On January 3, Ruslan Khasbulatov, a Russian politician and the last chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, died in Moscow at the age of 81. Alexander Cherkasov, a human rights activist and former chairman of the HRC "Memorial", announced this. According to TASS with reference to Khasbulatov's assistant, the funeral will take place on January 5 in Grozny.
Khasbulatov was born in 1942 in Chechnya. After the deportation of the Chechens, he and his family were moved to the village of Poludino in the Kazakh SSR, where he spent his childhood and youth. From the beginning of the 60s he was engaged in science and education, in 1978 he began teaching at the Russian University of Economics. G. V. Plekhanov. In the 1990s, he began to engage in politics, first becoming the first deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, and later heading it.
Early in his political career, he supported Boris Yeltsin, then president. Later he became his main rival and active participant in the constitutional crisis. In 2003, he was going to run for the presidency of Chechnya, but he never did. In 2021, he supported the re-election of Ramzan Kadyrov.
The Insider asked Cherkasov to talk about Khasbulatov. According to the human rights activist, Khasbulatov spent his entire political career adapting to the surrounding conditions. However, this did not help him much, and the politician remained a man who “flew past life”:
Ruslan Khasbulatov always ended up in the wrong place. In January 1993, he began to be branded as a bad Chechen, and not as a bad speaker of the Supreme Council. The man who devoted his whole life to becoming an assimilated Soviet intellectual was not very ready for this. In 1992, they tried to accuse him of the fact that, under his patronage, some people moved into Moscow hotels. After that, he launched a campaign to evict Chechens from Moscow hotels, so that, God forbid, he would not be accused of nepotism. But still they were accused.
He really made a good Soviet career. How did he get a recommendation to the party? In 1965, Sinyavsky and Daniel were arrested, and on December 5 there was a protest rally on Pushkinskaya Square for the first time in 30 years. Mostly students and graduate students of the university participated, and there was a study campaign, so it was impossible to avoid or get sick, everyone was expelled. Who was in charge of all this, and who received the recommendation to the party? Ruslan Imranovich Khasbulatov! The usual kind of party careerist nit, which was not going to be the first among the Chechens. I must say that he was still suspected of this, Dudayev suspected. He chose him as a target, because Dudayev believed that Khasbulatov was laying claim to something. Another story, of course: Dudayev, a man sent to Chechnya as the one who will steer the puppets of the Chechen national movement, suddenly began non-puppet activities.
In short, Khasbulatov was blamed throughout 1993 by Yeltsin propaganda. Not as a person leading the wrong policy, but as a bad Chechen. Throughout 1993, the propaganda was mostly anti-Chechen. Before the fact that on the eve of the storming of the White House in radio communications it was not clear what they would storm – the Moscow parliament on Krasnaya Presnya, Grozny or Kabul. No one seriously intended to settle this matter amicably, and no one seriously thought about the danger of a forceful solution. Khasbulatov later denied that he sent to storm Ostankino, but he did. He referred to the fact that the time on the video was shifted by an hour, but he sent to storm. This is a situation where the first shot and first blood makes you the loser. At this time in the early 90s, there were too few people who understood that it was impossible to shoot. Khasbulatov was one of those in civilian clothes. The military understood better. This one was one of those who didn't have the understanding not to shoot. These jackets on both sides had no understanding of how categorical the imperative is – "Thou shalt not kill!".
Then he ends up in a prison, is released under an amnesty, and they find a use for him – he allegedly organizes a peacekeeping mission in Chechnya. Then we had a lot of characters who were on a contract, who would return the defunct province to the bosom of the empire – Khadzhiev, Avturkhanov, and so on. But Khasbulatov did not succeed, because his authority as a speaker was worthless in Chechnya. He tried to run in 1997, but then they dealt with him more simply: they kidnapped his brother, after which he withdrew his candidacy. Further, all his activities were reduced to the fact that he was sometimes pulled out of a dusty box as an expert and asked about something.
I must say that while sitting in Lefortovo, he managed to write something, some kind of Greek classics. In my opinion, he is the only one in history who received a fee for an abstract of the ancient Greeks. He lied about 1993, that is, he presented his version of the defense. Article 51 does not prohibit anyone from lying in their own defense, but it does not make such lies true. And he also tried to comment on something about Chechnya, proving his importance. This is a man who flew past life.