The History of Russia-Chechnya War Research Paper

Introduction

The war, which started on Dec 1, 1994, and ended on Aug 31, 1996, was the first for Chechnya as it served as a way towards independence from the Russian Federation. The war was a defeat for Russia after a long time of victory but brought independence to Chechnya. Chechnya, since its birth, had been making attempts to gain independence from Russia till 1922, when it became a part of the USSR. In 1936, hopes again started rising when a soviet leader Joseph Stalin formed ASSR (Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) with the aim of seeking a separate homeland. But when in 1944, more than 1 million Chechens were deported to Siberia with the blame of cooperating with the Nazis, Chechens felt rage in their hearts against Russians.

In 1991 the Grozny chief of the communist party was killed at the hands of Chechens under the guidance of Dzhokhar Dudayev. Only after 2 months in November 1991, President Yeltsin send troops to Grozny, after which it had a clash with the forces of Dudayev. In June 1992, the Chechens Republic split into two parties, i.e., Ingushetia and Chechnya. Ingushetia joined Russian troops while Chechnya, in search of independence in 1993, announced as an independent state. However, it was not officially accepted by other nations until the war of 1994. According to Rasizade (April 2005), “Ingushetia separated from Chechnya to form its own autonomous republic within Russia.”¹.

The origins of the Russia Chechnya conflict are not new. Chechnyans have never accepted Russian rule and have always sought measures to gain independence, while on the other hand, Russia has fought even the fierce battles to remain with Chechnya. However, the first invasion of Russia was in the reign of Peter the Great. The eighteenth-century is said to be a tough time for both nations, as Chechnya came into being in the mid-eighteenth century. Russia was in the habit of conquering, that is the reason when in December 1994, Russian forces followed the target of invading and demolishing their Chechnya, they used all the same techniques, which they used to deploy in other wars fought before. So, this time it was also the same New Year’s Eve 1994 when Russian forces launched their main assault on Grozny. Russian forces pulled out of Chechnya almost 2 years later after suffering close to 6000 killed, having flailed to meet their objectives.².

It was this historical manifestation that started in December 1994 that made the Russian invasion of Chechnya vulnerable with failure and defeat, 5 years after Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Russia was overconfident and driven by vulnerability when its armed forces went into Grozny in December 1994. The cause for the defeat was simple as the Russian troops were not properly updated and trained and more poorly equipped with arms and ammunition³.

The purpose of Entering Chechnya in December 1994

Alexander Golz writes in MoscowTimes (1994), “The relations between Moscow and Dudayev’s regime in the three years since Russia became an independent state and the breakaway Chechnya region declared its own independence had been amazingly like this simple joke.”⁴. This shows the perception of Chechnya’s about their independence before the war.

The Chechen conflict shows how war can be conceived of, not only as death and destruction but as an extreme and dramatic form of life. Air raids, artillery bombardments, battles, torture, executions, fears, and grieving merge with human experiences like peace, victory, joy, songs, humor, and boredom. Seen from this perspective, the disasters of war engender a culture of survival, which manifests itself not only in the trenches and on the battlefield but also, for example, among people hiding in cellars fearing that they may not be able to dart out for drinking water fast enough to escape death.

People in the war began to believe that to end any continuing discrimination against them; the Chechens had to assume control over the republic. Chechen activists continually called for measures to unify their nation and for the return of all Chechens living outside Chechnya.

If we analyze Chechnya with the perspective of war and change, we see that it is only since the late 1980s that the local ideologues have been fundamentally altering the historical myth of the Chechens and, in the process, the then Chechen identity of 1994-1996. The Chechen identity what it is today is the result of two separate rival trends (groups). One belongs to the historic communities that take into account every possible effort to widen the geographic span and deepen its cultural legacy. While the other is the result of competition for resources and power, which always focuses on having ties. The former can be referred to as Ingushetia, while the latter, the real Chechnya.

According to Dudayev (1992), “Chechnya was never part of Russia, and the Chechens never thought of themselves as citizens of Russia. We are Chechens, and that can be a heavy burden. By the law of the mountains and our ancestors’ custom, we are obliged to help people who need shelter and protection. In such cases, even the law of blood vengeance loses its importance.”⁵.

The violence in Chechnya had become widespread even before the onset of full-scale war. What had the enthusiasts of Chechen independence employed as targets in these early years? Said-Selim, an 18-year-old from a village called Makhety, in the Vedensky raion, said in the summer of 1998:

“The central square (in Groznyy) was full of benches collected from the public gardens, and people were coming from the most remote mountain villages. Men formed circles to dance the zikr (a sacred war dance), something I’d never seen before. Great drums made you feel alive so that your feet would carry you into the round. The dance prepared us all to meet the enemy. What enemy? Nobody knew exactly, yet we all felt a need to unite against it, whether it was Zavgayev or the Russians. It didn’t matter very much then. In the face of that common enemy, all Chechens became one.”⁶.

Local Russians or other people of non-Chechen origin, particularly “city people” with apartments and cars, became popular targets for violence when the war initiated in December 1994. Dudayev’s government didn’t specifically brand local Russians as enemies of the Chechen revolution, and in fact, there were many Chechens who opposed a rift with Russia, but everyday participants in the conflict made their own, often more utilitarian decisions, such as taking the property and lives of those who were vulnerable or had no part in the new Chechen order.

Violence erupted to new heights when federal forces began a campaign of destruction in Groznyy, later repeated in other parts of the republic. The events of December 1994 uphold pains and miseries which Chechen and Russian citizens and fighters experienced and felt. The initial artillery bombardment and aerial bombing stunned and horrified the people of Chechnya. Air raids were suffered not only by Groznyy but by other population centers as well. Apartment block cellars were the only available shelters in the cities, and villages lacked even that.

Many authors have researched the incident and testimonials of December 1994, from which one can easily make out that many people in Chechnya thought at first that all these tanks and soldiers were part of one big demonstration, similar to the many they had watched. Abandoned by their top commanders, the president and the minister of defense, who simply disappeared from the scene, Russian generals and soldiers found themselves unconstrained by formal rules of engagement and started to rely on the same tactics as the rebels. In this way, the state subverted its own claim to legality. The moral asymmetry of legal order versus guerrilla uprising was lost when the bombing and torture began.⁷. The theme of deportation and its untold suffering dominated Chechen political discourse, both in the literary efforts of local writers and, later, in youth pop songs. Many young Chechens were influenced by pop songs whose theme was the 1944 deportation.

The fighting in Chechnya during December 1994–96 was marked by extreme cruelty followed by thousands of homeless Chechens who had grown up in a time of peace following World War II, they had never witnessed such hostility or experienced such violence in which they saw their own civilians on the part of their own army. Naturally, they reacted with shock and disbelief, initially seeing the events as a bad dream or a terrible mistake. This was followed by despair, a sense of helplessness, and mounting fear for their lives, families, and property.

According to Bellamy (2002), “The war ceased in August 1996 after the agreement was made between Russia and Chechnya, which referred to determining the status of Chenya’s independence in 5 years time. 50,000 civilians, 20003000 Chechnyan fighters, and 3826 Russian personnel lost their lives in the time period of 2 years.”⁸.

Evidence suggests that most of the casualties among combatants and civilians that occurred in this initial period between December and January 1994 were in Groznyy; elsewhere, the dead and the wounded were often left on the battlefield. The theme of abandoned bodies captured the attention of media and press coverage throughout the world that run through many war stories, frequently amplified by rumors.⁹.

A common interpretation of the war among Chechens suggested that it was a conspiracy against the people. Political leaders and other self-interested parties deceived the public with slogans and promises, intentionally turning the populace into killers against their own will. There were also some new comments and official statements about the 1994 war initiation, including an address by President Putin condemning attempts to spread the stain of terrorism on the entire Chechen people and warning against unlawful attacks on citizens of Chechen origin. Even more remarkable was the admission by the Moscow administration that “we live in the capital of a state at war,” calling for a high degree of “responsibility and vigilance from both the police and the population.” This was the time when not only Chechnya but the whole of Russia was seen as a war-torn society¹⁰.

Dudayev got the better of the federal politicians, who had been planning to install Salambek Khadzhiyev as head of the republic following the election scheduled for November 26, 1991; of course, this was in relation to the 1994 war. That would not have been a bad scenario for the change of power in Chechnya: Khadzhiyev was an intelligent, liberal-minded leader, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a prominent specialist in the field of petrochemistry, making his first successful forays into business. Dudayev and his supporters got around Aslakhanov and Khasbulatov by moving the election up a month and thus getting Dudayev elected¹¹.

In the words of Michael Ignatieff about the Chechnya truths, “The truth in Chechnya is what is interpreted, i.e., what will emerge from the conflict in Chechnya.” So it is all the more important to hear the versions of those people who have no Internet sites, TV cameras, or newspaper columns. These media resources are at the disposal of the opposed elite and various external actors, not of the common people who are up to their ears in the conflict as fighters or victims.¹².

Media resources where on the one hand, captured sentiments of the ordinary civilians; on the other hand, it captured various explicit statements of the social scientists and that of policymakers where in some cases, it criticized the issue of restraint and nonintervention. The press also provided umpteen coverage on behalf of the practice of intellectuals, often seen as interfering in local societies and conflicts only in a partial way by conducting their research or staging public and political actions. The media often declares the noncombatant Chechens are taking part in conferences and roundtables in Moscow, in the North Caucasus, and abroad. Facing total condemnation of Russia and enthusiastic support for the Chechen militants, such as was expressed in the resolution of the Pen Club or by the international conference organized by Moscow News in December 1999, these Chechens avoided softer words or positions more moderate than those of the plenary speakers. Though most of them rejected the regime of Maskhadov, they could not bring themselves to say so before audiences bent the other way. None of them ever said, “Stop speaking in our name, or at least let us be the first speakers on your agenda, not at the end when it is difficult to express disagreement.”¹³

The Media Image

According to Nullis Care (The MoscowTimes, 1994), “International relief agencies are preparing to rush aid to tens of thousands of people who fled the fighting in Chechnya, but their attempts to reach the republic’s battered capital are blocked.”¹⁴. This indicates what difficulties the media faced while reaching the injured and shattered people.

A commonly heard idea in Russia’s academic and public discourse is that when civilizations are in conflict, in the natural course of things, the ethnic groups, or peoples, of which they are composed, throw up leaders who express their collective will to realize a historically predestined outcome. In other words, if Dudayev had not risen to power, someone else would have, and everything would have played out in a similar fashion. Russian political writers and academics still tend to think in the old Soviet categories of “popular movements” and “revolutions” that they believe states are always built on an ethnic basis, that a forceful dismantling of an existing order is just, and that armed secession is moral when it is justified in terms of “national” self-determination.¹⁵.

In the months following August 1996, striking changes occurred in Chechnya. While the air around the Palace of Culture was rent by automatic gunfire in honor of President Maskhadov’s inauguration, influential media in the republic erupted with calls for vengeance. There was a sudden outburst of cultural and political theorizing; newspapers were filled with historical articles, poems, and pseudo-philosophical rhetoric by local authors.

According to a Chechen actress, Zura, “I have a dream that a new stage director will come to Groznyy, a brave man who won’t be put off by the fear of abduction or of all our other difficulties, who will breathe new life into our company. We are thirsting for work, for new productions, for new roles in a strange kind of war. It was definitely real, so many people killed, such devastation.”¹⁶.

Verses about the glorious new Chechen heroes began appearing in great abundance. Texts and photos celebrating the Chechen history and its achievements served as a means of propaganda and political mobilization, all the while distracting people from the woes of dealing with the terrible consequences of the war. Traditional institutions of scholarly research and academic integrity were discredited by the new intellectual elite, which consisted primarily of the political and cultural ideologies of the militant new leadership. Numerous war memoirs describing the exploits of Chechen fighters were popular. Each issue of Russian newspapers published by the Chechen Defense Ministry carried detailed commentaries about, or interviews with, the heroes of the Russian-Chechen war, accompanied with photographs of them in full military gear.

In 1997, the newspaper Chechenets offered a prize of $5,000 to anyone who proved that the words club, service, Freund, Pravda, and Rodina (the latter two are Russian words meaning “truth” and “motherland”) were of Chechen origin. The challenge was taken up by Kharon Vastigov, who wrote:

“The Chechen language is the source of all other languages. But the question was formulated incorrectly. It should be, “Do the said words belong to the ancient Chechen (Aryan) civilization?” Yes, undoubtedly. Our language is the clue to the linguistic civilization of all other nations…. The prize of $5,000 is what I am after; why pretend? I need it to be able to publish a newspaper … in which I intend to prove that the Chechen stock is that of the first man and that the Chechen language is the tongue of tongues.¹⁷. No prize was awarded.

After the war, the Russian language was seen as a vestige of imperial domination, an imposition to be done away with. Attempts were made to restore the Chechen language to the status due to it in the newly independent state. But this effort was problematic, given that the society had lost all of its educated linguists, including experts in the Chechen language. In the words of the local ethnographer Said-Magomed Khasiyev, “We have lapsed today into the opposite extreme anyone who can speak a couple of phrases in Chechen claims to be a linguist or an ethnographer.”

We may never know the whole truth about the involvement of Chechen leadership in the hostage-taking, which was indirectly encouraged, not only by important politicians and some of Russia’s business tycoons but also by the foreign media. The most barbaric terrorist acts and murders of hostages in Chechnya failed to rouse indignation in the outside world. The foreign media never used words like “terrorism” or “massacre” in describing the Arab mercenary Ibn Khattab’s attack on a federal convoy, in which over one hundred soldiers were killed. It was instead reported as a great military success for the Chechen fighters.¹⁸.

Media played a vital role in excruciating the terror of war on both sides; some foreign journalists, experts, and politicians, as well as some Russian human rights activists, tried to justify the terrorism and kidnapping in Chechnya in a variety of ways.¹⁹. Like in the light of terrorism or violence, they captured the war in Chechnya and explained the application of simplistic approaches to overcome violence in Chechnya, as well as violence against Chechnya, which are plentiful both in academic work and in the media. In other words, the key to understanding violence and conflict is recognition of the primary role of the specific social situation in the interpretation of human behavior and institutions.²⁰.

Since 1994, Russia and Chechnya have gone through several phases of conflicts in which the event of 1996 is still remembered for the 70,000 massacres of Russian troops and the invasion of Grozny by Chechnya²¹. The cold war is still going on where Russia has no doubt been able to gain sympathies with the United States.²². However, since then, Russia has been a notion of critics where it is blamed for attacking the civilians on various occasions. The assembly and Federal authorities have warned Russia several times to ceasefire the war, which has resulted in casualties of thousands of civilians, but both countries have deemed not to give up the bloody war.²³.

According to Leo Tolstoy, “We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening…” (Leo Tolstoy) That is what the two nations are supposed to consider about, that despite conducting umpteen conflicts they have achieved nothing but bloodshed of millions of innocent civilians.

Primary Sources

1. Chechnya, 2007a. Chechens, no. 11 (1997): 16; Kharon Vastigov, “In the Beginning Was the Word, ” Put’ Dzhokhara, no. 9 (1997): 4.
2. Dettmer Jamie, (2000) “Albright Can’t Get Putin to Budge on Chechnya” In: Newspaper. Title: The Washington Times. p. 1
3. 2000. “Russia Warned to Move towards Chechnya Peace” In. Newspaper Title: The Birmingham Post: 2000 p: 11
4. Gaffney Frank, (1996) “Russia’s Regression in Chechnya: Dispelling of Delusions” In: Newspaper Title: The Washington Times. Publication Date: 1996. p. 14
5. Golz Alexander, (1994) MoscowTimes.
6. Nullis Care, (1994) MoscowTimes
7. Rasizade Alec, (2005) Chechnya: The Achilles Heel of Russia-Part One In Magazine Title: Contemporary Review. Volume: 286. Issue: 1671 Page Number: 193+.

References

1. Aldis Anne & Herd P. Graeme, (2002) Russian Regions and Regionalism: Strength through Weakness: Routledge: London.
2. Alexander Pushkin, (1834), “Tis Time, My friend” Beissinger, Mark, and Lubomyr Hajda, eds. (1990). The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics And Society. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
3. Bellamy Paul, (2002) The Russian Quagmire Paul Bellamy Reviews the Performance of the Russian Armed Forces in the Chechnya Conflict In: New Zealand International Review. Volume: 27. Issue: 5. Page Number: 17+.
4. Cassidy M. Robert, (2003) Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya: Military Strategic Culture and the Paradoxes of Asymmetric Conflict: Strategic Studies Institute: Carlisle Barracks, PA.
5. Dudayev, Dzhokhar M. (1992). Ternistyi put’k svobode (The Thorny Way to Freedom). Groznyy:Kniga
6. Easter, G.M. (2000) Reconstructing the state. Personal networks and elite identity in Soviet Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7. Gustafson, T. (1999) Capitalism Russian-style, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8. Harrison, Simon. 1996. “War, Warfare. ” In Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, eds., Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 561–62. New York: Routledge
9. Hosking, G. (1998) Russia. People and empire, 1552-1917, London: Fontana Ignatieff, Michael. 1998. The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience. New York: Holt.
10. Robinson Neil, (2000) Institutions and Political Change in Russia: Macmillan Press: Houndmills.
11. Robinson, N. (ed.) (2000) Institutions and political change in Russia, Basingstoke: Macmillan
12. Sakwa, R. (1996) Russian politics and society, second edition, London: Routledge
13. Shearman, P. (ed.) (1995) Russian foreign policy since 1990, Boulder: Westview
14. Tishkov Valery & Gorbachev S. Mikhail, (2004) Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society: University of California Press: Berkeley, CA.
15. Tikhomirov, V. (2000) The political economy of post-Soviet Russia, Basingstoke: Macmillan
16. Webber Mark, (2000) Russia and Europe: Conflict or Cooperation? Macmillan

Footnotes

1. Magazine Article: Rasizade Alec, “Chechnya: The Achilles Heel of Russia-Part One,” Contemporary Review (2005), 286.
2. Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya: Military Strategic Culture and the Paradoxes of Asymmetric Conflict (Carlisle Barracks, PA, 2003), p. 1.
3. Ibid, p. 37
4. Golz Alexander, (1994) MoscowTimes
5. Dudayev, Ternistyi put’k svoboda (The Thorny Way to Freedom). (Groznyy:Kniga, 1992), 14
6. Tishkov & Gorbachev, Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society: (University of California Press: Berkeley, 2004), 130
7. Gustafson, Capitalism Russian-style, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 23
8. Journal Article: Bellamy, “The Russian Quagmire Paul Bellamy Reviews the Performance of the Russian Armed Forces in the Chechnya Conflict” New Zealand International Review (2002), 17
9. Robinson, Institutions and Political Change in Russia (Macmillan Press: Houndmills, 2000), 99
10. Hosking, Russia. People and empire, 1552-1917 (London: Fontana, 1998), 23
11. Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience. (New York: Holt, 1999), 125.
12. Sakwa, Russian politics and society, second edition, (London: Routledge, 1996), 11
13. Aldis & Herd, Russian Regions, and Regionalism: Strength through Weakness (London: Routledge, 2002), 87
14. Nullis Care, (1994) MoscowTime
15. Easter, Reconstructing the state. Personal networks and elite identity in Soviet Russia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 45
16. Zura Raduyeva, In Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society. (University of California Press: Berkeley, CA, 2004), 210.
17. Chechnya, 2007a
18. Weber, Russia, and Europe: Conflict or Cooperation? (Macmillan, 2000), 65
19. Harrison, “War, Warfare.” In Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, eds., Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology(New York: Routledge, 1996), 561-62
20. Beissenger et al., The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics And Society. Boulder, Colo.: West view Press, 1990.
21. Newspaper Article: Gaffney, “Russia’s Regression in Chechnya: Dispelling of Delusions” The Washington Times, (1996), 14
22. Newspaper Article: Dettmer, “Albright Can’t Get Putin to Budge on Chechnya” The Washington Times, (2000), 1
23. Newspaper Article: Russia Warned to Move towards Chechnya Peace” The Birmingham Post: (2000),11