Propaganda Gives Military Pyrrhic Victory in Chechnya
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Moscow Times, 22 March 2000
Remember the old Soviet joke about Waterloo? While watching a parade on
Red Square, Napoleon sighs and says, "If I had tanks like that, I
wouldn't have lost the battle at Waterloo." Brezhnev, standing beside
him, answers, "And if you had newspapers like we have, no one would have
known you lost the battle at Waterloo."
Our political and military leaders are convinced you can win a war on
television. Every day, the television broadcasts the confident faces of
the generals, telling about grand victories. The majority of
enthusiastic reports about the war are written either in Moscow,
thousands of kilometers from the line of fire, or under the control of
military censors in Mozdok. There is evidence that TV "war" footage is
often filmed dozens of kilometers from the line of fire. Only
occasionally do you see flashes of the actual face of war in the
background: wrecked machinery by the side of the road, tormented
soldiers wandering in the mud.
The sameness of newspapers and television is striking. The very
journalists who five years ago were digging up stories, are today, with
a serious expression, repeating any nonsense thought up by military
propagandists - such as the Chechens themselves are releasing poisonous
gases over their own positions. Various journalists, having suddenly
lost their individual style, have started writing in the official jargon
of army political workers. One gets the impression that all these
articles are written somewhere in the same place. But there are
exceptions. General Shamanov, who on television speaks in telegraphic
commander-style, suddenly starts speaking in the language of the
Chekhovian intelligentsia on the pages of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, showing a
deep understanding of history, culture and morality.
Newspaper editors, induced by "patriotic" motives, refuse to print
anything other than enthusiastic reports about victories and flattering
panegyrics to the generals or acting President Vladimir Putin. The
general rule formulated by cynical journalists is this: When writing
about Putin, write as you would about someone who is dead - either
something good, or nothing at all. This is redolent of the Brezhnev
period: News is confined to reports about official business and
incomprehensible reports on victories. Pre-election scandals spice
things up a bit, but even those will soon end.
After losing the first Chechen war, the generals have decided that the
journalists are to blame. The Chechen fighters won the information war
of 1994-96, and the army leadership lost; that's an obvious fact. But
the generals have forgotten this: If the fighters were beaten in the
mountains, the sympathy of the Moscow intelligentsia wouldn't help the
Chechens.
Our military and political leaders think a victory like the one in
Kosovo will justify everything. But will there be victory? While the
media writes about the Chechens gassing themselves, symptoms of
self-poisoning propaganda are becoming more noticeable in the Russian
camp.
But the generals' protestations that during the 1994-96 war all the
press was against them do not jibe with reality. First, anti-military
reports began to appear only after the failure of the New Year's
storming of Grozny in 1994. Who hindered the generals from quickly
finishing off the enemy and "closing the topic" before anti-military
attitudes developed in the rear? Second, Channel 2, NTV, Moskovsky
Komsomolets and Izvestia took up an anti-war (and not "pro-Chechen")
position only when Channel 1 tried, through titanic efforts, to change
public perceptions. They brought Alexander Nevzorov on board (no matter
what you think of him, he is one of the most talented people in Russian
television). He was given the best time slot and a sizable budget. But
in the final analysis, this was a complete information defeat, for the
simple reason that there was more truth in the programs of NTV than on
Nevzorov's show.
Having watched television reports from Kosovo, our generals and
ministries understood at long last what they didn't have: Although the
Americans didn't have high-class PR, the State Department and Pentagon
were able to stem the flow of negative information from the zone of
conflict. From our generals' point of view, this was the main reason for
NATO's success. And now, for a few months our army has been conducting a
war in Chechnya with one goal: to present material for a powerful
propaganda campaign. Alas, not a single war has ever been won in this
fashion.
The story of Radio Liberty correspondent Andrei Babitsky has shown what
will happen to journalists who don't play the Kremlin's game. But in
this case, the authorities clearly didn't get the reaction they counted
on. More than a dozen major publications - from the liberal Segodnya to
the radical communist Sovetskaya Rossia - united in protest against
Babitsky's treatment in a special, jointly produced edition of Obshchaya
Gazeta.
It is said that the Russian people support the war in Chechnya. But
after you talk to the man in the street, it becomes clear that this
popular support is a bluff. Putin's rating is dubious. And the few
surveys of public opinion that seep through the pages of our newspapers
show that 42 to 46 percent of Russians are in favor of instituting talks
with the Chechens.
Our military and political leaders think a victory like the one in
Kosovo will justify everything. But will there be victory? While the
media writes about the Chechens gassing themselves, symptoms of
self-poisoning propaganda are becoming more noticeable in the Russian
camp.
How long can this continue? Optimists believe that propaganda is
all-powerful. No matter how bad things are in reality, the leadership
can, with the support of TV, successfully fool people ad infinitum. The
pessimists, on the other hand, insist that sooner or later the truth
will out. Then there will be an enormous scandal that will make the
military and information defeats of the first Chechen war seem like
child's play. After all, from 1994 to 1996 the press enjoyed a certain
authority, earned in covering the war in Chechnya for the support of the
leadership during the presidential elections - support for the very
leadership that started the war.
The Kremlin played that game successfully. Now it's another story. How
long the people can be fooled depends not only on events in Chechnya. If
the war were the only problem the leadership had, all would work out
fine. But the war is just a side effect of a general crisis in the
regime. And the crisis will grow for objective reasons. The 1993 model
of government and society we had in 1993 has run its course, so
explosions are inevitable.
In this situation, it is becoming very hard to maintain the "information
positions." Every propaganda machine has its limits. Pushing false
information now is having an opposite effect. Military censorship isn't
helping. Today the "Ministry of Truth" is working at maximum capacity.
Sooner or later the money will run out - both for the war and for
propaganda (lies are more expensive than cannons). When the winter fog
lifts in the mountains of Chechnya and the snow melts from Moscow
political circles, they'll find that virtual victory can't hide real
defeat. But a military failure will turn into a propaganda catastrophe.
Say what you will, the sword is more powerful than the pen - even the
most poisonous.
Copyright 2000 The Moscow Times
|
