https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQZeCtF7Hpw
Excerpt from Vremia DDT, a 2002 documentary centered on DDT, one of Russia’s most famous rock bands throughout the 1990s and later. A montage of amateur film made by the group leader and frontman, Yuri Shevchuk during his visit to Russian frontlines during the First Chechen War in 1995-1996, overlaid by the song, “Patsany [The guys],” inspired by what Shevchuk saw there.
Post-Soviet
1995
In 1991, the year in which a number of states on the Soviet periphery declared independence from the USSR, the federated republic of Russia was renegotiating the relationship between its center and its 88 federal subjects, which were usually ethnic enclaves that came about as a result of Stalin-era Soviet nationalities policies. At this time, the Chechen national independence movement led by Dzhokhar Dudaev attempted to secede. Violent tensions ensued, both between Dudaev and other actors in the region, and between Chechnya and Moscow. Russian Federal troops engaged in the fighting and in November 1994, Yeltsin issued an ultimatum to Dudaev to submit to Moscow’s rule, while Yeltsin’s minister of defense Pavel Grachev, despite opposition, pledged to take the Chechen capital, Grozny by force in under a week. The large-scale assault failed and low-morale Russian Federal troops took heavy casualties, while indiscriminately shelling Chechen positions. Grozny did fall by March of 1995, with upwards of 30,000 civilians killed (many of them ethnic Russians) and conflict spreading into neighboring regions. Dudaev was killed by a Russian missile; meanwhile Chechen forces attacked Grozny several times, while also engaging in a terror campaign against Russians elsewhere. Eventually, on 31 August 1996, the Khasavurt agreement was signed, which promised a withdrawal of Federal troops in exchange for demilitarization. By this point, at least 50,000 Chechens and 10,000-15,000 Federal troops were killed (the precise numbers are disputed). The Second Chechen War would start three years later, triggered both by Chechen attacks on Dagestan and by what was likely a Putin-authorized FSB false flag operation against Russian civilians.
In January 1995, Yuri Shevchuk, the leader of DDT, one of Russia’s most-prominent rock bands throughout the 1990s, decided to visit the troops near Grozny and to see the war for himself. As a rocker who came on the scene in the 1980s, earned his share of ill will from local Party authorities in his hometown of Ufa and was closely linked to the Soviet liberal intelligentsia culture, Shevchuk was firmly in the pro-democracy movement during the Perestroika, but throughout the 1990s he was also a vocal critic of both Yeltsin and KPRF. He saw the October 1993 events as a civil war resulting from the incompetence and cynisim of the conflicting sides, and was disgusted by Yeltsin’s approach to Chechnya. He was a self-proclaimed pacifist, but at the same time he was well-loved by the Federal troops whom he met at the front. In their many interviews, they have recounted his bravery while there, while Shevchuk for his part has regularly extolled the human virtues of the average Russian common soldier and his commanding officer. In future interviews, Shevchuk will go on to recount experiences of PTSD and heavy drinking as a result of his trips to Chechnya. Following Russia’s first incursion into Ukraine in 2014, he will refer to his 1990s visits to the troops as his “Hemingway period” and declare that he is not willing to repeat it.
St. Petersburg
Shevchuk, Yuri
Chechnya
Vremia DDT (dir. Vasilii Blendov), 2002