By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW -- With a shower of paint bombs, rocks, eggs and bottles,
thousands of demonstrators outside the US embassy here on March 25 expressed
outrage at the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
Next morning, an estimated 5000 people demonstrated outside the British
embassy. The protesters included large numbers of students, as well as
factory workers organised by the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions.
As the day wore on, the US embassy again became the target of protest.
As many as 7000 people gathered, chanting and flinging projectiles. Press
reports noted the unusual range of people taking part -- from skinheads
and teenage football fans to office workers and pensioners.
From around Russia came news of further demonstrations. “Yesterday Iraq,
Today Serbia, Tomorrow Russia”, read a placard in St Petersburg. Nationalist
organisations signed up military veterans to defend Yugoslavia.
According to survey findings, no fewer than 93% of Russians oppose NATO's
bombing of Yugoslavia, where the majority Serb population have traditional
ties with Russia. Sensing the popular mood, Russia's state leaders have
tuned in to it -- at least rhetorically.
As the first reports of the bombing came in, President Boris Yeltsin
hinted that Russia might respond with measures “of a military character”.
In an interview on March 27, foreign minister Igor Ivanov accused NATO
of committing “genocide” against the Yugoslav people, and suggested that
the alliance answer for its actions before the UN war crimes tribunal.
For anyone who remembers the mood of Russian leaders -- and of a good
part of the population -- in the early 1990s, the scenes of the past days
and weeks have been brimful of irony. Seven or eight years ago, so far
as Yeltsin and many of his followers were concerned, the Western powers
could do no wrong.
But faith in the West has slid steadily since. As the bombs rain on
Yugoslavia, the last shreds of belief in Western good will are being replaced
by cynicism.
In the Russian press, the rationalisations offered by Western leaders
to explain the bombing campaign are treated with open scorn. So the NATO
powers claim to have gone to war from a commitment to defend the rights
of the Kosovar population in Yugoslavia? “There is an unquestionable double
standard”, the Moscow paper Novye Izvestia observed on March 26, “if one
recalls how harshly Turkey, a NATO member, deals with the Kurds.”
The mood of hostility to the West is especially marked in the military.
“Most Russian military personnel are expressing direct readiness for armed
solidarity with the Serbs”, the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported
on March 27. “The US and NATO are now associated exclusively with the image
of the enemy.”
It is not only among military officers that suspicions of NATO have
grown stronger in the past few years.
Why, Russians often ask themselves, has the NATO alliance even been
preserved, now that the Cold War has ended?
For a decade, liberal ideologues have tried to suppress the instinct
of many Russians to view political questions in terms of class. But as
the bombs and missiles have pounded Yugoslavia, even Russian liberals have
been admitting that NATO is a military club of the rich, an armed alliance
for enforcing the interests of the “haves” of North America and Europe
against the “have-nots”.
As citizens of what is now the great “have-not” of Europe, Russians
have been quick to note that the bombing of Yugoslavia also carries a powerful
message for them. If the Russian state should dare to pursue its interests
in ways not to the West's liking, the message says, the consequences for
Russia could be devastating.
These are valid reasons for the Russian masses to fling beer bottles,
including full ones, at the windows of the US embassy. The Russian elite
have been flinging epithets, but after years of implementing Western economic
prescriptions, the Russian government can now come up with little in the
way of concrete action to keep NATO in check.
When news of the bombing broke, Russian representatives in the United
Nations Security Council moved a resolution demanding an immediate halt
to the air strikes. The resolution, predictably, was heavily defeated.
Russian military collaboration with NATO has now been frozen, and ratification
by Russia of the START-2 nuclear arms reduction treaty has been postponed.
The effect of these moves on the NATO governments, however, has been undetectable.
Meanwhile, calls for Russia to provide military aid to Yugoslavia have
been quietly pushed aside by the authorities as impractical and dangerous.
The failure of Russian leaders to make any impact on NATO is not, however,
simply a reflection of Russia's drastically reduced influence in the world.
The will is not there either.
The leaders' expressions of outrage at the bombing of Yugoslavia have
been accompanied by assurances that no big changes in Moscow's orientation
to the West are desired or contemplated.
In a dramatic gesture on March 23, Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov
called off a trip to the US after being denied guarantees that air strikes
would not begin while he was there. Other members of his delegation, however,
made their way to Washington, and while bombs fell on Belgrade, most of
the meetings planned for Primakov's trip took place.
A meeting between Primakov and International Monetary Fund chief Michel
Camdessus, which had been due to take place in the US, was quickly relocated
to Moscow. The Russian government was seeking IMF credits of as much as
US$4.8 billion, needed to forestall a default on foreign debt payments.
Nothing the NATO powers might do in the Balkans, it became clear, would
be allowed to prejudice these negotiations.
It might be argued that in stating emphatic opposition to NATO's attacks
on Yugoslavia, Primakov and the Russian elite have passed an important
test. But given the popular mood, they could not have done otherwise. If
their statements are analysed, it becomes clear that the Russian rulers
have dealt with the imperialist bombers much more kindly than they might
have done.
A striking feature of the rhetoric issuing from Moscow -- both from
official spokespeople and major newspapers -- is the whitewash of the Yugoslav
government and its refusal to address the real history and dynamics of
the situation in Kosova. According to Novye Izvestia on March 26, Yugoslavia
has been under attack for “solving strictly internal problems”.
To foreign minister Igor Ivanov, quoted in the Moscow press, the Kosova
Liberation Army consists simply of “Albanian terrorists” and “Muslim extremists”.
Meanwhile, all but a few dismissive references to Serbian atrocities against
the Kosovars have been expunged from the Russian media.
The Russian elite is quite happy to underline its various differences
with the West by permitting and even encouraging chauvinist fervour. But
promoting a serious understanding of national rights and self-determination
-- something which would really give NATO problems -- is not its
line.
