Mar 14: Botakoz Kassymbekova,The Road to Democracy in Russia Runs Through Chechnya
Thread by Botakoz Kassymbekova and excerpts from the article as published in Foreign Policy on March 11, 2023
Botakoz Kassymbekova,The Road to Democracy in Russia Runs Through Chechnya- Foreign Policy
Nearly three decades ago, when post-Soviet Russia launched its first bloody war on Chechnya, Moscow traded its prospects for democracy for renewed, revanchist imperialism. When in 1993 then-President Boris Yeltsin decided to move against his opposition in the Russian parliament, he used the military to crush it. With the help of the military generals who backed him in his assault on the parliament, Yeltsin dismantled Russian parliamentary democracy and rewrote the constitution to secure presidential authoritarianism. He paid back the generals by destroying Chechnya. Yeltsin’s undemocratic move set the precedent for Russia to use violence at home and abroad to strengthen personalized rule.
Russia lost the first Chechen War of 1994-1996 due to the Russian army’s weakness and the resilience of Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev’s command. Although Russian and international human rights organizations and European Union states condemned Russia’s crimes against humanity, Yeltsin successfully sold the war to the United States as an internal conflict against “banditry.” And in one of its greatest strategic missteps, the United States failed to condemn Yeltsin—with President Bill Clinton instead comparing Yeltsin, incredibly, to Abraham Lincoln fighting the Confederates. Since Clinton’s priority was nuclear arms reduction instead of pushing Russia to comply with international law, as European states advocated, the United States provided financial assistance to Russia instead, partially for denuclearization.
A few years later, Vladimir Putin, too, used a war in Chechnya to legitimize and strengthen his personal power. In August 1999 Putin used the pretext of Islamic terrorism to launch the Second Russian-Chechen War. He officially labeled it a “counter-terrorist operation,” which he thought would be short, to raise his own popularity, rising from an unknown political appointee as prime minister to the president of Russia.
A Chechen colleague, who must stay anonymous, and I trace how russia gave up democracy for imperialism and why there will be no democratic Russia without independent Chechnya. Some excerpts:
„Crucially, both Yeltsin and Putin nurtured populist imperial sentiment, a belief that Russia is the victim of external powers that needs to protect itself by conquest.“
„A fixation on expansion and regional control prevented Russian leadership and Russians from developing civic virtues of democracy and human rights…Yeltsin and Putin’s wars on Chechnya, and later subsequent invasions, were key to preventing this transition.“
„It will not be enough to criticize Putin and his circle of loyalists to reform the Russian state and society in the future. A wider societal condemnation of imperialism is crucial for Russia’s future democratic development.“
„Russia’s leadership in the post-Putin era must rehabilitate Chechen society and statehood. The first step should involve the official recognition of genocides in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries and officially admitting Chechnya’s history of independent statehood.“
„Secondly, since the Kadyrov family’s rule is a creation of Putin’s regime, dealing with Putin and his legacy automatically means dealing with the Kadyrov legacy.“
„Any political program for a new Russia that does not guarantee international sovereignty for Chechnya will be a danger not only to its neighbors, but also to the many diverse nations such as Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Dagestan within Russia.“
„By legally admitting the genocides against the Chechen nation and securing sovereignty, Russian society will take responsibility for its past atrocities and develop respect for civic and sovereignty rights.“
„It is no coincidence that Ukraine was the first nation that seriously took steps for Chechnya’s rehabilitation…Promising full autonomy, as Yeltsin once did, proved to be illusory.“
„It is for Russia and Russian society, ultimately, to face the atrocities in Ukraine and Chechnya and elsewhere to launch a process of democratization, for the sake of its colonial victims and Russians themselves.“
Further reading by Botakoz Kassymbakova
Botakoz Kassymbekova and Erica Marat on Russia’s ‘Imperial Myth’, The Diplomat
Time to Question Russia’s Imperial Innocence, Ponars Eurasia
Kazakhstan Can’t Torture Its Way to Stability, Foreign Policy
Europe’s last empire: Putin’s Ukraine war exposes Russia’s imperial identity, Atlantic Council
DECOLONIZING RUSSIA A Moral and Strategic Imperative Witness Biographies, U.S. Helsinki Commission