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Title: Chechnya and National Liberation Author: Chris Hobson Date: 1995 Language: en Topics: Chechnya, Russia, Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation Source: 1995 Mar/Apr issue of L&R. Retrieved on 2016-06-13 from https://web.archive.org/web/20160613052428/http://loveandrage.org/?q=node/54
As this is written in mid-February, Shali, Samashki, Argun and other
towns around the Chechen capital, Grozny, where Chechen forces have
regrouped, are taking the full brunt of Russian fighter-bomber attacks,
tank barrages, and mortar bombardments. In Grozny itself, thousands of
buildings have only a wall or two standing. For nearly 10 weeks after
the Russians invaded on Dec. 11 to reverse a 1991 declaration of
independence, fighters in Grozny resisted block by block. Now, fewer
than a hundred thousand people pick for food in what was once a city of
400,000. Moving on, Russian forces level the countryside of a tiny
country that Russia originally conquered by force only 135 years ago.
Russian announcements follow a well-thumbed script. A “Provisional
Council” is named to run the country, headed by a former Soviet oil
minister. There’s talk of negotiation, announcements of cease-fires,
when Grozny still holds out—then the proclamation that the Chechen
president is a “state criminal,” when the balance shifts. Western
governments are supporting Yeltsin, with mild criticisms. President
Clinton goes out of his way to mention that Chechnya is part of Russia,
and adds that “if the forces of reform are embattled, we must renew—not
retreat from—our support for them.” He is referring to Boris Yeltsin.
German chancellor Helmut Kohl, visiting Clinton in February, agrees: we
must not “push the forces of reform and the President into a corner.”
(Yeltsin is happy to oblige them, once he has the upper hand; another
cease-fire is announced Feb. 13.)
To the contrary of what Clinton and Kohl say, the real lessons are
clear:
failed.
forces for change—a step toward democratization today, and toward the
goal of a voluntary federation of free peoples, still far away.
Russia (then Muscovy) began expanding into Muslim lands to its south and
east in the 1500s, reaching the Caucasus about a century later. Russian
policy was both imperialist and anti-Muslim. As one history summarizes,
“the liquidation of the governing bodies of these territories was
followed by a systematic occupation of the former Muslim lands....
Muslim inhabitants were treated as Russian subjects to whom the rights
reserved to Christians were denied” (Muslims of the Soviet Empire, 8)
Despite some periods of relative tolerance—under Catherine the Great in
the 1700s, after the 1905 Revolution, during the Soviet “New Economic
Policy” of the 1920s—suppression was the rule.
The Chechens and other tribal peoples, such as Daghestanis, resisted
Russian control until the nineteenth century. A major revolt broke out
under Imam Mansur in 1783, but the Chechen leader Sheikh Shamil led the
longest, bitterest resistance, a harassing guerrilla war from the rugged
Chechen hills that lasted from 1834 to 1859. With his capture the
Chechen lands became part of Russia, but Chechens and Daghestanis
revolted again, against Bolshevik rule, in 1920–22.
In the 1930s, the Chechens and the neighboring Ingush people were
organized into the “Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist
Republic,” ruled from Moscow. Legally, this was part of Russia, unlike
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, etc., which were supposedly independent republics
of the USSR on a par with Russia. (This is why, when these republics
declared the USSR dissolved in 1991, Chechnya remained inside Russia.)
From 1928 to 1941—the period of Soviet forced industrialization,
collectivization, and purges—Stalin carried out “a frontal assault on
Islam within Soviet borders. This assault resulted in the closing of
thousands of mosques and the liquidation or imprisonment of most Muslim
clerics... clerics and believers were accused of being saboteurs,
counter-revolutionaries and parasites.” (Muslims of the Soviet Empire,
11) In a so-called “super-purge” on Aug. 1, 1937, Stalin’s police
arrested, executed, or deported 14,000 people in the Chechen-Ingush
republic—one out of every 30 inhabitants.
Finally, after anti-Russian, anti-communist movements as German armies
approached the Caucasus in 1942, Stalin ordered the deportation of the
entire Chechen and Ingush population in 1944. “Security Police units
entered the Chechen-Ingush ASSR disguised as ordinary troops. On 23
February, when people were assembled in villages to mark Red Army Day,
they were suddenly surrounded by security forces and informed of the
decree.” (Soviet Disunion, 96) These deportations took an enormous toll
in lives. Up to 46 percent of the neighboring Crimean Tatars, also
deported en masse, were killed or died in transit or in exile. The
number of Chechen and Ingush casualties is not known.
When the Chechens and Ingush were finally allowed to return in the
1950s, they endured rioting and massacres by local Russians (1958) and
renewed anti-Muslim campaigns—in the 1960s, when two-thirds of the
mosques in the whole Soviet Union were closed, and again in the 1980s.
Sporadic resistance to Russia continued too—bombings, secret resistance
meetings, and an effort to found a “United Party for the Liberation of
the Caucasus” in 1969 (the leader was sent to a mental hospital); mass
demonstrations in 1973, and so on.
Despite the brutal suppression, Russia never succeeded in fully
controlling the Chechens. Both social and religious reasons help explain
why. The clan-tribal social structure, still strong as late as the
1980s, means that the average Chechen, even in the cities, belongs to a
social network that has nothing to do with the official government, and
that has always been highly resistant to Russian suppression. Religious
devotion, too, is a major reason for fighting a government that has
repeatedly tried to stamp Islam out. More specifically, a traditional
semi-secret network of Sufi brotherhoods, parallel to the official Sunni
Muslim religious structure, has provided organization and leadership for
resistance. Imam Mansur, Sheikh Shamil, Uzun Haji (leader of the 1920–22
rebellion), and leaders of other Muslim insurgencies elsewhere in Russia
were all members of various Sufi societies. The Sufi orders were still
strong in the 1980s, and may well be involved in the present resistance.
This background makes it clear why Chechnya declared independence in
1991, when the USSR cracked up after the attempted coup in August of
that year. Simply put, Chechen resistance has broken out every time
Russian power has been weakened—in 1920–22, 1942, 1991.
Nevertheless, independence was not the result of a popular movement.
There was no substantial dissident movement in Chechnya in the 1980s, as
there was in Ukraine, for example. Rather, the current president,
Dzhokhar M. Dudayev—a former Soviet air force general in Afghanistan—ran
a pro-independence campaign as an opportunist maneuver to gain power,
much as local Communist Party heads did in some other republics.
There is some truth in Russian charges that the Chechen government is
both a dictatorship and a front for organized crime. Dudayev’s allies,
later his police, were the Chechen crime syndicates who had
traditionally been active as smugglers and as gangs in Moscow. When
Peter Jennings of the New Statesman and Nation visited Grozny in 1993,
he noted “lines of new Mercedes, BMWs and Cadillacs” were parked outside
the presidential palace. Dudayev explained that the cars “show the
wealth of our nation... that our lads, our Chechen people, have learned
how to function creatively under the new conditions.” Meanwhile, up to
$300 million in oil revenues disappeared.
To some extent Chechen crime is a typical economic operation of an
empire’s “outsiders”—after all, why should Chechens respect Russian
legality? But Chechens too are among the regime’s victims. Jennings
reported that workers “complain they have received no wages for months”
and “live in constant fear” of armed gangs, the police force was
quintupled (part of the problem), and journalists who tried to
investigate the corruption were killed.
But to state what should be obvious, the Russian invasion transformed
this situation of growing dictatorship, with lingering nationalist
support for Dudayev, into a mass struggle. “The fighters now don’t fight
for Dudayev, but for themselves,” one guerrilla told the New York Times,
a comment echoed over and over. Though we shouldn’t have any simplistic
optimism about prospects for democracy if it should win, the
anti-Russian movement is a mass national resistance.
Two major lessons can be learned from the Chechen situation. First,
communism, or state capitalism, can’t be peacefully reformed into a
democratic system, any more than other forms of capitalism can be
peacefully reformed into a free, equal system. The point here isn’t one
of definitions, but one of dynamics.
Communism in the old USSR had two historic problems, and neither one has
been solved. The first was that its economic system, one of state
capitalism, was in permanent stagnation. The US and US-dominated
financial institutions, like the International Monetary Fund, want
Yeltsin to “solve” this situation through a wholesale attack on mass
living standards. Despite some “successes” in this plan, it has been too
politically dangerous to carry through, so the Russian economy is in a
downward spiral it can’t seem to break out of.
The second problem, symbolized by Chechnya, is that Russia is a state
built on the suppression of non-Russian nationalities. A glance at the
map tells the story. Over half of Russia’s area consists of non-Russian
lands that, like Chechnya, are “autonomous” areas or republics in law.
If Chechen secession is recognized, the whole pile takes a lurch toward
collapse. In other words, Russia remains an empire of suppressed
nations. Any progress toward real democracy risks breaking it up.
Since neither problem has been solved, and both can only be solved
within the present system through undemocratic means, Russia’s fragile
parliamentary system and its recently granted political freedoms are in
danger of unraveling. Since January, critics of the government like
Yeltsin’s own human rights commissioner, Sergei A. Kovalyev, have been
denounced as “enemies of the people”—a death sentence in Russia’s recent
past—and it has become clear that the decisions about Chechnya are being
made by a mainly military body called the National Security Council.
Yeltsin himself seems to be under the thumb of the NSC. One
parliamentary leader calls this body “a military-civilian junta
disguised as the National Security Council,” and warns, “If it continues
Russia will be ripe for an authoritarian dictatorship.”
It may seem that Russia’s “nationality problem” is not a result of
capitalism, but of a “Kremlin mentality,” a particularly barbaric
survival of pre-capitalist tsarist conquests. Without going into all the
reasons for considering Russian communism a form of state capitalism, it
can be said that other capitalist systems have been built on
pre-capitalist, or only partly capitalist, forms of oppression. Black
oppression in the United States is an example. As in Russia, these
appear to be special, inherited problems, when they are really built
into the system. And like the US, Russia and other ex-communist states,
with a couple of possible exceptions, are failing to solve their
“minority” problems through reforms.
Second lesson: The struggles for self-determination around the
ex-communist world are limited, but important struggles that help the
general struggle for democracy. On the surface, it may look as if
“nationalism” is a destructive force that contributes to the emergence
of authoritarian rule. Actually, in the six years since the old USSR
began to crack up in 1989, the struggle of the oppressed nationalities
has pushed Russia toward democracy not once but many times. The
struggles of the Baltic countries to secede, in 1989–91, contributed to
the weakening of Gorbachev’s rule, led Gorbachev to turn toward the
generals, and therefore helped bring about the coup attempt whose defeat
greatly, if momentarily, expanded Russian democracy.
Isn’t it plain that if Lithuania and the others had not struggled for
independence, it would have been harder to destroy communist rule, if
possible at all? And the secession of the other non-Russian states from
the USSR in 1991 at least means that Russia is now sliding toward
dictatorship in a smaller, weaker state. Finally, opposition to the
Chechen invasion itself has weakened the Russian army, increased the
demoralization of troops and officers, and led to open protests in
Moscow. The Russian government would be moving to the right without any
of this; what the national movements have created is resistance to this
move.
Nevertheless, if the authority of the state continues to fray and crack
without a full-scale popular struggle for freedom, the generals and
police will grow bold enough to counterattack. The next months or a year
can be crucial for the survival of any degree of freedom in Russia, and
after that, the other ex-communist states.
Right now it seems as if people in Russia and other ex-communist
countries are too economically exhausted and too demoralized by the
failure of reform to start mass struggles. If this is the case,
semi-democratic capitalism will give way to authoritarianism and,
internationally, Russian imperialism will re-emerge as a rival to US
imperialism.
The last word lies with the people, however, and they haven’t spoken it.
It’s possible that new struggles for liberty will emerge. It should be
clear, too, that battles are possible in the future to defend the
relatively limited democratic rights these countries have gained since
1985. In that case anarchists and anti-authoritarians, even though we
stand for the destruction of all oppression and oppose all states, would
side with people trying to defend limited forms of democracy against
destruction.
[Two Gorbachev-era books that are still useful for background are:
Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslims of the Soviet Empire,
a Guide (Indiana University Press, 1986); Bohdan Nahaylo and Victor
Swoboda, Soviet Disunion, A History of the Nationalities Problem in the
USSR (Free Press, 1990). The second deals with all non-Russian
nationalities, not just Muslims.]