After Dzasokhov’s departure to Moscow Taymuraz Mamsurov becomes a front man (in rear of photo).
Photo: Valery Melnikov
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The Kremlin’s Figure
// “If Dzasokhov Would Step Over His Price and Come to the People, They Would Calm Down”
On June 7 the president of Northern Osetia, Alexander Dzasokhov resigned. The authorities did everything so this resignation would not be connected to Beslan. But the plan didn’t work because even after nine months that passed since the tragedy in Northern Osetia everything there is connected with Beslan.
The day after Dzasokhov’s resignation the mourning women dressed in black gathered in the square in front of the parliament. The mothers who lost their children demanded the firing of all of Dzasokhov’s team, not just the president. The women were sitting there since June 7 when they started a three-day hunger strike against Dzasokhov and his successor Taymuraz Mamsurov, former speaker of the Northern Osetian parliament. The sun was scorching and the women were wearing thick clothes. The most elderly got sick. They called for an ambulance. The ambulance did not show up.
“If she will die now, they will tell us that it is our fault,” Marina Tsoi, the mother of a 13-year-old girl who died in Beslan School No. 1, told me.
“Everybody thinks we are guilty anyway just because we don’t forget this tragedy and we don’t let the politicians do their thing,” said another woman, Ella Kesaeva, whose daughter survived the Beslan tragedy, but two nephews and son-in-law perished. “They are offending us. They are accusing of us being paid to come here. They have enough consciousness to do so. They all have to go after Beslan! But they only got rid of Dzasokhov. They put another person in just like him. They don’t care about us. For instance they came out yesterday – Kozak (Dmitry Kozak, the president’s envoy in the South Federal District), Dzasokhov and Mamsurov, and they didn’t even approach us. Did you see how angry Kozak looked when he saw us? When he was in Cherkessk, he was talking two days straight with the people when they seized the government house. And we didn’t seize anything. We’re just standing here. And nobody needs us.”
Everybody knew what these women wanted. They were saying that they don’t want Mamsurov to be the new president of the republic. They were saying the whole government needs to resign. But in reality, they wanted a different thing.
“Here there are only women and they are far from politics,” said Marina. “We never were interested in politics, but when all this happened, people wanted attention, compassion and nobody came to them and gave them that. Instead, they received compensation. Do you think anybody touched this money? I am a teacher. I lived with my child only on my salary. And I was happy. No compensation can return me to that life. And it looks like nobody can understand that. We were waiting that our leaders would come to us and say forgive us. They would say they are with us. But they never came out and they never said a word. If Dzasokhov would step over his pride and come to us, sit down with us and talk, then the women would calm down. But he didn’t do that. And Mamsurov didn’t do it either.”
“Marina, but Mamsurov suffered himself,” I argued (Mamsurov is from Beslan himself and his daughter and son were wounded in the school. His daughter is still in one of the Moscow hospitals.”
“But you see that’s the thing. He was with us all that time. He knew what we suffered. Knew what we all need. He’s seen all this from the inside—and he didn’t make the step toward us. When Dzasokhov did not apologize everybody waited for Mamsurov to do that for him. That he would say, ‘I am the same like you are. I am feeling the same pain. I am with you. And I will protect you.’ And that’s it. That’s all he needed to say. And a lot of people cannot forgive him for his silence. Mamsurov is afraid that if he will come out one time then he will be exploited for that all the time. He won’t be. I know that for sure. These women need to know that the president is with them. But our state disregards our needs.”
Ella Kesaeva thinks that if everyone keeps silent the authorities will never change and the Beslan tragedy might happen again:
“Why does Russia conduct such policy? If we are an outpost of Russia in the Caucuses as they constantly tell us, then why is there such a disregard? Why would they appoint a man without asking us? We are tired of being patient. Sooner or later we will start to look for a way out. Yes, we do have a different mentality than Cherkes. We will not seize the government house. And everybody is using that. But we will not be sitting with our hands folded.”
Emma Tagaeva, who lost all her family at the school—husband and two sons—agrees with Kesaeva:
“We were sitting at home and raising our children until the moment when these dirty politics intruded in our lives. Now we will not be silent. Even just for the reason so we will not be shameful in front of ourselves. I feel like I finally did something honest. I feel like I spat in their faces!”
Finally the ambulance arrived. The woman who got sick received a shot and was taken to the hospital. Marina told me that a majority of the Beslan mothers are sick.
“With what?”
“It is something that doctors cannot cure,” answered Marina. “The doctors are curing diseases, but not the souls.”
I remembered how on the last court hearings of the terrorist Nurpasha Kulaev Marina said that he should not be prosecuted but rather be a witness. Other women were saying they were ready to forgive him if he would tell the truth. After that there were talks in Osetia that Beslan mothers stopped seeing reality in an adequate way. I asked Marina why she forgave the terrorist but did not forgive President Dzasokhov. She said she forgave him, too.
“Not everybody understood me,” said Marina. “Somebody judged me. But it’s my business to forgive or not and I forgave. And I felt better. Dzasokhov left and a lot of people don’t accuse him anymore, but he left with pain and if Mamsurov will become president today with the same burden on his soul, it would not lead to anything good.”
Beslan residents are upset, not only with Dzasokhov and Mamsurov.
“When Putin arrived to Beslan the night after the storm of the school,” says Marina, I was really offended. “Why did he come in the night and only for an hour and secretly? What was he afraid of? He should come in the daytime and openly and come out to people and say, ‘I am the head of this state and I could not save your children. Forgive me.’ He should take all the moral responsibility because the terrorist didn’t come here for us. They came to challenge the president. That was theirs and the president’s business. For this business we lost our children. And he didn’t say anything to us! After that, you know, a lot of people started to really dislike him. From now on, everything that Putin does, everything in the country, is being compared with Beslan. When the TV tower in Ostankino caught on fire, Putin went there right away. But he came to Beslan only three days after. Is the TV tower more important? Are we subhumans? How can we live after that in this country?”
“When the people were dying in Chechnya we didn’t do anything. The Chechen children were killed by the thousands and we didn’t come out with protests. We kept our mouth shut,” said one of the women. “And when it happened in our own house, we understood that we had to speak much earlier. We had to scream against that war.”
“That was a slick move. All the hands were pointing at Dzasokhov.”
In the government house, somebody was packing and somebody was getting ready for a new position. The new head of the republic, Taymuraz Mamsurov was still working in his old office while the president’s office was still empty. Fatima Khabalova, head of the Information Analytic Department of the local parliament, a bright an energetic woman, talked to me like a principal with a school girl. She was criticizing me for the Kommersant article published that day.
“What right do you have in your 28 years to tell Dzasokhov to ask his forgiveness from the people or not?! Why do you think Dzasokhov had to talk without the paper? Does Clinton never use a paper?”
“I wasn’t really against him reading the paper. I was just hoping that he would say at least a couple phrases himself. For instance, ‘People I’m leaving. Forgive me if I am guilty.’”
“Do you understand that it’s a totally different political mindset? It is not common in this mindset to so! You cannot make a person to tell something is not natural for him. He is upset more than all of us, but he cannot talk about it. And it’s dishonest accuse him of something he didn’t do in Beslan. What could he do?!”
“But he is the president. People say why elect a president if he cannot defend his own people.”
“Did you ever read the federal law of about terrorism? The regional leader his helpless! He has no subordinates. All the power is immediately transferred to the hands of law enforcement and FSB. At first I was shocked as well—people were calling and saying how could this thing happen that the president could not do anything? But then I sat down and read the documents and understood that he could not do anything.”
“Dzasokhov left. Mamsurov is from Beslan himself. His children also suffered. But part of the Beslan mothers is against him. How did that happen? Why would he not want to come out and talk to them?”
“There were a lot of people coming out there,” said Fatima. “I was there myself. But they don’t listen to anything. It seems to me that somebody masterfully is using their grief.”
“They just want somebody to ask forgiveness from them.”
“But who has to ask forgiveness? Mamsurov? Do you know that his children are already telling him for nine months about Beslan. Everyday he hears that. He still cannot get over it. Do you know what it means when they tell you they can take your children out of school, but others will stay? Ruslan Aushev offered him that. But he refused, because Osetian men do not do that. He was standing and looking at this school. He was ready to go there in the hail of bullets and die in there. But they told him that he cannot do that. His daughter is still in a grave condition. So why should he ask forgiveness? He is a victim as well. And why should Dzasokhov ask forgiveness as well? Do you know what he lived through?! Can you imagine seeing the tragedy and not being able to change anything. He is 70 years old. And he lived through that. You think he has nerves of steel? Beslan hit him so hard that he barely survived. He might not have any strength left to come out to these women.”
I am walking in the quiet government house. I see an open door of the office where there is a person who is close to the former president. I know him well. He gathers his papers and copies some papers off the computer. He is very upset, but not for himself, but for his chief who left not in the way he should leave:
“Dzasokhov is a statesman all the way to the bones. And that was his downfall. He never would admit that he wanted to resign right after Beslan. And Putin didn’t let him. And all the government knows about that. Dzasokhov even prepared the resignation papers. But Putin didn’t let him. He stayed after the conversation with Putin. Putin told him ‘If you leave, you will let us all down and will show that the terrorist one.’ And Dzasokhov who was crashed and buried by Beslan went with Putin’s word and he paid for it. The state and the president made a scapegoat out of him. Putin did not let him decide anything in Beslan and did not let him resign right after Beslan, thus making him the hostage of the situation. That was a slick move. All the hands were pointing out Dzasokhov. The Kremlin understood the hatred of the Beslan residents were looking for a way out. They needed culprits. And these culprits are Putin and those generals who were commanding in here. If Dzasokhov would resign the Beslan residents would quickly find a culprit. So Dzasokhov became a scapegoat. The president betrayed Dzasokhov after he said he never asked the Osetian president to stay in power.”
Another government official told me that no other president in the history of Russia was leaving like Dzasokhov, who really didn’t deserve that:
“He was in Beslan all the time, all three days. He was climbing the roofs and he is 70 years old to see what is going on. We have seen it with our own eyes. So what’s his fault? Was Dzasokhov the on who started the war in Chechnya? No Dzasokhov was the person trying to find a compromise with the neighbors. He was trying to protect the republic from terrorism. Was he able to? No. But is it his fault? No. It was Dzasokhov who offered buses and escape routes to the terrorists. Did General Pan’kov or General Proniechev go to the Beslan mothers three times a day? Dzasokhov called Maskhadov and Zakaev, offering everything possible to save the people. Everybody was expecting a miracle from him but he was not a magician. He just believed Putin. He believed the Russian president knows what to do and the president of Russian betrayed him.”
I returned to the square. It’s already evening. The tired mothers are sitting with their heads in their hands. The passersby stop and stand several minutes silently next to them. None of the republic’s leaders came out to the square this day. The women are still criticizing them. Marina Tsoi says that from now on these women in Northern Osetia will be the foundation for the opposition. “In the country there is a horrible regime that kills people. This regime doesn’t protect us. We are victims of the regime and somebody has to talk about it and fight with it.” And I’m thinking that if a nine-month delay with Dzasokhov’s resignation was nothing more than a slick trick of the Russian authorities, it didn’t work that well.
Olga Allenova
All the Article in Russian as of June 13, 2005
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