Explosions on the Victory Day. Causes and results

Dozens of people have been killed, dozens have been injured. To say that these acts of terrorism are inhumane is to say practically nothing. Any act of terrorism, any crime against life is inhumane. But a crime committed on a sacred for millions of people day, a crime, which makes us forget about our fathers and grandfathers, who died in the name of life is much more inhumane.

An unprecedented event has taken place in Russia today: the country has gone through two Minutes of silence in one day. Dagestan has announced mourning for those, who were killed in the echo of the bloodiest war in the world history. Russia’s President has called those, who committed these act of terror, Nazis.

Putin is not right. With all due disgust that one feels towards fascists, they cannot be compared to modern barbarians for one obvious reason: the Nazi ideology implied pride and supremacy of their nation over other peoples - the qualities, with which the Third Reich unconditionally wanted to ensure its posterity in the future. Those, who organized an act of terror during the march of demonstrators in Kaspiisk and shelled the stadium in Grozny from grenade launchers, showed contempt to their own people. Everyone knows that the cult of elderly people is one of the most important traditions in the Caucasus and in the East. But it was those elderly people, along with women, children, servicemen, whom bandits killed today. We’ll emphasize the conclusion: today bandits centered fire also at those, who won the horrible war against fascism. And it was their own descendants, who fusilladed them. Why? Brushing aside beautiful words about independence and freedom for their people, which in the modern world have become beautiful labels, behind which economic interests are hidden, we can put it plainly: because of the desire to control the oil pipe. That is to say, the barbarians, who committed the acts of terror today, had to choose between oil and their own people with its traditions and history. Oil tipped the scales.

Why? It’s a difficult, and at the same time, an easy question, which is easily beaten by another question: why not? If other similar “actions” are supported by the Russian political elite (remember that the Federal Security Service has instituted criminal proceedings against several people accused of aiding terrorists, the most well-known criminal case being the one against Boris Berezovsky, former Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of Russia and a close friend of the “family” of the country’s ex-president), by the European Parliament, which speaks in a roundabout way about the struggle for independence, by the US State Department establishing ties with bandits’ political emissaries, why can’t one make an attempt to “struggle for freedom” in a spectacular way on a sacred for Russia day as well?

A bit later, not today, all these forces will begin to comment on the Victory Day tragedy from their narrow, one-sided positions. They will have national TV channels and pages of Russia’s major newspapers and magazines at their disposal. It is known in advance that such political figures as Novodvorskaya, Borovoy, Yushenkov, Nemtsov and others of that ilk will start talking about the necessity of talks between the Kremlin and Maskhadov. They will refer to the memory of those, who were killed on the great holiday.

Some time later this topic will come up in the European Parliament, and some members of the Russian delegation will once again repeat that Russia oppresses small nations, which are compelled to struggle and speak about themselves with self-repulsive methods. The members of the European Parliament from other countries will support them with inspiration. They will support them, forgetting that the people, who were liberating these countries from fascism, might have been killed during the latest act of terrorism. After officially denouncing the acts of terrorism, the US State Department will again hold unofficial talks with the new “foreign minister of Ichkeria”. American diplomats will once again brush aside the demarches of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs by saying that they must know the versions of both sides. Common Americans will never know that their officials had another meeting and a round of consultations with terrorists.

Should we go on talking about this crazy circle of double standards, which are very well paid for sometimes?

Anyhow, the primary causes of all this do not lie in what has been stated above. They are most likely to be hidden in the fact that the Kremlin officials are not on friendly terms with the country’s history either.

The Kremlin has forgotten the lessons of Victory of its own country. It has forgotten the school course of history, which the current dwellers of the main Russian chambers had been lucky to study in full before they gave their consent to shorten the course of studies, so that current students of Russian secondary schools would learn as much about the latest war as they do about the battle of Borodino. It is natural that people in other countries know practically nothing about Russia’s participation in the World War II (this is rather vividly shown in one of discussions on the material by “Pravda.ru” at the leading Western weblog Fark.сom).

Veterans of the latest war are remembered in Russia only on holidays, when it is shameful not to remember them. That’s when promises, which are forgotten in two-three days, begin.

Today ideological leaders know what the Chief Directorate of Literature was created for only from the words of dissidents (what else can we talk about here, if one of the main political technologists of the Kremlin is former dissident Gleb Pavlovsky?). It’s natural that for this reason we know only bad stuff about the horrible censorship of the Chief Directorate. The lessons of the military operation in the Persian Gulf that was conducted by the US against Iraq, during which official censorship was introduced, remain unnoticed, if not secretly condemned.

The Office of the Public Prosecutor does not hear opinions expressed in press and TV, which, in fact, justify the actions of terrorists aimed at splitting the country. The Office does not hear them despite the fact that these speeches in leading mass media strongly contradict the country’s Constitution.

That’s exactly the reason why we hear only the words of censure among the first European comments on the Victory Day tragedy, which are said after acts of terrorism committed on ordinary days. I am sure that no Western leader will connect this event with the World War II, like President Putin did, because there is nothing advantageous, inconvenient and shameful in it: Russia is forgetting its history itself…

Peter Yermilin, Editor of the political section of PRAVDA.Ru.

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/05/09/40879.html

PRAVDA.Ru: MAY 9, THE 57TH VICTORY DAY