The powerlessness works on several levels. Despite guards posted at every school since Beslan, and despite heightened security in public places, people have realized how vulnerable they are to terrorist attacks. The slaughter of innocent people – the death toll now stands at 331, of whom 172 were children, has brought home to ordinary Russians the fact that their country is now at war.

Another level of powerlessness is felt by ordinary citizens toward the state. It is not a new feeling in Russia, but the gradual ebb of state power seems to have been replaced by a flood tide.

Tightened central authority

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent his first four years in office strengthening central authority. He divided the Russian Federation into seven super-regions and appointed a presidential envoy to each, thereby stripping the 89 regional governors of some of their power. He overhauled the upper chamber of Parliament, the Federation Council, and replaced the governors who formerly sat there with pro- Kremlin figures.

He surrounded himself with advisers from the security apparatus, known as the “Siloviki Clan,” and promoted them to high positions in political and economic life.

And he moved decisively against big businessmen who carved out great fortunes for themselves during the years of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, jailing some and sending others into exile. Putin determined that the state should regain control of the country’s mineral wealth.

In his defense, Putin supporters say Russia would descend into chaos without a powerful, sometimes ruthless, central authority. His detractors say he is creating an inefficient authoritarian regime without democratic checks and balances. What has happened since Beslan is an acceleration of the same centralization process.

Within days of the end of the siege, President Putin unveiled plans to abolish the direct election of governors, thereby reversing a 1994 change by Yeltsin which at the time was hailed as a milestone in Russia’s democratic development.

Next came a decision to change the voting mechanism for the State Duma, replacing regional deputies with candidates selected from party lists. The drastic revamping of Russia’s security organs are moves analysts say Putin had long contemplated. The planned changes also comprise a package of some 40 anti-terrorism bills due to be debated by Parliament this autumn and made into laws next year. Once the package has been rubber-stamped by the Duma, local governors will be proposed by Putin and simply approved by local parliaments.

The political dynamic

In the weeks after Beslan, so many existing governors attempted to join the staunchly pro-Putin United Russia party that officials lost count of applications. For those who can win the president’s approval and keep it, the change could be a godsend – they could in practice become governors for life, never having to seek re-election. The powerful mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, is one example. The decision to abolish individual constituencies, represented by deputies with local roots and power bases, in favor of candidate lists put forward by political parties, was viewed with even more dismay by critics.

In Parliamentary elections in December 2003, only four parties crossed the electoral threshold: United Russia, Motherland, the Liberal Democrats and the Communists. Of these, the first three are pro-Putin, with only the Communists viewed as opposition in the normal sense of the word. Under the planned changes, independent candidates, or those representing smaller parties without an existing platform of political power, would have little chance of electing candidates, leaving the current parties with major advantage. The buds of a civil society, focused on local issues and led by local politicians willing to take on central authority, will be left to wither on the vine.

Proposed reforms in security services focus on a concept to create a new, unified organization, probably modeled on the US Department of Home Security.

Reigning in oligarchs

Parallel to the political steps are a series of economic moves. Under Yeltsin in the early 1990s, a clumsy privatization process – that often lacked transparency – allowed the emergence of a new class of barons or oligarchs with major stakes in the country’s raw materials. Loopholes in the law have since allowed the big new companies to dodge income tax – nominally switching operations to offshore companies. A typical case was Yukos – which took control of some of Russia’s biggest oil fields, production and export facilities. Some of the oligarchs – in Putin’s eyes – like jailed Yukos majorityshareholder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and former Yeltsin adviser Boris Berezovsky, added insult to injury by backing political parties opposed to him.

When Putin was elected as Yeltsin’s successor in 1999, he lost no time in declaring war on the magnates. At least part of his argument was accepted with sympathy in the West: privatization under Yeltsin had failed to produce a new breed of efficient managers and had instead produced a corrupt new strata of fat cats.

In 2003, Yukos was ordered by a court to pay tax bills exceeding USD 3.4 billion for the year 2000 alone. With its ex-boss in prison and most of its assets frozen, the company protested it could not pay. Its last, almost suicidal step, was to suspend twothirds of daily oil supplies to China from the end of September on the grounds there was not enough accessible money left in the bank to pay railway transport costs. That step appeared to be designed to rile President Putin on the eve of a visit by the Chinese prime minister to Moscow, following the president’s own promise that Russia’s oil exports would not be affected by the Yukos battle. The latest blow was struck by Russian authorities – an announcement that Yuganskneftegaz, the main oil-producing subsidiary of the firm, will be sold to settle unpaid bills.

Further battles can be expected over a valuation report prepared by German bank Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, and the government’s conclusion from the report that the subsidiary be sold for USD 10 billion. Yukos complains the figure is far too low and that under Russian bankruptcy law, non-core assets should be sold before core assets like Yuganskneftegaz.

Western reaction

The West initially reacted to the political changes with shock.

“Russia is the first country in history to fight terrorism by scrapping democratic elections,” wrote the English-language daily, the Moscow Times. “Mr. Putin’s road to power is paved with Chechen corpses,” wrote Martin Wolf in the Financial Times Sept. 22. “The bombings that preceded his first election and then as conveniently ceased gave him the presidency. Since then, a cycle of repression, Chechen revenge and Russian retaliation has marked Mr. Putin’s accretion of arbitrary sway over his country. This war is giving Mr. Putin the victory he seeks in the struggle that matters to him: the one for absolute power in Russia.

“Any lasting resolution of the Chechen tragedy will depend on the pursuit of farsighted, humane and resolute policies in Moscow,” said Chris Patten, foreign affairs commissioner for the European Union. “I hope they are forthcoming and that the government of the Russian Federation will not conclude that the only answer to terrorism is to increase the power of the Kremlin. Frankly, there is not much good history on the side of that proposition.”

Russian astonishment

Russian politicians seemed astonished by the criticism. “No one can prove unequivocally that there exists a fully settled exemplary electoral system, compliance with which would mean that a country is democratic and committed to the idea of the supremacy of law,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko in Rossiskaya Gazeta Sept. 18. “As a process it … testifies to the efficiency and viability of democratic institutions.” Speaking to the heads of world news agencies in Moscow Sept. 30, President Putin appealed to the media to help in the fight against terrorism: “In a situation where there is an international terrorist threat, where people are dying, the media cannot simply be observers.”

Rhetoric of our times

He and other officials were particularly incensed by use of words like “insurgents, rebels and separatists” in media reports describing those responsible for Beslan.

When the Russian president urged the media to use the word “terrorism,” he echoed a frequent criticism by Israeli officials on the Western media’s reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

At Beslan, some Russian and foreign journalists complained of interference in their work. An OSCE report on media coverage, drawn up by former Hungarian dissident Miklos Haraszti, sharply criticized the Russian authorities’ handling of the tragedy.

That report drew fierce criticism from Moscow. In the last month, Russian diplomats have launched an offensive at UN Security Council meetings and elsewhere against what they call double standards of the West on terrorism. Britain has recently given asylum to a senior Chechen, Akhmed Zakayev, and to magnate Boris Berezovsky. The Americans gave asylum to another Chechen wanted by Russia, Ilyas Akhmadov. On Oct. 8, the UN Security Council unanimously passed a Russian resolution to speed up the extradition and prosecution of suspected terrorists – prompting Amnesty International to protest that nonviolent political activists and human rights activists could be detained under its rather general provisions.

After the recent NATO Defense Ministers’ summit in Poiana Brasov, Romania, visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said he was “heartened” by NATO sympathy for Russia over Beslan. But NATO officials said Russian policy in Chechnya was still viewed with misgivings. Back in Moscow, there is nervousness about more bombs and Putin’s concentration of power. Russians of “Caucasian appearance” were attacked on the Moscow metro, and 12,000 suspected non-residents in Moscow, living or working without permits in the capital, were arrested in a single week.

Putin’s supporters say he is right to not consider talking to terrorists. His critics say Russia has no choice but resume dialogue with moderate Chechens. They also warn that by pooling so much power into the position of president, he will be blamed personally if his rule does not lead rapidly to security and prosperity.