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

The initial state of unpreparedness of the Russian military for the war that emerged, and the
fact that no maps of Grozny were even available to distribute to the troops, 120 are symbolic of the
overall conceptual lag on the future of both Chechnya and the Russian Federation. Those in Moscow
who took the decision to launch a full-scale attack on Chechnya were moving into uncharted waters
and immediately foundered on a sandbank. In August 1995, when this report was written, after eight
months of destructive conflict in Chechnya, the question of the ultimate status of Chechnya
remained unchanged and the future structure of the Russian Federation was still in doubt. 121
After December 1994, what began as a political conflict over the structural legacy of the
USSR between the Russian Federation and one of its “subjects,” assumed the dimensions of an interethnic
conflict. This has had serious repercussions for ethnic Chechens living in the rest of the North
Caucasus and the Russian Federation as a whole, many of whom were expelled from their homes in
the summer of 1995. The evolution of the political dispute into an ethnic conflict was as much the
direct result of the propaganda of the Chechen leadership as it was a consequence of the Soviet
association of specific territorial-administrative units with a “titular nationality.” From 1991,
Dzhokhar Dudayev and his associates repeatedly stressed that it was the sovereign Chechen people,
embodied in the republic of Chechnya-Ichkeria, as opposed to the multi-ethnic people of the
political-territorial entity of Chechnya, who had exercised their right to self-determination and
seceded from the Russian Federation. Prior to the outbreak of war in December 1994, however, this
sole identification of Chechnya with the Chechen people did not translate into violence against the
Russian population of the republic. Indeed, after secession, the sovereign Chechen people proved to
be much less than a unity and were more likely to perpetrate violence against each other than against
ethnic Russians.
The Structural Legacy of the USSR and the Crisis of Leadership in Chechnya:
In addition to the conceptual lag in Russia’s regional policy before December 1994, several
other elements contributed to the escalation of the conflict between Chechnya and Moscow. The
most significant of these was a direct result of the structural legacy of the USSR and the fact that
prior to 1991 Chechnya had been an autonomous rather than a union republic. This fact meant that
Chechnya had none of the government institutions enjoyed by the Russian Federation and the other
union republics that might have enabled it to build an independent state. Its Soviet-era leadership
lacked experience in self-governance as a result of the symbolic nature of its autonomy up to 1991.
The new Chechen elite that rose to power after the collapse of the USSR was composed of
radical nationalists from the political fringes with no prior administrative experience; leaders of the
so-called ‘Chechen Mafia’ who specialized in extra-legal activities; members of the Chechen
diaspora from outside the borders of the USSR who had little idea of the environment in which
120 See Fred Hiatt, “Russian Military Machine Revealing Rust and Wear: Forces in Chechnya Ill-Equipped, Ill-
Trained,” Washington Post, January 17, 1995.
121 See for example, Alessandra Stanley, “Russian Assault Recaptures Police Station in Chechnya,” New York
Times, August 22, 1995. Stanley writes: “The peace negotiations in Grozny have bogged down over the issue of
Chechnya’s future political status. Russia wants Chechnya to remain part of the Russian Federation, but
Chechen leaders continue to demand independence.”
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