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Struggle for Self-Determination
By Pranjali Bandhu
The Chechens of North Caucasus have a long history of resistance to Russian colonisation starting from the early 16th century onwards.
The issue of Chechnian national liberation is a special case in Russian history. In 1991, as in the case of the Baltic republics, the Chechens proclaimed their independence and democratically ratified secession from the Russian Federation. While the Supreme Soviet of the USSR immediately ratified the independence of the Baltic nations, this was not done in the case of Chechnya, ostensibly because it did not have any constitutional right to secede unlike the other Soviet Socialist Republics. Instead we find Chechnya still being retained within the Russian Federation largely using brutal military force.
The Chechens of North Caucasus have a long history of resistance to Russian colonisation starting from the early 16th century onwards. Their present struggle for self-determination is rooted in past and continuing colonisation, discrimination and exploitation. They are a Muslim people of the mountain regions, who had earlier subsisted on livestock rearing, farming and on gathering forest produce. Socially, they lacked feudal stratification and were composed of groupings of patriarchal clans who, according to a Chechen saying, were “free and equal as wolves”. Islam had penetrated the East Caucasus in the 17th and 18th centuries and melted with local animist traditions. The Naqshbandi Sufi brotherhood, with its aversion to hierarchy and a creed of resistance, had appealed to the Chechens and other Caucasian peoples and had been adopted by them. The resistance to Russian colonial domination in the 19th century was also organised under the banner of Islamic solidarity.
Russian colonisation efforts settled Cossacks on Chechen agricultural lowlands and drove the Chechen people further into the mountains. This meant greater hunger for them and it also blocked the formation of feudal and landowning structures in their society. Forced deportation into the Ottoman Empire was also carried out, in the course of which thousands perished. Thus, land alienation and socio-economic marginalisation were the lot of the Chechen and other Caucasian peoples under the rule of the Russian tsars.
The discovery of oil near Grozny in the 1880s had brought with it rapid industrial and urban growth, but this benefited mainly Russian migrant workers. As the Empire sought dependable local cadres, a small minority of Chechens began to receive Russian education. From among these, a local intelligentsia emerged influenced by the ideas of the narodniki and later the Social-Democrats. Many of them were involved in the creation of an independent North Caucasian Mountain Republic in 1918, while others fought alongside the Reds during the Civil War as the best means for securing local autonomy. At this time, there was no exclusive Chechen nationalism and aspirations to sovereignty were couched in pan-Caucasian terms.
The White Army moved into the North Caucasus in 1919, and after its repudiation, it was followed by the Red Army, which was similarly resisted. By 1921, Stalin was forced to pledge full autonomy to a renamed Soviet Mountain Republic, accept local Islamic laws and return lands that had been granted to the Cossacks. But within a year the Soviet central government reneged on these promises and sent in army detachments to forcibly disarm the Chechens in the highlands. Artillery and aerial bombardment were also used to ‘pacify’ the local populations.
A process of modernisation was initiated, and this gained considerable local support for the Soviet regime. Adjustments were also made to administrative boundaries designed to dilute the weights of the titular nationalities of the newly formed Caucasian Socialist Republics, merging distinct groups and adding to them areas with predominantly Russian populations. It was the forced collectivisation of the mid-1930s that set off another wave of resistance in this region that continued up to 1938. A nationalist insurrection began in 1940 in the background of the Second World War gaining control of several mountain regions a provisional government was formed by 1942. Though some Caucasians collaborated with the invading Nazi army they were outnumbered by those who fought in the Red Army and as partisans against the invading force. Nevertheless, the Soviet regime carried out a genocidal deportation of Chechens and Ingush, a related Caucasian people, from the Caucasus to Central Asia in 1944.
A specific Chechen national consciousness began to emerge under these conditions. Religion became strongly intertwined with nationalism in exile and on return from exile to their homeland in the Russian Federation. The Chechen declaration of independence in late 1991 was one among a series of such declarations on the part of previous constituent republics of the USSR and was initially accepted de jure for 2-3 years.
The war against and occupation of Chechnya serves a number of purposes for the ruling ethno-kleptocracy in Russia, currently headed by Vladimir Putin. By contributing to a rising tide of xenophobia in Russia it helps the corrupt ruling elite to keep its hold on the people. The inflow of much needed migrants from the strife-torn and crime-ridden de-industrialised areas of the North Caucasus and also from other former Soviet republics into the industrial centres and rural areas of the Russian Federation, where they are able to secure a fairly good living for themselves, has led to a wave of resentment and Islamophobia on the side of the host population, both among its underprivileged sections as well as among its elite. Ethnic identity is beginning to determine profession and occupation in Russia.
(The writer can be reached at pranjali.bandhu@gmail.com)
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