24.03.2005
Streets of two generals
Explaining the decision to name a Warsaw traffic circle (“rondo” in Polish) after Dzhokhar Dudayev, a representative of city authorities said the following: “We were supported some 20 years ago during the martial law, so now, we have a moral obligation to support these who fight for their inalienable rights.”
This decision caused an angry reaction from Moscow. Earlier Moscow had already been indignant – there are streets and squares named President Dzhokhar Dudayev in 19 cities of the world, but the latest reaction has been the most harsh. When streets named after the Chechen president appeared in Vilnius, Riga and Lvov, the Kremlin expressed a light bewilderment.
Why did the decision of the Warsaw city authorities cause such angry reaction from Russia? No one speaks about bewilderment. Moscow says it considers necessary to review partner relations with the Polish capital. Deputies of the Moscow city duma discuss in private the possibility of renaming the street of Klimashkin (where the Polish embassy is located) into the street of Muravyev.
For Poles the name of this Russian general is the same as the name of general Yermolov for Chechens. A brother of a Decembrist, after the suppression of the 1830-1831 Polish rebellion, when asked whether or not the executed Decembrist Muravyev-Apostol was his next of kin, he said he was not from the Muravyevs who were executed, but who used to execute… Leading the suppression of another Polish rebellion in 1863 general Muravyev deserved the nickname “hangman” with his bloody “deeds”…
Moscow believes that the name of the general-hangman, “immortalized” in the name of a street, will be a worthy reply to Poles. The Polish side has declined to comment on the situation, but they were surprised at the tone of statements from Russian politicians. The problem is not that Russia cannot understand that Poland is a free country and the central authorities can hardly influence the decision of the Warsaw city council on such issues.
The Kremlin is indignant at perception of the fact that the name of Dzhokhar Dudayev long ago became a symbol of struggle for freedom not only for Chechens. This name will always be a symbol of struggle against the empire personified by general Muravyev and of which today’s Russian leadership is proud. By the way, a street of general Yermolov has existed in Moscow since Soviet times, and this fact as well as the opening of a monument to this “hero” in Chechnya is an accurate diagnosis of Russia’s priorities in the national policy.
Was hatred to such fighters against the empire the only reason for such harsh reaction from Moscow? Russian mass media assumed that the renaming coincided in time with a political scandal between Poland and Russia linked to comments from high-ranking representatives of the Polish foreign ministry following the assassination of the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov. We shall not exclude such possibility. But mass media have lost sight of another scandal linked to Russia’s refusal to recognize as the act of genocide the execution of 22,000 Polish officers (of them only 11,000 in the Katyn forest) in 1940 and the exile of 60,000 of their family members to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Besides, Russia has refused to pass all the documents linked to this crimes over to the Polish side. The Russian military prosecutor’s office classified 116 out of 183 volumes of documents. What kind of secret can “the crimes of the Stalin regime” be for “democratic Russia”? “During a preliminary investigation the Polish side examined the version of genocide, and this is my firm persuasion – there are no ground to speak about this legal phenomenon,” Russia’s chief military prosecutor told a recent press conference. “The actions examined within the framework of this case contain no signs of genocide of the Polish people,” he added.
Besides, Savenkov said that “according to the data received during the investigation from Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish colleagues, 14,542 people were kept in custody on the territory of the former USSR. The death of 1,803 of them was documented, 22 of them – identified.” The Poles speak about other figures, and they expected a different recognition.
Modern Russia, trying to be a successor of the USSR now also in terms of spiritual affaires, denies the right to freedom and independence to all the nations which used to be under its yoke. The refusal to recognize crimes of the past serves as an ideological substantiation of the ongoing genocide.
The Chechen Times
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