John B. Dunlop, “‘Storm in Moscow’: A Plan of the Yeltsin ‘Family’ to Destabilize
Russia,” Project on Systemic Change and International Security in Russia and the New States
of Eurasia, The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (October 8, 2004), 2.
27.
Frederick C. Cuny, “Killing Chechnya,” New York Review of Books (April 6, 1995).
28.
Maj. Gregory J. Celestan, “Wounded Bear: The Ongoing Russian Military Operation in
Chechnya,” Foreign Military Studies Office Publications (August 1996). http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/wounded/wounded.htm.
29.
David Hoffman, “Yeltsin Says a 2nd Term Depends on Ending War; Chernomyrdin Named
to Seek Chechnya Settlement,” The Washington Post (February 9, 1996).
30.
Thomas de Waal, “Introduction,” in Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War, (London: The Harvill Press, 2007), xiii–xiv.
31.
S. Kovalyov, “Neskolko replik po povodu chechenskogo konflikta,” in Pravovye aspekty Chechenskogo krizisa: Materialy seminara, eds. L. I. Bogoraz et al. (Moscow: Memorial, 1995), 82.
32.
M. Polyakova, “Kriminalnye aspekty voennykh sobytiy v Chechne,” in Pravovye aspekty, eds. L. I. Bogoraz et al., 44.
33.
Polyakova, “Kriminalnye aspekty voennykh sobytiy v Chechne,” 44–45.
34.
Kovalyov, “Summary,” in Pravovye aspekty, eds. L. I. Bogoraz et al., 179.
35.
Kovalyov, “Neskolko replik po povodu chechenskogo konflikta,” 83.
36.
Kovalyov, “Summary,” in Pravovye aspekty, eds. L. I. Bogoraz et al., 176. Secession was not an option, neither in Imperial
Russia nor in the Soviet Union. This fact was recognized by Yeltsin. “The Soviet empire,”
he wrote, “spanning one-sixth of the earth’s surface, was built over the course of
many years according, without the shadow of a doubt, to an ironclad plan. The internal
contradictions were ignored. No one proposed a scenario that allowed the empire to
abandon some of its territories or yield to the formation of new states. They didn’t
even think of it.” (Boris Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000), 53). The Chechen case was certainly not helped
by the inappropriate comparison made by US President Bill Clinton during a press conference
in Moscow in April 1996, when Clinton said: “I would remind you that we once had a
civil war in our country, in which we lost on a per capita basis far more people than
we lost in any of the wars of the twentieth century, over the proposition that Abraham
Lincoln gave his life for, that no state had a right to withdrawal from our Union.”
(Quoted in Thomas de Waal, “The Chechen Conflict and the Outside World,” Crimes of War Project (April 18, 2003).) http://www.crimesofwar.org/chechnya-mag/chech-waal.html.
37.
Sergey Kovalyov stands out as a unique personality in post-Soviet politics. Born in
1930, he studied biology, was arrested as a dissident in 1974, and was sent for seven
years to a labor camp in the Perm region. This was followed by an exile of three years.
In 1990 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet (Parliament) of the Soviet Union, and
from 1993 he was a member of the State Duma. As a founder and cochairman of the human
rights organization Memorial he was appointed in 1994 by Yeltsin to become chairman
of the Presidential Human Rights Commission. He resigned in 1996 because of the war
in Chechnya.
38.
Kovalyov, “Summary,” in Pravovye aspekty, eds. L. I. Bogoraz et al., 180.
39.
Kovalyov, “Neskolko replik po povodu chechenskogo konflikta,” 78.
40.
