 |
 |
|
|
 |
The Russian Woman
|
 |
Zhenya belonged to the small contingent of old Russian men and women who were incapable of leaving
Chechnya because they either didn't have the money or the strength. They had no knowledge of any
relatives in Russia and they didn't even have the strength to get themselves to an old-people's
home in some Russian town in the back of beyond. It was the Russian population that had stayed in
the cellars and among the ruins after the main battle. The Russians were the most wretched individuals
I came across during my stay in Chechnya. The Russian army regarded them as locals and treated
them accordingly. The Chechens let them know they were foreign and blood relatives of the occupants,
so they didn't show much sympathy for them. But most of the time, they left them alone and out of
pity even shared things with them.
|
|
|
What's it like being a Russian woman living among Chechens?
Like a Czech woman among Germans. I was born in Chechnya in 1935. My mother gave birth to me in
Grozny in what was known as the 47th district, in a little house with the number 010/7. That's
where my sisters and brother were born, too. One of my sisters died in 1941. So that left me, my
sister, who was two years older, and my brother, who was the eldest. I have spent my whole life in
the Caucasus and I can't say that anyone ever did me any wrong. It's only these past few years.
What made your parents come to Chechnya?
They found themselves here in 1928. As far as I know, they were simply sent here, the way it happened
in those days. So that Russians should settle in backward areas and Russify the local wild tribes.
Except that the Chechens weren't a wild tribe.
Did your parents ever complain about being in the Caucasus?
Never. I think they liked it here. In 1941, my father was called up. He died in 1943. From then on
it was nothing but funerals here. . . My Mum worked in the refinery and was in charge of the pumps.
It was hard and dirty work. No Chechen would have taken the job. She was shy and unassuming.
She didn't drink or go after the men like the other Russian women. Eventually, after a lot of
difficulties she got a job as a charwoman. All of us -- we three children and Mom -- lived on her
wages of 210 roubles. We ate beet instead of potatoes. We used to steal kerosene and sell it.
When we couldn't manage to, we would bring spring water from far off and sell it in the bazaar.
And we'd also make vodka at home, but it was a risky business. In those days, we could be sent to
prison camp for it. More recently, after they brought in the Islamic laws, you could get caned.
That's Sharia law, apparently.
And what happened to your husband?
He disappeared. He was a Ukrainian. I never went out with Chechens.
Do you say that because you're proud of it?
No, it's just a statement of fact. They taught us to sleep alongside them, but not with them.
We lived in peace, but we each knew we were a different species. They forbade their children to
marry Russians. So I, too, began to think it was better not to mix families. Anyway, our traditions
and customs are completely different. Even so, I've spent my entire life with Chechens. My daughter
lived several years with a Chechen and my granddaughters feel at home here. Anya, the elder one, was
the only Russian girl out of her whole class. No one ever made the slightest mention of it to her.
Everyone treated her kindly, parents and children alike. For a long time, my younger granddaughter,
Yevgenia -- she's named after me -- didn't even know she was a different nationality than her
fellow pupils. When the girls lost their mother, the parents of their classmates brought us food and
clothing. At that time, one of the women neighbours said to her: "Allah is punishing you on account
of your president. You Russians will always be slaves of your master." That was the first time my
granddaughter realized that she was "different."
Your Ukrainian husband left you because you didn't want to move away from the
Caucasus and he didn't want to live with Chechens. ...
That's not true at all. It's what the neighbours say, but those women didn't know him. I got married
in 1962. I was madly in love with him. He served here as a soldier. We got married and intended to
stay in Grozny. Then all of sudden he received a letter saying his mother had cancer. He told me I
had to meet her before she died. But when he took me with him to the Ukraine everything went wrong.
First, it turned out that his mother wasn't ill at all. She had lied to him to get him home.
She looked on me as a "Chechenified" Russian, which is probably worse than a "pure-blooded" Chechen.
Neither fish nor fowl. Then they forbade him to move to the Caucasus because they said it was a haunt
of bandits and criminals. So I came back without him.
Why did you return?
This was my home. I knew lots of people in Grozny and most of all I had a job. I had taken a
correspondence course in oil refining. My thesis was entitled "The Progressive Use of Existing Oil
Wells." I worked as a production controller in the oil refinery. Even if someone were to make me an
offer to move to Russia, I'd have to give it a lot of thought. I really feel at home here. And I
regret what happened to my city, irrespective of whether the Chechens or the Russians are to blame
for it. I really don't want to go away; this is where I'll die. Chechnya is my homeland, even if I'm a
"foreigner." Have I got anyone expecting me in Russia? Is there anyone there ready to house or feed
me? After all, no one's inviting me there!
Do you constitute a sort of community, you Russians who have stayed in
Chechnya during the war? Are you closer to each other than to the Chechens?
I expect so, because we share the same fate. The Russians started leaving Chechnya at the beginning
of the 90s when Jokhar Dudayev became president. It's not that they tried to wipe us out, but,
for instance, if a Chechen's flat was burgled it would give rise to a clan war -- a scandal, in other
words. But if someone robbed a flat where Russians were living no one, not even the authorities, did
anything about it. We became second-class citizens. They always had regarded us as such, but during
the Soviet Union they didn't dare show it. Then all of sudden everything was permitted and the hatred
they'd been bottling up for years suddenly came pouring out.
Didn't they have a slight justification? Most of the middle-aged Chechens had been
born in exile. And the Soviet regime didn't make things particularly easy for them when they returned
home. They weren't allowed to learn Chechen in school and they had to buy back their houses, which
Russians had occupied during their exile, at enormous cost.
No, most of them didn't buy them back. Instead they terrorized us until we preferred to leave of our
own accord. So, most of the Russians were concentrated in Grozny in blocks of flats that the Soviet
government built. The Chechens gradually built up enormous homes around those filthy flats and waited
for their opportunity.
Now Grozny virtually no longer exists. The Russians have remained . . .
The remainder of the Russians who are still stuck here are old folk, invalids and people who have been
abandoned. Quite simply, they can't afford to leave. And then there are few fools who couldn't bear to
abandon their mouldy shops and so they were ready to die even. Many of us are old people like me and
we haven't the physical strength to move somewhere else. We are worse off than the Chechens in cellars
and ruined flats, because absolutely no one will help us now. Neither the army, nor the government
in Moscow nor the local authorities, nor our neighbors, who have enough problems of their own.
Did you also stay here because you didn't want to abandon the property you had
acquired with difficulty over many years?
At the beginning, yes. But later when part of it had gone up in flames, part of it was taken by the
partisans and the rest was stolen by Russian soldiers, I realised that love of things was stupid.
If you manage to detach yourself from your property, you won't suffer when you see it go up in flames.
Now I don't amass anything and I will never again stock up with anything.
Didn't you ever agree with your husband at least privately? Aren't the Chechens
a wild tribe?
They're different. I must admit that they frighten me. I remember how in 1998 they organized public
executions of criminals on International Friendship Square. We always used to call that square
"The Three Cretins" because of a statue that stood there that consisted of a Russian, a Chechen
and an Eskimo or something, all in national dress. That dreadful spectacle took place beneath that
ludicrous trio. I once took my granddaughters to see the ceremony. I wept when they shot the three
murderers. The girls cried, too. On that occasion, I felt like Robinson Crusoe among the cannibals.
Even though you grew up in a society where the law of the vendetta applied and the
principle of a tooth for a tooth?
I don't say they were executed unjustly. They had murdered a child and a woman. I could understand
why they were executed, but I was sorry for them all the same. You see, although I've spent all my
life among Caucasians, during the Soviet Union I felt as if I was in Russia. The locals kept up their
own traditions and laws at home -- I knew them, too -- but the society lived according to Soviet laws.
There were Russians or Russified Chechens in the posts of authority, and Russian was spoken
everywhere on TV and in official departments, and books were published solely in Russian. So I never
lost contact with the Russian mentality and my original homeland. I expect that's why I cried at the
public execution and felt myself to be an observer at that spectacle, rather than a participant.
| Page 1 of 2 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Photo Essay - Take a walk through Chechnya's bombed-out capital, Grozny.
Timeline - Explore Chechnya's turbulent past.
Interactive Challenge - How much do you know about WTO-era China?
Interactive Map - Plot the Kurdish "problem" and Saddam's ultimate solution.
Photo Essay - See how chemical weapons killed the future of one Kurdish town.
|
|
|
|
Zhenya Morozova
