Chechen

Abstract: Introduction The Feel of the Game PART ONE: GENERAL APPROACHES AND ISSUES Ethnicity in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Context Soviet Ethnic Engineering Success and Failure Ethno-Politics in a Time of Transition Territories, Resources and Power Cultures and Languages in Conflict PART TWO: CASE STUDIES The Russians are Leaving Central Asia and Kazakhstan The Culture of Ethnic Violence The Osh Conflict The Anatomy of Ethnic Violence The Ingush-Ossetian Conflict Ambition and the Arrogance of Power The Chechen War (Part I) Ambition and the Arrogance of Power The Chechen War (Part II) PART THREE: GOVERNING CONFLICTING ETHNICITY Post-Soviet Nationalism What is Rossia? Identities in Transition Strategies for Ethnic Accord in Post-Soviet States PART FOUR: CONCLUSION: DESTROYING REALITY THROUGH THEORY (OR 'BACK TO THE IVORY TOWERS')

Abstract: Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict by John B. Dunlop (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, xi, 234 pp, $54.95 cloth, $18.95 paper). Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus by Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal (New York: New York University Press, 1998, xiv, 416 pp, $39.50). Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power by Anatol Lieven (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, xii, 436 pp, $57.95 cloth, $25.60 paper). Prisoner of the Mountains directed by Sergei Bodrov (Orion Pictures, 1997, 99 minutes).In November 1994 Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia, was worried about his standing in the opinion polls. Elections to the State Duma the previous year had not gone well, and the legislature was now dominated by a 'red-brown' opposition of old-line communists and nationalists like Vladimir Zhirinovskii's somewhat misleadingly named Liberal Democratic party. Meanwhile, chronic economic difficulties, rising crime, and increasingly flagrant corruption continued to erode Yeltsin's popularity. Even more worrisome, in the Caucasus region on Russia's southern border, Islamic separatists were threatening the Russian Federation's fragile unity.The crisis in the south centred on Chechnya, a small Muslim nation on the northern edge of the Caucasus mountain range that had declared its independence from Moscow in November 1991, shortly after the collapse of the USSR. Ironically, Yeltsin initially encouraged Chechen separatism in his campaign to weaken the authority of his archrival, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Although Yeltsin now opposed the move, over the next two years he did little to re-establish Moscow's authority over the breakaway republic. There were far bigger fish to fry at home, such as the struggle with the Supreme Soviet that had ended in a bloody showdown in October 1993.As for Chechnya, President Dzhokhar Dudaev, a charismatic former Soviet air force general with a penchant for melodramatic rhetoric and Cosa Nostra couture, had proven spectacularly unfit to govern his infant regime. With an unusually high number of BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes racing about the streets, there were many outward signs of prosperity in the capital, Grozny. Yet much of the republic's civic apparatus, such as schools and hospitals, had all but ceased to function. In the words of a British journalist: 'Dudaev seemed much more interested in the idea of calling Chechnya independent than in the practicality of making it work.' By 1994, Chechens were growing increasingly unhappy with their leader's laissez-faire style. There were many signs that his many domestic political opponents might soon force Dudaev out of office.Yeltsin was not prepared to wait. His own heavy-handed efforts to encourage Dudaev's foes had ended ignominiously on 26 November 1994, when an attempt to seize Grozny by opposition forces reinforced with Russian armour was easily quashed. The humiliation of this Caucasian Bay of Pigs only further encouraged hard-liners in the Kremlin. At the same time, although the presidential election was still more than a year away, it seemed that decisive action would surely boost Yeltsin's sagging political fortunes. One leading official reasoned: 'It is not only a question of the integrity of Russia. We need a small victorious war to raise the president's ratings.' After all, only two months earlier United States troops had easily occupied the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, in a similar operation to restore 'legitimacy' there. The Russian minister of defence, Pavel Grachev, boasted that one paratroop brigade would need no more than two hours to secure Grozny.General Grachev proved to be too optimistic. On 31 December, a day that happened to coincide with the minister's birthday, some 6,000 Russian ground troops launched a major assault on the Chechen capital. Even though Dudaev's men had done little to prepare the city's defences, it would take seven weeks of vicious urban combat and heavy artillery strikes to drive them out of their capital. …

Abstract: Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin improvised a system of "asymmetric federalism" to help maintain its successor state, the Russian Federation. However, when sparks of independence flared up in Chechnya, Yeltsin and, later, Vladimir Putin chose military action to deal with a "brushfire" that they feared would spread to other regions and eventually destroy the federation. Matthew Evangelista examines the causes of the Chechen Wars of 1994 and 1999 and challenges Moscow's claims that the Russian Federation was too fragile to withstand the potential loss of one rebellious republic. He suggests that the danger for Russia lies less in a Soviet-style disintegration than in a misguided attempt at authoritarian recentralization, something that would jeopardize Russia's fledgling democratic institutions. He also contends that well-documented acts of terrorism by some Chechen fighters should not serve as an excuse for Russia to commit war crimes and atrocities. Evangelista urges emerging democracies like Russia to deal with violent internal conflict and terrorism without undermining the fundamental rights and freedoms of their citizens. He recommends that the United States and other democracies be more attentive to Moscow's violations of human rights and, in their own struggle against terrorism, provide a kind of role model.

Abstract: Beginning in June of 2000 Chechen terrorists have carried out twenty-eight acts of suicide terrorism acts including two mass hostage taking operations combined with suicide terrorism (Beslan and Nord Ost). This paper reports the findings from psychological autopsies (interviews with close family members and friends) of thirty-four (out of 112 total) of these human bombers as well as augmenting them with material from hostage interviews from Beslan and Nord-Ost. The authors analyze the phenomena on the levels of the organization, individual, society and in terms of ideology and compare findings from other arenas also involving suicide terrorism. The main findings are that a lethal mix occurs when individuals in Chechnya are vulnerable to self recruitment into suicide terrorism due to traumatic experiences and feeling a duty to revenge and this vulnerability is combined with exposure to groups that recruit and equip suicide terrorists with both an ideology and the means to explode themselves. The ideology s...