Paul Goble
Staunton, Sept. 25 – Grozny wants to give Chechen names to three former Cossack settlements, something Moscow is prepared to go along with given the demographic change in Chechnya since the end of Soviet times; but some Russians who fought in the first post-Soviet Chechen war are outraged at what they see as a betrayal of their efforts.
At the end of Soviet times, roughly a quarter of the residents in the northern section of Chechnya were ethnic Russians; and there were numerous Russian and Russian Cossack toponyms. But as a result of Russian flight and still high Chechen birthrates, ethnic Russians have almost completely disappeared and Chechens dominate the area.
As a result, the Chechen government in Grozny wants to rename three former Cossack settlements that are now populated by ethnic Chechens with Chechen names, something that seems entirely reasonable given the Kremlin’s deference to Ramzan Kadyrov and that the Russian Duma has voted to approve in its first reading of the bill.
But some Duma members, including a former general who fought against the Chechens in the 1990s, are outraged and have suggested that this renaming betrays the memory of those who fought and died against Chechnya then and the Russian traditions that the Kremlin has pledged to defend.
Obviously, in this as in so much else, Chechnya is a special case; but the assertion of the right of republics to rename places when demography changes is likely to catch the attention of other non-Russians – and Russian objections to that are certain to exacerbate relations between Russians and non-Russians.
On this unusual case, a reminder that renaming involves more than doing away with Soviet place names, and the controversy, see kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/414922 and zavtra.ru/events/general_shamanov_vozmutilsya_pereimenovaniem_kazach_ih_stanitc_v_chr_vi_chto_tvorite.
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