Former Trotskyist and former Kremlin spin-doctor Pavlovsky.
Konservator November 15, 2002 THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA Author: Gleb Pavlovsky, president of the Effective Policy Foundation [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT OF THE 1960S-80S HAS DEGENERATED TO A PITIFUL FINALE IN RUSSIA TODAY. HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS WHO CALL FOR AN END TO THE WAR IN CHECHNYA ARE SELF-INTERESTED AND ENTIRELY ALIENATED FROM THE REST OF RUSSIAN SOCIETY.
Today's human rights movement is not concerned about the lives of citizens
Not everyone is aware that Russia - or, more precisely, the USSR - was the birthplace of the human rights movement. This is where it was invented in the 1960s, and this is where it took on global significance. And this is where it has degenerated, right before the eyes of its creators and the classics of the genre, some of whom are still alive. In the mid-1960s, when all oppositional, anti-Soviet, and anti-Bolshevik political models were rejected by the victors' society, including the educated class, those who were anti-Soviet found themselves marginalized. Then, rejecting sectarianism, the party line, and an underground existence, a new phenomenon arose in Moscow: the human rights movement. We are now witnessing its pitiful finale.
In Soviet times, the movement was prepared to have, and did have, a respectful dialogue with even the most hostile totalitarian regime. This dialogue was based on the entirely undemocratic constitution of 1936, rather like Iraq's constitution; but this did not prevent some splendid results from being achieved.
These days, the speeches of human rights activists appear intentionally insolent, one-sided, and thoughtless; giving one's opponent a fair hearing is considered optional in these circles, as it was among Lysenko supporters. The St. Petersburg-based Memorial society suddenly declared the killing of the terrorists at the Moscow theater to be "state terrorism". Moscow's human rights activists rushed to defend Zakayev and Maskhadov from the nation against which they are fighting.
"President Maskhadov represents the lawful government of Chechnya... And who is Putin?" Sergei Kovalev's words are a demonstrative break with the ethics of the Human Rights Committee era. Clearly, those who have appropriated the label of "human rights activist", while taking no personal risks and not really wishing to help anyone, are deliberately burning bridges between themselves and the nation, its people, and its leaders. Though they have nothing helpful to offer society, they still insult it.
"The storming of the theater was not provoked by the terrorists." How are we to interpret this extraordinary thesis from a document signed by Kovalev, among others? Do people have the right to set up a concentration camp in central Moscow, turning Muscovites into slaves - without thereby placing themselves outside the law, to be killed by anyone at any opportunity? In a comparable situation, the Soviet-era human rights movement took the side of liberty and safety for real people. It aimed to secure the basic conditions required for Soviet people to exist as individuals: the right to write, to read, to tell the truth, and to address the government as equals. That human rights movement despised traitors and turncoats. It was a civilian law enforcement body that rapidly became a global force, one which the Soviet government couldn't destroy.
Today's human rights movement is not concerned at all about the lives of citizens. It seeks rights in isolation from humans, like funding from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or small grants. A vacuum has formed in the area of defending real rights: the right to security, liberty, property, sovereignty. For example, Russia essentially has no such organizations as the Heritage Foundation or the D.A.R. in the United States. When our Committee of Soldiers' Mothers starts demanding larger and more effective military operations from the government, when it learns to welcome essential preventive operations - then it will gain a natural basis for monitoring the effectiveness of military structures. But now, when the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers calls for the state to disarm before its enemies, it is only a self-interested lobby group: mothers trying to ensure that the sons of other mothers, not their own, serve in the military. This is not a moral standpoint. These days, Russian citizens and Russian human rights activists speak different languages, live in different countries, and fight in different armies.
It's curious how what is meant to be the professional core goal for human rights activists - defending the rights of ordinary people - now requires to be smuggled into their midst. At a recent human rights congress, this was how Svetlana Gannushkina from Civil Cooperation reminded the assembled pacifist heroes of their duty to counter everyday abuses by the police: "I urge all lawyers to start a campaign in support of people on whom police plant drugs or weapons, and those who face police harassment... I believe this is one way of opposing the war in Chechnya." This is black comedy: in persuading human rights activists to do their duty, one is obliged to pay tribute to the sacred cow of pacifism: "No war in Chechnya!"
Human rights activists may be militarists or pacifists, that's their own affair. But they cannot be defeatists. The U.N. Human Rights Declaration arose as a manifesto of ideas for the anti-fascism movement. The human rights movement of the 1960s-80s was a continuation, by other means, of the war against Hitler. Vicotry over a new global enemy will give the world a new concept of liberties and rights for individuals. If the human rights movement still has a moral future, it can only be found on this path. (Translated by Andrei Ryabochkin)