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Prisoner of the Mountains
Film Screening and Discussion
With Guest Speakers Sergei Grigoriev and Brenda Shaffer
Summary by Ben Dunlap
On February 28th, The Carr Center for Human Rights and the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project co-sponsored a screening of the 1996 film "Prisoner of the Mountains" (directed by Sergei Bodrov), followed by a discussion led by Sergei Grigoriev, Senior Advisor to the Chair of the All-Russian Television and Radio Company, and Brenda Shaffer, a Fellow in the International Security Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
The film, a remake of the Lev Tolstoy story of the same name, features popular Russian actors Sergei Bodrov, Jr. as Vanya, a conscript in the Russian army, and Oleg Menshikov as Sanya, a Sergeant. The two soldiers are captured during a routine patrol in the mountains of an unspecified republic in the North Caucasus (but presumably Chechnya in the mid-1990s), when guerrilla fighters ambush their armored personnel carrier. Vanya and Sanya are handed over to a local man, Abdul, who intends to trade them to the Russians in exchange for his imprisoned son.
Brenda Shaffer began the discussion by raising questions about the authenticity of some the film's features, and connecting those questions to problems with depictions of Chechen fighters and the Chechen people in Western media coverage of the war. While an artistic film need not be judged for its factual accuracy, she noted, this film in particular has been praised for its realism, including the effective use of such cultural tags as music, prayer, costumes, and language not to mention the breathtaking mountain scenery. Yet many of the symbols in the film are not authentic. The "Chechen" characters, for instance, are played by Georgians, and the language they speak for "realism" is Georgian, not Chechen. One is reminded, said Dr. Shaffer, of early Hollywood Westerns, in which American Indians were played by "Italians with long hair."
Shaffer argued that the film comes across not as specific to the first Chechen war, but as "universal," a quality symbolically portrayed by the broken clocks and the emphasis on intergenerational relationships. However, the generational changes portrayed in the film by the irreverence of the new warlords to the codes of the elders do represent the reality in Chechnya of the past few years. On the whole, the film presents a thoughtful and nuanced view of life and conflict in the North Caucasus, and carries a clear and universal anti-war message.
More problematic, said Dr. Shaffer, is the portrayal of Chechen fighters in the Western press. Why, she asked, are they called "Islamic fighters," as though their most important identifying characteristic were their religion. "Why do we not refer to Russian servicemen as Orthodox Christian soldiers?" she asked. The Russian and Soviet governments, said Dr. Shaffer, have long made attempts to play on fears of militant Islam, using "Islamophobia" in the West to win Western assent for their suppression of national struggles. Unfortunately, she noted, Russia's anti-Islamic policies may actually lead to the rise of militant Islam.
Sergei Grigoriev began by declaring that the film's main message is one of peace "peace among nations and peace between individuals." He noted that the film skillfully captured the sentiments of most Russians at the end of the first Chechen war: they were tired of the fighting, and wanted it to stop. Just as "every work of art is a reflection of the time in which it is created," this film shows what people were obsessed with then" an end to the conflict.
Dr. Grigoriev said one of the key factors in the anti-war mood of the Russian population during the 1994-96 conflict was the failure of the government to mount an effective propaganda effort. In contrast, he said, the Russian government has learned to wage a successful information war in the current conflict, using as its "manual" NATO's public relations campaign during the intervention in Yugoslavia. Russian society overwhelmingly supports the military operations in Chechnya today, said Dr. Grigoriev, but not only because of media propaganda. Other factors, he argued, are just as important: the humiliation Russians suffered after the first war; the failure of the independent Chechen state from 1996 to 1999, where hostage-taking and slave-trading took place with impunity; the invasion of Chechen insurgents into Dagestan in August 1999; and the apartment bombings in Moscow in September 1999 that killed hundreds of Russian citizens and were blamed on Chechen terrorists. As a result of the new circumstances of the present popular war, Russian conscripts perceive a real purpose to their fighting, and they are better treated and better respected by society.
The discussion that followed the speakers' remarks was impassioned and at times heated.
One member of the audience wondered whether the film might be characterized as "anti-imperialist" and questioned whether the same film might be made today. Dr. Grigoriev argued that the film was not anti-imperialist, but rather showed the "human qualities" of all the characters" Russian and Chechen alike.
Another participant in the discussion called into question Russia's justification for its all-out assault and "indiscriminate killing" in Chechnya. "If Russia's mission is really to fight terrorists, bandits, assassins, drug-traffickers, and murderers, as it says," he asked, "then we should expect to see the Russian army invade cities from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok." At its core, the participant noted, Russia's Chechnya policy is deeply hypocritical. "The Russian Far East," he argued, "is just as corrupt and criminalized as Chechnya "when are the tanks going to roll in there?"
Others disputed the comparison between Chechnya and other regions of Russia. While crime certainly exists in other Russian cities, one participant said, it does not approach the levels seen in Chechnya. Another participant charged that the United States government acted more hypocritically in Yugoslavia than the Russian government in Chechnya. She asserted that the U.S. has no right to criticize Russia's handling of its Chechnya problem, given the large number of civilian casualties resulting from NATO's bombing of Belgrade.
In an effort to explain Russian support for the war, one participant focused on the role of the Moscow apartment bombings in shaping the perceptions and attitudes of ordinary Russians toward the war. He argued that the Moscow bombings were for Russians analogous to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya for Americans. "Just as there was little evidence to suggest that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the U.S. embassy bombings," he explained, "there was next to nothing linking Chechens to the explosions in Moscow. Yet the American public strongly supported measures to punish bin Laden by launching missiles at Afghanistan and Sudan, and the Russian public strongly supported measures to punish Chechen fighters by invading Chechnya." In both cases the heightened tension and psychological pressure of the bombings helped create support for a response that would otherwise be absent, he concluded.
Another participant lamented that, though he is against the war in Chechnya, he can think of no other reasonable response to Chechen fighters' incursion into neighboring Dagestan. "What should you do," he asked, "when these people invade your country? What is the solution?"
Melissa Carr, Project Coordinator at the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, concluded the discussion by calling on participants to reflect on the prospects for long-term peace and stability in Chechnya. "Debate about the current conflict in Chechnya is important and should continue," she said, "but let us also consider what will happen when the fighting is over and it is time for rebuilding and development."