Photo: Dmitry Korotaev/Kommersant
Chechnya set a terrible trip for Putin.
Just as soon as the Kremlin issued an ultimatum to NATO and demanded to redistribute the world, as in Yalta, it turned out that right on the territory of Russia you can take sick women hostage and publicly promise to cut off their heads. And our state, which was about to conquer Ukraine in 48 hours, cannot and does not want to do anything with these Russians, and only screams: “I see nothing, I hear nothing!”
Well, yes. To blame Kadyrov is not for you to bomb Florida. Florida is easier.
This shyness of the Russian state, which is not the first time, is embarrassing in this case, not only liberals, oppositionists and other “enemies” who are imprisoned for tweets. Videos about beheadings violated the unspoken agreement between society and Chechnya: you are there, in Chechnya, do what you want, this only concerns human rights activists, and Russia is another matter. And here, rapidly impoverished people were also shown how a woman without slippers was being dragged from Nizhny Novgorod to Chechnya. In this situation, everyone will think: “What will happen if they come to my house tomorrow? Will they take my business? Will they declare a blood feud on me and promise to cut off my head if I don't share it? What will the police say? «Deal»? What will Peskov say? «I don't understand Chechen»?
Have you thought why Russian oligarchs have all these powerful defensive fortifications in their offices? Against riot police? He doesn't care. Against the public? These won't be released anyway.
Yeah, you got it right. That's what they're worth. And for a long time.
In this sense, Ilya Yashin very accurately calculated that the one who now challenged Kadyrov, while Putin is in Beijing, is the contender for power. Few people in Russia want to live according to adat and Sharia, so that anyone can be beheaded or their business taken away. The main thing here is to survive by throwing such a challenge.
One important caveat must be made: a public promise to cut off heads in no way contradicts spiritual braces and punishments for bare buttocks against the backdrop of a temple. On the contrary, this is the quintessence of braces. Staples are just for the very society where, at the sight of naked buttocks, they are dragged to the fire, and their heads are cut off exactly what is public. There is only one problem. And it lies in the fact that one authority with a monopoly on violence should be responsible for both the buttocks and the heads.
And when cases for bare buttocks are initiated by the Investigative Committee, and they promise to cut off their heads in Chechnya, and the all-powerful Investigative Committee does not notice this with all its might, it turns out that this state does not have any monopoly on violence. And if we take into account that earlier this state itself diligently eliminated all other reasons for its existence, defiantly and publicly trampling into the mud the concepts of law, justice, equality before the law and other spiritless ideas of the hated West, then of all the bonds, it has only one monopoly left. to violence.
And suddenly it turned out that she was not there either.
Modern countries are organized differently. Dictatorships have a vertical of power. In China, Xi Jinping appoints governors, and it is understandable that the governor of Heilongjiang province cannot conduct independent foreign policy or start a war.
There is another model — when regions enjoy huge autonomy, as in the United States, and Oregon laws do not work in Wisconsin. But at the same time, both are subject to federal laws, and it cannot be that the governor of Oregon kidnapped the sick mother of his political enemy, and then his official representative began to explain about severed heads.
Obviously, neither one nor the other modern model of relations between Moscow and Grozny and Kadyrov correspond.
We will have to recall the older models. When the government was rougher, but weaker. For example, medieval Europe of the XII century, when the French king was formally the lord of the Duke of Normandy. But in fact, the Duke of Normandy owned more French territory than the French king himself, and at the same time he was the king of England.
By the way, let me remind you how the Norman dukes got this very Normandy. They plundered it and conquered it. And the then King of France, Charles the Simple, not being able to win this war, simply granted Normandy to the leader of the Vikings named Rollo.
At the same time, Rollo was supposed to bring homage to the king. According to legend, the newly-made duke was told that for this he must kiss Charles the Simple on the foot. The obedient vassal bent down, took the standing king by the leg, lifted it, knocking the king on his back, and immediately kissed him.
Reminds me of nothing, huh?
But, of course, a typical example is the Roman Empire, which collapsed not at all because the barbarians conquered it, but because they faithfully served it. and the Ardaburians invariably claimed to be loyal servants of the emperor for whom they would lay down their lives, and were given absolute control either over the emperor himself or over the province they had just conquered and devastated. Kadyrov is such a magister militum of the Caucasus, just as Alaric was the magister militum of Epirus.
Disintegrating empires tend to lie. They understood that they could not win in a real war, and therefore they preferred to lie.
They usually could not win the war for two reasons.
Firstly, their armies existed in order to steal money for military expenses. The commander received a salary for a thousand soldiers, but he actually had a hundred, and stole all the rest. As for the barbarian army, despite its incomparably smaller numbers, it earned money by war. This was the only way to social growth and good earnings in the barbarian outskirts.