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

As modern civil society ceased to function in Chechnya, the Chechen political culture came
into play. This political culture was traditionally highly-decentralized and non-hierarchical, rooted in
territorially-based extended family units, the teips. Once Dudayev dissolved the Chechen parliament
in 1993, the role of the legislative branch devolved by default to the traditional structures. Issues of
state significance began to be decided in meetings of the teips rather than sessions of parliament.
Instead of analysts and experts as presidential advisers, Dudayev turned to the elders of the teips and
to religious leaders. With no parliamentary representatives on hand, those outside the teip system
had few options for making themselves heard other than protest.
As a result, there was an exodus of Russians from the republic to Stavropol’ and Krasnodar.
These were the oil-industry workers, engineers, teachers, and doctors. In 1992-1993, for example,
approximately 150,000 Russians left Chechnya. 128 Their numbers were swelled by skilled Chechens,
starving the republic of the majority of its administrators and those who kept the economy
functioning.
In the period before December 1994, therefore, Dudayev’s popularity had plummeted—not only
among the political elite but also among the population as a whole. As the unfolding of events in
Chechnya from late 1991-1994 illustrates, only the general anti-Chechen policies of Moscow, as
opposed to its specifically anti-Dudayev policies, kept President Dudayev in place as the perceived
guarantor of national interests and of the sovereignty of Chechnya-Ichkeria. These policies included
two other attempted direct military interventions, and the financial and indirect military support of
numerous coup attempts by the Chechen opposition.
Chechnya’s secession and the evolution of the dispute with Moscow:
The sequence of events leading up to the war between Moscow and Chechnya is
complicated. It was initially sparked by the gradual realization in 1989 and 1990 that Moscow would
not raise the political status of the peoples of the North Caucasus within the USSR. In 1989, even the
Chechen representative to the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies, Ruslan Khasbulatov, who
would later become the Speaker of the Russian Parliament, denied that the small ethnic groups of the
Russian Federation had any particular right to national autonomy. In addition, the conservative
Soviet parliaments of the North Caucasian republics were anxious to retain their positions and
privileges and were not prepared to confront Moscow on the issue.
1. The Chechen Revolution:
In November 1990, 1,000 Chechens from across the Chechen-Ingush republic convened at
the first All-National Congress of the Chechen People (ANCCP) in Grozny. Here Air Force Major-
General Dzhokhar Musaevich Dudayev, the commander of the Soviet air force base in Tartu,
Estonia, was elected as the chair of the Executive Committee of the ANCCP. Dudayev’s prestigious
title, impressive service record and connections in the upper echelons of Soviet society were the key
factors in his election.
128 See Valery Tishkov “The Ambitions of Leaders and the Arrogance of Power,” CMG Bulletin, February 1995,
p.4.
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