Fighting for Self-Determination, Participation and Control

Approaches to Conceptualising the Conflicts in and around Chechnya

There is an abundance of academic work on the conflicts in and around Chechnya. This volume contributes to the general literature on the protracted situation in Chechnya in that it understands “conflict” as a broad phenomenon that includes not only armed confrontations, but also narratives and symbolic practices in diverse fields of social and political life.¹ Various conceptual approaches to researching the conflicts in and around Chechnya, some of which are contradictory, can be distinguished. The most important of them will be briefly discussed below before we outline the thrust of our own book.

One group of authors sees nationalism and historical grievances as the main drivers of conflict.² In the Chechen case, this literature, which usually attributes a strong inter-ethnic component to the conflict, focuses on the restoration of justice after the various political, socio-economic and cultural grievances experienced by the peoples of the North Caucasus under Soviet and Tsarist rule. This new scholarly interest in publicising and redressing historical grievances was an important contribution to public and academic discourse during Perestroika and the early post-Soviet period, when a specifically North Caucasian literature of decolonisation and de-Stalinisation emerged. Many of these works were dedicated in particular to the topic of the Caucasian War of the nineteenth century and the Stalinist deportation of several peoples of the Caucasus during the Second World War (Kandur, 1996; Khalilov, 1998; Degoev, 1992; Bliev and Degoev, 1994; Avtorkhanov, 1991; Alieva, 1993). More recently, the new layers of Chechen grievances have also been addressed, as reflected in a large number of academic, journalistic and activist works on the two Chechen wars, and the purges and “Chechenisation” since 2000 (Politkovskaya, 2001; Lokshina, 2007; Memorial, 2016; FIDH and Memorial, 2006; Human Rights Watch, 2001). Finally, some authors focused on nationalism and the inter-ethnic dimension of conflict, underlining the mobilising potential of the Chechen tribal system (Tishkov, 1997; 2004; Hughes, 2007).

A second analytical approach to explaining (armed) conflicts, including those in Chechnya, focuses on terrorism and wartime radicalisation as drivers for the use of force. Martha Crenshaw (1981) points to the role of long-term political, economic and socio-cultural grievances as key causes of insurgent groups resorting to violence. According to this argumentation, guerrilla warfare and terrorism can be used as instruments used to “redress these grievances”; indeed, they constitute typical behaviour among nationalist movements in large colonial empires (Crenshaw, 1981: 383). Linked to the larger problem of grievances is the explanation of the escalation of armed violence as a result of the war itself (Kalyvas, 2006). Following this reasoning, the mobilisation and radicalisation of insurgent groups is a reaction to the immediate exposure to violence and follows an often spontaneous, yet pragmatic logic to gain an advantage over what is perceived as the enemy. In Chechnya, this was impressively demonstrated by the mobilisation of the formerly undecided majority of the population in all districts of Chechnya after the invasion of Russian troops in November–December 1994. Here, “cultural codes” such as honour and the protection of livelihood played an important role (Souleimanov and Aliyev, 2017).

A third strand of literature highlights greed and structural opportunities as the most important reasons for conflict.³ In the case of Chechnya, the greed thesis is represented by authors focusing on access to and control of the Chechen petrol fields and pipelines (Cornell, 2001), and on the deals between a corrupt local elite and Russian oligarchs that gave rise to many conspiracy theories (Akhmadov and Lanskoy, 2010; Roshchin, 2014). Another group of authors emphasises state collapse, economic transition and elite change as opportunities for warlords and other “violence entrepreneurs” to engage in armed conflict (Zürcher, 2007; Cornell, 2001; Derluguian, 2005), or to keep it going, for example, through the trade in kidnapped people between the two Chechnya wars (Roshchin, 2014).

The fourth conceptual approach focuses on religion, especially Islamic extremism, as a primary driver of conflict in the North Caucasus. There is disagreement, however, among the proponents of the “Islamist extremism” thesis about the exact connection between religion and the insurgency. Certain authors hold that extremism, and thus the conflict, was imported to Chechnya by foreign ideologists and members of the global jihadi movement. Echoing the war on terror launched in the United States after 2011, the “Islamist threat” in the North Caucasus is portrayed in a kind of clash of civilisations rhetoric, with Russia and the West fighting against the entire Muslim world and global terrorism (Hahn, 2007; Schaefer, 2010; Kulikov and Lembik, 2000). Other proponents of the “Islamist extremism” thesis take a more differentiated approach to the problem of mobilisation and radicalisation under the banner of Islam and see religion not as the origin of the conflict, but rather as an instrument used by some of the involved actors. Thus, the Islamisation of the warlords opened up access to financial and ideological support from global Islamic networks after other resources, such as those from solidarity-based nationalist groups in the former Soviet space and from the international community, had dried up (Hughes, 2007; B.G. Williams, 2004; E. Souleimanov and Ditrych, 2008; Moore and Tumelty, 2008; Sokiryanskaya, 2014; Wilhelmsen, 2020).

A fifth body of literature explores discursive practices and their contribution to conflict escalation and the use of force.⁴ According to this approach, conflict-supporting narratives play a key role in the mobilisation and escalation processes in Chechnya. Moreover, this escalation happens not in a linear way, but as an intersubjective process of mutual radicalisation (Wilhelmsen, 2018; 2020). On one side, there is the exclusion and demonisation of Chechnya and the Chechens in Russia, and the discursive construction and securitisation of Chechnya as an existential threat to Russia’s national interests (Russell, 2005; Wilhelmsen, 2013; 2018; Snetkov, 2014). On the other side, the insurgents in Chechnya become more radical and find support and a new outlet of violence in the international Islamist movement (Hughes, 2007; 2001; Wilhelmsen, 2005; 2020).

Finally, the broader literature dealing not directly with conflict, but with issues of contested memories in Chechnya is also of relevance to this book. Various authors highlight the historical roots of Chechen nationalism (Bennigsen and Wimbush, 1985; Bennigsen Broxup, Avtorchanov and Lemercier, 1992; Gammer, 1998; 2006), or discuss specific episodes from the past, such as the Stalinist deportation of 1944, and the fear that these traumatic experiences could be repeated in the present (Derluguian, 2005; Cheterian, 2008; Brian Glyn Williams, 2000; Gammer, 2002). Other authors devote their research to the controversial politics of history and the aggressive “cult of victory” of the Second World War in Chechnya and Russia since 2000, which unfolds against the backdrop of Putin’s increasingly authoritarian regime (Merlin, 2014; Le Huérou, 2019; Iliyasov, 2022).

Due to the broad thematic spectrum of the individual contributions, it is difficult to assign the present volume to one of the above categories. Several contributions relate to the production of (memory) narratives and their significance in the conflicts and statebuilding processes in Chechnya. Thus, at least in part, the book follows the approach of the fifth body of literature, which centres on the discursive dimension of conflict. However, the contributions are not only about narratives; it is also about the environment in which they emerged. The book thus measures the contested memory narratives against the timeline of concrete events and broader processes. Combining narrative analyses with meticulous studies on the political, socio-cultural and military context, the book makes an interdisciplinary contribution to various academic fields, from history and social anthropology to political science, sociology and social psychology. The book also builds methodological bridges, notably between memory studies, which are departing more from oral histories and victims’ perspectives, and conflict and peace research, putting greater emphasis on the hard facts of the political and military context and developments at local, national and international levels. Ultimately, a rich and detailed image emerges that should help to better understand the protracted conflict(s) in Chechnya and the changing themes and functions of historical memory since Perestroika.

Political Context and Mnemonic Debates in Chechnya, 1986–2023

The conceptual link between memory narratives, statebuilding and conflict inspired the main idea behind, and the individual contributions to, the book. The timeline of political developments in and around Chechnya since Perestroika serves as a methodological guideline for the contextualisation of the narratives, and as a structure for arranging the contributions of the individual authors. To facilitate this contextualisation, a detailed chronological overview is included at the end of the book, containing key political events and processes between 1986 and 2023, including those involving collective memories. This chronological mapping, produced by the co-editors but contributed to by several authors of contributions to this book during the academic workshop in Bern at the end of 2021, also differentiates the political levels and geographical scope on which certain events and processes take place (see Appendix 1 – “Events and Processes”; a visualisation of the mapping can be accessed via an external link).⁵