UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Saturday 18 February 2:30 – 4:00: Panel K1: Perceptions of the Nation in Russia and Ukraine

Jason Vaughn (UCL - SSEES): ‘Russian public opinion in respect to the competition between nationalism and Islam in Russia’s Chechen conflict: what is considered more evil?’

Conflict in Chechnya has raged off and on since the fall of the Soviet Union. The 1994 Russian invasion, attempted in part to restore order to the region, in fact intensified the conflict greatly. Chechen resistance to the invasion initially took a more secular nationalistic tone, headed by former officers of the Soviet Armed Forces, such as ex-Soviet Air Force general Dzhokhar Dudayev and former Soviet Army colonel Aslan Maskhadov.

Nevertheless, there was always an under-current of traditional Islamic thought embedded in the resistance. Represented by noted Chechen commander, Shamil Basayev, this element of resistance has over time come to the forefront of the conflict; also coinciding with the spread of Wahhabism as a dominating sect of Islam, the global war on terrorism (which Russian President Vladimir Putin has linked to the Chechen conflict to gain public support), and to covert financial support from Islamic fundamentalist states, such as Saudi Arabia.

At the same time, the nationalist element of Chechen resistance was unable to sustain the Chechen state, even after its virtual independence following the pullout of Russian troops from 1996 to 1999. Even after victory in 1996 over the far larger Russian army, the Chechen state was not able to stabilize itself without the institution of some elements of Islamic law. The formerly more-strictly secular Aslan Maskhadov, as the second President of Chechnya, began to institute some elements of Islamic sharia law in order to solidify the foundation of his government in the region. Slowly but surely, Islamic elements gained more prominence in Chechen society than the possibility of a secular state, culminating in a Basayev-led Chechen invasion of neighbouring Dagestan in 1999 (without support from Maskhadov) in order to supposedly, and unilaterally, build a ‘greater’ Chechen Islamic state.

Popularity of the second Chechen war in Russian public opinion can be linked to the rise of ‘Islamic jihad’ as a factor in the Chechen conflict. In this paper, I propose to examine this connection, through the study of primary sources such as public opinion polling data gathered by Russian organizations such as VTsIOM, ROMIR, and the Public Opinion Foundation. The Chechen war, as will be argued, only became popular in Russian public opinion with the introduction of the ‘evil’ factor of Islam to the conflict. Before this, when secular nationalistic separation from the Russian Federation was the primary driving motivation of Chechen resistance, and not the establishment of an Islamic state, the Russian public was strongly against the introduction of Russian troops in the region.

The Russian public, I will argue, does not care if Chechnya is independent or not, as long as it is not an Islamic state. It will be shown that only the Islamic factor in the Chechen resistance was a worthy ‘demon’ for Russian public opinion to support invasion of the region.