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The Russian Woman
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At the beginning of the 1990s, when Jokhar Dudayev came to power and then afterwards, between the wars, from 1996 to 1999, the Russians left the Caucasus en masse although they had live here for decades and felt at home here. Did you also sense that the Chechens were starting to treat you differently?
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Differently, yes, but not badly. It depends who. They did take greater liberties with me, that's true. For instance, where a Chechen had no problems, I had to give bribes. I definitely had a harder time with officials. They were all Chechens. Here everyone is related to everyone else. And a cousin three times removed doesn't have to stand in line, naturally. The aunt of a cousin's daughter-in-law gets a higher pension simply because she is part of the clan. Even if you can't stand the sight of your relative and you worship your Russian neighbour, you'll always give precedence to your relatives and clan ties. It's a stupid law and inflexible.
Laws like that always applied in the Caucasus. But did something change in the 1990s?
Neighbors and friends behaved as they did before. During the Soviet Union, they didn't dare cross a Russian official and all of a sudden the boot was on the other foot. During Dudayev's rule, they started to be afraid to treat us normally. And on top of that, after 1996 religious fanatics came on the scene -- Wahhabis -- and they actually tried to force me out of my home and move in there. You see, the war turned people into animals. My neighbour, an influential Chechen, talked to them and they left me alone. The Russians started leaving mostly out of fear. They think twice before trying any tricks with a local. Everyone has some influential uncle in the establishment and a cousin with the partisans so as to have the best of both worlds -- that's the best protection, it's what they call "a roof" here. No one will avenge the death of a Russian -- and certainly not Yeltsin or Putin. But over the death of a Chechen his entire family will proclaim a vendetta which, unlike people, never dies. It can last for hundreds of years. We Russians don't even take offence when a Chechen spits in our face on the street. That's why they take greater liberties with us and why they have no respect for us. Nothing they do to a Russian is ever punished. At first, it had nothing to do with national hatred. It was just because we Russians were powerless, unarmed and downtrodden and didn't have a "roof."
So no one is to blame that you lost a roof over your head?
Tell me who and maybe I'll go to the ends of the earth. But you don't know either. Am I supposed to go to the Kremlin? Or to the UN? Or to the Russian soldiers here at the military post, maybe. They could easily open fire on me if they happened to be in a bad mood. Someone must be to blame for my tragedy, but I don't know who. I just have a suspicion that the person is somewhere very high up the ladder. During the first war, they used to say that Dudayev and Yeltsin weren't able to agree on sharing Chechen oil. But Dudayev is dead now, Yeltsin is retired and yet the war goes on, so I don't know. All the Russians will tell you that the Chechens brought it on themselves and the Chechens will say that the Russians want to wipe them out for no reason at all. Each side is half-right.
You say you're not angry with anyone and you don't want to blame anyone for everything that has happened to you. Are you grateful to anyone?
I ought to be, but it's like with hatred and rage: I just don't have the time for gratitude or the inclination. There are only a couple of people who stuck in my memory, maybe because I met them at moments of tension. On March 29, 1998 at 2.30 a.m. at night, we were burgled. They were ordinary burglars. They crept into our house and stole my mother's death certificate, the lease of the house, pots and pans, clothes and a $100 bill I had been given by [rebel leader] Shamil Basayev's brother, Shirvani. While my daughter was still able to walk, I had managed to fight my way into an audience with him, at the time when he was minister for the Chechen oil industry, and I explained to him the situation we found ourselves in. He told me that he didn't have anything to do with social policies, but that he would give her $100 out of his own pocket. And he did so. We kept it one side for when the worse came to the worst. Sometimes when I'm fed up with the entire world, I say to myself: "One crooked Chechen took everything I had and another Chechen gave me $100. That must be the way things ought to be, the way God wants it to be."
You lost everything of value, even your clothes. It wasn't the first time, nor the last, unfortunately. The authorities never helped you. Did you get any help from people around you -- your neighbours or friends?
At the school, the teacher gave my granddaughters some clothes after their mother died. My neighbors brought me something. One family from the Adygei region gave me some pots and pans. They were a bit battered, but they did the job. The Adygeians actually wanted to arrange for us to move out of Chechnya. They themselves were going back to Adygei and could have helped us get a room in a hostel and even refugee status. But that time Anya told them: "You don't know our Gran. She'll never leave Chechnya." Now I sometimes sit and think to myself that if someone were really to give me a clean room and guarantee that I'd live out my days in peace and calm, I'd leave. Even for Russia.
Would you like to take revenge on someone for everything that happened to you?
Not at all. Not now. I'm not angry with anyone. In spite of the fact that my daughter died, that they wrecked my house and did dreadful things to my granddaughters, I'm not angry with anyone.
--- Reprinted with permission from Petra Procházková.
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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.
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Zhenya Morozova
