Contested sovereignty: The tragedy of Chechnya

International Security

Volumn 23, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 5-49

  Lapidus, Gail W ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0032392076     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.23.1.5     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. For an account of this process, see Gail W. Lapidus, "Gorbachev and the 'National Question': Restructuring the Soviet Federation," Soviet Economy, Vol. 5, No. 3 (July-September 1989), pp. 201-250; and Gail W. Lapidus, "From Democratization to Disintegration: The Impact of Perestroika on the National Question," in Gail W. Lapidus and Victor Zaslavsky, eds., From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 45-70.
2. For an account of this process, see Gail W. Lapidus, "Gorbachev and the 'National Question': Restructuring the Soviet Federation," Soviet Economy, Vol. 5, No. 3 (July-September 1989), pp. 201-250; and Gail W. Lapidus, "From Democratization to Disintegration: The Impact of Perestroika on the National Question," in Gail W. Lapidus and Victor Zaslavsky, eds., From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 45-70.
3. Significantly, all except Tajikistan were conflicts over demands for sovereignty or independence by former autonomous republics whose populations constitute ethnic minorities in the new independent states.
4. The precise numbers are uncertain and the subject of heated controversy, ranging from the figure of 100,000 deaths cited by liberal political leader Grigory Yavlinsky to the 18,500 used by then-Minister of Internal Affairs Anatoly Kulikov. The numbers of wounded or maimed are even more uncertain; General Aleksandr Lebed has put the figure at 240,000. The best-documented recent estimate, by Vladimir Mukomel, calculates the total number of deaths at 35,000, of which 6,500 are military and 28,500 civilians; "Vooruzhennye mezhnatsional'nye i regional'nye konflikty: liudskie poteri, ekonomicheskii ushcherb, i sotsional'nye posledstviia" [Armed interethnic and regional conflicts: human losses, economic destruction, and social consequences], in Identichnost' i konflikt v postsovetskikh gosudarstvakh [Identity and conflict in post-Soviet states] (Moscow: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1997), pp. 298-324.
5. The civilian casualties in the war were largely the result of Russian bombardment of Grozny and other cities and villages; there were few reports of the kind of indiscriminate violence by Chechens against the Russian civilian population that were all too common in Bosnia.
6. Michael Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), p. 86.
7. See Gail W. Lapidus, "Ethnonationalism and Political Stability: The Soviet Case," World Politics, Vol. 36, No. 4 (July 1984), pp. 555-580. Although a number of scholars have pointed to the way in which Soviet policy promoted national and cultural development and state formation among non-Russian minorities, the policy was highly differentiated over time and space and allowed little scope for economic or political autonomy.
8. Only Dagestan reported a higher figure, with 80 percent; Tatarstan's, by comparison, was 48.5 percent.
9. According to official census data, only 0.2 percent of the titular nationality considered Russian to be its national language; Vsesoyuznaya perepis' naseleniya, 1989 [All-union census of the population, 1989] (Moscow: Goskomstat SSSR, 1991).
10. Susan G. Lehmann, "Islam and Ethnicity in the Republics of Russia," Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 13 (January-March 1997), pp. 78-103.
11. For a detailed account of this process, see Lapidus, "Gorbachev and the 'National Question,'" and "From Democratization to Disintegration."
12. Many of these aspirations and grievances long antedated perestroika; in 1954 the Writers' Union of Tatarstan had sent a request to the Communist Party Central Committee asking that the status of the republic be upgraded. In the North Caucasus, the political movements that emerged in the late 1980s initially also focused on achieving Union Republic status, and only later called for greater self-rule (samostoyatel' nost') and sovereignty; see Ann Sheeny, "Power Struggle in Chechen-Ingushetia," Radio Liberty Reports, November 8, 1991. Two reformers sympathetic to these demands, Andrei Sakharov and Galina Starovoitova, proposed a new constitution that would eliminate the Soviet ethnoterritorial hierarchy altogether.
13. The declaration proclaimed that the Chechen-Ingush Republic was part of neither the Soviet Union nor the Russian Federation; however, it also included provision for entering into contractual relations with other states and with a "union of states," in effect, the USSR.
14. For a more detailed discussion, see Fiona Hill, Russia's Tinderbox: Conflict in the North Caucasus and Its Implications for the Future of the Russian Federation (Cambridge, Mass.: Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, Harvard University, 1995); Emil Pain and Arkady Popov, "Chechnya," in Jeremy Azrael and Emil Pain, eds., U.S. and Russian Policymaking with Respect to the Use of Force (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1996); and Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict In and After the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame (London: Sage Publications, 1997), chaps. 9, 10.
15. For a more detailed discussion, see Fiona Hill, Russia's Tinderbox: Conflict in the North Caucasus and Its Implications for the Future of the Russian Federation (Cambridge, Mass.: Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, Harvard University, 1995); Emil Pain and Arkady Popov, "Chechnya," in Jeremy Azrael and Emil Pain, eds., U.S. and Russian Policymaking with Respect to the Use of Force (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1996); and Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict In and After the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame (London: Sage Publications, 1997), chaps. 9, 10.
16. For a more detailed discussion, see Fiona Hill, Russia's Tinderbox: Conflict in the North Caucasus and Its Implications for the Future of the Russian Federation (Cambridge, Mass.: Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, Harvard University, 1995); Emil Pain and Arkady Popov, "Chechnya," in Jeremy Azrael and Emil Pain, eds., U.S. and Russian Policymaking with Respect to the Use of Force (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1996); and Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict In and After the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame (London: Sage Publications, 1997), chaps. 9, 10.
17. For a more comprehensive analysis of the struggles over Russia's federal structure, see Gail W. Lapidus and Edward Walker, "Nationalism, Regionalism, and Federalism: Center-Periphery Relations in Post-Communist Russia," in Gail W. Lapidus, ed., The New Russia: Troubled Transformation (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995). A case study of the negotiations over Tatarstan is found in Edward W. Walker, "The Dog That Didn't Bark: Tatarstan and Asymmetrical Federalism in Russia," in Metta Spencer, ed., The Partition of State (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, forthcoming).
18. For a more comprehensive analysis of the struggles over Russia's federal structure, see Gail W. Lapidus and Edward Walker, "Nationalism, Regionalism, and Federalism: Center-Periphery Relations in Post-Communist Russia," in Gail W. Lapidus, ed., The New Russia: Troubled Transformation (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995). A case study of the negotiations over Tatarstan is found in Edward W. Walker, "The Dog That Didn't Bark: Tatarstan and Asymmetrical Federalism in Russia," in Metta Spencer, ed., The Partition of State (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, forthcoming).
19. The Russian Constitution adopted in December 1993 ignores the earlier Chechen declaration of sovereignty, explicitly identifies the Chechen republic as a constituent part of the Russian Federation, and contains no provision for secession.
20. Whether President Yeltsin's action violated the constitution was controversial. Yeltsin declared neither martial law nor a state of emergency, nor did he officially notify the Federal Assembly or seek the approval of the Federation Council, as the use of regular troops would normally require. The decision was issued in the form of several executive decrees, including one in the name of the Security Council, a body whose authority had not yet been defined, and was defended on the grounds that it was the president's responsibility "to restore constitutional order" in Chechnya. See Robert Sharlet, "Transitional Constitutionalism: Politics and Law in the Second Russian Republic," Wisconsin International Law Journal, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1996), pp. 495-521. In July 1995 a divided Constitutional Court upheld the president's action, with several dissents and "special opinions." Rossiiskaya gazeta, August 11, 1995, pp. 3-7.
21. Whether President Yeltsin's action violated the constitution was controversial. Yeltsin declared neither martial law nor a state of emergency, nor did he officially notify the Federal Assembly or seek the approval of the Federation Council, as the use of regular troops would normally require. The decision was issued in the form of several executive decrees, including one in the name of the Security Council, a body whose authority had not yet been defined, and was defended on the grounds that it was the president's responsibility "to restore constitutional order" in Chechnya. See Robert Sharlet, "Transitional Constitutionalism: Politics and Law in the Second Russian Republic," Wisconsin International Law Journal, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1996), pp. 495-521. In July 1995 a divided Constitutional Court upheld the president's action, with several dissents and "special opinions." Rossiiskaya gazeta, August 11, 1995, pp. 3-7.
22. Nongovernmental organizations like Memorial and the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers deserve mention as consistent critics of the war. The most comprehensive critique of Russian policymaking by a Russian analyst, along similar lines, is found in Pain and Popov, "Chechnya."
23. There is as yet no single comprehensive study in English of the conflict. This summary draws on a large body of materials including substantial, though not always well-substantiated, accounts by Russian analysts: a series of articles by Emil Pain and Arkady Popov in Izvestiya, February 7, 8, and 10, 1995; Maria Eismont's reportage in Segodnia, as well as her article in Prism, "The Chechen War: How It All Began," March 8, 1996; V.A. Tishkov, E.L. Belyaeva, and G.V. Marchenko, Chechenskii krizis [The Chechen crisis] (Moscow: Center for Sociological Research and Marketing, 1995). The report of the Duma's Govorukhin Commission, Svidetel'stva, zakliucheniya i dokymenty sobranye kommissiei pod predsedatel'stvom S.S. Govorukhina [Testimony. Resolutions and documents compiled by the commission headed by S.S. Govorukhin] (Moscow: Laventa, 1995), set up to conduct a thorough investigation of the events and assign appropriate responsibility, is highly tendentious and unreliable.
24. There is as yet no single comprehensive study in English of the conflict. This summary draws on a large body of materials including substantial, though not always well-substantiated, accounts by Russian analysts: a series of articles by Emil Pain and Arkady Popov in Izvestiya, February 7, 8, and 10, 1995; Maria Eismont's reportage in Segodnia, as well as her article in Prism, "The Chechen War: How It All Began," March 8, 1996; V.A. Tishkov, E.L. Belyaeva, and G.V. Marchenko, Chechenskii krizis [The Chechen crisis] (Moscow: Center for Sociological Research and Marketing, 1995). The report of the Duma's Govorukhin Commission, Svidetel'stva, zakliucheniya i dokymenty sobranye kommissiei pod predsedatel'stvom S.S. Govorukhina [Testimony. Resolutions and documents compiled by the commission headed by S.S. Govorukhin] (Moscow: Laventa, 1995), set up to conduct a thorough investigation of the events and assign appropriate responsibility, is highly tendentious and unreliable.
25. There is as yet no single comprehensive study in English of the conflict. This summary draws on a large body of materials including substantial, though not always well-substantiated, accounts by Russian analysts: a series of articles by Emil Pain and Arkady Popov in Izvestiya, February 7, 8, and 10, 1995; Maria Eismont's reportage in Segodnia, as well as her article in Prism, "The Chechen War: How It All Began," March 8, 1996; V.A. Tishkov, E.L. Belyaeva, and G.V. Marchenko, Chechenskii krizis [The Chechen crisis] (Moscow: Center for Sociological Research and Marketing, 1995). The report of the Duma's Govorukhin Commission, Svidetel'stva, zakliucheniya i dokymenty sobranye kommissiei pod predsedatel'stvom S.S. Govorukhina [Testimony. Resolutions and documents compiled by the commission headed by S.S. Govorukhin] (Moscow: Laventa, 1995), set up to conduct a thorough investigation of the events and assign appropriate responsibility, is highly tendentious and unreliable.
26. There is as yet no single comprehensive study in English of the conflict. This summary draws on a large body of materials including substantial, though not always well-substantiated, accounts by Russian analysts: a series of articles by Emil Pain and Arkady Popov in Izvestiya, February 7, 8, and 10, 1995; Maria Eismont's reportage in Segodnia, as well as her article in Prism, "The Chechen War: How It All Began," March 8, 1996; V.A. Tishkov, E.L. Belyaeva, and G.V. Marchenko, Chechenskii krizis [The Chechen crisis] (Moscow: Center for Sociological Research and Marketing, 1995). The report of the Duma's Govorukhin Commission, Svidetel'stva, zakliucheniya i dokymenty sobranye kommissiei pod predsedatel'stvom S.S. Govorukhina [Testimony. Resolutions and documents compiled by the commission headed by S.S. Govorukhin] (Moscow: Laventa, 1995), set up to conduct a thorough investigation of the events and assign appropriate responsibility, is highly tendentious and unreliable.
27. There is as yet no single comprehensive study in English of the conflict. This summary draws on a large body of materials including substantial, though not always well-substantiated, accounts by Russian analysts: a series of articles by Emil Pain and Arkady Popov in Izvestiya, February 7, 8, and 10, 1995; Maria Eismont's reportage in Segodnia, as well as her article in Prism, "The Chechen War: How It All Began," March 8, 1996; V.A. Tishkov, E.L. Belyaeva, and G.V. Marchenko, Chechenskii krizis [The Chechen crisis] (Moscow: Center for Sociological Research and Marketing, 1995). The report of the Duma's Govorukhin Commission, Svidetel'stva, zakliucheniya i dokymenty sobranye kommissiei pod predsedatel'stvom S.S. Govorukhina [Testimony. Resolutions and documents compiled by the commission headed by S.S. Govorukhin] (Moscow: Laventa, 1995), set up to conduct a thorough investigation of the events and assign appropriate responsibility, is highly tendentious and unreliable.
28. A second abortive intervention occurred in November 1992 when Russian forces sought to use the conflict between Ingush and Ossetians in the Prigorodnyi district of North Ossetia to advance into Chechnya; see the account by North Ossetia's Minister of Internal Affairs G.M. Kantemirov, in Govorit elita respublik Rossiiskoi Federatsii: 110 interviu Leokadii Drobizhevoi [The elite of the republics of the Russian Federation speaks: 110 interviews with Leokadia Drobizheva] (Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 1996), p. 188.
29. Sergei Shakhrai, chairman of the Russian State Committee on Nationality Policy, was a leading advocate of a strategy of isolating Dudayev and undermining his legitimacy by insisting on the illegality and criminal nature of the Chechen regime. While the RSFSR Congress of People's Deputies had declared the October 1991 elections in Chechnya illegal, neither the executive nor the judiciary ever undertook a formal review and assessment of them.
30. According to informed Russian sources, substantial quantities of Russian weapons and military technology were transferred to the Chechen side in 1992 with the knowledge and approval of Defense Minister Pavel Grachev. This was by no means an isolated incident; in the general disarray following the breakup of the Soviet Union and the chaotic withdrawal of Soviet military forces, large quantities of weapons were transferred or sold by military units in the Transcaucasus as elsewhere, allegedly with the acquiescence and often the participation of corrupt high-level military officials.
31. Emil Pain has denied allegations that the president's Analytical Center recommended or supported this approach, arguing that the strategy of covertly arming the anti-Dudayev opposition was already familiar to the Russian secret services, which had employed such tactics in overthrowing Presidents Zviad Gamsakhurdia in Georgia and Abulfazl Elchibey in Azerbaijan. See Azrael and Pain, U.S. and Russian Policymaking with Respect to the Use of Force.
32. Internal Affairs Minister Anatoly Kulikov was a leading exponent of such views, and he remained unalterably opposed to any compromise with the Chechen "separatists" even after the debacle of August 1996 paved the way for Aleksandr Lebed's negotiation of the Khasavyurt agreement. The tenor of his views is captured in a speech to the Duma on October 2 denouncing the agreement, where he argued that misguided Russian concessions were leading to ever more radical Chechen goals, including secret plans to unite a large part of the North Caucasus so as to expel Russia from the region and lock it off from the Caspian Sea. He predicted that the separatists would build a "militaristic, totalitarian, extremist-criminal state that is absolutely anti-Russian" and would unite all anti-Russian forces from Tajikistan to Ukraine and the Baltics. The Khasavyurt agreement, Kulikov maintained, represented "a highly professional job that provides support for the process of the destruction of the Russian state as a whole." Sovetskaya Rossiya, October 5, 1996, p. 2.
33. The leading figures in the ascendant "party of war" included Nikolai Yegorov, who had replaced Shakhrai as minister for Nationalities and Regional Affairs in mid-May and was given full control over policy toward Chechnya on November 30; Defense Minister Pavel Grachev; Minister of Security Sergei Stepashin; Minister of Internal Affairs Viktor Yerin; and Oleg Lobov, secretary of the Security Council. Two key figures in the president's apparatus were especially influential. General Aleksandr Korzhakov, a shadowy and hard-line figure who headed the president's Security Service and was a close confidant, and his associate General Mikhail Barsukov, Kremlin commandant. Korzhakov and Barsukov were closely allied with First Vice Premier Oleg Soskovets in challenging Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and his economic policies as well. Nikolai Yegorov, according to several accounts, provided the major impetus for coercive action; of Cossack background, and an agronomist with no training in ethnic issues, he had gained a reputation as a harsh administrator with little sympathy for ethnic minorities. As a thoughtful Russian parliamentarian and analyst, Viktor Sheinis, has put it, the replacement of Shakhrai by Yegorov was not so much a change from a "dove" to a "hawk," but rather from "an educated man with an inventive mind" to a "butcher - an ignorant uneducated man who prefers exclusively coercive decisions for those complicated problems which exist in Chechnya." See John Dunlop, "The 'Party of War' and Russian Imperial Nationalism," Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 43, No. 2 (March/April 1996), pp. 29-34; and Lilia Shevtsova, "Moscow's Chechen War," unpublished manuscript, Moscow Carnegie Center, 1998.
34. The leading figures in the ascendant "party of war" included Nikolai Yegorov, who had replaced Shakhrai as minister for Nationalities and Regional Affairs in mid-May and was given full control over policy toward Chechnya on November 30; Defense Minister Pavel Grachev; Minister of Security Sergei Stepashin; Minister of Internal Affairs Viktor Yerin; and Oleg Lobov, secretary of the Security Council. Two key figures in the president's apparatus were especially influential. General Aleksandr Korzhakov, a shadowy and hard-line figure who headed the president's Security Service and was a close confidant, and his associate General Mikhail Barsukov, Kremlin commandant. Korzhakov and Barsukov were closely allied with First Vice Premier Oleg Soskovets in challenging Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and his economic policies as well. Nikolai Yegorov, according to several accounts, provided the major impetus for coercive action; of Cossack background, and an agronomist with no training in ethnic issues, he had gained a reputation as a harsh administrator with little sympathy for ethnic minorities. As a thoughtful Russian parliamentarian and analyst, Viktor Sheinis, has put it, the replacement of Shakhrai by Yegorov was not so much a change from a "dove" to a "hawk," but rather from "an educated man with an inventive mind" to a "butcher - an ignorant uneducated man who prefers exclusively coercive decisions for those complicated problems which exist in Chechnya." See John Dunlop, "The 'Party of War' and Russian Imperial Nationalism," Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 43, No. 2 (March/April 1996), pp. 29-34; and Lilia Shevtsova, "Moscow's Chechen War," unpublished manuscript, Moscow Carnegie Center, 1998.
35. Ruslan Khasbulatov was a former Yeltsin ally of Chechen descent who backed Yeltsin in August 1991 but later opposed Yeltsin's policy toward Chechnya and sought to use the situation to promote his own political ambitions.
36. The plan to set up a puppet government, which would then legitimize the introduction of Russian forces, was strikingly reminiscent of Soviet policy in Lithuania in January 1991.
37. According to an account by Justice Minister Yuri Kalmykov, who opposed the decision, participants were told to vote on the "force option" first and to discuss the issue afterward. Alexander Gamov, "Security Council Votes Decisions prior to Discussing Them," interview with Yuri Kalmykov, Komsomol'skaya Pravda, December 20, 1994, p. 3. Defense Minister Grachev reportedly failed to share with the Security Council the reservations of the General Staff. See Oleg Vladykin, "Genshtab preduprezhdal, Grachev prenebreg" [General Staff warned, Grachev disregarded], Obshchaia gazeta, December 11-17, 1997.
38. According to an account by Justice Minister Yuri Kalmykov, who opposed the decision, participants were told to vote on the "force option" first and to discuss the issue afterward. Alexander Gamov, "Security Council Votes Decisions prior to Discussing Them," interview with Yuri Kalmykov, Komsomol'skaya Pravda, December 20, 1994, p. 3. Defense Minister Grachev reportedly failed to share with the Security Council the reservations of the General Staff. See Oleg Vladykin, "Genshtab preduprezhdal, Grachev prenebreg" [General Staff warned, Grachev disregarded], Obshchaia gazeta, December 11-17, 1997.
39. The account of the conversation comes from Sergei Kovalev, as cited in Pain and Popov, "Chechnya." Kozyrev would later assert that a successful military action required a "scalpel" rather than a hammer, but that the military proved incapable of it; conversation with the author at Stanford University, May 13, 1996.
40. The phrase is that of Security Council Secretary Oleg Lobov, as cited in Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict, p. 218.
41. A secret government document dated December 1 and later leaked by Russian sources, if authentic, offers a chilling glimpse of the contingency planning for the intervention. Apparently prepared for Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's signature, it contains instructions for handling the mass evacuation of the population of Chechnya. Plan meropriyatii po obespecheniyu evakuatsii naseleniya Chechenskoi Respubliki (Moscow: Government of the Russian Federation, decree, December 1, 1994).
42. OMRI Daily Digest, No. 86, May 3, 1995.
43. Radio Ekho Moskvy, as reported in RFE/RL Research Institute, bulletin no. 236, December 15, 1994. Surveys conducted throughout the war by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion also showed the public to be highly critical of Russian policy from the very beginning. In polls conducted in 1996, some 36 percent of respondents favored the departure of Russian troops from Chechnya and acquiescence in Chechnya's independence, while 23 percent favored decisive action to liquidate the Chechen fighters and retain Chechnya within the Russian Federation by any means. Asked who was primarily responsible for the bloodshed in Chechnya, 47 percent named President Yeltsin and his circle, 7 percent the Russian military leadership, and 24 percent Dudayev and his field commanders. Over 54 percent considered Russian policy toward Chechnya totally mistaken, while 3 percent considered it totally correct. These attitudes remained highly stable throughout the duration of the conflict. I should like to express my appreciation to Lev Gudkov for making the centers survey data available to me.
44. A useful chronology and compilation of proposals for a settlement can be found in Diane Curran, Fiona Hill, and Elena Kostritsyna, The Search for Peace in Chechnya: A Sourcebook, 1994-1996 (Cambridge, Mass.: Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, Harvard University, March 1997).
45. In the spring of 1996, General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, commander of federal forces in Chechnya, repeatedly asserted that the only subject of negotiations should be how the Chechen militants surrendered their weapons, even as Yeltsin was announcing a broad peace plan and promising the withdrawal of federal forces.
46. See Alexander L. George and Jane Holl, The Warning-Response Problem and Missed Opportunities in Preventive Diplomacy (New York: Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, May 1997). The difficulties in identifying the potential for violent conflict are discussed in Mikhail Alexseev, "Early Warning, Ethnopolitical Conflicts, and the United Nations: Assessing the Violence in Georgia/Abkhazia," unpublished paper, Kennan Institute, Washington, D.C.
47. See Alexander L. George and Jane Holl, The Warning-Response Problem and Missed Opportunities in Preventive Diplomacy (New York: Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, May 1997). The difficulties in identifying the potential for violent conflict are discussed in Mikhail Alexseev, "Early Warning, Ethnopolitical Conflicts, and the United Nations: Assessing the Violence in Georgia/Abkhazia," unpublished paper, Kennan Institute, Washington, D.C.
48. Emil Pain and Arkady Popov, "Russian Policy in Chechnya," Izvestiya, February 10, 1995, p. 4.
49. Testimony in hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, U.S. Congress, May 1, 1995, p. 34.
50. Shevtsova, "Moscow's Chechen War."
51. Author's conversation with Yegor Gaidar, November 26, 1996.
52. Presidents Mintimer Shaimiyev of Tatarstan and Ruslan Aushev of Ingushetia, for example, were skillful and influential figures who were in a position to play a constructive political role.
53. Statement by Movladi Udugov to joint session of the Chechen Presidential Council and the Parliament of the Confederation of Caucasian Peoples, TASS, August 23, 1994. The request for UN or other foreign observers was repeated the following month. According to a Segodnia correspondent in Grozny, following a rocket attack on the airport on September 30, 1994, the Chechen leadership called an emergency meeting at which it rejected opposition demands for a transfer of power, appealed to the governments of other North Caucasian republics to "forestall the use of their resources and territory" by Russian forces, and called upon the United Nations and other foreign governments to send observers to Chechnya. See Natalia Gorodetskaya, Segodnia, October 1, 1994, p. 1. Sergei Filatov, head of Yeltsin's administration, responded with a statement that Russia's leaders were not contemplating an invasion of Chechnya.
54. According to a high-level UN official interviewed by the author, no formal request from the Chechen leadership through appropriate channels was ever received.
55. A similarly negative response to suggestions that OSCE mechanisms be invoked was reported in Fred Hiatt, "Moscow Warns West on Criticism over Chechnya," Washington Post, January 13, 1995, p. A26.
56. However, it should also be noted that a project designed to monitor potential sources of ethnic conflict, by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in conjunction with Harvard's Conflict-Management Group, failed as late as October 1994 to identify the potential for conflict over Chechnya; Alexseev, "Early Warning, Ethnopolitical Conflicts, and the United Nations," pp. 7-8.
57. From 1992 to the outbreak of war, the UNPO sent urgent warnings to individual governments, to the Political Affairs office of the UN secretary-general, to the Foreign Ministry of Russia, and to the U.S. State Department and Congress, and offered space at their Hague offices to a representative of the Chechen government.
58. International Alert, Chechnia: Report of an International Alert Fact-Finding Mission, September 24-October 3, 1992 (London, n.d.).
59. Ibid. The mission was described as a fact-finding visit, in the context of trips to several regions or potential ethnic conflict, in an effort to develop early-warning mechanisms; it explicitly disavowed any intention of contacting local NGOs involved in conflict resolution, of providing third-party involvement, or of proposing solutions, although President Dudayev indicated his willingness to discuss third-party involvement in a letter of December 14, 1992, responding to the report (p. 52). The removal of Tishkov and his replacement by Sergei Shakhrai signaled a more hard-line approach by the Russian government to nationality policy and fewer possibilities for cooperation with international organizations, but there is no evidence that International Alert itself sought to pursue the issue.
60. The definitions are drawn from Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts, pp. 38-41.
61. The willingness of the Baltic governments to cooperate with such efforts stood in striking contrast to the Russian attitude at the time, and reflected their strong desire for recognition as genuinely democratic countries and for acceptance into European institutions. Pro-European attitudes were significantly weaker and far more controversial among Russian elites.
62. In a communiqué from December 13, 1994, the UNPO asserted that the organization had for months been warning the international community of the likelihood of a military invasion and appealing tor international efforts to prevent it. The communiqué condemned the Russian invasion and called upon all governments, the UN, and the CSCE (subsequently renamed OSCE) to use all possible influence over the Russian government to prevent a "bloodbath."
63. Such public assurances were proffered by Sergei Filatov, head of the Presidential Staff, on August 4 and 9, and by President Yeltsin himself on August 11. Interviewed on television before departing on a working tour of the Volga, Yeltsin stated: "Intervention by force is impermissible and must not be done. Were we to apply pressure by force against Chechnya, this would rouse the whole Caucasus, there would be such a commotion, there would be so much blood that nobody would ever forgive us. It is absolutely not possible." Similar denials were issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense on August 10 and 11. As late as September 30 Filatov told journalists that Russia had ruled out armed involvement in the Chechen conflict. "We have only one position - no Russian troops must be there," he asserted. Interfax News Agency, as reported by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, October 3, 1994.
64. One example of the tenor of such allegations was a December 1994 declaration of the Central Council of Russian National Unity, a right-wing political group: "The present Chechen administration has turned Chechnya into a parasitic, thieving conglomerate, and thereby lowered its people to the level of the early Middle Ages," cited in Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict, p. 184. As Yeltsin himself described the situation, "On the territory of the Chechen republic as the result of an armed coup, there was established the most dictatorial kind of regime. The fusion of the criminal world and the regime - about which politicians and journalists spoke incessantly as the main danger for Russia - became a reality in Chechnya. This was the testing ground for the preparation and dissemination of criminal power to other Russian regions." Maxim Isayev, "Kremlin Gossip," Nezavisimaya gzeta, February 17, 1995, p. 1. Foreign Minister Kozyrev insisted time and again that "this is neither an ethnic conflict nor a conflict between Moscow and a federation entity" . . . but an effort to eliminate criminal armed gangs and to restore order and the rights of Russian citizens. Interviews with Novoe vremya, Moscow, December 27, 1994, p. 52, and with Bratislava Smena, February 1, 1995, p. 1.
65. One example of the tenor of such allegations was a December 1994 declaration of the Central Council of Russian National Unity, a right-wing political group: "The present Chechen administration has turned Chechnya into a parasitic, thieving conglomerate, and thereby lowered its people to the level of the early Middle Ages," cited in Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict, p. 184. As Yeltsin himself described the situation, "On the territory of the Chechen republic as the result of an armed coup, there was established the most dictatorial kind of regime. The fusion of the criminal world and the regime - about which politicians and journalists spoke incessantly as the main danger for Russia - became a reality in Chechnya. This was the testing ground for the preparation and dissemination of criminal power to other Russian regions." Maxim Isayev, "Kremlin Gossip," Nezavisimaya gzeta, February 17, 1995, p. 1. Foreign Minister Kozyrev insisted time and again that "this is neither an ethnic conflict nor a conflict between Moscow and a federation entity" . . . but an effort to eliminate criminal armed gangs and to restore order and the rights of Russian citizens. Interviews with Novoe vremya, Moscow, December 27, 1994, p. 52, and with Bratislava Smena, February 1, 1995, p. 1.
66. A senior administration official described the Chechen leadership as "blackmailing, brutal, and authoritarian." See R. Jeffrey Smith, "U.S. Interests Seen Allied with Russia in Chechnya: Effect of Independence on Nuclear Stability Feared," Washington Post, December 25, 1994, p. A27. Another official dealing with Russian affairs was quoted as asserting: "I don't want to say that all Chechens are crooks, but the people running the country are." Ibid., p. A27.
67. A senior administration official described the Chechen leadership as "blackmailing, brutal, and authoritarian." See R. Jeffrey Smith, "U.S. Interests Seen Allied with Russia in Chechnya: Effect of Independence on Nuclear Stability Feared," Washington Post, December 25, 1994, p. A27. Another official dealing with Russian affairs was quoted as asserting: "I don't want to say that all Chechens are crooks, but the people running the country are." Ibid., p. A27.
68. The CSCE agreements obliged signatories to issue prior notice of military activities involving more than 9,000 troops or 250 tanks, and to issue invitations to outside observers when more than 13,000 troops were deployed. The Code of Conduct pledged the signatories not to use their military forces for internal security except in accordance with constitutional procedures, and to avoid injury to civilians or their property.
69. U.S. State Department briefing, January 11, 1995.
70. Press conference by President Bill Clinton, Miami, Florida, December 11, 1994.
71. McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, December 13, 1994. Pressed by the media to explain Christopher's apparent endorsement of Russian actions, McCurry stated: "Secretary Christopher did not endorse the Russian effort to reestablish civil order in Chechnya; neither did he oppose it. In a sense, he took a neutral position on it by saving that Chechnya is an integral part of Russia. Theretore, the Russians have to handle this and address it as an internal Russian matter." McCurry went on to suggest that the Chechens seek redress of their grievances by working through the Russian parliament.
72. Quoted in "In Brussels Urgent Talks on Chechnya," New York Times, January 10, 1995, p. A11.
73. Michael R. Lucas, "The War in Chechnya and the OSCE Code of Conduct," Hilsinski Monitor, No. 2, 1995.
74. U.S. Department of State briefing, December 14, 1994.
75. A high-level official reportedly stated: "I accept Yeltsin's argument" that if Chechnya is able to break away from Moscow, other republics may be tempted to do the same. "It's very important for our long-term security that Russia remain a unitary state that remains stable. We have an obvious interest in the stability of their armed forces [and] nuclear forces." Smith, "U.S. Interests Seen Allied with Russia in Chechnya." While the intelligence community assessments of the situation may well have been more nuanced, similar concerns had been voiced earlier in the year in a published article by National Security Council official Jessica Eve Stern, "Moscow Meltdown: Can Russia Survive?" International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 40-65.
76. See, for example, the U.S. State Department daily press briefing on January 3, 1995. More than a year later President Clinton would explicitly draw this analogy before a Russian audience. During his visit to Moscow in April 1946, in response to a question whether the United States should be more critical of the war in Chechnya, the president responded: "I would remind you that we once had a civil war in our country in which we lost on a per capita basis far more people than we lost in any of the wars of the twentieth century over the proposition that Abraham Lincoln gave his life for - that no state had a right to withdraw from our union." John F. Harris, "Clinton, Yeltsin, Gloss Over Chechen War: Russian Leader Denies Fighting Continues Despite Rising Death Toll," Washington Post, April 22, 1996, p. A1.
77. The Russian Constitution, Kozyrev stated, "provides for the unity of the Russian Federation, and, yes, as President Lincoln, President Yeltsin will not tolerate defection, especially defection not by popular referendum or any free and fair elections in the area, but just a military camp. . . . It is just a criminal gang."
78. Michael D. McCurry, U.S. State Department daily press briefing, January 3, 1995.
79. Michael R. Gordon, "U.S. Stays Aloof from Russia's War Within," New York Times, December 25, 1994, p.10.
80. U.S. State Department daily press briefing, December 12, 1994.
81. The issue was apparently raised in diplomatic channels through the U.S. embassy in Moscow in December 1994, and privately with Kozyrev at the OSCE Budapest meeting. But it was apparently not raised in conversations between Clinton and Yeltsin, the meeting of Kozyrev and Christopher in Brussels, the Grachev-Perry meeting, or the Gore-Chernomyrdin meeting in Moscow on December 14-16, 1995. James Collins, testimony before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, U.S. Congress, January 19 and 27, 1995.
82. Secretary of State Christopher had offered an explicit rationale for this view - a rationale heavily influenced by the "democratic peace" literature in international relations theory - in a speech to NATO on February 26, 1993: "Europe's long-term security - like America's - requires that we actively foster the spread of democracy and market economies. Democracies tend not to make war on each other. They are more likely to protect human rights and ensure equal rights for minorities. They are more likely to be reliable partners in diplomacy, trade, arms accords, and environmental protection." Cited in Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes, eds., Preventing Conflict in the Post-Communist World (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1996, p. 230).
83. Stanislav Kondrashov, "An Internal Affair with International Repercussions," London Times, December 17, 1995, p. 4.
84. Andrei Kortunov, "The Quasi-State and the West," Moskovskiye Novosti, January 8-15, 1995, p. 9, as cited in the Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, Vol. 47, No. 1 (February 1, 1995), p. 11.
85. Andrei Kortunov, "The Quasi-State and the West," Moskovskiye Novosti, January 8-15, 1995, p. 9, as cited in the Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, Vol. 47, No. 1 (February 1, 1995), p. 11.
86. Pavel Felgengauer, "Apocalypse Now," Segodnia, January 5, 1995, p. 1.
87. These included, most notably, the foreign ministers of Sweden and France, Lena Hjelm-Wallen, Alain Juppé, and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
88. Tyler Marshall, "EU Delays Pact over Chechnya," Los Angeles Times, January 6, 1995, p. A10.
89. For a more complete account, see Heather Hurlburt, "Russia, the OSCE, and European Security Architecture," Helsinki Monitor, No. 2, 1995; and Andrei Kortunov and Andrei Shoumikin, "Russian-European Interaction and the Chechen Crisis," unpublished paper, Russian Science Foundation, Moscow, 1995.
90. For a more complete account, see Heather Hurlburt, "Russia, the OSCE, and European Security Architecture," Helsinki Monitor, No. 2, 1995; and Andrei Kortunov and Andrei Shoumikin, "Russian-European Interaction and the Chechen Crisis," unpublished paper, Russian Science Foundation, Moscow, 1995.
91. Izvestiya, January 31, 1995. Gyarmati did, however, implicitly challenge the assertion by Kozyrev that the use of armed force against an "armed rebellion" was admissible from the standpoint of the OSCE code, stating that "the use of armed forces on such a scale and in such forms is at variance with OSCE principles." Leonid Velekhov, "Mr. Gyarmati In Search of Compromise," Segodnia, January 31, 1995, p. 1.
92. Izvestiya, January 31, 1995. Gyarmati did, however, implicitly challenge the assertion by Kozyrev that the use of armed force against an "armed rebellion" was admissible from the standpoint of the OSCE code, stating that "the use of armed forces on such a scale and in such forms is at variance with OSCE principles." Leonid Velekhov, "Mr. Gyarmati In Search of Compromise," Segodnia, January 31, 1995, p. 1.
93. The term "OSCE mission" would have implied that Russia was suspected of violating human rights in Chechnya. Russian acquiescence in the OSCE presence, however reluctant, nonetheless represented a major step forward, given the still-powerful tendency in elite circles to view with suspicion any "outside interference" in internal affairs, particularly one involving sensitive ethnopolitical issues.
94. These provisions were not stringently enforced, however, and Russia was ultimately admitted before the war was ended.
95. See, for example, the speech by Grigory Yavlinsky delivered at the symposium "Where Is Russia Headed?" sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C., September 19, 1996.
96. Boutros Boutros-Ghali in Stockholm, January 1995, as cited in Zelim Tskhovrebov, "An Unfolding Case of a Genocide: Chechnya, World Order, and the 'Right to be Left Alone,'" Nordic Journal of International Law, Vol. 64 (1995), pp. 501-555.
97. "Secretary-General Says Outlook in Somalia Remains Uncertain Despite Tremendous Progress," UN press release SG/SM/5153, November 9, 1993.
98. Quoted in Maria Eismont, "Chechnya - 'Samoe sil'noe razocharovanie' Prezidenta Yeltsina" [Chechnya is President Yeltsin's "greatest disappointment"], Segodnia, October 20, 1995, p. 2.
99. Andrei Shoumikhin, "The Chechen Crisis and the Future of Russia," Comparative Strategy, Vol. 15 (1996), p. 6.
100. In a recent statement announcing plans to declare Chechnya an Islamic republic, and to enforce shariya law, Maskhadov explained that the republic's first constitution had been liberal and secular because of Dudayev's desire to cultivate Western support. With those hopes now dashed, advocates of an alternative path have increasingly come to the fore.
101. The enormous gap separating the positions of the two sides is vividly captured in the two contrasting negotiating proposals published in Nezavisimaya gazeta, October 21, 1997, p. 5.
102. A survey of 1,000 respondents in each of several regions and republics of the Russian Federation carried out in late 1997 with the involvement of the author indicated that between 50 and 70 percent of respondents supported the right of secession from the federation.
103. RIA Novosti report, Moscow, May 18, 1998; see also FBIS Central Eurasia, May 15, 1998.
104. For a recent example, see Akhsarbek Galazov, "Segodnia u Moskvy net nikakoi kavkazskoi politiki" [Today Moscow has no Caucasus policy], Nezavisimaya gazeta, October 8, 1997, p. 5.