So that not a single one of our special services would find out where the Chechens get the most modern Russian weapons (no matter how many times I asked our military leaders to give me at least one serial number of a sniper rifle made in Tula in 1999 and found with the Chechens—silence in response). Yes, the army must not be humiliated any longer.

But these words are spoken cynically, to the applause of their allies from the "Bears," Communists, and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, people like Zhirinovsky, who do not send their own children to war.

For them, Motherland is power, not the people living in the vastness of Russia.

For them, Motherland is Voloshin, Berezovsky, and Chubais.

What should a normal candidate for president of Russia have done?

To name all the fallen Russian boys by name.

But they are a minority.

A minority—the dead and the refugees. A minority—teachers and doctors who hadn't received their salaries during his premiership. A minority—people. The majority—power and KGB active reserve officer Gryzlov, appointed by Putin to head the mythical "Bear."

That's why I look at this map from '95, trying to understand and unable to understand why we always have the same thing.

Only the guys are dying. Another generation...

...I welcomed the year 2000 at the dacha of my friend, the wonderful writer Eduard Uspensky. We, naturally, stayed up all night, hoping to catch up on sleep the next day.

In the morning, Edik woke me up:

"Get up immediately... Turn on the TV."

On January 1st, a country stunned by lack of sleep learned that Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin had voluntarily resigned, naming Vladimir Putin as his successor.

A new era was beginning.

Notebook Six: Year 2000

So that no cross would be placed over my body,
So as not to show our backs to the enemy,
With the holy names
Of our wives and brides
They named the combat
Vehicles.

The entire previous war in Chechnya was called an "anti-terrorist operation." Those who fought and died there didn't really understand the difference.

In summer, a decision was made to permanently deploy an army division and an internal troops brigade throughout Chechnya (as military garrisons).

We, a group of deputies from the State Duma's Security Committee, decided to go there and see everything with our own eyes.

I wrote then:

"September—the end of the cold summer of 2000. I returned from there on Wednesday night. Continuing my Chechen diary: it began in January '95, gunfire, fire, smoke, uncollected corpses in the streets, the basement under the Grozny dairy factory (then, unaccustomed, it was terrifyingly frightening).

...What a landscape after battle truly means, you only grasp when you look from a helicopter. We flew over practically all of Chechnya from north to south. And if in the north, above the stanitsas of Naurskaya, Znamenskaya, Shelkovskaya, there are practically no traces of war, then the closer you get to Urus-Martan, Gudermes, Shali, the more blown-up bridges, broken roads, and—ruins, ruins, ruins... Here it is, our domestic cosmos. I'm not even talking about Grozny itself anymore—if anything is to be done with this city, it's only one thing: sell it to Hollywood for horror movie filming. Yes, one more detail, wonderfully visible from the air: burning mountains. At first, I didn't understand what these eternal fires were (in one place, somewhere near Gudermes, I counted eleven of them). They explained: these are illegal oil wells being blown up. Where possible, whose are possible. And some are not... But more on that later.

The idea for this trip arose in the State Duma's Security Committee after the presidential decree on the permanent establishment of military units in Chechnya—both army and internal troops. In principle, the idea is sound and necessary: if we are to establish ourselves in Chechnya, then let it be for real, not in hit-and-run fashion, sending one battalion then another for three months... We already know how many people died in such movements. Just recall the Moscow region OMON, which never reached the final destination of its dangerous assignment...

We decided to see how this "permanent basis" was being established. How were officers and soldiers living? What weapons were they fighting with? How were they settling in? How did the local population treat them? Was care shown for the families of fallen officers?