Chechnya

History teaches only one thing — that it teaches nothing. The truth of this maxim was confirmed on New Year’s Eve, 1994, when, 15 years and a week after the beginning of the bloody and fruitless Afghan war, the Russian Army, ventured into Chechnya. The ostensible reason given for the invasion was to keep the Russian Federation intact (“if Chechnya secedes, Tatarstan, Buryatia and others might follow”), to counteract an illegal secession movement. Other reasons — e.g. oil, pride of power and even racism — lurked just below the surface. Nonetheless, the war in Chechnya turned out to be as bloody, destructive and inconclusive as the invasion of Afghanistan.

A lot has been said about the victims of this horrendous war. Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal (see book review, page 35) came to love and respect the Chechens for their bravery and suffering in standing up to the Kremlin’s hasty decision to fight, rather than negotiate.

But also to be counted among the victims were the underfed and ill-trained conscripts of the Russian army. Russian Life’s permanent photographer Sergei Kaptilkin visited their side of the barricade early in the war, and brought back some harrowing pictures, which we present here.

To be sure, Russian soldiers were not saints in this “bloody little war.” But it is wrong to focus too heavy blame on these naive youths, who believed they were “doing their duty” or “following orders.”

It is enough to look at the faces of the Russian soldier whose face is scarred for life by a bullet (far right) or the 19-year-old tank sergeant whose hair went grey after an attack (top) to know it would be wrong to throw the first stone here. Had the war dragged on, plans to recruit officers from the reserves would have been enacted. And, as I studied in the military department of the Foreign Language Institute, I might have been sent to Chechnya as well, to “do my duty” and “follow orders.” As might my son Vadim, had he been just eight years older.

Thank God that I can now fight this and other such wars with my plume, and that Vadim’s only weapon is a tennis racket.

I express sympathy for the victims of both sides in the bloody war in Chechnya. Yet Gall and de Waal are wrong when they call Shamil Basaev’s 1995 terrorist raid on Budyonnovsk hospital “a brilliant raid into the heart of Russian territory.” There is no honor in seizing women, children and nurses as hostages. Even in retaliation for the deaths of Basaev’s relatives.

Just as there is no honor in bombing civilian villages or in General Pavel Grachev’s boast that it would take him just one paratrooper regiment to capture Grozny. After all, he was talking about a town still located on Russian territory.

So, do not see these pictures as an attempt to condone the war from the Russian side. Instead, it is an homage to those who tried their best to carry out their duty — to execute the orders of their commanders no matter how precipitous and, well, criminal they may have been.

This is what our gifted friend Sergei Kaptilkin saw. For the record, these photos of his have received high praise, including Second Prize at the 1996 Interpress Photo Competition in Moscow. But personally, I hope Sergei will receive his next international acclaim for a more peaceful subject, like his shots of the Lena river which we published in September.

—Mikhail Ivanov