Chechen ethnic identity: assessing the shift from resistance to submission

ABSTRACT

This article critically assesses the ostensible transformation in Chechen ethnic identity. Journalists and scholars who came to this conclusion based their claim on obvious changes in Chechen behavior. The brave and irreconcilable resistance the nation demonstrated during the First and the Second Russo-Chechen Wars of 1994–1996 and 1999–2009, respectively, was replaced by a submissive and loyal stance with regard to the new authorities and recent enemies. This article investigates whether such a change in behavior reflects a corresponding change in ethnic identity. This article asserts that ‘non-Chechen’ behavioral models do not signify changes in Chechen ethnic identity by presenting and analyzing Chechen narratives concerning the question. In summary, this article concludes that the ethnic identity of the nation remained mainly untouched. This conclusion is supported by the observed continuity of Chechen resistance, which has always been driven by cherished values such as freedom.

KEYWORDS:

• Chechen
• identity
• behavior
• freedom
• resistance
• war

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the expression of this opinion, see M. Akhmedova, ‘Mozg Chechni’ [The Brains of Chechnya], Expert Online (2013). http://expert.ru/russian_reporter/2013/41/mozg-chechni/; E. Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya: Russia and the Tragedy of Civilians in War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp.86–8; A. Le Huérou, A. Merlin, A. Regamey and E. Sieca-Kozlowski, Chechnya at War and Beyond (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), p.6. A. Politkovskaya, A Dirty War. A Russian Reporter in Chechnya (London: The Harvill Press, 2001), p.xxii.

2. The article is based on the claim that Chechen resistance is driven by ethnic identity and therefore focuses exclusively on it rather than religious identity. The support of this claim is provided in the observed literature and transmitted narratives of the informants, some of which are presented in this article.

3. Ramzan Kadyrov was appointed by Moscow as the head of the Republic in 2007.

4. A. Jaimoukha, The Chechens (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p.3.

5. P. Sirén, The Battle for Grozny: The Russian Invasion of Chechnya December 1994–December 1996 in B. Fowkes (ed.) Russia and Chechnya: The Permanent Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp.87–169.

6. N. Werth, ‘The “Chechen Problem”: Handling an Awkward Legacy, 1918–1958’, Contemporary European History Vol.15-3(2006), pp.347–66.

7. M. Wagner, Travels in Persia, Georgia and Koordistan (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1856), p.252.

8. N. Nukhadzhiev and H. Umkhaev, Deportatsiya narodov. Nostal'giya po totalitarizmu [The Deportation of Peoples. Missing Totalitarianism] (Elista: Djangar, 2009), p.30.

9. V. Sheremet, Pod tsarskoyu rukoi…’ Rossiyskaya Imperiya i Chechnya v XIX–nachale XX vekov [Under the Tsar's Hand: The Russian Empire and Chechenia in the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th centuries] in V. Kozlov, F. Benvenuti, M. Kozlova, P. Polian and V. Sheremet (eds.) Vainakhi i Imperskaya vlast: problema Chechni i Ingushetii vo vnutrennei politike Rossii I SSSR (nachalo XIX–seredina XX vekov) [The Vainakhs and the Imperial Power: The Problem of Chechenia and Ingushetia in the Domestic Politics of Russia and the USSR (The Beginning of the 19th–The Middle of the 20th Centuries)] (Moscow: Rossiyskaya Politicheskaya Entsiklopedia, Part I, 2011), pp.21–52.

10. R. W. Schaefer, The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus: From Gazavat to Jihad (Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford: Praeger Publishers Inc., 2011), p.51.

11. N. Werth, ‘The “Chechen Problem”’ (2006).

12. F. Tornau, Vospominaniya kavkazskogo ofitsera [The Memoirs of a Caucasian Officer]. Collected and published by A. Makarov and S. Makarova (Moscow: AIRP-XXI, 2008), p.122. The translation of the quote is taken from J.F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908), p.273.

13. Such accounts can be found in J.F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquest, p.131; S. Bronevsky, Noveishie geograficheskie i istoricheskie izvestiya o Kavkaze [The Newest Historical and Geographical Data about the Caucasus] (Moscow: Tipografia S. Selivanovskago, 1823), p.182; P. Kovalevsky, Vosstanie Chechni i Dagestana v 1877–78 [The Uprising of Chechnya and Daghestan in 1877–1878] (Saint Petersburg: Tipografia M. I. Akinfieva, 1912), p.11–2.

14. The Chechens rebelled against Moscow continually. As Seely states, since 1859 when Imam Shamil (the leader of the Chechen and Dagestani state from 1840) was defeated and up until 1917, they had rebelled 17 times. See R. Seely, Russo-Chechen Conflict 1800–2000. A Deadly Embrace (London, Portland: Frank Cass, 2001), p.2.

15. Confirmed by A. Jaimoukha, Chechens (2005), p.153, and R. Schaefer, ‘Deportations in the Late 1800s on North Caucasians’ Participation in the First World War’, Caucasus Survey Vol.1-1 (2013), pp.91–106.

16. See J. F. Baddeley, The Rugged Flanks of Caucasus (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), p.5; C. King, The Ghost of Freedom. A History of the Caucasus (Oxford: University Press, 2008), p.67; Kovalevsky, p.39; J. Russell, Chechnya. Russia's War on Terror (Routledge: New York, 2008), p.13; R. Sakwa, Chechnya: A Just War Fought Unjustly? in B. Coppiters and R. Sakwa (eds.) Contextualizing Secession, Normative Studies in Comparative Perspective (Oxford: University Press, 2003), pp.156–86. See also a report written in the 1920s that describes Chechen resistance to Bolsheviks. Russian State Archive (RGV), Fund 25896, Register 9, Case 286, p.32. Extracts of it are available online http://artyushenkooleg.livejournal.com/346007.html.

17. A. Bennigsen, ‘Muslim Guerrilla Warfare in the Caucasus, 1918–1928’, Central Asia Survey Vol.2-1 (1983), pp.45–56. M. Bennigsen-Broxup, The Last Ghazawat. The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance towards the Muslim World (London: Hurst and Co, 1992). J. Burds, ‘The Soviet War Against “Fifth Columnists”: The Case of Chechnya, 1942–44’, Journal of Contemporary History Vol.42-2 (2007), pp.267–314. J. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of Separatist Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). M. Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule (London: Hurst, 2006). Y. Gordin, Zachem Rossii nuzhen byl Kavkaz [Why Russia Needed the Caucasus] (The Magazin ‘Zvezda’, Sankt-Petersburg, 2008). A. Jaimoukha, Chechens, 2005. A. Nekrich, The Punished People. The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War (New York: Norton and Company, 1978). N. Nukhadzhiev and Kh. Umkhaev, Deportatsiya narodov (2009). M.A. Reynolds, ‘Native Sons: Post-Imperial Politics, Islam, and Identity in the North Caucasus, 1917–1918’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas Vol.56-2 (2008), pp.221–47. R. Schaefer, The Insurgency (2011). S. Smith, Allah's Mountains. The Battle for Chechnya (London: Tauris Parke, 2001). N. Werth, ‘The “Chechen Problem”’ (2006).

18. R. Schaefer, The Insurgency (2011), p.97. The quote is taken from the Telegram of the commander of the Terek-Dagestan Military Group to S. Ordzhonikidze and S. Kirov dated 1 February 1921. Russian State Military Archive, Fund 39247, Registry 1, Case 101.

19. A. Bennigsen, ‘Muslim Guerrilla’ (1983).

20. See A. Avtorkhanov, Ubiystvo checheno-ingushkogo naroda: narodoubiystvo v SSSR [The Killing of the Chechens and Ingush. The Killing of the Peoples in the USSR] (Moscow: SP Whole Russia, 1991). P. Polian, Sovietizatsia po-vainakhski [Vainakh Way of Sovietisation] in V. Kozlov, F. Benvenuti, M. Kozlova, P. Polian, and V. Sheremet (eds.) Vainakhi i imperskaya vlast: problema Chechni i Ingushetii vo vnutrennei politike Rossii i SSSR [The Vainakhs and Imperial Power: The Problem of Chechnya and Ingushetia in the Domestic Politics of Russia and the USSR] (Мoscow: Yeltsin's Fund, 2011), pp.447–61.

21. V. Cheterian, War and Peace in the Caucasus: Russia's Troubled Frontier (London: Hurst and Company, 2008). M. Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002). V. Kozlov and M. Kozlova, ‘Paternalistskaia utopia i etnicheskaia realnost: Chechentsy i Ingushi v Stalinskoi ssylke, 1944–1953’ [The Paternalist Utopia and Ethnic Reality: The Chechens and Ingush in Stalin's Exile, 1944–1953], Vestnik Arkhivista Vol.3-4 (2003), pp.259–61. N. Werth, ‘The “Chechen Problem”’ (2006).

22. V. Kozlov and M. Kozlova, Paternalistskaya utopiya (2003).

23. M. Gammer, The Lone Wolf (2006), p.196.

24. V. Kozlov and M. Kozlova, Paternalistskaya utopiya (2003), refer to GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), Fund 9479, Register 1, Case 294, p.65.

25. J. Hughes, Chechnya from Nationalism to Jihad (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p.12; Gammer, The Lone Wolf (2006), p.187. C. Gall and T. de Waal, Chechnya: A Small Victorious War (London: Pan, 1997), pp.253, 260.

26. In M. Gammer, The Lone Wolf (2006), p.189.

27. J. Russell, Chechnya (2008).

28. See H. Baiev, R. Daniloff and N. Daniloff, The Oath, A Surgeon under Fire (London: Pocket, 2004). V. Cheterian, War and Peace (2008). G. Derlurguian, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-system Biography (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). T. Goltz, Chechnya Diary: A War Correspondent's Story of Surviving the War in Chechnya (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003). A. Matveeva, The Northeastern Caucasus: Drifting Away from Russia in R.B. Ware, The Fire Below. How the Caucasus Shaped Russia (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), pp.253–82. J. Russell, Chechnya (2008); Schaefer, The Insurgency (2011); E. Sokiryanskaia, Ideology and Conflict: Chechen Political Nationalism Prior to, and During Ten Years of War in M. Gammer (ed.) Ethno-Nationalism, Islam and the State in the Caucasus (London: Routledge, 2008), pp.102–38. V. Tishkov, Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society (London: University of California Press, 2004).

29. M. Eldin, Sky Wept Fire (London: Portobello, 2013), p.43.

30. F. Benvenuti, Introduction, in V. Kozlov, F. Benvenuti, M. Kozlova, P. Polian and V. Sheremet (eds.), Vainakhi i imperskaya vlast: problema Chechni i Ingushetii vo vnutrennei politike Rossii i SSSR [The Vainakhs and Imperial Power: The Problem of Chechnya and Ingushetia in the Domestic Politics of Russia and the USSR] (Мoscow: Yeltsin's Fund, 2011), pp.261–82.

31. V. Sheremet, Pod tsarskoyu rukoi (2011). P. Polian, Vainakhi v epokhu rossiyskogo mezhduvlastiya [Vainakhs During the Time of Interregnum], in V. Kozlov, F. Benvenuti, M. Kozlova, P. Polian and V. Sheremet, Vainakhi i imperskaya vlast: problema Chechni i Ingushetii vo vnutrennei politike Rossii i SSSR [The Vainakhs and Imperial Power: The Problem of Chechnya and Ingushetia in the Domestic Politics of Russia and the USSR] (Мoscow: Yeltsin's Fund, 2011), pp.261–82.

32. D. Khozhaev, Chechentsy v Russsko-Kavkazskoi voine [The Chechens in the Russo-Caucasian War] (Grozny: Seda, 1998), p.46.

33. V. Sheremet, Pod tsarskoyu rukoi (2011).

34. F. Benvenuti, Introduction (2011).

35. P. Polian, Sovietizatsia po-vainakhski (2011). A. Avtorkhanov, Ubiystvo checheno-ingushkogo naroda, (1991).

36. P. Polian, Sovietizatsia po-vainakhski (2011).

37. A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago. 1918–1956. An Experiment in Literary Investigation (New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper and Row Publishers, 2003, III), p.420.

38. Interview N 107.

39. V. Kozlov and M. Kozlova, Paternalistskaya utopiya (2003).

40. V. Sheremet, Pod tsarskoyu rukoi (2011).

41. M. Bennigsen-Broxup, The Last Ghazawat (1992), S. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers. The Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus (London: Routledge Curzon, 2001). Gammer, The Lone Wolf (2006), V. Kozlov, F. Benvenuti, M. Kozlova, P. Polian, and V. Sheremet, Vainakhi i imperskaya vlast (2011), A. Nekrich, The Punished People. The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War (New York: Norton and Company, 1978). E. O'Ballance, Wars in the Caucasus 1990–1995 (London: Antony Rowe Ltd., 2007). P. Polian, Sovietizatsia po-vainakhski (2011). N. Werth, ‘The “Chechen Problem”’ (2006).

42. Z. Ibragimova, Tsarskoe proshloe chechentsev. Vlast i obshchestvo [The Chechen Past in Tsar's Russia. The Power and the Society] (Moscow: Probel-2000, 2009).

43. J-F. Ratelle, ‘Radical Islam and the Chechen War Spill-over: A Political Ethnographic Reassessment of the Upsurge of Violence in the North Caucasus since 2009’ (PhD thesis, University of Ottawa, 2013).

44. The translation provided in the brackets cannot expose the whole richness of their meanings which include the entire sets of behavioural regulations. These meanings are unveiled through the narratives of my informants.

45. The substantial change in identity was admitted by several of Tishkov's informants (2004, p.49). None of my informants expressed this same point. This difference can be explained by the geography of the research, its time, and public. Tishkov's research took place mainly in Moscow and involved mostly pro-Russian or Moscow-based Chechens with positive attitudes towards their Soviet past, which was very recent at that time.

46. Interview N 92.

47. L. Iliyasov, Kultura chechenskogo naroda [The Culture of the Chechen People] (Мoscow: UNESCO, 2009).

48. Interview N 74.

49. This expression was popular among Russian criminals in the nineteenth and the beginning of twentieth centuries. By cutting all connections with their relatives, some criminals tried to minimise the possibility of being identified. Thus, eventually, they would remain without any close relatives, which was seen by the interviewee as a negative outcome.

50. Focus-group N 1.

51. Focus-group N 2.

52. S. Bronevsky, Noveishie geograficheskie i istoricheskie izvestiya o Kavkaze [The Newest Historical and Geographical Data about the Caucasus] (Moscow: Tipografia S. Selivanovskago, 1823), pp.183–4. R. Fadภeyev, 1824–1883. Gosudarstvennyi porภiมadok: Rossiภiมa i Kavkaz [1824–1883. The State's Order: Russia and the Caucasus] (Moscow: Institute of the Russian Civilisation, 2010), pp.75–6. P. Kovalevsky, Vosstanie Chechni i Dagestana v 1877–78 [The Uprising of Chechenia and Dagestan in 1877–1878] (Saint Petersburg: Tipografia M. I. Akinfieva, 1912), pp.11–2. P. Zubov, Kartina Kavkazskogo kraya [The Picture of the Caucasus] (Vol.III, Sankt-Petersburg: Tipografia Konrada Vingevera, 1835), p.175.

53. C. Haney, C. Banks, and P. Zimbardo, ‘Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison’, International Journal of Criminology and Penology Vol.1 (1973), pp.69–97.

54. Interview N 72.

55. Similar assessments can be found in S.E. Mendelson, ‘Anatomy of Ambivalence: The International Community and Human Rights Abuse in the North Caucasus’, Problems of Post-Communism Vol.53–6 (2006), pp.3–15.

56. Interview N 101.

57. Interview N 15.

58. E. Sokiryanskaia, Ideology and Conflict: Chechen Political Nationalism Prior to, and During Ten Years of War in M. Gammer (ed.) Ethno-Nationalism, Islam and the State in the Caucasus (London: Routledge, 2008), pp.102–38.

59. Interview N 27.

60. Interview N 96.

61. V. Tishkov, Obshchestvo v vooruzhennom konflikte (etnografiya chechenskoi voiny) [Society in an Armed Conflict (The Ethnography of the Chechen War)] (Moscow: Science, 2001), p.163.

62. Interview N 96.

63. The meaning of Lai here is a person hired for a low-profile work, or a servant.

64. Interview N 96.

65. Similar accounts were recorded by V. Tishkov, Obshchestvo (2001), pp.163–5.

66. See also T. Wood, Chechnya: The Case for Independence (London: Verso, 2007), p.164.

67. Interview N 107.

68. A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (2003), pp.420–1.

69. N. Werth, ‘The “Chechen Problem”’ (2006).

70. Interview N 14.

71. Interview N 26.

72. Sokirianskaia is quoted in E. Souleimanov and G. Jasutis, ‘The Dynamics of Kadyrov's Regime: Between Autonomy and Dependence’, Caucasus Survey Vol.4-2 (2016), pp.115–28.