Where is Chechnya going? Political reflections by Dzhokhar Dudayev (part 2)

15 marzo 2024 maceriadmin Lascia un commento

That is why the archaic for modern foreign political science linguistics terminology “good, honest, decent, fair”, etc. as applied to our new power structures does not have even approximately unambiguously identified semantic content, because a million people will give exactly a million different interpretations to it. For some reason, for example, when speaking about the performing skills of a musician, we use quite natural and characteristic definitions such as “talented” or “skillful”, but not at all “virtuous” or “crystal honest”. This, as they say, is from a different opera.

Why is it that in politics everything is put upside down and professionalism is advanced to the “good guy”? Any specialist is very jealous of dilettantish talks about the subtleties of his profession. In politics, strangely enough, everything is allowed.

If we give in to the verbal exercises and tempting enticements of the rather proliferated “elementary educated” and use as state-building material such abstracted criteria thrown by Satan himself, we will probably not build anything good…ANY community of people at all times is differentiated, and the real basis of its division is the multiplicity of human aspirations, principles of behavior, potentialities and influential moments. Integrating by one or another criteria into groups and categories, they constitute those real natural forces and movements in society. In this connection, it is probably worth recalling that the formation and development of the state, which is also true for any individual, is based on these four characteristic driving factors, conventionally named: STIMULUS, MOTIVE, POWER AND FACILITIES.

STIMULUS is usually understood as a value reflecting the vector sum of its components, such as all kinds of Interests, Desires, Feelings, etc. MOTIVE is a potential value integrating Intellect, Knowledge, Experience, Know-How, etc. Another vector value is POWER, which integrates Power and Strength. And finally, FACILITIES is another potential value, the components of which are Money, Resources, Funds, etc. Predominantly operating with such concepts, which are “political bricks, mortar, armature and concrete”, and not with dilettantish abstract ones – “honesty, decency” or even “competence”, will always help any statesman and not only him to get a sufficiently objective dialectically verified analytical picture of any socio-political processes, to have the basis that does not allow making inexcusable and irreparable mistakes of political nature. The tools used for dismantling and destruction, as a rule, are unsuitable for construction and creation. That is why all appeals to “reason, brotherhood, understanding, unity, consensus…” etc. are useless. Only those who will be able to satisfy the Stimulus of the people, using the Means through the Motive of specialists, will be able to increase the Power of the state.
Further. Many people thought, and are still strongly convinced of it, that it is worth to adopt the external attributes of the so-called civilized democracies, i.e. to elect a Parliament, a President and a Constitutional Court, delegating there the “best” representatives of the people, and all problems are solved. This is a monstrous misconception, and in conditions of collegial state capitalism, which today is certainly not only the Chechen Republic, but also Russia, these institutions turn out to be nothing more than the well-known “Hottabych’s telephone!” Absolutely identical to the prototype in all externally visible parameters and banally completely empty inside, without the electronic and mechanical stuffing that makes the apparatus work. We think, i.e. “call”, that we govern, while the people live under the influence of their objective social laws of evolutionary development.

Photo of a voucher (privatization check, 1992) with an indication of the place where the monogram of the artist Igor Krylkov is located on the banknote (letters I and K in an oval).

Parliaments, Senates, Congresses, as a rule, are only a symbol of POWER in the hands of the explicit (authoritarianism) or implicit (non-authoritarianism) MASTER and, at best, serve as a laboratory practice for practicing the legislature set by the Master or giving legitimate form to his wishes.

As for the Presidential Structures, Cabinets or Councils of Ministers, other possible state bodies of executive power, they, as a rule, fulfill the function of these Wishes. Naturally, any form of state governance is characterized by a greater or lesser divergence in the directions of vectors of interests of the Master and the People. Except that in authoritarian state capitalism the change of the direction of the latter in its direction is performed by the Master mainly at the expense of the Power component of the Power factor, and in collegial private capitalism through the predominant use of the components of the Means factor. Unfortunately, and this is probably characteristic of most citizens of the former USSR, we are still in the deep captivity of nostalgic illusions about that executive power, which was exercised thanks to years of clearly defined totalitarian system, which had a wide range of appropriate tools: from fiscal bodies for suppression of dissent to institutions for “ideological straightening of brains”, from the stick to the carrot. Even the most ardent Western “anti-Sovietists” recognized at the time that totalitarianism ensured greater efficiency, discipline, and order. This is achieved, of course, at the expense of such characteristically dominant in authoritarian state capitalism worst components of the Stimulus, such as fear, fear, a sense of hopelessness, powerlessness, etc. Another question, of course, is what we have come to as a result of all this….

Let’s imagine hypothetically that the notorious Power overnight completely and completely passes into one hands: either the President, or the Parliament, or someone else. And let us be ruled by the ideal in each case, either presidential X. or the many-faced parliamentary Y, or nameless Z. What does this mean in practice? And that in this case all the national wealth, all the country’s resources and all its economic potential “falls under the monopoly of X. Y-a, or Z. That is, they will manage and distribute what they personally do not really own, but the owner – the people have very ephemeral economic rights! Together with the entire ministerial team, the governing echelon of the government can hardly constitute even one tenth of a percent of the population. But the psychology of behavior and programmed attitude of any manager – non-private co-owner, especially in the conditions of decline in economic production and deterioration of living standards of the poor part of the population, consists in instinctive efforts to keep the place under the sun by justifying the motives of their activities, referring to the difficulties of objective and subjective plan, as well as criticism of various formal and informal objects that create allegedly insurmountable problems. Remember N. Ryzhkov, V. Pavlov or T. Gaidar. V.Chernomyrdin is bound to follow this path.

Naturally, and it is inherent in human nature, that the dissatisfied and offended, “who know better how the country should be run and what the people need”, necessarily starting with derogatory criticism, can move on to much more serious and active actions to “restore justice”. What is the response for the ruling elite? To tighten the screws? But this is a return to totalitarianism, from which they fled and have not yet had time to catch their breath. Make personnel reshuffles? Nothing will change significantly. Then the System itself must be replaced! But, as it seems, we changed it by dismantling the “unified party-parameter room” and creating a modernized one with “separate warheads”. This is where another stumbling block turned out to be. Having flown out at first in one “anti-imperial missile”, we ended up like those “swan, crayfish and pike”, with our spatially differently oriented vectors of Stimulus and Power, different baggage of Motive and Means.

Yes, sometimes power is divisible. And its rank gradation is possible both vertically and horizontally. But on a national scale, it always has pyramidal differentiation, strengthening from the base to the top. And two or even three pyramids in a country is a competition of authoritarian authorities. Reasonable peace or peaceful compromise in such unnatural conditions is nonsense. Artificial attempts of horizontal separation of powers, i.e. to make several Masters at the same time, is an objective doom for “family-economic” strife, which will continue until the unstable balance will not take its more natural stable state, peculiar only under one definite Master, until the divided pyramids will finally merge into one. Many people mistakenly see the antagonism of “divided powers” as a personal factor. Then imagine, for example, that we swapped places with the Chairman of the Parliament of the Chechen Republic. In half a year, if not sooner, having mastered and gotten up to speed, having been in a “different skin”, each of us will defend new positions, noticing a grain of sand in someone else’s eye and not seeing a log in our own. And there is nothing surprising or tragic in this, it is simply the natural nature of a person to defend the interests of a certain (“his”) group and category of people or, if you like, a part of society. I am sure that the same metamorphosis would have happened if B. Yeltsin and R. Khasbulatov had been swapped.

Former Soviet Parliament Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, seen here second-left in 1993

What then is the reason for stability in the collegial private capitalist camp? Is their “collective economy” quiet and smooth and God’s grace? Not at all. And here interests and motives may differ greatly, and various storms and tsunamis may occur. But in the world, where “the dominance of private property” rules, the communicative language of business invariably develops a mutually acceptable solution, which, having passed through “their” structures of power, is always implemented, as it is refined by the filter of economic expediency and the state Guarantor of Private capital. The only way of civilized solution to any conflict, which has been worked out for centuries, is to make it more profitable for the disputing parties to stop the conflict than to continue it. We have yet to master such methods.

Thus, implying a change of the System, in fact we have changed only its external Form, its Attributes. The System itself remained inviolable – state-capitalist! To finally dispel the last illusions about its viability, let us consider the question: “Will such a competitive government be able to effectively realize its management mission in the period of transition to market relations, so that the sheep would be safe and the wolves would be fed? What, in general, is its potential future, if neither M. Gorbachev and the Union Parliament, nor B. Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, nor other CIS republics have been able to do so so far – one does not need to go far for examples….

Where is Chechnya going? Political reflections by Dzhokhar Dudayev (part 1)

5 marzo 2024 maceriadmin Lascia un commento

On April 29, 1993, the newspaper “Ichkeria” published a long article by Dzhokhar Dudayev, in which the President of the Chechen Republic framed the political context in which the Republic found itself, and proposed a long and detailed reflection on the direction that the new state of the Chechens he could have taken. We are publishing the first part today, translated into English.

On the question of the state-political structure of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

The reason for writing this article was my sincere conviction of the need for an urgent, comprehensively balanced and thorough conversation about our long overdue and pressing issues.
Almost a year and a half has already passed since the proclamation of the independent Chechen Republic. What seemed a few years ago to be a centuries-old pipe dream for the Chechen people is today, in spite of everything, an objective reality. We have not only freed ourselves from imperial dictate, but also proclaimed the task of building a new social formation on the model of developed capitalist countries, calling it “secular civilized”. Of course, it seemed to many people before that everything was much easier, it was enough to remove odious figures, to break or dismantle some things, to give up something and everything else would go on as usual, we could not afford any problems. Moreover, we had almost no doubts about WHAT exactly we wanted to build and HOW exactly we wanted to live in it. It seemed to us, and even now we are strongly convinced of it, that we should only adopt the external attributes of civilized democracies, i.e. elect a Parliament, a President and a Constitutional Court, implementing the so-called “separation of powers”, delegating the best representatives of the people to these structures, and all the issues will be solved by themselves. But the future, as it turns out, always makes its unexpected adjustments.

The “revolutionary” euphoria gradually passes, unfamiliar and ear-slashing word combinations become commonplace and familiar, and every day’s life puts before us all new problems and questions, and each time more and more complicated. And with time we become wiser. Even a cursory retrospective look at the recent “our beginning” allows us to rethink many things in a new way, highlighting the blunders and mistakes. Add to this the fact that the chronic failure to solve some of the main problems of economic nature for our society in this transitional period often gives rise to nihilistic moods, feelings of dissatisfaction and pessimism, sometimes turning into defeatist or even aggressive rejection of everything that has been done. But there is nothing tragic in this, believe me, nor is there any reason for panic. This is the dialectic of the natural course of complex reformist transformations. It is said that a man rejoices twice – when he “buys” and then when he “sells”. We have already experienced the first, and we have obviously come close to the second. But it has become difficult to revise what we have acquired, what we can still use, and what it is time to consign to the dustbin of history.

The statue of Lenin torn down in the square of the same name in Grozny, renamed “Sheikh Mansur Square”

However, in the modern era of information and political boils and maximum conditions for the politicization of society, it is indeed extremely difficult to understand objectively the intense events taking place around us and to give them an unambiguous analytical assessment. Even the Chechen “political elite” is not ready for this. The absence of effective methodological tools in its “portfolio baggage” has not only put us all in an erroneous dead-end position, but has also failed to outline a sufficiently effective way out of the crisis.
Today we can name several myths and basic misconceptions that have had a devastating effect on the process of the formation of the Chechen state and which can be conditionally characterized as follows:

1) uncertainty of the state-legal status of the Czech Republic;
2) false premise of “separation of powers”;
3) myth of “good leaders”;
4) choice of the form of economic development

The most fierce disputes and discussions that hamper our progressive course are connected with the ambiguous assessment of the socio-political and socio-economic formation that is now called the Chechen Republic. Today there is no shortage of all sorts of definitions and attempts to characterize all the diseases of our state, no shortage of “authoritative diagnoses” and plenty of “alternative-free prescriptions”. That is why a logically adequate interpretation of the investigative processes surrounding the current stage of the Vainakh people’s historical development is becoming very relevant. In my opinion, only the anatomy of the disintegration processes of the Russian Empire’s transformation, on the one hand, and the influence of the laws of evolutionary development of human society, on the other hand, can provide such a tomographic picture of a profound understanding of the problems of the formation of a sovereign Chechen state.

According to Western scientific standards, modern history knows two types of state structure: authoritarian and collegial. The former is usually understood as a regime of unity of power, when a PERSON (chief, leader, etc.) rules. The second is understood when the country is ruled collegially by representatives of different forces of society. Each of these forms of state structure can have, pronounced variations, state-capitalism and private capitalism. That is, there are four main modifications:

authoritarian state capitalism:
2) collegiate private capitalism;
3) authoritarian private capitalism;
4) collegiate state

We would like to warn, first, that often used definitions such as: totalitarianism, dictatorship, democracy, etc. should be used very carefully, because, often and especially in the context of the issue under consideration, they do not really reflect either the essence or the content of the state structure, which will be explained below. And, secondly, although this classification does not claim to be true in the first instance, it is a simple and reliable pilot map among the reefs of “Noev’s” political science terminology. As is known, the former USSR of the “pre-Gorbachev period” was one of the classic examples of the authoritarian state capitalism regime with all the necessary attributes of pyramidal comprehensive and all-encompassing power and executive discipline. This was a necessary and sufficient basis for the adopted centralized scheme of management of the national economy of the country. A vivid example of the opposite and antagonistic state system is the collegial private capitalism of the USA. At the same time, the predominant characteristic of the private capitalist system lies in its inherent ability to self-regulation, which is inherent within it and inherent only to it, and which is tuned to the level of the highest social efficiency and economic expediency, penetrating the state structure in the opposite direction – from the micro to the macro level.

The flag of the Soviet Union, an example of “State Authoritarian Capitalism” cited by Dudayev

It is clear that they have more differences than similarities. And this is quite common knowledge. But the main fact is that in the first case, the role of the owner of the country is played by a specific person (general secretary, president, chairman…), and in the second case – by the FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY. It is the true, though not explicitly expressed, real “master of the situation” in the capitalist world, and not the president, senate or congress, as many sincerely delude themselves. Presidents come and go, but the financial oligarchy remains. This field should be known and always remembered! In the capitalist world, the parliamentary and presidential institutions, which today are fashionably but dilettantishly nodded to in various arguments, are nothing more than an officious facade of the “powers that be”: financial tycoons, military-industrial magnates, royal dynasties, and sometimes even the mafia. If THEY do not wish it, no ideal law issued by the parliament or presidential decree will have a life. If the “officios” step out of the conditioned framework and break the taboos, it ends his career politically or even physically. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is a vivid example of this. If a political crisis breaks out in a developed capitalist country, for example, Italy or South Korea, and the government is urgently changed, you can be absolutely sure that in the “quiet family circle” of the financial oligarchy there is an outwardly unremarkable, but very significant for this country new balance of power and balance of interests of spheres of influence.

Flag of the United States of America, example of a “collegiate private capitalism” cited by Dudayev

The third, very few, group of countries of authoritarian private capitalism includes, for example, the Sultanate of Brunei and some “banana kingdoms”. Being an inherently unstable entity, this form is characterized by frequent regime changes and patrimonial coups d’état. However, if international capital enters such a country under the influence of its interests, achieving the necessary level of balance of internal forces through financial and forceful support of one of the parties, then the authoritarian private capitalism is provided with a long “life”.

Finally, the fourth, also unstable (due to the uncertainty of a single master) form of state structure, which is usually a transitional stage either from collegial private capitalism to authoritarian state capitalism (1917 in Russia), or vice versa (current processes in the “socialist” countries). It is clear that in this classification, which, although conditional, is very effective and illustrative, the Chechen Republic is not in the first formation, from which it fled under the flag of anti-imperialist sentiments, but it is clearly not in the second one, to which it is not clear how long we have to run. We are also far from the third “dignitary” camp by nature. Well, the last thing left is collegial state capitalism! That’s where our forced landing is and the stove from which we are obliged to dance. Another pernicious factor for the Chechen state is the unanimity that the absolute majority of people believe that it is necessary and sufficient for the republic to have “good leadership and a good parliament”, which could supposedly improve the life of the people. At the same time, practically everyone has his or her own version of “good” candidates for leadership positions.

The dangerous consequences of such and other similar, outwardly very attractive and seemingly only true, approaches lie in the methodological incompetence that has struck our society. Unfortunately, we very often, one could say, often lump everything into one pile and do not make special distinctions between concepts, terms, phraseology. Expressing ourselves with the same words, we perceive their different contents.