- MOSCOW (Reuters) - A dissident
Russian governor launched a blistering attack on President Vladimir Putin
web sites) on Sunday, saying he was taking Russia back to the darkest days
of Soviet rule.
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- Nikolai Fyodorov assaulted Putin on all fronts for his
first year in office and called his Chechnya campaign a disaster in a rare
public attack by a serving governor.
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- ``We are now on a receding wave taking us back in time,''
Fyodorov, governor of the central Chuvashiya region, told NTV's analytical
Itogi program.
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- ``Some people might not realize it but we are returning
to the 1950s or 30s,'' he said, referring to the time of mass communist
repression under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
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- ``Instead of a democratic Russia over the last months
we have been building a bureaucratic Russia. It is obvious that instead
of a federative Russia, a strongly centralized Bolshevik Russia is being
built,'' he said.
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- NTV is itself embroiled in a fight against what it says
is Putin's drive to curb the press freedom and is usually shunned by pro-Kremlin
politicians.
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- Putin has unnerved local leaders by embarking on a crusade
to boost the Kremlin's dominant role in relations with Russia's 89 regions
and republics.
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- Kremlin's Fierce Critic
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- Fyodorov showed his colors earlier this month as the
only one in the 178-strong upper chamber of parliament not to stand to
the music of Stalin's Soviet-era anthem which Putin had pushed through
parliament to become Russia's national tune.
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- Despite his apparent loneliness, Fyodorov told NTV that
he hoped it would not be long before others rally to his cause and said
that members of both houses of parliament ``not only support me but say
thank you to me for voicing ideas that they share.''
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- Turning to Putin's 14-month-old military drive in rebel
Chechnya, which was instrumental in winning him the hearts of many Russians,
Fyodorov slammed the Kremlin chief's trust that the military could stamp
out armed resistance to Moscow.
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- ``The war in Chechnya is hopeless, with no end in sight.
In essence, it is also criminal because it is partly a civil war. The anti-terrorist
operation there was a complete disaster,'' he said, using the official
description of the military campaign.
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- Fyodorov said he was often asked why unlike most of his
humbled colleagues he was not holding his fire now that the Kremlin had
so much leverage against the regional leaders and Putin enjoyed wide public
backing.
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- ``I am not personally intimidated by the numerical prevalence
of the majority because their large numbers do not mean that historically
they will also prevail,'' he said.
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