Alexander Litvinenko

by Blowing Up Russia (lit)

  And second, to answer your question about the book s sources. In the actual editions - both in English and Russian, as everyone noticed - the sources were not identified. This was done deliberately. I did not wish to make it any easier for the FSB to criticize the book. Because when you identify a source, you give people the option of criticizing not the book itself - and arguing not with the facts presented in it - but with the sources. In other words, as a professional historian, I knew that this book would be much more difficult to argue with if it contained no sources.

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  However, at the press conference on March 5, all the reporters who received an English edition of the book were also given a CD. And this CD contained not merely the sources, but the entire factual database on the basis of which the book had been written. And we did this because we wanted all reporters who had the time and interest to explore this issue to see that not one sentence in the book had been made up or pulled out of a hat, that every single word in this book, every single conclusion, had a source, was based on factual materials, on the basis of which I and Alexander Litvinenko arrived at various conclusions.

  Lev Roytman: Thank you, Yuri Georgievich. Now, very briefly, about you. You are a historian - American or Russian, it is hard to say which. You defended a doctoral dissertation in 1993 at the Academic Institute in Moscow. Even prior to this, your books and collections of documents edited by you had been published in America. These include The Bolsheviks and the Left SR s, which came out in Paris; Towards a History of Our Isolation (London, 1988); The Failure of the World Revolution (also in London in 1991, and then in Moscow in 1992). And your last book is Big Bosses. In other words, your scholarly reputation is, in essence, impeccable. This is to attest to your scholarly integrity, so to speak.

  Now a question for our guests in Moscow. Alexander Vladimirovich Cherkasov, Board Member of the Memorial Society and Coordinator of its Human Rights Center (specifically, the program Hot Spots ). You have lived and worked in Chechnya during the first and now the second war. During my recent stay in Moscow, when you and I met, you were very critical of Litvinenko s and Felshtinsky s book. That was right when we were broadcasting our programs about it, and you were even against these programs.

  Your position: first of all, what was the reason for it? (I didn t want to hear your position at the time because, if I may speak as a reporter, I wanted you to stay hot.) That s the first thing: your position. And second, maybe your position has changed after all?

  Alexander Cherkasov: You know, now that I ve had an opportunity to become familiar with the entire contents of the book, I can say that it s uneven. It has fragments, chapters, that contain references to sources (or at least references to sources that have now been published). For example, the part about the organization of the bombings in Moscow at the end of 1994. Novaya Gazeta has now published the relevant materials as documents from Moscow municipal court hearings. In other words, they can be double-checked. Or the part about Ryazan, which is quite simply an excellent compilation of materials about the failed bombing attempt.

  But the problem is that Novaya Gazeta initially made three chapters of the book available to the Russian reader: a chapter about the Chechen war, a chapter about the bombing in Ryazan, and a chapter about other episodes, other bombings, based on sources that cannot be verified, that we have no opportunity to verify.

  The events of the first Chechen war actually happen to be reasonably well-known to my colleagues and, to some degree, to me as well. And precisely in this chapter the authors repeatedly stretch the facts and give strained interpretations in order to prove their

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  premise. It s clear that Mr. Felshtinsky didn t make it all up, that he got it from certain sources. Evidently, he used them rather uncritically.

  Sometimes this even places my colleagues, for example, in a false position. It turns out they didn t know what they were doing in Budyonnovsk. It will soon be seven years since the events in Budyonnovsk. The book gives one account of what happened there.

  And since we can t analyze the whole book now, it would be useful to show on the basis of certain episodes that other accounts are, on the whole, possible.

  Let me correct myself. Obviously, the book is necessary. It has to be read - just as many other books have to be read - and then argued with. But the arguing has to start right now, in order to separate the truly provable and proven elements from the uncritical repetition of accounts circulating in the press, in Russia or abroad.

  Lev Roytman: Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov, member of the Government Duma, Chairman of the Memorial Society. Sergei Adamovich, during the first Chechen war you were the head of the so-called Kovalyov group. This was a commission of observers from human rights organizations in the zone of military operations in Chechnya. You, too, were in Budyonnovsk (since we re talking about Basaev, about the capture of the hospital in Budyonnovsk). June 14 is the anniversary of this event, which in my view was a terrorist attack, pure and simple. Now you are the chair of the Public Commission investigating the circumstances of the fall 1999 bombings in the cities of Russia, which is the main subject of Alexander Litvinenko s and Yuri Felshtinsky s book The FSB Blows Up Russia.

  Question: The facts presented in this book - despite the fact that not all of them are documented (we ve heard the author, Yuri Felshtinsky, give his reasons for not documenting all of them) - however that may be, are these facts of use to you in your investigation?

  Sergei Kovalyov: You see, we undoubtedly need the book. It is more than useful. It is simply indispensable. Nonetheless, I completely agree with the comments made by Cherkasov.

  Let us take Budyonnovsk again, for example. This is just one episode, but, incidentally, an episode that I would consider highly representative. The authors hypothesis is as follows. A bribe was received in return for an agreed-upon truce, a bribe in the millions.

  The Chechens were, roughly speaking, abandoned, the money was pocketed, and the truce was buried. And then Dudaev orders Basaev to organize an attack, which is either supposed to lead to peace or to bring the money back. This is the premise and it is, shall we say, incredibly naive. And then the subsequent events in Budyonnovsk are narrated as follows. The special forces have almost taken over the hospital, Basaev s fighters are just about to be destroyed, and all of a sudden Chernomyrdin unexpectedly remembers that it s important to stick to the deal, wants to re-establish good faith on the part of Moscow, and issues orders to halt the operation.

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  Nothing like this ever happened. I don t know if any money was exchanged. That s something I don t know about. It s hard to believe that it was, but I can t prove anything.

  But what I know for sure is that no Chernomyrdin ever stopped an OMON attack. The attack was repulsed, the attack was checked, the hospital wasn t captured, the main victims were the hostages, not the rebels. And that s the moment when we finally managed to reach Gaidar. Gaidar entered into negotiations with Chernomyrdin, and Chernomyrdin directed me to form a delegation for talks with Basaev, which is what happened. As far as the negotiations are concerned - which took place in parallel between Volsky on one side and Imayev on the other (not just them alone, of course) - these official negotiations had actually already begun when our buses were leaving Budyonnovsk.

  Lev Roytman: Thank you, Sergei Adamovich. So you cast doubt on Yuri Felshtinsky s and Alexander Litvinenko s account. Of course, we will ask Yuri Felshtinsky to state his own position in a moment.

  I want to make a comment about its being hard to believe. It s also hard to believe that the FSB blew up the buildings in Russia. On this count, very many people agree with the sentiments and logic of the following statement by Putin. He literally screamed: What?

  Blew up their own buildings? He was asked the question by a reporter. Well, you know, that s nonsense, sheer absurdity. There are no people in the Russian security services who would be capable of such a crime against
their own people. Even making such a suggestion is amoral and in essence nothing but part of an information war against Russia.

  So this suggestion, which is the core of Felshtinsky s and Litvinenko s book, is one that many people also find unpalatable. And nonetheless, you are investigating these circumstances, Sergei Adamovich. Hard to believe, yet what if that s what really happened?

  Yuri Felshtinsky: First, I would like to emphasize that the bulk of the book The FSB Blows Up Russia isn t concerned with the events in Budyonnovsk, but with events that are more important for this book, namely, the history of the bombings in Moscow and Ryazan.

  Second, I don t want to actually focus our whole discussion on a single episode, regardless of how accurate or inaccurate it might be in the opinion of the participants of the roundtable.

  Third, even in the Budyonnovsk incident itself, what we wanted to call attention to was not the history, which everyone knows, but to one episode in this complex history, which no one knows about. Namely, the bribes that were being made at that point. As for Sergei Adamovich s statement that it is doubtful that all this was done for money, I would put it somewhat differently: it is absolutely clear that everything that was done in Russian politics during this period was done exclusively for money, and nothing was ever done for free. So on this score, of course, there is something to argue about.

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  But I repeat that, in the interests of our listeners, I would still like to shift our discussion from the minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour sorting out of what happened in Budyonnovsk (the history of which, by the way, still hasn t been fully written - I think there s still a lot of new and interesting information that we ll probably learn some day), and to shift all of us to the main topic of the book, namely, the bombings in Russia in September 1999.

  Lev Roytman: Thank you, Yuri Georgievich. I completely agree with you, and as the host I want to conclude our analysis of the Budyonnovsk episode here. This episode is, in fact, hardly central to your book, and there probably wouldn t have been any book if it was only about this episode.

  Oleg Petrovich Orlov - Memorial Society Board Member, Chair of the Human Rights Center (Director of Hot Spots, the same program). You were part of the Kovalyov group, worked in Chechnya during both the first and second wars. In your view, does the basic premise of the book The FSB Blows Up Russia merit public attention?

  Oleg Orlov: Undoubtedly. Discussion of these issues, of the book s premise, is absolutely necessary and very useful. My opinion of this book is another matter. I d say that my attitude is considerably more critical than that of my colleagues.

  You see, we are told: Let s leave aside the events of the first war, the book is about something different; you re focusing on the details, while the book is about the bombings. But in the part of the book that deals with the bombings in Moscow, I cannot check the credibility of the facts, especially since the book contains no precise references (I m not familiar with the CD). But in the part that deals with the first war - let s leave Budyonnovsk aside - many other episodes in the war are described imprecisely, to put it mildly. Or not so much imprecisely, as from an angle that s convenient for the basic interpretation of the events that runs through the entire book. And when I see such an approach, such a selection of facts, in the part of the book that s devoted to the first Chechen war, then I really do begin to have doubts about the painstaking precision and selection of facts in the other parts of the book.

  It is precisely this imprecision, precisely this, shall we say, looseness in the description of the facts (Budyonnovsk is only one striking example, there are others), that practically makes this book worthless. And therefore, the very important discussion surrounding these questions - who blew up the buildings? were the security services involved in the bombings? - the level of this discussion is lowered, unfortunately, when the discussion is built around this book.

  Lev Roytman: Thank you, Oleg Petrovich. For clarity, for our listeners sake, let me quote from The FSB Blows Up Russia to illustrate the gist and orientation of the argument presented in the book: If during the first Chechen war of 1994-1996, the state security apparatus tried to prevent Russia from developing in a liberal democratic direction, then the political challenges of the second war were far more serious: to

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  provoke Russia to start a war in Chechnya, and in the ensuing confusion, to seize power in Russia during the upcoming 2000 presidential elections. The honor of instigating this war fell to the new director of the FSB, Colonel General Patrushev.

  Yuri Felshtinsky: Frankly, it would be immodest of me, as the author, to propose that the whole discussion of the September 1999 bombings should be organized around my own book. Please, let s put the book back on the shelf and simply talk about this topic, regardless of what s written in the book. The corpses are not virtual but real. With the corpses, there is no mistake - regardless of how the events are described or who is describing them.

  We still have no answer to the question: who is responsible for these corpses? And if it s hard to conceive, as President Putin says, that Russian officers blew up their own buildings, with their own living citizens, then I think it s very easy to conceive that Russian officers are murdering civilians in Chechnya, and specifically not just Chechen civilians, but Russian ones as well. I think it s very easy to conceive that these buildings were not blown up by Chechens, since there s no evidence whatsoever to show that they were blown up by Chechens.

  It seems to me that we are constantly narrowing down our discussion. We don t want to talk about the bombings, because the facts presented in the book might be convincing, but if we compare them to the first chapter about the events in Chechnya, then those parts of the book aren t very convincing, which means the whole book isn t very convincing, so in that case let s keep quiet and not talk about the bombings& In the end, it seems to me that what we re really interested in is not how skillfully Litvinenko and Felshtinsky presented their account. What we re really interested in is the question of who actually blew up the buildings in Russia in September 1999 and why did they do it. And I believe that we should concentrate on precisely this question. And for some reason, until we wrote this book, and until the French reporters with funding from Berezovsky made the documentary, this was a question that no one talked about.

  Lev Roytman: Thank you, Yuri Georgievich. That is not entirely correct, since even before the documentary (you actually describe this in your book, by the way) Duma Deputies Shchekochikhin and Ivanenko tried to file a parliamentary inquiry request with the General Prosecutor about this issue, about the circumstances surrounding the events in Ryazan. It is true, however, that their attempts to convince the Duma were fruitless.

  And as a result - although, only after the documentary and after your book - a Public Commission was formed to investigate the bombings in the cities of Russia in the fall of 1999, whose head is Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov.

  Sergei Adamovich, are you able to form some basic picture of the events? We are talking about an investigation, after all, and the work of an investigation consists precisely in checking different accounts. What is your account of the bombings, the account that you are checking?

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  Sergei Kovalyov: If we re talking about the Commission that we created, I d only like to say that the creation of this Public Commission, with the participation of a large number of deputies, was preceded by another in a series of attempts to create a parliamentary commission. This attempt - as is the norm in our country, or in our Duma at any rate - crashed spectacularly. Although I should point out that quite a large number of deputies voted in favor of it - 180 people, quite a bit.

  What are the goals of our Commission, what account of the events are we investigating?

  We re examining all existing accounts of the events. As for the proposition that the security services took part in these bombings, that they organized them& It s frightening for me to believe this
theory, but that doesn t mean we re rejecting it.

  I would put it this way: There is no credible proof for a Chechen trail (there are very serious doubts that the Chechens could have done this). By the same token, there are no irrefutable proofs of the Kremlin scenario. There are logical arguments to be made against both of these accounts.

  Could I say for certain that one of them will turn out to be false? Could I say for certain, for example, that the security services had nothing to do with it? No, I could not, not under any circumstances. Our Commission s task is to obtain credible facts.

  Lev Roytman: You couldn t swear to it, but President Putin could. One would imagine that this isn t particularly conducive to your Commission s work. Am I mistaken?

  Sergei Kovalyov: Generally speaking, given the circumstances, the authorities should be more interested than anyone in a thorough and objective investigation of these monstrous crimes, since all suspicions fall on them. Therefore, one would very much like to hope that the authorities will facilitate our Commission s work in various ways. Unfortunately, so far this has not happened.