Alla Dudayeva: The Russian Empire is doomed. Widow of Dzhokhar Dudayev: The Ukrainian people remind me of the Chechen people in their spirit. Where is Dudayev’s wife now?
Alla Dudayeva was born in 1947 in the Kolomensky district of the Moscow region. In 1970 she graduated from the art and graphic department of the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute. I met Air Force lieutenant Dzhokhar Dudayev in the Kaluga region, in the military town of Shaikovka. In 1967 she became his wife. She gave birth to two sons - Avlur and Degi - and a daughter, Dana. After the murder of her husband, on May 25, 1996, she tried to leave Chechnya and fly to Turkey. In 1996-1999 she collaborated with the Ministry of Culture of the ChRI. In October 1999, she left Chechnya with her children. She lived in Baku, from 2002 with her daughter in Istanbul, then in Vilnius (the son of Alla and Dzhokhar Dudayev, Avlur, received Lithuanian citizenship and a passport in the name of Oleg Davydov; Alla herself only had a residence permit). In 2003 and 2006, she tried to obtain Estonian citizenship (where from 1987-1990 she lived with her husband, who at that time commanded a heavy bomber division and was the head of the Tartu garrison), but was denied both times. Alla Dudayeva is the author of memoirs about her husband and a number of books published in Lithuania, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and France. Currently he works on the Georgian Russian-language TV channel “First Caucasian” (hosts the program “Caucasian Portrait”). 1989 Our city, behind the gray veil of rain, You, like a mystery, excite and beckon me, either with dreams of something beautiful in the distance, or with sadness about those who are gone forever. Who wore down your cobblestones with the soles of his feet And lay down under the gray stones forever. But traces of these hands remained on the walls. They close you in and lead you into a mysterious circle. I can’t get away from these traces anywhere. Apparently, a soul remains in the stone vaults. Sunzha, your waters are so dark in the depths, It’s as if someone’s face appeared in the darkness, But the water is spinning over it, As if fate were conjuring a cruel dance. Playing dice again, what if something comes up? Maybe this land will finally get lucky? Alla Dudaeva 1990 Human! At the turning point of centuries, Look back over the centuries and years, New generations are coming, When ours is gone forever. Maybe someone will look with irony, With anger, bitterness in young eyes. Why is so much mixed up? Grief, tears and sadness in the tracks? How many lives have disappeared in the darkness, Human destinies have been distorted, It’s like a clanging machine Dragged along, shredding them. Take a closer look, maybe you will become smarter, Learn from the mistakes of others, Be more merciful and kinder, There will be fewer of your mistakes. 1990 Alla Dudayeva Cry of the ancestors We are the glory of your ancestors The descendants of these mountains Weapons have not been laid down In ingloriously for a long time! Lightning is burning again In the snow-capped mountains, The time has come to fight, Again we shout “Orst1akh” All the way to freedom, Your turn has come, The hundred-year-old Vainakh road, forward! Our ashes are in every heart, Let them knock in the chest, Whoever has the strength to fight, Come out to battle! Three months of patience, humility is behind. If you don't want peace, taste war. For honor, for home, for clan, For the glory of your ancestors, “Orstdakh” Arise people! November 1991 Alla Dudayeva Ichkeria Who was in the homeland of your fathers, Never saw a more beautiful place, Quite a few brave men died in the mountains... For what and how? You won't be able to answer this right away. Above the cone of the mountain, a star trembles, Behind it, the peaks of the mountains are hidden in the fog, A vault of trees is continuous, but the tower stands there, Frozen in centuries-old silence before us. In it, old stones are black from gunpowder, A pile of bones whitening under the moonlight, The legends of antiquity are confused, But the mountaineers remember where to expect trouble from... Here lie those who gave their lives, For the honor and faith of the proud people, Who, having died, became free again, But dear, it was freedom... Russia - your name, hundreds of times, Accompanied by a curse the Caucasus, From the crying of women and from the groaning of the mountains The air trembles again and the vision becomes foggy. Only the enemy is happy about the burned land And every look is filled with hatred. No one will even mention rights. The power stands on human bones. And not dew, but tears on the grass. Bloody streams flow in your country. March 1996 Alla Dudayeva Confession When I stumble at the end of the day, The climb was difficult - don’t judge me. When I shed blood in a mortal battle, Do not judge - I defended my honor. When I was deceived, I was betrayed by a friend, Don’t judge again - I believed and loved. When I did not discern the cunning of evil, Do not judge - my heart was pure to the bottom. When the earth covers my eyes with a cloak, Then judge - but God is your judge. 1994 Alla Dudayeva Prayer I'm waiting for you, my love, day and night, Like hundreds of women, without closing my eyes, I whisper, saying goodbye to you for the umpteenth time, Let this not be the last time. Let this not be the last time I see you, Let me press against your chest again, I pray in despair for a meeting, when parting, you leave again for flights. You leave again, just like before, To compress space and preserve eternity, And for me, moments are like centuries. How can I live them, how can I kill time? How can I kill the doubts in my soul, Why do I need this blue? In a steel shell, a living drop, You rush in it, my love and life I pray with wings, tanks and engines, Fate itself, heed my prayers, Do not drop the one who is dear to your heart, Whom you carry there above the sound. He came up with this lot for himself, Be merciful, kind, have mercy! Dispel fatigue, do not put pressure on your shoulders, lift the veil of fog from your eyes. He must be calm, strong, vigilant, After all, a pilot makes a mistake only once... And at home I go through a hundred thousand options, without closing my eyes Without cooling my eyelids with the cool of the night, Touching my forehead with a hot hand, I will run out again to meet you “flying like a bird!” “You’ll say again jokingly. 1988 Alla Dudaeva Fable “The Lion and the Jackals” A tired lion walks and wanders through the jungle for a month without sitting down. Jackals obligingly follow him in his saving shadow. And they declare their love... Oh, how brave you are, oh how straightforward you are! You are steeper, you are harder than rocks. We will all go to death with you. As soon as you give out a cry, we will go into battle! It’s a pity that my belly has become deaf to hunger, it is deaf to the impulses of the soul, and there has been no food for days... Suddenly a shadow fell on the path. There was a trap ahead... And with new strength: “How straight you are! How strong you are! How powerful you are! You are higher than the mountains! You are above the clouds! What is this trap for you! You will dance the cancan on it! You'll knock him down with your paw in an instant and walk right along the path! And the lion proudly led his mane and... He walked straight along the path. So this lion fell into a trap And there was a monstrous can-can - On the skin of a lion. The moral of this story is this: If you are proud, strong and straightforward, don’t fall into such a trap. Don’t trust those who swear their love, The straight man will not bend in a bow, Only the flatterer has a crooked backbone, And you will pay with your head! 1990 Alla Dudaeva Russia, 1996 Not faces, but the faces of shadows and chimeras, Not the wind, but walls and half-measure truth, Half-measure love and half-measure country, Sounding like a broken string, And life is like a dream, and I would be glad to wake up , Only death is true and friends are cursed bitterly Over your coffin, sleep peacefully soldier! You were betrayed from birth, by the powerlessness of your fathers, you broke your heart about the inviolability of dreams, the silence of the grave is your breath, and the girl became confused long ago. There is no color of embarrassment on the young face, A corrupt mask on the whole country, A bloody mess of times and peoples, Murderers, victims and judges, convenient laws, And the drunken cook, without waiting for the morning, Burns the kitchen to the ground along with the mess... 1996. Alla Dudaeva
We agreed that he would meet us at the airport, but there was no one in the greeting room. I go out into the street: Vilnius is covered either with fog or with a shroud of snow, and the square is deserted. Suddenly, right at the steps, a black Saab slows down. Saab is not a Chechen people's car like Porsche or Land Cruiser 200, but the thin profile of the driver reveals his father, and I go down.
He gets out of the car - tall, thin, wearing a fitted gray coat, a black polo and black shoes polished to a shine (no pointy toes!). He greets politely and extends his hand in a European way. Yes, it is he, Degi Dudayev, the son of the first Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev, persona non grata in today's Chechnya, where even a conversation about him can cost a posthumous excursion to the Tsentoroevsky zoo. “I’m five centimeters taller than my father, but yes, I look a lot like him. Imagine what it’s like when everyone compares you to your father and measures you by your father,” he smiles, and behind this polite smile there is either bitterness or sarcasm.
Outside the window flashes a rather monotonous landscape of the outskirts of Vilnius - gray panel high-rise buildings, people dressed in dark clothes. Dudayev is 29 years old. Nine of them he lives here, in cloudy Lithuania, a transit zone through which thousands of Chechens fled to Europe during - and, most importantly, after - the war.
The editor of the site Ichkeria.info (added in 2011 to the Federal list of extremist materials and sites) Musa Taipov, one of the supporters of Chechen statehood, a politician in exile and a typical “white emigrant” of the new type, says that in France alone today there are more than 30 thousand Chechens - including himself. In the capital of Austria, Vienna, there are about 13 thousand.
"Authorities European countries they are trying not to advertise the number of Chechen refugees, but at one time I dealt with this issue and was in contact with the authorities, so I can say that today at least 200 thousand Chechens live in Europe.” The main countries are France, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Germany. The Chechens did not stay in the Baltic states, they moved on. But Dudayev the son did not go anywhere and remained here, at a crossroads.
They expected some actions from him in the style of his father, but so far they have not received anything - he did not show himself in Chechen politics, did not head any government in exile, nor a foundation named after his father, and all these three days I tried understand how the son of a man who in some way changed the course of life lives Russian history: two wars, the collapse of politicians and generals, possibly future military tribunals.
Dudayev drives the car confidently, with his seat belt fastened (in Chechnya, such law-abiding behavior is considered a sign of weakness). I ask if he is bored here, and in general - why Lithuania? Lithuania, he answers, because his father headed a heavy bomber division in Estonia from 1987 to 1990 strategic purpose and just caught the birth political movement for the independence of the Baltic states. Moreover, he had a very good reputation: he was given a division in Tartu in a deteriorating state, and in a couple of years he made it exemplary - in general, such an anti-crisis manager.
General Dudayev was close friends with both Estonian and Lithuanian politicians. He was “one of the three,” as he was called in the Lithuanian press, along with Gamsakhurdia and the Lithuanian Landsbergis. Dudayev’s ties with the Baltic states turned out to be strong: in Riga there is Dudayev Street, in Vilnius there is a square named after him, located with signature Baltic irony in such a way that it seems to precede the Russian Embassy in Lithuania if you enter it from the city center.
Having dropped our suitcase at the hotel, we go to lunch. In Christmas Lithuania it is 10-15 degrees below zero. Dudayev parks his Saab, and we go into a small restaurant in the Old Town, with green walls and black and white photographs reminiscent of a Parisian cafe. A tall waiter, a typical Lithuanian, lights a candle, and in the twilight of snowy Vilnius we talk in Russian about Chechnya and the war.
“We moved a lot during our father’s life - we lived in Siberia, Poltava, and Estonia, but if then there was a feeling that we were at home everywhere, now it’s the other way around: no father, no home, nowhere. I’m like an eternal wanderer and in fact I don’t really live anywhere: I go to my mother in Tbilisi, to my brother and sister in Sweden, I go skiing in Austria, and swimming in Greece. I could have moved anywhere for a long time - to Sweden, Holland, Germany. I lived in Paris for several months and tried it on for myself. No, it's not all mine. What keeps me here is that... - he falls silent, picking up Right words. - Here I can still hear Russian. In Europe, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m at the end of the earth, that I’m getting further and further from my home. Panic begins: that I will never return. It’s because of the Russian language that I’m stuck here.” What does Russian speech mean to him anyway? “Only someone who has lost their homeland can understand this,” he sighs. - You will not understand. When you don’t hear your native language for a long time, it’s as if you’re hungry for it.” Where is it then, my homeland? “Chechnya. Russia,” he is surprised.
How amazing. Who would have heard now: the son of Dzhokhar Dudayev yearns for Russian speech and Russia. The father fought with Russia, and his son yearns for it and dreams of returning. Dudayev does not agree. “My father didn’t fight with Russia,” he tactfully corrects me. He says that Dzhokhar understood that Chechnya would be nowhere without Russia, he respected Russian literature, and served its army.
By the way, Dudayev was the first Chechen general in the USSR army and one of the best military pilots in the country. “But he wanted partnership, he wanted the Chechens’ right to live in their own state to be recognized, as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Lithuania, Latvia and so on wanted.” Everyone who wanted it got their freedom. Except for the Chechens.
I remember the words of my Chechen friend, who, talking about Dudayev’s rule, said that after Dudayev came to power, terrible unrest began, and he insisted that “if the trams stop, then they will bring in troops.” And sure enough, at the end of 1994, the trams in Grozny stopped, the center disconnected the republic from its power transmission line, and this was the last measure following the economic blockade. And once under blockade, the republic began to be marginalized, and the city’s tram artery was literally pulled apart piece by piece, along wires and rails.
“In November or December 1994, I don’t remember exactly, Chechens stood in a human chain, holding hands, from Dagestan to the border with Ingushetia - they wanted to draw the attention of the world community so that we would not be bombed or touched,” says Taipov from France . “Father didn’t want war, but you see how it all turned out,” - this is Dudayev.
I ask him: if my father were alive and saw everything that his struggle had turned into, would he not regret what he did? Degi is silent for a long time: cigarette in hand, looking into the distance. “Understand, I cannot judge my father. Everything was boiling and seething then, all the republics wanted freedom. It was like euphoria...
My father was supported in the Kremlin. Zhirinovsky came to him, high officials in Moscow received him and said: come on, well done, go ahead. This gave some illusion that victory was possible. At least in the form in which Tatarstan later received it, in the form of autonomy. But it turned out that Chechnya was dragged into war. And Russia was pushed into the war. But they could have, they could have come to an agreement and made the neighbors true friends, and not enemies, as happened later with many. And Russia itself would be stronger.”
Dudayev Jr. believes that for the Russian leadership the Chechen issue lay in the field of geopolitics. “If you look at the map, Chechnya is located in such a way that you cannot cut it out separately; it is inextricably linked with the rest of the Caucasus and Russia itself. We will not be able to set borders and separate from Russia, being surrounded by Russia, being, in fact, part of it. Separate Chechnya - Dagestan, Ingushetia, Stavropol region will crumble. That is probably why the question was so acute for Russia: not “to lose Chechnya or not,” but “to lose the Caucasus or not.” And conquering the Caucasus is an ancient pastime of the Russian Empire. That’s probably why the cutting turned out like this.”
They finally bring us meat. But it cools down: I ask question after question, and he, looking for answers, returns to the past, and this contrast of past and present is such that he literally feels bad. Just imagine: the son of the president of a tiny country that is at war with the empire, a golden boy who has almost everything, who goes to school with security, his father is accepted by Saudi kings and Turkish politicians, the pro-Western Balts send money to help, the army is one of the largest countries of the world is temporarily powerless in the face of a handful of desperate warriors, on whose new coat of arms a wolf lies.
(“This coat of arms is on my shoulder, I tattooed it, knowing that we Muslims are not supposed to have tattoos, and before the funeral it will definitely be burned off our bodies, but I won’t care anymore,” he laughs, putting out his cigarette in the ashtray. ) This wolf, a symbol of that Ichkeria that existed for only a few years, driven with a needle into the skin, is a seal of fidelity to what the father served. “This flag and coat of arms hung for several years, they were removed, but they will remain on me until the end.”
To paraphrase Kharms, “you could have become a king, but you had nothing to do with it.” He, as a son, got to wander, and the other son got his father killed in the same way (and by the same people) - everything. “I remember Ramzan, by the way. He was such a silent boy, he ran around on Akhmad’s errands, with his daddy under his arm.” - “Helped - I mean, my father?” “I mean, yes, it’s a family business,” he answers with subtle irony.
Dudayev smokes cigarette after cigarette. With his twitchiness, profile, impeccable manners and hopeless melancholy, he begins to remind me of Adrien Brody. He remembers how he came to Chechnya as a first-grader, how he lived in Katayama (a cottage community along Staropromyslovskoye Highway with lilac alleys), how happy he was, because he suddenly had so many brothers and sisters, and everyone spoke Chechen - his father’s language, and then it began there was a war, and he lived in the presidential palace, he was guarded for days, and it seemed like there was almost no childhood, but you are still happy, because among your own people, at home.
And the last - the brightest - years of life with my father, how they shot together at the shooting range, how my father taught how to use weapons, all these conversations about life, and life itself - at the limit, at its peak, at its end. And as a result: “How many rich houses, expensive cars and European capitals I have seen, but nowhere and never will I be as happy as I was happy in Katayama.”
“Have you not thought about such a paradox that Ramzan Kadyrov is the successor to the work of Dzhokhar Dudayev?” - I ask. Dudayev almost choked. “Look,” I continue. - Your father played honestly, like a Soviet officer who knows what honor and dignity are. He said openly what he wanted. Ramzan does exactly the opposite: he says what Moscow wants to hear, assures it of loyalty, but the laws and power of the Russian Federation in Chechnya are no longer valid. There is neither mountain democracy nor Russian state. Chechnya is a small sultanate.”
Dudayev laughs: “Sorry, I remembered how someone advised Dzhokhar to introduce Sharia law in Chechnya. And the father laughed: “If I cut off the hands of all the Chechens, then where can I get new Chechens?” I know you want to know what I think about him. Now I’ll formulate, wait... When they ask me how I feel about Kadyrov, I answer: Kadyrov was able to do what others could never do,” he says meaningfully.
Then I ask him who his father will remain in the history of Chechnya: the man who involved the people in the massacre, or the ideologist of independence? Dudayev is silent for a long time. Unpleasant, painful questions, which, I’m sure, he himself pondered more than once. “I think that no matter how times change, no matter how many years pass, my father will remain what he is - a symbol of freedom, for which there is a very high price.”
Not everyone can bear the weight of the burden left by their father. Dudayev's eldest son Ovlur left with his family for Sweden, abandoning the name given at birth. Ovlur Dzhokharovich Dudayev became Oleg Zakharovich Davydov - it seems that it couldn’t be funnier. “I will never be able to understand this,” Deguy sums up briefly.
Daughter Dana got married, changed her last name and, as befits a Chechen woman, is raising children and taking care of her family. Degi, the youngest, remained the only son of his father, and although the surname Dudayev brings many problems to its owner, and his movements around the world are examined by the intelligence services through a magnifying glass, he carries it proudly, like a family banner.
The interview ends, we go out into the darkness of Vilnius, colored by the lights of Christmas illumination. Dudayev behaves like a gentleman and sympathetically offers to take him by the elbow. “Listen, let’s go to Gamsa? Well, you asked for someone from that time who knew my father, my family, me, but no one knows Gamsa better anyway. He arrived a few days ago, this is a sign of fate.”
We get into the car and go to the hotel “for Gamsa”. I still don’t quite understand who it is, then I see a tall Caucasian man impatiently waiting for us in the lobby and looking interestedly out the window. He finally gets into the car and immediately begins making jokes and jokes with his inimitable Georgian accent. His face seems familiar to me, but for the life of me I don’t remember where it came from.
“Julia, you know, I am very drawn to St. Helena Island - when I am there, I feel as if I have returned home. I must have died there in a previous life!” “I had the same feeling in Istanbul, when I looked out of the windows of the harem at the Bosphorus and burst into tears because I would never see my father’s house.” Dudayev turned around in admiration: “Well, you’ve gathered here, huh!”
Creaking through the snow, we walk from the car to the Radisson Hotel to climb to the 22nd floor, where from the huge windows of the Skybar we will look at Vilnius at night. There I learn that Gamsa is Giorgi, and only then that this is Giorgi Gamsakhurdia, the son of the first Georgian president who gave Georgia independence. As photographer Lesha Maishev sarcastically noted: “The only thing missing from this table was Gaddafi’s son.”
Their fathers were friendly and dreamed of creating a united Caucasus. “The Caucasus is not Europe, not Asia, it is a separate unique civilization that we want to present to the world.” Gamsakhurdia, in fact, helped Dudayev to legally flawlessly hold a referendum on independence and secession from the USSR. Gamsakhurdia was killed in 1993, Dudayev in 1996. A couple of weeks later, already in Moscow, I will receive an SMS from Gamsakhurdia Jr.: “Imagine, at a meeting of security forces, Ramzik said that he was giving a million dollars for my head. Am I worth so little, I don’t understand, huh? :))”
While Dudayev and I are talking about something, Gamsakhurdia’s phone rings and he leaves. Returning, shining. “Borya called and said to me: have you come up with something? When are we going to start something, huh?” Boris turns out to be Boris Berezovsky. “Where does he get the strength and money to do this? - I ask. “They say on Channel One that he is as poor as a church mouse and lives on handouts.” The roar of laughter shakes the table so much that the cups rattle. “Borya is poor?! And on Channel One they don’t say that the stork brings children, huh? Wait, I’ll go and tell Bora this!”
The next morning, Dudayev picks me up at the hotel, we have breakfast, the waitress asks in Russian: “What kind of coffee would you like?” “White,” Dudayev answers. I look at him questioningly. “Ah-ah,” he laughs, “white is with milk. Black - without milk. That's what the Lithuanians say. You know, I speak six languages, lived in different countries, in my head - like in a cauldron - traditions, cultures, expressions are mixed, sometimes such confusion arises, you know, sometimes you wake up and don’t immediately understand where you are and who you are. This is how it happens with me.”
Living in Russia, he spoke Russian, then for several years of living in Chechnya - in Chechen, then Georgia, therefore, he learned Georgian, then English college in Istanbul (“the first year he was silent, because all the teaching is in English, and where did I get it from?” was, English? How did I speak on the second!”), then the Higher Diplomatic College in Baku (“Turkish and Azerbaijani are almost identical, they were the easiest to learn”), then Lithuanian (“this is a language not for our ears, but I already like polyglot, wherever I live at least a little, I begin to speak the language”).
We stop by the empty office of his company, VEO, which specializes in solar energy, installing and selling solar generators and panels. “I used to work in logistics, then I decided to get involved in alternative energy, we are partners with the Germans, they are now ahead of everyone in solar energy.” Gray carpet on the floor, computers, office equipment - everything seems to be deliberately in gray northern tones. He rents an apartment nearby, in an unfinished mirrored high-rise building, one wing is inhabited by tenants, the other two are empty, with gaping concrete eye sockets.
“They abandoned construction because of the financial crisis, this is Baltic pragmatism,” he laughs. Nearby is the icy, deserted, windswept Constitution Avenue with the mirrored Swedbank skyscraper, like a revived picture of the surface of the Moon. The apartment - a high-tech studio with floor-to-ceiling windows - is cold and uninhabited, the sun doesn’t shine through the windows, because apparently it doesn’t exist here at all. This is a transit point for things, sleep, but not “my home is my fortress.” There seems to be not a single personal thing here that speaks about the owner.
“No father, no home, nowhere,” I remember. In a silver Macintosh we look at a huge archive of photographs: Dzhokhar Dudayev after the first flight on a fighter, in the cockpit, in formation (everyone is looking straight, he is the only one with his body turned and looking to the side, and so on in many photographs, like Napoleonic “it’s not me” I go against the current, and the current is against me"), presentation of the rank of general; then Grozny, politics, a smart suit, sparkling eyes and enthusiastic listeners...
Black-and-white photographs show little Degi in his father’s general’s cap in the arms of Chechen publicist and comrade-in-arms of Dzhokhar Maryam Vakhidova, caption under the photo: Little general. The largest series of pictures is stored in the Daddy and me folder.
We go out, and I notice how Dudayev quickly, automatically opens and closes the door, turns off the lights on the landing, runs down, drives quickly, all the time writing something on his smartphone, as if he was afraid to stop. I tell him about this. “If you stop, you start to remember, think, reflect, because I’m always on the move: business, friends, the gym, airports. Chechnya is like a taboo. Yesterday I talked to you for several hours about Chechnya and broke down. This is the pain, you know... that will never go away.”
We decide to spend this day on the road, going to Trakai Castle. We drive out onto the highway - on both sides there are snow-covered pines and spruces: old, centuries-old ones, under heavy caps, and young trees, sprinkled with snow. “Tell me about Chechnya, how is it there now?” - he suddenly asks. I tell you for a long time, in detail, he has not been there since 1999, since the beginning of the second war. He listens, is silent, then thoughtfully says: “You know, maybe it’s good that it’s like this now...”
Bundled Lithuanians are dancing from the cold, and Dudayev is wearing a light knitted jacket with faux fur: “No, I’m not freezing, however, when we lived in Transbaikalia, my mother wrapped me in overalls and sent me to sleep on the balcony, in 40-degree frost. Well, you’re a creative person, what can you do,” he smiles.
Near the lake near the Trakai fortress there are trading tents, I drop in to buy gifts for the children, and Dudayev, having learned that I have two sons, buys gifts from himself: a wooden pistol with a stretched rubber band, which makes a completely believable sound, a wooden knight’s hatchet, a sword and a slingshot with which you can shoot an elephant. I protest. “Don’t argue, these are boys! They must get used to weapons from childhood and be on friendly terms with them. Moreover, you know, times are like this, everything goes to big war, - I look at his suddenly serious face. “Men need to be educated from childhood.”
He says that in the third grade he had an old TT in his briefcase, and he himself disassembled and lubricated security pistols. Dzhokhar Dudayev’s love for weapons is known: after becoming president, he allowed all men from 15 (!) to 50 years old to own them. Leaving the Republic Soviet authority left behind military units and weapons warehouses, which the locals took away with great enthusiasm.
As Colonel Viktor Baranets writes in the book “The General Staff Without Secrets,” the Kremlin tried to divide the remaining weapons in the republic on a 50/50 basis, and Yeltsin sent Defense Minister Grachev to negotiate with Dudayev, but he allegedly “didn’t have time,” and by 1992 70 percent of the weapons were stolen. By the beginning of the war, the republic was fully armed, and during the second war many Chechens “watered their gardens with oil” (a joke that every Chechen will understand). At the beginning of hostilities, Degi himself received as a gift from his father an Astra A-100 pistol, made by order of the CIA in Spain: “For me, it is better than all the Stechkins and Glocks for its accuracy, the ability to install a laser sight with a sensor on the handle, the absence of a safety and for its size "
In the evening the three of us meet. I take out my voice recorder, Gamsakhurdia is the second one for backup. “My father,” Dudayev begins the story, “was friends with Gamsakhurdia, and when a year after the referendum and Georgia’s exit from the USSR, Zviad conflicted with the pro-Moscow Shevardnadze, his family was in danger. He asked for asylum in Azerbaijan, but was not given it.
In Armenia, Gamsakhurdia’s family was accepted, but under pressure from Moscow they had to surrender him. Any day now, they were supposed to be sent by plane from Yerevan to Moscow and arrested. Or kill. Then my father sent his personal plane and security chief Movladi Dzhabrailov to Yerevan with the order “not to return without Gamsakhurdia.” He burst into the office of the then President of Armenia Ter-Petrosyan, took out a grenade and grabbed the pin.”
“Yes, yes, that’s how it was,” continues Gamsakhurdia. - He said that he would release the pin only when our whole family landed at the Grozny airport, and so he sat opposite the President of Armenia for several hours until they reported from Grozny that everyone was in place and had landed. The security wanted to arrest him or shoot him, but Ter-Petrosyan said: this is a man’s act, let him return home. Vai, Yulia, imagine what those times were like, huh? Time for men and real actions!” So the Gamsakhurdias escaped and lived for several years in the presidential palace of Dzhokhar.
Dudayev recalls the moment when the family of the exiled Gamsakhurdia landed in Grozny. “George came down from the plane and, raising his eyebrows, looked around: it was exactly a scene from the movie “Home Alone,” remember when the hero realizes that he will have Christmas in New York without his parents. He was such a plump boy, calm in appearance, but as soon as I saw him, I immediately understood: this guy will rock!”
Several years of friendship in bombed-out Grozny under the roar of military aircraft, childhood spent within four walls and with eternal security. “We didn’t have a childhood, we didn’t! Now, I remember, I remembered an episode from my childhood!” Then they say in chorus: “Georgy stole a bottle of cognac, and we drank it between two: I was about 10, Georgy was 13. And in order to escape from Alla (Dudaeva - GQ note), we climbed into my father’s ZIL and fell asleep in the back seat. Everyone was looking for us so much, they almost went crazy, they thought we had been kidnapped, imagine! And we grunted until we lost our pulse and fell asleep. It was our kind of rebellion!”
Having left for the Baltic states, Dudayev entered the IT faculty. “Where else, I sat locked up all the time and talked to the computer.” It is difficult to experience that acute feeling of the proximity of death, which only happens in war, in ordinary life, but it is possible: Dudayev is interested in snowboarding and racing motorcycles. On his Honda CBR 1000RR, he accelerates to almost 300 km/h. Gamsakhurdia somehow suddenly opens up: “When I feel really bad, I go up (to the mountains - GQ note), to a deserted place, and throw grenades into the gorge, and this roar, explosions, they calm me down.”
Dudayev and Gamsakhurdia the younger remember how their fathers, sitting in the kitchen in the evenings, drew big plans on paper: the Confederation of Caucasian Peoples, new idea for the entire Caucasian civilization (mountain code of honor, etiquette, cult of elders, free use of weapons), multiplied by secularism government structure, Constitution and democracy (here the tone was set by Gamsakhurdia, a noble family, white bone, nominated by the Helsinki Group for Nobel Prize world in 1978).
In 1990, Dzhokhar Dudayev returned from the Congress of Unrepresented Peoples, held in Holland, with a sketch of a new Chechen flag and coat of arms: 9 stars (teips) and a wolf lying against the background of the sun. (“It’s no wonder that his chakra opened in Holland,” Deguy jokes about his father’s insight.) Alla Dudayeva (this is a little-known fact) took the sketch and drew the coat of arms in the form in which it is now known. “She looked up to Akela from Mowgli and made the wolf more formidable than her father had.” Crazy time, extreme degree of feelings. “The fathers dreamed that they would create a completely new education based on political map peace." A small but proud bird - like in that parable.
To some extent, we can say that Gamsakhurdia succeeded: Georgia was separated from Russia by the Greater Caucasus Range, and the imperial hand, or rather the missile, reached Chechnya without hindrance. And if Dudayev Jr. tried to escape from the past, doing business, wandering around the world, keeping memories in a silver Macintosh, then Gamsakhurdia really “lit up.” As an active member of Saakashvili’s team, he was one of the initiators of the introduction of a visa-free regime, first for residents of the Caucasus, then in general. At one time, the Russian Federation was put on the worldwide wanted list by Interpol: Kadyrov’s supporters accused him of supporting Chechen terrorists in Pankisi. He introduces himself as “the only Chechen-Georgian,” that is, a person dealing with the Chechen issue in Georgia.
“You probably know that in order for a Chechen to leave his homeland, something supernatural had to happen,” Taipov says via Skype from France, where he has lived since 2004. “So in 2004, when Akhmad Kadyrov was killed and his son was appointed, the following happened: everyone who in the 1990s were patriots and advocated independence - and this was mostly the intelligentsia - everyone realized that there would be no mercy . We were free and they weren't, you know? Therefore, 2004 is the second wave of emigration, the most powerful in the entire history of the Chechen people. The free people fled."
Here again, involuntary parallels arise with the white emigration, who sold family jewelry for pennies, just to have time to escape from those “who were nothing, will become everything.”
“The young state makes many mistakes,” says Gamsakhurdia. - Misha also made mistakes, of course, without them it would not work, but still he managed to build a legal state, laid the foundation. Dzhokhar also made mistakes, but he was then able to lay the foundations of a democratic society, the foundations of morality, which he then began to violently destroy.”
Dudayev, for example, categorically prohibited the torture of prisoners. “He said this: what is the fault of that soldier whom the Motherland sent here, by order, by order? He was thrown into a meat grinder, he is following orders - why commit atrocities and humiliate him? Once he hit the hands of Ruslan Khaikhoroev, a field commander from Bamut, with a rifle butt, because he allowed himself to commit atrocities against Russian prisoners of war. If my father saw how today one Chechen can afford to abuse another...” - and a painful silence hangs over the table.
Russian propaganda criticizes Saakashvili for supporting the separatists, the “terrorist nest” in the Pankisi Gorge, suspecting the machinations of either the CIA or the devil, but everything is actually simple and sentimental: this is the gratitude of a boy with sad eyes, who came out of the plane and holding his father’s hand, who saved to the Chechens, when everyone around them betrayed and turned away, but the Chechens did not. So when in 2010 Saakashvili won applause at a speech at the UN, voicing the “idea of a United Caucasus,” we now understand where this idea comes from. From the kitchen of the presidential palace in Grozny, from the distant 1990s.
We are sitting in the California bar, next to a noisy group of Lithuanian basketball players, drinking Irish coffee. (“The drink of English intelligence officers,” comments Gamsakhurdia.) The bill is brought, and Dudayev, like a hawk, intercepts the check so that, God forbid, Gamsakhurdia does not pay.
When he goes to the counter to pay, I hear Georgy: “It’s because he lives here, and I came to visit, and this is how he welcomes me, Caucasian hospitality! Dzhokhar raised him ideally, he has honor and decency in the first place, that’s what an officer is, you know? I think that’s why he stays away from everything, because he sees dirt in the distance and wants to get around it.”
We return to the hotel after midnight, Vilnius shimmers with snow and lights, the Cathedral rises on the right like a white mountain, Catholic crosses, snowdrifts, people are going home. And at this moment I understand why Dudayev never became a real emigrant, did not leave far and forever, did not devote himself to memoirs, opposition activities, and did not make capital in his father’s name. Why is he stuck in this sleepy Lithuania, at a snowy stop, in this transit zone, yearning for Russian speech, loving Russia and his little Chechnya selflessly and honestly, as only someone who has lost his home can love.
In 1994, on December 11, Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree “On measures to ensure legality, law and order and public safety on the territory of the Chechen Republic,” which provided for the disarmament of detachments of supporters of Dzhokhar Dudayev. Troops were brought into Chechnya, and then there was something that would be difficult to call anything other than shameful. Interviews and memoirs of direct participants in those dramatic and bloody events appear in the media. The weekly Sobesednik also did not stand aside, whose correspondent conducted a long interview with the widow of the “first president” of the Chechen Republic, Dzhokhar Dudayev.So, Alla Dudaeva(nee Alevtina Fedorovna Kulikova). Daughter of a Soviet officer, former commandant of Wrangel Island. Graduated from the art and graphic department of the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute. In 1967 she became the wife of Air Force officer Dzhokhar Dudayev. She gave birth to two sons and a daughter. She left Chechnya with her children in 1999. Lived in Baku, Istanbul. Now he lives with his family in Vilnius. According to the latest information, he is preparing to obtain citizenship of Estonia, a country where Dzhokhar Dudayev is remembered from Soviet times, when he headed an air division near Tartu.
Interlocutor correspondent Rimma Akhmirova first asked Dudaeva a question about Litvinenko. Still, before his death, he had close contact with the Chechens and called Akhmed Zakayev his friend. This is what Alla Dudayeva answered: “I think that Alexander converted to Islam before his death in order to be close to his friends in the next world. In recent years, he walked along and managed to tell the world a lot of truth about the KGB, FSK, FSB. And that’s how we met. Dzhokhar had just been killed, and we were planning to fly with the whole family to Turkey, but we were arrested in Nalchik. I was interrogated by a specially arrived young officer who introduced himself as “Colonel Alexander Volkov.” He also joked that this was not a random surname.”
“After some time,” Dudayeva continues, “I saw him on TV next to Berezovsky, and recognized him real name- Litvinenko. And that time, television reporters did an interview with me, from which they aired only the piece “Yeltsin is our President” taken out of context, and played it throughout the election campaign. I wanted to make a refutation, but Volkov-Litvinenko then told me: “Think: anything can happen to your bodyguard, Musa Idigov.” Musa was then kept in isolation. Litvinenko was interested in the truth about the death of Dzhokhar. The intelligence services were afraid that he could survive and escape abroad."
The journalist also asked what Alla Dudayeva thought about the rumors and versions according to which Dzhokhar Dudayev was alive. There are even those who claim: Dudayev had doubles, and Alla Dudayeva married one of these doubles. It is clear that the widow denies all these rumors. She spoke in some detail about how, in her opinion, the leader of the Chechen separatists was killed.
“Dzhokhar was given a satellite telephone installation by the Turkish Prime Minister Arbakan. The Turkish “leftists” associated with the Russian intelligence services, through their spy, during the assembly of the phone in Turkey, installed a special microsensor in it that regularly monitors this device. In addition, at the Singnet Super Computer center , located in the Maryland region, USA, a 24-hour surveillance system was installed to monitor the phone of Dzhokhar Dudayev. The US National Security Agency transmitted daily information about the whereabouts and telephone conversations of Dzhokhar Dudayev to the CIA. These dossiers were received by Turkey. And Turkish “leftist” officers passed on this dossier to the Russian FSB. Dzhokhar knew that a hunt had begun for him. When the connection was interrupted for a minute, he always joked: “Well, are you connected yet?” But he was still sure that his phone would not be detected.”
Alla Dudayeva also reported that Dudayev’s burial place is still kept secret. According to her, she believes that someday the former general and former leader of the anti-constitutional regime in Grozny will be buried in the ancestral valley of Yalkharoy. The widow accuses the Russian authorities of the fact that the war is still going on over control of oil flows, since the Chechen land is very rich in non-oil reserves. Here is a very remarkable excerpt from her interview, which talks about how Dudayev offered the Americans the right to 50 years of Chechen oil production.
"...The Americans offered to take an oil concession for 50 years for $25 billion. Dzhokhar named the figure of $50 billion and managed to insist on his own. For a small country, this was a huge amount. Then, in one of Dzhokhar’s speeches on television, his famous phrase “about camel milk, which will flow from golden taps in every Chechen house." And then, according to Dudayeva, there was a leak of information, allegedly by Kremlin proteges, former minister oil industry, Salambek Khadzhiev and the head of the government of the Chechen Republic, Doku Zavgaev, themselves offered the Americans for the same fifty years, but for only $23 billion. Because of this, the widow of the former general said, the first Chechen campaign began.
In the process of preparing the material for publication, the author turned to Ytra military observer Yuri Kotenko for comment.
He noted, after reading the interview, that this was a classic female perspective on the political and military events of those years. And the first thing I noticed was who Dudayeva calls “her own.” Especially in light latest events with former FSB officer Litvinenko. "My friends" last years he walked along straight path", etc. – even then Litvinenko was one of the Chechen militants.
It is also important to note that Alla Dudayeva again says that her husband is dead. As Yuri Kotenok said, many people in Chechnya believe that Dudayev was not liquidated, that he is alive and hiding in a safe place. Actually, the same thing is now being written in the press, which cannot be convicted of loving Russia, and they are also talking about Basayev. They say that Shamil did his job, he was undercover.
This is not true, and here's why. Such eccentric and narcissistic people as Dudayev and Basayev were cannot lead a quiet secret life, hiding in some quiet place. People who developed grandiose military-terrorist operations against Russia (we are not talking about the possibility of implementation), who claimed to be the leaders of the nation, cannot vegetate in some Turkey, for them this is tantamount to physical death.
And one more remark was made by our military observer. We must never forget that Dudayev openly opposed Russia, it was with his knowledge that genocide was committed in Chechnya against the Russian, Armenian, Jewish and other peoples, and it was under his leadership that multinational Grozny turned into the capital of one nation. He placed himself outside the Constitution of the Russian Federation, in fact, outside the law. And Dudayev was not going to hand over the oil to the Americans for the notorious “milk taps”; in the head of the former Soviet army general, grandiose military plans to combat Russian Federation. He is an enemy, and they treated him like an enemy.
(1947-08-10 ) (72 years old)USSR USSR (1947-1991)
Russia Russia (de facto until 2004)
Chechnya (unrecognized)
Stateless (de facto since 2004)
Alla Fedorovna Dudaeva(born Alevtina Fedorovna Kulikova, genus. March 24, 1947, Moscow region) - widow of Dzhokhar Dudayev, artist, writer, TV presenter, member since 2009. Currently granted asylum in Sweden.
Biography
In October 1999, she left Chechnya with her children (by that time already adults). She lived in Baku, from 2002 with her daughter in Istanbul, then in Vilnius (the son of Alla and Dzhokhar Dudayev, Avlur, received Lithuanian citizenship and a passport in the name of Oleg Davydov; Alla herself only had a residence permit). In 2006, she tried to obtain Estonian citizenship (where in the 1990s she lived with her husband, who at that time commanded a heavy bomber division and was the head of the Tartu garrison), but both times she was refused.
Activity
Alla Dudayeva is the author of memoirs about her husband and a number of books published in Lithuania, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and France. . He has been a member of the Presidium of the Government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria since 2009.
All her life Alla Dudayeva writes poetry and draws pictures.
Until October 20, 2012, she worked on the Georgian Russian-language TV channel “First Caucasian” (hosted the program “Caucasian Portrait”).
Alla Dudayeva's paintings have been exhibited in different countries of the world.
Bibliography
Translations into foreign languages
- Milyon birinci(The first million) “Şule Yayınları”, 448 pp. 2003 ISBN 9756446080 (Turkish)
- Le loup tchétchène: ma vie avec Djokhar Doudaïev(Chechen Wolf: my life with Dzhokhar Dudayev) “Maren Sell” 398 pp. 2005 ISBN 2-35004-013-5 (French)
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Notes
An excerpt characterizing Dudayev, Alla Fedorovna
Again, but very close this time, something whistled, like a bird flying from top to bottom, a fire flashed in the middle of the street, something fired and covered the street with smoke.- Villain, why are you doing this? – the owner shouted, running up to the cook.
At the same moment, women howled pitifully from different sides, a child began to cry in fear, and people with pale faces silently crowded around the cook. From this crowd, the cook’s moans and sentences were heard most loudly:
- Oh oh oh, my darlings! My little darlings are white! Don't let me die! My white darlings!..
Five minutes later there was no one left on the street. The cook, with her thigh broken by a grenade fragment, was carried into the kitchen. Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov’s wife and children, and the janitor sat in the basement, listening. The roar of guns, the whistle of shells and the pitiful moan of the cook, which dominated all sounds, did not cease for a moment. The hostess either rocked and coaxed the child, or in a pitiful whisper asked everyone who entered the basement where her owner, who remained on the street, was. The shopkeeper who entered the basement told her that the owner had gone with the people to the cathedral, where they were raising the Smolensk miraculous icon.
By dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych came out of the basement and stopped at the door. The previously clear evening sky was completely covered with smoke. And through this smoke the young, high-standing crescent of the month strangely shone. After the previous terrible roar of guns had ceased, there seemed silence over the city, interrupted only by the rustling of footsteps, groans, distant screams and the crackle of fires that seemed to be widespread throughout the city. The cook's moans had now died down. Black clouds of smoke from the fires rose and dispersed from both sides. On the street, not in rows, but like ants from a ruined hummock, in different uniforms and in different directions, soldiers passed and ran. In Alpatych’s eyes, several of them ran into Ferapontov’s yard. Alpatych went to the gate. Some regiment, crowded and in a hurry, blocked the street, walking back.
“They are surrendering the city, leave, leave,” the officer who noticed his figure told him and immediately shouted to the soldiers:
- I'll let you run around the yards! - he shouted.
Alpatych returned to the hut and, calling the coachman, ordered him to leave. Following Alpatych and the coachman, all of Ferapontov’s household came out. Seeing the smoke and even the fires of the fires, now visible in the beginning twilight, the women, who had been silent until then, suddenly began to cry out, looking at the fires. As if echoing them, the same cries were heard at other ends of the street. Alpatych and his coachman, with shaking hands, straightened the tangled reins and lines of the horses under the canopy.
When Alpatych was leaving the gate, he saw about ten soldiers in Ferapontov’s open shop, talking loudly, filling bags and backpacks with wheat flour and sunflowers. At the same time, Ferapontov entered the shop, returning from the street. Seeing the soldiers, he wanted to shout something, but suddenly stopped and, clutching his hair, laughed a sobbing laugh.
- Get everything, guys! Don't let the devils get you! - he shouted, grabbing the bags himself and throwing them into the street. Some soldiers, frightened, ran out, some continued to pour in. Seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov turned to him.
– I’ve made up my mind! Race! - he shouted. - Alpatych! I've decided! I'll light it myself. I decided... - Ferapontov ran into the yard.
Soldiers were constantly walking along the street, blocking it all, so that Alpatych could not pass and had to wait. The owner Ferapontova and her children were also sitting on the cart, waiting to be able to leave.
It was already quite night. There were stars in the sky and the young moon, occasionally obscured by smoke, shone. On the descent to the Dnieper, Alpatych's carts and their mistresses, moving slowly in the ranks of soldiers and other crews, had to stop. Not far from the intersection where the carts stopped, in an alley, a house and shops were burning. The fire had already burned out. The flame either died down and was lost in the black smoke, then suddenly flared up brightly, strangely clearly illuminating the faces of the crowded people standing at the crossroads. Black figures of people flashed in front of the fire, and from behind the incessant crackling of the fire, talking and screams were heard. Alpatych, who got off the cart, seeing that the cart would not let him through soon, turned into the alley to look at the fire. The soldiers were constantly snooping back and forth past the fire, and Alpatych saw how two soldiers and with them some man in a frieze overcoat were dragging burning logs from the fire across the street into the neighboring yard; others carried armfuls of hay.
Alpatych approached a large crowd of people standing in front of a tall barn that was burning with full fire. The walls were all on fire, the back one had collapsed, the plank roof had collapsed, the beams were on fire. Obviously, the crowd was waiting for the moment when the roof would collapse. Alpatych expected this too.
- Alpatych! – suddenly a familiar voice called out to the old man.
“Father, your Excellency,” answered Alpatych, instantly recognizing the voice of his young prince.
Prince Andrei, in a cloak, riding a black horse, stood behind the crowd and looked at Alpatych.
- How are you here? - he asked.
“Your... your Excellency,” said Alpatych and began to sob... “Yours, yours... or are we already lost?” Father…
- How are you here? – repeated Prince Andrei.
The flame flared up brightly at that moment and illuminated for Alpatych the pale and exhausted face of his young master. Alpatych told how he was sent and how he could forcefully leave.
- What, your Excellency, or are we lost? – he asked again.
Prince Andrei, without answering, took out notebook and, raising his knee, began to write with a pencil on a torn sheet. He wrote to his sister:
“Smolensk is being surrendered,” he wrote, “Bald Mountains will be occupied by the enemy in a week. Leave now for Moscow. Answer me immediately when you leave, sending a messenger to Usvyazh.”
Having written and given the piece of paper to Alpatych, he verbally told him how to manage the departure of the prince, princess and son with the teacher and how and where to answer him immediately. Before he had time to finish these orders, the chief of staff on horseback, accompanied by his retinue, galloped up to him.
-Are you a colonel? - shouted the chief of staff, with a German accent, in a voice familiar to Prince Andrei. - They light houses in your presence, and you stand? What does this mean? “You will answer,” shouted Berg, who was now the assistant chief of staff of the left flank of the infantry forces of the First Army, “the place is very pleasant and in plain sight, as Berg said.”
Prince Andrei looked at him and, without answering, continued, turning to Alpatych:
“So tell me that I’m waiting for an answer by the tenth, and if I don’t receive news on the tenth that everyone has left, I myself will have to drop everything and go to Bald Mountains.”
“I, Prince, say this only because,” said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrei, “that I must carry out orders, because I always carry out them exactly... Please forgive me,” Berg made some excuses.
The marriage of Dzhokhar and Alla Dudayev produced sons Avlur (Ovlur) and Degi, as well as daughter Dana.
Avlur became a citizen of Lithuania in 2002 under the Russian name Oleg Davydov. He moved to the Baltic states before his father’s death, after being wounded in a clash with federal troops. Subsequently, he left for Sweden, where he prefers to live as a non-public person.
35-year-old Degi, who has Georgian citizenship, lives in Lithuania and runs the VEO company, which works in the field of alternative energy. In 2012, he participated in the Georgian TV show “Moment of Truth”, where he stated on a lie detector test that he does not hate the Russian people, but if he could, he would avenge his father. Also in an interview, the son of Dhokhar Dudayev stated that he lives in Vilnius, because in this city he can hear Russian speech.
In 2014, Degi was fined in Lithuania for falsifying documents; this case received resonance in the press. When crossing the country's border, he had with him 7 fake passports, apparently intended for members of the Chechen diaspora who wanted to move to Europe. The widow of the first president of Chechnya saw in this fact “the machinations of the Russian special services.” Degi Dudayev maintains an Instagram account with more than 1,700 subscribers - a significant part of the publications on it are dedicated to his father. In addition, he is friends with youngest son the first president of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia.
Dana and her husband Masud Dudayev also lived in Lithuania for some time, but then left for Turkey. In 2010, she unsuccessfully tried to settle in Sweden. As of 2013, she lived in Germany, separately from her husband, who settled in the UK. It is known that former militant Akhmed Zakaev provided assistance to this family.
The general’s children living in different countries are raising Dzhokhar Dudayev’s five grandchildren.
In addition to his immediate family, the Chechen president had 12 brothers and sisters, all of whom were older than him. As Alla Dudayeva said, a significant part of the Dudayev family died in the war, and the younger generation of the family numbers more than a dozen people.
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