Room No. 1
Kronstadt - A fortress island near the city of St. Petersburg, Russia

Kronstadt, founded in 1704, is a town of 45,000 inhabitants on an island in the Gulf of Finland. Nowadays this town is formally a district of St. Petersburg. Traditionally, it has served as the base of the Russian Baltic Fleet.

In February 1921 the inhabitants of Kronstadt were, like most other city-dwellers in Russia, hungry, cold and discontented with Communist rule. The sailors at Kronstadt were in sympathy with them; they recognized that winning the war against the Whites was one thing, but that it was also necessary to defend the spirit of the Revolution against the authoritarian and bureaucratic regime the Bolsheviks were building.

In March 1921 Kronstadt was the scene of the first and last popular armed uprising against the rule of the Communist Party. The revolt only lasted 18 days, but could conceivably have provided the spark for a third revolution that would have toppled the young Communist government and created a very different Russia.

The island was closed to ordinary citizens until 1996, because of the presence of a naval military base on the island. You could only go to Kronstadt on an excursion or at the invitation of a resident of the town.

Nine years ago a brand-new cadet school took up quarters in an old, 500 meter-long, pre-revolutionary barracks building surrounded by an iron fence. The number of enrollees quickly rose to six hundred from less than a hundred initially, with ages ranging from nine to seventeen. The school, which represents an attempt to revive Czarist military traditions, is under President Putin's special protection. At the academy, the days are filled with military drill and classroom activities, leaving the boys only one hour of free time each day. The school can also be seen as a social project, as orphans and children with difficult family backgrounds are given priority in student selection. The children of fallen heroes of the Chechen war are particularly welcome. Still, most of the boys do look back on a long family tradition of careers in the military, the police force or the KGB. The cadets come from all over the Russian Federation, also from Chechnya, some having grown up thousands of kilometers away.

Room No. 2
Grozny - The Capital of Chechnya

Chechnya is a small area situated in the north-eastern part of the central Caucasian mountain chain. The neighboring Ingushetians are close relatives of the Chechens, both linguistically and culturally. In the vernacular, both groups describe themselves as "Vainah" - literally "our people". The Chechens are the main ethnic group in the northern Caucasus.

Imperial Russia set out to conquer the Caucasus region as early as the eighteenth century with the help of a special military unit known as the Cossacks, who were to become the backbone of Moscow's expanding colonial rule. The Russian-Chechen wars have been a recurrent reality ever since.

The current capital of Chechnya, Grozny (a Russian word meaning cruel), was originally a fortress erected in 1818 as a deterrent against Chechen rebels. The same year marked the beginning of the Caucasian war, a period of frequent hostilities that spanned more than forty years. Today's Chechens say that they lost about 75 per cent of their people in the course of the fighting in the nineteenth century, with casualties on both sides totaling several hundreds of thousands. After the war, surviving Chechens were deported from the fertile regions of the Northern Caucasus.

Large-scale oil production in the Grozny area began in 1893, drawing foreign capital in its wake. The financial boom resulted in the establishment of several large factories.

The so-called "wild division" of Chechen and Ingush regiments during the First World War became famous for their unique mix of bravery, proclivity to sacrifice in action, contempt of death, and their phenomenal ability to withstand pain and scarcity.

In 1944 Stalin ordered the simultaneous deportation of more than 300,000 Chechens and 93,000 Ingushetians to Central Asia, with a resulting death toll in excess of 180,000. A ban was imposed on the Chechen language, which remained in place for 13 years. Only in 1957 were the survivors given permission to return to their homeland and re-establish an autonomous Chechen-Ingush Socialist Soviet Republic. An assembly of representatives of the Chechen nation declared Chechnya's independence in November 1990 amid claims that a country which produces more than four million tons of crude oil a year can fend for itself, even without Russia.

Dudayev was elected the first President of Chechnya in 1991. The same year saw a revolution that caused a shift of power away from a thin layer of Chechen intellectuals to a new set of rulers characterized by parochialism, foolhardiness, cruelty and unflagging determination. Key positions in the economy went to people with no relevant expertise. Oil riches vanished into thin air. Such developments eventually led to the outbreak of the first Chechnya war.

By 1996 the total number of fatalities had exceeded 200,000 and a peace treaty was signed in Hasavjurt. The accord, which put an end to the first Chechnya war, also effectively set the stage for the second. The Russian military felt bullied and humiliated, and complained that the politicians had not allowed them to "finish the job"; to a large extent, this attitude accounts for the kind of revenge-driven brutality seen during the second Chechnya war, with its trail of medieval atrocities perpetrated against rebels and civilians alike.

Aslan Maskhadov became the second President of Chechnya in 1997. His imposition of Shariah (strict Islamic rule) and the carrying out of public executions did not save the country from chaos and anarchy. Chechnya became something of a safe haven for criminals from all over the Russian Federation.

When a Chechen hit squad led by Basayev and Khattab attacked a village in Dagestan in 1999, Russia had to respond in some way. Public support for Vladimir Putin, the newly appointed crisis Prime Minister and head of the KGB's successor organization the FSB, seems to have been enhanced ahead of the 2000 Presidential Election by his endorsement, after the bombing of a block of flats in Moscow, of renewed military action in Chechnya and his decision to mount a counter-terrorist operation in the northern Caucasus. After succeeding a much-enfeebled Yeltsin as President, Putin failed to stop the war, although he had several real opportunities to do so. The Caucasus expedition now threatened to become a chronic problem for the 21st century as well, if only because of a large number of vested interests in keeping it that way.

If history repeats itself, the region could be in for decades of continuing hostilities echoing the nineteenth-century Caucasian war.

Our film shows Hadizhat Gataeva as she combs the ruins of shot-up houses in central Grozny in search of orphaned or semi-orphaned children and offers to take care of them and be "a mother" to them. Gataeva, who grew up in an orphanage herself, has been harboring abandoned children since the first war in Chechnya.

Room No. 3
In the State of Ingushetia - 4 kilometers from the border between Russia and Chechnya

Ingushetia, or "Galgaachia" in the native tongue, is the smallest constituent republic of the Russian Federation, located in the northern Caucasus. The Ingush people are closely related to the Chechens and speak a similar language, belonging to the Caucasian family of languages. Ingushetia has been part of Russia since 1810. From 1921 to 1924 it was part of the Soviet Mountain Republic established in the Caucasus. The Ingush Autonomous Oblast was established in 1924. From 1934 to 1992 it was joined to neighboring Chechnya in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, except for a brief period following World War II.

Many of the families who lost their homes when they were forced to leave Chechnya because of the armed conflict that began in 1999 are now living in appalling conditions in the neighboring Russian Republic of Ingushetia. Initially, many displaced Chechens lived in tented camps, but these have now all been closed down by the Ingush authorities in an attempt to make them go home. Some of the internally displaced families are still living in ruined factories and former farm buildings - which are not fit for human habitation - without adequate shelter or such vital services as water, gas and electricity.

The Ingush authorities say that it is safe to return to Chechnya, claiming that the situation has returned to normal. However, many who would like to return are afraid. They say that their greatest fear is that their children will be abducted during night raids and will "disappear" like so many others in Chechnya. The Ingush authorities sometimes promise to provide material for housing, but often the material is delivered and then taken away the next day. In some cases people were not allowed to move into houses built by aid agencies such as Médecins Sans Frontières. Before the closure of the tented camps, local and federal authorities cut off gas and electricity supplies in an attempt to force people to return to Chechnya. Many of the human rights violations that have characterized the conflict in Chechnya are now spilling over into Ingushetia. There are frequent reports of the "disappearance" and killing of Ingush and Chechens in Ingushetia. There are also reports of harassment of those who speak out against the spread of violence.

The current level of atrocities virtually borders on genocide or ethnic cleansing. People are abducted from their homes by kidnappers who demand ransoms to let them go. Failure to oblige may result in having to pay for the victim's maimed corpse, albeit at a lower price. The Duma has declared the war over several times, but the bombing raids have not ceased. The refugee camps in Ingushetia have been emptied but the displaced persons have nowhere to go in Chechnya. With shooting in her backyard, Hadizhat Gataeva, the woman in our film who takes care of nearly 63 orphans, must move her family out of harm's way again, to neighboring Dagestan since they cannot return to Chechnya. But it is not clear just where in Dagestan they will be able to set up a new home. Kapanamur, the German charity that has been supported Ms. Gataeva's family for years, has announced that they will stop their support at the end of the year.