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

Radical nationalist groups, including the Vainakh Democratic Party, the Islamic Way, the
Green movement, and the Caucasus Society joined the Executive Committee. In addition to
Dudayev, the Committee’s First Deputy Chairman was Yusup Soslambekov (a member of the
council of the Vainakh Democratic Party). The other key deputies were Zemlikhan Yandarbiev
(Chairman of the Vainakh Democratic Party), and Khusein Akhmadov (a former deputy of the
Checheno-Ingushetia parliament). During the congress, representatives issued a declaration stating
that the Chechen republic should be restored as a sovereign entity—The Chechen Republic-
Ichkeria—which should have equal status with the Russian Federation in the USSR.
The ANCCP quickly emerged as the most powerful political organization in the republic. It
was heavily supported by those in the Chechen ‘black market’ who hoped to replace supporters of
the Soviet-era Chechen leader Doku Zavgaev in key economic positions, especially in the oil sector.
Black marketeers became the primary funders of the ANCCP’s and later Dudayev’s Chechen
National Guard. 129 The ANCCP also won backing from nascent radical Islamic movements among
the Muslim clergy, and the elders of the teips.
As a result of its widespread support, the ANCCP’s actions elicited an immediate response
from the local government. The day after the ANCCP congress, the parliament of Checheno-
Ingushetia also adopted a declaration of sovereignty. It refused, however, to sanction the idea of
secession from the Russian Federation. Consequently, the ANCCP denounced the parliament for
political cowardice and demanded its dissolution. On May 25, 1991, Dudayev, as the Chairman of
the ANCCP’s Executive Committee, announced that, as a result of the declaration of sovereignty,
the Checheno-Ingushetia parliament had lost all legitimacy and the ANCCP and the Executive
Committee had become the only legitimate power in the republic.
The critical juncture came in August 1991, when the conservative parliament of Checheno-
Ingushetia wavered over whether to support the abortive putsch in the Soviet Union. Dudayev and
the Executive Committee seized the opportunity to win both the support of the republic’s population
and the Russian leadership to overthrow the parliament and its Chairman, Doku Zavgaev. Ruslan
Khasbulatov’s call, as acting Chairman of the Russian parliament, for the removal of all those
leaders of the Russian Federation’s republics who had supported the putsch spurred Dudayev into
action. Members of the ANCCP national guard seized control of the television and radio stations,
enabling General Dudayev to appeal directly to the Chechen population to overthrow the old Soviet
nomenklatura.
The fact that the Russian government was anxious to be rid of Zavgaev was a major factor in
Dudayev’s initial success. At this juncture, the view in Moscow was that the ANCCP’s declarations
were largely demonstrative and that Dudayev would establish an essentially pro-Russian
government in Grozny. 130 In late August, the Russian government sent a member of the Presidium
of the Russian parliament, General Aslanbek Aslakhanov, and the deputy to the Chairman of the
Russian Council of Ministers, Inga Grebesheva—both prominent Chechens—to Grozny to attend an
129 See Vasil’eva and Muzaev, p.60.
130 This view was confirmed by a prominent Russian official interviewed by the SDI Project in early 1995.
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