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Russia and Chechnia: The Permanent Crisis pp 1–24Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction

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Abstract

The desperate struggle of the Chechen people against the potentially overwhelming power of their mighty northern neighbour has caught the world’s imagination over the past two years, because of its dramatic quality. This fact in itself would justify an extended treatment of the subject. But there is a further reason to concern oneself with this issue. The Chechen — Russian relationship has not only an intrinsic interest but a bearing on the fate of post — communist Russia; the way the Russian government handles the Chechen question has been, and continues to be, a touchstone of its attitude towards the transformation of the state into a genuine federation. Hence the present collection of essays, which is intended both to present some of the background and to examine the struggle itself in detail.

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Notes

  1. The Chechens are customarily linked with the Ingush, and they have indeed suffered a similar fate at certain points in their history. But they are not the same people, and when the time came, at the end of 1991, to make the crucial decisions, the Ingush in general preferred to adopt a more moderate policy of autonomy within the framework of the Russian Federation. There were several reasons for this. One was that their grievances at the time were largely directed against the neighbouring Ossetians, because of the loss of the Prigorodnyi district to them in 1944, and they hoped for Russian support in recovering the area. Another was that they wanted to recover autonomy from Chechnia, which they had lost in 1934 (see Iu. Karpov, ‘K probleme Ingushskoi avtonomii’, Sovetskaia Etnografiia, 5 (1991), p.29). Most important of all, the Ingush lacked the Chechens’ long tradition of resistance to Russia, having taken part neither in the Shamil rising nor in the Gotsinskii rising of 1920–1.

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  2. The most up-to-date survey of the Chechen and Ingush languages is by Joanna Nichols, in R. Smeets (ed.), The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, vol.4 (Delmar: New York, 1994), pp.1–77 (Chechen), 79–145 (Ingush).

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  3. M.S. Kosven et al. (eds), Narody Kavkaza. Etnograficheskie Ocherki, vol. 1, (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960), p.25.

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  4. S.A. Arutiunov, ‘Iazyka Narodov Kavkaza’, in M.G. Abdushelishvili et al. (eds), Narody Kavkaza. Antropologiia, Lingvistika, Khoziaistvo (Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk, 1994), p.102.

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  5. See G.V. Klimov, Die Kaukasischen Sprachen (Hamburg: 1969), p.47, for an account of varying views of the status of Chechen within the East Caucasian language family.

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  6. E. Chantre, Recherches Anthropologiques dans le Caucase, vol. 4, (Paris: 1887), p.195; on the existence of pagan-Christian syncretism, see N.N. Veliakaia and V.B. Vinogradov, ‘Doislamskii Religioznyi Sunkretizm u Vainakhov’, Sovetskaia Etnografiia, no.3 (1989), pp.39–48.

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  7. The conclusions of M.A. Mamakaev’s detailed Soviet-era study, Chechenskii Taip (Rod) v Period Ego Razlozheniia (Groznyi, 1973), are broadly in line with more recent accounts by Russian journalists (for example Tat’iana Nedashkovskaia, ‘Rossiiskie-Chechenskie Razgovory na Puti k Soglasiiu’, Novoe Vremia, no.20 (1994), pp.12–14, and D. Makarov and V. Batuev, ‘Chechentsy i taipy’, Argumenty i Fakty, no.3 (796), (January 1996), p.2. The main difference is that whereas according to Mamakaev the clan system disintegrated hundreds of years ago, with the coming of capitalist relations, many recent writers see the Chechen taipy and tukhumy as retaining an important role even now.

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  8. Quoted in A. Bennigsen, ‘Un Mouvement Populaire en Caucase au XVIIIe Siècle. La Guerre Sainte du Sheikh Mansur (1785–1791)’, Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique (CMRS), vol.V, no.2, p.170.

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  10. A. Bennigsen, op. cit., pp.159–205.

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  11. This is not the place for a discussion of Sufism in the Soviet Union. The whole subject has been treated in detail by A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Mystics and Commissars (London: Hurst, 1985) and more recently, specifically for the North Caucasus, by Fanny E.B. Bryan, ‘Internationalism, Nationalism and Islam’, in M.B. Broxup (ed.), The North Caucasus Barrier (New York: St. Martins Press, 1992), pp.195–218.

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  12. The most recent study of the Shamil movement is the highly detailed account by Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar (London: Frank Cass, 1994).

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  13. A.W. Fisher, ‘Emigration of Muslims from Russia in the Years after the Crimean War’, Jahrbücher für die Geschichte Osteuropas. Neue Folge, vol.35 (1987), p.363.

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  14. For the resistance and fate of the Circassians in the nineteenth century see P.B. Henze, ‘Circassian Resistance to Russia’, in M.B. Broxup, The North Caucasus Barrier, pp.62–111.

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  15. M. Pinson, ‘Ottoman Colonization of the Circassians in Rumili after the Crimean War’, Études Balkaniques, vol.8, no.3 (1972), p.71.

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  16. A. Bennigsen, ‘The Qadiriyah (Kunta Hajji) Tariqah in North-East Caucasus, 1850–1987’, Islamic Culture, vol.LXII, nos.2–3 (April–July 1988), pp.63–78.

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  19. W. Zürrer, ‘Deutschland und die Entwicklung Nordkaukasiens im Jahre 1918’, Jahrbücher für die Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, vol.26 (1978), p.37. Zürrer’s article is a useful guide to the kaleidoscopic changes of 1918.

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  20. R. Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union, revised edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964), p.197.

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  21. Quoted in B.O. Kashkaev, Grazhdanskaia Voina v Dagestane 1918–20 gg. (Moscow, 1976), p.174. Gabiev was temporarily proved wrong by the shifting fortunes of war. On 3 September 1918 Soviet control in Temir Khan Shura collapsed under Chechen pressure and ‘Prince Nuh-Bek Tarkovskii established himself as dictator there’ (W.E.D. Allen and P. Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), p.507).

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  22. Zürrer, op. cit., p.39.

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  23. Zürrer, op. cit., p.40.

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  24. There are several divergent views in the secondary sources about the area of effectiveness, the viability, the policies and above all the reasons for the failure of the North Caucasian Republican Government of 1917 to 1920. Three participants in the government have published their views. See P. Kosok (Kotsev), ‘Revolution and Sovietization in the Northern Caucasus, Pt.2, Caucasian Review, no.3 (1956), pp.45–53; V-G. Jabagi, ‘Revolution and Civil War in the North Caucasus’, Central Asian Survey (CAS), 10 (1991), nos.1/2, pp.119–132; H. Bammate, ‘The Caucasus and the Russian Revolution (from a political viewpoint)’, CAS, 10, no.4 (1991), pp.1–30; Soviet sources predictably differ from all the above; but the memoirs of General Denikin contain yet another version. This question deserves investigation.

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  25. This rising has now been analysed in detail by M.B. Broxup, ‘The Last Ghazawat: The 1920–1921 Uprising’, in M.B. Broxup, The North Caucasus Barrier, pp.112–45.

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  26. The establishment of Bolshevik rule in the North Caucasus has been covered summarily by S. Blank in ‘The Formation of the Soviet North Caucasus 1918–1924’, CAS, 12, 1 (1993), p.13, and in great detail up to March 1918 by R.D. King in Sergei Kirov and the Struggle for Soviet Power in the Terek Region, 1917–1918 (New York: Garland, 1987). For the period from March 1918 to January 1921, however, there is no modern treatment.

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  27. These figures come from an official history produced in the Brezhnev era, which is hardly likely to understate the numbers (Ocherki istorii Checheno-Ingushskoi ASSR, vol.2 (Grozny: Checheno-Ingushskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1972), p.84).

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  28. Ibid., Ocherki, vol.2, p.115; A. Bennigsen, op. cit., p.70.

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  29. M.S. Magomedov, ‘Iz istorii resheniia natsional’nogo i religioznogo voprosov na severnom Kavkaze’, Voprosy Nauchnogo Ateizma, 14 (1973), p.47. Magomedov also gives the apparently contradictory figure of 61 200 mürids for the ‘national republics of the Northern Caucasus’; if this is adopted the number of Sufis in Chechnia alone in 1926 would have to be scaled down considerably.

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  30. These figures are taken from G. Simon, Nationalism and Policy Toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), Table 2.1, p.26 and Table A.15, p.416.

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  31. It would take us too far afield to examine the controversy over the Circassians. Soviet writers of an earlier time viewed their subdivision as a wise response to genuine national differences. In the West it has been seen as a case of ‘divide and rule’. For a very recent view by a specialist on Circassian linguistics, stressing the fundamental unity of the East Circassians (Cherkess and Kabardians), despite differences of dialect, see R. Smeets, ‘Circassia’, CAS, 14, 1 (1995), pp.107–25.

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  32. N.S. Nechipurnova, ‘Natsional’nyi moment v raionirovanii Severnogo Kavkaza’, in Osushchestvlenie Leninskoi Natsional’noi Politiki na Severnom Kavkaze (Piatigorsk: 1971), p.47.

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  33. Ocherki istorii Checheno-Ingushskoi ASSR, vol.2, p.129.

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  34. See in detail A. Avtorkhanov, ‘The Chechens and the Ingush during the Soviet Period and its Antecedents’;, in M.B. Broxup (ed.), The North Caucasus Barrier, pp.157–84. Avtorkhanov was present in Chechnia during this period.

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  35. N.F. Bugai, L.Beriia — I.Stalinu: ‘Soglasno Vashemu Ukazaniiu’ (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 1995), pp.90–1.

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  36. Beria’s telegram of 22 February 1944 to Stalin, quoted in M.A. Vyltsan, ‘Deportatsiia Narodov v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny’, Etnogra-ficheskoe Obozrenie (1995), no.3, pp.36–8.

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  37. Ibid., p.40.

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  38. Iu. Desheriev, Zhizn’ vo Mgle i Bor’be (Moscow: Paleia, 1995).

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  39. Bennigsen, op. cit., p.74.

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  45. R.J. Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the Soviet Union (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994), Table 4.4, p.176.

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  46. See in detail C.D. Harris, ‘A Geographical Analysis of Non-Russian Minorities in Russia and its Ethnic Homelands’, Post-Soviet Geography, vol.34, no.9 (Nov. 1993), pp.543–97.

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  47. Russian journalists have examined the clan background of Dudaev, and there is in general a tendency in Russian journalism to stress the importance of this factor. For an interpretation of Chechen politics in terms of clan membership, see D. Makarov and V. Batuyev, ‘Chechentsy i Teipy’, Argumenty i Fakty, no.3 (796) (January 1996), p.2. In the absence of any serious anthropological studies, this question must be left open.

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  48. M.B. Broxup, ‘After the Putsch, 1991’, in M.B. Broxup, The North Caucasus Barrier, p.233.

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  49. Izvestiia, 8 October 1991, p.1.

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  50. Izvestiia, 11 October 1991, p.1, A. Kazikhanov reporting from Grozny.

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  51. Izvestiia, 10 October 1991, p.2.

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  52. I. Dement’eva, ‘My ne pribavim sebe svobody, otniav ee u drugikh’, Moskovskie Novosti, 46, 17 November 1991, p.5.

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  53. Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, 45, no.30 (1993), p.28.

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  58. See also the study by J.I. Dorian, I.S. Rosi and S.T. Iudriyan, ‘Central Asia’s Oil and Gas Pipeline Network. Current and Future Flows’; Post-Soviet Geography, vol.35 (Sept. 1994), p.420.

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  60. This view has also been taken by R.G. Kaiser in his useful comparative article, ‘Prospects for the Disintegration of the Russian Federation’, Post-Soviet Geography, vol.36, no.7 (September 1995).

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  1. Ben Fowkes
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    Ben Fowkes (Senior Lecturer) (Senior Lecturer)

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Fowkes, B. (1998). Introduction. In: Fowkes, B. (eds) Russia and Chechnia: The Permanent Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26351-6_1

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