Ingushetia Should Not Unite with Chechnya on Basis of Putin’s Model for Ukraine and Russia, Activists Insist

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – For years, Vladimir Putin and his supporters have insisted that Russians and Ukrainians are one nation and that because that is the case the Ukrainian state should be disbanded and the two peoples should live together in a single one as they in fact did under the tsars and Soviets.

            Few have noticed, however, that this argument about the relationship between nations and republics is being reproduced within the Russian Federation, where some are suggesting that the Ingush and Chechen nations, which share many cultural features and were part of a single republic, should follow the same course the Kremlin advocates for Ukrainians and Russians.

            Because such a position could help power the kind of amalgamation of federal subjects within the Russian Federation not just in the North Caucasus but elsewhere, it merits attention as a bellwether of Moscow’s policies and as an indication of the way in which foreign policy positions can bleed back into domestic ones.

            Prague-based commentator Vadim Sidorov says that problems in Ingushetia have led some figures there to suggest that these could be overcome if Ingushetia were to unite with Chechnya where they believe the situation is being dealt with more effectively. These suggestions have generated more opposition than support (region.expert/republic/).

            Ayup Gagiyev, head of the republic’s Constitutional Court Moscow has disbanded, is among the opponents. He says that “those who speak out against the statehood of Ingushetia may freedly use their constitutional right to choose their place of residence in any other region of Russia.”

            But “the statehood of Ingushetia,” he continues, “is the most important condition for the preservation by the Ingush people of their national identity. On the basis of this fundamental principle, the best representatives of our people have proceeded in their decades-long effort to achieve legal status for the Ingush people within Russia.”

            Sidorov argues that “for Russian federalists what is interesting is not so much the ethno-national than the political dimension.” Many have failed to see that Ingush protests over the last three years have not been only about the change in the border with Chechnya but in the loss of the Ingush of the right to choose their own leaders and to insist they represent the people.

            It is certainly true, he says, that the sultanate Ramzan Kadyrov has created in Chechnya resembles what Putin has done for Russia as a whole and that one result of this is that Kadyrov gets more help from Moscow than Ingushetia does. But Ingushetia seeks democracy and genuine federalism and talk about anything else is a potentially dangerous distraction.