Monde, 16 December 1999)

As it happened, on the very eve of the French visitors' arrival, Memorial had been torn apart precisely over the Chechen issue. On that day, Sakharov's widow, Elena Bonner, resigned from the organisation to express her support of the Chechens' right to self-determination. To be sure, there was no divergence between her and Memorial over the need to denounce the massive violations of human rights in Chechnya. Memorial's position, however, was that "the question of Chechnya's independence could not appear on the agenda of negotiations inasmuch as Chechen authorities had shown their inability to guarantee the life, security and rights of their citizens ... and to stop robberies, fights, kidnappings and the creation of illegal armed bands." (Le Monde, 17 December 1999)

Glucksmann and Lévy found themselves in the midst of the fray. Their contribution to the debate consisted in denouncing the "criminal regime" of Boris Yeltsin and predicting that sooner or later, he and Vladimir Putin, as war criminals, would be declared outlaws by civilised nations. The following day the intrepid French visitors publicly confronted Russian deputy chief-of-staff General Valeri Manilov, described by Le Monde's correspondent as a "sort of Terminator - Jamie Shea" (Le Monde, 18 December 1999). Glucksmann "stared the general in the eye," (ibid.) declared that he would not speak to him but only to his superior, accused that superior, i.e., Prime Minister Putin, of organising crimes against humanity on a massive scale, and called for a minute of silence in memory of those torn apart in Grozny. BHL, perhaps not to be outdone, told the general to his face: "you are a terrorist, the terrorists are in Moscow, you have their logic and their words" (ibid).

Le Monde's correspondent commented that "Russian human rights' activists appreciated this attack, many experts and academics pouted." (ibid.) In fact, it is likely that of all the people present at the Moscow meeting Glucksmann and BHL were the ones most pleased with their performance. Obviously, the visitors could not follow verbatim the discussions among their Russian hosts but they do not appear to have made any effort to understand the position of their counterparts. In particular, they did not grasp that, among the Russian intelligentsia at least, the war in Chechnya was a subject of anguished debate, not an object for categorical pronouncements.

Glucksmann and BHL could have learned the state of mind in Moscow by listening to the Russians they met. (True, they would have had to stay more than a couple of days and they would have had to put aside their pre-prepared text). They might have consulted Western accounts based on Russian sources, such as opinion polls. They could even have taken the pulse of their Russian interlocutors back home by consulting with the editors of Esprit, a major Parisian intellectual monthly unqualifiedly opposed to the war. In its pages, four respectable Russian academics bickered about the causes of the war, its justification, and its effect on Russian society. (Esprit, January 2000: 170-178) Notwithstanding the prodding of the French moderator and their own critical analysis, the Russians simply would not endorse the wholesale condemnation of the war that was, apparently, expected of them.

* * * * *

The misunderstanding between Paris and Moscow, which was only to grow deeper in the coming months, must have been surprising to all concerned. Although the subject of this paper is the European perception of Russia rather than the Russian perception of Europe, a few words on the Russian dimension of this misunderstanding may be in order. Those familiar with the Russian intelligentsia may well ask how it came about that this legendary social stratum, defined for over one hundred fifty years by its radical moral absolutism, should have now parted ways with the moral absolutists of the West? The answer must be sought, it seems to me, both in developments over the longer term and in the immediate past.

The latest encounter between the Russian intelligentsia and the West, which began in the late 1980s after decades of separation, has been eloquently described as "one of the most tragic blind dates in history." (Gessen: 30). Russian intellectuals' expectations of Western interest and support for their own causes, along the line of the mobilisation that occurred on behalf of Soviet dissidents, were dashed. In a parallel process, though for different reasons, the prestige of Russian intellectual figures declined, both abroad and at home. Most damagingly, the intelligentsia fatally compromised itself by its unconditional (though unreciprocated) support of Yeltsin, even through the storming of the Russian Parliament in 1993.

With the First Chechnya War in 1994 the Russian intelligentsia lost its dreams and illusions, without being able to recover its classic sensibilities. An articulate intelligentka who accompanied Ombudsman Kovalev through the war zone has recorded the sense of futility and guilt that marked their grim travels (Gessen: 5). Speaking on behalf of "us, who grew up in a city under siege [presumably, Leningrad - AL]" another member of Kovalev's entourage returned from Grozny saying: "We, the intelligentsia, are responsible for all of this completely." (Gessen: 4-5) Even Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the tenor of Russian nationalism who had kept his distance from the Yeltsin regime, simply called for Russia to abandon Chechnya to its own fate (43-44, 96).

By the time of the Second Chechnya War in 1999, the Russian intelligentsia had no more illusions but it had recovered neither its self-confidence nor its critical instincts. In the meantime, its attitude to the Chechnyan question evolved under the impact of two developments: on the one hand, the lamentable internal condition of Chechnya (to which I shall return in the conclusion to this paper) and, on the other hand, what can be described as the "Kosovo comparison factor."

The comparison between Kosovo and Chechnya has been emphasised by Europeans critical of Europe's passivity in the face of Russian aggression, as contrasted to its active involvement in the Balkans under what are seen as comparable circumstances. Le Monde Diplomatique, a not very diplomatic monthly loosely affiliated with the daily Monde, put the issue squarely: "Kosovo-Chechnya, two weights, two measures." (Internet edition, 5 November 1999). And, commenting on Kosovo, a respected contributor to Esprit lamented that the UN and the West were forfeiting their "moral credibility [presumably gained in Kosovo? - AL] through their complicity with the crimes of Putin in Chechnya." (Hassner: 179-181)

Not surprisingly, among the shrillest exponents of such views has been André Glucksmann. On the first anniversary of the Kosovo war, in a Le Monde article (25 March 2000) entitled, "The Return of the Man Eaters" [an allusion to one of his earliest and best-known books - AL] Glucksmann lambasted "democratic Europe" for "[lying] supine in front of the cop of the Kremlin without forcing him to respect the rules of life in common" adding: "the Chechens have the right to live, their survival engages our responsibility, their death dishonours us." According to Glucksmann, "little North Korea" was already anticipating the lessons to be drawn from Putin's law of the jungle, allowing itself several million deaths through hunger by virtue of its possession of a couple of "cobbled together nuclear warheads." By "surrendering before the 'purification' of Chechnya, by giving carte blanche to Putin the democratic community [was] repudiating itself. It suggest[ed] to whoever want[ed] to listen that Belgrade's only mistake would have been that of not disposing of a chemical, biological or atomic arsenal of massive destruction." (ibid.)

But the Kosovo-Chechnya comparison cuts both ways. Strategically, the invasion of Kosovo may have provided lessons for the Russian general staff as, it has been suggested, the earlier United States incursion in Haiti inspired the first Russian intervention in Chechnya. (Hill) Politically, Kosovo reduced the negative international impact of a new campaign in Chechnya. When Le Monde (26 January 2000), invoking the authority of one of Prime Minister Putin's predecessors, revealed (belatedly) that the decision to invade Chechnya had been taken in March 1999, at the time of NATO's intervention in Kosovo, it did so to discredit the justifications Moscow was invoking. It also inadvertently underscored the green light that Kosovo represented for the Russians.

Morally, Kosovo also appears to have made it easier for Russian society to justify the use of force on its behalf. The second war in Chechnya took place within the borders of the Russian Federation and it purported to be a response to a widespread (though not necessarily well founded) sense of direct, personal insecurity. Russians of all classes and beliefs did not find it difficult to view this endeavour as more legitimate than the Kosovo operation which many had condemned earlier as an arbitrary assertion of power by an alliance of unthreatened states in a theatre outside their zone of concern. Given their other daily concerns, most Russians probably did not feel the keen sense of outrage over Kosovo that dominated official statements and the press, but they certainly showed no sympathy for the allied operation.

Western policy on the Second Chechen War too looked very different from the standpoint of Moscow than it did from that of Paris. In autumn 1999, at the very time that Glucksmann and others were criticising Western politicians for their silent complicity in Russian atrocities in Chechnya, the Russia press was complaining about heavy-handed anti-Russian Western partisanship. Putin's Helsinki meeting with EU leaders was said to have been derailed by European demands that Putin explain and justify the Chechen campaign (Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 23 October 1999, trans. in CDPSP 51:43, p. 5). Western complaints about shelling of innocents were treated ironically:

"Everyone in Chechnya knows people who are involved in the slave trade, in raiding neighbouring regions or in selling arms, drugs or stolen oil. These slave-traders and raiders have civilian wives and children. If no one shelled the slave-traders and raiders, the villages where they live and which they control through force of arms would present an idyllic picture, unspoiled by the captives hidden away in basement cells. Meanwhile, outrages are being committed in Stavropol Territory and Daghestan - dozens of kilometres away from these peaceful Chechen villages. So yes, one might ask why those Russians are shattering the peace and quiet of these upstanding villages." (Vremya, 26 October 1999, trans. in CDPSP 51:43, p. 6-7).

In December 1999, the Russian press debated the question of whether the EU was extremely hostile or only somewhat hostile to Russia. Even Kommersant (11 December 1999, trans. in CDPSP 51:50, p. 18) which opted for the softer assessment complained of EU double standards and its "slap in the face for Russia," comparing the EU's harsh attitude to Russia's Chechen war with its indulgent attitude towards Turkey "no less brutal" Kurdish war. Izvestiia (15 December 1999, trans. in CDPSP 51:50, pp. 18-19) put the darkest colours on EU machinations: Europe was applying the policy of the stick to Russia and the recent Helsinki Summit confirmed Russia's worst fears. Although only a minority of EU countries was in favour of a tough resolution on Russia, it was this resolution that prevailed. Moreover, countries considered friendly to Moscow, notably Germany, France and Finland, had left Russia in the lurch. In the case of France, "The French President's attitude toward Russia hasn't really changed, but he has been forced to take public opinion into account. And public opinion is being shaped by the French news media, which are providing extremely one sided coverage of the Chechen conflict: in near-hysteric tones, they're comparing Yeltsin and Putin to Milosevic (at least we can be thankful they're not saying Hitler)." (ibid.)

* * * * *

In the months following Glucksmann's unhappy visit to Moscow in December 1999, his criticism of Russia's war in Chechnya increased in both scope and impact.

On the anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Chechens in February 1944 André Glucksmann and others - including, this time, Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Ismail Kadaré, Danielle Mitterand but also Russians, such as Elena Bonner, Vladimir Bukovskii, and Sergei Kovalev - published a text entitled "Crimes without Punishment" calling for a massive protest meeting. "Vladimir Putin is pursuing Stalin's work," declared the text, stating that its purpose was to break the silence surrounding Russia's ongoing murders, massacres, and other crimes. (Le Monde, 22 and 24 February 2000).

"1944-2000: the Calvary of the Chechens," thundered Le Monde's front-page headline (24 February 2000) and the message was coming through. The first secretary of France's ruling socialist party stated that pressure had to be put on the Russian government to make it behave differently in Chechnya, notably that the exclusion of the media and of an international presence in Chechnya was unacceptable. (Le Monde, 22 February 2000) The French foreign minister defended his record.

"France has expressed itself from the beginning with more force and clarity than all its partners have, West European or American. ... We have been the first to speak of massacres. I have been the first, in this very spot [the National Assembly], to speak of the abominable sufferings of civilians in this war ... and I have said that this war has a colonial character." (Le Monde, 24 February 2000)

He concluded reaffirming that France called on Moscow to halt immediately "repression, reprisals and everything that appears to have taken place and to have continued since the Russian army retook control over Grozny." (ibid.)

Glucksmann and his friends did not let up the pressure. European measures directed against Haider's Austria provided an occasion for him to point out - referring to "post-Hitlerian, neocolonial and neototalitarian dangers" - that Belgrade and Moscow supported Vienna; Moscow, above all, did not deserve better treatment than Vienna. In Glucksmann's terms, "Haider's ethnico-sovereignist spirit and Milosevic's hyper-colonial methods (apartheid, purification, depopulation) are multiplied tenfold by the autocratic tradition of the Russian state which, since Peter the Great, devours small nations to recall its own people to submission and to teach it servility." (Le Monde, 18 February 2000).

At a colloquium held in the National Assembly in mid March 2000, Glucksmann expressed his indignation that "for the first time since the destruction of Warsaw in 1944, a European city - Grozny, capital of Chechnya - had been razed and punitively emptied of its inhabitants." Calling Russia "a rogue state, which no longer has the ideology of the past but has adopted its methods," Glucksmann accused Europe of "having fallen asleep in its democracy and prosperity." These remarks, and criticism of the French foreign minister, were echoed by several parliamentarians. Most significantly, the then president of the Foreign Affairs commission of the National Assembly, Jack Lang, while noting that France had protested more than its European partners and deploring the fact that "silence, timidity, and pusillanimity had taken the upper hand over solidarity," expressed his astonishment that Russia continued to sit in the Council of Europe. "Could we not envisage a temporary suspension?" he asked, an idea which was soon to come to fruition. (Le Monde, 15 March 2000)

It was in the following weeks that the manifesto entitled "A Horror is Haunting Europe"" which was the point of departure for this paper, appeared. In the light of what we have already seen that statement may now appear to have a certain air of déjà vu. It marks a significant step, however, in the growing pressure on Russia and the deepening estrangement between Russia and Europe.

First, "A Horror is Haunting Europe," appeared almost simultaneously with another petition, specifically addressed to the French president and prime minister and signed by one hundred thirty French academic specialists of the ex-Soviet Union. These signatories declared that they could not maintain "business as usual" in their professional relations with Russia. They denounced the continuation of economic aid and normal political relations between France and Russia. They also castigated their Russian colleagues for consenting to the war, for refusing to enter into discussion, and for contending that Westerners (such as the signatories) had been misinformed about the war. (Le Monde, 21 March 2000). Each of these two documents reinforced the other and made their joint protest difficult to ignore.

Second, within days of the appearance of Glucksmann's manifesto, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted to initiate a process which could eventually lead to expulsion of Russia from that organisation (RFE/RL, daily report, 7 April 2000). To be sure, the 41-member Council of Europe - not to be confused with any body of the European Union - functions essentially as a talking club for democracies and possesses no real political powers. Nevertheless, it is one of the few European organisations to which Russia belongs. Sanctions by the Council of Europe immediately affect the perception of Russia by states and other international organisations, including financial institutions; they undermine Russia's self-perception as a European democracy; and they underline Russia's isolation in its war against Chechnya.

Finally, Glucksmann's "A Horror is Haunting Europe" was the first document in the campaign against the Chechen war to provoke a counter-response from the Russian intelligentsia. Originating in the Russian Academy of Sciences and signed by a number of intellectual and cultural figures (the best known of whom to a Western audience would be the film producer Nikita Mikhalkov) the Russian open letter, dated April 3, was a low-key affair:

"Politicians and influential individuals have submitted our country to violent criticism and call for its isolation. We are sorry that eminent Western representatives of arts and culture have joined the anti-Russian campaign. Russian citizens have expressed their will in electing to the presidency Vladimir Putin, the man who has assumed the responsibility for operations in Chechnya. We call upon everyone, our partners but also our adversaries, to respect this will." (Izvestiia, cited in Courrier international 497, 11-17 May 2000).

A similar tone of sorrow rather than anger appeared in the Russian press in response to the punitive measures adopted by the Council of Europe: "Since last summer, who has not tried to humiliate Russia? we are used to it"" sighed the Nezavisimaia Gazeta. (cited in Courrier international 493, 13-19 April 2000)

* * * * *

Since March 2000, the war in Chechnya has lost much of its salience, both in Russia and in the West. The Council of Europe has kept up pressure, stressing that Russia has not yet complied with the Council's expectations and its voting rights would therefore remain suspended. As of September 2000, the Council has not, however, undertaken any further measures towards expulsion. (Council of Europe Communiqué, 29 June 2000, www.coe.fr)

André Glucksmann, however, has continued the campaign to make Chechnya the touchstone of Russian behaviour and of European morality. Around the time of his trip to Moscow last December Glucksmann was already referring to Russia as a "rogue state" (L'Hebdo, 16 December 1999). He has now taken to calling it "probably the greatest rogue state of the XXIst century". (Le Monde, 13 July 2000)

Most dramatically, Glucksmann has published an account of what he claims to be his secret trip to Chechnya under the evocative title, "One Month in the Chechen Ghetto." (Le Monde, 13 July 2000) It is spread over two full pages of Le Monde; a third full page, signed by Glucksmann's journalist travelling companion and entitled "The Chechen Kamikazes," carries a large photo of a guerrilla warrior in heroic position; it bears the legend "narrative of a voyage to the land of courage." (Le Monde, 14 July 2000) After a breathtaking description of his adventures in evading capture by the Russians, Glucksmann draws a picture of a nation of unqualified nobility: "when they greet each other, the Chechens first wish each other 'liberty,' and secondly, but it's optional 'health.'" (Le Monde, 13 July 2000) Such are "these 'Frenchmen of the Caucasus,' (!) noted by Alexandre Dumas for their rebellious spirit and their frank speech." (ibid.) In the same vein, Glucksmann cites the legends of Chechen history admiringly, recognising within them a saga of resistance "to Genghis Khan, to the tsars, to Stalin and Beria, to Yeltsin and Putin, proof of an inalterable love of liberty." (ibid.)

The comments that Glucksmann makes on his own experiences cast further light on the idealising romanticism of his article. In an interview with the Chechen press agency Glucksmann confides that his trip to Chechnya reminded him of his past: "as a Jewish child in occupied France able to survive only thanks to his family, actively participating in the resistance." (Kavkaz-Center, 25 July 2000, www.kavkaz.org). In response to the interviewer's question of whether the Chechen "boeviki" [fighters] have not themselves committed crimes and whether he really believes that all the kidnappings of foreigners are the work of the FSB [the Russian successor to the KGB], Glucksmann responds confidently: Of course, there may be groups within the resistance who allow themselves to be manipulated - as there were in the French resistance - but there are more kidnappings in Moscow than in Chechnya; there were no kidnappings before the first Chechnya war, these were begun by Russian soldiers. Even Chechen suicide-bombers, he maintains, hit only specific places and execute only criminals. "They cannot be compared to the human bombs who jump into crowded buses in Tel Aviv." (ibid.) "And what is the Chechens' attitude to Russia and to the Russians?" asks the interviewer. "There is no hatred toward the Russians," answers Glucksmann. (ibid.)

 

* * * * *

At this point one must stop for a reality check. Is it possible that Glucksmann is referring to the same situation that has been described in the following terms by an independent British commentator, among the best-informed long-time observers of the Chechnyan question and one fundamentally sympathetic to the Chechens' plight?

"In Chechnya, Russia finds itself faced with a modern state's nightmare: a region on its immediate frontier which is simultaneously a chaotic failed state, a haven for banditry and organised crime, a threat to Russian control of adjacent regions, and a base for Islamic terrorist actions in Russia. It is as if Moscow had a mixture of Afghanistan and Sierra Leone for a neighbour." (Lieven, 2000: 145)

This is in no way to absolve Russia of responsibility for failures of judgement, of statesmanship and, indeed, of humanity. The number of counts on which Russian political and military leaders could be indicted has been growing and should not be glossed over or, alternatively, buried in wholesale condemnation of "everything which appears to have taken place," to borrow the French foreign minister's turn of phrase cited earlier. Nor does Hubert Védrine's characterisation of Chechnya as a "colonial war," echoing Glucksmann's much-used term, provide a useful assessment. If nothing else, Russia cannot just sail away from Chechnya as France or Britain did from its colonial possessions. (ibid.) Upon reflection, it is wishful to believe that the solution to the crisis lies in negotiations with Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, "legitimately elected under international supervision," as he is accurately but fatuously described. Maskhadov has, at best, long been powerless and, at worst, has actively obstructed the emergence of a state of law in his Republic.

How too can one take seriously Glucksmann's starry-eyed refusal to acknowledge Chechen responsibility for hostage taking? Indeed, kidnapping is the Chechens' biggest business, carried out by mainly by their military commanders and enjoying broad popular support. It is governed by venal rather than political considerations, obeys strict market principles, and is not confined to Russians; inhabitants of neighbouring republics and, especially, foreigners are likely victims too. Nor is kidnapping simply a consequence of the recent wars, as Glucksmann would have it; Russian soldiers were already being kidnapped in 1991. All things considered, kidnapping is preferable to the fate experienced by, among others, a number of unfortunate foreign aid workers; no ransom was asked for them but they were found beheaded. Statistics on kidnapping underestimate the phenomenon because the "smoothest" kidnappings are not reported but are settled privately. One source quotes a semi-official figure of four hundred victims in the year or so following the end of the First Chechnya War in 1996 and 202 victims in the first nine months of 1997. (Rau) Another Western source estimates that "kidnapping, banditry, and terrorism throughout the period from 1997 to 1999 claimed in all some 1,300 Russian victims." (Lieven: 148)

* * * * *

Clearly, Glucksmann's - and other high-minded Western Europeans' - analysis of the war in Chechnya and the perception of Russia which ensues from it are badly skewered. This is hardly news to those who mindful of the woeful record of Western intellectuals in evaluating Russia. This record applies to the Soviet period (see Hollander) and even as a recent, magisterial study argues, to earlier periods as well. (Malia).

If one is to judge on the admittedly limited basis of the case study that has been presented in this paper, one must conclude that this misperception is now due, in the first instance, to the persistence of historical paradigms and tropes that dominate thought long after the conditions that gave birth to them have disappeared. Moreover, incomprehension of Russia has been fostered by the inability of West European intellectuals and their Russian counterparts to find a common language, although earlier state-imposed obstacles to such a quest have disappeared. In this regard, it seems to me that the West Europeans are presently more to blame than the Russians, inasmuch as the former are less willing than the latter to acknowledge that they have something to learn from their counterparts.

The account given here leads to the conclusion that a rigorously moral stance, such as that adopted by Glucksmann and others, does not provide a sound basis for establishing policies and attitudes towards Russia. Another Parisian intellectual has expressed this conclusion eloquently:

"One of the characteristics of the ideology of human rights is that it, in fact, defines questions that are non-discussible, and peoples or states who are not to be touched by those who refuse barbarism. Under the reign [of this ideology] there is nothing relative and nothing provisional; no historical processes exist. Democracy is not a goal which human societies fix for themselves but an immediate imperative. In short, divine justice must reign on earth, here and now. Is it necessary to specify that borders, sovereignties, state realities, economic and geopolitical constraints should efface themselves in front of human rights." (C. Lévy: 19-20)

Though referring to Kosovo rather than to Chechnya, this statement applies with equal force to the case I have presented here. Need I add that the statement was met with shocked disapproval in the intellectual milieu that I have described and to which it was addressed? (Esprit, June 2000)

 

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