Our heroes

Samashki, Chechen Republic

May 9 was a genuine holiday for me only when I was a child. Balloons, flags in hands, well-ironed red neckties, ceremonial formations against a backdrop of reawoken nature with its brilliant colours... But from the seventh or eighth grade onwards my delight in having two or three days without any hateful lessons became mixed with a sense that it was not a Chechen holiday.

Although I wanted to join in, I could never shake off the thought that the Chechens had marked the first thirteen celebrations of this anniversary in exile, allegedly for having supported the defeated side. The official version promoted by Stalin and Beria said that we too had been defeated on that day. On the other hand, there is no point in denying that the Chechens did put up resistance to Soviet rule, a resistance which at times was very considerable. As, for example, on the very eve of World War ...

Who killed Akhmad Kadyrov? (weekly review)

By Vadim Borshchev, special to Prague Watchdog

The Victory Day celebration and the military parade in downtown Grozny looked rather modest compared to the amazing scope of the events that marked the Day of Mourning on the fifth anniversary of the death of President Akhmat-Khadzhi (Akhmad) Kadyrov. In building the cult of his father, Ramzan Kadyrov does not skimp on either money or rhetoric. The head of Chechnya is not in the habit of limiting himself in the choice of enthusiastic epithets when it comes to people with whom he feels a special emotional bond. In a recent interview for the leading Russian newspaperRossiiskaya Gazeta he called Vladimir Putin a "saint". To describe his father, he found is no less powerful an image of the same sort. In an official Address to his compatriots, Kadyrov presented Akhmat-Hadzhi as a “righteous man” [pravednyi].

The cult would not be a cult were it not to contain, in ...