Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 6 – Twenty-five years
ago today, Chechnya declared independence from the USSR. Since then, the Chechens defeated the Russian
army in one war, achieved an accord with Moscow that might have led to the
realization of their dreams, saw that agreement betrayed by Moscow, and suffered
the brutality of Putin’s invasion and Kadyrov’s repression.
Nonetheless, many Chechens despite this
retain their hopes for the future; and they can only be encouraged that on this
anniversary, Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has suggested that the current
crisis in Russia will give them and other still-oppressed peoples in Russia
another chance at independence (ehorussia.com/new/node/12880).
At the very least, this “round”
anniversary should be the occasion for remembering three things that many fail
to recognize: Chechnya did not declare its independence from Russia but from
the Soviet Union, Russia not Chechnya violated the Khasavyurt accords, and
Chechens, thanks to Putin and Kadyrov, now suffer under a more murderous regime
than any since Stalin’s.
Moscow has so falsified the history
of Chechnya’s drive toward independence in 1990-1991 and its own role not only
in failing to live up to the Khasavyurt accords but also engaging in state
terrorism and imposing by the use of overwhelming military force the vicious
regime now in place in Grozny that it is necessary to recall the facts.
The history of Chechens and Chechnya
has always been complicated and no more so than in 1990-1991. In November 1990,
the All-National Congress of the Chechen People meeting in Grozny took the
decision to take steps toward the restoration of Chechen statehood (akhyadidig.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/а-идигов-о-воссоздании-чеченского-гос/).
Chechnya, which was then part of the
Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, sought to operate within
the law and pushed the supreme soviet of that autonomy to adopt a declaration
of state sovereignty on November 27, 1990, as part of what has become known as “the
parade of sovereignties” in the RSFSR.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
refused to recognize this declaration and so the leadership of the
Chechen-Ingush Republic as it now styled itself decided that it would sign the
new union treaty on August 20, 1991. But the day before, the August coup broke
out, and the head of the Chechen-Ingush Republic took the side of the coup
plotters.
Both Chechens and Ingush were
outraged and they forced the removal of the head of the Chechen-Ingush
Republic. But the leadership of the RSFSR instead of supporting them supported
the leadership that had supported the coup in order to ensure that Chechnya
would remain subordinate to Moscow, an act illegal even in terms of Russian
law.
But on September 6, the government
of the Chechen-Ingush Republic voluntarily resigned from office, and the
Chechens moved to begin the process of “restoring their own state.” As the
leaders of the Chechen independence movement today point out, that day has since
been known as Chechen independence day (akhyadidig.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/президиум-правительства-чр-ичкерия-о/).
It
set and held elections on October 27, and these were recognized as legitimate
by observers from numerous countries and international organizations. They were
not recognized by the Soviet government or by the Russian government which in
December, three months after the Chechen Independence Day, replaced the Soviet
one.
For
almost three years, Chechnya and Russia coexisted in an uneasy calm, but then
in order to build authority at home, Russian President Boris Yeltsin launched
his attack on Chechnya, an attack that failed and ultimately forced Russia to
agree to the Khasavyurt accords which provided a kind of road map for future
consultations on Chechnya’s final status.
Tragically,
those 1996 agreements (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/08/1996-khasavyurt-accords-last-time.html)
did not lead to peace because Moscow refused to meet any of the conditions that
its representatives had agreed to. Then, after staging the apartment bombings
in Russian cities and blaming them on the Chechens, Putin began a second war on
Chechnya.
That
war brought little good to either Chechnya or Russia. It ended with the installation
of the murderous regime of Ramzan Khadyrov whose only “virtue” is his absolute
loyalty to Vladimir Putin, and it resulted in the view of many in the “Chechenization”
of Russia itself with the spread of uncontrolled state violence from the North
Caucasus to Russia as a whole.
But
Putin using his control of the media portrayed what he did as putting an end to
the disintegration of Russia and built his own political authority on that
basis. That effort of historical revisionism continues both in Grozny and in
Moscow.
In
Grozny, on this date as on every September 6th since 2002, the
Moscow-imposed Chechen regime celebrates what it calls “The Day of Civic Accord
and Unity” (tass.ru/v-strane/3596512
and nazaccent.ru/content/21791-den-grazhdanskogo-soglasiya-i-edineniya-otmechayut.html).
Kadyrov for his
part told the Chechens that over the past few years, Chechnya has been “transformed
from a zone of military actions into a flourishing region” at the edge of
Russia. “We have the right to be proud
of the nationality policy which is being realized in the republic … For many
years, there has not been a single conflict” in Chechnya ethnic or religious.
And Putin echoes this falsification
of history: He told the Bloomberg news agency that Russia “has a federative
state,” and the rights given to regions and republics like Chechnya “do not
destroy or divide the country but on the contrary unify it” even if some
problems do remain (rufabula.com/news/2016/09/05/chechen-federation).
Chechnya in 1991
aspired to be an independent secular state. Its leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, who
had served as a Soviet air force general in Estonia, sought to have his nation
follow the example of the Baltic countries. What Putin and Kadyrov have
achieved is to create a situation in which Islamists pose a more immediate
threat than ethno-nationalism.
That may help the two of them
deflect criticism from the West which in general supports any move against
Islamism, but it obscures the fact that Putin and Kadyrov are responsible for
that change and that an independent secular Chechnya would have been far less
of a problem for Russia and the world than an Islamist one under only nominal
Muscovite rule.
And that reflection makes the
argument this week offered by journalist Oleg Kashin about the coming
disintegration of Russia especially important and compelling (ru.krymr.com/a/27965204.html).
Kashin writes that “when we think
about the disintegration of Russia [now], we always have in the back of our
minds the disintegration of the USSR, that is the falling apart along
administrative-territorial divisions, ‘centrifugal forces,’ separatism, local
wars, and the final resolution at Beloveshchaya pushcha.”
But that understates the dangers
ahead, he argues. “In contrast to the Soviet Union, there are no even
artificial borders along which Russia could disintegrate. People who have nothing in common are
distributed across a common territory and are not separated one from another by
any physical boundaries.”
“It is possible,” Kashin continues, “that
this is the secret of that state firmness which before Crimea was customarily
called stability but now is not.” Instead, the coming disintegration will set
all against all regardless of any consideration of borders, the chief
achievement of a regime that has failed to offer any vision of a common future.
Despite all “the tragic
circumstances” it involved, the disintegration of the USSR did have a number of
“beneficiaries – from the Baltic peoples who became full-blown Europeans to the
Central Asian first secretaries who became full-blown dictators.” But the approaching disintegration of Russia “looks
much more depressing.”
“It will not have any beneficiaries,”
Kashin concludes, “and no one will be happy.”
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