Propaganda and the Question of Criminal Intent; the Semantics of the Zachistka

Abstract

This article seeks to explore the origins and evolution of zachistka (‘cleansing’) and the particular role it played in the second Chechen war of 1999–2005. It argues that zachistka has become part of state, military and media representations of violence, building a psychological environment in favour of war. The article seeks to understand how the propaganda of the Russian Ministry of Defence might have contributed to the perpetuation of war crimes or incitement to atrocity crimes in the region.

Notes

¹ ‘Obstanovka v Severo-Kavkazskom regione na 8 oktyabrya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 9 October 1999; ‘Obstanovka v Severo-Kavkazskom regione na 11 octyabrya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 12 October 1999; ‘Obstanovka v Severo-Kavkazskom regione na 12 octyabrya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 13 October 1999; ‘Obstanovka v Severo-Kavkazskom regione na 19 octyabrya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 20 October 1999; ‘Obstanovka v Severo-Kavkazskom regione na 21 oktyabrya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 22 October 1999; ‘Obstanovka v Severo-Kavkazskom regione na 25 oktyabrya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 26 October 1999; ‘Obstanovka v Severo-Kavkazskom regione na 27 oktyabrya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 28 October 1999.

² ‘Obstanovka v Severo-Kavkazskom regione na 11 octyabrya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 12 October 1999.

³ I take the end of large scale military activity in Chechnya at the time of the death of Chechen President, Aslan Maskhadov on 8 March 2005.

⁴ Slobodan Milosevic Trial, International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia, Case No. IT-02-54, Transcript of Trial Proceedings, 2 November 2005, pp. 46260–66, available at: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/051102ED.htm, accessed 12 June 2014. See also, Momcilo Krajisnik Trial, International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia, Case No. IT-00-39, Transcript of Trial Proceedings, 4 March 2005, p. 9905, available at: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/krajisnik/trans/en/050304IT.htm, accessed 10 June 2014; Radovan Karadzic Trial, International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia, Case No. IT 091927, Transcript of Trial Proceedings, 27 October 2009, pp. 510, 572–68, available at: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/trans/en/091027IT.htm, accessed 12 June 2014.

⁵ Prosecutor v. Nahimana, Barayagwiza, and Ngeze, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda Trial Chamber I, Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, 3 December 2003, available at: http://ictr-archive09.library.cornell.edu/ENGLISH/cases/Nahimana/decisions/131205.html, accessed 2 March 2011.

⁶ In order to ensure the anonymity of the interviewees, I am unable to cite the exact location of the interviews with members of the armed forces, except to say that they were all conducted in Russia. Nor was I able to record their exact unit and only their general rank. Subject A, reconnaissance officer, 2 May 2013; Subject B, Russian officer, 3 May 2013; Subject C, Special Forces officer, MVD, 4 May 2013; Subject D, Special Forces commander, MVD, 7 May 2013; Subject E, Special Forces officer, MVD, 8 May 2013; Subject F, Special Forces officer, MVD, 9 May 2013. The civilian interviews were conducted in Austria since the Chechen diaspora population has reached nearly 16,000 since 2001. Several groups, such as the humanitarian organisation, Caritas, and former staff of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights were able to provide contact names for potential interviewees living in the region. All interviewees had lived in Chechnya up until 2005 and experienced both Chechen wars. Subject 1, male, 45 years, 1 October 2012; Subject 2, female, 46 years, 2 October 2012; Subject 3, female, 45 years, 2 October 2012; Subject 4, female, 55 years, 3 October 2012; Subject 5, female, 44 years, 4 October 2012; Subject 6, male, 45 years, 5 October 2012.

⁷ Although fully aware of how important television and radio broadcasts were in the Chechen wars, analysis for this article was confined to print media.

⁸ ‘Zavodi uvelichivayut vypusk boepripasov sovetskie voiny! Eshche krepche beite vraga!’, Pravda, 29 August 1943.

⁹ Ushakova (1935). See also, ‘Na “Kr. Oktyabre” zachistka, sortirovka i khranenie metalla v zagone’, Pravda, 6 October 1932; Galin (1935); ‘Vsesoyuznye sorevnovanie mettallurgov’, Pravda, 24 September 1940.

¹⁰ ‘Plan rosta proizvodstva i kapital’nogo stroitelstva’, Izvestiya, 21 March 1946.

¹¹ ‘Tonneli stroyat nastoyashchie muzhiny’, Izvestiya, 5 September 1981; ‘Goryachii bereg’, Izvestiya, 20 June 1980.

¹² ‘Metod Stakhanovitsa Kondakova’, Pravda, 29 February 1939.

¹³ ‘Sploshnaya Zachistka’, Pravda, 3 April 1935.

¹⁴ ‘Risovodstvu-nadezhnuyu material’no-tekhnicheskuyu bazu’, Izvestiya, 26 March 1980; ‘Proizvodstvo vozrastet’, Izvestiya, 13 July 1982; ‘Pamyatka komandiru otdeleniya’, Tikhookeanskaya Vakhta, 13 October 2004.

¹⁵ ‘O ribe sibirskoi’, Pravda, 3 March 1960.

¹⁶ ‘Risovodstvu-nadezhnuyu material’no-tekhnicheskuyu bazu’, Izvestiya, 26 March 1980; ‘Proizvodstvo vozrastet’, Izvestiya, 13 July 1982. See also, ‘V chest’ Dnya Konstitutsii SSSR’, Izvestiya, 4 October 1980; ‘Pamyatka komandiru otdeleniya’, Tikhookeanskaya Vakhta, 13 October 2004.

¹⁷ Correspondence with Peter Holquist, 9 December 2006. See also, Singleton (1966) and Landis (2004).

¹⁸ From email conversations with Sheila Fitzpatrick, Arch Getty and Peter Holquist, I gathered that none of these scholars has come across the word zachistka in their work on either the revolutionary or Stalinist period.

¹⁹ See also Pobol’ and Polyan (2005, p. 37). They argue that the first deportation grounded in ethnic prejudice from 1928 to 1930 was against Koreans, Poles and Finns.

²⁰ Email discussion with Dr Robert Lagerberg, Department of Russian, University of Melbourne, Australia, 6 December 2006.

²¹ Interview with Subject B.

²² ‘Valerii vye zhertvy yakoby zakonchennoi voiny’, Izvestiya, 4 December 1995.

²³ This was later referred to as a karatel’naya zachistka. See, Snegirev (1996).

²⁴ ‘Zametki Tsveta Khaki 4. Prikhod konstitutsii na derevenskuyu svad’bu’, Izvestiya, 17 March 1995.

²⁵ Interview with Subject B.

²⁶ Kislitsi is recalling events in Grozny five years before when he heard zachistka used for the first time.

²⁷ ‘Storonniki Dysaeva atakovali Grozny i deistvovali kak otkrovennyie banditi’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 11 March 1996.

²⁸ I derived this figure from a database search of 7,236 articles in 63 of Russia’s central newspapers run on the Eastview database of Russian Newspapers from 1999 to 2005. The search term was zachistk[a] from 1 January 1999 to 12 February 2005.

²⁹ Interview with Subject C.

³⁰ Interview with Subject B.

³¹ Interview with Subject B.

³² Interview with Subject B.

³³ Interview with Subject C.

³⁴ Anonymous Russian soldier, cited in Memorial (2001).

³⁵ ‘Chechnya: Bandity zhdyt podkremleniya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 23 May 2000.

³⁶ ‘Totalnye zachistki Generala Baranova’, Utro-Ru, 4 September 2000, available at (weblink no longer active): http://www.utro.ru/articles/ politics/2000/09/04/200009040320042039.shtml? 2000/09/04? 2000/09/04, accessed 11 September 2011. See also, Dmitrievskii et al. (2009, p. 82).

³⁷ Interview with Subject B.

³⁸ Interview with Subject B.

³⁹ ‘Totalnye zachistki Generala Baranova’, Utro-Ru, 4 September 2000, available at (weblink no longer active): http://www.utro.ru/articles/ politics/2000/09/04/200009040320042039.shtml? 2000/09/04? 2000/09/04, accessed 11 September 2011. See also, Dmitrievskii et al. (2009, p. 82).

⁴⁰ A Russian military base that houses the 42nd Motor Rifle Division is situated in Khankala, a small settlement to the east of the Chechen capital, Grozny.

⁴¹ Interview with Subject B.

⁴² Interview with Subject B. A BMP (Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty 1) is an infantry fighting vehicle.

⁴³ Interview with Subject B.

⁴⁴ Interview with Subject F.

⁴⁵ Interview with Subject C.

⁴⁶ I am using the Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell definition: ‘propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist’ (Jowett & O’Donnell 2007, p. 7). See also Dojcinovic (2012a, pp. 4–5).

⁴⁷ Interview with Subject 1.

⁴⁸ Interview with Subject 2.

⁴⁹ Interview with Subject 1.

⁵⁰ Interview with Subject 2.

⁵¹ Interview with Subject 3.

⁵² Interview with Subject 4.

⁵³ Interview with Subject 1.

⁵⁴ Interview with Subject 2.

⁵⁵ For discussion on eliminationist discourse, see Oberschall (2012, pp. 174–75).

⁵⁶ ‘Obstanovka v Severo-Kavkazskom regione na 25 octoberya’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 26 October 1999.

⁵⁷ ‘Putin Declares War on Terrorism’, Moscow News, 30 October 2002.

⁵⁸ See also, Article 19, Information Security Doctrine of the Russian Federation, 9 September 2000, available at: http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/ns-osndoc.nsf/1e5f0de28fe77fdcc32575d900298676/2deaa9ee15ddd24bc32575d9002c442b!OpenDocument, accessed 14 January 2014.

⁵⁹ Author’s interview with Stanislav Dmitrievskii, human rights activist, Connecticut, USA, 12 May 2013.

⁶⁰ ‘Neob’yavlennaya voina protiv moskvichei’, Izvestiya, 13 July 1996.

⁶¹ ‘Primer podaet Moskva: natsional’nyi chistki v rossiiskikh gorodakh’, Izvestiya, 28 May 1998; ‘Korichnevaya Rossiya’, Izvestiya, 9 June 1998.

⁶² ‘V borbe za pravoporadok ne dolzhni byt’ “svobody ruk”’, Izvestiya, 25 July 1996. See also, Arifdzhanov (1996).

⁶³ The papers chosen for this study include: state-owned: Izvestiya, Krasnaya Zvezda, Rossiiskaya Gazeta; independent: Trud and Komsomolskaya Pravda; and opposition: Novaya Gazeta and Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

⁶⁴ Interview with Subject 2.

⁶⁵ In the same interview, when asked who he was fighting against, the chief reconnaissance officer responded, ‘[w]ith those who don’t want to live in Russia by Russian laws, don’t want to follow our faith. Chechens are a nation of scums. Of course there are good people among them, but the majority are monsters. … Normal Chechens, those who are Russified, have already fled. And the entire infection is coming from the mountains. Who are we fighting now? Either dim-witted youngsters, pensioners that have grown up through the two wars. Or those who have already spilt so much blood that they have nowhere to go’ (Rechkalov 2003).

⁶⁶ ‘Prosecutor v Radislav Krstic’, International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia, Case No. ICTY. IT-98-33-T, August 2001, available at: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/krstic/tjug/en/krs-tj010802e.pdf, accessed 16 June 2016.

⁶⁷ Conversation with Predrag Dojcinovic, University of Connecticut, USA, 4 April 2012.

⁶⁸ Momcilo Krajisnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Transcript of Trial Proceedings, International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia, Case No. ICTY IT-00-39, 4 March 2005, p. 9905, available at: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/krajisnik/trans/en/050304IT.htm, accessed 4 May 2009.

⁶⁹ Slobodan Milosevic, Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia, Transcript of Trial Proceedings, International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia, Case No. ICTY IT-02-54, 31 October 2005, pp. 45946, 46121, available at: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/051101IT.htm, accessed 12 June 2010.

⁷⁰ See also, Wilson (2015, p. 133).

⁷¹ ‘John Langshaw Austin’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/austin-jl/, accessed 22 March 2015.

⁷² The most prominent military actors considered here are General Viktor Kazantsev (Commander of the Allied Group of Federal Forces in the North Caucasus), Vladimir Shamanov (Colonel General, Russian Commander of the Airborne Forces), Vladimir Moltenskoi (Colonel General, deputy chief of the Russian Land Forces) and Roman Shadrin (Colonel and Commander of the 503rd Tank Regiment).

⁷³ ‘Dlya soglasovaniya deistvii’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 15 January 2000.

⁷⁴ Interview with Avalu Aidamirov, a resident of the village of Chernorech’e, 6 July 2001. See, ‘Zachistka poselka Chernorech’e’, available at: http://www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/N-Caucas/misc/chernor.htm, accessed 10 August 2010.

⁷⁵ Interview with Subject D. Similar thinking lay behind the response of another officer of the Special Forces, ‘It’s just slang. Officially there is no term such as “cleansing” … [There were] no emotions, to be honest. It was just a standard task. Everyday work’ (interview with Subject C). ‘There was always fear’ said Subject E, ‘but at that moment, it was probably anxiety because there was work to do during a cleansing’. ‘It evokes no emotion in me whatsoever’, said Subject D. ‘It was a standard military or police operation that had such a banal name, there was nothing evil about it, it was just banal.’ For Subject D, it meant to ‘clean up the scum’.

⁷⁶ Interview with Subject A.

⁷⁷ Interview with Subject A. Subject B responded: ‘For the one retired officer who served with the ground forces for 20 years—“It’s likely some kind of military slang. … Well, the associations come close to “cleaning dirt from your hands”, “lice from your hair”, “cleaning out”—anything, even “cleaning under your nails” and so on. … Or to “clean up dirty rooms from cobwebs, bugs, mice”. I’m not linking the enemy to bugs or mice, but just when it comes to the linguistic side of this issue, these are my associations’ (interview with Subject B).

⁷⁸ Interview with Subject C.

⁷⁹ Interview with Subject E.

⁸⁰ Interview with Subject B.

⁸¹ Interview with Subject B.

⁸² Interview with Subject F. When asked how he could tell the difference between a fighter and a normal civilian, Subject E recalled, ‘With my eyes. We called their eyes “animal eyes”—they were really evil eyes, empty. There was one time when we found someone in one of these houses—he had a really murderous glare, hatred in his eyes. Some civilians were standing opposite and had despair in their eyes as if something was going to happen at that very moment’.

⁸³ Interview with Subject E.

⁸⁴ Interview with Subject C.

⁸⁵ Interview with Subject E.

⁸⁶ Interview with Subject B.

⁸⁷ Interview with Subject E.

⁸⁸ Interview with Subject A.