| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
DID CHECHNYA CHECHENISE VLADIMIR PUTIN before Putin Chechenised Chechnya?
To what extent was Vladimir Putin's approach to the administration of Russia,
and particularly of the North Caucasus, influenced by crises that he faced during his
first formative months of power in 1999? Did the Kremlin's Chechenisation
programme become a template not only for the stabilisation of Chechnya, but for
the long-term administration of its North Caucasian neighbours, and finally for the
reconstitution of the Russian Federation? How have instabilities in the North
Caucasus been affected by the evolution of Russian federalism, and how have they
affected that evolution?
This article considers the extent to which instabilities in the North Caucasus and the
evolution of the Russian Federation have shaped each other reciprocally since 1999. It
suggests that Russia's federal recentralisation has inadvertently contributed to
regional problems of political corruption, political alienation, and Islamist extremism,
while these regional problems have contributed to authoritarian, bureaucratic, and
centralising trends in the Russian Federation. It proposes that Russians have fallen
into a vicious cycle of horizontal resistance and vertical reaction that may be as selfperpetuating
as it is self-defeating.
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