Misstep in Chechen-Ingush Boris Yeltsin stumbles over a rebellion in a tiny enclave in Russia
By JAMES CARNEY Moscow
For three days last August, Russian president Boris Yeltsin seemed larger than life -- the right man for a dramatic moment in history. His stubborn resistance to the coup attempt by hard-liners delivered him from the shadow of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and established him as the country's most powerful leader. Since then, amid several policy disputes, Yeltsin's image has lost some of its luster -- and last week, confronted by his biggest crisis since the putsch, he stumbled badly, raising fresh doubts about his ability to steer Russia out of multiple crises.
Faced with a rebellion by gangsterish leaders in Chechen-Ingush, a small autonomous republic in the south of the Russian Federation, Yeltsin decreed a state of emergency in the region on Nov. 8. He demanded that Chechens turn in their weapons and, to enforce his orders, deployed 532 Interior Ministry special police. With the arrival of the Russian paramilitary troopers at an airport outside Grozny, Chechen-Ingush's capital, bloodshed seemed inevitable. Armed volunteers loyal to Dzhokhar Dudayev, the leader of the Chechen revolt, surrounded the federation force while thousands more prepared to defend the city against assault.
Within 48 hours, Yeltsin's resolve began to crumble, and he withdrew the stranded troopers. Still, at a special session of the Russian parliament, vice president Alexander Rutskoi strenuously defended the state of emergency against calls for its repeal. "This is not a revolution," Rutskoi said later, "it's banditry." But after two days of debate, the parliament delivered its own blow to Yeltsin by voting overwhelmingly to veto his decree. "It is inadmissible to tackle ethnic problems by military means," said Nikolai Medvedev, chairman of a parliamentary commission on ethnic relations. "The authority of the [Russian] president has been damaged."
The conflict with Chechen-Ingush had been escalating since September, when nationalists in the largely Sunni Muslim enclave of 1.3 million, located between the Caspian and Black seas, ousted the local Communist Party boss and demanded sovereignty from Russia. To put muscle behind their rhetoric, Chechen militants armed with automatic weapons, hunting rifles and knives began seizing government buildings in Grozny. At first Yeltsin, at the time on a two-week vacation to write a memoir of the August putsch, did nothing. Then, after disputed elections late last month that Yeltsin's government declared illegal, Dudayev, a retired Soviet air force general, claimed the presidency of the republic. When Yeltsin issued his decree, Dudayev, who dresses in fatigues and surrounds himself with bodyguards, promised to wage a war of liberation.
Acting largely on the advice of aides, Yeltsin played into Dudayev's hands by declaring the state of emergency. Support for the general surged among Chechens. In Moscow, by contrast, Yeltsin was criticized from all sides: reformers accused him of going too far, conservatives of not going far enough. Gavril Popov, the reformist mayor of Moscow, said Yeltsin had learned nothing from Gorbachev's bitter, sometimes bloody struggle to hold the republics of the Soviet Union together and was repeating those very mistakes as he tried to preserve the Russian Federation's multiethnic fabric. Even Gorbachev rebuked Yeltsin for practicing "double standards." Said a senior Western diplomat: "Yeltsin couldn't have handled this worse."
By week's end, tensions had eased in Chechen-Ingush, but the problem had not gone away. Yeltsin must negotiate a settlement with Dudayev, for whom last week's confrontation was a victory. Russia's ethnic troubles only begin with Chechen-Ingush. Though non-Russian nationalities make up about 20% of Russia's population of 147 million, they claim nearly half the federation's territory in various "autonomous" republics and regions. Many of the groups, including the Yakut, the Tatars and the Bashkir, are making demands for greater independence.
Before he was elected president, Yeltsin had promised the ethnic enclaves "as much sovereignty as you can swallow" -- a pledge he probably wishes he could take back. But the push for sovereignty by small republics has more to do with economics than with ideology or desire for self-rule. The collapse of the Soviet economy is fueling the unrealistic argument that each distinct region within the country would be better off abandoning a sinking ship. For the people of Chechen-Ingush, where the average wage is less than half that in Moscow, independence sounds better than staying in.
To change that perception and preserve his support among Russians, Yeltsin must act fast on the economy. Three weeks ago, he proposed some bold reforms, including privatization and an end to price controls to create a market economy in Russia. But instead of moving on quickly, he stalled, allowing opposition to the reforms to grow before he could carry them out. Under pressure, Yeltsin is gradually toning down his program. If he succeeds in negotiating a deal with Dudayev, he can recover from his mishandling of the Chechen conflict; if he fails to deliver on economic reform, crisis will only intensify.
