THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK…

Needless to say, those Duma deputies who voted acted according to belief and/or conscience were a tiny minority. Sergei Kovalev, an independent deputy who was Yeltsin’s human rights ombudsman and a strong opponent of the Chechen War, refused to vote at all, citing what he said was the obvious political nature of the vote, the dangers of it destabilizing Russia completely and the absurdity of the Communists leading the impeachment charge. Indeed, there was something grotesque about the KPRF leaders inside the Duma railing accusing Yeltsin of genocide and conducting a murderous war against a small North Caucasian nation while its supporters gathered outside the Duma carried placards featuring the likeness of Josef Stalin. As Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky put it in his speech prior to the vote: “This party destroyed tens of millions of people in our country and brought it to collapse–this party has no right to hold power in Russia. And no impeachment will help it.” Yet Yavlinsky also pulled no punches when it came to today’s Kremlin. Noting that 400 bodies of Chechen war victims–soldiers and civilians–remain unburied in a refrigerator in southern Russia, he said: “These people are garbage for the president. We are all garbage for the president, meant to strengthen his weakening absolute power.”