No rest for the weary as Chechnya heats back up for Moscow
“Chechnya Bomb Kills President In Blow To Putin: Top Officer is Wounded,” by Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, 10 May, p. A1.
It is hard to have much sympathy for either side in this one. The Chechens waged a bloody war for separation from Russia in the mid-1990s (1994-1996), winning autonomy from Moscow but not a separate state. The new leader hand-picked by Moscow to head the region was the target of the assassins’ bomb. He had led a Chechen rebel force in that first war, but decided to cast his lot with the Russians when the second Chechen war began in 1999, after Russia invaded the breakaway republic to remove its openly defiant but freely elected president. Simply put, this one isn’t going to die out any time soon.
Russia gave up its empire at the end of the Cold War, but drew a firm line around the Russian Republic itself, trapping any would-be breakaway republics within that border. You might wonder why Russia just doesn’t give in and let this tiny population go its own way, but I do believe it is simply too much to ask. Russia gave away an empire that it had spent tens of millions of lives acquiring and subjugating (through bloody conquest and ruthless, murdering rule—no doubt), and gave it all away without firing a single shot in anger. Imagine the United States deciding to wage a Civil War to recapture all the Confederate states and then being faced with the prospect of letting the republic of Greater Mobile go its own way.
I know, I know. It’s not fair to compare, and as a former Soviet expert on the former Soviet Union, I must bow to all the arguments about the racial distinctiveness of Chechens. But to me, this is strictly an “olive tree” war that speaks to the past, not the future. Russia therefore should have a free hand to do what it must as far as America is concerned, for in Chechnya’s continued struggle I see nothing but a pathway of deepening disconnectedness.
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