Figure 1.-- |
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The Russian relationship with Chechnya is a bloody one. The relationship began with the bloody Russian conquest by Tasarist armies during the late 19th century. Further repression followed during the Soviet era, culminating in Stalin's deportation order during World War II because he believed them to be sympathetic to the NAZIs. The Chechans were eventually allowed to return as part of the de-Stalinization program. Chechan history was little known in the west until the Chechan separtist movement developed with the disolution of the Soviet Union. Chechnya' efforts to obtain independence or a degree of autonomy resulted in brutal Russian military campaigns which has gradually changed a nationalist movement into a radical Islamic campaign that have launched guerilla raids of unimaginable barbarity, often targeting pregnant women and children.
The Chechans and Ingush speak a Caucasian language and are Sunni Muslems.
Chechnya was conquered by the Russians with considerable bloodshed in the late 19th century. Russian general Alexei Yermolov conducted the conquest of Chechnya and Dagestan in the late 19th century. The Russians destroyed villages aand built fortresses throughout the region. The Brutal tactics usedwere not unlike those used by the Rissians in the 1990s. Two authors looking at the Russian Caucasian Wars see many parallels with modern Russian policy. [Gall and Waal]
Chechan resistance to the Russians countinued in the mountaneous areas and was led by the legendary Imam Shamil. The pek of resuistance was the Shamil Rebellion.
The largely Muslim Chechans harbored continued resentment toward the Russians and the Communist Soviet state. Chechnya was initially an oblast. The Stpviets launched a through atheist program. Much of the historical discussion of thiseffort was the arrest of priests and distruction of churches. The program also attacked Islam. Here we have less information on the Soviet effort to supress Islam in Chechnya and other areas of central Asia unfer Soviet control. It certainly was every bit as brutal as the efforts in European Russia against Christianit. The Soviets changed the status of Chechnya to an autonomous republic--the Chechan-Ingush Autonomous Republic. This status was disolved along with the deportations (1944), but eventually restored after Stalin's death and the beginning of the De-Stalinization effort led by Khrushev (1957).
Stalin concluded that the Chechens were sympahetic to the NAZIs. We are not sure just how valid this charge us. It is likely that many Chechens were anti-Communist because of their Islamic religion and Stalin's suppression of all religions. We do not know to what exten the Chechens supported the NAZIs wen the Wehrmacy moved into the Caucuses (1942). (Many Soviet citizens in the Baltics, the Ukraine, and other areas of the Soviet Union looked on the Germans as lineraors until their genocidal racial policies toward Slavs became apparent.) We do know that many Chechens served loyally in the Red Army.
Stalin ordered that the entire Chechen people be exiled to Siberia. The action was coordinated by he NKVD and launched February 23, 1944. The 1 million Chenchens were brutally packed into box cars in the middle of the winter and deported east to Central Asia and Siberia. Many found themselves in Kazakhstan. Little provision was made for them either on the transports or in the camps to where they were deported. Accounts of the transports are harrowing. Chechen women in particular were mortified to being packed together in boxcars with men for the extended trasport. Some women were ashamed to relieve themselve in front of men and held their urine until their bladders burst. Anuyone who resisted was shot or executed n other ways. It is estimated that about one-third of the Chechen people were killed or died in the roundups and transport box cars, although no precise statistics are known to exist.
The Ingush were another Caucasian Muslim people. Noth Ingushetia and Chechnya are locatedin the volitile southern Caucauses north of Gerorgia. Ingushetia is located east of Checnya. Stalin also ordered the Ingush deported along with the Chechens, also suspecting them of NAZI sympathies. Like the Chechans, the Ingush were eventually allowed to return (1957). As part of Stalinist punishment of the Ingush, Stalin transfered a northern region to neighboring North Ossetia. This created an ethnic conflict that only surfaced after the collapse of the Soviet repression. The Ingush were Muslim although many were non-praticing. The Ossetians are mostly Christian with a substantian Muslim minority. When the Ingush were allowed to return to Ingushetia, they were unable to return to the northern area that had been transferred to Ossetia, There Ossetians had occupied their homes and farms. The Russian Government prepared to return this area to Ingushetia (1991), but never implemented the transfer. In the turmoil associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighting broke out between the Ingush and Ossetians. The Ingush unlike the Chechnyans did not move toward independence, but did want to recover the northern area of their territory (1992). The Russians moved troops into stop the fighting, but not before 583 deaths. An estimated 60,000 Ingush were displaced as a result of the fighting. There are still refugee camps in Ingushhetia.
Deportation is a mild term desguishing what happened to the Chechans. Conditions abord the transports were deplorable. Many more Chechens perished in the harsh conditions of their exile. Many of those who died were the children and the elderly.
After Stalin's death (1953) Khruschev launced the De-Staliinization program (1956). A part of that process, Soviet authorities allowed the Cechans to return to Chechyna (1957).
Only when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the 1980s was the military service of Chechen World War II veterans recognized and the men involved received pensions.
As Soviet central authority weakened, separtist sentiment grew in many areas, including Chechnya. Dzhokar Dudayev, a former Soviet Air Force commander, rose to power in Chechnya and persued a separtist agenda. At the time, Soviet and subsequently Russian authorities gave little attention to Chechnya. Their concern were the tumultous events in Moscow and the fight for the Soviet state and Russian Republic. The economic situation absorbed the attention of officials. Meanwwhile conditions in Chechnya spiraled out of control. Dudayev was unable to maintain control. Poorly paid army commanders and soldiers stole weapons and sold them. Weapons were soon available all over Chechnya which became notorious for both kidnapping and smuggling.
The Soviet Union was disolved December 31, 1991. Even within the new Russian Republic there were restive areas. The issue of independence was an extremely senssitive one for the Russians. The concern was that if one area was given indepence, it would lead to demands from other areas. The Russian Government made concessions granting a degree of autonamy to some areas such as tatarstan. Soviet Officials for reasons that are not known to us were unwilling to offer similar arrangements for Chechnya. As a result, the Chechens have since 1994 experienced a second Holocaust. Estimates suggest that up to 1/4 of the Chechen people have been killed since 1994.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin finally faced the problem of confronting the separtist rebellion in Chechnya (1994). Hardliners advising Yeltsin encouraged him to intervee militarily. One adviser, oleg Lobov, suggested to Yeltsin that a small victorious war would be helpful politically. Yelltsin ordered the Russian Army to intervenne to support Chechens opposed to Dudayev . A Russian tank colum entered Grozny (November 26, 1994). It proved to be a disaster. The Chechans unliked the Eastern Europeans successfully resisted the Russian tanks. Tanks are often seen as over powering. In fact, tanks without supporting infantry are vulnerable. Fighters loyal to Dudayev killed and captured Russian soldiers. In the new Russia, images of captured Russian soldiers were broadcast on television, especially bt NTV a private station. The Russian public was shocked. Worse was to come. Stunded by the defeat of the armour column, Yeltsin ordered a larger offensive. A punishing battle ensued, all portrayed on television nightly and capped by a fiscco on Nrw Years eve (December 31, 1994). The war in Cechnya continued for 2 years. The Russians succedded in killing Dudayev in a rocket attack (April 1996). The Russian Army was battereed by the Chechans. The world was amazed that the long fared Russian Army was unable to suopress the Chechans. The Chechans even staged attacks in neighboring areas of southern Russia. An attack on a hospital was especially notorious.
President Yeltsin finlly aggreed to a ceasfire. There was no agreement as to the future status of Chechnya. Under e ceasefire, the Chechans achieved self-government and a degree of autonomy for 5 years. With the death of Duddayev, selveral militia leaders rose to prominance. More ominance was the appearance of Arabic Islamic jihadists. The Chechan movement was initially nationalist and separtist, the appearance of the jidhaists was the beginning of a change in the conduct and goals of the war.
Dudayev found it difficut enough to control Chechnya. The Russians by killing him destroyed what minimal central cotrol exusted in Chechnya. There were extensive reports of extensive banditry, kidnapping, and smuggling in Chechnya. Here it is difficult to assess to what extent these problems existed in Chechnya before the Doviet intervention and to what extent the Soviets exacerbated them by killing Duddayev and other Chechan leaders. Russian brutality in attempting to supress the autonomy movement is a fact, but Chechan lawlessness can not be ignored as a serious problems faced by Russian officials. It is true that some Chgechan separtists were in fact criminals who found it useful to adopt the guise as patriots and later Islamic fundamentalists. [Klebnikov] Various militia leaders exercized some control locally. One of those commanders, Shamil Basayev, led an incursion in neighboring Dagestan (1999). He hoped to stimulate an armed ising there which would make Russian control over Chechnya even more tenious. Soon afterwards te apartment bulding bombngs began. Over 300 people were killed.
Yeltsin's hand picked successor was his last primeminister, Vladamir Putin. Putin's backround was a career in the KGB. There was strong support in Russia for a stronger response to the Cechans. The Russian public was furious over a wave of apartment buildings Moscow and other cities. Most Russians assume that these terrorist attacks were carried out by Chechans. This may well be the case, but no one has definitievely determined just who was responsible. Putin promissed the Russian people a quick, 2-week campaign. The struggle in Chechans continues to this day and seems endless. The province is in ruins. President Putin has no waivered from the tough, no-compromise apptroach he committed to in 1999. He at time has coinsidered other approsaches, but in the end had decided on a tough military approach. The Russians have used brutal tactics in Chechnya. Whole villages have been destroyed. The Soviets have expended more ordinance on Grozny than any European city has experienced since the end of World War II. (At the same time, Russian officials criticised America's much more targeted air campaign in Serbia.) Civilians have been rounded up and brutalized. The Chechans for their part have turned to attacks on Russian civilians. There are in 2004 about 100,000 Russian soldies in Chechnya. They seem unable to deal with the shadowy Chechan resistance. The Russian soldiers have behaved brutally and have radicalized the younger generation. The Chechans in turn have staged horendous acts of violence in Russia such as the attack on te Norost performance in which many children were killed (2003). The Russians currently blame any attack on Chechans regardless of the available information. An estimated 50 percent of the population has been driven out side their homeland by both the Russian military and fundamentalist Islamic fighters. If that was not bad enough, Chechnya today is an enviroonmental disaster. Some medical assessments claim that 1/3 the babies born in Chechnya today are born with birth defects.
The full details of the terrorist attack at Beslan are not yet known. What is known is that many of the terrorists who murdered the children, parents, and teachers of School No. 1 were Chechans and Ingush. Thus this terrible outrage is the latest event in the long bloody history of the southern Causcases. The attack appears to be an effort by the Chechans to expand the conflict in Chechnya so as to increase pressure on the Russians as well as mindless killing in an effort to achieve revenge for Russian operations in Chechnya.
Gall, Carlotta and Thomas de Waal. Chechnya: Calamnity in the Caususes.
Klebnikov, Paul. Conversations With a Barbarian. Klebnikov was an American who founded the Russian edition of Forbes. He was shot and killed in Moscow during July 2004. Russian authofrities in September 2004 arrested two Chechans who they believe shot Klebnikov because of his book on Chehnya.
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