The essence of the Forest Issue was that Russian ecologists, under the leadership of the Moscow Institute of Ecological Legal Issues, or Eco-Juris, which brought the case, demanded the repeal of twenty-two orders of the Cabinet of Ministers transferring Grade One forests to the category of nonafforested land. These orders permitted the felling of more than 34,000 hectares of prime forest in Russia.
Russia’s forests are divided into three categories. Grade One relates to those deemed particularly important either for society or for the natural environment. These are forests containing highly valued species, habitats of rare birds and animals, reservations and parks, and urban and suburban green belts. The Forestry Code of the Russian Federation, accordingly, recognizes Grade One forests as part of the national heritage. Berg Park was in this category.
The formal applicant for the change in categories and subsequent right to fell trees was, oddly enough, the Forestry Commission of the Russian Federation, or Rosleskhoz. It is the body that has the right to submit documents relating to the legal status of forests for signature by the prime minister. The twenty-two orders disputed by the ecologists had been made without the statutory state ecological inspection, with the result that the national heritage became the prey of short-term interests. Where forests were cut down, they were replaced by gas stations, garages, industrial parks, local wholesale markets, domestic waste dumps, and, of course, housing developments.
The ecologists consider this last option to be the least objectionable, but only providing that the new homeowners behave responsibly toward the magnificent forests surrounding their houses and do not destroy the roots in the course of laying drainage systems.
While the Forest Issue was being considered and the judges were taking their time, almost 950 hectares of top-quality forests were condemned to destruction under new orders signed by the prime minister. The greatest damage was done in the Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenetsk Autonomous Regions, where trees were destroyed for the benefit of oil and gas companies. Moscow Province also suffered: what happened to Berg Park was the result of deliberate judicial procrastination.
While the paperwork was being taken care of and nobody had the courage to dot the legal i’s or cross the legal t’s, the struggle for the forest in Pervomaiskoe became violent. When, at the request of the prosecutor’s office, the ecological group went to record the results of the developers’ activities with a videocamera, police reinforcements were brought in. A fight broke out, the camera was broken, and the ecologists, all of them elderly, were beaten up.
“Of course, we do not want to wage a war, but we have been left with no option,” Nikolai Abramov, the village elder, says by way of explanation. “The estate was the last place in the village where we could go to walk. There were usually old people and mothers with strollers there. There is a school for three hundred pupils and a kindergarten on the grounds. All the rest has been turned into cottages for the New Russians.”
The veteran ecologists are aware that they are at war primarily with the super-rich, people whose wealth vastly eclipses anything they themselves have ever seen. They have heard the money talk, however. At a village assembly, Alexander Zakharov, chairman of the Pervomaiskoe Rural District Council, openly declared that the sums of money involved were too great for there to be any possibility of reversing the situation. Here is what Igor Kulikov, chairman of the Ecological Union of Moscow Province, wrote to the provincial prosecutor, Mikhail Avdyukov: “The chairman of the council publicly stated to members of the ecological group elected by the assembly that he had given their names and addresses to the Mafia, which would deal with them if they did not stop their protests.”
Zakharov is undoubtedly one of the central characters in this unseemly tale. If he had stood firm, not one dacha would have encroached on the grounds of Berg Park. At the foot of the documents that ultimately permitted the felling of the Pervomaiskoe trees, in contravention of the law and against the resolution of the village assembly, is Zakharov’s signature.
The scenario is a familiar one. First, application is made to the upper echelons in Moscow for the “transfer of Grade One forests to the category of nonafforested land.” A short time later, an order is drafted for signature by the prime minister. The felling of the forest ensues when, implementing the prime minister’s order, the local forestry officials and the head of the district council give the go-ahead.
There is not much wrong with our laws in Russia. It is just that not many people want to obey them.
NORD-OST: THE LATEST TALE OF DESTRUCTION
Moscow, February 8, 2003. No. 1 Dubrovskaya Street, now known to the whole world as Dubrovka. In a packed theater whose image—just three months ago—was flashed to all the world’s newspapers, magazines, and television stations, there is an exuberant atmosphere. Black tie, evening dress, the whole of the political beau monde has assembled here. Sighs and gasps, kisses and hugs, members of the government, members of the Duma, leaders of the parliamentary factions and parties, a sumptuous buffet…
They are celebrating a victory over international terrorism in our capital city. The pro-Putin politicians assure us that the revival of the musical Nord-Ost on the ruins of terrorism is nothing less than that. Today will see the first performance since October 23, 2002, when the unguarded theater, its actors, and its audience were seized during the evening performance and held hostage for fifty-seven hours by several dozen terrorists from Chechnya, who hoped to force President Putin to end the second Chechen war and withdraw his troops from their republic.
They didn’t succeed. Nobody withdrew from anywhere. The war continues as before, with no time for doubts about the legitimacy of its methods. The only thing that changed was that in the early morning of October 26, a gas attack was mounted against all those in the building, some eight hundred people, both terrorists and hostages. The secret military gas was chosen by the president personally. The gas attack was followed by a storming of the building by special antiterrorist units in the course of which all the hostage takers was killed, along with almost two hundred hostages. Many people died for lack of medical attention, and the identity of the gas was not even revealed to the doctors charged with saving lives. Already on that evening, the president was announcing, without a qualm, that this was a triumph for Russia over “the forces of international terror.”
The victims of this murderous rescue operation were barely remembered at the gala performance on February 8. It was a typical fashionable Moscow get-together at which many seemed to forget what it was they were raising their glasses to. They sang, they danced, they ate, a lot of people got drunk, and everyone talked a lot of nonsense, which seemed all the more cynical because the event was taking place at the scene of a massacre, even if the theater had been refurbished in record time. The family members of those who had died in the Nord-Ost tragedy refused categorically to come to the celebration, considering it a sacrilege. The president was also unable to attend but sent a message of congratulation.
Why did he send congratulations? Because nobody could break us. His message was couched in typically Soviet rhetoric and proceeded from typically Stalinist values: it was a shame about the people who died, of course, but the interests of society must come first. The producers warmly thanked the president for his understanding of their commercial problems and said that audiences would be in for a treat if they came back. The musical had received a “new creative impetus.”