Sept. 11 and Beslan: a battle for civilization

Victor Erofeyev IHT

Saturday, September 11, 2004
Russia must now decide

MOSCOW The blow struck by Islamic terrorism at the twin towers in New York three years ago came as a complete shock to the people of Russia. We had not suspected that the new century would begin with such a bloody dawn.
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I was outside the American Embassy in Moscow late in the evening of Sept. 11, 2001. The pavement was littered with flowers and lighted candles. I think that never at any other time in history have Russians been brought so close to America by such profound and heartfelt compassion. We Russians believe that grief brings people closer together - it has always been and still is a feeling that is shared. Sept. 11 changed the image of the United States in Russian consciousness forever: We realized that we live in a single world and that that world is in need of our care and protection. The Russian state, alas, has lagged behind the heart: The leadership here has lacked the courage to draw the conclusion that we share a common enemy. I am by no means one of those who believe that America under George W. Bush has not made its fair share of political and military mistakes. But at the same time, I admire America for seeing what we should have seen in Russia.
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There's a paradox here. After all, you would think that Russia, with a perspective born of historical experience, would have been able to guess where the extremist ideology of Islamic fundamentalism was leading. Remember, revolutionary terrorism was born here and honed in Stalin's gulag. Islamic radicalism grew up in moral opposition to the "rotten" West - an idea that those of us reared in the Soviet Union can easily grasp - out of resentment, poverty and national humiliation. Now this same flammable mixture has exploded within our own borders. Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel leader, might well be feeling pleased with himself. Probably his greatest victory so far had been to impose a state of dual power on Russia: President Vladimir Putin as the ruler of Russia and himself as the commander of fear. But in Beslan, Basayev achieved something new: He forced Russia to sit up and listen to his message. Now everyone has realized that this business is not coming to an end, that it is only just beginning, the beginning of a new war.
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Where does Basayev end and Al Qaeda begin? A separatist and a fundamentalist are two very different things. The first demands political separation; the second declares holy war against us. But the separatist Basayev no longer exists. A massacre of children worthy of Herod is not a coded invitation to peace negotiations. Basayev's message can no longer be reduced to vengeance, an idea that presumes we call it quits when all the scores have been settled.
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The military dispute over Chechen sovereignty, morally impossible for Russia to win from the very beginning, has mutated, leaving none of the old certainties in place. Like Osama bin Laden's attack on the United States, Basayev's attack on the school signifies the start here of the Third World War of which the whole of Western civilization is so rightly afraid, which it tries with all its might to postpone, which it even tries to ignore.
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Russia is far from certain that she has any substantial relationship to this newly imperiled civilization. She relapses into a stupor in the face of her enemy's audacity. She looks back, sometimes with nostalgia, on Stalin's cunning imperial maneuvers, at his seizure of half of Europe. Nowadays she is awkward and ungainly.
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But while she has been unsuccessfully searching for her own national idea since the collapse of communism, the fundamentalists have listed her as one of their enemies. Recent experience has confirmed their intentions.
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A serious war has begun in Russia, and we have to live by the laws of wartime and submit to the ruling authority. This authority has unfortunately inherited a bad legacy; it is not responsible to anyone, and it is inclined to tell lies. But no matter what one thinks of Putin, in today's conditions he is more of a restraining factor than an apologist for censorship and restrictive legislation. In the absence of any real political opposition or civil society, it is the president who must decide whose side Russia will be on in the war. There is no choice. Russians would like to remain hors de combat in the conflict of civilizations, but they won't be able to. On Sept. 11, 2001, we wept in sympathy with America; after Beslan we shall have to dry our tears and try to build a genuine, full-blooded link with the West.
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Victor Erofeyev is the author of "Russian Beauty." This article was translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield.