In the Name of War.(Chechnya)(Brief Article)

With his close-shaven head and his small, feral eyes, Yuri Budanov, 37, is not the kind of man to inspire affection. Yet he's got plenty of fans. Outside the courthouse in southern Russia, where Budanov's case is being tried, demonstrators hold up placards proclaiming his innocence and calling for his release. When the trial started, supporters brought flowers--and chased away a man who held up a banner proclaiming death to criminals.

A criminal is exactly what Budanov would normally be. Not only is he on trial for murder, he's actually confessed to it--except he committed the deed while fighting on Moscow's side in the Chechen war. A little more than a year ago, Budanov has admitted, he detained and killed an 18-year-old Chechen woman named Elza Kungayeva. The prosecution says she was a non-combatant--an assertion that, if true, would give Budanov, an Army colonel, the dubious distinction of becoming the highest-ranking Russian military officer in recent memory to be officially accused of killing a civilian. As a result, his trial, which went into recess last week, has assumed an importance that goes well beyond a run-of-the-mill homicide case. According to the Russian magazine Kommersant Vlast, "This is not a trial of an individual person. Russia's Army itself is being judged."

Russian society may be in the dock as well. The most striking thing about Budanov's crime is how many Russians think it doesn't warrant punishment. The demonstrators in front of the courthouse, in the city of Rostov-on-Don, are only the most vocal representatives of a wider mood. One recent survey by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda showed that 79 percent didn't think Budanov should be tried. At the start of the trial, Budanov's former commanding general, Vladimir Shamanov, made a point of visiting the court and shaking Budanov's hand. And the charges of rape that originally figured in Budanov's indictment have been dropped.

So why are Russians so forgiving of such a brutal killing? The answer, at least in part, can be found in Russia's long record of wars inflicted and endured. Again and again, the country has been traumatized by external invaders or riven by civil war. Its authoritarian rulers, from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin, have all too often resorted to using force against their own citizens. British military historian Antony Beevor, author of a book about the savage World War II battle for the Soviet city of Stalingrad, points out that Russia's original conquest of Chechnya in the middle of the 19th century was notorious even by the low standards of other colonial powers like Britain and France. "Because Russian history has been so bloody, there's a kind ...