Legitimate? By whose standards? Who recognized that "government" beside a bunch of taliban thugs who are an international pariah themselves?
>
>The iron power of marxist analysis allows us to debunk such petty bourgeois
>reformist illusions. Where would we or the Chechens be without it?
The iron power of marxist analysis asks us to provide scientific (= supported by material evidence) explanations instead of speculations. So you did not really answer my question about the factual basis of Kagartlitsky's claims, but instead you changed the subject.
>The Gazette (Montreal), October 26, 1999, FINAL
>
>Who's calling the shots?: Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in
>Afghanistan and Pakistan
>
-- snip
So what it really says is that Russia is fighting another war against fascism, this time of islamic rather than nazi origins. Both fascisms are equally evil - but that of course does not mold Russians into "defenders of civilisation" (unless you define their imperial interests as 'civilisation') or even exonerate their attrocities, either those in 2nd world war or those more recent.
Stated diffetently, 2nd world war, afghanistan and now chechnya are conflicts between two thugs, Russian imperialism and german or islamic fascism. None deserves any particualr sympathy. But I find Russian imperialism a far more preferable alternative - a choice between being defined as a human being and subhuman species that must be exterminated.
wojtek