Therefore, I carefully followed what was happening there, read, listened, met with eyewitnesses, talked, and sometimes argued with various Russian politicians.

And I wrote in "LG" about what I learned, what I doubted, and what I fundamentally disagreed with.

I haven't found any notes before '95, but most likely they existed: I just never learned to save my articles.

But here's what I found. An angry and nervous comment on the front page of "Litgazeta": "Will we hear from Boris Yeltsin again: 'Forgive me, your president'?"

It was prompted by two events: Boris Nikolaevich, according to this text, had disappeared somewhere again and then returned again (what a passion our president had for disappearing acts—just like Old Man Hottabych! You'd lose count of how many times it happened—at least that one in January 1995, I can't for the life of me remember).

And the second reason, of course, was Chechnya, from where reports came, each more terrifying than the last, though I didn't suspect then the true scale of the tragedy of the New Year's offensive on Grozny.

Here's what I wrote then:

"The euphoria that unexpectedly gripped some media outlets in the middle of last week personally plunged me into a state of shock.

What new holiday have they invented on our street? Ah, our president, appearing at the presentation of credentials by new ambassadors, looked 'cheerful, confident, and fully in control of the situation'? Ah, he promised to end military actions in Chechnya within a few days (the day 'LG' comes out is Wednesday: well, what's happening now?) Ah, he's back with us! He finally woke up and saw what had been happening during his seclusion, when words about the 'president fully controlling the situation' flew from the uncertain mouths of his aides...

Yes, naturally, politics and morality are incompatible. But not to such an extent!

And I have no strength to believe that from the moment we saw the 'cheerful and in control of the situation' president, one bloody page of the Caucasian war ended and a new, unstained, clean one opened...

Alas, you won't believe it anymore, you won't console yourself, and I'm afraid, you won't forgive.

I'm amused—and how can one not recall the recent Soviet past!—when Oleg Lobov, live on television, justifies the deaths of Grozny civilians by saying that the US during the Gulf War "destroyed three hundred thousand non-military, but civilian Iraqis" (my American friends gasped, wondering what dream our Security Council Secretary conjured this fantastic figure from), or when Andrei Kozyrev, with a thoughtful air, explains to us, people still communistically trusting, that the US also uses its armed forces to resolve its internal conflicts, no worse than we do.

Oh, America! What would we do without it? Where else would our politicians draw examples from then?

But why then do they not recall other examples from the same America?

During the Gulf War (supported then by the entire civilized world, including us, incidentally), I found myself in Washington. And I remember not only the sorrow spread throughout the country—more than a dozen American soldiers died, accidentally hit by their own artillery fire—their photographs on the front pages of newspapers, their biographies, interviews with their parents and friends, but also a storm of indignation across America when a single "surgical" bomb hit a bunker where civilians were sheltering.

Did our hawks forget about this?

Or – closer, very close now...

The fate of two American pilots shot down in Bosnia.

Don't they remember? Weren't they surprised that President Clinton personally dealt with their fates, and all of America anxiously watched whether the President would manage to return one alive from captivity and the body of the other, who died there?

Only two... A drop in the human sea, but everyone understood that if the president didn't notice this drop—he was worthless. A president who doesn't care about a single citizen in trouble, can he count on the trust of his other citizens?

I hear in response: but that's also propaganda, behind which lies a subtle calculation and a play for popularity.

I think we would have understood our president if, at the time when Russian military towns in Grozny were being devastated, when officers of the Russian army were being taken hostage, when, finally, Chechnya refused to hand over its terrorists responsible for plane hijackings, Russia had intervened, carried out a military expedition, spoken the language of force.

Yes, I think we would have understood...