The tragedy in Beslan is considered to be a direct consequence of Chechen separatism. But to what extent are the Beslan events linked to the drive for Chechnya's independence?
The problem is that, on the one hand, the Chechen separatist movement has embraced the most repulsive forms of international terrorism. Conceivably, they allow it to solve its financial problems, and receive supplies of arms and mercenaries. But, on the other hand, such interaction puts an emphatic end to any political prospects for Chechen independence.
To adopt terrorist methods at a time when the civilised world is fighting international terrorism means courting inevitable defeat. Moreover, this will be a global defeat and perhaps a final and irreversible one. Sovereign terrorism will never be recognised by either Russia or any other responsible state in the world. So the result achieved by Chechen separatism in the more than ten years of its struggle against Moscow is all too obvious: political stalemate, total discredit, a face-losing failure.
In the early 1990s, the ideologists of Chechen separatism drew parallels between Chechnya's aspirations for independence and the wave of successful anti-colonial revolutions that swept the world in the twenty or thirty years after World War II. The implication was that an independence drive can and must be forcible and cruel; and examples from the recent history of Asia and Africa seemed to suggest that the aim justified the means.
But these ideologists missed the train of anti-colonial revolutions and it can be said definitively that militant anti-colonialism as a political phenomenon acceptable to the world breathed its last in the 1970s, and any attempts to reanimate it these days can only develop into bloody and senseless carnage.
Apart from the global trends, there are also Russian specifics. In the place of the former USSR we see fifteen independent states. Moreover, none of them gained state sovereignty through an armed struggle waged by the titular nation for independence. The USSR was dismembered and the former Union republics seceded from the centre in a peaceful way.
Practice suggests that only non-violent and peaceful separatism can be effective and politically successful.
It is common knowledge that armed detachments preaching separatist ideology waged an armed struggle against Moscow in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Ukraine and the Baltic states. Like the separatists in Chechnya today, they terrorised pro-Moscow locals and tried to seize populated centres. But they were wiped out in a few years. Obviously, history is repeating itself in the North Caucasus as a bloody farce.
It is futile to talk to Moscow in terms of force, and only a madman can believe that taking children hostage could change anything in its position.
But a non-violent discussion with the Kremlin, like the one conducted with it by separatist movements of former Union republics in the late 1980s, is unlikely to bring any results either. Russia is now experiencing an economic upswing and is returning to the fold of the most authoritative powers. Separatism in such conditions does not enjoy mass support even on territories seeking to secede, and Chechen separatism is no exception. The recent presidential election in Chechnya confirmed this with utter clarity.
And now, to judge by sentiments prevailing in Chechnya, the Beslan tragedy put an end to the idea of independence. Chechnya is as frightened and depressed at what happened as the rest of Russia. But with a qualification: the Chechens realise better than anybody else that now they have deadly enemies in the Ossetians. And this is a real misfortune for the republic.
