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

encompassed all groups repressed at any juncture during the Soviet period. As a result the Law
became an instrument for all aggrieved groups pressing claims on the Russian government. The
most significant of these groups in the North Caucasus was the Cossacks, whose autonomies had
been abolished as a consequence of the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. In spite of their pre-
Revolutionary status as a military caste, rather than a distinct ethnic group, the Cossacks were
specifically mentioned in the Law as a “repressed people.” This legitimized Cossack demands that
they be given parity with the non-Russian ethnic groups of the region.
Some action was taken by the Russian government, in the wake of the Law to address
individual cases, but in each case this action was ill-conceived. Karachaevo-Cherkessia was
upgraded from an AO to an ASSR in July 1991 but there was no specific program to address the
grievances of the Karachai. The Aukhovsky district of the Chechen-Akkintsy in Dagestan was
restored in May 1991 in a vague formulation and only after armed clashes had broken out between
Chechens and other groups settled in the area. A law on the formation of an Ingush republic was
passed in June 1992, but with no instructions on the delimitation of the new republic’s borders. And
a decree on the rehabilitation of the Cossacks was issued in June 1992, again with no concrete
program appended to promote the development of the Cossacks.
The inadequacies of the 1991 “Law on the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples” and its
supplementary legislation were the principal contributory factors in the most serious territorial
conflict in the North Caucasus, prior to the outbreak of the war in Chechnya: the conflict between
North Ossetia and Ingushetia over the Prigorodny district of North Ossetia in the fall of 1992.
North Ossetia-Ingushetia:
In addition to the passage of the Law on the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples and the
territorial legacy of the deportations, a number of other factors contributed to the outbreak of
violence between North Ossetia and Ingushetia:
1. The violent conflict between South Ossetia and Georgia in 1991 and 1992. 76 This resulted in
a flood of Ossetian refugees from South to North Ossetia, the majority of whom were housed
in the Prigorodny district upsetting the ethnic balance between Ossetians and Ingush. 77
76 This conflict was the result of a dispute over the status of South Ossetia within the new Georgian state. It
centered on Georgia’s refusal to upgrade South Ossetia from an AO to an ASSR which resulted first in South
Ossetia’s request for inclusion in the Russian Federation and then in its declaration of independence from
Georgia.
77 The Ossetians are an Iranian-speaking group, the descendants of the Alans who settled in the Caucasus in the
4th century and were pushed into the mountains by invading Turks and Mongols. The Alans converted to
Eastern Orthodoxy under the influence of the Byzantine Empire in the 9th century. The majority of Ossetians,
however, remained pagan until conversion by Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Sunni Muslim Ingush
are closely related ethnically and linguistically to the Chechens. They were, in fact, formerly considered to be
part of the same Caucasian ethnic group, the Nakh. The distinction between the two people arose during the
Caucasian Wars in the mid-18th century. The Ingush, who were the western branch of the Nakh, distinguished
themselves from the eastern branch, the Chechens, by refusing to fight the Russians. Both groups were given
their names by the Russians according to the key village in their respective territories–“Ongusht” and
“Chechen.”
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