Three days after Yeltsin's remarks, Russian military forces dropped thousands of leaflets over Grozny warning residents to get out of town by December 11. "Everyone who fails to leave the city will be destroyed," the leaflet stated.

The next day the Russian government retreated slightly from the ultimatum. "We have not set any time period," said Russian interior minister Vladimir Rushailo. But, he added, "People who are capable of leaving the war zone should do it as soon as possible."

Washington is exploiting the Russian government's assault on the 1.5 million Chechens to further its campaign against the workers state in Russia. Moscow "will pay a heavy price for those actions, with each passing day, sinking more deeply into a morass that will intensify extremism and diminish its own standing in the world," said Clinton in a White House speech December 6.

Accusing the Kremlin of committing "war crimes," the editors of the Washington Post urged an investigation of "Russia's tactics in Chechnya... to let Russia's leaders and generals know that no one should be immune from prosecution for such atrocities."

The U.S. rulers' policy toward Moscow is driven by their aim to overturn the Russian workers state and reimpose capitalist property relations there/. As part of this, Washington is seeking to expand its influence in the Caucasus, including with a recently signed oil pipeline deal. Those interests shape the Clinton administration's positions in relation to Chechnya.

The Russian officer corps is adamant about retaking Grozny, the city from which they were expelled during the 1994-96 Chechen war for independence. "Grozny is a symbol of the Russian military's humiliation during the earlier war, and Russia's generals show every sign of wanting it back," the New York Times reported November 29.

Some 100,000 Russian soldiers have been sent to Chechnya and more than 60 towns and villages are now occupied by the Russian military. Tens of thousands troops surround about 80 percent of Grozny. Fighting has intensified as Chechen rebel forces in Grozny, Argun, and Urus-Martan put up stiff resistance to the Russian military.

Grozny, which was devastated in the first war from continuous bombing and shelling, has been pummeled by Russian warplanes, helicopters, and artillery batteries. Russian deputy prime minister Nikolai Koshman, appointed as the Kremlin's chief administrator in the Russian-occupied territory, said Chechnya's capital would probably be transferred to Gudermes, the second largest city, where a shoot-on-sight nighttime curfew is in effect.

Koshman said the Russian government would be in no hurry to rebuild Grozny after destroying it. "We can think about reconstructing Grozny in the future, if the situation warrants it," he declared.

More than 4,000 people have died so far in Moscow's bloody assault, and at least 220,000 people have been driven from their homes in Chechnya into the neighboring republic of Ingushetia and elsewhere. About 50,000 people remain in Grozny, where 250,000 used to live.  
 

Washington presses for 'reforms'

Washington and its imperialist allies are using Moscow's brutal onslaught to press the Yeltsin regime to adopt laws that would remove restrictions on capitalist investors. Michel Camdessus, the director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), declared in late November, "The violent military campaign in Chechnya is creating very negative reactions against Russia in the world." Camdessus announced December 7 that the imperialist financial institution would continue to delay a $640 million loan to Russia until the Kremlin adopts bankruptcy laws that would protect capitalist investments and enforce payments for electricity, natural gas, and rail-freight services.

Meanwhile, the Clinton administration may order the Export-Import Bank, a U.S. government trade agency, to hold up a $500 million loan to Russia's Tyumen Oil Company, which is involved in a "nasty dispute" with BP-Amoco over control of another Russian oil enterprise, London's Financial Times reported December 7.

Washington has taken other recent steps to squeeze the Kremlin and weaken its influence in the Caucasus region. During the November 17-18 summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Istanbul, Turkey, Clinton lectured Yeltsin to seek "a political dialogue and a political settlement" on Chechnya. While in Istanbul the U.S. president oversaw the signing of an agreement between the governments of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia to build a $2.4 billion pipeline that would send oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey and bypass the existing pipeline, which goes through Chechnya. Another deal was concluded to pipe gas from fields in Turkmenistan to Turkey.

"These pipelines will be an insurance policy for the entire world by helping to ensure our energy resources pass through multiple routes instead of a single chokepoint," crowed Clinton.

The pipeline negotiations are just one aspect of Washington's efforts to establish political domination in the region. In 1997 the Pentagon conducted military exercises in Kazakhstan that included U.S. troops and soldiers from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan—former Soviet republics on Russia's southern flank.  
 

Moscow gains in Chechen war

Moscow has been more successful in its current attempt to crush the Chechen struggle for independence than the 1994-96 war. The Russian military has been advancing behind a line heavy bombardment. During the previous war Moscow's losses were huge and widely reported in Russian press at a time when the army was underfed and sometimes not paid. The military campaign became deeply unpopular among broad layers of working people and others in Russia. Chechen residents mobilized to appeal—often successfully—to the Russian soldiers not to shoot.

Over the last several months, the Kremlin has waged a propaganda campaign that has gained some sympathy among Russian citizens. The regime claims that Chechen independence fighters are "bandits," "international terrorists," and "Islamic fundamentalists" who are to blame for a series of bombings in apartments that killed more than 300 people in several Russian cities last September. The government has produced no evidence that Chechens were involved, and no one has claimed responsibility for the explosions.

There is also less political support among Chechen workers and peasants for the independence fighters this time. The Russian media has linked the Chechen fighters to kidnappings and demands for

ransom. Moscow's war in the Caucasus is rooted in the Stalinist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union more than 70 years ago. The bureaucratic caste that emerged in the 1920s usurped power and trampled on the rights of peoples who had been oppressed under the tsarist empire. The Bolshevik policy of voluntary federation and the championing of self-determination of oppressed nations led by V.I. Lenin was reversed.

The Yeltsin regime is trying to stanch the inevitable uprisings for self-determination and independence among the peoples in the Caucasus. But the resistance to Russian chauvinism won't go away.

"Even if you can suppress this problem by force for one year, for two years, it will arise again at a future date," said Ruslan Aushev, president of Ingushetia and a former officer in the Soviet army. "Every Chechen thinks about their own nationality, their own language, and their own culture," he asserted. "The probability that they will ever live as subjects of the Russian federation is very small."

This will be true as long as the Russian federation is not voluntary.  
 
 
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