|"Born to be free"
By Apty Bisultanov, Chechen poet and philosopher
Chechens live on small territory which, in various periods of history, was the target of ambitious interests of various peoples who were powerful at the time. Each contact with the strangers caused a cataclysm (catastrophe) for the Chechens as the powerful people usually have only one instrument to achieve their goals - force. The use of force triggers war and any war causes numerous losses and ruins everything what has been created.
Born to be free, Chechens never escape challenge. thus bringing their nation to nearly a complete elimination. Even defeated they cannot accept the captivity as everything is to be changed for that - way of living, traditions, mentality, genetic characteristics. In one word, it means to lose the God-granted originality - the relic of any nation - and to stop being Chechens.
The current war is not only the result of the Russian-Chechen conflict, but also of the conflict between the Chechens and the whole modern world. The same happened to the Mongols and Tatars. to Tamerlane and has been happening for three centuries in Russia. And it will continue until the world realises that it is dealing with a civilization which succeeded to carry out a rare experiment of creating a society devoted of the mechanism of suppression. Public institutions guided human relations there, while freedom, honour and dignity of the individual dominated.
It is hard for modern world to comprehend the logics of the Chechens when they again plunge into a war which they cannot win. But after many years of complete incapacity to resist, after facing a choice of surrender or death, the Chechens this time viewed the freedom to fight and die as the freedom itself.
The modern world id stunned and cannot understand the miracle of how a small people with no regular army and no military conscription can resist the enormous force of a hundred thousand-man strong army. The world even tries to find an explanation in the weakness of one of the greatest military powers. But no!
The reasons are expressed in the "Manifesto against military conscription and the militarist system" signed in the early 20th century by outstanding contemporaries. It says that "The military conscription leads to the degradation of human personality, to the elimination of freedom". Only genetically free people are ready for genuine nobleness, for big sacrifices for the sake of supreme values.
The tragedy of the Chechens is that the world simply does not know us. Our ancestors signed the convention banning thrust weapons a thousand years before Europe did. A man thrusting his knife into somebody was declared pariah in the Chechen society which strictly fixed the rights and duties not only of a man, but also of the animal and the bird. A person, who has ruined an ant-hill in this mini-world, or dared to hunt a Caucasian goat during the mating season, or resorted to violence against the weak was declared ignoble and deprived of the right to be a free member of the Chechen society.
Our life is based on the supreme values and rejects lies, violence and slavery. Only a trully free man is capable of respecting freedom and dying for it. We do not want to defeat anyone or strip someone of the freedom. We want to grant the freedom to the World!