24 July 2000
Only the very strong in body and mind can endure Grozny today. The survival of the fittest, and no one else. Everywhere there are ruins, filth, hunger and hordes of thin, homeless puppies digging in the ruins of what once were houses and finding nothing there. This is no place for children, old people or the sick.
Someone from the crowd calls out: "Did you know that the old people's home is back on Borodin Street? And they've brought the weakest of them here. They just want to boast that the war is over and now people can live normally again."
"What do you mean, the home is back? Whatever for? Who decided . . . What right did they have . . . ?"
From October last year Novaya gazeta engaged in a titanic struggle to persuade our government bureaucrats that they must immediately take steps to save the inhabitants of the old people's home: the hundred scared, hungry and totally impoverished old people on Borodin Street in Grozny needed to be evacuated to escape the bombardment of the city.59 (The home was, moreover, also serving as a residential home for those suffering from chronic mental diseases.) Of course, no one wanted to do anything about them. Every official in Moscow cited the fighting as the obstacle; it was impossible to reach
agreement with the military, they said, to create a safe corridor. The Chechen fighters then in control of the district kept raising the price. Time passed, the bombs kept falling and every now and then disturbing news about the dreadful conditions in the home would reach us. It became clear that if we did not act immediately then quite probably there would be no one left to save.
It took until mid-December before we managed to wear down the government officials and generals. Our newspaper gathered the money needed to pay the drivers and guides and to buy the petrol for the coaches. Brave officers from the Ingush republic's organised crime squad received the necessary orders. They inched their way towards the home, as bullets and shells continued to fall around them, and brought the old people back to their own front-line republic.
And now we learn that the old men and women have again been returned to face the bullets in Grozny! Someone just couldn't wait to report back to the Kremlin that "civilian life was fully restored in Chechnya"! On 26 June the inhabitants of the home were brought back to the Chechen capital, and back to the fighting that has never ceased here. They did not want to go and resisted, but the matron, Tamara, used every argument to get them to go back. (We already knew her all too well: she repeatedly deceived and misled everyone who had worked to evacuate the old people the previous autumn and winter.) Before they set out, she assured all the old men and women: "The building has been fully repaired and restored and everything is there again – water, light and food." They gave in. The first group of 19 returned to Borodin Street where, it turned out, there was no electricity, no water, no gas and no food. There were not even any staff there.
"Thank God they gave us some supplies for the journey," said a tearful Auntie Lucia. "We still had some noodles and pearl barley. Otherwise we would have died of hunger straight away. But that is a month ago now." Lucia (Lyudmila) Petrovna Malyshkina is one of the old women from the home. We were sitting on a bench out in the courtyard and did not dare go into the building. Empty windows gazed down at us; all the glass was gone.
"What did you eat for lunch?"
Auntie Lucia keeps silent.
"And just now, what did you all have for supper?"
"I boiled up some tea in a saucepan. And I handed out the last remaining bits of bread."
On the boards stands a filthy saucepan, found in one of the nearby ruins. Filthy hands, filthy metal mugs. It's almost unbearable to sit among the inhabitants of the old people's home, even out in the courtyard, even when there is a light evening breeze. In all likelihood they have not washed since they arrived back on 26 June and the stench is unbelievable.
We enter, through the gaping hole where the doors used to be. On the floor and the narrow metal-frame beds lie those who cannot get up. Someone's mother or father lies there absolutely bedridden. A blind old woman who doesn't remember her own name (she is in a small room marked No 7) immediately reacts to an unfamiliar voice and asks: "You're not a doctor, are you?" Without listening to the answer, she hurriedly demands, "Have you brought the medicine?" A paralysed old man lying nearby, Uncle Isa, pleads: "I want to die. Give me something, a pill, an injection."
I have no medicines with me, either to save life or to take it away. The old woman bursts into a flood of silent tears. No one has been here. Neither the cheerful new mayor of Grozny, Supyan Makhchaev, who is constantly shown on all the main Russian TV channels, nor Beslan Gantamirov, who is struggling ferociously to undermine all the others fighting for control of Chechnya today.
No one has any need for these old people who are no longer of any use to anyone.
Somewhere not far off heavy artillery is firing. Shells whine past us. Bursts of automatic gunfire can be heard but no one pays any attention. That is how night comes to Grozny.
Is this the secure old age they were always promised?
Only a sadist could have dreamed up this return to Grozny. There is just one question to ask Valentina Matvienko, the deputy premier in the Russian government who is responsible for social policy. Can she tell us how she assesses the situation: these old people, who are totally in the care of the State, were taken to a city where even generals on active military service prefer not to show their faces too often. She has the ultimate responsibility for all old people's homes. How does she explain this transfer, compounded by a failure to provide them with food, water, or clothes, when everyone knows perfectly well that they cannot work or find food and clothing on their own?
We have a word for it – but it's not one you can print. There are cuts everywhere in welfare payments. The country wants as few dependants as possible. But in pursuit of that goal it forgets that there are a few tests that very clearly reveal the moral health of a nation, i.e. how it treats the incurably ill, the destitute and the elderly. The history of this latest war shows yet again that we do not pass these tests. And it is a failure, furthermore, not of oversight but of our conscious decisions and convictions.
As we were leaving we suddenly had a hopeful idea. There is an army post not far from Borodin Street. Surely they could help? Policemen from Vyatka were on duty there. I appealed to them: help these unfortunate old people, share some of your food with them, give them the leftovers of tinned meat and bread. These food products can always be bought at army posts at prices lower than those in the improvised markets that most people in Grozny use. But the policemen stubbornly and persistently refuse to understand our request. Gradually we see that they are ready to sell, but not to give things away.
I pull out my last banknote and offer money. "Take this and go to the market," I say. "You'll be going there anyway, so buy something for the old folk: they can't move themselves."
But they refuse to do that as well. They have no desire to go to the market – for anyone else. For themselves, they'll go. Of course, the Vyatka policemen are not obliged to worry about anyone but themselves and their own survival in Grozny. Of course, their commander has not ordered them to help the old people. Of course.
The Vyatka contingent told us to try a detachment of the Sofrino brigade of Interior Ministry soldiers, a group from the Moscow Region who are stationed a little further away. There was now no time left to reach them, however: the curfew was approaching inexorably and the army posts were preparing themselves for night duty. So nothing is left but a direct appeal through our newspaper to Lieutenant-Colonel Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, the commander general of the Interior Ministry forces, and Stanislav Kavun, his deputy: Please, order your soldiers who are manning the post in the Staropromyslovsky district of Grozny to share at least something edible with the old people. They'll die otherwise.
From this day on, meanwhile, our paper is collecting aid for the elderly inhabitants of the old people's home who were so treacherously carted back to Grozny. Readers who want to take part in this effort to save them should record their offers on pager number 232-0000, #49883. Volunteers with experience in caring for the elderly are desperately needed; they should bring everything they need with them (from sleeping bags to water), to come and help in Grozny. It would be so good, at the end of this saga, to say proudly, "That may be the way others behave, but we are still human beings."
As we drove away, simple Maka ran after us, as far as her deformed, trailing leg would take her and kept crying something to us, raising her hands to her teeth. A filthy nightdress covered her emaciated body and her head had been shaved to clear the lice. To live you must eat and you must drink: that's what Maka was telling us, though not a word was intelligible.
GROZNY
POSTSCRIPT
After we had left, I'm glad to say, the commander of the Vyatka policemen, Kuznetsov, sent formal instructions, at our request, to his subordinates in Grozny. They fed the old people. Thank you.