Between “ethnocide” and “genocide”: violence and Otherness in the coverage of the Afghanistan and Chechnya wars

Abstract

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the two Russian wars in Chechnya were the longest, most protracted conflicts of the USSR and Russia after WWII. Both were conducted under conditions of unprecedented violence in peripheral territories. Despite their distance in time and space, both wars are closely linked to each other on the level of cultural representations in contemporary Russia. This paper analyses how the conflicts were represented in a key Soviet and Russian newspaper as the wars unfolded. It analyses the textual and visual coverage of the wars in the Krasnaia zvezda (1980–1986; 2000–2003), in order to disclose changing interpretations of violence and the Other. The paper argues, first, that Krasnaia zvezda told the story of two different types of violence prevailing in each conflict. The Afghan case was presented as one that put the social and cultural transformation of the population at the center of its attention – violence was hence not only physical and excessive but also cultural, as it aimed at the social fabric of society. The Chechen case focused on the recapture of territory and the restoration of sovereignty. Therefore, physical violence appeared more bluntly in the coverage of the conflict. Second, the paper shows that these two different types of violence implied two different visions of the Other. In Afghanistan, the Other was represented as becoming more and more similar to the socialist Self. This dynamic is visually underscored by numerous images of Afghans who have embarked on the path to Soviet modernity. In Chechnya, in contrast, the Other was presented as traditional, backward, and immutable. The Other was usually reduced to complete cultural difference and depicted a dehumanized fashion. This orientalization of the Other was a precondition for the use of excessive physical violence.

Keywords:

• Afghanistan
• Chechnya
• Otherness
• violence
• media coverage

Notes

1. Feifer (2009) provides a concise introduction into the War in Afghanistan. For more detailed accounts, see Braithwaite (2013) and Kalinovsky (2011). They all draw on Liakhovskii (1995). For an account covering the Soviet and later Russian involvement in Afghanistan, see Gareev (1996).

2. About the consequences of the Chechen wars see Le Huérou (2014).

3. Galina Zvereva underscored that the

direct comparison of the experience in Chechnya with that of the USSR in Afghanistan has a crucial importance for the makers of mass [cultural] products. It is “doomed to succeed” to the extent that it fully coincides with [ … ] collective imaginations and formulas of “narrative knowledge” (Zvereva 2002, 102–109).

4. Clastres “advances a functionally positive relation between ‘war’ [ … ] and the collective intentionality that defines what constitutes primitive societies” (Viveiros de Castro 2010, 10).

5. This position also echoes strongly the European 19^th century discourses that equate pauperism with a social danger and evoke the fear of the mob (Procacci 1991, 158).

6. Here, Clastres fails to grasp the structural dimension of violence to which Galtung (1969) has referred and whose insights remain valid today (Dilts 2012, 192).

7. This notion of improvement of the Other permeates much of Western thought since the times of colonialism, as has been argued by Li (2007). As for the Soviet Union, it “was founded on ideas and plans for the betterment of humanity, rather than on concepts of identity and nation,” and it inherited the belief to be endowed “with a special destiny to clear the Asian wilderness and civilize the tribes of the East” (Westad 2007, 37–40).

8. “Toute organisation étatique est ethnocidaire, l'ethnocide est le mode normal d'existence de l’état” (Clastres 1974, 107).

9. Interestingly then, the modern state, for Clastres, prevents war, as seen above. On the other hand, it does not prevent ethnocide – quite the contrary. While tying ethnocide closely to the state, Clastres anticipates the critique against Kaldor (1999); he also echoes Foucault's argument on state racism (1978) but is at odds with Arendt's insistence on the “inherent genocidal potential of the modern state” (Bartov 2000, 130).

10. Orientalism is “the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient,” a style for “having authority over the Orient” and “a style of thought” (Said 2003, 2–3). For a discussion of Russian Orientalism, see Khalid (2000).

11. “The social scientific debate over what counts as violence is not as innocuous as one may imagine but reflects and contributes to these norms of visibility and recognizability” (Winter 2012, 198).

12. The period under scrutiny covers the heyday of occupation. According to Mikhail Gorbachev, considerations to leave took shape in 1985: “To us it was already clear in 1985 that we had to leave Afghanistan. But we could not do it at once,” Arkhiv Gorbachev-Fonda, f. 2, op. 1, k. 8049 (Tezisy k nachalu vystupleniia M.S. Gorbacheva na Sovete Oborony, 17 October 1989). At the same time, Gorbachev declared that “the region is strategically important and we cannot remain indifferent [ … ] It is important to us that the peoples know, that one can rely on the USSR,” Arkhiv Gorbachev-Fonda, f. 3 op. 1, k. 4771 (Iz besedy M.S. Gorbacheva s Bettino Craxi, 29 May 1985).

13. For earnest Soviet efforts to transform Afghanistan, see Robinson and Dixon (2013). For a discussion of modernizing wars, see Malinowski (2008).

14. Ruslan Aushev, chairman of a veterans' committee, explicitly confirms these thoughts in an interview with Ekho Moskvy: “[In Afghanistan,] we did not have the task, as many say, to defeat somebody [ … ] The main task for us in Afghanistan was to secure. Secure the transport of goods, secure communications, help the Afghan army” (Larina 2014). Also Gareev (1996, 371) prefers to speak of a failure of Soviet politics rather than a failure of the military.

15. Vadim Zagladin confirms this intimate link between Central Asia and Afghanistan in the minds of the Soviet leadership: “Basically we tried to push our Afghan friends to an accelerated advancement of socialism, according to the example of our Central Asia [ … ].” Arkhiv Gorbachev-Fonda, f. 3, op. 1, k. 7192 (Dokladnaia zapiska V.V. Zagladina, 20 February 1989).

16. “Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand” (Said 2003, 7).

17. For Elena Losoto hospitals represented “the uttermost limit [ … ] of female activity [in Afghanistan], only men go further” (Losoto 1990, 23). For an overview on the role of women in the Soviet Army and especially in Afghanistan, see Seniavskaia (1999, 160–170).

18. Bulgakov's Country Doctor's Notebooks provide another telling example for how medicine is cast as an encounter between urban modernity, embodied by the doctor coming from the city (and desperately longing for its modern amenities), and rural backwardness, ignorance, and superstition, embodied by an internal other, the Russian peasant.

19. In her memoir, Elena Losoto shows that even in Kabul it was too dangerous to move around freely; hence, medical field-trips to the countryside seem rather unlikely. Still, she argues that Soviet medical facilities also treated locals and were hence spared from enemy fire (Losoto 1990, 5–8, 21–23).

20. On the problematic nature of this “friendship of the peoples” see Behrends (2005) and Edgar (2007).

21. On Soviet attitudes toward Islam, see for instance Edgar (2006).

22. RGANI, f. 89, dok. 103, per. 11, l. 3 (O publikatsiakh v stredstvakh massovoi informatsii materialov otnositel’ no deiistvii ogranichennogo kontingenta sovetskikh voisk v Afganistane, 24 June 1985).

23. Also, the formal use of images changed drastically. While during the 1980s there was a close connection between pictures, captions, and report, with the latter often providing an extended interpretation of the picture, now, in the 2000s, text and picture loosely relate to each other. The same pictures were used several times to provide illustration for any random report about Chechnya. Hence, certain topics per se represent Chechnya.

24. For the roots of the Russian usage of the term khuliganstvo, see Neuberger (1993).

25. The return of order and legality was a key theme of Vladimir Putin's presidential campaign and remained a pillar of his legitimacy. Famously, he promised a “dictatorship of law” (Putin 2008, 49).

26. Police checking the papers of people from the Caucasus or Central Asia is a common sight in Russian cities.

27. Gareev (1996, 375) briefly alludes to the situation in Chechnya and stresses that its “peaceful inhabitants” can be equipped with machine guns or grenade launchers.

28. The second Russo-Chechen conflict was framed into the context of the international “War on terror,” and terrorism and extremism were used interchangeably (Bacon, Renz, and Cooper 2006, 115–123). Terrorism was chiefly seen as a military issue alone. A rare departure from this stance came in 2009, when Dmitry Medvedev declared the problems in the North Caucasus to be socioeconomic in nature (Medvedev 2009).

29. “Sovereign power's effect on life is exercised only when the sovereign can kill. [ … ] It is essentially the right of the sword” (Foucault 2003, 137, 240). See also Foucault (1978, 136).

30. Krasnaia zvezda omits for example that in the Afghan countryside, male/female segregation was much looser than that in the cities (Hirschkind and Mahmood 2002, 339).

31. In Orientalism “the Other wants what the Self has to give her” (Chowdhury 2012, 20). While this “superiority” might be a typical theme of druzhba narodov, it remains doubtful whether it could be equally applied to European “friends.”