RUSSIA'S TINDERBOX - Belfer Center for Science and International ...

fragmented even further and none of the organizations has succeeded in offering an alternative
vision to the KNK that is capable of bringing the North Caucasus together behind Moscow. 61
The first major pro-Russian organization was created by Ramazan Abdulatipov even before
the publication of the Security Council’s report. Then First Deputy Chairman of the Russian
parliament’s Council of Nationalities and presently First Deputy Chairman of the Federation
Council, Abdulatipov was one of the few high-ranking North Caucasians at the federal level. In the
fall of 1991, Abdulatipov convened a congress of the Association of Peoples of the Caucasus in
Moscow. The Association was intended to be a direct challenge to the KNK which, at this juncture,
had just declared the creation of a Mountain Republic and seemed poised to instigate regional
separatism. The Association was based in Moscow with a heavy representation of Moscow scholars
and Dagestanis (as Abdulatipov is an ethnic Avar from Dagestan). In 1992, it began to publish a
Russian-language magazine in Moscow, Ekho Kavkaza (“Echo of the Caucasus”), which gave
concrete form to the idea of regional integration. With a distribution of 50,000 copies and
Abdulatipov as chair of the advisory board, the journal profiled the individual national groups and
local political leaders, and discussed cultural, economic and social issues in the North Caucasus. 62
The Association, however, failed to become a credible counter-weight to the KNK and,
instead of drawing support away from the KNK was one of the factors that galvanized it into action
in 1991 and 1992. With the exception of the continued publication of its magazine, the Association
engaged in little discernible activity after its establishment.
The second major organization, the North Caucasian Democratic Congress, was established
in Stavropol’ Krai as the direct result of a conference in Piatigorsk sponsored by the Russian
government in January 1993. The conference was organized by the Ministry for Nationalities and
Regional Policy, then headed by Sergei Shakhrai. It was the first initiative in the North Caucasus
that attempted to move beyond a confrontational approach to the region and find concrete for
mechanisms for cooperation, and concluded with the signing of a “Declaration on the Principles of
Inter-ethnic Relations in the North Caucasus.” Ninety-three representatives from 37 republican
parties, movements, and the regional branches of Russian political parties took part in the
conference, with the notable exception of the KNK. Nineteen of these organizations were later
represented in the Political Council of the Congress. To mark a break with the radicalism of
Chechnya, a leader of the Chechen opposition and a former minister of the USSR oil industry,
Saslambek Khadzhiev, was elected head of the Political Council. Sergei Shakhrai’s opening
statement at the conference stressed that the chief priority of Russia’s policy in the Caucasus was the
preservation of a unified Russian state. 63
61 Short-lived organizations in the region have included the North Caucasian Inter-Parliamentary Union formed at
a meeting of regional leaders led by Ramazan Abdulatipov in Piatigorsk in October 1992 and the Assembly of
the North Caucasian Peoples, established as the result of a conference in Moscow in October 1992. Numerous
conferences of ethnic and socio-political movements in the North Caucasus were also convened throughout the
region in 1992 and 1993 to provide additional “pro-Moscow” fora for the discussion of regional issues.
62 See also Vasil’eva and Muzaev, p.23.
63 See Galina Kovalskaya, “The Caucasus: a mechanism for settling and averting conflicts has yet to be found,”
New Times International, February 1993 pp.6-9.
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