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

Chechnya was operating; 122 and a handful of educated young idealists whose proposals for reform
were thwarted at every turn. They were all woefully ill-equipped to deal with the multiple challenges
of creating a new Chechen nation state and creating a functioning market economy.
Although there was a university, a pedagogical institute, a medical institute, and an oil and
gas institute in Grozny, none but the latter—given the importance of the oil industry in the region—
could compete with facilities in the Russian Federation. Throughout the Soviet period, there was a
consequent brain-drain of ambitious Chechen youth toward the Federation center. The most highlyskilled
political cadres and economic specialists in Chechnya were, therefore, trained outside the
republic and were often Russians assigned to work there by Moscow. Ethnic Russians, for example,
accounted for around 20% of the total population and were the dominant group in Grozny and other
key urban centers. Dzhokhar Dudayev himself was educated in elite Soviet military schools in
Tambov and Moscow, and was assigned to a strategic bomber base in Tartu in Estonia until 1990.
He came to Chechnya only on retirement from the Soviet airforce. 123
The Chechnya that Dudayev and the new elite inherited was an impoverished one. In the
1980s, the rural regions of Checheno-Ingushetia where ethnic Chechens and Ingush predominated,
had experienced a gradual economic decline as state resources were diverted towards industrial
development and the booming oil industry. By the late 1980s, in spite of promises by the Soviet
authorities to create jobs in the construction and food processing industries, rural unemployment had
increased dramatically. According to unofficial estimates it reached as high as 30% of the total labor
force in 1991 (20% in official estimates). 124 This unskilled Chechen and Ingush labor force was
diverted beyond the borders of the republic to find seasonal work elsewhere, while skilled workers
from the central regions of Russia were brought in to work in the oil industry. This
create
ased not only on its own total oil reserves of
approximately 30 million tons, but also on the receipt from Russia of an average of 17-19 million
tons of crude oil a year for processing at its refineries. As a result of Dudayev’s mishandling of the
relationship with Moscow, by 1994 crude oil refining in Chechnya had dropped to an all time low of
122 Such as Yusef Shamsedin, the erstwhile Chechen Foreign Minister, who was born in Jordan.
123 See for example, Steven Erlanger, “Chechen Warrior Chief: Soviet Army Credentials,” New York Times,
December 15, 1994.
124 See Vasil’eva and Muzaev, p.58-59.
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