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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations
The Graduate School
2011
Ethnic Violence in the Former Soviet Union
Richard H. Hawley Jr. (Richard Howard)
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
By
RICHARD H. HAWLEY, JR.
A Dissertation submitted to the
Political Science Department
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded:
Fall Semester, 2011
Richard H. Hawley, Jr. defended this dissertation on August 26, 2011.
The members of the supervisory committee were:
Heemin Kim
Professor Directing Dissertation
Jonathan Grant
University Representative
Dale Smith
Committee Member
Charles Barrilleaux
Committee Member
Lee Metcalf
Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and
certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
ii
To my father, Richard H. Hawley, Sr.
and
To my mother, Catherine S. Hawley
(in loving memory)
iii
AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are many people who made this dissertation possible, and I extend my heartfelt
gratitude to all of them. Above all, I thank my committee chair, Dr. Heemin Kim, for his
understanding, patience, guidance, and comments. Next, I extend my appreciation to Dr. Dale
Smith, a committee member and department chair, for his encouragement to me throughout all of
my years as a doctoral student at the Florida State University. I am grateful for the support and
feedback of my other committee members, namely Dr. Charles Barrilleaux, Dr. Lee Metcalf, and
Dr. Jonathan Grant, the last of whom is my outside committee member from the department of
history. Finally, I want to thank former committee members for their support, encouragement,
and helpful comments, in particular Dr. Will H. Moore and Dr. Paul Hensel, the second of whom
inspired me to approach ethnic conflict in the post-Soviet space from the territorial perspective.
Thanks must also be extended to other university personnel who made the successful
completion of this dissertation attainable. In particular, I want to thank Dr. Sara Tirulamasetty,
M.D. for her encouragement and support, and for helping me to gain the structure I needed to
reach this important milestone in my life. I also extend my gratitude to Dr. John Bailey, M.D.,
who helped me to stay on track, especially with the coursework. I owe a tremendous debt of
gratitude to Bea Awonyi, PhD., the Director of the Student Disability Resource Center at the
Florida State University, and to Darren MacFarlane, MSW, the campus-wide social worker.
Without them, I probably would have had a much harder time completing this dissertation. I also
want to thank Mary Schneider and Jerry Fisher, the two departmental academic coordinators
whom I have had the pleasure of befriending, and who offered me encouragement, gave me
direction, and who made sure I did everything I was supposed to do to obtain my doctorate.
I also want to extend my appreciation to the Graduate School at Florida State University,
for making sure that my dissertation meets university guidelines, and for making the publication
of this project possible.
I thank the personnel at the Co-Cathedral of Saint Thomas More for their encouragement
and guidance throughout all of my years as a doctoral student at the Florida State University. In
particular, I owe my gratitude to Monsignor Mike Tugwell, Deacon Santiago Molina, Louis, and
to the priests I have encountered in Tallahassee over the years. I also want to thank Brothers
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Jude Lasota, Sam Gunn, and Jason Zink for their friendship and help. I am grateful to have met
Beth Dees, who assisted me in navigating this thing called life, and who helped to make the
completion of this project possible. There were friends who I met down here in Tallahassee who
gave me encouragement, guidance, and assistance over the years. In particular, I want to thank
Kristian Bredemeyer, Jonathan Korsah, Bonny Bhatacharjee, PhD., Chad Tilford, Steve Mozier,
Sean Kozlowski, and J.P. Gower for their friendship. You made my stay in Tallahassee
welcoming and pleasant. Finally, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my family, in
particular to my father, Richard, and to my late mother, Catherine. I have dedicated this
dissertation to you both, for you brought me into the world, raised me, and supported my
doctoral dream. My stepmother, Judy, came into the lives of my father and me, and made the
pain over losing my mother less intense. I also want to extend my gratitude to my sisters,
Margaret and Joan, and to the men in their lives, Robert and Scott, for being there for them. In
addition, I owe a tremendous debt to my late grandparents, and to my aunts, uncles, and cousins.
You all encouraged me to pursue my dream, and to bring it to a successful conclusion.
The scientific enterprise is built on the work of others, and all scientists are a team who
work to advance the frontiers of knowledge. In particular, I want to extend my appreciation to
the works of those who preceded me, and whom I have cited. Any errors of fact and
interpretation in this dissertation are mine, and mine alone. Because of the aforesaid individuals,
this work was completed, and it is my hope that it makes a contribution, however modest, to the
scientific enterprise.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................... viii
ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................... xi
1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................... 1
2. TERRITORIALITY IN ITS LITERATURE CONTEXT .......................................................... 9
3. THEORY OF TERRITORIALITY ...................................................................................... 27
3.1 Facilitating Conditions of Territoriality ......................................................................... 29
3.2 Research Design: Methods and Cases ............................................................................. 39
3.3 Conclusion and Summary ................................................................................................ 46
4. RUSSIAN AND SOVIET NATIONALITIES POLICIES....................................................... 48
5. NAGORNO-KARABAKH ..................................................................................................... 87
5.1 Historical Background ...................................................................................................... 90
5.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Nagorno-Karabakh Case ................................. 103
6. MOLDOVA ........................................................................................................................... 119
6.1 Historical Background .................................................................................................... 122
6.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Moldova Case .................................................... 133
7. CHECHNYA ......................................................................................................................... 146
7.1 Historical Background .................................................................................................... 147
7.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Chechnya Case .................................................. 154
8. NON-EVENT 1: TATARSTAN........................................................................................... 166
8.1 Historical Background .................................................................................................... 168
8.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Tatarstan Case .................................................. 188
9. NON-EVENT 2: CRIMEA................................................................................................... 197
9.1 Historical Background .................................................................................................... 198
9.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Crimea Case ...................................................... 223
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10. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 244
10.1 Causes of Ethnic Conflict ............................................................................................. 247
10.2 Non-Events ..................................................................................................................... 250
10.3 Concluding Remarks .................................................................................................... 252
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 259
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ................................................................................................... 296
vii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ANM
Armenian National Movement
ARC
Autonomous Republic of Crimea
ASSR
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
AzPF
Azerbaijani Popular Front
CIS
Commonwealth of Independent States
CMMC
Central Muslim Military Collegium
CPD
Congress of Peoples’ Deputies
CPM
Communist Party of Moldova
CPRF
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
CPSU
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CRI
Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
CSTO
Collective Security Treaty Organization
DMR
Dniestr Moldavian Republic
FSB
Federal Security Service
GKChP
State Emergency Committee
viii
GRU
Chief Intelligence Directorate
GUAM
Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova
KGB
Committee for State Security
LDP
Liberal Democratic Party
MASSR
Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
MSSR
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NDP
National Democratic Party
NKAO
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast'
NKVD
Peoples' Commissariat for Internal Affairs
OGRF
Organizational Group of Russian Forces
PEVK
Party for the Economic Revival of the Crimea
PFM
Popular Front of Moldova
PfP
Partnership for Peace
PMC
Party of Moldovan Communists
RDK
Republican Movement for the Crimea
ix
RSFSR
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
SBU
Security Service of Ukraine
Sovnarkom
Council of Peoples' Commissars
SSR
Soviet Socialist Republic
TPC
Tatar Public Center
TSFSR
Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
USA
United States of America
USSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
x
ABSTRACT
Ethnic violence broke out in the Soviet Union during the second half of Mikhail Gorbachev’s
time as Soviet leader. In general, Soviet leaders were taken by surprise by the upsurge in
nationalism in the USSR. They came to believe that Communism had supplanted nationalism in
the Soviet Union, but they were proven wrong. It is the thesis of this project that territoriality is
the underlying factor behind the ethnic conflicts that broke out in the last years of the USSR and
the first years of the post-Soviet era. It is a psychological program in the human mind that
defines what are the “proper” boundaries of a polity. Since territoriality is a constant, there exist
six identifiable facilitating factors that condition how territoriality leads to ethnic violence.
These facilitating conditions are the size of an ethnicity (majority/minority status), economic
resource differences, the availability of information, the presence of an ethnic diaspora nearby,
the location of a polity, and the role of the elites. To address the issues surrounding the territorial
basis of ethnic conflict, an exploratory, heuristic, most-similar systems comparative case study
approach is employed. This project’s temporal domain is 1988 to the present, and the polities
selected for examination are Nagorno-Karabakh, Moldova, and Chechnya. In addition, two nonevents are chosen for study: Tatarstan and Crimea. In the non-events, ethnic violence did not
break out on a sustained and prolonged scale. Territoriality was present in all of the examined
cases except for the second Chechen war (1999-), which mutated from an ethnic conflict into a
religious struggle on the Chechen rebel side. The facilitating factors are present in some form in
the five cases.
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Ethnic conflict is a reality of human existence. A certain nationality mobilizes to fight
another ethnic group. Usually, ethnic war breaks out over territorial disputes or when one
ethnicity works to secede from a polity dominated by another nationality. Not that all ethnic
disputes are active. Many are latent, and have the potential to explode into ethnic violence.
Given the large number of nationalities in the world, one would suppose that ethnic conflict
would be more common than it really is. There has to exist an underlying reason and certain
specific conditions that turns a latent ethnic dispute violent. While there are other ways to define
the 'Other' against whom one contends, such as sexual orientation and gender status, ethnicity is
a salient characteristic that generates much violence. Like the other two markers of status
mentioned, national identity is a given of a human being. One is born into a certain nationality,
and s/he cannot alter their ethnicity. Given the ascriptive nature of national identity, people
espouse strongly held views on ethnicity, and they feel a strong and intense attachment to their
individual national identities.
Given that people have a strong sense of ethnic identity, and the prevalence of nationality
wars, the question arises of why ethnic conflict arises in the first place. In other words, what
causes ethnic wars? This is the research question this project seeks to answer. This study is of
an exploratory nature, so it does not seek to offer a definitive answer to the issue of why
nationality wars happen. Instead, this project offers a tentative answer to the research question.
This book is a first step in exploring the dynamics of ethnic conflict, and serves as a springboard
for future research into nationality issues, specifically ethnic wars. There have been numerous
instances of nationality conflicts in the post-World War II period, and several others in the pre1945 era. Looking at the post-1945 period, several violent conflicts that have an ethnic
coloration come to mind. There is the Rwandan Hutu-Tutsi war of 1990-94, which mutated into
genocide against the Tutsi and moderate Hutu by Hutu extremists in 1994. Also on the African
continent was the 1967-70 Nigerian civil war, which pitted the Hausa and Yoruba against the
Igbo-dominated secessionist state of Biafra. There is the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict
over the same Levantine territory, Israel/Palestine. In Northern Ireland, the Irish Catholics
1
fought the British Protestants in a vicious civil war from 1969 to 1998, and the Basque
nationalist group ETA has fought for a sovereign Basque homeland that is independent of Spain.
Even the Western Hemisphere has its ethnic conflicts. The biggest one in the Americas concerns
relations between African-Americans and European-Americans in the United States. The
question arises of what do these nationality conflicts share in common.
My thesis for this project is that territoriality, the psychological vision of what constitutes
the “proper” boundaries of a polity, is the factor behind the ethnic conflicts of the world. Land or
sea territory may be at stake between two or more ethnicities. Territoriality can take many
forms, with one nationality working to secede from a certain polity, or two ethnicities contesting
a piece of territory. A national group's claim could extend to only a portion of territory or to the
whole territory. Paradoxically, territoriality takes many forms, but is a constant psychological
construct of human nature. Because territoriality is a constant, it must be accompanied by
facilitating conditions that make ethnic conflict break out. In other words, territoriality is present
in all ethnic wars, but it is also present in latent nationality disputes. Other factors, the
facilitating conditions, must exist for ethnic conflict to erupt into violence. These facilitating
conditions are: 1) the size of an ethnic group (its majority or minority status); 2) the location of a
nationality, whether it is in the middle of a polity or on its periphery; 3) economic resource
differences between ethnicities; 4) the availability of information; 5) the presence of an ethnic
diaspora nearby; and 6) the role of the elites. All six of the facilitating conditions carry equal
weight, though the role of national elites is contingent in character, depending on the behavior of
members of a specific elite, and is not fixed like the other ones. There are contending theories
that attempt to grasp and nail down nationality wars' cause. These explanations are elitism,
economism, environmentalism, and theological. Elitism posits that national elites drive ethnic
conflict, while economism claims that a nationality elite initiates ethnic wars as a way of
enriching itself. Environmentalism asserts that nationalities fight each other for scarce natural
resources, such as water or oil. The theological explanation is something of a straw man, and its
key claim is that religious differences are behind nationality conflicts. It is my argument that
these competing explanations are incomplete, and that my version of the territorial argument
encompasses the concerns of its four competitors. Room can be found for the rival explanations
in the facilitating conditions. Territoriality may offer a complete theory for why nationality
disputes erupt into violence.
2
To study the research question and to test the territorial theory, I employ a heuristic,
comparative most-similar systems design that is exploratory in nature. In other words, I search
for patterns in the ethnic conflicts I study, but identify them as tentative because this project
entails exploration, and not definition. It is an exploratory case study, not a definitive one, which
would involve taking a case to definitively “prove” a theory. Comparative most-similar system
studies involve looking for similarities across cases. Ideally, one wants similarities to extend
across all of the cases, except for the variable of interest. One hopes that there is variation on the
factor one is studying. The real world is more complex than this idealization, but one can
approximate it as closely as is possible. To set as many similarities as possible on the table, a
political analyst has to theorize at the mid-level. In other words, metatheories tend to be so
general that the exceptions overwhelm their explanatory power. Small-size theorizing, which
often involves N = 1 studies, are good for detail, but lack generality. The researcher and reader
cannot discern larger patterns from a study that has one case. Based on what I wrote above, a
scholar can use an N =1 design for a definitive study. An exploratory study such as this one
requires an N > 1 research design.
To gain as much traction on the research question as possible, I analyze non-events,
where ethnic violence did not break out on a sustained scale. This strategic plan involves taking
two instances of latent ethnic disputes, and describing and comparing them with three cases of
active ethnic conflict. For the non-events, the phenomenon of interest, ethnic violence, is absent.
They share much in common with the cases of actual ethnic violence though. My spatialtemporal domain for this project is the post-Soviet space in the 1988 to the present time period.
The post-Soviet space encompasses Russia and the fourteen other Soviet successor states that
emerged after the USSR collapsed in 1991. In general, the post-Soviet states share a common
historical legacy and confront many of the same problems in transforming their societies from
Communist modes of governance to capitalistic ones. They were under the Russian-dominated
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), they shared the CPSU's Marxist-Leninist
philosophy, they were subjected to a centrally-planned command economy, religion was
proscribed all over the USSR, and Russian was the medium of communication of the entire
Soviet Union. There are differences between the former Soviet republics, such as religious
matters. Nine of the Soviet successor states are traditionally Christian, while the other six are
nominally Muslim.
3
For this study, the three cases of actual ethnic violence are the Armenian-Azerbaijani war
over Nagorno-Karabakh (Karabagh), fought between 1988 and 1994, the 1992 Moldovan civil
war, and the post-Soviet Russo-Chechen wars. Concerning the last case, the first Chechen
conflict was fought between 1994 and 1996, while the second one began in 1999, and continues
to the present. These post-Soviet wars show that Communism, with its emphasis on “proletarian
internationalism,” failed to solve the nationality question in the Soviet Union. In fact, the
Karabagh conflict's outbreak marked the beginning of the end of the USSR. National selfassertion, combined with economic dysfunction, brought down the Soviet Union. This is one
reason to look at ethnic dynamics in the last years of the USSR. Lenin and his Soviet successors
made policy decisions that contained the seeds of ethnic conflict. In other words, their
nationality policies set one ethnicity against another one. As will be made clear in the historical
sections of the chapters that cover the cases, Lenin, Stalin, and the other Soviet leaders sought to
divide the nationalities of the Soviet Union so as to better rule them. Because of their policy
decisions, the Soviet collapse left a lot of “tinderboxes” behind that were set off by ethnic
discontent with the Soviet-imposed status quo. While the CPSU ruled the Soviet Union, these
nationality disputes were contained. As soon as the CPSU's rule started to unravel, these latent
ethnic disputes erupted into violence. Not all ethnic violence escalated to war, though. Several
ethnic riots broke out across the USSR in the 1989-91 period. During the 1990s, the former
Soviet Union was beset with chaos. In these confusing circumstances, ethnic wars began, and
continued for a time. Of the three cases of actual ethnic violence I study, the second Chechen
war continues.
For the non-events, I examine Tatarstan and Crimea. In these two instances, there exist
ethnic differences, but nationality violence has not broken out on any sustained scale. As will be
seen, there were ethnic riots in these two regions of the former USSR, but the elites clamped
down on the disturbances before they escalated to civil war. Given the huge number of
nationalities in the post-Soviet space, the number of active ethnic conflicts is a subset of all
national disputes. For most of the time, ethnicities in the former Soviet Union live in reasonable
peace with each other. There exists prejudice among nationalities who live in a certain region.
As will be explained later, the role of the elites is strong and positive, with the members of the
ruling classes in Tatarstan and Crimea usually viewing national issues as positive-sum games.
There have been sub-groups that take a zero-sum approach to ethnic politics, but their public
4
influence is minimal, and the regional elites have been able to marginalize such factions. Both
Tatarstan and Crimea experienced tensions with their respective central governments, but the
positive-sum thinking on both sides kept any differences from escalating to war.
To test the theory of territoriality, I examine the causes of the ethnic wars that occurred in
the former USSR. I begin the study of each case with a historical background section. This
initial part of each case gives the context that will help to understand the issues that are present in
each instance of active and latent ethnic conflict. Each historical section begins when the nations
being dealt with entered the historical stage. For the instances of actual nationality war, I end the
historical section at the point before the latest armed struggle began, and then I deal with the
war’s causes. With repsect to the non-events, I take the history of Tatarstan and Crimea up to the
present day. The historical sections provide essential background to understanding what led up
to the most recent actual ethnic conflicts, and to discerning why the latent nationality disputes
have remained largely peaceful.
In addition to political scientists, historians, sociologists, and theologians would gain
insight from reading this volume. For historians, my research into the territorial cause of ethnic
conflict may provide a factor moving certain historical events along. Ethnic violence is a major
historical phenomenon. One application of the territorial explanation is the cases of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia in Georgia. Suny (1994) wrote about the history of Georgia. He and other
scholars of Georgian history and politics could apply my framework to come up with the reason
for why the Abkhaz and Southern Ossets have rebelled against central control by Tbilisi, and
why the Georgian central government is adamant about regaining control of these two areas.
Sociologists study human interactions in terms of societal structures. My research could benefit
them by explaining why different ethnic societies clash with each other in many instances.
Territoriality may provide the explanation for why societies fight each other, for their competing
visions of the “proper” boundaries often mobilize the elites and masses together in unified
action. Sociologists could further delve into the dynamics that brings about elite-mass synergy
in territorial disputes. Theologians could benefit from my line of research, for with the collapse
of Soviet atheism, religion is assuming a more prominent role in post-Soviet affairs. Religion
changes the stakes involved in the five instances I examine. The Soviet authorities tried to
homogenize all Soviet peoples into the New Soviet Man, who was to be an anti-religious atheist.
After the Soviet collapse, religion has regained its footing, and has influenced the way the
5
world’s theological systems have interacted in the post-Soviet space. Of the world’s religious
beliefs, only Hinduism is absent in the Soviet successor states. The former USSR thus serves as
a laboratory to see how different religions either get along or clash with each other. A key divide
in the post-Soviet space is the Christian-Muslim one. Given the contentious history between
Christianity and Islam, the former USSR offers instances of these two faiths peacefully
coexisting, but also cases of conflict between them. Thus, theologians would profit from reading
this research project.
This project is presented in the following chapters. Following this introduction, Chapter
1, is the literature review, which composes Chapter 2 of this project. In this section, I present
alternative explanations for why ethnic conflict arises, including elitism, economism,
environmentalism, and theological. I explain why territoriality explains nationality disputes the
best, and place the argument in its wider context, incorporating the role of elites into my
argument. Besides reviewing the four alternative explanations, I explain how many studies of
ethnic conflict are based on one case and how my study employs three cases and two non-events,
which gives better traction in elucidating the factors that lead to nationality disputes. I conclude
the literature review with an analysis of what sources I employed to come up with the facilitating
conditions. In the following chapter, Chapter 3, territoriality and its facilitating conditions, I
elaborate on the basic discussion of territoriality, introduce its facilitating factors, and explore the
implications of the concept for ethnic and national disputes. Territoriality is a constant, and the
six facilitating conditions are the factors that induce change, and the presence of a majority of
them may spark ethnic conflict.The facilitating factors are economic resource differences, the
size of the ethnic population, the role of elites, the availability of information, the presence of an
ethnic diaspora nearby, and the location of ethnic groups.
Chapter 4 deals with a historical synopsis of pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet
nationalities policy in the former USSR, with an emphasis on Russian policies toward nonRussian nationalities. Beginning with the Russian conquest of the Kazan khanate in 1552, when
Russia became a multi-ethnic state, I proceed to discuss the fluctuations in the tsarist, Soviet, and
post-Soviet attitudes and policies toward the minority nationalities. For the tsarist and Soviet
periods, I deal with the Russian leadership's policies toward the non-Russian ethnic groups of the
two Russian states. While I focus the post-Soviet discussion on the Russian Federation, I look
briefly at how the other fourteen Soviet successor states deal with their ethnic minorities. For the
6
Soviet period, I examine the Soviet drawing and redrawing of borders, and how this influenced
inter-ethnic relations in the USSR. I argue that Soviet central government decisions
inadvertently encouraged nationalism, and were the source of the frictions that sparked ethnic
conflict. In the final section, I look at post-Soviet developments in inter-ethnic relations, and
place the cases I deal with in their context, in other words, in their relation with other ethnic
disputes that have beset the former Soviet Union.
In Chapter 5, I present the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over the region of NagornoKarabakh (Karabagh), beginning with the entry of the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples onto
the historical stage, Karabagh's place in Armenian and Azerbaijani history, a brief discussion of
early 20th-century Azeri-Armenian relations, the 1915 Armenian Genocide and its impact on
subsequent Armenian thinking, and Armenia and Azerbaijan's places in the Soviet Union, with
treatment of how Soviet planners created Nagorno-Karabakh. My focus in this chapter is on the
1988-94 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, and its impact on
relations between the antagonists, with particular emphasis on their competing territorial claims.
Chapter 6 presents the second of my cases of actual ethnic conflict in the former USSR,
the 1992 Moldovan Civil War. Seeing it as a struggle between the Bessarabians and the
Transdnistrians, I give an overview of Moldova's history from the emergence of the Romanian
people onto the historical stage, the 1812 Russian annexation of Bessarabia, the Soviet creation
of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the USSR's 1940 annexation of
Bessarabia and the subsequent creation of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, and cover
the Moldavian SSR's history up to 1988. Then I explore in depth the 1989 reemergence of
Moldovan nationalism, and the subsequent Transdnistrian reaction, which touched off the 1992
war.
Chapter 7 presents my last case, the Republic of Chechnya. After giving a historical
overview of Chechen developments, with a focus on the Russo-Chechen wars of 1784 to 1920,
the formation of Checheno-Ingushetia, and the Chechen deportation of 1944, I explore the
Chechen declaration of independence in 1991, and the two subsequent Russo-Chechen conflicts
(1994-96 and 1999-present) in depth. In this chapter, I explain how a movement for national
independence metamorphosed into a religious struggle on the Chechen side.
In Chapter 8, I present the first of the two non-events, the Republic of Tatarstan, in which
the war component is missing, and the ethnic one is still present. Tatarstan is surrounded by
7
Russia. After a brief overview of Volga Tatar history, I focus on the 1988-92 period and on
subsequent events in Russo-Tatar relations, including the 1992 Federation Treaty, the 1994
Russo-Volga Tatar Treaty, and I finish with an analysis of Putin and Medvedev's revisions of
Russian federalism, including the 2002 Tatarstan charter, and the 2007 Russo-Tatar agreement.
In Chapter 9, I proceed to the second non-event, the case of the Crimea, which is an autonomous
republic of Ukraine with a Russian-speaking majority. I explore the peninsula's history from
ancient Greek colonization, through the founding of the Crimean Tatar Khanate, Russian
annexation in 1783, the 1954 award of Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the
Soviet breakup, and post-Soviet developments. I deal with the return of the Crimean Tatars to
the peninsula, their political activism, and Slav-Tatar tensions. Finally, I examine the 1992-97
Russo-Ukrainian dispute over Crimea in depth, and the way Russia and Ukraine resolved their
differences.
In the concluding chapter, Chapter 10, I bring the findings of the cases of actual ethnic
violence and the non-events together, and analyze how they fit together in the unified theory of
territoriality and its facilitating conditions. The second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war is an
anomaly that brings up the issue of religious consciousness in the post-Soviet space, and its
possible effects on ethnic peace in the future. After this, I explore the implications of the
territoriality theory for the future of ethnic conflict in the former USSR. Then I tentatively
explore the meaning of my theory for ethnic conflicts outside the post-Soviet space, and
conclude with an analysis of how territoriality is a recurrent problem for inter-ethnic peace, and
how the recognition of this factor with its facilitating conditions predicts ethnic conflict.
8
CHAPTER TWO
TERRITORIALITY IN ITS LITERATURE CONTEXT
Territoriality, the idea of what constitutes the proper boundaries of a polity, is a concept
that has been utilized by political scientists to explain a subset of international conflicts, namely
those involving boundary disputes over land or sea frontiers. Hensel (2000) and Huth (2000)
have analyzed territorial disputes at the macro-level, finding that they compose a substantial
portion of international conflict. Sovereign polities disagree over where the “proper” boundary
lies between them. Many instances of this phenomenon come to mind, including Guatemala's
claim over Belize, the conflict between Honduras and Nicaragua over their Mosquito Coast
demarcation line, the Russo-Chinese argument over the Amur-Ussuri frontier, the Indo-Pakistani
differences over possession of Kashmir, Iraq's claim to Kuwait, and Kiribati's contention that it
should own several US-held islands in Micronesian waters (Buckman, 2009; Russell, 2009;
Leibo, 2009; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011). Several territorial disputes have erupted into
war, such as the British and Argentinian conflict over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) in
1982, the Kargil War in 1999 between India and Pakistan, Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and
the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over the territory of Karabagh in the early 1990s (Buckman, 2009;
Russell, 2009; de Waal, 2003). Some territorial disputes have an ethnic component to them,
while others do not. The Karabagh conflict has ethnic dynamics to it, while Saddam's takeover
of Kuwait, and his subsequent expulsion from Kuwait by a US-led coalition, was in essence an
intra-Arab dispute. Honduras and Nicaragua's differences over the Mosquito Coast involved two
countries with the same ethnic profile, with mestizos forming the majority of their populations
(Buckman, 2009; Russell, 2009; Zuercher, 2007; de Waal, 2003). This project utilizes the
concept of territoriality, and applies it to ethnic conflict, which can take on an international
dimension, or be confined to a single sovereign state. It is the contention of this exploratory
study that territoriality is behind ethnic conflict.
In applying territoriality to nationality disputes, I understand the concept in terms of
political psychology. For a territorial ethnic conflict to appear in the first place, two or more
nationalities must have opposing ideas of who owns a particular piece of land or sea, with one
9
ethnic group claiming the territory and at least another one contesting that claim. As a mindset,
territoriality is a psychological concept with political ramifications, for ethnic conflict can
involve two or more sovereign states contesting territory with which one country may have an
ethnic affinity. A nationality dispute between two or more ethnicities that is confined to a single
polity will involve its central government in attempts to resolve the ethnic conflict somehow,
whether by imposing a solution on the two or more sides or physically eliminating one of the
ethnic partisans to the dispute. Whether an armed nationality dispute is confined to one country
or involves two or more sovereign states, international actors may intervene in the conflict in
pursuance of their interests, which could be confined to selfish reasons or involve altruistic
motives. Such international actors may be a neighboring country not directly involved in the
ethnic dispute, or a major power, or even an international organization, such as the United
Nations, the African Union, or the Organization of American States. Given these realities,
localized ethnic disputes may escalate to international war involving several countries.
Communications have sped up in the past two centuries making it highly likely that word of
atrocities by one ethnicity against another will get out, and stir the world's conscience to do
something to halt the massacres and other crimes against humanity. Often, a neighboring power
with an indirect interest in an ethnic dispute will involve itself because it has an affinity with one
of the nationalities participating in the ethnic conflict. This linkage could involve linguistic,
historical, religious, or even some kind of ethnic affinity. Territoriality, which forms a key part
of human psychology, has political connotations, and constitutes the main reason why ethnic
conflict breaks out in the first place.
This project rests on the assumption that ethnic disputes are driven by both the elites and
the masses acting in a symbiotic relationship. In the post-Soviet cases I consider, this
relationship seems to hold. Sometimes, the masses initiate the ethnic conflict, and an elite
emerges from the aroused masses, or an existing elite takes up the masses' cause as a means to
stay in power. Often, an elite will start a nationality dispute as a means of redefining its
legitimacy, and the masses follow it. In either case, some leader or some group taps into the
territorial impulse common to humanity. In other words, the masses are not sheep who follow
the elite whatever it decides to do, and the elite does not merely do what the masses tell it to do.
In ethnic disputes, territoriality is the mediating impulse that brings the elites and masses
together in common action against a shared foe. It also organizes how the elite and masses of an
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ethnicity view the other side, which is usually another nationality with which it is in conflict. As
a political psychological construct, territoriality defines how an ethnicity's elite and popular class
relates to each other. Territoriality is indicated by the utterances of journals, newspapers, fliers,
slogans, and public speeches. These utterances are related to territorial issues, such as challenger
claims to disputed territory that a target possesses or to all of a target's territory. In terms of
manifestation, territoriality is usually related in behavioral modes, but it also influences the
institutional frameworks in an ethnic dispute. A political party, such as the Armenian National
Movement, may arise to champion a certain national cause, and use its basis to contest elections
with an incumbent party that is seen to be out of touch (Payaslian, 2007). Often, an ethnicity
structures institutions in such a way as to benefit itself and to disadvantage another nationality.
In the same Karabagh case, the Azerbaijani government in Baku used its control of NagornoKarabakh during Soviet times to send Azeri “colonists” to the region, and to thus alter the
demographic balance between the territory's Armenian majority and Azeri minority (de Waal,
2003). Jurisdictional status is a form of possessive institutionalization that a certain polity may
manipulate to increase the share of its co-nationals at the expense of ethnicities already present in
the territory.
Alternative Explanations and Territoriality's Relationship with Them
There are alternative explanations that attempt to explain how ethnic conflict arises, and
their concerns have to be addressed. It is the argument of this section that the other theories have
some strand of truth to them, but that they are incomplete, and that territoriality assumes their
emphases, and offers a more generalizable explanation for ethnic conflict. Among the four
alternative explanations I will address are economism, elitism, environmentalism, and
theological. The last alternative theory may appear to be out of place in what is essentially a
secular debate, but there appear to be manifestations of religious conflict that have ethnicallyrooted bases. Among the most prominent religious ethnic disputes are the British-Irish
disagreements over Northern Ireland's status, the Tamil-Sinhalese dispute in Sri Lanka, and the
Christian Armenian-Muslim Azerbaijani clash over the Karabagh region (Jamieson, 2006;
Russell, 2009; Thompson, Western Europe, 2009). This theological argument is more of a “straw
man” rather than a fully-established research program. It appears that religion alters the stakes of
a territorial dispute, modifying how the sides perceive the issues. Jonathan Fox (2004) has
researched religious conflict in the post-1945 era. He juxtaposed theologically-based wars with
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ideological armed conflicts, and found that the latter decreased after the Cold War's close, and
that religious wars have been a presence in the Cold War and “New World Order” eras. His
inquiry into religious conflicts is helpful to understanding some wars that have occurred since
1945. Extrapolating from the cases of religious ethnic conflict, it appears that most religious
authorities back their own ethnicity against another in a nationality dispute. Even when two
nationalities share the same faith, one group of theological leaders may back one ethnicity, while
another faction supports the adversary. For example, the French and English were both Catholic
during the Hundred Years' War, but the ecclesiastical authorities of England and France
championed their respective national causes (Seward, 1999).
However, this explanation is incomplete because, in many cases, the ecclesiastical
authorities of any religious group appear to be cheerleaders rather than initiators of ethnic
conflict once violence breaks out between two or more nationalities. Not that religious leaders
are always at the sidelines as cheerleaders. Sometimes, they are the initiators. Pope Urban II
launched the Western Crusades to take the Holy Land out of the Muslims' hands, and the
Ayatollah Khomeini kept the war against Saddam's Iraq going with the aim of overthrowing the
Baathist regime in Baghdad (Johnson, 2011; Runciman, 1987). Thus, it is possible for
theological leaders to start what are in effect ethnic conflicts, for most Iranians are either Persian,
an Indo-European group, or Azeri Turks, while most Iraqis are Arabs. The Western Crusades
involved Western Europeans, most of whom were of Indo-European origin, against Muslim
Arabs and Turks, though Saladin was an Indo-European Kurd. Except for Fox (2004), Froese
(2005), and Pyle and Davidson (2003), the articles under consideration for their treatment of
religion in ethnic disputes compartmentalize theological belief systems as one component of
their arguments rather than raise religion to a center stage position. Either religion is treated as
an independent variable in quantitative research, as in the studies of Shamir and Sagiv-Schifter
(2006), Kunovich and Hodson (1999), and Campos and Kuzeyev (2007), or it is subsumed as
something that is observed in a case study that addresses a fundamentally secular concern, as in
the projects of Gezon (1997), Randall (2005), and Ayoade (1986). Given the instrumentalization
of religion in most of the articles about ethnic disputes, the above-mentioned exceptions stand
out. Froese (2005) treats religion as a central factor in the “Velvet Divorce” that occurred
between Czechs and Slovaks in 1992, while Pyle and Davidson (2003) demonstrated
discrimination against religious minorities or the religious majority by the proprietors of the 13
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American colonies. In the latter case, Catholics and theological groups based on non-English
Protestant ethnicities faced discriminatory penalties, which were lifted only in the 1776-1833
period. Thus, religion cannot be dismissed as a contributor to ethnic conflict.
What makes religion an incomplete explanation for sparking ethnic conflict is that most
nationality disputes involve a secular, non-transcendental factor or set of factors that ignite them
and drive them. This is where the other three alternative explanations – economism, elitism, and
environmentalism – come into play. Elitism assumes it is the nationality elite that drive ethnic
conflicts. According to this theory, an ethnic ruling class initiates the idea of taking territory
away from another ethnicity, or waging war against another national group so as to diminish the
latter's status in a polity. National elites incite the masses, who follow their elite leaders like
sheep (Gagnon, 1999; Fearon and Laitin, 2000). While accepting that elites have a role to play
in inciting conflict, I believe they have to tap into the territorial urge that humans possess, the
desire to hold onto some piece of land exclusively. My theory is not purely elitist because there
has to exist some kind of resonance between the elite and the masses they lead. In other words,
the masses have to respond to an elite call to arms. Territoriality provides the synergy that links
the perceptions of the elite and the masses with regard to a piece of territory, whether it is land or
water, and this political psychological construct explains why both sets of actors more or less act
in unison. The initiative for action against another nationality may come from either an elite
member or from the masses. Sometimes, the masses raise an alternative elite from among their
members if the preexisting elite is perceived to be lacking with regard to the territorial issue at
hand. Either the elite or the masses can propose a plan of action in an ethnic dispute, but both
need each other to put the action plan into practice. On the one hand, the elites need to be
convinced that a territorial issue is salient, and that the benefits outweigh the costs of any policy
to alter the territorial status quo at the expense of another ethnicity. On the other hand, the
masses make the same calculations. It is usually the case that the elite have the means to coerce
the masses into following it. However, it needs the support of at least a significant segment of
the masses for action to be effective. Thus, while elite action is not the whole picture, it deserves
consideration as a facilitating condition in my territoriality theory.
Examples of ethnic conflict that appear to illustrate the elitist theory are Milosevic's
rousing of the Serb masses in an effort to create a Greater Serbia in the former Yugoslavia in the
late 1980s and the 1990s, Ojukwu's attempt to lead the Igbo masses in creating a Biafra
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independent of Nigeria in the late 1960s, and Sheik Mujibar Rahman's successful campaign to
make the eastern wing of Pakistan into the independent country of Bangladesh in 1971
(Dickovik, 2009; Russell, 2009; Thompson, Nordic, Central, and Southeastern Europe, 2009).
In my view, there is no doubt that the national elites in these wars played a crucial role in
mobilizing the masses behind their schemes. However, emphasizing elitism at the expense of
other factors leaves one with an incomplete picture. Both elites and masses must share a
paradigm common to both sets of actors for synergy to emerge that leads to action. Territoriality
is this common paradigm, for an ethnic elite draws from a history it shares with the masses to
convince the commoners to follow its program for territorial revision at the expense of another
nationality. Sometimes, the masses are the initiator of some ethnic conflict, and an elite emerges
from them that displaces an incumbent elite that is out of touch with the commoners' desires.
This factor, as I will point out in the Karabagh chapter, explains why the Armenians and
Azerbaijanis acted as they did at the beginning of their war over Nagorno-Karabakh in 1988.
One can argue that the masses in Croatia and Slovenia were the ones who began the Wars of the
Yugoslav Succession (1991-2001) by electing secessionist, nationalist elites in Yugoslavia's first
post-1945 free elections in 1990. Milosevic was endorsed by the Serbian electorate in 1990,
which gave him a mandate to carry out his designs for a Greater Serbia. Once his policies led to
disaster, the Serb masses rose up in 2000, and ousted him (Thompson, Nordic, Central, and
Southeastern Europe, 2009). What this discussion implies is that elitism as an explanation of
ethnic conflict is an oversimplification. The masses, or at the least a substantial portion of the
commoners, must feel a connection with the elite. This is what makes action effective. Without
commoner endorsement, elite actions do not amount to much. In conflicts involving other
nationalities, territoriality is the “glue” that holds the ethnic elite and the masses it leads together.
There must exist a commonly-held vision of territorial change that leads the elites and the masses
to challenge the claims of another ethnic group.
Economism is a variant on the elitist model, and it states that elites incite ethnic conflict
as a way to enrich themselves (Hoffler and Collier, no date; Ross, 2004). This could possibly be
the case in the former USSR, but elites may expose themselves to dangers they would not face in
a non-violent situation. There could exist segments of the elite that gain from peaceful
interactions with other peoples, and want to avoid war. Or the land may be of little value
resource-wise, but of great value to two communities for historical reasons. The conflict
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between the Israeli Jews and the Palestinian Arabs is a prominent example of two ethnicities
fighting over land that has few resources, but whose symbolic importance is of primary
significance to both nationalities, for the Jews view Israel as the “Promised Land” bestowed on
them by God, while the Muslim Palestinians and their fellow believers of the umma (world
Muslim community) regard Israel/Palestine as the place where the Prophet Muhammad took a
grand tour of Allah's heaven (Russell, 2009). In this case, the national elites of both ethnic
communities tend to cite theological and historical reasons for why their ethnicity should have
possession of the land of Israel/Palestine rather than rely primarily on economic justification for
their claims. Britain and Argentina went to war in 1982 over the Falkland Islands (Islas
Malvinas), and while the possibility of oil near the islands played a part in starting the conflict,
Britain also tended to cite historical precedent and the presence of British colonists as
justifications for repossessing the Falklands. On the other hand, Argentina looked to the pre1832 period, when it held the Malvinas, as the basis for its claim that the British presence in the
Falkland Islands was illegitimate, and that the islands “properly” belong to the Argentine
Republic (Buckman, 2009). It would appear that Israel/Palestine and the Falklands/Malvinas
lack a large enough resource base to make waging war over them worthwhile. However, the
Zionists and Palestinians in the Israel/Palestine case, and the Britons and Argentines in the
Falklands/Malvinas instance, based their cases on historical and religious grounds. These
examples would appear to corroborate Kaufman's (2001) argument that ethnic symbolism leads
to nationality conflicts. Kaufman's contention explains these two instances pretty well, but one
can search deeper down for an account of why national disputes erupt into violence.
Territoriality provides the motive for why two or more nationalities fight over a piece of land or
sea area.
In the two instances cited above, there exists a clash of what are the “proper” boundaries
of the polity. In the Falklands case, the Argentines consider the islands to be an extension of the
territory they control, and their primary justification for their assertion is the control Argentina
exercised over the Islas Malvinas in the 1810-32 period. On the other hand, Britain considers the
Falklands to be part of its empire, and it treats the outpost and its British colonists as an
extension of its imperial enterprise. In the Israel/Palestine case, many Israeli Jews think that
Israel is the ancestral homeland that gave Jewish identity its shape, and use this as a pretext to
justify a Jewish sovereign presence in the “Holy Land.” Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand,
15
claim a continuous habitation of Palestine since at least the 7th century CE, when the Arab
Muslims took over the territory and Islamicized it. Some Jews and many Palestinians view
retention of the “Holy Land” as a zero-sum game, with their side being entitled to the whole
territory. There are Zionists who think that God gave the Jews all of the land of Palestine,
including the West Bank (Samaria and Judea). Many Palestinian Arabs, including the Islamist
movement Hamas, assert that they hold possession of all of the area that had been Palestine until
1948. What these two examples illustrate is that what passes for ethnic symbolism could really
be territorial conflict in actuality. Economic factors may play a part in ethnic territorial disputes,
but historical and even theological justifications cannot be ruled out. A more encompassing
theory that incorporates economic factors provides more traction, and offers a more general view
than is offered by economism (Buckman, 2009; Russell, 2009; Ross, 2004).
Environmentalism states that nationalities fight each other when resources become
scarce, and the local environment is devastated to such an extent that fighting becomes a way to
secure scarce resources, such as arable land or clean water (Homer-Dixon, 1994). The jury is
still out on this theory because environmental devastation has not been on so extensive a scale as
to spark general war. This explanation has solid reasoning behind it and it offers a grim
prognosis for ethnic amity were it to unfold in the future. Instances of environmental war have
been usually confined to one ethnicity, such as the Polynesians of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and
the Maya of what is now southern Mexico and Central America. Some observers cite the Darfur
conflict between sedentary Africans and nomadic Arabs as an example of environmentallyinduced ethnic conflict. It appears that desertification has pushed nomadic Arab groups in
Darfur to seize the farmland of the Fur and other African sedentary peoples. However, there
could be more to this story than just ecological degradation. It appears that two ways of life are
in conflict in Darfur. Nomadic groups in the past have overrun agricultural areas, and turned
them into pasturage. On the other hand, agriculturalists have reclaimed territory from nomads,
and have turned them into farms. In other words, nomads and farmers represent different and
antagonistic ways of life that do not fit neatly into an environmentalist framework (Dickovick,
2009; Buckman, 2009; Theroux, 1992).
Environmentalism may explain ethnic conflicts in Central Asia. It may clarify why the
Kyrgyz and Uzbeks fought each other in 1990 and 2010, but it does not explain why the
Karakalpaks are not up in arms over the desiccation of the Aral Sea. In addition, the
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environmental conflicts may have some underlying territorial component to them that is driving
them. There could be more than meets the eye than competition over land and potable water in
the Kyrgyz-Uzbek clashes. Both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan border each other, and this partially
explains why around 15 % of the Kyrgyz republic's population is ethnically Uzbek. It is possible
that the Kyrgyz think of the Uzbeks in their polity as “interlopers, who do not belong.” At the
same time, the Kyrgyz are divided into a northern group and a southern group, with both factions
antagonistically vying for control of Kyrgyzstan's central government. Both Kyrgyz groups may
view the Uzbeks in their midst as a political threat that may take away effective control of the
area in which they (the Uzbeks) tend to concentrate, the Osh vilayet (province). There exist
Kyrgyz who are jealous of the relative economic success of Kyrgyzstan's Uzbeks. What gives
the Kyrgyz-Uzbek rivalry a territorial dimension is the Kyrgyz conviction that the Uzbeks in
their republic do not belong, and that it would be better for the Uzbeks to “return” to Uzbekistan,
their titular republic. In the Ferghana valley, where Osh is located, the Soviet ethnographers did
not draw clear boundaries that definitively separated one ethnicity from another. They laid the
seeds for this conflict, which came out in the open in the ethnic riots of 1990 and 2010 (Roudik,
2007; New York Times, 2010).
In the debate between these four explanations for ethnic conflict, my territorial argument
tries to encompass the essential factors of the economist, elitist, environmental, and theological
theories, and provide a factor that under girds all four explanations. In this sense the territorial
argument is “primal,” harking back to something that is basic to human nature. The danger with
such an explanation is that it may explain nothing by explaining everything. However, if the
territorial argument describes all of the cases under consideration, then it explains why ethnic
conflict has arisen in the first place. It is in the primordialist tradition, which states that ethnicity
is a given of human nature (Kellas, 1998), but it allows for some role by the elites, whether
established or formed by the masses in the heat of the moment. In this sense, the territorial
explanation straddles the primordialist-constructivist divide, while tilting toward the
primordialist side. Elites cannot operate in a vacuum. They must have already existent material
with which to work. In ethnic conflicts, this is provided by territoriality.
Analysts have raised a major objection to the territorial concept. Namely, they argue that
territoriality is really an underlying condition, and that other explanations of ethnic conflict truly
elucidate the factors that lead one nationality to fight another. Huth (2000), a major proponent of
17
the territorial argument addresses this objection. He has encountered it over the years. Huth
asserts that territorial issues arouse popular sentiments, and that leaders tap into the territorial
sentiment because they find utility in doing so. Territoriality is not the only factor behind
international and intercommunal conflict. Huth (2000) concedes that regime change, and the
desire of one country to replace another sovereign state's central government, is a major factor in
the arousal of conflict. Most regime change issues revolve around ideological differences. The
US-Soviet rivalry is the most recent and important example of this phenomenon.
However, ethnic disputes revolve around the issue of territoriality. Huth (2000) argues
that national elites can tap into the territorial instinct, which they share with the masses. If the
masses do not see a territorial dispute as salient, then elite calls for territorial revision fall on deaf
ears, and the masses do not respond to their national elite's signals. People have the ability to
filter out what is perceived as unimportant and less relevant, and to focus on urgent matters. Had
territoriality not mattered that much, then there would have existed few if any ethnic conflicts.
In other words, territoriality matters because people possess a psychological construct that makes
it important. Territoriality is a cause of ethnic conflict. It is a factor that turns latent nationality
disputes into violent confrontations.
There have been studies of ethnic conflict in the former Soviet bloc, the former USSR,
and Eastern Europe. Kaufman's book, Modern Hatreds (2001), is one such analysis. He argues
that ethnic symbolism is the root cause of nationality conflicts. While I agree with him, I do so
up to a point. There has to be some kind of underlying factor that mobilizes people behind ethnic
symbolism. I assert that territoriality is the real cause of nationality disputes, and that it is the
“base,” while Kaufman's ethnic symbolism is the “superstructure.” Given that I differ somewhat
in my causal explanation from Kaufman, it is important to keep in mind that he has made a major
contribution to the field of post-Communist studies.
Many books have been written about the post-Communist ethnic conflicts. Many of them
are historical surveys that try to find the root causes of nationality disputes in historical events
and circumstances, for example, Goltz (2003), Malcolm (1996, 1998), Lieven (1998) and de
Waal (2003). Such surveys are useful to gather historical data and information on human
behavior on ethnic conflicts. What I attempt to do, as a political scientist, is to detect patterns in
historical events, and to find underlying causal mechanisms that explain human behavior.
Historical surveys can be good as history, but they are usually based on a single case. One must
18
have at least two cases of a phenomenon to gauge any kind of causality. Hence, the need for a
comparative case study of ethnic conflict.
It is the case that other scholars have trodden the path on which I have embarked. In this
vein must be mentioned the works of Monica Toft (2003) and Christoph Zuercher (2007). Toft
analyzes territoriality in the former USSR, initially employing a statistical assessment of whether
settlement patterns provide the cause of ethnic violence. Utilizing two statistical tests with
Gurr's Minorities At Risk data set, she finds that concentrated ethnicities, except for citydwellers, tend to agitate for autonomy, self-rule, or territorial revisions, while elites aggressively
deal with national groups that call for secession, regardless of the value of a particular piece of
territory. A country's elite acts in this manner to prevent a precedent from being set that would
encourage other nationalities to declare their independence from the sovereign polity. Toft
proceeds to examine Chechnya and Tatarstan in Russia, and Abkhazia and Ajaria in the Republic
of Georgia. In the cases she examines, she finds corroboration for her territorial assertion. The
study I am conducting is a quasi-replication of Toft's, though without statistical tests. While I
also focus on Chechnya and Tatarstan, as Toft does, I do not closely analyze the Georgian
examples as she does. Instead, I examine the Bessarabian-Transdnistrian dispute in Moldova,
and the Karabagh war which was fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In addition, I look at
the Crimean situation. Finding the same social process at work in Tatarstan and Chechnya
means that my research adds corroboration to what Toft (2003) has found, while my other cases
would make the territorial argument applicable to areas that have not been considered so far in
this light.
Zuercher (2007) confines his analysis to the Caucasian region. He examined Chechnya,
Dagestan, Karabagh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Ajaria. Basically, his argument is elitist in
character, positing that an ethnic elite utilizes material and social capital to mobilize the masses
to fight a central authority. He buttresses his argument by examining the Armenian-Azerbaijani
conflict over Karabagh and the Georgian central government's wars with Abkhazia and South
Ossetia in the early 1990s. Ajaria and Dagestan are employed as non-event cases. Zuercher
(2007) uses these last two instances to corroborate his argument that elites are behind ethnic
conflicts. In the Ajar and Dagestan examples, the elites face a different set of circumstances that
discourages ethnic conflict with their respective central governments. Ajars are Georgians of the
Sunni Muslim faith, and their ethnic affinity with the Christian Georgian counterparts induces
19
their elite to be cooperative with Tbilisi. Dagestan's settlement pattern, with several ethnicities
gathering together in neighborhood “associations,” keeps the peace in this republic, according to
Zuercher (2007). In other words, the elite in Makhachkala find it difficult to organize an ethnic
crusade against other nationalities, for the basis of local organization “deters” ethnic
mobilization.
Like Gagnon (1999) and Fearon and Laitin (2000), Zuercher's (2007) elitist explanation
is incomplete. Several of the arguments I cited above to show elitism's incompleteness apply to
Zuercher's contention, particularly the need for elite-masses synergy and the masses' support or
acquiescence in an elite-orchestrated program. Sometimes, the masses themselves are the
initiator of a nationality war, and out of them emerges an alternative elite that takes over from the
incumbent ruling group, which the masses perceive is out of touch with their desires. My
interpretation of the Karabagh war would appear to support this claim, and the elite of
Transdnistria worked together with the masses of the region to form a separatist state on the
territory of Moldova which is east of the Dniestr river. In other words, the Transdnistrian masses
gave their support to their emerging elite in 1990, rather than merely being manipulated by
Smirnov and his coterie. An explanation that factors in the popular class' input is more complete
than one that just looks at elite behavior. My territorial argument rests on the symbiotic
relationship between an elite and the masses under its jurisdiction. According to territoriality, the
Christian Georgians and the Ajars share a common definition of the boundaries of their shared
homeland, while the majority of Dagestanis were satisfied with their republic being a “subject”
of the Russian Federation. Since Zuercher's book, Islamist violence has broken out in the
Dagestani republic, with Chechen rebels being the instigator of it (Shoemaker, 2010). These
attacks by Islamist militants are a challenge to both Zuercher's contention and mine. Dagestan is
no longer a non-event example of non-violence, and the Islamists are after something
transcendental, and do not view the fighting in Dagestan in territorial terms. Zuercher can claim
that a religious elite instigated the recent fighting in the Dagestani republic, but the Islamists
would not have had staying power were it not for the support and/or acquiescence of the
Dagestani public. Neither Zuercher's contention nor mine satisfactorily “explains” the Islamist
violence in Dagestan. Fox's (2004) analysis of religious conflicts may offer a better explanation
of the Islamist jihad against the authorities in Makhachkala. What is occurring in Dagestan is a
subject for further research.
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As mentioned earlier, Kaufman (2001) overcomes the weaknesses of N = 1 studies by
employing a comparative case study method. Huth (1996) utilizes statistics to provide
corroboration for the territorial argument, and thus his approach is the most generalizable. I do
not disagree with the proposition that general studies are useful to understand phenomena. For
my purposes, my level of generalization is confined to the mid-level. The existence of
Communism is such a confounding factor that a study confined to the post-Communist world is
justified. Ethnic conflict in the five remaining Communist states cannot be analyzed that well
because of the paucity of relevant information upon which inferences are drawn. In addition,
post-Communist countries are on a different level of existence from Communist states. In the
former, Communism is a relic of the past, while it is still alive in China and the other Communist
countries. “Internationalist proletarian” propaganda was broadcast and distributed in the Soviet
Union for 70 years. Ethnic conflicts were at a minimum during Soviet times. However,
Communist propaganda failed to seep into popular consciousness, and once Soviet peoples were
free to express themselves, they started to behave as their counterparts did in the “free world.”
Territoriality is embedded in the human psyche, and it took the existence of “normal” conditions
for it to come out in the post-Communist countries. Given these circumstances, it is no surprise
that ethnic conflict broke out in the former USSR and the former Yugoslavia. Clashing visions
of territoriality led to violence between nationality groups.
Facilitating Conditions of Territoriality
Those who assert that territoriality is more or less a constant are not wrong. It appears to
be stamped in the human mind, and people act based on it. Such a psychological construct
applies to all territorial disputes, and it does not vary. However, it takes different forms, such as
whether it is land-based or sea-based, whether it involves territory in one country or between two
or more sovereign states, and whether it includes a portion of territory or the whole territory of a
polity. There exists a paradox between the constant character of territoriality and the way it
varies based on context. Territoriality's facilitating conditions are what explain how it changes
based on its context, and these conditions themselves are the mediating variables between
territoriality and ethnic conflict that help set the whole process in motion. There are six
facilitating conditions that influence how territoriality sets off a nationality war. They are: 1) the
size of the ethnic population; 2) the role of the elites; 3) availability of information; 4)
availability of an ethnic diaspora nearby; 5) the location of an ethnic group; and 6) economic
21
resource differences. These facilitating conditions are derived from research by previous
scholars, and that I have incorporated into my work. Some researchers emphasize one
facilitating condition, while others look at more than one of them. Below is an account of how
other scholars have employed the facilitating conditions, and of how I have developed them for
use in this project.
Bollens (1998) looked at three ethnically-divided cities: Jerusalem, Belfast, and
Johannesburg. The role of elites and the location of ethnic groups fit into Bollens' cases. Among
his findings was that if ethnicities live in separate areas and are concentrated in specific areas,
then the stage is set for ethnic conflict, and that if ethnicities are mixed in, the occurrence of
ethnic conflict in an urban setting is reduced. However, at the national and state/provincial level,
the mixing of ethnicities does not prevent nationality disputes. For example, the Zionists and the
Palestinians were at each others' throats during the Mandate period. Partition seemed to stabilize
the battle lines after 1948-49. Much the same could be said for the Cyprus situation. Civil war
was a constant recurrence on the island from independence in 1960 until 1974, when Turkey
occupied the part of Cyprus with a Turkish Cypriot majority, and thus partitioned the island into
Greek and Turkish halves (Russell, 2009). Bollens' argument falls apart at the macro-level, while
it appears to hold at the micro-level he studied.
Bookman (1994) argued that economic differences, specifically income and industrial
levels between Yugoslav republics and between the Czechs and the Slovaks, contributed to the
breakup of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, respectively. Nafziger and Richter (1976) make a
similar argument for the cases they examine, Biafra and Bangladesh. In these two instances,
Nafziger and Richter find that the Nigerian and Pakistani civil wars were set off by squabbles
between the respective central governments and particular provinces over natural resource
profits. While I agree with Bookman (1994) and Nafziger and Richter (1976) to a certain extent,
ethnic conflicts involve more than economic differences, though they assume an important
position in why nationality disputes happen. For example, the Igbo, who created Biafra,
distrusted their countrymen after ethnic rioting in northern Nigeria resulted in many Igbo deaths.
Fear of being wiped out contributed to Igbo suspicions, and helped spur their desire for an
independent, sovereign state (Dickovick, 2009). In the Bangladesh case, the Bengalis of East
Pakistan thought they were victims of political and economic discrimination. The Pakistani
central government was located in West Pakistan, and staffed mostly by West Pakistanis. Bengali
22
grievances were of a political and economic nature, and both factors motivated the East
Pakistanis to fight for an independent Bangladesh (Russell, 2009). Much the same dynamic can
be seen in the former states of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. In Yugoslavia, the Croats and
Slovenes grew to distrust the military and political domination of the central government by the
Serbs, while the Slovaks in Czechoslovakia chafed under Czech domination of the federal
government in Prague (Thompson, Nordic, Central, and Southeastern Europe, 2009). While
economic differences played a role in causing civil war in Nigeria, and the breakup of pre-1971
Pakistan, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, they were one factor among others that contributed to
the respective outcomes.
Giuliano (2000) credits the Tatar elite in Tatarstan with preventing conflict between
Kazan Tatars and Russians. Tatarstan's president at the time, Mintimer Shaimiyev, appealed to
state nationalism as a way to outflank the radical nationalists of Ittifaq (Alliance), who pushed
for an independent Volga Tatar state, and who would want the Russians in Tatarstan to either
leave or accept Ittifaq's domination. Ittifaq espoused ethnic nationalism. The role of the elites
under Shaimiyev and his successor, Rustam Minnikhanov, is the strongest factor that has kept the
Russo-Kazan Tatar conflict peaceful. As will be seen in my later examination of Tatarstan, the
Volga Tatar elite has played its cards well given the environment in which it operates. This
environment, which encompasses the location of Tatarstan and the mixed Russian-Kazan Tatar
settlement pattern, also plays a role, and cannot be ignored (see Toft [2003]).
Lynch (2002) describes the behavior of the former USSR's breakaway republics. He
examined four of them: Karabagh; Transdnistria; Abkhazia; and South Ossetia. In his
description is a discussion of elite formation in these separatist quasi-states. This process leads
to centralized governments that brook no significant opposition because of the overwhelming
external threat from the metropolitan state that asserts de jure jurisdiction over the breakaway
regions. Their economies are state-run and heavily militarized, and they tend to devote
substantial resources to their armies. External support for them is crucial because without it they
would have been re-annexed to the metropolitan state which has asserted control over them. In
the same elitist vein, Eriksen (1991) analyzes the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism,
and ascribes the sovereign state's elite with the task of instilling a common state identity among
the inhabitants it has jurisdiction over. The trick for an incumbent regime is to combine many
ethnicities into one state, and make them identify with that state. Miles and Rochefort (1991)
23
show this phenomenon at work in Niger and Nigeria, with the Hausa of both states identifying
more with the country to which they belong rather than to the common Hausa identity.
These articles appear to offer support for an elitist interpretation of state-building. What
this signifies for my project is that the role of elites is indispensable to understanding the
dynamics inherent in ethnic conflict. While appreciating the elite factor in ethnic disputes,
ascribing them to elite action alone makes for an incomplete explanation, for such an analysis
leaves out other vital conditions, such as the role of ethnic diasporas, which Shain (1994-95) and
Shain and Bristman (2002) discuss in their articles, taking the Jewish lobby in the US as their
example. US support for the Jewish state of Israel is largely based on the lobbying efforts of
American Jewish groups on behalf of Israel. Portes and Grosfoguel (1994) examined the
relationship between the Caribbean and its diasporas in the US. Cuban-Americans' influence
over the American policy toward Cuba is a case in point. Saideman and Ayres (2000) found that
the concentration of a nationality in a specific area is conducive to secessionism, while that an
ethnic group's relative size does not influence an ethnicity's propensity toward seceding from a
certain country. In a solo article, Saideman (2000) observed that an international player will
most likely come to the support of secessionist attempts in another sovereign state if it has an
ethnic affinity with some of that country's inhabitants. What this discussion boils down to is that
an ethnicity with kin in another country is likely to receive outside support for its secessionist
campaign. Ethnic concentration can be likened to a nationality's location, for an ethnic group
that inhabits a specific piece of territory is more likely to call for secession rather than a minority
nationality that is dispersed in a sovereign polity.
Communications, or the availability of information, is another facilitating condition that
matters. Remington (1985) found that Soviet ethno-federalism tended to keep alive ethnic
distinctiveness in the USSR by providing CPSU propaganda and directives in the native
languages of the Soviet Union's ethnic units. Foreign broadcasts and word-of-mouth encounters
in native languages also reinforced this trend. His overall observation was that segmented
communication in the Soviet Union augmented Russian domination and political centralization.
While his overall finding has unraveled with the 1991 collapse of the USSR, his emphasis on
communications media strengthening nationality identification helps not only to explain why the
Soviet Union imploded, but also the importance communications plays in ethnic identity and
action by a nationality. With the introduction of the telegraph and telephone in the 19th century,
24
and of radio, television, and the Internet in the 20th century, more information has become
available more quickly to more people. Today, people are bombarded with plenty of
information, and must filter it to put it in meaningful contexts. What this means for my study is
that communications is a factor of importance, more so with the advances in technology in this
field. To ignore the availability of information in late 20th century and early 21st century
Eurasian ethnic conflicts would lead to misleading inferences. As a facilitating condition, it is a
necessary analytical construct.
The final facilitating condition is of primary importance to this study, the location of a
nationality. Intuitively, this appears to make sense. An ethnicity at the periphery of a sovereign
polity will have an easier time of seceding than one located in the center of a country. One factor
that induced Lenin and Stalin to designate an ethnic entity as a Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR)
rather than as a lower-level unit such as an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) was
its location on the borders of Soviet territory. National units that shared a border with
neighboring countries were made into SSRs, while those in the middle of the RSFSR or of an
SSR were given a lower designation and made part of a union-republic, with the RSFSR being
the largest of them in the Soviet Union (Martin, 2001). When the USSR collapsed in 1991, it
was the union-republics that became sovereign states, while the former ASSRs and other lowerlevel ethnic units became part of the newly independent former Soviet republics (Shoemaker,
2010). Chechnya is an exception that proves the rule of location being a factor of the utmost
significance. This republic is on the Russian periphery, and it shares a southern border with the
independent Republic of Georgia. The Chechen republic's titular nationality thought in the
1990s that it had a chance of carrying out a successful secession due to its location. Tatarstan
illustrates the importance of position. It is in the middle of the Russian Federation, and its
national elite knows that it has little chance of breaking away from Moscow's control. Thus,
Tatarstan is accommodating of Russian central government interests. These two instances that
will be examined in subsequent chapters show the significance that location poses for territorial
ethnic disputes (Gall and de Waal, 1998; Daulet, 2003).
All six facilitating conditions act as mediating factors that cause ethnic territorial disputes
to erupt into violent conflict. Their inclusion into my analysis is necessary because modeling
needs to reflect reality's complexity in some manner while still being able to discern the forests
from the trees. Territoriality is a given psychological construct that acts through the facilitating
25
conditions to ignite ethnic violence. To have merely posited a direct relationship between
territoriality and ethnic conflict would have led to specification error, which biases the results of
any study. It is possible that there are other factors that have not been enumerated, and this study
examines the facilitating conditions, but their weighting is not done statistically. Thus, this
comparative case study's results are more uncertain than those that would have been discerned
with some quantitative measure. It must be kept in mind that knowledge “gained” from the
scientific enterprise is conjectural, and this applies to all scientific projects, whether they are
qualitative or quantitative. The limitations of mid-level theorizing necessitate that I confine my
focus to a certain and specific spatial domain. Given the exploratory nature of this study, the
conclusions reached are tentative, and in need of further study. Despite these limitations, this
research project is worthwhile, especially given the strategic importance of Russia and the other
Soviet successor states. The chapter dealing with an elaboration of the territoriality theory and
research design follows next, and this chapter will have served its purpose if the reader views the
territorial cause of ethnic conflict in the light of previous research, upon which I have drawn to
derive my theory. Chapters on Chechnya and the other cases are an empirical application of my
thesis, and will elaborate on its validity within the limits of a comparative case study.
26
CHAPTER THREE
THEORY OF TERRITORIALITY
My thesis is that territoriality is the underlying cause of ethnic conflict in the post-Cold
War world. Territoriality is the human vision of what constitutes the proper boundaries of a state
or ethnicity, which depends on such factors as state ideology, natural resources, and sub-national
activity. State ideology is the ideas a polity holds. With regard to territoriality, it is the concept
of what boundaries a state should have. States and ethnicities want access to resources that
ensure survival and prosperity for their people. Sub-national activity manifests itself when
ethnicities in a state agitate for altered boundaries at the expense of other nationalities, and even
independence from the state which rules over them. Territoriality is expressed in ways other than
the urge for natural resources. It is also manifested in the human urge to expand the borders of a
state to gain access to the seacoast. A country may have an ideology, a guiding idea, which
promotes territorial expansion of the state. Empires are a manifestation of the territorial instinct.
For example, Catherine the Great of Russia conquered the Crimean khanate to gain access to the
Black Sea (Sasse, 2007), and Ivan the Terrible had a vision of ruling over other ethnicities, and
this idea formed the basis for his conquests of the Tatar-ruled khanates of Kazan' and Astrakhan'
in 1552 and 1558, respectively (Daulet, 2003). Even the American people harbor the territorial
instinct, which expressed itself in the 19th century in “Manifest Destiny.” Territoriality gives rise
to ethnic conflict because two ethnicities or states clash over territory, for their visions of
boundaries and social order are incompatible. When there exist conflicts between human groups
over the status of a certain piece of land, then a territorial dispute occurs. Territorial disputes
take many forms. It could be the case that two groups clash over where their common boundary
lies. One group may claim control over a substantial portion of another group's territory, or even
over all of the other group's territory. One group may fight for independence from rule by
another group or may embark on an irredentist campaign to bring their ethnic kin under their rule
(Huth, 1996). This factor of territoriality may explain why wars of independence break out in
the first place. In two of the cases I consider, an ethnic group has struggled or is struggling for
sovereignty against some other nationality. The Chechen and Transdnistrian “wars of
27
independence” are examples of this phenomenon. In the third case up for consideration, the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, irredentism plays a leading role in stoking territorial clashes.
Ethnicity is a central concept of this study, and it is the sense people have of belonging to
a group based on a common language, ancestor, history, and, many times, religion. Working on
territoriality, ethnic leaders and intellectuals construct national identities based on the criteria that
make up ethnicity, especially history (Kaufman, 2001). Shared experiences bind a group
together, and attachment to ancestral soil is a major component of this common ethnic identity.
One implication of the ethnic basis of territoriality is the phenomenon of irredentism, the desire
of a nationality to take over land that lies beyond its national borders, but that it considers part of
its ancestral territory. This factor of irredentism may explain the Azeri-Armenian dispute over
Nagorno-Karabakh. Irredentism and the desire for sovereignty together may be the underlying
factors of the territorial basis of ethnic disputes in the post-Cold War world. A nationality may
initially fight for independence and then take over what it considers as its ancestral land. This
process may well explain the case of Greece, which attained sovereignty from the Turks in 1829,
and then expanded later to include most of the Greek-speaking areas of the Balkans, the
Mediterranean, and the Aegean in the later 19th century and the first half of the 20th century
(Thompson, Western Europe, 2009).
Another concept that needs to be defined is religion. Besides more or less being a
component of one's ethnic identity, it under girds the competing theological explanation, which
states that it is religious differences that drive ethnic conflict. In simple terms, religion is the
transcendental quest for meaning in the universe. It centers on two issues, the meaning of human
existence and what happens to people after they die. Huston Smith (1991, 187) defines religion
as “a way of life woven around a people's ultimate concerns,” and as “a concern to align
humanity with the transcendental ground of its existence.” Smith's definitions are encapsulated
in my brief characterization of theological speculation. Most religious adherents belong to eight
faith traditions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and
animism (Smith, 1991). Of the remaining professors of a theological stand, the majority follow
such new religious movements such as Mormonism, Baha'i Faith, Scientology, and
Transcendental Meditation, most of which have been founded since 1800 (Partridge, 2004). In
the post-Cold War world, there has occurred an intermingling of the different religions, which all
have universalistic claims. However, the major religions are concentrated in certain regions and
28
countries of the world. For example, the largest group of Christians in southern Europe and
Latin America belong to the Catholic Church (Catholic Almanac, 2010), while the Arabian
peninsula is mostly Muslim, with the three Islamic factions being represented (Sunni, Shia, and
Kharajite) (World Almanac, 2010). Around 80 % of the people of India are Hindus, while
mainland Southeast Asia is mostly Buddhist (except for Malaya) (World Almanac, 2010). Even
the United States has a Christian concentration, with 51 % belonging to different Protestant
churches, 22 % following the Catholic tradition, and a small number of Orthodox Christian
believers (Catholic Almanac, 2010; World Almanac, 2010).
What all of this means for my study is that a certain ethnic group tends to identify with a
certain faith tradition. In a majority of the world's countries, one major religion tends to
predominate. In other words, the world's major religions tend to be territorially concentrated.
Given the migration of ethnicities, religious diasporas exist in most of the world's sovereign
states. Given the interplay of the world's religions, it is no surprise that ethnic conflicts have a
religious dimension. If my territorial explanation is corroborated, then religion acts as a
cheerleader to the respective national groups, playing a secondary role to territoriality. Such a
relationship between territoriality and religion would undermine the competing theological
theory of ethnic warfare. It is possible that religious differences between clashing nationalities
are subsumed in my theory of the territorial origins of ethnic conflict.
3.1 Facilitating Conditions of Territoriality
Territoriality is a constant, in the sense that its psychological profile does not change.
While it takes different forms, as outlined above, it constitutes a vision of the “proper”
boundaries of a polity, which is a fixed psychological state. It could be the case that territoriality
is a program that humans possess in their minds which spurs them to claim control over a certain
piece of land or sea territory, and to contest the territorial claims of other humans. In other
words, territoriality is a constant because it is a mental program embedded in the human psyche.
Given the unchanging character of territoriality, there must be variation in the causal explanation.
Facilitating conditions are the intervening factors that explain the variation in outcomes. I have
discerned six facilitating factors that must be present for territoriality to touch off nationality
disputes. These six facilitating conditions are: 1) the size of an ethnic population, whether it
has majority or minority status in a territory; 2) the role of the elites, whether they join the ethnic
agitation or not; 3) communication, that is the availability of information; 4) the availability of an
29
ethnic diaspora nearby; 5) the location of the ethnic group, whether it is near the border or in the
middle of the polity from which it seeks autonomy or independence; and 6) economic resource
differences, in which it would appear that a greater disparity between a polity and a region that
seeks greater self-rule or self-determination would fuel a nationality dispute and precipitate
violence. Having listed the facilitating factors, it is necessary to explain each individual
sufficient condition in greater detail.
Size of an Ethnic Population
How large an ethnic group is in relation to the territory it inhabits, whether it is a majority
or minority in that region, is an important determinant of whether ethnic conflict breaks out. It
appears reasonable that an ethnic majority in an area calculates that it has a chance of attaining
greater autonomy or even independence if it engages in some form of armed struggle than an
ethnic minority. This proposition appears intuitive. An ethnic group can mobilize most of a
territory's inhabitants if it is in the majority. An ethnic minority in a region may calculate that it
does not stand a chance in an armed confrontation with that region's ethnic majority or with the
central government. However, as Toft (2003) shows, this proposition does not always hold.
While it is self-evident when there is no other actor involved in the situation, a foreign power
may intervene in a regional dispute of another country, and support an ethnic minority in its
struggle with a dominant nationality group or with that foreign country's central regime. Toft
(2003) cites the case of the secessionist republic of Abkhazia, which nominally belongs to
Georgia, but is now a self-governing Russian satellite. She cites the fact that the Abkhaz, the
titular nationality of Abkhazia, made up only 18 % of the republic's population in 1989, the year
of the last census in the Soviet Union, while the same census revealed that 45 % of Abkhazia's
population was composed of ethnic Georgians. In June, 1992, the Georgian warlord Jaba
Ioseliani invaded Abkhazia to restore central Georgian control. Russia sensed an opportunity to
assert its interests in the former Soviet sphere, so it backed the Abkhaz minority in its struggle
with the Georgian central government in Tbilisi. There was no overt support for the Abkhaz
rebels, but the Russians supplied them with heavy weapons, with which they won their armed
struggle with Georgia in September, 1993. Most of Abkhazia's ethnic Georgians, about 250,000
people, fled Abkhazia, and settled in Georgia proper, the part of Georgia excluding Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, another region of Georgia that has fought for independence from Tbilisi (Toft,
2003).
30
Another case of an ethnic minority fighting for its independence against a dominant
nationality with foreign support is the ethnic Tamils of Sri Lanka. While India's central
government itself did not expressly back the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the
ethnic Tamils of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu provided support for their ethnic kin in Sri Lanka
in the latter's quest to establish an independent state free of control by Sri Lanka's central
government, which is dominated by the island's ethnic majority, the Sinhalese. While the
Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan central government in Colombo defeated the Tamil rebels in
2009, the longevity of the latest conflict between the island's Sinhalese majority and Tamil
minority, which began in 1983, occurred because the Tamils of Tamil Nadu provided assistance
to the LTTE. While the Tamil-Sinhalese armed conflict appears to be over, Sinhalese
insensitivity toward the Tamil minority, who inhabit Sri Lanka's northern and eastern regions,
may reignite ethnic conflict on the island, and give India a chance to help the Tamils with the
necessary military support to prevail over the central government in Colombo (Russell, 2009).
Role of the Elites
Every ethnic group has an elite, which is defined as a small group of leaders of a
community, who articulate the interests of an ethnicity, define the parameters in which a
nationality operates, and provide the leadership for an ethnicity to achieve a desired outcome. In
other words, a nationality's ruling group distills the different priorities and defines what are the
most important stakes and aims of an ethnic group. In addition, ethnic elites define what factors
make a nationality what it is. Usually a common language and a shared history provide the glue
that holds an ethnicity together. Religious affiliation also may cement members of a nationality,
but not always. While most Armenians, about 95 % in the Armenian republic, belong to the
Armenian Apostolic Church, an Oriental Orthodox group, the ethnic Magyars of Hungary are
divided by religion, but united by language and history. About 60 % of Hungary's population is
Catholic, while 25 % is Protestant, yet the Magyars consider themselves one people (Catholic
Almanac, 2010; World Almanac, 2010; Binns, 2002). A nationality requires some kind of elite to
define its salient characteristics. An ethnic elite, whether it is already established or arises
spontaneously from some events, also provides the leadership to see that the nationality attains
its goals, whether it be greater cultural autonomy, more self-government, or even independence.
As stated earlier, every ethnicity is led by some kind of elite. This holds true of
“primitive” peoples as well as more advanced ethnicities. A “primitive” nationality may lack
31
formal state institutions, but the heads of the families serve as the ethnicity's elite. Perhaps
priests, medicine men, medicine women, or shamans define the legends that underlie ethnic
cohesion. Chiefs may take the place of family heads in other “primitive” societies. It has
occurred throughout history that a “primitive” ethnicity may have more than one chief or that
one chief of the nationality conquers the other chiefs and declares a unitary state made up of his
ethnic cohorts. Kamehameha I of Hawaii comes to mind as one chief among many who
conquered the eight major Hawaiian islands and created a single Hawaiian monarchy as an
example of this phenomenon (World Almanac, 2010). In more advanced polities, there exists a
central government, which is usually dominated by a specific ethnicity. National minorities have
their own leadership structures, whether they be subservient rulers to the central sovereign
regime, or they be an educated elite that articulates the interests of the ethnicity it represents.
This educated elite could be made up of religious leaders, successful entrepreneurs, or members
of the intelligentsia. Malaysia presents a key example of this case for more advanced societies.
Ethnic Malays dominate Malaysia's central government in Kuala Lumpur and the Malaysian
monarch is seen as the embodiment of the Malay national character. The Chinese and Indian
minorities are represented by elites made up of politicians that belong to their respective
ethnicities, Buddhist and Hindu religious leaders, and educated members of the Chinese and
Indian communities, which include artists, writers, and journalists (Leibo, 2009). In a territorial
dispute between ethnicities, some kind of elite plays a crucial role in determining the outcome of
a nationality struggle by its decisions and ability to mobilize its ethnic cohorts. One example of
this phenomenon that comes to mind is the Nigerian Civil War, which pitted the Igbo-dominated
Eastern region (Biafra) against rump Nigeria, which was composed of the Hausa-dominated
Northern Region, the Midwest Region, and the Yoruba-dominated Western Region. Nigeria's
military ruler, Gowon, mobilized the Hausa and Yoruba to fight the Igbo and their allies, who
were led and mobilized by Ojukwu, the military leader of the Biafran rebellion. While both
Gowon and Ojukwu were effective mobilizers, it was the decisions of Gowon that decided the
course of this conflict. He blockaded Biafra, which forced it, inevitably, to surrender, then he
pursued a conciliatory policy toward the Igbo after hostilities ceased (Dickovik, 2009).
Sometimes it occurs that one ethnic elite mobilizes its followers sooner than another one, and
thus prevails over the poorly mobilized nationality. After World War I, the Czechs were better
mobilized than the Slovaks, and thus persuaded the Allies to let them extend Czech control over
32
Slovakia. Stefanik, the Slovak leader, agreed to Czech proposals to place the Slovak lands in a
state that was to be dominated by the Czechs because the Slovaks were not as well mobilized as
their Czech counterparts. Once the Slovaks were effectively mobilized during and after the 1989
Velvet Revolution, Slovaks got their wish for an independent state, and Czechoslovakia split into
the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 (Kirschbaum, 2005).
Communication and the Availability of Information
As with any undertaking involving the mobilization of people, communication is
essential. One must get the word out and grab the attention of the populace to develop a critical
mass of people to carry out effective political action. In addition, people may only act in a
cogent way if the political elite can issue clearly-understood instructions. Sometimes rumors
will result in a specified political action such as riots targeting another ethnicity. At other times,
ethnic conflict arises as a result of an emphatic and efficient communication campaign by a
national elite that results in its followers acting against another ethnicity. Means of
communication affects the availability of information. In “primitive” societies, the only reliable
means of communication is word of mouth. While a chief or elder can mobilize members of his
group, he cannot extend his political reach beyond the group he leads. With the advent of
writing, it became easier to mobilize more people for political ends. Television, radio, and the
Internet have made it possible to assemble large groups of people to carry out a political
campaign. The Rwandan Genocide comes to mind. Hutu extremists used television and radio to
stir up the Hutu masses to murder 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutu in 1994. While there was
enmity between the Hutu and Tutsi over which group would control the Rwandan state, Hutu
extremists used the electronic communications media at hand to make the Rwandan genocide
one of the most deadly events in modern history that involved ethnic conflict (Dickovik, 2009).
Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, the first and second Soviet leaders respectively,
perfectly understood the power of modern means of communication to stir up the masses. They
placed all the available means of communication under their control, and used them to mobilize
the Soviet peoples to construct a Communist state. Once Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in
June, 1941, Stalin utilized Soviet media to persuade the Soviet peoples to confront, contain, and
then push back the Wehrmacht. Soviet propaganda told the Russians and the other Soviet
peoples about Nazi intentions and atrocities, which played a large role in motivating the Soviet
Army to expel Hitler's legions and to take over Eastern Europe and eastern Germany. Stalin and
33
his successors tightly controlled the available means of communication, including television,
radio, and reading material. By maintaining a tight reign on the availability of information, they
kept ethnic conflicts that arose from taking on a life of their own because the restrictions on
communications limited popular mobilizational potential and enabled the Soviet central
authorities with effective means to clamp down on any ethnic unrest that occurred. For example,
there were clashes between Abkhaz and Georgians in 1979 over keeping Georgian as the state
language of the Georgian SSR. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader at the time, was able to contain and
suppress the Abkhaz-Georgian clashes because the USSR central government controlled the
availability of information that reached the Soviet public (Dziewanowski, 2003, Suny, 1994).
Mikhail Gorbachev understood that the tight control over the Soviet media was hurting
his country, for the Soviet Union was falling behind its Western adversaries and the Newly
Industrializing Countries economically and technologically, which would have an effect on
Soviet military capability. That is why he was willing to open up Soviet media and make more
information available to the Soviet public. Having more information available, the Soviet
peoples learned from each other what mobilization strategies were most effective and of ways to
stir up national complaints into ethnic violence. Armenia's quest to integrate the disputed region
of Nagorno-Karabakh was the first major instance of ethnic violence in the USSR under
Gorbachev. Subsequent ethnic clashes and wars were modeled after what the Armenians and
Azeris did. No doubt the releasing of political prisoners from the Gulag provided ethnicities
with leaders to agitate on their behalf, but it can be argued that Gorbachev inadvertently
unleashed the ethnic conflicts that beset the Soviet Union by making it easier for the Soviet
peoples to communicate with each other and that the Balts' and Armenians' agitation provided a
model for the subsequent nationality clashes in the USSR. In other words, the greater
availability of information made the demonstration effect much more cogent than it would have
been had the communications media been restricted. Gorbachev was in a Catch-22 situation.
Either he could have maintained media restrictions at the cost of the USSR falling further behind
the West, or he could tolerate nationality disputes that frequently erupted into violence as the
price for opening up the Soviet system. Largely, Gorbachev chose the latter course, which
explains why latent nationality disputes spread throughout the Soviet Union. Availability of
information plays a major role in determining the spread of ethnic violence in a polity or territory
(Dziewanowski, 2003).
34
Availability of an Ethnic Diaspora Nearby
In most cases of ethnic violence, a diaspora of co-ethnics is a key source of support and
sustenance for nationalities involved in conflict. A diaspora of co-ethnics is the major ally of a
nationality involved in a dispute with another ethnicity. There is the natural concern for ethnic
cousins by a national diaspora, which is defined as the group of an ethnicity living outside that
ethnic group's homeland. Diaspora support for embattled ethnic kin can take many forms.
Members of the diaspora may join their co-ethnics as volunteers or even become leaders of their
ethnic kin in their homeland. Taking an example from one of my cases, the first two presidents
of the present Armenian republic are technically from the exile community. Levon TerPetrossian, the first president, was born in Syria of Armenian parents, while the second chief
executive, Robert Kocharian, was president of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh before
being elected to the top executive post in Armenia (Payaslian, 2007). Exile communities may
provide settlers to a homeland, and augment the number of fellow nationals who already live in
the home territory, and even tip the ethnic balance in a disputed land, provided it is habitable.
One instance that comes to mind is the Jewish migration to Palestine after World War I, and the
second migration of Jews to the State of Israel after it was declared independent in 1948. Given
that a large number of Palestinians fled the new state of Israel, the migrating Jews grew to a
critical mass to become the majority in the Jewish state (Russell, 2009).
Ethnic diasporas may also carry out violent acts in the country where they reside to gain
publicity for the cause of their ethnic kin. For example, in 1975, Moluccan terrorists seized a
train in Holland to bring attention to the Indonesian “subjugation” of the Moluccas. In a more
sensational case, Fenian terrorists planned to invade British North America from bases in the
United States, and hold the British colonies north of the US hostage in return for Britain granting
Ireland independence. Such a scheme failed due to the American crackdown on the Fenians, but
the hair-brained plan of the Fenians illustrates what a diaspora can accomplish if it exists as a
large community in a particular foreign country (Thompson, Western Europe, 2009). In addition,
a diaspora can send funds, materiel, and other supplies to co-ethnics in their homeland, and thus
tip the military balance in favor of their ethnic kin. Perhaps the diaspora's logistical support will
lead to a stalemated situation between its ethnic kin and the opposing side, whether it be another
nationality or a central government. As already mentioned, the Tamils of India provided support
to the Tamil Tigers on Sri Lanka. This diaspora assistance partially explains why the Tamil35
Sinhalese conflict of 1983-2009 lasted so long. Prabukharan and his LTTE followers would have
held out for only a few years had the Indian Tamils not provided them with necessary funding
and armaments (Russell, 2009). In another example, the American Jewish lobbying on behalf of
Israel proved crucial to the US decision to send military supplies to Israel during the 1973 Yom
Kippur War. Sometimes, an exile community may lobby a foreign government to use its army to
do the work for their co-ethnics in the homeland, and to bring an ethnic dispute to a conclusion
the lobbying ethnicity finds satisfactory. During Pakistan's 1971 civil war, East Pakistani exiles
in India lobbied for New Delhi to directly intervene in East Pakistan on behalf of Bengali
independence. India's prime minister at the time, Indira Gandhi, sent the Indian army into the
eastern wing of Pakistan, which defeated the Pakistani army in the region, and this action led to
East Pakistan's emergence as the independent republic of Bangladesh (Russell, 2009).
As the above discussion illustrates, an ethnicity's diaspora can play a critical role in the
outcome of a conflict between the diaspora's co-ethnics in the homeland and the opponent,
whether it is some other nationality or a sovereign government. This is the case especially if the
diaspora lives nearby. This is so because the logistic distance is shorter, which enables the
diaspora to send numerous forms of assistance, such as volunteer fighters, funds, and materiel.
Another factor that facilitates diaspora support is the case where the diaspora is relatively
wealthy. Because the wealthy ethnic diaspora has many resources with which to provide help to
kin involved in a conflict, its assistance may tip the balance, and lead to victory for the coethnics in the homeland. Jewish diaspora aid to Israel is an example of this factor at work
(Russell, 2009), while an instance of the beneficial effect of having an ethnic diaspora nearby is
the relationship between the Crimean Russians and the Russians in the Russian Federation.
Russia's size and its proximity to Crimea induce Ukraine to think twice about treating Crimea's
Russians as second-class citizens. Many Moldovan Romanians have Romanian passports, a fact
which may deter Transdnistria from attacking Bessarabia. By giving its ethnic kin in Moldova
passports, Romania shows that it is concerned about the fate of the Moldovan Romanians.
Romania probably provides substantial assistance to its co-ethnics in Moldova. Summing up,
having an ethnic diaspora nearby or one with wealth may prove critical to whether an ethnicity
achieves its goals in its homeland or not (Shoemaker, 2010).
36
Location of an Ethnic Group
Location matters and determines a sovereign state's or a nationality's policy vis-a-vis
nearby entities. An example that readily comes to mind is Finland's proximity to Russia.
Because it neighbors Russia, Finland has to take Russia's interests into consideration. During the
Cold War, Finland did not formally join any military alliance the Soviet Union opposed for fear
of antagonizing the USSR. Despite its democratic political character, Finland had to consider
how its policies were received in the Soviet Union, and hence leaned toward the Soviet side
during the US-Soviet rivalry (Thompson, Nordic, Central, and Southeastern Europe, 2009). An
example of a country being surrounded by another one illustrates the difficulties that country
faces. The African national state of Lesotho is completely enclosed by South Africa. During
South Africa's apartheid era, Lesotho, a black majority-ruled state, had to tread carefully,
publically denouncing white domination in its neighbor, while taking the apartheid regime's
concerns and interests into consideration. With the end of apartheid in South Africa, Lesotho no
longer has to worry about the interests of its neighbor's white minority. However, it still worries
about how its policies, particularly in the foreign domain, affect South African sensibilities
(Dickovik, 2009).
In the case of secession, an ethnicity's chances of breaking away from a country increase
if it is on that sovereign state's outer rim. In other words, if a nationality is situated near a
foreign country rather than in the middle of the country from which it wishes to secede, the
possibility of it successfully securing sovereign independence is greater. Being on a country's
periphery makes it easier for the seceding ethnicity to receive needed supplies and volunteers,
while the rebellious nationality can call in a neighboring power bigger than the state it desires to
break away from to intervene and secure independence. For example, Bangladesh secured its
independence from Pakistan because of Indian army intervention. India bordered East Pakistan,
making its military intervention possible. As a counterexample also taken from the Indian
subcontinent, the princely state of Hyderabad was completely surrounded by India. Hyderabad's
ruler tried to secure sovereignty for his state from India in 1947. One year after independence,
India sent its army into Hyderabad, adding the princely state to its domains, and the international
community could do nothing to help Hyderabad. In this instance, perhaps Pakistan had a stake in
an independent Hyderabad, but its distance from the princely state made any attempt at
assistance impossible. Hyderabad could have obtained aid from the Islamic world since the
37
Hyderabad prince was a Muslim, but the Muslim countries bowed to reality and realized that
Hyderabad's location made assistance futile (Russell, 2009). Logistics matters in an ethnic
conflict, and a nationality can more readily obtain support for its cause if it is located near other
countries or on the periphery of the country from which it is attempting to secede. An ethnic
group located in the middle of a sovereign state cannot receive supplies, finances, and volunteers
for its armed struggle against central authorities. Foreign countries realize they cannot be of
much assistance to a rebellious ethnicity which is surrounded by the state from which it is
attempting to break away. The likelihood of foreign intervention for a surrounded nationality is
much less, in fact, it is close to zero, than for one situated on the periphery of a country.
Economic Resource Differences
Differences in economic resources between ethnic regions or between an ethnic area and
its central government are a cause of resentment, which could explode into ethnic violence.
Economic resource differences can be measured in terms of regional gross domestic product
(GDP), regional per capita incomes, and the monetary reward for regional economic output.
This last measurement could be based on mineral wealth, timber resources (if applicable), or
industrial enterprises. Regions that are well endowed economically, in terms of a high GDP, high
per capita income, concentration of industrial enterprises, or much resource wealth, induce
resentment from less endowed regions. Well-off regions may want to secede from a sovereign
state to keep the profits from the local enterprises in their own hands. In another case, two
ethnicities may clash over an area endowed with some resource, which could be coal, iron,
petroleum, or some other asset. Sometimes, a poor area wants to break away from a country
because it feels the “metropolitan” is exploiting its resources and labor for its own purposes and
neglecting the interests of the natives of the locality. Some nationality in an area may feel
threatened by migration of non-indigenous peoples onto its premises. These migrants are drawn
to an area by the promise of economic wealth. In other words, an ethnic majority in an area may
find itself a minority in its own homeland, due to immigration of non-natives, who are lured by
economic incentives.
There are instances of these factors that illustrate the dynamics at work when economic
resource differences are a reason for ethnic violence. In the former Yugoslavia, the republics of
Croatia and Slovenia were economically better off than the other Yugoslav republics, including
the largest one, Serbia. Serbia and the other poorer Yugoslav republics resented the fact that
38
Slovenia and Croatia were economically wealthier and more modern than them. In turn, Croatia
and Slovenia felt resentment that the profits of their labors were going to the less-developed
Yugoslav republics. They also felt exploited by Serbia, which formed the nucleus of the
Yugoslav federation and dominated its armed forces. In an effort to throw off Serb
“exploitation” and to keep the profits of their enterprises in their home republics, Croatia and
Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991. Serbia tried, but ultimately
failed, to subdue the Croatian and Slovenian secessions (Thompson, Nordic, Central, and
Southeastern Europe, 2009). In an instance of inter-ethnic discord over a disputed resource, the
Nigeria-Biafra war comes to mind. The Eastern region was oil-rich and dominated by the Igbo
ethnic group, while the Hausa-dominated Northern region of Nigeria and the Yoruba-dominated
Western region had few petroleum reserves. It has been argued that the Hausa and Yoruba
teamed up together to subdue the Igbo-led Biafran secession to ensure they received their share
of Nigeria's petro-profits. In other words, the Hausa and Yoruba desire for oil drove them to
clash with the Igbo, whose region possessed most of Nigeria's petroleum reserves (Dickovik,
2009). An example of an oppressed and exploited nationality desiring independence from a
“metropolitan” is the Bengali desire to secede from Pakistan in 1971. Most Bengalis in
Pakistan's eastern wing thought the West Pakistanis, principally the Punjabis, were getting rich
off their labors, and that they were benefiting little from West Pakistani domination of the
Pakistani state. This factor played a role in the Bengali secessionist rebellion, and the majority
of Bangladeshis feel that they are economically better off in an independent state than as part of
Pakistan (Russell, 2009). A case of an ethnic majority fearing for its status is Latvia during the
Soviet era. Many Russians moved into Latvia, and by 1989, the Letts comprised only 52 % of
the Soviet republic's population. This fear of being swamped by the Russians drove the Lettish
effort to secure independence for their republic from the USSR. While violence between the
Letts and the Soviet central government was minimal, there was always the possibility during the
Soviet era that serious clashes could have erupted between the Latvians and the Russians
(Plakans, 1995). To sum up, there have been manifestations of ethnic violence sparked by
economic resource differences between regions.
3.2 Research Design: Methods and Cases
To answer my question, what explains ethnic conflict, I employ a comparative case study
approach. It is a heuristic case study, exploring questions and issues and finding corroboration
39
for them, and not a definitive case study because this project is in its infant stages (Eckstein,
1975). Since non-events are as important as events, I will include two instances where a
nationality has lived in peace with the dominant group without resorting to arms. My cases
where ethnic conflict has occurred are the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute (1988-94), the RussoChechen wars of 1994-96 and 1999-, and the Moldovan civil war of 1992. Of these three violent
disputes, the Chechen wars have occurred in the Russian Federation, while the other two have
happened in non-Russian former Soviet republics. In addition, I chose these three cases because
of the attention they have received in the Russian and international press. For non-event cases, I
have chosen the Crimea, an autonomous republic of Ukraine located on the Black Sea, which
was ceded to the Ukrainian SSR from the RSFSR by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954
(Sasse, 2007), and Tatarstan, the Russian republic for the Volga Tatars, which was created by the
RSFSR government in 1920 (Rorlich, 1986). The two non-events have the ethnic factor, but lack
armed conflict. In the Tatarstan case, there have not occurred serious violent clashes between the
Volga Tatars and the dominant group in the Russian Federation, the Russians. In the Crimean
case, no serious ethnic conflict has sprung up between the Russian majority and the Ukrainian
minority. While there has been violence between the Muslim Crimean Tatars and the Crimean
Russians and Ukrainians, it has not degenerated into sustained warfare. In other words, the
Crimea has largely seen peace between its three dominant ethnic groups.
As indicated in this book, there are other instances of ethnic conflict throughout the
former Soviet Union, such as the Abkhaz (1992-93, 2008) and South Ossetian (1991-92, 2008)
wars with the Georgian central government, the Uzbek clashes with the Meskhetian Turks in
1989 and with the Kyrgyz in 1990 and 2010, and the Kazakh confrontation with Russians of
North Caucasian descent at Novyy Uzen in 1990 (Goltz, 2008; Suny, 1994; Hahn, 2007; New
York Times, 2010). My criteria for choosing the three cases of ethnic violence that I will examine
in this study, the Nagorno-Karabakh war, the Moldovan civil war, and the post-Soviet RussoChechen wars, do not just include press coverage. The other Soviet and post-Soviet conflicts
also received press attention, but I selected them for other reasons. The Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute was the first one to break out in the USSR, and it challenged the Soviet Union's territorial
integrity. Chechnya's wars with the central government of the Russian Federation have been an
obstacle to the Kremlin's aim to maintain the territorial integrity of post-Soviet Russia. Likewise
the existence of the Transdnistrian republic threatens Moldova's claim to territorial wholeness.
40
In addition, Moldova's civil war was chosen because it appeared to lack the religious element
found in the other two cases. Nagorno-Karabakh and Chechnya can be interpreted as MuslimChristian clashes, while both antagonists in Moldova are Russian Orthodox. In the Moldovan
case, many Moldovan Romanians have recently joined the Bessarabian Metropolitan Church, the
Moldovan arm of the Romanian Orthodox Church, while there exist 1200 Russian Orthodox
churches in Moldova, which fall under the Russian Orthodox organization in the Moldovan
republic, the Moldovan Metropolitan Church (Shoemaker, 2009). Eastern Orthodox Christians,
to which belong the Russian and Romanian Orthodox Christians, consider themselves members
of a single Christian church, the Orthodox (Eastern) Church. Eastern Orthodox think of their
autocephalous (self-governing) national churches as parts of the Eastern Orthodox whole, and
that Eastern Orthodoxy is the only “true” Christian organization, with Catholics and Protestants
belonging to heterodox churches of questionable salvific value (Smith, 1991; Binns, 2002). This
factor has not prevented the autocephalous Orthodox churches from backing the state to which
they are affiliated. For example, Russia's Eastern Orthodox population and hierarchy backed
Russia in its 2008 war with Georgia, while the Georgian Eastern Orthodox supported the
Saakashvili government in Tbilisi. As mentioned in the previous section, it appears that religious
conflict may play a cheerleading role in territorial and ethnic disputes.
My central time period is 1988 to the present (2011), beginning with the year that the first
serious ethnic dispute broke out during the Gorbachev years. Gorbachev's policies unleashed the
forces that brought down the Soviet Union. Ethnic conflict was one of the unleashed forces.
Nationality wars weakened the authority of the Soviet central government, and exacerbated the
USSR's economic problems because the Soviet regions were interdependent. Soviet economic
planners placed a particular industry or economic activity in a particular region. For example,
Uzbekistan was the USSR's chief cotton-producing region. Any disorder in the USSR threatened
one economic cog, which caused the other cogs to become disjointed. In other words, a major
Soviet disturbance, particularly a secession effort, caused the whole interdependent USSR
economy to unravel, leading in particular to a decrease in gross domestic product (GDP)
(Dziewanowski, 2003). Any project that examines post-Soviet politics has to begin with
Gorbachev and his actions. It can be argued that Soviet nationality propaganda and policies
reinforced the sense of territoriality the Soviet peoples held, and thus made the ethnic conflicts
that erupted after Gorbachev assumed power that much more explosive. It has been argued that
41
the Communist elites in the Soviet Union were paralyzed by the eruption of nationalist ferment.
They may have readily given up power, or merely adopted the nationalist program of their
ethnically-conscious opponents because they were caught by surprise by the nationalist eruptions
and ethnic conflicts. Having convinced themselves that they had solved the “national question,”
the ethnic ferment that broke out into the open after 1988 left the Communist elites unprepared to
deal with a situation that was unprecedented to their minds. This line of reasoning has validity.
Gorbachev and his predecessors ignored the existence of territoriality in human beings, assuming
that Communist regimes imposed internationalist consciousness on the masses through MarxistLeninist propaganda. It can be argued that the Communist leaders in the USSR bought their own
internationalist propaganda, and were unprepared to deal with national consciousness. Be that as
it may, this project will investigate the link between Soviet nationality policies and Gorbachev's
actions.
I use a comparative case study method because not enough time has elapsed between
Gorbachev's accession to power and the present day (2011) to employ a quantitative method. In
addition, the details underlying each case of ethnic conflict are important, and help contribute to
my explanation. Even though it is easier to generalize from a quantitative model, sometimes the
details are crucial, and cannot be overlooked. For example, Transdnistria is multi-ethnic, yet the
various groups share a common identity based on a shared territory. What accounts for this
seeming deviation from mono-ethnicity, which underpins most territorial cases? For this project,
a most-similar systems design will be used, for the post-Soviet space shared many characteristics
in common, among which are a similar imperial (Russian) heritage, the background of a common
command economy model and transitions to capitalism, and the legacy of a left-wing singleparty dictatorship. In addition, all of the former Soviet republics at least pay lip service to
establishing democratic polities, and they are presidential republics. While Moldova's
parliament has more power than the president, its chief executive serves as head of state.
Ukraine is a presidential-parliamentary republic, while Georgia and the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) members have presidents who are more powerful than their republics'
national legislatures. However, the former Soviet republics do not share everything in common.
Nine are traditionally Christian, while six are nominally Muslim (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan). At the same time the languages of the former USSR
belong to different language groups, the Slavic and Turkic being the most common. Russian,
42
Ukrainian, and Belarussian are East Slavic tongues, while most Central Asians and the Azeris
speak Turkic languages. Armenian is a distinct Indo-European language that is distantly related
to the Slavic languages, while Chechen is a Caucasian tongue that resembles Georgian.
Moldova's Romanians speak a Romance language, the only one in the former USSR, and it is
related to French and Spanish (World Almanac, 2010; Lieven, 1998). It is the case, though, that
the Soviet successor states share enough in common, especially on the political plane, to justify
the use of a most-similar systems approach.
I chose the former USSR as the spatial domain for this study because I am interested in
how Soviet nationality policies influenced the development of ethnic identity, and helped stoke
conflict once Soviet central controls were eased. It now appears that Soviet Marxism did not
diminish national identities in the USSR, but rather pushed them underground, where they
festered until Gorbachev launched perestroika. This researcher is interested in postCommunism, and how the Soviet successor states are handling ethnic issues. The former
Yugoslavia has been the focus of the study of ethnic conflict in post-Cold War Europe. This
study, like Monica Toft's (2003), attempts to bring attention to national disputes in the former
Soviet Union, where ethnic disputes have been confined to the periphery of the post-Soviet
space. My project explores the territorial dimension of nationality conflicts in the Soviet
successor states, just like the one by Toft (2003). In a sense it is a quasi-replication of her work.
However, I chose a somewhat different case selection, and conceptualize territoriality somewhat
differently than Toft (2003) does. I begin my study with the Gorbachev years because he
initiated the policies that led to the resurgence of national disputes in the former USSR. Before
Gorbachev, there were ethnic disputes, such as the 1979 conflict between the Georgians and
Abkhaz over keeping Georgian as the Georgian SSR's official language (Toft, 2003; Zuercher,
2007), but the Soviet central government managed to clamp down on them. Only under
Gorbachev did the Soviet ethnic disputes take on a life of their own. I continue this study into
the post-Gorbachev era because all of the ethnic conflicts in this project are related to the
breakup of the Soviet Union. Even the two Russo-Chechen wars are related to this event. What
stoked the ethnic conflicts in the USSR was the expression of the territorial impulse among the
Soviet peoples, which 70 years of “proletarian internationalist” propaganda failed to eradicate.
These are the reasons for choosing the spatial-temporal domain that will be examined.
43
Non-events may have the same import as events in explaining why some phenomenon
occurs or not. There are latent and not-so-latent ethnic differences in the former USSR that have
not turned violent, and it is interesting to see what factor is missing from the “peaceful” ethnic
disputes, Russo-Volga Tatar relations and the relationship between the Russians, Ukrainians, and
Crimean Tatars in Crimea and the peninsula's interactions with the Ukrainian central government
in Kiev. It is possible that present-day Tatarstan was conquered so long ago, in October, 1552,
that the Volga Tatars have resigned themselves to Russian rule (Daulet, 2003), while the
Chechens were conquered by the Russians relatively recently, in the 1780s, and thus have a more
recent memory of independence (Goltz, 2003; Lieven, 1998). It is probable that the Sufism
(Islamic mysticism) of the Chechens has a more militant character than the Jadidist (new
learning) approach of the Volga Tatars (Daulet, 2003; Lieven, 1998). This theory rests on the
view that elites drive conflict. If my territorial explanation is corroborated, then it is more likely
that the reason for peaceful Russo-Volga Tatar relations may be the fact that Soviet
ethnographers and politicians drew Tatarstan's borders so as to dilute the Volga Tatar component
of the autonomous republic's population. At half of Tatarstan's population, the Volga Tatars
would find it difficult to wage a successful war of independence against the Russian central
government (Daulet, 2003; Rorlich, 1986). In the case of Chechnya, the Chechens form a
majority of the republic's population, and thus perceive that they have a greater chance to attain
sovereignty (Toft, 2003). What this boils down to is the idea that indigenous ethnic majorities in
a territorial entity think they have a greater chance of winning independence for their homeland
than do ethnic minorities in a territory (see Toft, 2003). This supposition is based on the
calculation an ethnic group makes concerning its homeland. In the case of Tatarstan, the Volga
Tatars want greater control over their republic, and territoriality provides the basis for Tatar
agitation for more autonomy. Soviet planners tried to dilute the Tatar component when creating
the Tatar ASSR, the Soviet ancestor of modern-day Tatarstan, so as to undermine the Tatars'
attachment to their territory, or at least to make it impossible for the Muslim Tatars to wage a war
of independence from Russia. This calculating move by Soviet policy-makers may prove that
they realized that Tatar territorial attachment to their homeland was a threat to the RSRSR's
integrity (Daulet, 2003; Rorlich, 1986). Had Soviet planners created a Tatar-majority republic,
then the Volga Tatars may have been more assertive about their national and territorial rights to
their homeland than they proved to be during Soviet times (except for the Stalinist phase). That
44
the present-day Volga Tatars want more freedom from Russian central government control
illustrates the failure of Soviet sblizhenie (the coming together of the Soviet peoples into one
nationality) and sliyanie (the merging of the Soviet peoples) policies (Martin, 2001).
Territoriality may be the underlying motivation for Tatar agitation.
My second case of non-violent ethnic conflict is the Crimean republic, which is an
autonomous entity in southern Ukraine. With eastern Ukraine, the southern part of the country is
more Russified than central and western parts of the country. Whereas central and western
Ukraine contains ethnic Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian, southern and eastern Ukraine contains
ethnic Russians in addition to russophone Ukrainians. In addition, Crimea contains a Crimean
Tatar minority, made up of Muslim Tatars who have arrived on the peninsula from Central Asian
exile (Sasse, 2007). Again, there appears to be a Christian-Muslim rift between the Crimean
Russians and Ukrainians, on the one hand, and the Crimean Tatars, on the other. Another
dimension comes into play in the Crimea case. Crimean Russians have ethnic kin in southern
and eastern Ukraine and in the Russian Federation, while the Crimean Ukrainian minority has
co-ethnics in “mainland” Ukraine. Both Crimean Russians and Ukrainians have support from
their ethnic brethren respectively in Russia and Ukraine, both of which are neighbors, sharing a
long common border. Given the proximity of Russia and Ukraine, and the fact that the Crimea
belonged to the RSFSR from 1920 to 1954, it comes as no surprise that the two East Slavic
neighbors have clashed over Crimea's status. Yet Russia and Ukraine have not gone to war over
Crimea, and the Crimean Russians and Ukrainians have remained peaceful neighbors on the
peninsula. While there has been violence between the Crimean Russian majority and the
Crimean Tatar minority, it has not escalated to prolonged and sustained war (Sasse, 2007). In
sum, Crimea has remained largely peaceful despite its conflict potential. This is a puzzle in need
of a possible solution. These are my reasons for examining the non-events.
I take actual cases where the important variable, violence, is missing. In the Crimean and
Tatarstan cases, the ethnic factor is present, but there is an absence of sustained violence based
on it. The omission of violence in the two non-event cases may elucidate the factors that lead an
ethnic dispute to escalate to bloodshed. It is possible that an ethnic group in its homeland will
not launch a war of independence if it is a minority in its home territory. As the Volga Tatars
make up half of their republic's population, it is probable that there is a threshold of 50 % or
under in the titular nationality's ethnic composition in its homeland. If it is 50 % or less, the
45
ethnic group may see no choice but to cooperate with the nationality that dominates the region.
In the Crimean case, the ethnic Russians compose 58 % of the autonomous republic's population,
while 24 % are Ukrainian and 12 % Tatar. Being in the majority and having support from coethnics in the Russian Federation, the Crimean Russians are in a potential position to have their
way, which would entail uniting Crimea with Russia. However, the Crimean Ukrainians belong
to the titular nationality of Ukraine, the Ukrainians, who make up 77 % of the Ukrainian
republic's population. In other words, the Crimean Russians are a local majority, while the
Crimean Ukrainians belong to the ethnic majority in the titular republic, Ukraine (Sasse, 2007).
In sum, what accounts for the lack of violence between the Crimean Russians and Ukrainians,
given that both have powerful co-ethnic patrons? This question will be addressed in the chapters
dealing with the non-events.
3.3 Conclusion and Summary
Territoriality is the concept that is being tested in this project, and it involves whether
people fight over territory because they have different views of what are the “proper” boundaries
between two competing polities. This concept is mutable to a certain extent because it can take
different forms, whether it is a boundary dispute or a claim by one polity to the entire territory of
another. Territorial disputes could be over land or water boundaries. A case of the latter is the
Pacific island nation of Kiribati's claim over several US-held atolls north of the sea territory of
Kiribati. Another example is the Marshall Islands' claim over Wake Island, a US possession.
Iraq's claim over Kuwait is an example of a perceived land requisition. Focusing on one of the
cases in this study, Armenia claims part of territory nominally held by Azerbaijan. Specifically,
the Azeri-Armenian conflict is over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia does not claim
all of Azerbaijan, only that part in which Armenians are the dominant group.
Territoriality is a constant. There must exist variation to have a proper causal
explanation. This variation is provided for in the six facilitating conditions. These facilitating
factors are: 1) size of an ethnic population; 2) role of elites; 3) availability of information; 4)
availability of an ethnic diaspora nearby; 5) location of an ethnic group; and 6) economic
resource differences. All of these facilitating conditions have a role to play in igniting ethnic
conflict. Territoriality provides the motive, while the facilitating conditions are the spark that
sets off ethnic conflict. Against my model are four competing explanations: elitism, economism,
environmentalism, and theological motivation. My explanation does not negate these four
46
factors, but rather subsumes them, and these four competing theories are seen as subordinate to
territoriality. The competing explanations are incorporated into the facilitating conditions, with
religion being a special case of a theological elite providing support for a polity in its struggle
with another. What distinguishes elitism from theological motivation is that the first takes place
in a worldly setting, while the latter occurs on a more transcendental dimension. Whether the
elite employs religion or not, it is motivated by territoriality to engage in conflict with another
ethnicity. In my construct, religion is a cheerleader in an ethnic-territorial dispute taking place in
modern times rather than the key driving ethnic wars. Religion tends to alter the stakes in a
territorial dispute. Thus, it has an influence on ethnic conflict, but it is not the overriding factor
in my territorial conception of nationality violence.
This project employs a comparative, most-similar systems, heuristic case study approach
to the question of what causes ethnic conflict. Being heuristic, it is exploratory, and represents
the beginning of this research project. It is qualitative, so it is geared toward generating
hypotheses and exploring specific cases in detail to gauge what underlies ethnic conflict. On the
other hand, it is hard to generalize the specific cases beyond the spatial-temporal domain, the
former USSR since 1988. It is my hope to see if my findings extend to other spatial domains in
the post-World War II era. If the dynamics at work in the former Soviet Union are at work in
other spatial domains, such as Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America, then the territoriality
theory has greater generalizable applicability.
Territoriality is the theory that this project examines. It is the purpose of the case studies
to see how well territoriality applies to specific situations. I have chosen to examine three
instances of ethnic conflict in the post-Soviet space, which are defined as events and include
Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Moldova, and two examples of latent ethnic conflict, which
are non-events because they have not escalated to sustained bloodshed and include Crimea and
Tatarstan. Before examining the cases, it is necessary to explore Russian and Soviet nationalities
policy, and the role they played in making ethnic conflict in the former USSR more likely.
47
CHAPTER FOUR
RUSSIAN AND SOVIET NATIONALITIES POLICIES
This chapter covers the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet nationalities policies in the
territory that encompasses the former Soviet Union. Most of the coverage in this chapter will
concern Soviet policies toward the USSR's non-Russian minorities and the nationality policies of
the Russian Federation and the other Soviet successor states. I will start out with pre-Soviet
tsarist government policy toward the Russian ethnicity and the non-Russian ethnic minorities,
then proceed with Lenin and Stalin's ideas of how to treat the Soviet Union's non-Russians.
After quickly reviewing Khrushchev and Brezhnev's nationalities policies, this chapter will
analyze Gorbachev's approach to the USSR's ethnic minorities, who made up one-half of the
population of the Soviet Union in 1985. At the end of this chapter, I will discuss the Soviet
successor states' policies toward their ethnic minorities, those who do not belong to the titular
nationality. The Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania will be excluded from this
analysis, with Russia and the other eleven former Soviet republics being the focus of my
attention. It is the argument of this chapter that Soviet nationalities policies inadvertently stoked
the flames of nationalism, and that the post-Soviet order still has to deal with this inheritance.
Russian Nationalities Policy in the Tsarist Era
Since the reign of Ivan III the Great, the Muscovite state pursued a policy of bringing the
other Russian principalities, those on the territory of what had once been Kievan Rus, under its
control. By enacting this policy, the Muscovite rulers sought to restore unity to the lands that
were once under Kievan Rus' authority. By restoring political unity under its authority, the
Muscovite state aimed to create a successor to Kievan Rus that was powerful on the international
scene. Besides dominating the East Slavic lands, Muscovy hoped that a unified state under its
control would ward off foreign invasions. Under Grand Prince Ivan III (1462-1505), the
“gathering process” began in earnest. This ruler conquered the major Russian rivals of
Novgorod in 1471-79 and Tver' in 1485. In 1480, Ivan the Great proclaimed that Muscovy
would no longer pay any tribute, or rather would not offer “gifts” any longer, to the Golden
Horde. After this de jure declaration of independence from the Mongols, the Golden Horde khan
48
in Sarai sent an army to subdue the “rebellious” Muscovites. Ivan III ordered his army to
confront the Mongol military formation. Both armies faced each other on the Ugra River, but
battle was not joined. With this non-event that followed Ivan the Great's declaration of
independence, Mongol rule over Russia came to an end, and Muscovy arose as a successor state
of Kievan Rus. Ivan the Great was the first Muscovite ruler to use the title of tsar', which is the
Russian rendering of Caesar. He took this nomenclature from the East Roman (Byzantine)
Empire. In addition, he married the niece, Zoe, of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI
Palaeologus, and he created the tsarist national emblem, combining the double-headed eagle of
the Byzantine emblem with Saint George slaying a dragon. This emblem was re-adopted as
Russia's state symbol by Yeltsin, and it is still in use to this day. After Ivan the Great's death in
1505, his son, Vasily III, succeeded him. Vasily III (1505-33) conquered the last two
independent Russian principalities, Pskov and Ryazan. With this action, the modern Russian
ethnicity was brought under a single authority, that of the Muscovite state. This polity was made
up mostly of ethnic Russians who adhered to the Eastern Orthodox faith (Riasanovsky and
Steinberg, 2011).
To the west of Muscovy in 1500 was the Lithuanian state. In the 13th and 14th centuries,
Lithuania had taken over territory from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. In 1386, the Lithuanians
united their state with Poland, and they converted to the Poles' faith, Catholicism. Poland and
Lithuania legally merged in 1569, in the Union of Lublin. This Polish-Lithuanian state
controlled East Slavic lands. In these East Slavic territories, there emerged the Belorussian and
Ukrainian ethnicities, which were similar to the Russians, but distinct from them. By the Union
of Brest in 1596, a minority of Ukrainians accepted papal primacy, while the pope allowed these
Ukrainians to preserve their Byzantine rite. Most Ukrainians and the Belorussians still adhered
to the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith though. The Muscovite state considered the Ukrainians
and Belorussians to be its “natural” potential subjects because the Russians, Ukrainians, and
Belorussians were all heirs of the Kievan Rus inheritance in its view. This way of approaching
the Ukrainians and Belorussians put Muscovy on a collision course with the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. However, the Muscovite state had to contend with the Muslim successor
khanates of the Golden Horde, namely the Crimean, Kazan', Astrakhan', and Sibir' khanates, first
(Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011).
49
It fell to Ivan IV the Terrible to tackle the Muslim khanates. By the time of his reign,
Muscovy was strong enough to take them on, and incorporate them into the enlarged Muscovite
state. Ivan the Terrible (1533-84) succeeded his father, Vasily III, upon the latter's death, but he
only had himself crowned tsar' in 1547. Around this later date, Ivan IV assumed the affairs of
the Muscovite state himself. He feared that the Kazan' and Astrakhan' khanates would join with
the Ottoman Empire, which included the Crimean khanate at this time, to inflict a serious defeat
on Muscovite armies. To prevent such an eventuality, he decided to strike first. In 1552, he sent
an army to take over the Kazan' khanate. On October 2 (Old Style)/ October 15 (New Style),
1552, the Muscovite army captured Kazan' city, and thus secured control over the entire khanate.
Kazan' khanate lost its existence as a separate state, and became part of Muscovy. With this
action, the Muslim Volga Tatars became subjects of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Muscovite
state. This non-Russian nationality became the first one to fall under Russian authority. With the
conquest of Kazan' khanate, Muscovy became a multinational empire. Ivan the Terrible
proceeded to take over Astrakhan' khanate in 1558, overthrow the khanate's Muslim Tatar
dynasty, and add the territory that had been the Astrakhan' khanate, to his expanding imperial
state. In the Muscovite northeast, a merchant family, the Stroganovs, sponsored a Cossack army
led by Yermak, which proceeded to invade the Sibir' khanate in 1581. Ivan IV sent the
Muscovite army into the Sibir' khanate to consolidate the Russian conquest of it. With this
action, the Muscovite eastern flank was secure from a potential Muslim threat. Russian traders,
adventurers, and soldiers went on to acquire lands east of the Sibir' khanate, reaching the Pacific
coast in 1649. Additional territory in this region later fell under Muscovite control. This vast
region, which was made up of the Sibir' khanate and lands to its east, became the Russian region
of Siberia. In the Russian language, the Asian part of the current-day Russian Federation is
called Sibir', and Siberia is an Anglicized version of this nomenclature. With the addition of
Siberia, the Muscovite state took over an area with several indigenous ethnic groups. The
Siberian conquest truly made Russia into a multinational state. In 1654, Tsar' Aleksei concluded
the Treaty of Pereyaslavl with the Ukrainian Cossack hetman (leader) Bogdan Khmel'nitsky,
which added present-day eastern Ukraine up to the Dniepr River to the tsarist realm. Thus,
Muscovy began its incorporation of Ukrainian lands into Muscovite territory (Riasanovsky and
Steinberg, 2011; Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003; Naumov, 2006; Subtelny, 2009).
50
Muscovy was a multinational state by 1600. However, it was an empire, with a single
dynasty controlling and dominating its government, rather than a modern-day nation-state. The
ruling houses, the Riurikhids until 1598, and the Romanovs from 1613 until 1917, derived their
legitimacy from Russian Orthodoxy and invoked the “divine right of kings” doctrine to justify
their imperial rule over Russia. Russia's tsars and empresses reasoned that their authority
derived from divine sources, and not from the people. This line of reasoning was utilized to
justify one-person rule, autocracy. Reigning in the name of Russian Orthodoxy was also used to
justify efforts to convert the Volga Tatars to Christianity from Islam. Such a proselytizing effort
was a failure. In fact, it provoked numerous risings by the Volga Tatars against Russian rule. In
1773, the Volga Tatars and Bashkirs joined in the Pugachev rebellion. Partially, to undermine
support for Pugachev's uprising, Empress Catherine II the Great issued an ukaz (decree) that
granted religious toleration to practitioners of non-Christian religions. She may have also
wanted to keep the Buddhist Kalmyks, a Mongol ethnicity, from taking part in the Pugachev
insurrection. In 1789, she allowed Russia's Muslim peoples to have a nation-wide council that
would look after their religious affairs, though she appointed its members. Catherine the Great
took part in the three partitions of Poland, in 1772, 1793, and 1795, that resulted in the
disappearance of an independent Polish state from the map of Europe. With the partitions, she
brought in Ukrainians, Belorussians, Jews, and Poles under Russian rule. Catherine the Great
also fought the Turks in two wars, one from 1768 to 1774, and the other from 1787 to 1792.
After the first Russo-Turkish war, Russia extended its influence over the affairs of the Crimean
khanate. Finally, in April, 1783, Russia annexed the Crimean khanate, which provoked the
second war with the Ottoman Empire, a conflict Russia won. As a result of the 1792 Treaty of
Jassy, Russia extended its border with Ottoman Turkey to the Dniestr River. During Catherine
II's reign, Russia started on its conquest of the North Caucasus region, incorporating the northern
Ossets, Chechens, Ingush, and Dagestanis into the Russian realm. Catherine the Great added
more peoples to the tsarist empire, and her successors followed in her steps, conquering new
territories for the Russian empire, and bringing more ethnicities under the Russian imperial
Crown (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Rorlich, 1986; Millward, 2007; King, 2000; Fisher,
1978; Suny, 2001).
Tsar' Aleksandr I pursued an expansionist policy, adding the territory making up modernday Finland to the Russian realm in 1809 after a successful war with Sweden. Next, he fought
51
the Ottoman Turks, and beat them. By the Treaty of Bucharest with the Ottoman Empire, Russia
acquired sovereign control over the region between the Dniestr and the Prut Rivers, which
Aleksandr I christened Bessarabia. Thus, Russia won control over a largely Romanian-inhabited
territory. In 1801, Russia expanded into the southern Caucasus by annexing the Kingdom of
Georgia, an Eastern Orthodox Christian realm. Aleksandr I also fought Persia, and secured from
the Persian monarchy the territory that now makes up the Republic of Azerbaijan and Karabagh.
As a result of Russia's participation in the anti-Napoleon alliance, the tsarist empire was awarded
with a large chunk of Polish territory which included Warsaw. Aleksandr I called his Polishinhabited realm the Kingdom of Poland. Along with the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Kingdom
of Poland enjoyed autonomy under the Russian imperial rubric. However, subsequent tsars
revoked their autonomous status, alienating the Poles and Finns from Russian rule, an enmity
which set the stage for the independence of Poland and Finland during and after World War I.
Under Tsar' Nicholas I, Russia fought the Ottoman Empire and Persia. By the Treaty of
Turkmenchai with Persia, Russia secured control over the territory that now makes up the
Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijani region of Nakhichevan. In 1830-31, the Poles rose up
against Russian rule. After suppressing this uprising, Nicholas I rescinded Polish autonomy, and
turned Russian Poland into an ordinary gubernia (province). It was in 1833 that Nicolas I's
minister of education, Uvarov, came up with the Official Nationality ideology, which proclaimed
Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality the cornerstone of Russia's “nationality” policy. In
practice, this policy meant that the Russian autocrat would rule without ceding any authority to
other branches of government. By Orthodoxy, this policy meant that the Russian Orthodox
Church was the state religion of the tsarist empire, a tradition that went back to the early days of
the Muscovite state, when the Russian Orthodox patriarch decided to make Moscow his
patriarchal see in 1328. Continuing the Byzantine tradition, the Russian patriarch submitted to
the Muscovite autocrat. Although tsar' and patriarch were supposed to jointly preside over the
Orthodox Church in theory, the secular autocrat had the upper hand in practice. This is indicated
by tsar' Peter the Great, who altered the Russian Orthodox governing authority, replacing the
patriarch with the Holy Synod, a body that was under the complete control of the autocrat, in
1721. The Russian Orthodox Church's subordination to the autocrat was tied in with the third
pillar of Official Nationality, nationality. This term implied that the Russian people and the
others under the tsarist imperial realm were to submit to the Russian autocrat, and offer him/her
52
unconditional obedience. Official Nationality guided tsarist policy toward the Russians and the
non-Russian ethnicities until the fall of the tsarist government in 1917 (Riasanovsky and
Steinberg, 2011; Suny, 1994; Payaslian, 2007; de Waal, 2003; Altstadt, 1992).
Nicolas I attempted to extend Russian influence over the Ottoman Empire's Orthodox
Christian subjects in the early 1850s. One indication of his intentions was the effort to make
Crimea into a “Russian Athos,” a holy site that Russian Orthodox monks and nuns would inhabit,
and that Russian Orthodox pilgrims would visit. He also claimed the Holy Land's Christian
religious sites for the Russian Orthodox Church, a policy that created friction with Catholic
France, which extended its own claim to the Christian holy sites in Palestine. Britain and France
saw the largest issue as Russian control over Ottoman Turkey's Orthodox Christian subjects.
Were Nicholas I to attain his objective, Britain and France reasoned, then Russia would have de
facto control over Ottoman-held Europe (Rumelia) and the Armenian-inhabited regions of
Anatolia. To prevent the realization of Nicolas I's dream, Britain and France went to war against
Russia, and sided with the Ottoman Empire. British, French, and Ottoman forces fought the
Russians on the Crimean peninsula, and the Russians were defeated. This failure may have
contributed to Nicolas I's death in 1855. Nicolas I's son and successor, Aleksandr II, made peace
with the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and France. This setback did not stop Aleksandr II from
expanding the Russian realm. Russia began to take over the Kazakh lands in 1730, and had
completed this process by the mid-19th century. In 1865, Russia initiated its conquest of southern
Central Asia, seizing Tashkent in that year. It then proceeded to take over the khanates of
Bukhara, Khiva, and Kokand, and completed its Central Asian conquests by seizing control of
the Turkmen-inhabited lands of Transcaspia in 1881. Meanwhile, Russia subjugated the peoples
of the western North Caucasus during the reign of Aleksandr II, and tsarist forces crushed the
rebellion of Imam Shamil in the area made up of present-day Chechnya and Dagestan in 1859.
By the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and the 1860 Treaty of Peking, Russia acquired Chinese territory up
to the Amur and Ussuri Rivers. In 1864, the Poles rose up for a second time, but the Russian
army crushed this insurrection (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Allworth, 1994; Lievan, 1998;
Royle, 2000; Kozelsky, 2010).
Aleksandr II was assassinated by radical populists in March, 1881. His son, Aleksandr
III, took over, and began a Russification campaign. He wanted the non-Russian peoples to speak
Russian as their primary language, kept the Ukrainians and Belorussians under the control of the
53
Russian Orthodox Church, and his Okhrana secret police cracked down on any non-Russian
nationalist ferment. He maintained the discriminatory practices against the empire's Jews,
confining them to the cities and settlements of the Pale of Settlement, and not allowing the
Russian Jews to own land or till it. Aleksandr III died in 1894, and his son, Nicolas II, became
tsar'. In general, Nicolas II maintained his father's Russification drive, extending it to Finland.
In the late 1890s, he revoked Finland's status as an autonomous grand duchy, an action that
caused the Finns to resent Russian rule. An 1897 imperial census revealed that ethnic Russians
composed 44.5 % of the tsarist empire's population. This meant that the non-Russians formed a
majority in the imperial realm. Despite being a minority, the Russian people made up a plurality
in the territory ruled by Tsar' Nicholas II. The Russfication policies of Aleksandr III and
Nicholas II indicate that the Russian ethnicity was the favored one in the tsarist realm. Another
indication of this policy is that the Russian Orthodox Church was the state religion of the
Russian Empire. Russia's tsars and empresses ensured that the Ukrainians and Belorussians did
not form separate Orthodox churches, and that they remained under the Russian Orthodox
patriarchs and Holy Synod. While Catherine the Great granted religious toleration to nonChristians, Russia's rulers favored Russian Orthodoxy over other religious systems, a fact that is
indicated by their sponsorship of a Russian Athos on the Crimean peninsula, and by attempts by
Nicholas I and his successors to “persuade” the Volga Tatars to convert to Russian Orthodoxy.
Under Nicolas II, there occurred a series of pogroms against the Jews, the most famous one
happening in Kishinev in 1903. During the pre-1905 part of his reign, Nicholas II continued
with his father's policies, and Official Nationality was the cornerstone of his political thinking
(Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; King, 2000; Kozelsky, 2010; Rorlich, 1986).
Nicholas II attempted to expand Russian influence into Manchuria and Korea. This
policy led to war with Japan, which also coveted those areas. Japan defeated Russian forces on
land and on the sea, and Russia capitulated to Japanese demands in the US-mediated Treaty of
Portsmouth. This action touched off the Russian Revolution of 1905, which Nicholas II
managed to crush, but at the cost of agreeing to establish a legislative branch called the Duma.
Non-Russians won representation in the four pre-1917 Dumas, but Nicholas II restricted the
franchise of the 3rd and 4th Dumas in order to ensure that pro-tsar' parties controlled the
legislature. As a result of Nicholas II's limiting of the vote, the non-Russian minorities lost
significant representation in the later two Dumas. Despite his setback in the Russo-Japanese War
54
of 1904-5, Nicholas II took advantage of the Chinese Revolution and the subsequent disorder in
China to acquire influence in Tuva and Outer Mongolia. Both regions proceeded to establish
pro-Russian governments after the 1911 Chinese Revolution. After Nicholas II issued his
October Manifesto in 1905, he unwillingly allowed nationalist parties to operate in the empire.
Among these nationalist parties were the Armenian Dashnaktsutiun, the Russian Muslim Ittifak,
which the Volga Tatars led, the Kazakh Alash Orda, and the Azerbaijani Turk Mussavat. As
before the 1905 Revolution, the Okhrana kept tabs on the affairs of the non-Russian nationalist
parties. Among anti-Semitic Russians arose the “Black Hundreds,” which were bands that
preyed on Jews. As long as the tsarist state could hold on, the nationalist movements were held
in check, and Nicholas II could pursue Official Nationality as a bedrock of tsarist rule of Imperial
Russia (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Rorlich, 1986; Olcott, 1995; Altstadt, 1992; Payaslian,
2007).
In February (Old Style)/ March (New Style), 1917, the tsarist regime collapsed due to the
pressures of Russian involvement in the First World War, especially inflation and food shortages,
Nicholas II's mismanagement of Russia's military effort, and Rasputin's scandalous behavior,
which included appointing incompetent non-entities to ministerial posts. Nicholas II and his son,
Aleksei, abdicated, and a Provisional Government, composed of Octobrist liberals and socialists
(though not Bolsheviks), took over. At the same time, councils of workers and soldiers called
Soviets were formed, and they constituted a parallel government to the Provisional Government.
Under Prince Georgy Lvov and his successor, Aleksandr Kerensky, a Socialist Revolutionary, the
Provisional Government promised freedom to the Russians and the non-Russian nationalities. In
practice, this meant that the non-Russian minorities would enjoy autonomy within a Russian
federal republic, though the Provisional Government did not spell out national self-government
in great detail, leaving this matter to a popularly-elected Constituent Assembly. In the chaos that
followed the February/March, 1917 revolution, Russia's national minorities took advantage of
the newly-established latitude to assert their interests within the Russian republican structure.
For example, the Volga Tatars pressed for a non-territorially-based autonomy for the Russian
Muslims as a whole, although the other Muslim peoples in Russia aimed for the creation of
territorially-based national units within the Russian polity. This national ferment came to an end
with the Bolshevik seizure of power (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Rorlich, 1986).
55
Soviet Nationalities Policy
On October 25 (Old Style)/ November 7 (New Style), 1917, the Bolsheviks, the more
radical and elitist of the two Marxist factions in Russia, took over the reigns of government in a
coup. They initially took over Petrograd and Moscow, the latter with some bloodshed. Next, the
other Soviets fell in line behind the Bolshevik-installed regime. Vladimir Lenin, the head of the
Bolsheviks, became chair of the Soviet of Peoples' Commissars (Sovnarkom), in effect premier
of Soviet Russia. He appointed the Bolsheviks' expert on non-Russian minorities, Joseph Stalin,
as Peoples' Commissar (Minister) of Nationalities. Stalin was chosen as the Bolsheviks'
nationalities expert because he was an ethnic Georgian from the city of Gori, which is now a
major city in the Republic of Georgia. In other words, he was a non-Russian whom Lenin
thought understood the non-Russian perspective. Stalin joined up with Lenin when the latter
formed the Bolshevik faction in 1903, and he wrote an essay on the nationality question in
Russia. Stalin's loyalty to Lenin, and his non-Russian origin were sufficient for Lenin to appoint
him as his Peoples' Commissar of Nationalities. The Bolsheviks had no definite plan on file with
regard to the non-Russian nationalities when they took power in 1917. Instead, they based their
policy on Austro-federalism, the Austrian socialist plan to set up national autonomous units for
Austria-Hungary's subject peoples. There was no precise plan for the arrangement of national
units in Russia, but Austro-federalism was Stalin's and the Bolsheviks' guiding principle when
they set out to organize Russia's ethnic minorities. Initially, Lenin set up a Communist
government for the ethnic Russians called the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
(RSFSR). In March, 1918, he moved the RSFSR capital to Moscow, and the Bolsheviks were
rechristened Communists. Shortly afterward, a civil war broke out in Russia between the
Communists and the anti-Communist Whites. Later in the year, the White cause fell into the
hands of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, who seized control of the White government in Omsk in a
putsch. His base of military operations was Siberia. The other White generals in Russia,
Vrangel in the Russian North, Yudenich in Estonia, and Denikin in Ukraine and the Kuban area,
nominally submitted to Kolchak's rule. Kolchak enunciated a “Russia, One and Indivisible”
platform, which entailed making the ethnic Russians the dominant and ruling group in Russia,
with the non-Russians submitting to Russian rule, and obtaining no ethnic autonomy from
Kolchak in return. Lenin and Stalin reacted to Kolchak's unitarist program, and their
nationalities policy was partially formed in reaction to it. By promising Russia's non-Russian
56
nationalities autonomy, even the right to secede from Russia, Lenin and Stalin won over
significant numbers of non-Russians (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Mawdsley, 2005).
In practice, the Soviet permission for secession by non-Russians was a non sequitor, for
Lenin intended to take over the territory that had composed the tsarist empire, and even to extend
Communist influence into Europe. He reasoned that nationalism was a “bourgeoisie” invention
that would fade away once the workers overthrew the ruling bourgeoisie and established
dictatorships of the proletariat. Lenin saw himself as the leader of the international Communist
movement, and he thought that Europe was ripe for Communist revolutions, and that Communist
takeovers of European countries would save the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. His anticipation
of Communist revolutions in Germany, Italy, France, and the other European states proved to be
premature. While there were Communist takeovers in Hungary under Bela Kun and in Bavaria,
these Marxist revolutionary regimes collapsed, and were crushed by the Romanian army and the
Freikorps (Free Corps), respectively. On the territory that had made up the Russian imperial
state, Finnish nationalists defeated Finnish Communists in a civil war, and the Estonians, Letts,
and Lithuanians beat back Communist armies. At the end of the Russian civil war, the Soviet
army invaded Poland with the aim of making the Polish state into a Soviet republic, and to use
Poland as a springboard for Communist expansion into Germany. Under General Pilsudski, the
Polish army beat back the Soviet one on the outskirts of Warsaw, the Polish capital. After this
“Miracle on the Vistula,” the Polish army proceeded to take over western Belorussian and
Ukrainian territory. The 1921 Treaty of Riga, which was signed by Soviet Russia and Poland, set
the Soviet-Polish boundary, and codified Poland's gains at the expense of Soviet Russia. In the
days after the German capitulation to the Allies in November, 1918, Romania occupied and took
over Bessarabia. As a result of these events, Lenin's government lost Poland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Finland, and Bessarabia, lands that had belonged to the tsarist empire (Riasanovsky
and Steinberg, 2011, Davies, 1972).
Concerning the other territories that were possessions of the tsarist state, Lenin and his
Soviet army managed to take them over after having defeated the Whites in battle. Lenin had to
concentrate on the White threat, so he gave little initial attention to the non-Russian nationalities
question. Even Stalin was sent to Tsaritsyn, which was on the Volga, to help the Soviet army
beat back a White advance. The armies of Kolchak, Yudenich, Vrangel, and Denikin were
defeated, and the Soviet armed forces moved into Siberia and the non-Russian areas of the
57
former tsarist state. Stalin and Soviet ethnographers set out to carve out national units for the
non-Russian groups. Not all non-Russian nationalities received “autonomous” political units.
For example, several Siberian peoples such as the Even, the Itelmen, and the Eskimos were
considered too small to obtain territorially-defined units. It was south of Siberia that the Russian
Communists established their first satellites. Soviet forces conquered Tuva and Outer Mongolia.
Instead of incorporating these two areas into the RSFSR, Lenin ordered that Communist parties
be formed to rule them, and that Outer Mongolia and Tuva would retain nominal independence,
while being subservient to the Soviet regime in Moscow. Tuva and Outer Mongolia served as
examples of what lay in store for any other countries that were taken over by Russian
Communist forces in the future. Stalin applied the lessons he learned in Outer Mongolia and
Tuva to Eastern Europe after World War II (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011).
The Soviet ethno-federal structure established by Lenin and Stalin was a complicated
arrangement. Initially, there was the RSFSR. When Soviet forces took over Belorussia and
Ukraine, they set up Soviet republican governments under the control of local Communist
parties. In the case of the south Caucasus, the Soviet army conquered Azerbaijan in April, 1920,
Armenia in December, 1920, and Georgia in February-March, 1921. These three south
Caucasian republics were amalgamated into the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist
Republic (TSFSR), with its headquarters in Tbilisi. While there were local Armenian, Georgian,
and Azerbaijani Communist parties, some powers were “delegated” by the Armenian SSR, the
Georgian SSR, and the Azerbaijan SSR to the TSFSR government. In theory, the RSFSR, the
TSFSR, the Belorussian SSR, and the Ukrainian SSR were nominally independent, but the
Soviet Communist party in Moscow controlled all of their affairs in practice, even local
Communist party matters. In Central Asia, the Bolsheviks secured control of Tashkent in late
1917, and used it as a base for their operations in the area, which included crushing an
autonomist government in Kokand. The Soviet Army under General Mikhail Frunze conquered
the Kazakh lands and southern Central Asia after defeating Kolchak's forces. Initially, Central
Asia was incorporated into the RSFSR. Stalin wanted to incorporate the TSFSR, the Belorussian
SSR, and the Ukrainian SSR into the RSFSR structure, but Lenin overrode Stalin on this point.
On the other hand, Lenin preferred to set up a federal level that was above the RSFSR and the
other three Soviet republics. Stalin gave into Lenin, and acceded to Lenin's request to create the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This USSR government was theoretically and in
58
actuality the highest state authority in the former tsarist territories. On December 30, 1922, the
RSFSR, the TSFSR, the Belorussian SSR, and the Ukrainian SSR signed the union treaty that
created the USSR. As of this date, the Soviet Union came into being as the highest state
authority that the Russian Communists controlled (Goltz, 2003; Riasanovsky and Steinberg,
2011).
Although the Russians' union-republic, the RSFSR, was the largest in area and the most
populous, it was a “ghost state” that did not share certain features with the Soviet Socialist
Republics, the SSRs. Unlike the other union-republics, the RSFSR did not have its own
Academy of Sciences, Communist Party, or police force. Lenin and Stalin feared that the
Russians would pursue autonomist goals if they possessed their own Communist Party. They
wanted the ethnic Russians to identify primarily with the USSR government and the Soviet
Communist party. In this objective they were successful. Ethnic Russians tended to identify the
Soviet Union as their “homeland,” and to look to the Soviet Communist party for direction. This
identification of the USSR with Russianess was strengthened by the adoption of the Russian
language as the state tongue of the Soviet Union. It was only when the Communist reformer
Boris Yeltsin was elected chair of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet on May 29, 1990, and that this
legislative body declared the RSFSR's “sovereignty” on June 12, 1990, that one can speak of the
RSFSR as behaving as a political entity with an agenda that was distinct from that of the Soviet
central government (Goltz, 2003; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Colton, 2008).
It was in the 1920s that most national units were established for the USSR's non-Russian
nationalities. In October, 1924, Stalin detached the Uzbek and Turkmen ASSRs from the
RSFSR, and turned these regions into Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs). The first Soviet Union
constitution was implemented in 1924. With respect to the RSFSR, the 1924 Soviet constitution
was superior to the 1918 RSFSR charter. Five years later, in 1929, Stalin detached the Tadzhik
ASSR from the Uzbek SSR, and made it into a distinct SSR. He let the Uzbek SSR keep the
Tajik-inhabited cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, and he made Dushanbe the capital of the
newly-minted Tadzhik SSR. In 1919, the Russian Communists created the first national unit in
the RSFSR, the Bashkir ASSR. Lenin followed this with the creation of other Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republics (ASSRs), autonomous oblasts, and national okrugs (districts). In
May, 1920, the Sovnarkom issued an ukaz which created the Tatar ASSR, with its capital in
Kazan. This ASSR was the titular “homeland” for the Volga Tatars. Instances of autonomous
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oblasts were the Jewish (Birobidzhan) Autonomous Oblast' and the Kara-Kirghiz (Kyrgyz)
Autonomous Oblast'. In 1924, the Chechen and Ingush areas of the North Caucasus were
combined to create the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Oblast'. Kazakhs were placed in the
Kirghiz (Kazakh) ASSR in 1920, which was part of the RSFSR. In 1921, the Crimean ASSR,
which was also under RSFSR jurisdiction, was created for the Crimean Tatars, and the NagornoKarabakh Autonomous Oblast' was formed for the Armenians in the Azerbaijan SSR. Stalin
signaled his desire to annex Bessarabia by creating the Moldavian ASSR, which was under
Ukrainian SSR jurisdiction. Formation of Soviet national units did not end in the 1920s, but
continued up to Nikita Khrushchev's time (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Allworth, 1994;
Goltz, 2003; King, 2000; de Waal, 2003).
Stalin enunciated an official doctrine that was to guide the policy decisions of the
national units of the Soviet Union until the rise of Gorbachev. This Stalin policy was
summarized in the phrase, “national in form, socialist in content.” In theory, this meant that the
various nationalities of the USSR were allowed maximum expression of their ethnic heritage
under the Communist rubric. In practice, it came down to employing native languages to explain
Communist policies emanating from the Soviet Politburo in Moscow. This tendency became
especially pronounced with the enunciation of “socialist realism” in 1932. This doctrine that
guided Soviet artistic and literary endeavors boiled down to artists and writers following the
directives of the Soviet Communist party, painting socialism in a bright light, and showing that
the USSR was heading toward Communism. “Socialist Realism” supplanted the artistic and
literary experimentation in the Soviet Union that was a continuation of Russia's “Silver Age”
(Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011).
A corollary of the “national in form, socialist in content” doctrine was the policy of
korenizatsia (indigenization). What this meant in practice was that the titular ethnicity of a
Soviet national unit staffed its political (party and state) and cultural posts, and that the titular
nationality's language was employed in cultural matters to promote Communist doctrines. A
“national” first secretary used his position to promote his ethnic kin to the top political and
cultural posts in his bailiwick. In 1922, Stalin assumed the post of General-Secretary of the
Soviet Communist Party, and he used his post to staff the party with people loyal to him. This
power of appointment gave Stalin the advantage in his succession struggle against his rivals,
primarily Leon Trotsky, after Lenin's death in January, 1924. Likewise, Stalin's underlings in the
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national units employed their authority to appoint cadres to top posts who were loyal to them and
to Stalin. It has been argued that korenizatsia made the Soviet Union into an “affirmative action”
empire (Martin, 2001). What this meant was that the Soviet Communist leadership encouraged
the titular ethnicities in the national units to assume positions of leadership in the “reserves”
created for them. In fact, Soviet ethnographers created alphabets for nationalities that did not
have a written language. This sounds “progressive,” and it was, but it must be kept in mind that
the Russian Communists used literacy as a primary means of infusing loyalty by the USSR's
nationalities to the Soviet system they created. This took the form of alphabet changes for many
languages that employed “undesirable” scripts. The Volga Tatars, the Central Asian Turkic
peoples (the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Karakalpaks), and the Azerbaijanis were
required to drop their Arabic scripts and adopt Latin alphabets in the 1920s. By this action, these
nationalities cut themselves off from their cultural heritages, and they became basically illiterate
until they mastered the new Latin scripts. Despite Soviet denigration of the Russian heritage in
the 1920s, the ethnic Russians were the dominant nationality in the USSR. Their language was
the official tongue of the Soviet Union, and “acceptable” elements of Russian culture, such as
Pushkin and Tolstoy's writings, were taught in schools throughout the USSR (Riasanovsky and
Steinberg, 2011; Martin, 2001).
National historians in the Soviet Union had to view their individual histories through the
Communist prism, and show that the USSR was progressing to Communism. Even as early as
the 1920s, Lenin, Stalin, and the other Soviet authorities aimed to fuse the various Soviet
nationalities into one people, the New Soviet Man. According to Marxist theory, the socialist
political-economic order would negate the appeal of nationalism, and the proletarians (the
workers) would identify with each other as a class, and discard national identities. With the
elimination of the bourgeoisie, Soviet proletarians would fuse together into one new identity, the
New Soviet Man, who would take the leap from socialism to full-blown Communism, a society
composed of workers that is run by workers. Such a societal ordering would be classless
because there would exist one class only, the proletarians. Soviet leaders had two terms for this
process, sblizheniye (the coming together of the Soviet peoples) and sliyanie (the fusion of the
Soviet peoples). Soviet propaganda from the beginnings of the Communist regime spoke of
these processes as historically inevitable, with the fusion of Soviet peoples producing the New
Soviet Man, who would use Russian as his/her means of communication. Such was Marxist
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theory. In practice, had sliyanie occurred, all of the Soviet peoples would become Russians with
a Communist tinge. There were non-Russian nationalists who saw sblizhenie and sliyanie as de
facto Russification. In a sense, the Russian Communists took over the Russification policy of
the tsarist state as practiced by tsars Aleksandr III and Nicholas II, and placed a Communist
veneer over the government policy of assimilating non-Russian peoples into the Russian nation
(Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Martin, 2001).
There emerged in the 1920s Soviet Union a “national Communist” tendency that viewed
the USSR as a kaleidoscope of nationalities that were united under the Marxist-Leninist banner,
but one where the Soviet peoples kept their distinctive national identities. National Communists
tended to hold to different interpretations of the character that their ideology would take, while
the Soviet center held to one nationalities interpretation, sblizheniye and sliyanie. Thus, the
national Communists were divided along nationality lines, and failed to present a united front
against Soviet centralizers. Two prominent national Communists in the USSR in the 1920s and
early 1930s were Mirsaid Sultangaliev, the first secretary of the Tatar ASSR in the early 1920s
who articulated on a Muslim Communism, and Mykola Skrypnyk, the first secretary of the
Ukrainian SSR in the 1920s and early 1930s, who envisioned a distinct Ukrainian identity for the
Soviet Ukrainians, or so the Soviet procurators alleged of him in the 1930s. Sultangaliev
envisioned that the Soviet Muslim peoples should unite under one leader and establish their own
Communist Party. He went further than this, and called for the Soviet Muslims and other nonRussian peoples to dominate the Russian nation. In sum, he wanted the colonized peoples,
particularly the Muslims, to govern the European colonizer nations. Sultangaliev also called for
the diminution of class conflict among the Soviet Muslim nations, urging them to present a
united front against the European colonizers. Skrypnyk did not harbor any transnational ideas.
Instead, he wanted the Ukrainians of the Ukrainian SSR to remain distinct, and not to be
assimilated into the Russian people. Stalin did not like the ideas of Sultangaliev and Skrypnyk,
so he purged them. Sultangaliev was removed from his post as first secretary of the Tatar ASSR
in 1923, and Skrypnyk was purged in the early 1930s, during the First Five-Year Plan. Stalin did
not stop with these two individuals. He purged their followers and any other Communist leaders
and cadres in the USSR who harbored “national Communist” ideas (Riasanovsky and Steinberg,
2011; Subtelny, 2009; Rorlich, 1986).
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There occurred a terror-famine in the Ukrainian SSR in 1932-33. At the same time, onehalf of the Kazakhs perished due to famine. Massive death on this scale was no accident. Mass
famine was due to the dislocations caused by collectivization. Stalin ordered the Ukrainian
peasants to gather in the grain harvest, but Soviet secret policemen and interior ministry
personnel kept many Ukrainians from eating the harvested crop. It appears that Stalin set out to
starve the Ukrainians into submission. He succeeded in this task. Stalin saw the Ukrainians as
junior partners of the Russian ethnicity. In other words, the Ukrainians were to be subordinate to
the Russians. Loyal Communist Ukrainian officials performed this role during Stalin's reign and
up to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. Starting in the mid-1930s, Stalin restructured
Soviet nationalities policy. He maintained the thrust of Lenin's policies, but he reorganized the
national structures of the USSR. For example, in 1934, Stalin upgraded the Chechen-Ingush
autonomous oblast' to an ASSR, and added Grozny and the Nadterechny region to the newlycreated Chechen-Ingush ASSR. In 1935, Stalin halted the denigration of the Russians, and
started to exalt them as “Elder Brothers,” who would form the vanguard of the Soviet
Communist revolution. He allowed historical works and movies that praised Russian figures of
the past such as Aleksandr Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. Stalin also dissolved the TSFSR, and
allowed the Armenian SSR, Georgian SSR, and Azerbaijan SSR to exist as separate unionrepublics. He also upgraded the Kazakh ASSR and Kyrgyz national oblast' to union-republic
status. His purge of the late 1930s not only killed off any Communist leader who did not owe his
rise to Stalin, but also wiped out the remaining “national Communists,” or at the least those
accused of such a “heretical” doctrine (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Conquest, 1986;
Allworth, 1994; Goltz, 2003; Gall and de Waal, 1998).
In 1936, Stalin promulgated a new Soviet constitution that left his imprint on the Soviet
Union. With regard to nationalities policy, the creation of the Armenian SSR, the Georgian SSR,
the Azerbaijan SSR, the Kazakh SSR, and the Kyrgyz SSR occurred at the time this charter was
implemented. World War II was to bring additional territory under Soviet control, and Stalin
organized these newly-acquired areas with Soviet nationalities policy as his guide. In 1939,
Stalin concluded the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler. This non-aggression accord included
a secret protocol that partitioned Eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
After Stalin invaded Finland in late 1939, he detached the Karelian ASSR from the RSFSR, and
made it into a union-republic called the Karelo-Finnish SSR. This action indicated his intention
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to take over Finland, and to Sovietize it. While he failed in his quest to Sovietize Finland, his
victory in the Winter War brought democratic Finland into the Soviet sphere of influence. In
June, 1940, Soviet forces took over the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In the
subsequent months, the three Baltic republics were formally annexed to the USSR, and
incorporated into the Soviet Union as union-republics. Stalin took over Bessarabia from
Romania in June, 1940, and he created the Moldavian SSR out of Bessarabia and a section of the
former Moldavian ASSR. Most of the territory that had composed the Moldavian ASSR was
reintegrated back into the Ukrainian SSR. When it became apparent that Poland would fall to the
Nazis, Soviet forces occupied the Belorussian and Ukrainian sections of Poland, and
incorporated these areas into the Belorussian SSR and Ukrainian SSR, respectively. Thus, on the
eve of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, Stalin had made hay out of Wehrmacht successes in
Eastern Europe and in Western Europe as well. Stalin probably expected a war with Hitler in
1942. He hoped the capitalist powers would have exhausted themselves in warfare at that time,
and that the Soviet Union could take advantage of capitalist exhaustion to extend Soviet
influence farther into Europe. Stalin's hopes of doing so were interrupted by the Wehrmacht's
invasion of the USSR, an event Stalin did not anticipate so soon (Riasanovsky and Steinberg,
2011).
On June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union along with the Nazis' East
European allies. Stalin found himself an ally of Britain, and the British offered the USSR a
helping hand. In December, 1941, the United States entered World War II on the side of the
Allies and in opposition to Hitler. After Soviet forces broke the back of the Wehrmacht at the
battle of Stalingrad (formerly known as Tsaritsyn, now known as Volgograd), they moved west,
and reconquered Soviet territory that had fallen into Nazi hands. Soviet forces continued to
move into Eastern Europe, occupied the region, and were awarded with east German territories
as a result of military campaigns. In April-May, 1945, the Soviet army took over Berlin, the
capital of the Third Reich, effectively ending Nazi power. In 1944, Stalin deported whole Soviet
ethnicities who were accused of collaborating with the Nazi invaders. He had already sent the
entire Soviet Korean population from the Soviet Far East to Central Asia around the time of the
Soviet-Japanese border clashes in 1938 and 1939. While Stalin concluded a non-aggression pact
with Japan in April, 1941, he did not allow the Soviet Koreans to return from their Central Asian
places of exile. Among the unfortunate Soviet peoples to be deported in 1944 to Central Asia
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and Siberia were the Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Karachai, Balkars, and
Meskhetian Turks. Stalin also deported the Volga Germans to Siberia and the Kazakh SSR, and
he abolished their ASSR. He turned the Chechen-Ingush ASSR into an ordinary oblast', as well
as the Crimean ASSR. Crimean Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Germans were deported as
well as the Crimean Tatars. After the conclusion of war in Europe, Stalin pressured
Czechoslovakia to cede Transcarpathia to the USSR. Czechoslovakia obliged, and
Transcarpathia was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR. In general, Stalin reestablished the preJune, 1941 western Soviet boundary, augmenting Soviet territory with the addition of
Transcarpathia and the northern part of the former East Prussia, which became the Kaliningrad
oblast'. This oblast' became an exclave of the RSFSR, and that union-republic's westernmost
political unit (Dziewanowski, 2003; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Fisher, 1978).
Three months after the conclusion of war in Europe, the USSR entered the Pacific War on
the Allied side, occupying southern Sakhalin', the Kurile islands, Manchuria, and northern Korea
(the part of Korea north of the 38th parallel). Stalin annexed southern Sakhalin' and the Kurile
islands, and added them to the RSFSR. In 1944, he annexed Tuva, and made it part of the
RSFSR, while he maintained Outer Mongolia, formally known as the Mongolian Peoples'
Republic, as a Soviet satellite. What Lenin and Stalin applied in Outer Mongolia in the early
1920s, Stalin proceeded to do in Eastern Europe in the 1944-49 period. Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Soviet-occupied part of Germany, which became
the German Democratic Republic, were Sovietized, and made into Soviet satellites. The Soviet
satellite governments in Eastern Europe adopted Communist ideology, established ruling
Communist parties, set up centrally-planned economies, and took their direction from the Soviet
leadership in the Soviet Kremlin. Local Communist partisans also took over Yugoslavia and
Albania. In 1948, the USSR broke with Yugoslavia, and Albania aligned itself with the Soviet
Union to forestall Yugoslav designs on it. In 1961, Albania turned against the USSR, broke off
relations, and allied itself with Communist China. In northern Korea, Stalin established a
satellite Communist government under Kim Il-sung. Because his country, North Korea,
bordered both the USSR and Communist China, Kim Il-sung had latitude that the East European
satellites did not enjoy. He played the Soviet Union and Communist China against each other,
especially after the Sino-Soviet split in 1960. It has been argued that the Soviet Union was an
empire. This statement has validity because there was a ruling autocrat (the General-Secretary),
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a ruling nationality (the Russians), an imperial ideology (Communism), and subject nationalities,
including those in the satellites. Scholars call the Soviet Union the “internal empire,” and the
Soviet satellites the “outer empire.” The only difference between the two was that the “internal
empire” fell within formal Soviet boundaries, and the “outer empire” was formally outside
Soviet territory, though its governments were subject to Soviet control and direction
(Dziewanowski, 2003; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011).
While Stalin elevated the Russian ethnicity to “Elder Brother” status in 1935, World War
II provided him with a further stimulus to advance this idea, and to use it to justify Soviet
Communist control of the USSR and the satellites. When Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in
June, 1941, Stalin fell back primarily on Russian nationalism to rally the Soviet peoples. This
meant that he mentioned relevant Russian historical figures such as Aleksandr Nevsky, Ivan the
Great, and Ivan the Terrible, who either repelled foreign invaders or conquered in the name of
Russia, “the Third Rome.” These figures fit into Stalin's nationalistic scheme, although he
conceived Russia as a Communist version of the “Third Rome.” He also authorized historians,
writers, artists, and cinematographers to create works extolling the Russian people. Although
Stalin himself was Georgian, he was a Russified one who identified with the Russian nation.
With the conclusion of World War II, Stalin utilized the Russian struggle in the “Great Patriotic
War” to bolster the Soviet Union's legitimacy among the Soviet peoples. Soviet forces liberated
the Jewish inmates in Hitler's death camps in Eastern Europe. In the last years of his life, Stalin
persecuted the Soviet Jews, and drew up plans to deport all Soviet Jews to Siberia, using the socalled “Doctors' Plot” as an excuse to treat the Jews as a “deported people.” Only his death on
March 5, 1953 forestalled his plans to deport the Soviet Jews (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011;
Dziewanowski, 2003).
A power struggle over the succession occurred after Stalin's death, pitting Khrushchev
against Malenkov, Beria, and the Stalinists. Khrushchev won the succession conflict, for he was
awarded the post of General-Secretary, whose powers of appointing cadres he used to best his
rivals. In the process of winning over allies among the Soviet nomenklatura, he courted the
Ukrainian SSR apparatchiks by ceding Crimea oblast' to the Ukrainian SSR, and taking Crimea
away from RSFSR jurisdiction. He accomplished this act of “bribery” in February, 1954. After
his secret speech at the 20th CPSU Congress in February, 1956, Khrushchev further redrew the
internal boundaries of the USSR. He abolished the Karelo-Finnish SSR in 1956, and gave the
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territory back to the RSFSR, and Karelia assumed the status of an ASSR. There were few Finnic
Karelians in Karelia at the time, with most Karelians fleeing to Finland after the Soviet army
beat the Finnish armed forces in 1944. Next, Khrushchev proceeded to rehabilitate most of the
deported peoples. These rehabilitated nationalities were allowed to resettle in their “homelands,”
and the abolished ethnic units were reconstituted. Chechens and Ingush returned to their
“homeland” in the North Caucasus, and Khrushchev restored the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. It is
said that the returning Chechens forced the Russians who had occupied their dwellings to leave
them. The Ingush received only the eastern part of their original “homeland,” while the western
part, the Prigorodny region, went to North Ossetia. As another example, the Kalmyks were
permitted to return to their home area that was to the southwest of Astrakhan', and their ethnic
unit, the Kalmyk ASSR, was reconstituted. Both the Karachai and the Balkars were allowed to
go back to the western North Caucasus, and Cherkessia once again became Karachai-Cherkessia,
and Kabardinia became Kabardino-Balkaria. However, not all of the deported peoples were
rehabilitated, and allowed to return to their “homelands.” For example, the Volga Germans had
to remain in Siberia and the Kazakh SSR, and Khrushchev did not restore the Volga German
ASSR. None of the deported Crimean peoples, primarily the Crimean Tatars, were permitted to
go back to Crimea. Khrushchev left the Crimean Tatars in the Uzbek SSR and the Tadzhik SSR.
The Meskhetian Turks, a Turkic Muslim people who had lived in the Georgian SSR until 1944,
suffered the same fate as the Crimean Tatars. They had to settle for remaining in the Uzbek SSR.
Khrushchev was the last Soviet General Secretary to redraw the internal borders of the Soviet
Union. By 1960, there were 53 ethnic units in the USSR for 128 nationalities. Some ethnic units
contained more than one titular nationality, and Dagestan was made up of several national
groups, primarily the Avars and Dargins. As mentioned earlier, several Siberian peoples did not
have their own ethnic units. While they were distinct, the local oblast' took care of their
concerns (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Aron, 2000; Uehling, 2004; Dziewanowski, 2003;
Zuercher, 2007; Sasse, 2007; Goltz, 2003).
In October, 1964, Khrushchev was overthrown in a palace coup led by his lieutenant
Leonid Brezhnev, who took upon himself the all-important post of General-Secretary. Thus
began what Gorbachev termed the “era of stagnation.” Brezhnev emphasized stability, and this
meant that the Soviet cadres under him would keep their jobs as long as they suppressed dissent,
followed general CPSU guidelines, and fulfilled the quotas specified in the Five-Year Plans.
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Brezhnev is famous for enunciating the doctrine named after him. According to the “Brezhnev
Doctrine,” the USSR would guarantee that any Communist country remained Communist. He
articulated this doctrine after the Warsaw Pact suppressed the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia
in August, 1968. Brezhnev probably fell back on this doctrine to justify sending Soviet troops
into Afghanistan in December, 1979. He did not alter the internal boundaries of the USSR. This
lack of action contributed to the popular sense that things did not change that much in the Soviet
Union under Brezhnev. Brezhnev promulgated a new Soviet constitution in 1977, one which
replaced the USSR charter of 1936. In 1978, the union-republics adopted their own constitutions
based on the 1977 Soviet one. In their 1978 constitutions, the Armenian SSR and Georgian SSR
were required to adopt Russian as their state languages. This linguistic policy provoked riots
among the Georgians. Clashes also broke out between the Georgians and Abkhaz. The latter
were a Caucasian nationality like the Georgians, but they followed the Islamic faith. From 1920
to 1931, the Abkhaz had their own SSR that was associated with the Georgian SSR. In the latter
year, Stalin, showing his sympathy for his ethnic kin, downgraded Abkhazia to an ASSR, and
subordinated it to the Georgian SSR. This policy decision laid the seeds of future ethnic conflict
between the Georgians and the Abkhaz. After the Georgian riots, Brezhnev backed down, and
allowed the Armenian SSR and the Georgian SSR to maintain their native languages as state
tongues instead of the Russian language (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Dziewanowski,
2003; Suny, 1994).
Yuri Andropov, the former head of the KGB, became General-Secretary after Brezhnev
died in November, 1982. His tenure as General-Secretary was brief, but he had enough time to
groom Gorbachev for the succession. Andropov cracked down on corruption, and he had
Brezhnev's son-in-law, Yuri Churbanov, arrested. This arrest led to the exposure of a scheme that
involved Churbanov and the late first secretary of the Uzbek SSR, Rashidov. Both men overreported the Uzbek SSR's cotton output, and pocketed the funds the Soviet center allocated for
the “ghost output.” Andropov proceeded to appoint a successor to Rashidov who was closely
watched by the Soviet Kremlin. In effect, the Uzbek SSR came under “direct rule,” and
remained so until Gorbachev's appointment of Islam Karimov as first secretary of the Uzbek
SSR in 1989. This action alienated the Uzbek SSR apparatchiks from the Soviet center.
Andropov died in February, 1984, and Brezhnev's former aide, Konstantin Chernenko, became
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General-Secretary. Chernenko did not last long, and died of emphysema in March, 1985
(Allworth, 1994; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Dziewanowski, 2003).
Upon Chernenko's death, Mikhail Gorbachev, Andropov's favorite candidate for the
succession, assumed the post of Soviet General-Secretary on March 11, 1985. Gorbachev
realized that the Soviet system was near bankruptcy, so he intended to expose the failures of the
Communist system in a policy called glasnost' (openness), and to correct these defects with a
policy called perestroika (restructuring). He hoped that glasnost' and perestroika would lead to a
renewed and more vibrant Soviet Communist system. Gorbachev believed, like his
predecessors, that the “nationality question” was solved in the USSR, and thus did not need that
much attention. Unlike Brezhnev and Khrushchev, Gorbachev never served as first secretary
outside the RSFSR. Khrushchev had been first secretary of the Ukrainian SSR in the late 1930s,
while Brezhnev was first secretary of the Moldavian and Kazakh SSRs in the 1950s. These nonRSFSR postings may have given Khrushchev and Brezhnev access to the non-Russian pulse
inside the Soviet Union. Gorbachev may have been blind to the aspirations of the non-Russian
nationalities because he lived his whole pre-General-Secretary life in the RSFSR. He was first
secretary of Stavropol' krai, a region near the North Caucasus that is inhabited mainly by ethnic
Russians. Unlike Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Gorbachev did not really know anything about the
non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union. And this showed. In November, 1986, he removed
the Brezhnev crony, Dinmukhamed Kunayev, from the post of first secretary of the Kazakh SSR,
and replaced Kunayev with an ethnic Russian, Gennady Kolbin. This action precipitated riots by
ethnic Kazakhs in the Kazakh SSR's capital, Alma-Ata. These disturbances were the first time
that ethnic trouble broke out on Gorbachev's watch. More was to follow in the future (Olcott,
1995; Dziewanowski, 2003; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011).
Gorbachev alienated the Kazakh apparatchiks and people by placing an ethnic Russian as
head of the Kazakh SSR. In this union-republic, the Kazakhs were a minority, and Gorbachev's
appointment of Kolbin to the post of Kazakh SSR first secretary appeared to threaten the Kazakh
hold over the levers of power in the Kazakh SSR. Together with “direct rule” over the Uzbek
SSR, the Soviet Kremlin had alienated the two largest ethnic groups in Central Asia from the
Soviet system. Not that the Central Asians wanted independence from the Soviet Union. They
just wanted to govern their own affairs in their own bailiwicks. In June, 1987, Crimean Tatar
activists staged a demonstration in Moscow, demanding the right to return to Crimea. Soviet
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KGB agents and interior ministry forces put down their protest. In 1988, the Soviet peoples,
sensing an opening in the Soviet political system, began to assert their national rights. This took
the form of rallying ethnic kin to press for the redress of perceived historic injustices, and
pressing for greater freedom for the nationalities to express their aspirations and distinctive
cultures. 1988 marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union, and the “national question”
played a key role in causing the USSR to unravel and collapse. There is no doubt that the
national ferment caused the already dilapidated economy further disruption, and that economic
ties between the national units weakened, causing growth rates to stagnate, then to decline. In
other words, national ferment caused the economic situation in the Soviet Union to worsen. One
reason the Soviet economy collapsed was that the Soviet center controlled all legal economic
transactions. Once the Soviet Kremlin lost control of many national units, the state-run
command economy simply broke down. The nationality gremlin was a key factor in the
breakdown of the Soviet economic structure (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Dziewanowski,
2003).
In addition to the economic disruption, the national ferment caused the breakdown of the
Soviet authority structures. All union-republics declared “sovereignty,” which meant that their
laws took precedence over those of the Soviet center. This “parade of sovereignties” caused
political confusion, and worked to undermine further the legitimacy of the Soviet system. This
Soviet national ferment began in the Armenian-inhabited autonomous oblast' of NagornoKarabakh, whose Armenian residents demanded union of their region with the Armenian SSR.
Their ethnic kin in the Armenian SSR backed their claim, and the Armenian SSR capital,
Yerevan, witnessed massive demonstrations calling for joining Nagorno-Karabakh with the
Armenian SSR in February, 1988. Azerbaijanis in the Azerbaijan SSR, frightened by the
Armenian demands, launched a pogrom against local Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of
Sumgait. This action provoked war between the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians and the
Azerbaijanis. The Armenian SSR supported its ethnic kin in Nagorno-Karabakh, while the
Azerbaijan SSR imposed a blockade on the Armenian SSR. Gorbachev tried to dampen down
this conflict by imposing direct Soviet rule over Nagorno-Karabakh, but this effort at controlling
the situation failed. Gorbachev was faced with an ethnic war on Soviet territory, and anything he
did only made matters worse (de Waal, 2003; Altstadt, 1992; Payaslian, 2007).
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In the Baltic union-republics, the local nationalities established “popular fronts,” which
were political parties in all but name, in 1988. These “popular fronts” carried out
demonstrations, which hundreds of thousands of Balts joined. They initially called for
“sovereignty” for their union-republics, and for the native tongues to be Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania's state languages. After all of the Baltic republics had declared “sovereignty” in 198889, the “popular fronts” demanded that the USSR grant the Baltic states independence. Other
union-republics observed what the Balts did, and adopted the same tactics that caused a
groundswell of popular support for the de facto nationalist parties in the Baltics. On April 9,
1989, Georgians held a demonstration in the Georgian SSR capital of Tbilisi, and agitated for an
independent Georgia. Soviet army troops brutally put down this demonstration. The dead from
this incident became “martyrs” for the Georgian national cause, and various Georgian nationalist
parties emerged to harness the Georgian nationalist energy. These Georgian parties coalesced
into a Roundtable coalition, and this coalition was led by Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a son of a
Georgian novelist and a member of the Soviet dissident movement. In the Armenian SSR, the
Karabakh Committee, which led the Armenian nationalist cause, reconstituted itself as the
Armenian National Movement. In the Moldavian SSR, the Moldovan Romanians formed their
own “popular front,” and the Moldovan Romanian public joined massive demonstrations calling
for Romanian to become the official language of the Moldavian SSR. This was done by the
Moldavian SSR Supreme Soviet in August, 1989. Other “popular fronts” were created in the
Ukrainian SSR, the Belorussian SSR, and the Uzbek SSR, but these “popular fronts” remained
small and were relatively ineffectual. RUKH, the Ukrainian “popular front”, enjoyed support in
the western Ukrainian SSR, but only lukewarm support in the more Russified southern and
eastern regions of the Ukrainian SSR. Birlik, the Uzbek “popular front” was a small-time actor
on the Uzbek SSR political scene, and a faction broke off from Birlik, and christened itself Erk .
In the last half of 1989, the Soviet satellite governments in Eastern Europe collapsed in the face
of popular revolts and pressures. In a matter of months, the USSR's East European “outer
empire” was no more (Allworth, 1994; Lieven, 1994; Dziewanowski, 2003; Meyer, 2009).
1990 was a year when the USSR further unraveled. The national ferment reached a
crescendo during this year. In February, 1990, Gorbachev dropped the CPSU monopoly on
power, a decision which opened up the USSR to a multiparty system, and that legalized the
nationalist “popular fronts,” and turned them into real political parties with which the Soviet
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Communist party had to compete. During February-March, 1990, most union-republics held
multiparty elections, or something approximating them. In the Baltic republics, the “popular
fronts” won political power, while in the Moldavian SSR, the local “popular front” joined up
with reform (nationalist) Communists to dominate the Moldavian SSR government machinery.
In March, 1990, the Georgian SSR declared “sovereignty,” joining the Baltics and the Moldavian
SSR in the “parade of sovereignties.” On March 11, 1990, Lithuania's popular front government
declared the republic's independence from the Soviet Union. In response, Gorbachev imposed a
blockade on Lithuania, and he only lifted it when the Sajudis-led Lithuanian regime agreed to
suspend its independence declaration in exchange for negotiations with the Soviet central
authorities on Lithuania's status. Gorbachev's problems with the nationality issue did not end
with Lithuania backing down from its independence declaration. Instead, matters got worse for
him. On May 29, 1990, the Communist-dominated RSFSR Supreme Soviet elected the democrat
Boris Yeltsin as its chair due to pressure from the masses of the RSFSR. Yeltsin's first order of
business was to push an RSFSR declaration of “sovereignty” through the RSFSR Supreme
Soviet. This bill passed on June 12, 1990, and with it the RSFSR's laws took precedence over
those of the Soviet center. This action led the other union-republics to declare their own versions
of “sovereignty.” The Kyrgyz SSR was the last one to proclaim its “sovereignty,” which it
proceeded to do in December, 1990. With this “parade of sovereignties,” a war of laws
developed between the Soviet central government and the union-republics. After Yeltsin
admonished the sub-units of the RSFSR to “take as much sovereignty as you can swallow” in
Kazan' during a visit in early August, 1990, the ASSRs and other national units of the RSFSR
proceeded to proclaim their own “sovereignty.” For example, the Tatar ASSR declared
“sovereignty,” on August 30, 1990, affirming that its laws took precedence over those of the
USSR and RSFSR's governments on its territory (Daulet, 2003; Graney, 2009; Colton, 2008;
Aron, 2000; Allworth, 1994; Dziewanowski, 2003).
Gorbachev's moves to implement religious freedom helped to spur national revivals in
the union-republics. He began his relaxation of restrictions on religion by presiding over
commemorations of the 1,000th anniversary of the baptism of Kievan Rus in 1988. At this time,
he began to return church buildings to the Russian Orthodox Church for religious uses. In 1989,
he allowed the Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church to emerge from the catacombs, legalize its
activities, and to function in public. This Ukrainian Catholic Church acted to retrieve churches
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that the Russian Orthodox Church had seized in 1946 as part of the forced absorption of this
Eastern-rite Catholic church into the officially-tolerated Russian Orthodox Church. Conflicts
over churches erupted in western Ukraine, a stronghold of Ukrainian Byzantine Catholicism,
between Ukrainian Orthodox (Moscow Patriarchate) and Ukrainian Greek Catholics. Around
this time, Soviet Muslims began to rebuild mosques in Islamic areas of the USSR, including
Central Asia, the North Caucasus, Azerbaijan SSR, and the Middle Volga region. A USSR
Supreme Soviet commission absolved the Crimean Tatars of war guilt, allowed them to return to
Crimea, and advocated for the reestablishment of the Crimean ASSR. While a majority of
Crimean Tatars returned to Crimea from Central Asian exile, the peninsula's Russian majority
took over the reigns of control of the Crimean ASSR apparatus, which was established in
January, 1991. While the majority of Crimean Tatars had gone back to Crimea by 1991, they
were a disenfranchised minority that had to struggle for a place in Crimean and Ukrainian affairs.
In October, 1990, the USSR parliament and the union-republic legislatures passed laws making
freedom of religion a bedrock policy of the Soviet polity. This legislation reversed Lenin's antireligious policy, which had been at the center of Soviet action since the Communist seizure of
power in 1917. Religious freedom in itself did not cause the breakdown of ties between the
Soviet center and the union-republics, but nationalist activists used it to rally their national
constituents and to cement their national identities to particular pieces of land. In other words,
religion fed into the national ferment in the USSR in 1989-91 by strengthening national
attachment to specific territories. Thus, it contributed to the fragmentation of the Soviet Union
(Dziewanowski, 2003; Allworth, 1994; Uehling, 2004; Garrard and Garrard, 2008).
During Soviet times, the ethnic Russians considered the USSR as their “homeland.”
Yeltsin's election as RSFSR Supreme Soviet chair in May, 1990 signaled that the Russians were
no longer content with acting as the bedrock of the Soviet order. They were tiring of their role as
the “Elder Brother” people of the Soviet Union. The Balts enjoyed a higher standard of living
than the Russians in the RSFSR. Because the ethnic Russians of the RSFSR did not really
benefit materially from being the USSR's dominant people, they “rebelled” against Soviet
authority by pressing for “sovereignty” for the RSFSR, which would give them a greater
collective say in Soviet affairs. In other words, they wanted more political power and material
benefits than they had as inhabitants of a “ghost state.” By 1990, ethnic Russians in the RSFSR
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were themselves caught up in the national ferment that was affecting other union-republics and
even the national units of the RSFSR itself (Colton, 2008; Aron, 2000; Dziewanowski, 2003).
It was in 1991 that the unraveling of the USSR reached its conclusion with the Soviet
collapse. National self-assertion played a large role in causing this dissolution of the Soviet
Union to happen. A “war of laws” developed between the Soviet center and the union-republics,
with the Soviet peoples unsure of who was really in control of the USSR. Even the national
units of some union-republics asserted themselves, further confusing the political picture in the
last year of the Soviet Union. For example, Tatarstan was pressing for union-republic status,
which brought it into conflict with Yeltsin and Gorbachev, and the Abkhaz ASSR and the South
Ossetian national oblast' of the Georgian SSR were agitating for their independence from
Tbilisi's jurisdiction. In October, 1990, the Roundtable party of Zviad Gamsakhurdia won
republic-wide elections in the Georgian SSR. This event concerned the Abkhaz and the South
Ossetians, who feared becoming second-class citizens in Georgia. Gamsakhurdia ruled in an
autocratic manner, which added fuel to the fire as far as the Abkhaz and South Ossetians were
concerned. In neighboring Armenia, the Armenian National Movement won the republican
elections held in 1990. Earlier in that year, the Azerbaijan Popular Front tried to seize power in
Baku. Gorbachev sent in the Soviet army, which restored Communist authority in Azerbaijan.
Due to the deaths in the military crackdown, the Azerbaijanis were alienated from the Soviet
order and their own Communist government. By early 1991, the Baltic republics, Moldova,
Armenia, and Georgia had nationalistic, non-Communist governments. Gorbachev turned
rightward in late 1990-early 1991, bringing Communist hard-liners into his government. In
January, 1991, the Soviet army attempted to crackdown on nationalist demonstrators in Vilnius,
Lithuania's capital, and Riga, Latvia's capital. All the Soviet army accomplished was seizing the
broadcast television station in Vilnius, and killing people in both Lithuania and Riga. As a
backup plan, the Sajudis-led government of Lithuania started television broadcasts from Kaunas.
In short, the Soviet army's attempts in early 1991 to crush Baltic national self-assertion ended in
failure. In March, 1991, a union-wide referendum was held on whether to preserve the USSR.
Of the fifteen union-republics, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, and the Baltic republics did not
participate. Of the electorate in the nine union-republics who did take part in the referendum,
70 % supported the continuation of the Soviet Union in some form. Onto the referendum
question in the RSFSR, Yeltsin added a question of whether the RSFSR's voters would like to
74
popularly elect the RSFSR president. A majority of the RSFSR's electorate voted in the
affirmative (Dziewanowski, 2003; Suny, 1994; Payaslian, 2007; King, 2000; Riasanovsky and
Steinberg, 2011).
In the spring of 1991, Gorbachev moved back on to the course of reform. He met with
Yeltsin and the eight other union-republic presidents of the Soviet republics that had participated
in the March referendum at Novo-Ogarevo outside Moscow in April, 1991 to negotiate a union
treaty to replace the one of 1922. Gorbachev was finally addressing the nationality question in a
meaningful way. In a sense, he had no choice, for the “war of laws” was sapping the political
and economic energies out of the Soviet system. In the end, Gorbachev agreed with the nine
union-republic presidents to reestablish the USSR as a confederation, in which the unionrepublics held most of the powers, while delegating some, such as military and foreign affairs, to
the Soviet center. Such an agreement would have put the hard-line ministers in Gorbachev's
government out of work. They were also concerned when Gorbachev proposed to drop
Marxism-Leninism from the CPSU's program in July, 1991. In addition, they found Gorbachev's
dropping of the CPSU's monopoly on political power in February, 1990 to be offensive and very
un-Marxist. These are the factors that induced the Communist hard-liners in the Soviet
government to overthrow Gorbachev in the August, 1991 coup. Yeltsin, who had won the first
popular election for Russian president, on June 12, 1991, with 57 % of the vote, condemned the
hard-liners' putsch, and so did the presidents of Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Moldova's government
and those in the Baltic republics joined in denouncing the coup, while Azerbaijan's president was
in Iran when it was happening. Uzbekistan's government and those of Turkmenistan and
Tajikistan supported the putsch. Some national units of the union-republics backed the hardliners' coup, including the Tatarstan, Crimean ASSR, and Transdnistrian regimes. Transdnistria
had declared its independence from Moldova in September, 1990. It was run by hard-line
Communists who wanted the Soviet Union to be preserved in its 1922 form. After three days,
the coup collapsed, and Yeltsin became the most powerful leader in the USSR, and he eclipsed
Gorbachev in importance. The union-republics emerged out of the August coup with the upper
hand, and the Soviet center ceased to exist in all but name (King, 2000; Subtelny, 2009; Olcott,
1995; Riasanovky and Steinberg, 2011; Lieven, 1994; Sasse, 2007; Kuzio, 2007; Daulet, 2003).
In the aftermath of the August putsch, the union-republics declared their independence
from the Soviet Union. Broadly, there were two motives for the independence declarations.
75
Such union-republics as Armenia and Moldova did so to fulfill nationalist aspirations. Georgia
had proclaimed itself independent of the USSR on April 9, 1991, while Estonia and Latvia
declared their republics' independence during the August coup. Like Armenia and Moldova,
Georgia and the Baltic republics declared their independence from the Soviet Union to fulfill
national dreams of state sovereignty. In a way, they were restoring the independence that the
Soviet government took away. The other union-republics proclaimed their independence from
the Soviet center as a way to escape the radical reforms of Yeltsin, who was now in the
ascendency. Such republics as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus', and Ukraine
figured that Gorbachev was playing second fiddle to Yeltsin after the collapse of the hard-liners'
putsch, and that separating themselves from the Soviet center would keep them immune from the
radical reforms that were about to emanate from Moscow (primarily the RSFSR government).
Kazakhstan preferred that Gorbachev continue in some way as the head of a Soviet
confederation, while Yeltsin was groping his way forward in the aftermath of the coup's collapse.
In other words, Yeltsin may have not had a clear idea of the RSFSR's relationship with the other
union-republics until December, 1991. He agreed with Gorbachev though, to recognize the
Baltic republics as independent, sovereign states on September 6, 1991. Yeltsin's Russian
government took over the USSR's budget in late November, 1991. Until the final Soviet collapse
in December, 1991, Gorbachev attempted to negotiate a new union treaty, for the Novo-Ogarevo
agreement became obsolete after the collapse of the August coup. In the end, Gorbachev's
efforts in this sphere failed, for the union-republic presidents rejected Gorbachev's new union
treaty in November, 1991. On December 1, 1991, the Ukrainian electorate participated in an
independence referendum, and 90 % of them voted for an independent Ukraine. This event made
up Yeltsin's mind about the fate of the Soviet center. Along with Leonid Kravchuk, the
Ukrainian president, and Stanislav Shushkevich, the president of Belarus', Yeltsin decided to
abolish the Soviet Union. Yeltsin met with the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus' near Brest,
Belarus', on December 8, 1991, and they signed an agreement abolishing the USSR, and making
the union-republics into sovereign, independent states. A Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) was established as an international association of former Soviet republics. Its main
purpose was unclear, and still is to this day. Ukraine saw the CIS as a divorce committee that
would facilitate the apportioning of Soviet government assets among the republics that had made
up the Soviet Union. Yeltsin may have envisioned the establishment of supranational agencies
76
among CIS members that Russia would dominate. Ukraine had its way on this point in the postSoviet era, and Russia had to set up all of the attributes of a sovereign state. Russia became just
one of 15 separate former Soviet republics, though it dominated the post-Soviet space because of
its area and population size. In the aftermath of the Brest Declaration that set up the CIS, the
Central Asian republics wanted to join the CIS. At Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan on December 22,
1991, the Central Asian republics, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova joined the Commonwealth
of Independent States as co-founders, along with the three original signatories, Russia, Ukraine,
and Belarus'. Georgia and the Baltic republics did not join the CIS. With Gorbachev's
resignation as Soviet president on December 25, 1991, the USSR ceased to exist, and the 15
union-republics became independent states (Dziewanowski, 2003; Suny, 1994; Colton, 2008;
Lieven, 1994; Goltz, 1998; King, 2000; Subtelny, 2009; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011).
Post-Soviet Nationalities Policy
After the Soviet collapse of 1991, Soviet nationality policy was no more. In its place
were fifteen nationality policies of the Soviet successor states. Although the USSR ceased to
exist, the legacy of Soviet ethno-federalism lives on in the policies of Russia and the other
countries in the post-Soviet space. Given that the Russian Federation (Russia) is the largest
former Soviet sovereign polity in area and population, it will receive extensive attention. Next, I
will cover the issue of national minorities in Ukraine, Belarus', and Moldova, and then proceed
to discuss nationalities policy in the southern Caucasian republics (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and
Georgia). Finally, mention will be made of nationalities policy in Central Asia, especially
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In general, the post-Soviet polities have adopted policies that favor
the titular nationality. Some have made allowance for the national minorities within their
borders, while others have not done so. Where national minorities are treated as second-class
citizens, or perceive themselves to be so, ethnic conflict has erupted. The Soviet Union created
national entities that have replaced “internationalist” Communist ideology with nationalist ideas.
Some post-Soviet presidents have proved to be more adept at addressing minority concerns than
others. This, plus the extent of authoritarian control, has determined whether ethnic peace has
prevailed in the post-Soviet republics.
As the 1989 Soviet census indicates, ethnic Russians made up 50 % of the population of
the USSR, while the RSFSR composed 76 % of the Soviet Union's territory. In the RSFSR in
1989, ethnic Russians made up 82 % of its populace. The largest ethnic minority in the RSFSR
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was the Volga Tatars, who composed 3.8 % of its population (Toft, 2003). Together with the
Volga Tatars, Muslim peoples made up around 16 % of Russia's population (Hunter, 2004). In
the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, the Russian Orthodox population in Russia climbed up to
two-thirds (as of 2008, see Garrard and Garrard, 2008). While Russian Orthodoxy is a central
component of ethnic Russian identity, though not the only one, some ethnic minorities in the
territory of the Russian Federation were converted to the Eastern Orthodox faith, such as the
Chuvash, Yakuts, and Komi. Saint Stepan of Perm' was known for his missionary endeavors
among the Komi (Zyrians) in the 14th century. During Soviet times, the RSFSR was the titular
republic for the ethnic Russians. In the post-Soviet era, the Russians are the dominant ethnicity
in the Russian Federation, and they control the central government in Moscow. There still exist
the national units for Russia's ethnic minorities. Right after the collapse of the USSR, there were
sixteen ethnic republics in Russia. Four more ethnic entities attained republican status in 1992,
specifically Khakassia, Altai Republic, Karachai-Cherkessia, and Adygea, while ChechenoIngushetia bifurcated into Chechnya and Ingushetia. Chechnya declared its independence from
Russia in November, 1991 under its president, Dzhokar Dudayev, while Ingushetia established
its own government, and decided to remain a “subject” of the Russian Federation. In June, 1992,
Ingushetia was recognized by the Kremlin as an entity distinct from Chechnya. Given the
“upgradings” to republican status and the splitting of Checheno-Ingushetia into two separate
republics, there are currently 21 ethnic republics in the Russian Federation (Heaney, 2010;
Saunders and Strukov, 2010; Gall and de Waal, 1998).
After launching his economic reform program, Yeltsin proceeded to stabilize his relations
with Russia's ethnic minorities. In March, 1992, he concluded a Federation Treaty with Russia's
national units. This agreement regulated relations between the Russian center and the national
units until a new national constitution could be drafted. Tatarstan and Chechnya did not sign the
Federation Treaty, for Tatarstan wanted to conclude a separate treaty with the Kremlin, while
Chechnya wanted to become an independent, sovereign state. Yeltsin sent interior ministry
troops to Chechnya in November, 1991, but the Chechen authorities sent them packing.
Chechnya took over the caches of arms the Russian army left behind when it withdrew from the
Chechen republic in 1992. Yeltsin surrounded Tatarstan with interior ministry troops during the
Tatar republic's referendum on its status. Mintimer Shaimiyev, the president of Tatarstan, had his
way in the referendum, in which the electorate approved his plans for a “sovereign” Tatarstan in
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union with the Russian Federation. Yeltsin was preoccupied with his struggle against the
Communist-dominated Soviet parliament, and he placed the nationalities issue on the back
burner. Needing allies, Yeltsin decided to negotiate a federation treaty with Shaimiyev. On the
other hand, Yeltsin drew the line with regard to Chechnya, rejecting that republic's bid for
independence. In the summer of 1993, Yeltsin convened a constituent assembly, which drew up
a charter that enshrined a strong executive. At the same time, a constitutional committee of the
Soviet parliament was composing a constitution that envisioned strong legislative control over
national affairs. In this context, Yeltsin courted the presidents and governors of the national
units, and wooed most of them to his side. On September 21, 1993, Yeltsin felt strong enough to
dissolve the Soviet parliament. In reaction to Yeltsin's move, the Soviet parliament “deposed”
Yeltsin, and put Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi and Parliamentary Speaker Ruslan
Khasbulatov in “control” of Russia. Matters came to blows, and Yeltsin sent in the army to
forcibly subdue and disperse the Soviet parliament. Yeltsin won the power struggle with the
Soviet parliament, and on October 4, 1993, the Soviet-era legislature was no more, and Yeltsin
was the undisputed leader of Russia. He ruled by decree until the December, 1993 referendum
on his constitution and elections to the Federal Assembly, which was composed of an upper
chamber called the Federation Council and a lower house called the State Duma. In the
Federation Council sat the leaders of the ethnic minority entities, plus representatives from the
other “subjects” of the Russian Federation. Each “subject” was allocated two representatives in
the Federation Council. In December, 1993, 57 % of Russian Federation voters approved of
Yeltsin's constitution, which became the law of the land. This charter superceded the 1992
Federation Treaty. In practice, the national units enjoyed less autonomy under the 1993
Constitution than they did under the 1992 agreement. On February 15, 1994, Yeltsin signed an
agreement with Tatarstan that made the Tatar republic a “subject” of Russia, but one that had
autonomous powers (Daulet, 2003; Graney, 2009; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, 2011; Shevtsova,
Yeltsin's Russia, 1999; Colton, 2008; Aron, 2000; Lieven, 1998).
The Federal Treaty between the Russian center and Tatarstan established what became
known as asymmetric federalism, in which some “subjects” of the Russian Federation enjoyed
more autonomy than others. Shaimiyev set a precedent that other “subjects” followed in their
relations with the Kremlin. In total, 47 “subjects” (including Tatarstan) concluded separate
agreements with the Russian center in the 1990s. As a result of these treaties, Russia became an
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asymmetric federal state. At the same time, Yeltsin refused to countenance the secession of
Chechnya from the Russian Federation. On December 11, 1994, he sent the Russian army into
Chechnya after covert operations to topple Dudayev failed. Russia's army became bogged down
in a guerrilla war against well-prepared insurgents. On the other hand, the Russian army was
unprepared for its invasion of Chechnya. General Pavel Grachev, who planned the Russian
invasion of Chechnya on Yeltsin's orders in his role as Russia's defense minister, thought the
operation to subdue Chechnya would be a cakewalk. It was anything but that. In the end, the
Chechen insurgents under Aslan Maskhadov repossessed the Chechen capital, Grozny, in August,
1996, after having checkmated the Russian army deployed there. Yeltsin sent Aleksandr Lebed'
to Chechnya to extricate the Russian army from the Chechen republic, and to agree to terms with
the Chechen nationalist guerrillas that would provisionally settle matters for the time being.
Lebed' carried out his mandate, and Chechnya became de facto independent. Chechnya's status
was supposed to be settled by 2001 under Lebed's Khasavyurt Treaty with Maskhadov. This did
not happen, for another Russo-Chechen war erupted in August, 1999, when Chechen guerrillas
invaded neighboring Dagestan. Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin, the then head of the FSB, as
his prime minister and heir apparent during this time. The Russian army invaded Chechnya for a
second time with the aim of making the Chechen republic a permanent “subject” of the Russian
Federation. This second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen conflict boosted Putin's popularity, and
assured him of victory in the March, 2000 Russian presidential elections. Yeltsin resigned on
December 31, 1999, and handed over power to Putin, who instituted a different nationalities
policy and a different approach toward Russia's “subjects” (Shevtsova, Putin's Russia, 2005;
Dziewanwoski, 2003; Riasanowsky and Steinberg, 2011; Gall and de Waal, 1998; Evangelista,
2002; Graney, 2009; Heaney, 2010).
Upon being inaugurated as post-Soviet Russia's second president in May, 2000, Putin set
out to restore what he called the “power vertical” (Russian, vertikal vlasti). By this, he meant to
concentrate political power in Russia in the central executive, and to diminish the powers of the
“subjects.” Putin envisioned the Russian president having the upper hand over the federal
legislature and judiciary, and that the federal level would wield most powers, leaving only a few
to the “subjects.” In practice, the federal government has delegated 70 % of welfare
expenditures to the “subjects,” but has otherwise relegated the rest of the authority to itself. In
May, 2000, Putin established seven federal districts, each of which encompassed a number of
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“subjects.” At the head of each federal district was a plenipotentiary, whose responsibilities
included ensuring that “subjects'” legislation matched that of the federal center, and that
“subject” laws conformed with the provisions of the 1993 constitution. In effect, “subject” laws
needed to fit in with Putin's agenda. Putin pursued re-centralization. Next, Putin expelled the
“subject” presidents and governors from the Federation Council, and replaced them with
presidential appointees. He continued the war in Chechnya. Russian soldiers took Grozny in
February, 2000, and have held it ever since. Putin established a Chechen government that was
loyal to the Kremlin, and that would pursue an anti-insurgency campaign. This Chechen regime
has been dominated by the Kadyrov clan, with Akhmad Kadyrov ruling from 2000 to 2004, and
his son, Ramzan, has presided over Chechnya since 2007. Chechnya's Islamist rebels have
targeted Russians in the heartland and in the North Caucasus. Two of the most notorious
Chechen terrorist attacks were the Dubrovka theater incident of 2002, and the Beslan school
hostage crisis of September, 2004. After the Beslan incident, Putin tightened the reigns of
presidential power even further. He took away the right of the “subjects” to elect their own local
executives in popular elections, and replaced this with a system of the Russian president
appointing the “subjects'” presidents and governors. Putin also aimed to reduce the number of
Russian “subjects.” During his second presidential term, he reduced the number of Russia's
“subjects” from 89 to 83. Currently, there are still 83 “subjects” of the Russian Federation. To
diminish the number of “subjects,” Putin combined some federal units and abolished the federal
status of some others. Evenkia lost its federal status, and became part of Krasnoyarsk krai, while
Komi-Permyakia was combined with Perm' oblast' to form Perm' krai. No republic has lost its
federal status yet. Krasnodar krai wants to absorb Adygea, but the Adygeans have been adamant
about retaining their own polity, the Republic of Adygea (Heaney, 2010; Shevtsova, Putin's
Russia, 2005; Saunders and Strukov, 2010).
Putin rescinded asymmetric federalism, which was a cornerstone of Yeltsin's federal
policy. In 2001, the Duma and Federation Council passed a law requiring that all languages in
the Russian Federation be written with a Cyrillic script. This law came in reaction to Tatarstan's
attempt to change the Volga Tatar language over to a Latin alphabet. Putin wanted to institute
standardization in the “subjects'” relations with the Russian center. In line with this policy, Putin
scrapped the asymmetric treaties, all 47 of them, and replaced them with agreements that gave
the Russian center the upper hand over the “subjects,” and that ensured that “subject”
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constitutions conformed with the 1993 Russian federal charter. In the early 2000s, the Russian
center found that many “subject” laws failed to conform with federal legislation and the 1993
Russian constitution. In reaction to this federal action, the “subjects” modified their charters and
laws so that they fit federal criteria as set by Putin. For example, Putin found that Tatarstan's
1992 constitution and that many of its laws did not conform with federal precedent. Shaimiyev
rescinded the 1992 charter, and replaced it with a new constitution in 2002. During the next
year, Putin abrogated the 1994 Russo-Tatar treaty. Shaimiyev had to negotiate a new federal
treaty with the Kremlin. The effect of the replacement of the 1992 charter and the 1994 treaty
was the reduction in powers held by Tatarstan. Russia's center gained powers at the expense of
Tatarstan. Currently, the Russian center has the upper hand over Tatarstan. An indication of this
is the replacement of Shaimiyev with his prime minister, Rustam Minnikhanov. Dmitry
Medvedev, Putin's successor as Russian president, appointed Minnikhanov to the post.
Minnikhanov owes his position entirely to the Russian president, and is subservient to him.
Tatarstan enjoys little of the autonomy it exercised during the Yeltsin era (Heaney, 2010;
Saunders and Strukov, 2010; tatarstan.ru/english/; Graney, 2009; Daulet, 2003).
Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus' are unitary states. However, the first two have concluded
agreements with ethnic minorities that give these nationalities a measure of autonomy. Belarus'
has an ethnic Russian minority (13 % of Belarus' population) and a Polish one (10 % of this
republic's populace). However, the Belarussian government has made no provisions for setting
aside territory for the Russians and the Poles. In short, the Russians and Poles of Belarus' do not
enjoy any separate self-rule. Ukraine and Moldova are different stories. Although both are
unitary states, with the central government wielding most powers, Moldova and Ukraine have
made treaties with one ethnic minority each. Moldova concluded an agreement with the Gagauz
Turks, an Eastern Orthodox Christian people who reside in southern Bessarabia, in 1994 that
granted the Gagauz-inhabited regions a measure of self-rule, allowed the Gagauz to elect their
own president, and authorized the Gagauz president to have a seat in the Moldovan parliament.
Mircea Snegur, post-Soviet Moldova's first president, and his successors have offered a similar
deal to Transdnistria, but the Transdnistrian authorities have rejected Chisinau's offers, and they
favor a restoration of the Soviet union-state. Russia protects Transdnistria, a situation that makes
the Transdnistrian president, Igor' Smirnov, more recalcitrant. Gagauzia's agreement with
Chisinau may pave the way for a similar accord between Transdnistria and the Moldovan central
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government. Such a scenario appears unlikely though, and Transdnistria will continue to stick to
its Sovietist position. Ukraine has come to terms with the Autonomous Republic of Crimea
(ARC). After the ARC declared its “independence” from Ukraine in 1992, and elected a proRussian president in 1994, the situation settled down, and the Ukrainian central government and
Crimea came to an agreement granting the latter self-rule within the Ukrainian state. Leonid
Kuchma, Ukraine's second president from 1994 to 2004, fired the pro-Russian Crimean president
in March, 1995, an event that induced the Crimean Russian majority to come to terms with
Kyyiv. In 1995, the Ukrainian parliament, the Supreme Rada, recognized Crimea as an
autonomous republic of Ukraine, though Crimea's degree of self-rule was limited. Crimea
accepted this arrangement, and codified it in the 1998 Crimean constitution, which is still in
effect. Kuchma also granted Russia a 20-year lease over Sevastopol', and he divided up the
Black Sea Fleet with Yeltsin. In 2010, the Rada extended Russia's lease up to 2042. Crimea has
the Turkic Muslim Crimean Tatar minority. It has acquired Ukrainian citizenship, and has
supported RUKH and the “Orange” parties ever since. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have
Russian minorities, and their status in the Baltic republics has been a bone of contention with
Russia since the Balts achieved independence in September, 1991 (Sasse, 2007; Kuzio, 2007;
King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007; Uehling, 2004; Shoemaker, 2010; Thompson, Noridc,
Central, and Southeastern Europe, 2009).
Relations between the titular nationalities and the ethnic minorities have been
confrontational and adversarial in the south Caucasian republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and
Georgia. The Republic of Armenia is ethnically homogeneous, with most of the republic's
inhabitants belonging to the titular nationality. However, it has backed its ethnic kin in
Karabagh, who make up the majority of that territory's population. Karabagh's Armenians
endured what they perceived as discrimination by the Azerbaijani authorities. Stalin had placed
Karabagh, despite its Armenian majority, under the jurisdiction of the Azerbaijan SSR.
Armenians see Stalin's action as a historical injustice that had to be corrected, even with armed
force. Azerbaijan perceives the secession of Karabagh as threatening to its territorial integrity.
That is why Azerbaijan has fought to retain control of Karabagh. In the Armenian-Azerbaijani
war, the Armenians seized control of the disputed territory. In the process, hundreds of
thousands of Azerbaijanis have been displaced, and many of them still reside in refugee camps in
Azerbaijan. In addition, Azerbaijan faces issues with its Lezgin minority. Lezgins also live in
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the Russian republic of Dagestan. Baku fears that its Lezgins will secede and join their territory
with Russia. Among Azerbaijanis, fear of dismemberment is a primary concern, and this
explains their recalcitrance on national minority affairs. Georgia also fears for its territorial
integrity. Two of its ethnic minority units, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, seceded from Tbilisi's
control in 1992-93, after heavy fighting. Russia used its influence to halt the fighting between
the Georgians, on the one hand, and the Abkhaz and South Ossetians, on the other. After the
conclusion of the Abkhaz-Georgian war, Georgia joined the CIS in 1994. The 2003 Rose
Revolution toppled President Eduard Shevardnadze, whom many Georgians considered to be too
pro-Russian, and Mikheil Saakashvili took his place as Georgia's president. In early August,
2008, Saakashvili ordered the Georgian army to seize South Ossetia and bring it back under
Georgian central control. In response, Russia invaded Georgia and drove Georgian forces out of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On August 26, 2008, Russia recognized Abkhazia and South
Ossetia as independent, a move that alienated the Georgians. Russia has soldiers in Abkhazia
and South Ossetia to guarantee their “independence.” Ajaria, an autonomous republic of
Georgia, made an agreement with Tbilisi to accept the latter's jurisdiction. This happened
because the Ajars are ethnically Georgian, though they are Sunni Muslims. A majority of
Georgians are Eastern Orthodox Christian, and they are presided over by their own patriarch,
who is autocephalous. Because the Georgian Christians and Ajars share an ethnic affinity, they
were able to come to terms with each other. It helped that Saakashvili replaced the proShevardnadze president of Ajaria in 2004 with one beholden to him (Zuercher, 2007; Goltz,
2009; Shoemaker, 2010).
In Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have ethnic minorities that have a pretty
prominent place in their societies. Uzbekistan inherited an ASSR from Soviet days. This ASSR,
which was renamed the Republic of Karakalpakistan in the post-Soviet era, is an integral part of
present-day Uzbekistan. The Karakalpaks are a Turkic Muslim people related to the Kazakhs. In
fact, Karakalpakistan was part of the Kazakh ASSR until 1936, when Stalin transferred it to the
Uzbek SSR. Uzbek president Islam Karimov has ruled with an iron fist since the independence
of Uzbekistan in 1991. This has “prevented” the Karakalpaks from expressing their ethnic
interests. Since Uzbek independence, the Karakalpaks have been quiet, and have endured the
desiccation of the Aral Sea, which was a cornerstone of their existence as a people. Kazakhstan
does not have a territory set aside for an ethnic minority. However, the ethnic Russian minority
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inhabits the northern region of Kazakhstan, while most Kazakhs reside in the southern part of the
country. Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has pursued a policy similar to that
being enacted in Tatarstan. He encourages Kazakh nationalism, seeing Kazakhstan as the
“homeland” of the Kazakhs. At the same time, he has pursued a Kazakhstani identity that
encompasses all of Kazakhstan's inhabitants, including the ethnic Russians. Nazarbayev moved
Kazakhstan's capital from Almaty (Alma-Ata) to Astana, which is located in northern
Kazakhstan. He did this to cement Kazakhstan's control over the Russian-inhabited north of his
country. Nazarbayev has enacted a korenizatsia (indigenization) policy that favors appointing
top government officials from the Kazakh ethnicity. However, he has to be sensitive to the
concerns of the large Russian minority, especially since it occupies northern Kazakhstan. Ethnic
peace has prevailed in Kazakhstan since its independence in 1991 (Allworth, 1994; Shoemaker,
2010; Olcott, 1995).
As this review of pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet nationalities policies shows, Soviet
ethno-federalism reinforced territoriality among the Russian-dominated state's ethnic minorities.
The tsarist empire conquered territories with preexisting nationalities that inhabited a specific
piece of land. Only small nomadic groups in Siberia did not inhabit a certain area. Most
nationalities in the tsarist empire possessed certain territories. Lenin, Stalin, and Soviet
ethnographers acknowledged this territorially-based ethnic diversity as a reality, and acted to
accommodate it within the Soviet Communist context. In practice, the Russian-dominated
Soviet Union controlled all aspects of the national minorities' lives, and Soviet “nationalism”
came down to each ethnicity with a certain territory expressing Marxism-Leninism in their own
languages. Eventually, all languages in the USSR had to be written in a Cyrillic script (Allworth,
1994; Graney, 2007; Fisher, 1978). This action indicates the extent of Russian domination of the
Soviet Union. From the mid-1930s until the Soviet collapse in 1991, the Soviet authorities
extolled the Russians as the “Elder Brother” people of the Soviet Union, who would lead the rest
of the Soviet peoples into the promised Communist society (Martin, 2001). In 1991, the USSR
broke up into its constituent union-republics, which became independent, sovereign polities.
Russia emerged as the largest republic in the post-Soviet space in terms of land area and
population. It has tended to dominate most of the other former Soviet republics. Those republics
with ethnic minority entities have had to deal with the results of the Soviet ethno-federalism
legacy. Some republics have been more successful than others in dealing with their ethnic
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minorities, and even these republics have been better able to handle one ethnic minority over
another one. Given the importance of the legacy of Soviet ethno-federalism, an analysis of its
dynamics is necessary. Below are the case studies of this exploratory, heuristic project. We
begin with the first instance of ethnic conflict in the USSR, the war between Armenia and
Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which marked the beginning of the end of
the Soviet Union.
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CHAPTER FIVE
NAGORNO-KARABAKH
The former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have a territorial dispute between
them. It concerns the Armenian-inhabited region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is nominally part
of Azerbaijan. Between February, 1988 and May, 1994, both countries fought a war over
possession of the region, which resulted in about 25,000 casualties (de Waal, 2003). NagornoKarabakh's Armenians came out the winner, retaining control of the region, connecting it with
Armenia, where their ethnic kin reside, and driving the Azerbaijanis out of about one-eighth of
their republic. Azerbaijan came out the loser in the Nagorno-Karabakh war, suffering higher
casualties, losing control of Nagorno-Karabakh and the territory surrounding it. The Soviet
central government and the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union's main successor state, have
been heavily involved in the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute. A Russian-sponsored initiative
ended the war in a cease-fire in May, 1994. In addition, Armenia is a member of the Russiandominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military alliance. Azerbaijan is of
interest to the United States because of its extensive oil reserves, and the US State Department
has made proposals for resolving the territorial dispute that have tried to address Azerbaijani
concerns. Any resumption of hostilities between the Azerbaijanis and the Nagorno-Karabakh
Armenians has international implications because of Russia's military alliance with Armenia.
Such an event would bring in Turkey on the side of Azerbaijan, for the Osmanli Turks of Turkey
and the Azerbaijanis are both Turkic peoples, sharing similar languages and professing Islam,
though the Azerbaijanis are Twelver Shiites, while the Osmanli Turks are mainly Sunnis. Other
Islamic powers would come to Azerbaijan's aid, though Iran's position in the ArmenianAzerbaijani dispute is ambiguous and unclear. Russia, a country with an Eastern Orthodox
Christian majority, would find itself in conflict with the Muslim world if hostilities resume
between Azerbaijan and the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.
It is the argument of this chapter that the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute over NagornoKarabakh is a territorial dispute, with religion assuming a cheer leading role in the background.
Religious differences have influenced the terms of conflict between the Armenians and the
Turkic peoples over the centuries and into the present, but territorial considerations take first
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place in the calculations of both sides over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Since the advent of
Islam and the Islamicization of the Turkic peoples, the Armenians, an Oriental Orthodox
Christian ethnicity, have been concerned with securing a homeland in a region dominated by
peoples who became the Osmanli Turks and the Azerbaijanis. On the one side, the Turkic
peoples have aimed to establish rule over the non-Muslim Armenians, while the Armenians have
worked to establish control over as much of their historic homeland as possible, on the other
side. Armenians consider Nagorno-Karabakh as part of historic Armenia, while the Azerbaijanis
think that the region is an essential part of their state, which arose during World War I. For
Armenia, the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute is an irredentist struggle. Armenians argue that
Nagorno-Karabakh is part of their historic homeland, and that this has been the case since the
time of Jesus Christ. While the Armenians justify their position with such an argument, the
Azerbaijanis think they are fighting for the territorial integrity of their state. They assert that
Stalin, as Soviet Commissar of Nationalities, awarded Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, and that
the Soviet-era boundaries are inviolable. International law seems to be on the side of Azerbaijan.
However, the United States has proved to be flexible about altering international boundaries in
some situations, such as Kosovo and south Sudan (Thompson, Nordic, Central, and Southeastern
Europe, 2009; New York Times, 2010). Russia has argued that since the United States detached
Kosovo from Russian ally Serbia, it was justified in recognizing the Georgian regions of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states in August, 2008 (Goltz, 2009). One day,
Armenia may follow these precedents, and formally annex Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia would
very possibly invoke the Collective Security Treaty, which is the basis of the CSTO, to ward off
an Azerbaijani military campaign against Armenia. It is possible that Azerbaijan will be
confronted with a fait accompli one day, and be powerless to stop Armenia's annexation of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
It is also a possibility that the status quo will continue, and that the Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute will remain frozen. Recently, Turkey and Armenia have made moves to mend ties
between the two neighbors. It is important to mention the key stumbling blocks in improving
Turkish-Armenian relations. One is the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute itself, for Turkey has come
to the aid of its Turkic neighbor, Azerbaijan. Since Armenia and Azerbaijan are antagonists,
Turkey has shown partiality toward the Azerbaijani side, roiling the Armenians. On the other
hand, Armenia will not back down, and renounce its claim to Nagorno-Karabakh. Thus, the
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Nagorno-Karabakh dispute is a major impediment to improved Turkish-Armenian relations. The
other major stumbling block to ameliorating relations between Turkey and Armenia is the
Armenian Genocide (1915-23), in which the Osmanli Turks murdered 1 million Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies that the massacres of Armenians were a genocide, and that the
massacre of so many Armenians was a byproduct of World War I. It argues that as many
Osmanli Turks died in Allied operations against Ottoman Turkey. It concludes this line of
reasoning by asserting that the Ottoman Armenians were victims of the First World War as much
as the Osmanli Turks. Armenia calls the World War I massacres out and out genocide, and a
campaign in which the Young Turk government of the time successfully exterminated the
Armenian population in what would become Turkey. Armenians remember the Genocide up to
this day, and this collective memory influences how they view the Turkic peoples and other
Muslim ethnicities. Azerbaijani pogroms against Armenian communities in the Azerbaijan cities
of Sumgait in 1988 and Baku in 1990 revived Armenian fears of genocide, and made them more
determined than ever to secure hold of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In general, Armenians
distrust being under Islamic rule, and fear that Azerbaijan would squeeze the Armenian
population out of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Historic Armenia encompassed what is now the
Republic of Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nakhichevan (an exclave of Azerbaijan bordering
Turkey), and much of eastern Turkey. Nakhichevan is a case in point for the Armenians. Once
there was a substantial Armenian population in this region, but the Azerbaijanis replaced them.
This fear of Nakhichevanization has driven the Armenians to hold onto Nagorno-Karabakh, and
to drive out the Azerbaijanis. As will be seen, Armenians are somewhat justified in being
suspicious of Turkic motives toward them. They want to secure control of Nagorno-Karabakh,
just as they annexed the region of Zangezur in 1918. For Armenia, the “proper” boundaries are
those that encompass as much of historic Armenia as possible. Azerbaijan considers Stalin's
boundaries to be the “proper” ones. It is in this context that the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute
over Nagorno-Karabakh is played out. This region is the only former Soviet territory in which
the ethnic majority was included in another union-republic rather than with its ethnic kin in
another one. Even though the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians were and are the ethnic majority in
the region, Stalin denied them membership with their co-ethnics in the Armenian SSR, and added
Nagorno-Karabakh to Turkic Muslim Azerbaijan. In sum, the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is a sui
generis one in the former USSR, and it appears likely that Armenia will maintain de facto control
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of the region, if not it will downright annex it one day, provided Russia will come to its aid in
case of trouble with Azerbaijan.
5.1 Historical Background
Armenia and Azerbaijan have different histories, which leads both nationalities to view
the same events differently. For example, the Armenians view the World War I genocide against
them as a personal tragedy, which affected relatives and co-ethnic friends. Today, there are 7
million Armenians in the world, 3.1 million of whom live in Armenia, and 3.9 million in the
diaspora. One million deaths in the Genocide of 1915-23 is a huge proportion of the world's
Armenian population (Payaslian, 2007). Azerbaijanis take up the position of their fellow
Osmanli Turks, and view the Armenian massacres as an unfortunate incident, but one which was
a result of World War I, in which as many Turks as Armenians were killed. Both ethnicities see
the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians through different lenses. For Armenia, they are fellow coethnics, while the Azerbaijanis view them as Caucasian Albanians who were assimilated by the
Armenian nation. Azerbaijan views the Caucasian Albanians, who are not to be confused with
the Illyrian-descended Albanians of the Balkans, as their national ancestors. Azerbaijani Turks
assimilated many Caucasian Albanians, while the Armenians absorbed the rest. As will be seen,
the Caucasian Albanian question is a source of controversy between the Armenians and the
Azerbaijanis, and helps fuel the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute (Goltz, 1998).
Since the Armenian and Azerbaijani histories are so different, I will treat the former first,
then address the latter. According to tradition, the ancestors of the Armenians came from Thrace,
which is in the present-day southeastern Balkans. This Indo-European people settled in the
western Caucasus, and probably mixed with the Caucasian-speaking people who were already
there. Out of this mixing, the modern Armenian nation was born, with the Indo-European
Armenian language becoming the national tongue. The Armenian people entered history in the
6th century BCE, when they were made subjects of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. After
centuries of Persian and Greek rule, the Armenian people established an independent state, with
this political entity reaching its greatest extent under Tigran II the Great (1st century BCE). He
founded four cities called Tigranakert, one of which was in present-day Nagorno-Karabakh. This
region was called Artsakh by the Armenians. It can be argued that from the time of Tigran the
Great, the Armenians had established control over what would become Nagorno-Karabakh
(Payaslian, 2007; Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
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After Tigran the Great, Armenia declined in extant and significance, and it became a
pawn between the Roman and Persian empires, with one or another of these imperial states
controlling more of Armenia at one time or another. The next, and one of the most, significant
events in Armenian history was Armenia's adoption of Christianity in 301/314 CE. Trdat IV was
a Roman vassal king who administered western Armenia. Saint Gregory the Illuminator, a
Cappadocian Christian evangelist, convinced Trdat IV to make Christianity the state religion of
Armenia, which thus became the first Christian sovereign polity in the world. It was an
Armenian Christian monk, Mesrup Mashtots, who invented the Armenian alphabet in the 5th
century CE. In 507 CE, the Armenian church rejected the findings of the Council of Chalcedon,
and it subsequently left the Catholic Church, becoming an Oriental Orthodox church, which
taught that Christ has one nature, divine, not two (human and divine), as taught by the Chalcedon
council. Thus, the Armenians found themselves isolated from the Roman pope and the
Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople (now Istanbul). This isolation did not stop the
Sassanian Persians from seeing the Armenians as a Roman fifth column. It comes as no surprise
that the Persians suspected the Armenians in their realm of harboring treasonous thoughts, and
worked to suppress manifestations of Armenian national consciousness. Under Vartan
Mamikonian, a nobleman, the Armenians rose against the Persians in 451 CE, but were defeated
(Payaslian, 2007). Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) contributed forces to Mamikonian's army. After
the defeat of this Armenian rebel army, Sassanian Persia placed Artsakh under the control of a
Caucasian Albanian satrap. Later, the Sassanian Persian monarch Feroz negotiated the Nevarsag
Agreement with the Armenian nobility, which granted the Armenians freedom to practice their
Christian faith and the Armenian nobility autonomy in internal affairs (Chorbajian, et al., 1994;
Sapsezian, 1996).
Saint Gregory the Illuminator had converted the Caucasian Albanians to Christianity after
convincing Trdat IV to make Armenia into a Christian state (Chorbajian, et al., 1994). One
Caucasian Albanian dynasty was succeeded by another one, but Artsakh continued to be under
Caucasian Albanian rule, who governed on behalf of the Sassanians, until the Islamic conquest.
The advent of Islam forever altered the destinies of the Armenians and the Caucasian Albanians.
Muslim forces conquered the Sassanian Empire after besting the Persians at the battle of
Qadisiya in 637 CE. Earlier, the Arab Muslim army had pushed the East Roman (Byzantine)
Empire out of the western Fertile Crescent. As a result of these victories, Armenia and
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Caucasian Albania fell under Arab Muslim control. Eventually, the Armenians, under the
Bagratunis, threw off Muslim rule. This Bagratuni Armenian kingdom lasted from 885 CE until
1064/1065 CE. In the latter year, the Byzantine Empire conquered Armenia. In Artsakh, a local
Armenian dynasty ruled, and it opposed Bagratuni attempts to centralize control in Bagratuni
hands. It was during the 9th and 10th centuries that the Caucasian Albanians ceased to exist as a
distinct people. In general, the western Caucasian Albanians Armenianized, while those in
eastern Caucasian Albania converted to Islam. In the 10th century, the Turks settled in eastern
Caucasian Albania, and the Caucasian Albanians under them were assimilated into the Turkic
nation. Azeri, the language of the migrant Turks, became the tongue of the eastern Caucasian
Albanians as well. Like the original Armenians, who assimilated the local Caucasian-speakers in
the 6th century BCE, the Azeri Turks absorbed the eastern Caucasian Albanians, making their
tongue the language of the whole ethnicity (Altstadt, 1992; Payaslian, 2007; Chorbajian, et al.,
1994).
In the Nagorno-Karabakh region, there are several Armenian monuments that appear to
suggest that the area has had an Armenian population since at least the early Christian period.
Among the Armenian monuments in Nagorno-Karabakh are: the mausoleum of Saint Grigoris
(489 CE); the Tsitsernavank basilica in the Lachin district (5th-6th century CE); the Dadivank
(1214 CE), Gandzasar (1216-38 CE), and Gtichavank (1241-46 CE) monasteries; the monastery
of Yeghishe Arakyal in the Martakert district; and the Cathedral of Our Savior, also known as
Ghazanchetsots (1868-88) in Shushi
(Shusha). In addition, there are thousands of khachkars,
which are stone slabs with crosses on them, throughout the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In
contrast, the Muslim Turks constructed three mosques in Shusha, all built in the 18th-19th
centuries. Few secular monuments have survived over time. However, Nagorno-Karabakh had
several Armenian scriptoria during the Middle Ages, including those at Gandzak, Gandzasar,
Khoranashat, Targmanchats, and Erits Mankants (Chorbajian, et al., 1994). Armenian
manuscripts, of a religious and historical nature, were made at these scriptoria. From this brief
discussion of monuments in Nagorno-Karabakh, it appears that the Armenian cultural presence
has been predominant in the region. Whether the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians are descendants
of the original Armenians or Caucasian Albanians who were Armenianized, it is evident that
Nagorno-Karabakh is part of the Armenian cultural area. The fact that Tigran II the Great
established a city in the region called Tigranakert in the 1st century BCE is evidence for an
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Armenian presence in present-day Nagorno-Karabakh before the Caucasian Albanians and the
Azeri Turks entered the historical stage.
On the other hand, Altstadt (1992) states that the Caucasian Albanians emerged on the
historical scene in the 4th century BCE, and inhabited a region that extended from the Araz river
to the domains of the Sarmatians. As mentioned earlier, the Caucasian Albanians ruled in the
name of the Sassanian monarchs, enjoying autonomy. Both the Arranids and the Mihranids,
Caucasian Albanian dynasties, ruled over Artsakh on behalf of the Sassanians. Once the Arab
Muslims secured control of Armenia and Caucasian Albania, the latter entity begins to disappear
from history. Eastern Caucasian Albania's Islamicization led many western Caucasian Albanians
to adopt the Armenian language and join the Armenian national church. Altstadt (1992) asserts
that the Caucasian Albanians were assimilated by the Armenians, the Arabs, and the Turks. It
would appear the Arab Muslims converted the eastern Caucasian Albanians to Islam, and that the
Azeri Turks imposed their language on them. Thus, it appears that the Armenians and the Azeri
Turks both assimilated elements of the Caucasian Albanian nation. Given that Artsakh had an
Armenian dynasty during the Bagratuni era and that most monuments in present-day NagornoKarabakh are Armenian, the Armenians have a pretty strong claim to the region (Chorbajian, et
al., 1994).
The Battle of Manzikert, which occurred on Armenian territory in 1071 CE, was fought
between the Byzantine and Seljuk Turk armies. Seljuk forces under Alp Arslan beat the
Byzantines. This battle spelled the beginning of the end of the Byzantine Empire, which went
into an irreversible decline until its demise in 1453 CE. Armenia had lost a potential Christian
protector when the Byzantine Empire lost its footing. Russia inherited its version of Christianity
from Byzantium, so while the Russian Orthodox Church is Chalcedonian, it and the Russian
government view the Oriental Orthodox Armenians as a Christian people in need of protection.
However, the Russians would not appear on the Armenian scene until the early 19th century.
After the battle of Manzikert, several Armenian nobles and many Armenian commoners left their
Armenian homeland to escape Muslim rule, and settled in Cilicia, which was then part of the
Byzantine Empire. Eventually, the Cilician Armenians established an independent kingdom,
which lasted until the Mamluks took it over in 1375. This Cilician Armenian kingdom was the
last sovereign Armenian state until the proclamation of the Republic of Armenia in 1918.
Meanwhile, the Georgian kingdom established its lordship over the original Armenian homeland
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in the 12th century CE. With the Mongol conquest of Georgia in the 13th century, the Armenian
homeland also fell into Mongol hands (Payaslian, 2007).
Both the Golden Horde and the Il-Khanids, which were two of the four Mongol dynasties
established by Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, converted to Islam in the 14th
century CE. As a result of these events, and the Muslim Mamluk conquest of Cilician Armenia
in 1375, the Armenians experienced continuous Islamic rule until the arrival of the Russians in
the early 19th century. Western Armenia passed into Ottoman hands, with the Ottoman Turks
replacing the two Turkish tribes that had dominated the area since the disintegration of the
Mongol Empire. Cilician Armenia was taken over by the Ottomans in the early 16th century,
following the Ottoman conquest of Mamluk lands. On the other hand, Safavid Persia took over
the territory that became the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the same time as the
Ottoman Turks conquered the Mamluk domains. Thus, the Armenians found themselves as a
pawn between the Ottoman Empire and Persia. Despite the wars fought between Persia and the
Ottoman Empire, the Armenian homeland was divided along the lines specified above
(Payaslian, 2007).
After contributing to the defeat of Napoleon, Russia showed a great interest in expanding
in the Caucasus. Tsar' Aleksandr I had annexed Georgia to his domains in 1801, a move which
paved the way to further Russian advances in the Caucasian region. After waging a war against
Persia, which occurred during the Napoleonic campaign against Russia, Aleksandr I concluded
the Treaty of Gulistan with the Persian government in 1813, which stipulated that present-day
Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh would pass into Russian hands. This treaty only whetted the
Russian appetite for further conquests. Under Aleksandr I's successor, his brother Nicholas I,
Russia went to war against Persia again. Again, Russia beat Persia. By the 1829 Treaty of
Turkmenchai, the territory of the present-day Republic of Armenia passed into Russian hands.
Many Armenians left Persia, and settled in Russian Armenia. Several of these Armenian
immigrants made homes for themselves in present-day Nagorno-Karabakh (Payaslian, 2007;
Chorbajian, et al., 1994; de Waal, 2003).
The national awakenings in Europe in the 19th century spread to Armenia, which
developed a more focused national consciousness. Two of the main Armenian nationalist parties
to emerge at this time were the Dashnaks and the Hnchaks. Hnchak party positions were in line
with those of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party, and it tended to
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support Lenin's policies. On the other hand, the Dashnaks were a nationalist party who fought
for an independent Armenian republic. Dashnak is short for Dashnaktsutiun, which translates as
the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Both the Dashnaks and the Hnchaks had branches in
both Russian Armenia and in the Ottoman Empire. During the 1905 Russian Revolution, the
Armenians and Azerbaijanis fought each other. At that time, the Azerbaijanis were known as
Tatars, and this 1905-06 conflict is known as the Armeno-Tatar War. It began with a Tatar
(Azerbaijani) pogrom against the Armenians in Baku. Fighting spread to Nakhichevan, Yerevan,
Zangezur, and what would become Nagorno-Karabakh. Thousands of Armenians were killed as
well as thousands of Azerbaijanis. The Dashnaks organized Armenian defenses in Shusha, which
was then the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Under Dashnak leadership, the Armenians
of Shusha beat back two Azerbaijani attacks. Many Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian villagers,
however, were killed by Azerbaijani mobs. Fighting between Armenians and Azerbaijanis
ceased following Tsar' Nicholas II's bloody re-imposition of Russian central government control
throughout the tsarist empire in 1906 and 1907 (Chorbajian, et al., 1994; Payaslian, 2007).
Of the Armenian nationalist parties extant at the time (1905-18), the Dashnaks were the
predominant party in the Armenian community. Tragedy was to befall the Ottoman Armenians
during World War I, for the Young Turk government that ran the Ottoman Empire during the
First World War wiped out the Armenian community in what would become eastern Turkey.
There were Armenian survivors of these massacres, but they had to flee for their lives to Russian
Armenia and the Fertile Crescent. Suspecting the Ottoman Armenians of pro-Russian
sympathies and sensing an opportunity to `cleanse' eastern Anatolia of a non-Muslim people, the
Young Turk triumvirate set out to kill all the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Beginning on
April 24, 1915, the Ottoman government began the massacre of the Armenians. Ottoman
Armenian soldiers were taken out of their auxiliary battalions, and massacred. Next, the Young
Turk government ordered the Armenians to hand in their weapons, to which the Ottoman
Armenians complied. Turkish soldiers and Kurdish auxiliaries then killed the Armenian men
they could get their hands on, moving on to march the women and children into the Syrian
desert, where these Armenian people died of hunger, exposure, and thirst. Probably, several
thousand Christian Armenians were forcibly converted to Islam, and given over to Muslim
families. The only armed Armenian resistance was on Musa Dagh, a mountain situated near the
Mediterranean coast. French ships evacuated these armed Armenian resisters. In all, at least 1
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million Armenians, if not more, were killed in the massacres perpetuated by the Young Turk
government. Most of the Armenian victims died in 1915, but the Turks continued to massacre
Armenian communities until 1923, the year the Republic of Turkey was established. About
500,000 Ottoman Armenians fled to Russian Armenia during the massacres, where several
thousand of them died of hunger. The Turkish massacres of the Armenians embittered relations
between the Armenians and the Turkic peoples, particularly the Osmanli Turks and the
Azerbaijanis, an enmity which continues to this day (Payaslian, 2007; Akcam, 2006; Balakian,
2003; Bobelian, 2009).
This event, the Armenian massacres, also known as the Armenian Genocide, is a salient
collective memory that the Armenians share with each other. The Armenians, those in the
present-day Republic of Armenia and those in the diaspora, want the Ottoman massacres of their
ethnic kin to be recognized as a genocide, in fact, the first one of the 20th century, and they also
want Turkey to acknowledge the massacres as an act of genocide and to apologize to the
Armenian people. On the other hand, Turkey denies that the Armenian massacres of 1915-23
were a genocide, and argue that the Ottoman Armenians died in a civil war fought in the empire,
and that as many Turks as Armenians were killed in the First World War. In the opinion of this
author, the massacres of the Ottoman Armenians constituted a genocide, which can be defined as
murdering a human group or part of a human group. Setting out to kill off another ethnicity is an
act of genocide, and in the Armenian case, the Ottoman Armenians turned in their weapons at the
behest of Armenian church leaders, then were massacred in droves even though they were
defenseless. Truth be told, the Ottoman massacres of Armenians constituted a genocide, for they
fit the definition of this particularly heinous form of murder. Regardless of how the Turks and
Armenians view the 1915-23 Genocide, the Armenians see the massacres of their co-ethnics as
such, and want the world community to remember the victims, and do not want a repeat of the
`Armenian Massacres.' It must be remembered that Ottoman Armenians were massacred in the
Ottoman Empire during the 1890s, though on a smaller scale compared to the World War I
Armenian Genocide. When the Young Turks took over the Ottoman Empire in 1908, the
Dashnaks supported them in the hope that the Young Turk government would end oppression. In
1913, three Young Turk extremists took control of the imperial government in Istanbul, and
allied the Ottoman Empire with Germany and Austria-Hungary. The triumvirate viewed the
Ottoman Armenians as a fifth column of Russia, which was an Allied power during the First
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World War. In a sense, the 1915-23 massacres of Armenians were a continuation and
intensification of the 1890s massacres that this ethnicity underwent. Enver Pasha and the other
two Young Turk extremists wanted to create a Muslim homeland in which the predominant
language was Turkish, and the Christian Ottoman Armenians were in the way. In the minds of
the triumvirate, the Armenians had to be eliminated to realize their goal (Akcam, 2006; Balakian,
2003; Bobelian, 2009).
Just as significant as the enormous loss of Armenian life were the refugees who fled to
Russian Armenia. These 500,000 Ottoman Armenians joined up with their ethnic kin in Russia.
After the fall of the tsarist monarchy in February, 1917 (Old Style), the Armenians in Russia
began to organize themselves under Dashnak leadership. In the capital of Russia, Petrograd,
Lenin and his Bolsheviks seized power in a coup on October 24-25, 1917 (Old Style), and they
started to establish the world's first Communist state once their power was more or less secure.
A civil war broke out in Russia between the Bolsheviks, who restyled themselves as
Communists, and the Russian Whites, who were a coalition of monarchists and non-Communist
socialists that fell under the control of military officers of the former tsarist army and navy.
Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak seized power from a council of liberal and socialist parties that had
initially led the White movement, and he became Lenin's chief opponent. Amid this chaos in
Russia, the Armenians joined up with the Georgians and Azerbaijanis to form a Transcaucasian
Federation. This federation proved to be short-lived, and on May 26, 1918, Georgia, under the
Mensheviks, declared its independence, followed by Dashnak-ruled Armenia and Musavat-ruled
Azerbaijan two days later. The Dashnak-run Republic of Armenia was the first independent
Armenian state since Cilician Armenia. It confronted a Turkish threat. Ottoman forces invaded
the young republic, only to be repelled by desperate Armenian troops at the battle of Sardarabad
in 1918. This victory secured Armenia's independence from Turkey, and ensured the survival of
the Armenian nation. General Andranik Ozanian conquered the Zangezur region for Armenia,
and took it out of Azerbaijani jurisdiction. With this action, Armenia reached its present-day
internationally-recognized borders. Andranik next focused his attention on adding the NagornoKarabakh region to Armenia. As a result of Azerbaijan's declaration of independence, this area
became part of Azerbaijan. Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenians mobilized to fight the Azerbaijanis,
and Andranik tried to help them. However, the Azerbaijanis drove out or killed the Armenians in
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Shusha, and the British occupation force favored Azerbaijan retaining Nagorno-Karabakh
(Payaslian, 2007, Chorbajian, et al., 1994; Dziewanowski, 2003).
With the victory of the Communists in the Russian Civil War, Lenin's regime could focus
on forcibly retaking the borderlands that had seceded from Russia. It succeeded in taking over
Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Transcaucasus region. Britain had withdrawn its occupation
forces from the Transcaucasus region, leaving it open to a Russian Communist party takeover. In
April, 1920, the Red Army occupied the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, squelching
Azerbaijani independence. With the fall of Azerbaijan to the Russian Communists, the NagornoKarabakh region passed into Soviet hands, and Lenin's government let Azerbaijan keep it. In
December, 1920, the Red Army took over the Republic of Armenia. Shortly after this takeover,
the Dashnaks rose up against Soviet rule, but their rebellion was suppressed. In February-March,
1921, the Red Army invaded and took over Menshevik-ruled Georgia, completing the Soviet
conquest of the Transcaucasian region. Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan were joined together
by the Soviet Russian government in a Transcaucasian federation, the Transcaucasian Soviet
Federative Socialist Republic (TSFSR). The TSFSR central government was headquartered in
Tbilisi, Georgia, and it nominally held some powers exclusively, relegating the rest to its
constituent republics (Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan). While the TSFSR was nominally
independent, the Russian Communist Party really controlled it. In 1922, the TSFSR signed the
Union Treaty along with the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Belorussian SSR that created
the Soviet Union. This Union Treaty took effect on December 30, 1922, and Armenia and
Azerbaijan became part of the USSR. It was during 1921 that the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh was
decided. Initially, Stalin, as Soviet Commissar of Nationalities, decided to give the region to the
Armenian SSR, but Narimanov, the head of the Communist party in the Azerbaijan SSR,
threatened to allow `anti-revolutionary' elements to reemerge in his republic if Stalin went
through with the decision. After giving this decision reconsideration, Stalin awarded NagornoKarabakh to the Azerbaijan SSR, justifying his decision on the grounds that the Armenianinhabited region was economically tied to Azerbaijan, and not Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh's
Armenians, who made up 94 % of the region's population, were not happy with this decision of
Stalin's, but held their tongues. They had been driven out of Shusha during the period of
Azerbaijani independence, and the Azerbaijanis killed scores of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.
With the advent of Soviet rule, the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians enjoyed a modicum of
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stability. Azerbaijan's government encouraged Azerbaijanis to settle in Nagorno-Karabakh, and
thousands of Azerbaijanis heeded the call, and by 1989, only 75 % of the region's population was
ethnically Armenian, while the rest were mostly Azerbaijanis. During Azerbaijani rule, the
Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians were discriminated against, and Azerbaijanis were preferred for
choice jobs. While the head of Nagorno-Karabakh was an ethnic Armenian, he had to hold a
pro-Azerbaijani position to keep his job. Azerbaijan's government discouraged open cultural
expressions by Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenian majority. Given this background, it comes as no
surprise that the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians would rebel against continued Azerbaijani
control once the opportunity presented itself (Payaslian, 2007; Chorbajian, et al., 1994, Suny,
1994; Zuercher, 2007).
The Armenian SSR went through the phases of the USSR's development, including the
New Economic Policy, collectivization and industrialization under Stalin's Five-Year Plans,
Stalin's purges of the Soviet Communist Party, and World War II. In 1936, Stalin abolished the
TSFSR, and the Armenian SSR became a separate union-republic of the USSR. During World
War II, called the `Great Patriotic War' in Russia, the Armenian SSR had to mobilize 500,000
men, of whom 175,000 gave their lives in the war against Hitler. These 500,000 troops came out
of an Armenian SSR population of 1.3 million. From 1945 to 1949, 150,000 Armenians from the
diaspora migrated to the Armenian SSR, including the young Levon Ter-Petrossian and his
parents. In 1965, the Armenians in the Armenian SSR held protests with the connivance of the
union-republic's leadership against Turkey and its massacre of 1 million Armenians during World
War I. In response to the agitation, the Soviet leader at the time, Leonid Brezhnev, ordered the
Armenian SSR government to erect a memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, which
was completed in 1966. It is situated outside the Armenian capital, Yerevan. Brezhnev probably
acted as he did because the Armenian SSR was a union-republic of the Soviet Union and Turkey
was a member of NATO. He wanted to cement Armenia's commitment to the Soviet cause, and
keep the Armenians at loggerheads with the US-allied Osmanli Turks. While the construction of
a monument was easy to do, Brezhnev did not consider the demonstrators' demand for territorial
revisions, including attaching Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenian SSR. Thus, NagornoKarabakh remained part of the Azerbaijan SSR during Brezhnev's term and those of Andropov
and Chernenko. Mikhail Gorbachev took over as Soviet General-Secretary on March 11, 1985.
He proclaimed glasnost' (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) as the cornerstones of his
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new policy. When he started to implement these policies in 1988, he gave the Soviet peoples the
promise of more freedom than they had enjoyed in the past. Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenians and
those in the Armenian SSR sensed an opportunity to press for the attachment of NagornoKarabakh to the Armenian SSR. It is against this background that the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute
took place (Payaslian, 2007; Chorbajian, et al., 1994, Sapsezian, 1996).
The origins of the Azerbaijani people are clouded in controversy. This debate of
Azerbaijani origins revolves around the Caucasian Albanians and their fate. As mentioned
earlier, the Azerbaijanis consider the Caucasian Albanians to be their predecessors in the area
that became Azerbaijan. Modern-day Azerbaijanis base their claim to Nagorno-Karabakh on the
premise that the Sassanian Persian government let a Caucasian Albanian dynasty rule over the
region. Two successive Caucasian Albanian dynasties, the Arranids and the Mihranids, held
dominion over Artsakh on behalf of the Persian sovereign. After Saint Gregory the Illuminator
converted the Armenian state to Christianity, he proceeded to Caucasian Albania, and began its
Christianization. Most Caucasian Albanians became Christians. With the Islamic conquest of
the Persian Empire, the Caucasian Albanians came under Muslim jurisdiction, and those living in
what would become the Republic of Azerbaijan converted to Islam, while the western Caucasian
Albanians adopted the Armenian language and religion. It was in the 10th century CE that the
Azerbaijani Turks entered history, and settled what would become the Republic of Azerbaijan
and northwest Iran. They had already converted to Islam. There existed a Caucasian Albanian
Islamic state called Shirvanshah, and it emerged in the 9th-10th centuries CE, and lasted until the
Safavid Persian conquest of all of the Azerbaijani-inhabited regions in the early 16th century CE.
It is possible that the Azerbaijani Turks and the Muslim Caucasian Albanian peoples merged to
form the modern-day Azerbaijanis, with Azeri Turkish as the common tongue and with Islam
playing a central role in their lives. Given the disappearance of the Caucasian Albanian
language, it appears that the Azerbaijani Turks absorbed the Caucasian Albanian people, a
process made easier by the sharing of a common Islamic faith. Just as the ancient Indo-European
Armenians absorbed the local Caucasian peoples, so the Azerbaijani Turks assimilated the
Muslim Caucasian Albanian people (Altstadt, 1992; Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
In the early 16th century, the Azerbaijanis were to undergo a religious transformation and
subjugation to the Safavid Persian dynasty. Shah Ismail, a Sufi leader, ended the chaos that beset
the Persian heartland, and imposed the Safavid dynasty on Persia after conquering what is
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modern-day Iran, Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan. He made Shiite Islam, specifically the Twelvers
variety, the state religion of Persia, and he forcibly converted the peoples of modern-day Iran and
Azerbaijan to Shiism. With this move, the Azerbaijanis became Shiite Muslims, an event that set
them religiously apart from the other Muslim Turkic peoples, who follow Sunni Islam. The
conversion of the Azerbaijanis to Shiism was completed by Shah Ismail I's successor, Tahmasp I.
Initially, the Persian authorities allowed the local Armenian princes, called meliks, to rule the
Nagorno-Karabakh region on behalf of the Persian shah. In the early 18th century, the meliks
rose up against Persian Muslim rule, but were defeated. In 1750, one of the meliks broke ranks
with the other four, and allowed an Azerbaijani prince onto Nagorno-Karabakh territory. This
Azerbaijani Turkish prince settled in Shusha. He extended his jurisdiction to include all of what
would become Nagorno-Karabakh, and he and his descendants imposed a harsh Islamic rule over
the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians (Altstadt, 1992; Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
By the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan between Russia and Persia, the tsarist empire gained
control over what is now Azerbaijan, including Nagorno-Karabakh. The region remained under
Russian tsarist control until the fall of the monarchy in February, 1917 (Old Style). In early
1918, Azerbaijan entered the Transcaucasian Federation along with Georgia and Armenia. On
May 28, 1918, both Armenia and Azerbaijan declared their independence, two days after
Menshevik-ruled Georgia did so. Musavat, an Azerbaijani nationalist party, ruled the Azerbaijani
Democratic Republic. Its initial capital was Ganje, in Azerbaijan's northwest. With Ottoman
help, the Azerbaijani army called the Army of Islam captured Baku from the Bolsehviks on
September 16, 1918. On April 27, 1920, the Red Army invaded the Azerbaijani Democratic
Republic, the Russian Communists imposed a Marxist-Leninist government on Azerbaijan, and
the republic was sovietized, with the Russian-controlled Communist party functioning as the
only legal political party in the republic. In 1921, Azerbaijan became one of the Caucasian
republics that formed the TSFSR on Stalin's orders. Armenia and Georgia were the other
members of the TSFSR. This Russian Communist-ruled federation was one of the signatories of
the 1922 Union Treaty that created the USSR, and the treaty went into effect on December 30,
1922. In 1936, Stalin dissolved the TSFSR, and the Azerbaijan SSR became a separate unionrepublic of the Soviet Union. The Azerbaijan SSR kept this status until the 1991 breakup of the
USSR (Altstadt, 1992; Goltz, 1998).
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The region that became the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1991 was of vital strategic interest
to the tsarist government. For one thing, the territory abutted Persia, which Russia viewed as in
its sphere of influence and interest. It also contained large petroleum reserves, onshore and
offshore, which made Baku a boom town. Russian immigrants moved to the oil-rich Aspheron
peninsula, where Baku is located. Many Armenians migrated to Baku after the conclusion of the
Treaty of Turkmenchai, which Russia and Persia signed in 1828. This treaty gave what is now
the Republic of Armenia and Nakhichevan to the Russian Empire. Until the 1840s, the
Azerbaijan territory was under Russian military rule. After that, Russian civilian administrators
took over and ran the area on behalf of the tsar'. Azerbaijan's large oil reserves provided the
basis for the region's industrialization. An Azerbaijani working class emerged, which took its
place beside the bazari (merchant and craftsman) and peasant classes. There were periodic
peasant revolts, and the Azerbaijanis took part in the 1905 Russian Revolution. Azerbaijani
bands fought the Armenians of what was to become Nagorno-Karabakh until the tsarist army
intervened and restored order. A Shiite Ecclesiastical Board, which was modeled on the Russian
Holy Synod, was created by the tsarist government, and it controlled Muslim religious affairs in
the Azerbaijani region. In effect, this ecclesiastical board stifled religious activity. As a result,
the initiative passed to secular nationalist parties. In 1912, they merged and created the Musavat
(Equality) party, which remained inactive until the February, 1917 (Old Style) revolution.
Capitalizing on the chaos in the Russian center, Musavat took center stage in Azerbaijan, and
became the leading political force in the region, for Azerbaijanis constituted a majority of its
population. Following the Bolshevik seizure of power in October, 1917 (Old Style), Musavat
opposed the Bolsheviks. In Baku, a Communist soviet government dominated by Russians and
Armenians was set up. It terrorized the Azerbaijani population of the city. After taking Baku in
September, 1918, the Army of Islam and the Musavat took their revenge on the Russians and
Armenians. General Andranik Ozanian of Armenia took over the Zangezur region from
Azerbaijan, and added it to Armenia. He tried to seize Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia, but he
failed to do so. The British occupiers of Azerbaijan backed the Azerbaijani claim to NagornoKarabakh. While the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians recognized Azerbaijani control over their
area in 1919 in exchange for cultural and political autonomy, they were livid with the Allies
when the latter recognized Azerbaijani control over Nagorno-Karabakh. Andranik besieged
Nakhichevan, but the Ottoman forces foiled him, and their possession of this region strengthened
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the Azerbaijani claim to it. After the Russian Communists took over Azerbaijan, they let the
Azerbaijani SSR have Nakhichevan, which became Azerbaijanized during the Soviet era. In
1921, Stalin awarded Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, justifying his decision with the argument
that this region was economically tied to Azerbaijan, and not Armenia. Thus, Nagorno-Karabakh
became the only ethnic territory in the Soviet Union which was detached from its titular republic,
and which was attached to a union-republic that had a different ethnic character. In 1923, the
USSR central government formally awarded Nakhichevan to the Azerbaijan SSR, while the
Nagorno-Karrabakh Autonomous Oblast' was formally constituted in 1924. As already
mentioned, the Azerbaijani government encouraged Azerbaijanis to migrate to NagornoKarabakh, so that by 1989 about 25 % of the region's population was Azerbaijani. Most
Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh settled in Shusha and Khojali, highly elevated cities that
afforded them some distance from the ethnic Armenian majority. One important Azerbaijani
leader during the Soviet era was Heydar Aliev, a KGB general who was appointed head of the
Azerbaijan SSR in 1969. He served in that capacity until 1982, when he was promoted to the
Soviet Politburo, on which he served until 1987, when Gorbachev “retired” him, and banished
him to Nakhichevan, Heydar Aliev's birthplace. H. Aliyev remained in Nakhichevan, in effect,
in political exile, until 1993, when he again became leader of Azerbaijan, this time of a sovereign
state (Altstadt, 1992; Goltz, 1998).
5.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Nagorno-Karabakh Case
Territoriality, the mental program in the human psyche which defines the “proper”
boundaries of a polity, is present in the Nagorno-Karabakh case. Nagorno-Karabakh, also
known as Nagorny Karabakh, is the Russian name for the Armenian-inhabited region of
Azerbaijan. There are alternate renderings of the name of the territory. Nagorny is Russian for
mountainous, while Karabakh is the Russian form of Karabagh. The term Karabagh is a TurcoPersian word that means Black Garden (Turkish, kara- means black + Persian, -bagh means
garden). For the convenience of the reader, the author will use the term Nagorno-Karabakh
when discussing the Soviet period, and will employ the terms Karabagh and Mountainous
Karabagh for the period following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
In this chapter, the author argues that the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute is largely territorial
because Armenia and Azerbaijan focus on the territory, and have concentrated their efforts on
possessing or retrieving it. Religious differences play a role, for the Muslim-Christian conflict
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continues, and the differences between Armenia and Azerbaijan constitute a front line in this
religious struggle (Jamieson, 2006). However, the religious issue is of secondary importance in
the Nagorno-Karabakh/Karabagh dispute because both sides primarily turn their gaze on a
material resource, land. Culture and religion are weapons in this territorial dispute rather than
factors taking center stage. There is merit in the argument that religious differences have altered
the stakes in this particular conflict. When atheist uniformity was imposed on the USSR, the
Karabagh Armenians grudgingly accepted their territory’s status in the Azerbaijan SSR.
However, the religious revival that began in the Soviet Union in 1988 changed the issues at hand.
Karabagh’s Armenians refused to remain in a Muslim-majority polity that they perceived
discriminated against non-Muslims. On the other hand, Azerbaijan’s perception that its retention
of Nagorno-Karabakh is an issue of preserving the Azerbaijan republic’s territorial integrity may
be partially grounded in the Muslim desire to hold onto all territory the Islamic forces have taken
over since the caliphs’ campaigns of the 7th century. Muslims, Azerbaijanis included, are
sensitive to the territorial losses to non-Muslims since the Austro-Turkish war of 1683-99, and
they want to retain as much land in Muslim hands as is possible (Wheatcroft, 2008). Despite the
way religion alters the stakes in a conflict, Armenia’s differences with Azerbaijan over Karabagh
fit in with my territorial argument. In general, Armenia wants to take possession of Mountainous
Karabagh, or at the least, have the Karabagh Armenians inhabit and control the territory, while
Azerbaijan considers Karabagh an integral part of its territory, and sees the detachment of the
territory as a threat to its integrity. Azerbaijan may fear that the `secession’ of Karabagh may
trigger other secessionist agitation within its borders. For example, Azerbaijan has a Lezgin
minority, who may want to join their ethnic cousins in Dagestan. Iran has a large Azerbaijani
Turkish minority in the country’s northwest. It is possible that Iran could lay claim to
Azerbaijan by asserting it is reunifying the entire Azerbaijani population. Such a scenario seems
highly unlikely though because Russia would probably not tolerate an Iranian takeover of
Azerbaijan. Iran is paranoid that Azerbaijan will voice a desire to `gather’ all Azerbaijanis under
Baku’s rule. Russia would probably not tolerate such Azerbaijani behavior either. For
Azerbaijan, the primary territorial dispute is with the Karabagh Armenians and the Republic of
Armenia. On the other hand, Armenia has written off taking back Nakhichevan, but it is
adamant about keeping Mountainous Karabagh in Armenian hands, and not ceding any more
territory to the Muslim Turkic peoples.
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The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabagh is territorial by nature, for both
countries lay claim to the piece of land, which is 4,400 square miles in area, and has about 6080,000 people as of 2001, mostly ethnic Armenians (Zuercher, 2007; de Waal, 2003).
Armenians consider Mountainous Karabagh to be part of their homeland, and even though it is
unknown when the region became part of Armenia, Armenians point to Tigran the Great’s
establishment of a Tigranakert in Artsakh (Karabagh) during the 1st century BCE and to the
religious monuments and khachkars as testimony to a continuous Armenian presence in the
territory for centuries. This argument is buttressed by the Armenians, who point out the Artsakh
contribution to Vartan Mamikonian’s army, and to the fact that Armenian dynasties ruled over
Karabagh until the mid-18th century, when the Azerbaijanis allegedly first entered the area
(Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
Azerbaijanis see the Karabagh dispute as one of preserving the territorial integrity of their
republic. They point to the Caucasian Albanian lordship over Artsakh in the 4th-7th centuries CE
as primary proof for their claim. For Azerbaijanis consider the Caucasian Albanians to be their
ancestors in the eastern Caucasus. Some Azerbaijani scholars consider all of the Armenians to
be descendants of Caucasian Albanians, and hence think the Armenians are bereft of statehood,
and should be ruled by Azerbaijanis (de Waal, 2003). Such an argument is spurious, for the
Armenians are an Indo-European people with a Caucasian admixture who settled in the Caucasus
in the 6th century BCE. It is possible that the Caucasian peoples who were assimilated by the
Armenian nation in the centuries before Christ were related to the Caucasian Albanians. It is
also possible they were related to the neighboring Georgians. Azerbaijanis also point to the
Azerbaijani Democratic Republic’s nominal control over Karabagh, especially to the Karabagh
Armenians’ submission to Azerbaijani rule in 1919, as “proof” of Azerbaijani control over the
region. Most important of all, Azerbaijanis emphasize that Stalin let the Azerbaijan SSR retain
control of Karabagh (Nagorno-Karabakh) in 1921 (Altstadt, 1992). Goltz (1998), who tells the
Azerbaijani side of the Karabagh dispute, concedes that Armenians constitute the majority in the
territory.
It appears that Azerbaijan’s claim is more political, while Armenia’s is political and
ethnic. Armenia appears to have a stronger stake over the Karabagh territory. Not only are the
Armenians a majority in Mountainous Karabagh, their cultural presence is more extensive.
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There are only three extant mosques in Karabagh, and they are in Shushi (Shusha). On the other
hand, Karabagh had 126 Armenian Christian monasteries in the 13th century CE (Sapsezian,
1996). While most have been abandoned over the centuries of Muslim and Communist
oppression, they point to a strong Armenian presence in the territory. Karabagh is dotted with
khachkars, which are Armenian stone crosses representing Jesus Christ. During the Bagratuni
period in Armenian history, Karabagh had an independent dynasty that challenged Bagratuni
rule, and Armenian melik ruling dynasties controlled Karabagh until one melik allowed in an
Azerbaijani khan around 1750 CE (Chorbajian, et al., 1994). After the 1828 Treaty of
Turkmenchai, only 400 Armenian families from Persia settled in Karabagh. Nevertheless,
Armenians still constituted a majority of Karabagh’s population despite centuries of Muslim rule
(de Waal, 2003). As this course of argument shows, the territorial claim is paramount, with
religious and cultural issues playing second fiddle.
Facilitating Conditions in the Nagorno-Karabakh Dispute
All six facilitating conditions played a role in setting off the Armenian-Azerbaijani war
over Nagorno-Karabakh. An Armenian national elite emerged from the intelligentsia in 1988,
and took over Armenia in the republic-wide election of 1990. This elite, who initially formed the
Karabagh Committee, and used this committee to build a mass political party, the Armenian
National Movement, led Armenia to independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. NagornoKarabakh was the rallying point which the new Armenian national elite used to unite the
Armenian people, and to help the Karabagh Armenians to secure their territory from Azerbaijani
domination (Payaslian, 2007; de Waal, 2003). On the other hand, the Karabagh dispute set off a
power struggle in Azerbaijan between the intelligentsia and the nomenklatura, with the NagornoKarabakh issue being a central bone of contention between them. Azerbaijani intellectuals and
apparatchiks argued over how to wage the Karabagh war against the territory’s Armenian
inhabitants and against the Armenian republic. In the end, the nomenklatura beat the
intelligentsia in June, 1993, when Heydar Aliev returned from Nakhichevan to assume the
Azerbaijani presidency (de Waal, 2003; Altstadt, 1992; Goltz, 1998).
Elite behavior on both sides played a critical role in stoking the flames that resulted in
conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan from 1988 to 1994. Armenia’s dispute with
Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh began in October, 1987. It is interesting that the Karabagh
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war started on a collective farm (kolkhoz) in the Shaumian region of Azerbaijan, which is
situated north of the Karabagh region. This kolkhoz was staffed with ethnic Armenians, and it
was headed by an Armenian director. This collective farm was in the village of Chardakhlu, and
the local Azerbaijani administration replaced this Armenian director with an ethnic Azerbaijani.
Chardakhlu’s Armenians held a demonstration against this move, and the local Azerbaijani
militia suppressed this protest. In response to this development, Azerbaijanis in the Zangezur
region of Armenia were forced to flee to the Azerbaijan SSR in November, 1987. These events
occurred while the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians sent a petition to the Soviet central
government in Moscow demanding that Karabagh be turned over to the Armenian SSR. Karen
Demirchian, Communist leader of the Armenian SSR, tacitly approved of this petition, and
turned a blind eye to the Dashnak effort to smuggle arms into Nagorno-Karabakh. This region’s
Komsomol (Communist Youth Organization) acquired many weapons, most of them of
Czechoslovak origin. Robert Kocharian, one of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Komsomol leaders at the
time, was to play an important role as post-Soviet Armenia’s second president (1998-2008) (de
Waal, 2003; Shoemaker, 2009). During 1987-88, the Soviet government was in control of the
Transcaucasian region (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia). It was during this time period that it lost
control over developments in the Armenian and Azerbaijani SSR’s. The conflict between
Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh quickly took on a life of its own. Gorbachev
and his colleagues found themselves reacting rather than taking the initiative once fighting broke
out between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. His actions tended to fuel the conflict rather
than dampen it down. He tried to disarm the Karabagh Armenians, a move which infuriated their
ethnic kin in Armenia and throughout the Armenian diaspora. Azerbaijanis were disappointed
when he placed Nagorno-Karabakh under temporary Soviet central government control, and his
return of the region to the Azerbaijan SSR did not lesson Azerbaijani suspicions of Soviet
Kremlin moves. His military campaign against Baku’s Azerbaijanis in January, 1990 only made
Azerbaijanis desire that their union-republic secede from the Soviet Union (de Waal, 2003;
Altstadt, 1992; Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
A delegation of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians went to Moscow in February, 1988 with a
petition by the territory’s Armenian population asking the CPSU Politburo to transfer NagornoKarabakh to the Armenian SSR. On February 13, 1988, thousands of Armenians gathered in the
main square in Armenian-inhabited Stepanakert, which is the capital of Mountainous Karabagh.
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The crowd demanded that the Soviet central government give Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
At this time, Karabagh Armenians made up 75 % of the territory’s population. There were
40,000 Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh, who were concentrated in Shusha and Khojali.
Karabagh’s Armenians feared that the Azerbaijanis would one day become a majority in
Nagorno-Karabakh, and make the Karabagh Armenian dream of uniting the territory with
Armenia an impossibility. These Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh remembered that
Nakhichevan once had a substantial Armenian community, but that it was displaced with
Azerbaijanis. Nakhichevan is now almost completely Azerbaijani in composition, and is part of
Azerbaijan. Zori Balayan, an Armenian intellectual from Nagorno-Karabakh, who was the first
ideologist of the Karabagh cause, argued that the Turks (Osmanli and Azerbaijani) wanted to
create a pan-Turkic entity, and that Armenia was in their way, and thus had to be eliminated.
Many Armenians think this is the case, and point to the 1915-23 `Massacres’ as proof for this
claim (de Waal, 2003; Zuercher, 2007; Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
On February 20, 1988, the Nagorno-Karabakh Supreme Soviet (parliament) convened,
and the Armenian majority passed a resolution demanding that the Soviet central government
transfer Nagorno-Karabakh from the Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenian SSR. Azerbaijani
delegates did not participate in this session, and called the proceedings a farce. These events in
Stepanakert had a ripple effect in the Armenian SSR, giving Armenians an issue behind which
they could rally. On this same day, in the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, 30,000 people assembled
for a rally in Theater Square. While this rally was ostensibly called to advocate for
improvements in Soviet environmental policies in the Armenian SSR, this issue was quickly
drowned out by the Nagorno-Karabakh matter. This rally was organized by the Karabakh
Committee, an Armenian nationalist group led by eleven intellectuals. Soon, the leading
members of this organization emerged, Vazgen Manukian and Levon Ter-Petrossian, who was
born in Syria, and who moved to the Armenian SSR with his parents in the late 1940s. Both
were master organizers, and provided the Armenian nationalist cause with the leadership to
pursue policies that led to the loss of Soviet control over the republic. After the February 20,
1988 rally, the Karabakh Committee overshadowed the Armenian Communist party in the
Armenian SSR’s political discourse. The Yerevan protests took on a life of their own. Two days
later, the crowd swelled to 100,000 people, then to 300,000 on February 23, 1988. One million
Yerevan Armenians came out on February 25, 1988, and the crowd had only one issue on its
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mind, Nagorno-Karabakh. Gorbachev and his Politburo colleagues discussed the NagornoKarabakh situation, and came up with a reply: Nagorno-Karabakh was to remain part of the
Azerbaijan SSR. In addition, Gorbachev sent Soviet Interior Ministry troops to NagornoKarabakh to calm down the Armenians in the territory. These moves by Gorbachev only turned
the Armenians off, and led to later agitation for Armenia to secede from the USSR (de Waal,
2003; Chorbajian, et al., 1994; Zuercher, 2007).
On February 19, 1988, Azerbaijani students, workers, and intellectuals held a rally in
Baku in front of the Azerbaijan SSR Supreme Soviet building, declaring that Nagorno-Karabakh
was part of Azerbaijan, and would always remain so. The spark for this protest was
Azerbaijanis’ fears for the territorial integrity of their republic. They reasoned that if Armenia
received Nagorno-Karabakh, then Azerbaijan would be dismembered, or severely reduced in size
at the least. Lezgins in Azerbaijan would be encouraged by the Nagorno-Karabakh precedent to
demand the absorption of their lands into Dagestan, where there exists a large Lezgin
community. Azerbaijan sees the Nagorno-Karabakh issue as one of preserving territorial
integrity (de Waal, 2003). It is interesting that Nagorno-Karabakh was the only Soviet territory
where the local majority was the same as that of a neighboring titular union-republic, but whose
territory belonged to another union-republic with a different titular nationality. In other words,
the Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh had co-ethnics in the Armenian SSR, most of
whose inhabitants were ethnically Armenian. But Nagorno-Karabakh was part of the Azerbaijan
SSR, most of whose people were Azerbaijani Turks. Soviet ethnographers, had they rigorously
applied the principle of including ethnic majority areas with union-republics with which they had
an ethnic affinity, would have been in their rights in arguing for including the Nagorno-Karabakh
territory in the Armenian SSR. While the Soviet central government made Nagorno-Karabakh
into an autonomous oblast’ in 1924, such a move did not stop Baku from acting to Azerbaijanize
the territory, and discourage the territory’s Armenian majority from expressing its cultural
heritage (Zuercher, 2007). With the protests in Stepanakert, Yerevan, and Baku, the first volleys
in the latest battle over Karabagh were exchanged. Violence soon broke out between Armenians
and Azerbaijanis that ignited a Soviet civil war. This civil conflict took on the character of an
interstate war after Armenia and Azerbaijan broke away from the Soviet Union.
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Despite Gorbachev’s refusal to give the Karabagh territory to Armenia, the Armenians in
the territory and in the Armenian SSR pressed on with their campaign. Although Gorbachev
promised to maintain Nagorno-Karabakh’s autonomy in the Azerbaijan SSR and to send
economic aid to improve the Karabagh Armenians’ well-being, the Armenians would have none
of it. Instead of calming the situation, Gorbachev’s reaction to the Armenian ferment
emboldened the Azerbaijanis to react to Armenian agitation. Azerbaijani actions led to an
Armenian reaction, which started a tit-for-tat cycle that led to war. The party boss of Baku,
Musayev, managed to head off an anti-Armenian pogrom in his city for the time-being, but one
broke out in the city of Sumgait, which is near Baku. On February 26-27, 1988, the Azerbaijani
crowd grew, with many of them refugees from the Armenian SSR. One refugee told about
Armenian atrocities against Azerbaijanis leaving the Armenian republic, stories which were
exaggerated for effect. Sumgait’s second party secretary called for the expulsion of Armenians
from the Azerbaijan SSR. On February 28, 1988, the party leader of Sumgait, Jehangir
Muslimzade, tried to calm the Azerbaijani crowd, and lead it out of range of Armenian-inhabited
precincts. Instead, many Azerbaijanis splintered off, and attacked the Armenian quarter,
torturing and killing Armenians in a three-day orgy of violence. Officially, 26 Armenians and 6
Azerbaijanis were killed in this progrom, though the figure could actually be higher. Gorbachev
sent in military forces and imposed a curfew, but this failed to calm the Armenians in Sumgait.
Instead, almost all of the 14,000 Sumgait Armenians fled to the southern RSFSR (de Waal, 2003;
Zuercher, 2007).
This pogrom convinced more Armenians to leave the Azerbaijan SSR. In 1988, the
Azerbaijan SSR had 350,000 Armenians. By 1992, all Armenians had left Azerbaijan, and
Yerevan expelled all Azerbaijanis in the Armenian republic. For Armenia, the Sumgait pogrom
was the latest instance of Turkic perfidy, and was a repeat of the 1915-23 `massacres’.
Azerbaijanis maintained that it was the Armenians themselves who started the pogrom, but this
is highly unlikely. De Waal (2003) mantains that Sumgait Communist party apparatchiks started
the pogrom, and that they handed the Azerbaijani crowd the addresses of Armenians. His
explanation seems plausible, for the Sumgait apparatchiks thought they could house the
displaced Azerbaijanis in apartments abandoned by the Armenians. Gorbachev did not initiate
an investigation into the Sumgait pogrom, a decision which fueled conspiracy theories among
both Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Armenians reasoned that Gorbachev failed to punish the
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perpetrators, and thus let them get away with murder. Such a move, the Sumgait pogrom, was
seen by Azerbaijanis as `proof’ that the Armenians started it themselves. At the time of the
Sumgait pogrom, the pro-Azerbaijani Gevorkov was replaced as party head of NagornoKarabagh by Genrikh Pogosian, who, bowing to his constituency’s wishes, became a champion
of an Armenian takeover of the territory under his jurisdiction. In September, 1988, the
Armenians were expelled from Shusha, and the Armenians cast out the Azerbaijanis in
Stepanakert. The battle lines were hardning, and the expulsions presaged the violence that was
to follow in Nagorno-Karabakh (de Waal, 2003).
These events were not the only ones that followed the Sumgait pogrom. Gorbachev fired
the party heads of the Armenian and Azerbaijan SSR’s, Karen Demirchian and Kamran Bagirov,
respectively, and replaced them with Suret Harutiunian and Abdurrahman Vezirov. In the
Armenian SSR, the local Communist party lost control of the political situation, and the 11-man
Karabakh Committee took over the political initiative. Levon Ter-Petrossian became the leader
of this committee, having the strategic prowess to awaken Armenians and to lead them through
an unprecedented political situation. Robert Kocharian, with other radicals, formed their own
political organization in March, 1988 called Krunk. This organization was the first in the Soviet
Union to employ syndicalist tactics. In Moscow, the Politburo was divided over the NagornoKarabakh issue. Aleksandr Yakovlev, a top Gorbachev aide and reformer, and others proposed
to upgrade the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast’ to an ASSR, but to keep this ASSR
under Azerbaijan SSR jurisdiction. Communist hard-liners, led by Yegor Ligachev, argued for
the status quo, which meant that Azerbaijan retained virtually full control over NagornoKarabakh. The May, 1988 compromise proposal failed to unite the Politburo, or to satisfy the
Armenians and Azerbaijanis, who used the Politburo’s divisions to their advantage. On taking
over from Demirchian, Harutiunian allowed the red-blue-orange tricolor flag of the 1918-20
Armenian republic to fly in Yerevan. On June 15, 1988, the Armenian SSR Supreme Soviet
passed a resolution calling for Nagorno-Karabakh’s reunification with Armenia. Two days later,
the Azerbaijan SSR Supreme Soviet passed its own resolution that called for Azerbaijan to keep
Nagorno-Karabakh. On July 12, 1988, the Nagorno-Karabakh Supreme Soviet passed a second
resolution which announced the territory’s secession from the Azerbaijan SSR, and which
renamed the territory the “Artsakh Armenian Autonomous Region.” A week before the
“Artsakh” resolution, Soviet soldiers fired on Armenian protesters at Yerevan’s Zvartnots
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airport, killing a student demonstrator. This action further alienated the Armenians from the
Soviet order, and subsequent Armenian demonstrations had an anti-Soviet character to them (de
Waal, 2003; Zuercher, 2007; Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
Gorbachev made an attempt to defuse the recurring crisis by establishing direct Soviet
central government control over Nagorno-Karabakh on July 24, 1988. He chose the Soviet
industrialist Arkady Volsky as his viceroy for the territory. In effect, Volsky was a governorgeneral with absolute powers over Nagorno-Karabakh. His mandate was initially for six months,
but it ended up lasting for eighteen months. Volsky focused on improving the economic
condition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians, but this campaign ended in failure. During his
tenure as the Soviet Kremlin’s “special representative” to Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory cost
the Soviet central government 1 billion rubles for a Soviet economic aid package of 400 million
rubles. Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian majority refused to sell its products to the Baku
government, complaining that such economic exchanges were unprofitable. Ethnic tensions
between Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians and Azerbaijanis escalated, and fighting broke out
between the two communities. Armenian youths stoned buses going to Shusha. Azerbaijanis
retaliated by attacking a convoy of Russians and Armenians taking supplies to Stepanakert on
September 18, 1988. In response, Armenians gathered whatever weapons they had at hand,
mostly axes and hunting rifles, and some of them got through a Soviet Interior Ministry troop
cordon, and attacked Azerbaijanis in Khojali. Twelve were injured as a result of these clashes,
and two of them died. It was as a result of this event that all Azerbaijanis were expelled from
Stepanakert and all Armenians from Shusha. Volsky called for Gorbachev to impose a curfew
(de Waal, 2003).
In January, 1989, Gorbachev made Volsky head of an eight-man “Committee of Special
Administration,” which had four Russians on it, two Armenians, and a token Azerbaijani. This
committee disbanded all political and governmental entities in Nagorno-Karabakh, and assumed
absolute control over the territory. However, this committee’s jurisdiction was more theoretical
than reflective of political realities. In July, 1989, the local party of the Armenian-inhabited
Shaumian region, which is north of Nagorno-Karabakh, passed a resolution attaching Shaumian
to the Nagorno-Karabakh territory. This move displeased the Azerbaijani authorities in Baku.
On August 16, 1989, the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians set up a seventy-nine member National
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Council to represent them in their struggle with Baku and the Soviet central government. By this
time, both Karabagh Armenians and Azerbaijanis got hold of small arms, and military operations
began: both sides blockaded roads, blew up bridges, and took hostages. The Soviet Politburo
tried to keep weapons out of the hands of Karabakhis, but its efforts were too little, too late. On
November 28, 1989, Gorbachev gave Nagorno-Karabakh back to the Azerbaijan SSR. Volsky
stayed in the territory until the Soviet suppression of an Azerbaijani opposition takeover in Baku
in January, 1990. It was around autumn 1989 that the Azerbaijani opposition imposed a rail
blockade on Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians, a policy continued by Azerbaijan’s governments
up to the present day (2011). On December 1, 1989, the Nagorno-Karabakh National Council
and the Armenian SSR Supreme Soviet passed a joint resolution that declared NagornoKarabakh part of the Armenian republic, and that all the inhabitants of the territory were
Armenian citizens (de Waal, 2003; Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
As becomes clear in the above account, the Armenian and Azerbaijani elites played a
central role in starting the Nagorno-Karabakh war. A counter-elite emerged in the Armenian
SSR, which took up and championed the cause of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. This
counter-elite was composed of eleven intellectuals who dubbed their body the Karabakh
Committee. After the December, 1988 earthquake in the Leninakan (Gyumri) and Spitak areas
of Armenia, the Karabakh Committee proceeded to form an Armenian nationalist party, the
Armenian National Movement (ANM), which won the May, 1990 Armenian SSR Supreme
Soviet elections. ANM legislators elected Levon Ter-Petrossian, the Armenian National
Movement leader, as Speaker of the Armenian SSR Supreme Soviet. He went on to become
post-Soviet Armenia’s first president, and was the Armenian republic’s chief executive during
the interstate phase of the Karabagh war (January, 1992-May, 1994) (de Waal, 2003; Payaslian,
2007). In the Azerbaijan SSR, the Azerbaijani Popular Front (AzPF), which was founded in
September, 1988, attempted to take over the Azerbaijani government by direct action in January,
1990. In response to the Armenian SSR’s takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh’s budget on January 9,
1990, the AzPF launched a pogrom against Baku’s Armenian inhabitants. This pogrom was the
last straw for the Bakuvite Armenians, and they fled the Azerbaijani capital, and moved to the
RSFSR or the Armenian SSR. Gorbachev sent the Soviet army into Baku to reimpose
Communist party authority over the Azerbaijan SSR. Ayaz Mutalibov, the Azerbaijan republic’s
premier, became leader of the Azerbaijan SSR, and this Communist led Azerbaijan to
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independence from the USSR in 1991. He was forced to resign in March, 1992, and he fled to
Moscow (Altstadt, 1992; Goltz, 1998).
Elite behavior was important to sparking the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over NagornoKarabakh, but these elite actions were conditioned by the five other facilitating conditions.
Armenia and Azerbaijan were located on the periphery of the USSR. Both union-republics were
situated in the southern Caucasus region. Armenia shared borders with Turkey and Iran, while
Azerbaijan bordered Iran and the Nakhichevan region, which belongs to Azerbaijan, has a border
with Turkey. Nagorno-Karabakh is situated in southwestern Azerbaijan, and it is near Armenia.
Stalin ensured that the NKAO was cut off from the Armenian SSR. Despite his efforts to isolate
Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia, his legacy does not live on in the post-Soviet era. NagornoKarabakh Armenian forces conqured the Lachin Corridor in April, 1992, which connects the
Nagorno-Karabakh region with Armenia. These factors point to the centrality of location in
influencing the nature of this territorial conflict. Had Nagorno-Karabakh been situated in the
middle of Azerbaijan, then Armenia would not have been able to send military assistance to its
ethnic kin. Being near Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh could count on Armenia sending materiel,
volunteers, and even regular soldiers to help the territory’s Armenian inhabitants secure their
freedom from Baku’s control. On the other hand, Azerbaijan’s task of reimposing its control
over Nagorno-Karabakh was complicated by the proximity of Armenia to the territory. Baku
failed to isolate the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians from their co-ethnics in Armenia. What made
Azerbaijan’s strategy difficult to carry out was Armenia’s more or less secure supply line to
Nagorno-Karabakh (de Waal, 2003; Zuercher, 2007; Chorbajian, et al., 1994; Goltz, 1998).
According to the 1989 Soviet census, Armenians composed 75 % of Nagorno-Karabakh’s
population, while Azerbaijanis made up most of the rest. In 1924, the Armenians made up 94 %
of the NKAO’s population, while the other 6 % was mostly composed of Azerbaijanis. One
reason the Karabagh Armenians took up arms against the Azerbaijanis was because the
territory’s Armenians feared that they would become a minority in their homeland, and that the
Azerbaijanis would form the majority of Nagorno-Karabakh’s inhabitants in the future.
Karabagh’s Armenians observed how the substantial Armenian presence in Nakhichevan
disappeared, and that most of Nakhichevan’s present-day inhabitants are Azerbaijani Turks. In
other words, the Karabagh Armenians took up arms because they sensed an opportunity that
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perestroika offererd. They saw their chance to reunite Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. Being
three-quarters of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population, the Armenians had the numerical superiority
to impose their will upon the territory. It helped that the Karabagh Azerbaijanis were
concentrated in the towns of Shusha and Khojali. All Karabagh Armenian forces had to do was
use their local superiority in numbers to surround the two towns, and force out their Azerbaijani
inhabitants. Karabagh’s Armenians reasoned in 1988-89 that their opportunity to redress a
historic injustice perpetrated by Stalin could be redressed, and they seized the chance offered by
the freer political atmosphere in Gorbachev’s Soviet Union (de Waal, 2003; Chorbajian, et al.,
1994).
Both the Karabagh Armenians and the Azerbaijanis could count on ethnic diaspora
nearby, especially after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. From the initiation of hostilities in
1988, the Karabagh Armenians had the support of the Armenians in the Armenian SSR and those
Armenians in the diaspora. Armenians all over the world, especially those in the Armenian
republic, sent assistance to their beleaguered ethnic kin in Nagorno-Karabakh. This help took
the form of munitions, money, volunteers, and moral support. In 1987-88, the Armenian SSR
passed on Czechoslovak weapons to the Karabagh Armenians, with the top Armenian SSR
officials looking the other way. It is likely that Armenia continued to supply the NagornoKarabakh Armenians with materiel after 1988. One indication of this support was the Karabagh
Armenians’ performance on the battlefield. They succeeded in their strategic goals. Karabagh
Armenian forces and even the regular Armenian army after 1991 pushed the Azerbaijanis out of
Nagorno-Karabakh and the Azerbaijani territory surrounding the region. Thus, Armenian
diaspora support proved crucial to the Karabagh Armenians’ efforts to throw off Azerbaijani rule
(de Waal, 2003; Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
Azerbaijan had the sympathy of Turkey and the rest of the Islamic world. It is probable
that Turkey sent arms to Azerbaijan after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Mujahedin volunteers
from Afghanistan arrived in Azerbaijan to help out in Baku’s war effort to repossess NagornoKarabakh. The ethnic diaspora that could have been most helpful to the Azerbaijani Turks in
Azerbaijan was their ethnic kin in northwestern Iran. Given the absolute control the mullahs
have over the Iranian polity, and their preference for Armenia, Iranian Azerbaijani support for
their co-ethnics in the former USSR was neutralized. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his
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colleagues distrust Azerbaijan, fearing that the Azerbaijani republic will lay claim to the
Azerbaijani-inhabited region of Iran. Azerbaijan is also a rival to Iran in the petroleumexporting arena. Iran views Azerbaijan as a competitor for world oil markets. It is probable that
Khamenei fears that Azerbaijan will use Stalin’s occupation of northwestern Iran during World
War II as a historic precedent to assert a claim over Iranian territory. Given these realities,
Turkey was the focus of the Islamic world’s support for the Azerbaijanis in their struggle with
the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians (de Waal, 2003; Goltz, 1998; Altstadt, 1992).
During the Soviet period, Baku encouraged the Azerbaijanis to “colonize” NagornoKarabakh. Comparing the 1924 and 1989 census results, this factor appears to be corroborated.
Economic incentives played a key role in motivating Azerbaijanis to move to an area with an
Armenian majority. The Azerbaijan SSR used its jurisdiction over the NKAO to attempt to alter
the demographic balance. Azerbaijanis received preference for top jobs in Nagorno-Karabakh,
although the party head of the region was an ethnic Armenian. This Armenian leader of
Nagorno-Karabakh had to adopt a pro-Azerbaijani line to keep his job. Karabagh’s Armenians
feared that they would become helots in their homeland, and that the Azerbaijanis would become
the economic ruling class. Baku favored the Azerbaijanis who settled in Nagorno-Karabakh, and
saw the Armenians as second-class citizens whose economic opportunities had to be limited.
Karabagh’s Armenian majority wanted to secure control over the territory’s economic resources,
and it viewed the Karabagh Azerbaijanis as economic competitors that had the aim of
impoverishing the Armenians. It comes as no surprise that economic competition had a role in
stoking conflict between the Karabagh Armenians and the Azerbaijanis (de Waal, 2003;
Chorbajian, et al., 1994).
While the Soviet Union had a firm hold over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Azerbaijanis could
do as they pleased in the territory, and destroy much of the Armenian cultural heritage. While
Soviet policy gave the authorities in Baku an excuse to tear down “bourgeoisie” Armenian
monuments, the Azerbaijani government encouraged the Karabagh Azerbaijanis to express their
cultural preferences fully. Most Armenians in the titular republic forgot about NagornoKarabakh, and General Andrannik’s efforts to take the territory for Armenia in the post-World
War I era. All of this changed in the pivotal year of 1988. At the rallies in Yerevan in late
February, 1988, organizers passed out leaflets with information about Nagorno-Karabakh to the
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crowds, who began to chant Gha-ra-bagh (Karabagh) once they became aware of the plight of
their co-ethnics in the Armenian-majority region of Azerbaijan. Word of mouth spread the
message, and ever-larger crowds showed up for the protests. On February 25, 1988, one million
Yerevanites attended a rally in support of the Karabagh Armenians. Soviet and international
media reported on these rallies, which encouraged the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to fight for
their cause. As part of his policy of glasnost’, Gorbachev allowed the Soviet media to cover
developments in Nagorno-Karabakh. This only steeled the determination of the Karabagh
Armenians to expel the Azerbaijanis and to make their territory independent of Baku’s control,
and hardened the resolve of the Azerbaijanis to repossess Karabagh. By handing over NagornoKarabakh back to Azerbaijan in November, 1989, Gorbachev alienated the Armenians from the
Soviet political order. This explains why the Armenians threw out the Communists in the May,
1990 union-republic elections, and gave a majority to the Armenian National Movement. After
their victory, the ANM took control of the Armenian SSR media, and used it to get out the
Armenians’ view of events in Nagorno-Karabakh. In Azerbaijan, the AzPF focused much of its
attention on Nagorno-Karabakh. Besides imposing a blockade on Karabagh and Armenia in
1989, the AzPF hoped to wage a more effective war against the Karabagh Armenians than the
Communist Azerbaijani government was doing. This partially explains why the AzPF carried
out direct action in late 1989-early 1990. After Soviet forces reimposed Communist rule in
January, 1990, Mutalibov used his control of the local media to give the Azerbaijani side of the
Karabagh issue. He took advantage of the “war of the laws” between the Soviet center and the
union-republics to pursue Azerbaijani national interests. As can be seen, the local media in
Armenia and Azerbaijan became spokespieces for their respective national causes, and both
republics presented their side of developments in Karabagh (de Waal, 2003; Chorbajian, et al.,
1994; Altstadt, 1992).
All six facilitating conditions played a role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. They
influenced how the Armenians and Azerbaijanis viewed the Karabagh issue, and defined the
parameters in which both sides operated. The Soviet center more or less contained the Karabagh
war, but its efforts to solve the Karabagh dispute ended in failure. By giving Karabagh back to
Azerbaijan, and by sending the Soviet army to reimpose Communist rule over Azerbaijan,
Gorbachev alienated both Armenians and Azerbaijanis from the Soviet order, and his actions
contributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union. While he was able to restore Soviet control in
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Baku, he lost control of Armenia, and gave the ANM the opportunity to take power from the
Communists in Yerevan. This ANM victory helped the Karabagh Armenians enormously, and
Ter-Petrossian’s government used its resources to increase material, military, and moral
assistance to the beleaguered Karabagh Armenians. As can be ascertained, the NagornoKarabakh war marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union (de Waal, 2003).
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CHAPTER SIX
MOLDOVA
The Republic of Moldova, which is situated between Romania and Ukraine, has a frozen
conflict on its territory. It involves the area of Moldova east of the Dniestr river, which has
broken away from the control of the Moldovan central government in Chisinau. This region,
which is about the size of Rhode Island, has taken the name of the Dniestr Moldavian Republic
(DMR). It is known in shorthand as Transdnistria. In the Trandnistrian region, Russians and
Ukrainians constitute the majority, while Moldovan Romanians are a minority. This is the
opposite of the ethnic situation in Moldova west of the Dniestr river, the region known since
1812 as Bessarabia. In Bessarabia, Moldovan Romanians are the majority, while Russians and
Ukrainians constitute distinct minorities. Ethnic Russians form the elite of Transdnistria, running
its political and economic affairs, while the Moldovan Romanians are the elite in Bessarabia. As
can be ascertained, the conflict between Bessarabia and Transdnistria is ethnic in character, and it
involves the titular nationality of Moldova in a struggle with members of the former USSR's
ruling nation, the ethnic Russians. In addition, the ethnic differences between the Moldovan
Romanians of Bessarabia and the Russian elite of Transdnistria have ideological overtones.
Transdnistria's Russians and Ukrainians want to preserve as much of the Soviet past as is
possible. While carrying out a form of privatization of state enterprises and having more than
one political party, the Transdnistrians have preserved the flag and state emblem of the
Moldavian SSR, which they have made their own, and have advocated for a form of restoration
of the Soviet Union, a vision which includes the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, and
Transdnistria joining together. Russians and Ukrainians get preferential treatment in
governmental and top economic posts in the DMR, while the region's Moldovan Romanians face
discrimination. On the other hand, Bessarabia views itself and Transdnistria as constituting the
independent, sovereign state of Moldova, a subject of the international community of countries.
While Bessarabia's Moldovan Romanians see themselves as the ruling group in Moldova, they
also feel the pull of their ethnic kin in Romania. Pro-Western parties in Moldova, such as the
Christian Democratic Popular Party (CDPP), see Moldova's future involving its integration with
Europe, possibly union with Romania, while the Party of Moldovan Communists (PMC) sees
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Moldova remaining independent, though respecting Russian interests, and participating in the
Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
It appears that the Russians and Ukrainians of Transdnistria have taken advantage of the
Bessarabians' identity crisis to separate their region from Moldovan central government control.
They have received the backing of the Russian government in Moscow. In Transdnistria is
deployed an Organizational Group of Russian Forces (OGRF), which is all that remains of the
Russian 14th Army. In essence, the OGRF is a “trip wire” force that shows Russia's commitment
to defending the existence of a separate Transdnistrian state. During Moldova's 1992 civil war,
the Russian 14th Army came to the aid of the Transdnistrian forces, which were fighting soldiers
of the Moldovan central government. This Russian military intervention was the first time that
the Kremlin interposed itself in another country in the post-Soviet era. Even under Yeltsin,
Russia considered Moldova to be in its sphere of influence, which it dubbed the “Near Abroad”
(blizhnee zarubezh'ye). Russia took advantage of the chaos that beset the former Soviet states to
protect its ethnic kin in Moldova.
It is the argument of this chapter that the Bessarabian-Transdnistrian conflict is territorial
in character, with both sides holding different conceptions of what are the “proper” boundaries of
the Moldovan state. On the one side, the Moldovan central government, which is based in
Bessarabia, sees Moldova as a unitary sovereign state that encompasses the territory of
Transdnistria. On the other hand, the DMR views itself as a separate entity that is distinct from
Bessarabia, and that desires to become part of a reconstituted Soviet Union that includes, at the
least, the three East Slavic republics of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus'. Both sides see the stakes
in all-or-nothing terms. Even their peace proposals concede nothing to the other side. The
reason for Transdnistria's continued existence is the backing of the Russian Federation. Without
it, Transdnistria would have fallen to Moldovan central government forces in June, 1992. After
the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, Russia showed its hand by warning Chisinau to desist from
military action to recover the Transdnistrian region. Russia did not want the Moldovan central
government to follow Georgia's example of launching a military attack on a breakaway region
(Reuters, 2008). Russian military and political backing of Transdnistria has destabilized the
situation in Bessarabia. The PMC has attempted to take Russian concerns into consideration
when articulating Moldovan government policies, while the pro-Western parties have tried to
steer Moldova away from the Russian orbit and envision a Moldova that is integrated somehow
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into the NATO and European Union frameworks. This divergence of policy has produced a
polarization in Moldovan politics, for the pro-Western parties are adamant that the OGRF leave
the Transdnistrian region, while the PMC is open to a federalization solution that would preserve
Transdnistria as a separate entity. In April, 2009, Moldovan youths rioted against the incumbent
PMC government, an event that triggered new elections, which the pro-Western parties won by a
slight majority (Shoemaker, 2010). Bessarabia's conflict with Transdnistria may have fed into
this unrest, for Moldovan youths may be frustrated with the presence of a Russian military force
on Moldovan territory, and want it to leave. While there is an ideological dimension to the
Bessarabian-Transdnistrian conflict, it feeds into the territorial thrust of the argument. What the
conflict boils down to is different and antagonistic conceptions of territoriality, with the
Bessarabians wanting to preserve the Republic of Moldova as a unitary state with the lands east
and west of the Dniestr united under its jurisdiction, while the Transdnistrians desire to
reestablish a Soviet union-state, with Transdnistria forming a component of such a reconstituted
entity.
Despite the all-or-nothing thinking on both sides, Moldova offers a precedent of the
accommodation of an ethnic minority's interests. In southernmost Moldova there lives an ethnic
minority called the Gagauz, who are a Turkic people that follow the Eastern Orthodox Christian
religion. They arrived in southern Bessarabia after the Russians took over the region in 1812,
fleeing Ottoman intolerance in what is now Bulgaria. The Gagauz Turks, who make up four
percent of Moldova's total population, agitated for a separate state of their own starting with the
proclamation of a Gagauz republic in 1990. This action caused friction with the central
authorities in Chisinau. However, the Moldovan central government and the Gagauz Turks
settled their differences in a 1994 treaty, which created a Gagauz autonomous region that is
under Moldovan jurisdiction and that is in the territory of the Republic of Moldova (King, 2000;
Brezianu and Spanu, 2007). Given the Gagauz example, Chisinau could accept a federalization
scheme for Transdnistria that would create an autonomous area comprising the territory east of
the Dniestr river which would still remain a part of Moldova. However, the all-or-nothing
thinking of the Transdnistrian authorities and of many Bessarabian politicians makes a political
settlement unlikely. There have been peace plans which have been floated, but they failed due to
intransigence on both sides. For example, the Russian government proposed the Kozak Plan in
2003. Moldova's president, Vladimir Voronin of the PMC, initially accepted the plan, which
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would have endorsed keeping a separate, autonomous Transdnistrian state as part of Moldova.
However, Moldova's pro-Western parties and many ordinary Bessarabians opposed the Kozak
Memorandum, and Voronin backtracked on his endorsement of it. The Moldovan Romanian
objection to the Kozak plan arose from the proviso of the plan that would have permitted the
OGRF to stay on Transdnistrian territory (Shoemaker, 2009; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007). On the
other hand, the Bessarabian side has come up with the 3-D proposal (democratization,
decriminalization, and demilitarization), which would entail the withdrawal of Russian troops
from Transdnistria and which gives the region east of the Dniestr river no special status
(Brezianu and Spanu, 2007). As can be seen, neither side is willing to make any meaningful
concession to the other side. If some variant of the Kozak plan is accepted by Chisinau,
Moldova would have to agree to a separate Transdnistrian entity with its current Russian elite
still in power and with a Russian troop presence. On the other hand, if Transdnistria accepts the
3-D proposal, it would have to accept real democratic elections that its elite may lose and would
have to agree to the withdrawal of the OGRF from Moldova. It appears that the standoff
between Bessarabia and Transdnistria will remain a frozen conflict into the foreseeable future.
6.1 Historical Background
The histories of Bessarabia and Transdnistria are different. In a sense, theirs are the
histories of two worlds apart. Their joining together into a single entity occurred on August 2,
1940, when the USSR Supreme Soviet passed a law creating the Moldavian Soviet Socialist
Republic (MSSR), which, for the first time, united Bessarabia and Transdnistria together (King,
2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007). Before this date, Bessarabia and Transdnistria followed
different historical trajectories. Bessarabia was part of the “traditional” Romanian homeland
from earliest times, at least, from the time of the Dacian kingdom, which Emperor Trajan took
over in the early 2nd century CE. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the region that later became
Bessarabia was the eastern part of the Principality of Moldova, which was one of the two
Romanian principalities that existed at this time. The other was Wallachia. With the Ottoman
conquest of Wallachia and Moldova in the 16th century, Bessarabia became part of the Ottoman
Turkish Empire. On the other hand, what later became Transdnistria was not considered by the
Romanians to be part of their homeland. Instead, it was a frontier region that the Russians
gained by the Treaty of Iasi in 1792. Russia took over Bessarabia in 1812, and the Russian
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tsarist government administratively kept this area apart from the future Transdnistrian territory.
In 1918, Romania annexed Bessarabia with the consent of the majority of its inhabitants.
Transdnistria emerged as a distinct historical entity in 1924, when it became part of the
Moldavian ASSR, which was subsumed into the Ukrainian SSR. In this “autonomous republic,”
the Soviet authorities created a Moldovan elite, and experimented with policies to create a
distinct “Moldovan” identity for the area's Romanian minority. In 1940, the Moldovan elite of
Transdnistria, which was the only part of the former Moldavian ASSR to be transferred to the
MSSR, took over leadership of the Moldovan union-republic, and implemented the Soviet
policies to separate the Moldovan Romanians from their ethnic kin in Romania. With the
reassertion of Moldovan Romanian identity in 1989, the Bessarabian Romanians gained control
of the Moldovan central government, a move that provoked the Transdnistrian Russians and
Ukrainians to form a separate republic on Moldovan territory east of the Dniestr river in 1990
(King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007). This is the general outline of the different historical
trajectories of Bessarabia and Transdnistria, and these different histories explain in general why
conflict was inevitable between the two regions. Russia's central government deployed the
Russian 14th Army to prop up the Transdnistrian regime in June, 1992, which was the first time
in the post-Soviet era that the Russian Federation used its forces outside of its frontiers (King,
2000).
Romanian history begins with the Dacians, who were the ancestors of the Romanians.
By the 2nd century BCE, the Dacians, an Indo-European people, had established an independent
kingdom. Between 101 and 107 CE, Roman emperor Trajan conquered Dacia, which included
parts of present-day Moldova. Roman soldiers, aristocrats, and commoners colonized Dacia, and
intermingled with the local population, imposing Latin upon the Dacians. The Romanian
language grew out of the Latin spoken in Dacia. Between 271 and 275 CE, the Roman army and
administration was evacuated from Dacia. Until the 14th century, little is known specifically
about the Romanians. What can be said with some certainty is that the Germanic and Slavic
invaders intermingled with the Romanian people in what later became Transylvania, Moldova,
and Wallachia (Brezianu and Spanu, 2007). Roman Emperor Constantine I regained control of
the Dacian lands between the Danube river and the Carpathian mountains, and introduced
Christianity to the Romano-Dacians. The territory that became Romania and Moldova fell under
the religious jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. Thus the Romanians
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adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity, a decision reinforced by the Bulgarian acceptance of the
Byzantine version of Christianity in the middle 9th century CE (Walker, 1999). Two Turkic
peoples, the Pechenegs and Cumans, dominated the Romanian lands after taking them over from
Bulgaria, and ruled them until the 13th century CE. In 1241 CE, the Tatars (Mongols and Turks)
took control of the Romanian-inhabited lands, and controlled them until the establishment of the
two Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldova in the 14th century (Brezianu and Spanu,
2007; King, 2000).
In 1352, the ethnically Romanian prince Dragos established the Moldovan polity as a
buffer state that was subject to the Hungarian king, Louis I of Anjou. Hungary's monarch
commissioned Dragos to hold off the Tatars. Dragos' successor, Bogdan I, declared Moldova an
independent, sovereign state in 1359. Under Dragos, Bogdan I, and their successors, the
Moldovan princes (voievods) carved out a territory that stretched from the Danube to the Dniestr,
incorporating the region that abutted the Black Sea. In 1401, the Orthodox Christian bishop of
Moldova was made a Metropolitan by the Ecumenical Patriarch. Alexandru cel Bun (Alexander
the Good), who ruled from 1400 until 1432, built up Moldova's state institutions and fought the
up and coming Ottoman Turks. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople,
overthrowing the Byzantine Empire. In the wake of this traumatic event for Eastern Orthodox
Christians, the Moldovan prince Petru Aron accepted Ottoman suzerainty in 1456. Petru Aron's
successor, Stefan cel Mare (Stephan the Great) repudiated accommodation with the Ottomans,
and fought them, defeating the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Vaslui (1475). Ottoman and
Wallachian forces defeated the Moldovans the next year at the Battle of Valea Alba. After losing
several more battles to the Ottomans, Stefan was forced to accept Ottoman rule in 1489. Stefan
cel Mare ruled until 1504, and he was succeeded by less competent voievods. In 1538, Ottoman
sultan Suleiman the Magnificent defeated a Moldovan army led by Prince Petru Rones, and
occupied Moldova's capital, Suceava. This event marks the completion of the Ottoman conquest
of Moldova. In exchange for accepting Ottoman suzerainty, the Moldovan princes were left in
power, and the Ottoman Porte left the Moldovan Orthodox Church alone. Moldova and its sister
Romanian principality, Wallachia, enjoyed autonomy in the Ottoman Empire, being exempt from
the devsirme (the annual Ottoman requisition of Christian boys for service as janissaries and
government officials) and having no Muslim landlords on their territory. In return, the
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Moldovans and Wallachians had to pay tribute at an unfavorable rate of exchange to the Sublime
Porte (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
This situation continued in Moldova until 1711. In that year, Moldovan Prince Dimitrie
Cantemir rebelled against Ottoman rule, and allied himself with Peter I the Great of Russia.
Ottoman forces bested a combined Russo-Moldovan army at the Battle of Stanilesti. In the
aftermath of this battle, the Ottoman Porte abolished rule by the Moldovan voievods, and placed
the principality under the Phanariots, who were well-connected Greeks in Istanbul
(Constantinople). The Phanariot Greeks were incompetent rulers of Moldova, seeking financial
gain at the expense of proper governance. Phanariot clans competed over profits to be had from
Moldova's resources. As a result of this misrule, the Romanian populace was alienated from
their Phanariot overlords. Russia fought two subsequent wars against the Ottoman Empire in the
18th century, and Moldova was a battleground. Austria was also interested in Ottoman lands, and
took over northern Moldova in 1775, a region it rechristened Bukovina. In 1792, after defeating
the Ottoman Turks, Russia concluded the Treaty of Iasi with the Sublime Porte. By this
agreement, Russia gained the territory east of the Dniestr, a region that includes present-day
Transdnistria. As a consequence of this treaty, the Dniestr became a common frontier between
the Ottoman Empire and Russia (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
The early 19th century was a turning point for the eastern part of the Principality of
Moldova. In 1806, Russian forces occupied the region, and Russia secured possession of the
area in the Treaty of Bucharest, which was concluded in May, 1812 with the Ottoman Empire.
Russia's government christened the eastern part of the Principality of Moldova that it annexed
Bessarabia. Originally, the name Bessarabia applied to an area between the Dniestr and Danube
which was taken over by the Basarab dynasty of Wallachia. Russia appropriated the term, and
applied it to the region between the Prut and Dniestr rivers. With the advent of Russian rule, the
Phanariot overlordship over Bessarabia came to an end. In place of the Phanariots, Russia
allowed autonomy to Bessarabia until 1821. Under Metropolitan Gavril Badulescu-Bodoni of
Chisinau and Hotin, Bessarabia was an autonomous eparchy (diocese) of the Russian Orthodox
Church, Moldovan Romanian and Russian were official languages of the region, and the tsarist
government codified Bessarabian autonomy in an 1818 Statute. In 1821, Badulescu-Bodoni
died, and the Russian imperial government rescinded Bessarabia's autonomy. Eight years later,
the tsarist regime promulgated a new law code that made Bessarabia into what was in effect an
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ordinary province of Russia. Russian was officially made the sole official language of
Bessarabia in 1854. Continuing with the Russification campaign, the Bessarabian autonomous
eparchy was subsumed into the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1871, Bessarabia was downgraded
from an oblast' (region) into a gubernia (imperial province). Seven years later, Russia regained
the Izmail, Cahul, and Bolgrad regions from Romania, which it had ceded to the Ottoman
Empire in 1856. These three regions, which had historically been part of the Moldovan
principality and Bessarabia, were excluded by the tsarist government from Bessarabian
administration (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
At the time that Bessarabia was being more fully integrated into the Russian Empire,
what was left of the Principality of Moldova and the Principality of Wallachia merged in 1859,
when both principalities' nobles elected the Moldovan prince, Ioan Alexandru Cuza, as their
common head. Three years later, the United Principalities took the name Romania, and Romania
gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, following Russia's victory over the
Ottomans in a brief war. Also, in 1862, the Romanian government replaced the Cyrillic alphabet
used to write the Romanian language with a Latin script. In 1881, Romania became a monarchy.
This new Romanian state claimed to be the legitimate ruler of all Romanians, including those in
Bessarabia. Thus, the new Romanian state had a claim on Russian-ruled Bessarabia, where, by
1900, Romanians made up 47.6 % of the region's population. Germans, Gagauz Turks, and
Bulgarians composed large minorities in Bessarabia at the time. Most of these migrants came to
the region after 1812. There was also a sizable Jewish community in Chisinau (Kishinev), which
the Russians had made the capital of Bessarabia. In 1903 and 1905, there were anti-Jewish
pogroms in Chisinau. Anti-Semitism was rife in the Bessarabian capital. Bessarabia's
Romanians tended to live in the countryside, where they were ruled by reactionary Russian and
russified Moldovan nobles. In a foreshadowing of Soviet policy, the tsarist government called
the language of the Bessarabian Romanians “Wallacho-Moldovan” instead of Romanian. In the
cities, the inhabitants tended to speak Russian, whether they were ethnic Russians, russified
Moldovans, or Jews. In 1861, the serfs in the countryside were emancipated in Tsar' Aleksandr
II's ukaz (decree), and the zemstvo (territorial) system of local self-government was introduced in
1878 (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
The 1905 Russian Revolution gave impetus to national consciousness among the
Bessarabian Romanians. Before the revolution of 1905, Bessarabian students at the University
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of Dorpat in Estonia founded an underground Romanian nationalist organization, Bessarabian
Countrymen. As its leader the Bessarabian students chose Ion Pelivan. In October, 1905, during
the first Russian revolution, Pelivan and Patelimon Halippa established the Society for Moldovan
National Culture. Pelivan also founded Bessarabia's first newspaper, Basarabia, which was
published until the tsarist government shut it down in 1907. Bessarabia's political situation
changed after the tsarist government collapsed in February, 1917 (Old Style). The Society for
Moldovan National Culture transformed itself into a political party, the Moldovan Nationalist
Party, which favored the Provisional Government in Petrograd and keeping Bessarabia in the
(First) Russian Republic. With the Bolshevik seizure of power in October, 1917 (Old Style), the
Moldovan National Party called for Bessarabia's independence from Soviet Russia. Romanian
activists went to Bessarabia to convince the Romanians in the province to unite the Bessarabian
region with Romania. Among them was Onisfor Ghibu, a Transylvanian Romanian who
established Romanian-language schools. After Lenin's putsch in Petrograd, 900 Bessarabian
Romanian military officers met, and together they proclaimed Bessarabia to be an autonomous
republic, and called for the creation of a Sfatul Tarii (National Council) to govern the
Bessarabian republic. On November 21, 1917, the National Council convened, selected Ion
Inculet, a Socialist Revolutionary, as Bessarabia's president, and chose Halippa, a pan-Romanian,
as his deputy. The Sfatul Tarii feared that Ukraine would annex Bessarabia. To help forestall
such a move, the National Council declared Bessarabia to be an autonomous republic within
Russia on December 2, 1917. However, it was Romania that decided Bessarabia's fate. In midJanuary, 1918, Romanian forces invaded Bessarabia, and drove the Bolsheviks east of the
Dniestr. On January 24, 1918, the Sfatul Tarii declared Bessarabia's independence as the
Moldovan Democratic Federated Republic. About two months later, the National Council
decided Bessarabia's “permanent” status. By a vote of 86 for union with Romania, and 3 against
such a move, and with 49 abstentions, the Sfatul Tarii proclaimed Bessarabia's “conditional”
union with Romania on March 27, 1918. In accordance with the conditional status of the union
with Romania, Bessarabia was to enjoy autonomy. After the collapse of the Central Powers, the
National Council renounced its conditions, proclaimed that Bessarabia was fully united with
Romania, and dissolved itself on November 27, 1918. Thus, by 1918, Bessarabia was part of
Romania, and the region's fate was decided in Bucharest, Romania's capital (King, 2000;
Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
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Soviet Russia did not recognize the Romanian annexation of Bessarabia. While the
Soviet authorities carried out negotiations with Romania, they infiltrated agents into Bessarabia,
carried out propaganda and agitation efforts targeted at the Bessarabian Romanians, and border
clashes occurred between Soviet and Romanian border guards. There were three Sovietinstigated uprisings in Bessarabia, at Hotin in January, 1919, Bender (Tighina) in May, 1919, and
Tatar Bunar in September, 1924. Romanian forces and law enforcement bodies put down these
rebellions successfully, for the Bessarabian Romanians, though disappointed with the way the
union with Romania worked out, distrusted the Bolsheviks even more. The Soviet central
government carried out its propaganda and agitation efforts through the Society of Bessarabians,
which published a bimonthly journal, Red Bessarabia. This society called for Bessarabia's
incorporation into the USSR. This Soviet activity indicated that the Soviet leadership wanted to
take over Bessarabia. Its early efforts to affect Bessarabia's absorption into the Soviet Union
failed, necessitating a change of tactics (King, 2000).
On October 12, 1924, the Soviet central government created the Moldavian Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), which it placed under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian SSR.
This so-called MASSR was carved out of Ukrainian territory, and it made up 2 % of the
Ukrainian SSR's area and population. According to the 1926 Soviet census, the MASSR had
572,114 inhabitants, of which 49 % were Ukrainians, 30 % Romanians, 9 % Russians, and 8 %
Jewish. Balta was the first capital of the MASSR, but the Soviet central government moved the
MASSR's capital to Tiraspol in 1929. By creating the MASSR, the Soviet Union signaled its
intention to annex Bessarabia. As a major component of this effort, the USSR claimed that the
MASSR's Romanians and those Romanians in Bessarabia were in fact a separate people called
the Moldovans, who had a language similar to Romanian, but distinct from it. Soviet
propaganda called the MASSR “the cradle of Red Moldova” and “Bessarabia in miniature.”
According to a 1926 Soviet publication, “the creation of the MASSR is the beginning of the
liberation of Bessarabia” (quoted in King, 2000). Creating a separate Moldovan language
involved forcing the Romanians in the MASSR to use a Cyrillic rather than a Latin script, and
the invention of neologisms for “Moldovan” that were derived from Russian words. Soviet
policy was not consistent on what constituted the “Moldovan” nation, and on the criteria that
differentiated it from the Romanian nation. In terms of “indigenization” (korenizatsia), the
Romanians controlled the cultural ministry and its related components, such as the Moldovan
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Scientific Committee, the precursor of the Moldavian SSR Academy of Sciences. On the other
hand, most of the other ministries were administered by Russians and Ukrainians. When the
USSR annexed Bessarabia in June, 1940, and created the Moldavian SSR (MSSR) two months
later, the elite of the MASSR took over control of Bessarabian affairs, and was the ruling group
of the MSSR until 1989 (King, 2000; Dima, 2001).
By creating the MASSR, the Soviet Union had two objectives in mind. The USSR
wanted to keep the “Bessarabian Question” on the international agenda and the MASSR served
as a means to infiltrate Romania. Despite its efforts to “Moldovanize” the MASSR's Romanians,
the Soviet policy was a failure. In February, 1930, the Ukrainian SSR government called for
crushing “Moldovan chauvinism.” In 1934, the Moldovan Scientific Committee was abolished.
On February 2, 1932, the MASSR Communist Party decreed that the “Moldovan” language be
written in the Latin script. The neologisms and grammatical innovations of the 1920s were
discarded. Six years later, on May 15, 1938, the Cyrillic script was reintroduced for the
Romanian spoken in the MASSR. However, the 1920s alterations of the Romanian language
were not readopted. In effect, the only major difference between Romanian and “Moldovan”
after 1938 was in the alphabet used for writing and publishing. When the USSR took over
Bessarabia in 1940, the Cyrillic script was imposed on the Romanians of the region. During the
1930s, the MASSR leadership was subjected to the systemic purges that beset the USSR,
reaching a crescendo in 1937-38. Among the casualties was Pavel Chior, who composed a
“Moldovan” grammar in the mid-1920s, and Ivan Ocinschi, and Leonid Madan, the latter two
purged for “wrecking” the latinization campaign. The significance of the MASSR was that it
provided the elite who ran the MSSR from 1940 until 1989 (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu,
2007; Dima, 2001).
As can be seen, the historical trajectories of the Bessarabian and Transdnistrian regions
were different. World War II led to the union of the two areas by the Soviet central government.
In late August, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany concluded a non-aggression pact. In a
secret protocol, the two powers divided up Eastern Europe, with Stalin getting Bessarabia. After
the fall of France to Nazi forces, Stalin acted on this secret protocol, and took possession of
Bessarabia. From June 28 to July 3, 1940, Soviet forces hastily occupied Bessarabia. On August
2, 1940, the Soviet central government set up the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR),
which was composed of Bessarabia and six of the westernmost raions (regions) of the former
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MASSR. Stalin placed the remaining territory of the former MASSR under Ukrainian SSR
jurisdiction. The capital of the MSSR was Chisinau (Kishinev), while Tiraspol became part of
the Moldavian SSR. Stalin transferred the Izmail, Akkerman, and Hotin regions to the Ukrainian
SSR in November, 1940. Throughout 1940, the Soviet authorities killed or deported 90,000
people they perceived as political opponents of the Soviet system. On June 22, 1941, Nazi
Germany invaded the USSR, and Bessarabia fell to Axis forces within days. The territory of the
MSSR was placed under Romanian jurisdiction by the Nazis, and Jews and Roma were
particular targets of Nazi “extermination” campaigns. By April, 1944, Soviet forces had retaken
the Transdnistrian region, and the USSR took back Bessarabia when it invaded Romania on
August 23, 1944. Although Romania switched sides after King Mihai's coup against Antonescu,
the fascist leader of the country from 1940 until the 1944 Soviet invasion, the Soviet Union was
insistent on keeping Bessarabia, and it considered the “Bessarabian Question” solved (King,
2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007; Dima, 2001).
In the aftermath of the Soviet repossession of Bessarabia, the MSSR was reestablished,
state-directed reconstruction began, and Bessarabian agriculture was collectivized (1946-50).
“Kulaks” were deported from the MSSR, with a total of 16,000 families being forcibly moved
from 1941 through 1951. About 115,000 Bessarabians lost their lives in a famine in 1946-47. In
addition, in March, 1955, 40,000 Moldovan Romanians “volunteered” to move to the RSFSR
and the Kazakh SSR. Other Moldovan Romanians were killed in the Stalinist purges of the early
1950s. At the same time, and continuing until 1989, there was an influx of Russians and
Ukrainians into the MSSR, many of these “immigrants” settling in Transdnistria, which was
more industrialized than Bessarabia. Transdnistrians provided the cadres who controlled the
MSSR's party and governmental apparatus. An outsider, Leonid Brezhnev, served as GeneralSecretary of the Communist Party of Moldova (CPM) from 1950 until 1956. After him,
Transdnistrians served as Communist party heads of the Moldavian SSR, including Ivan Bodiul
(1961-80) and Semion Grossu (1980-89). Despite the political union between Bessarabia and
Transdnistria, both regions were different, with Bessarabia being agricultural, rural, and
Moldovan Romanian, while Transdnistria was industrialized, urban, and Slavicized. In 1940,
68.8 % of the MSSR's population was Moldovan Romanian (King, 2000). By 1989, 64.5 % of
the Moldavian SSR's populace was of this ethnicity; 13.8 % were Russian, and 13 % Ukrainian.
In the Transdnistrian region, 40 % were Moldovan Romanian, and the rest were mostly Russian
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and Ukrainian. Fifteen years later, 78.8 % of Bessarabia's population was Moldovan Romanian,
while the Moldovan Romanians made up 30 % of Transdnistria's population. In 2004, 28 % of
Transdnistria's population was Ukrainian, while 30 % was Russian. In Moldova as a whole in
2004, Ukrainians made up 11.2 % of its population, while Russians composed 9.3 % (Brezianu
and Spanu, 2007). What this signifies is that the Russian and Ukrainian populations have
declined as a whole in Moldova since 1989, but that they make up an even greater proportion of
Transdnistria's populace. Transdnistria has become more Slavic since the end of the Cold War,
while the Moldovan Romanians compose an even greater share of Bessarabia's population than
they did in 1989. In 2004, they made up 71.7 % of Moldova's total population (Brezianu and
Spanu, 2007).
In economic terms, Bessarabia was fundamentally agricultural, while Transdnistria was
basically an industrial area. It was after 1950 that Bessarabia became an agricultural center of
the USSR. By the 1970s, the MSSR was producing 10 % of the Soviet Union's canned foods,
12.3 % of its fruits, 8.2 % of its wines, and 4.2 % of its vegetables. Like the rest of the Soviet
economy, MSSR agriculture continued to grow, however slowly, until the late 1970s. Around
that time, the Soviet economy began to stall, and Soviet central government officials criticized
the MSSR leadership for inertia and corruption. Soviet leader Brezhnev replaced Bodiul with
Grossu in 1980 in an effort to appear to be addressing the Moldavian SSR's serious economic
problems. Grossu did not seriously address them. Instead, he was known for padding the
economic numbers and other forms of corruption. Industry in the MSSR was concentrated east
of the Dniestr, in Transdnistria. In this region there were two power stations, a steel mill, and
factories that made refrigerators, alcoholic beverages, and clothing. It was this industrial
infrastructure that attracted Russians from the RSFSR and Ukrainians from the Ukrainian SSR.
Besides the economic stagnation, the MSSR's population suffered health problems due to the
excessive use of fertilizers, the soil suffered due to intensive farming, and many fish in the
Dniestr died due to temperature changes and agricultural runoff. Two indications of the adverse
effects of ecological damage on the MSSR's population were the facts that the Moldavian SSR
had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the European USSR, and the lowest life
expectancy of any union-republic in the European section of the Soviet Union (King, 2000).
Of the union-republics of the Soviet Union, the MSSR was one whose titular nationality
shared ethnic kin on the other side of the Soviet border. Both Romania and the MSSR had ethnic
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Romanian majorities, making up what has been termed “eastern latinity.” During the MSSR era
(1940-89), the Soviet central government argued that the Moldovan Romanians were a distinct
people from the Romanians of Romania. It imposed a Cyrillic script on the Moldovan
Romanians in 1940, banned the importation of Latin-script books into the MSSR from Romania,
and kept the Moldavian SSR from having cultural and educational contacts with Romania.
Moldovan Romanian scholars were pressured to write publications “proving” the Moldovan
Romanians' distinctiveness from the Romanians in Romania. On the other hand, Romanian
scholars, even under Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, argued that the Moldovan Romanians
and their ethnic kin in Romania were one and the same people. Of the two positions, the
Romanian scholars were in the right, for the only major difference between Soviet-era Moldovan
Romanian and the Romanian written in Romania was that the former was forced by the Soviet
authorities to use a Cyrillic script, while the latter continued to be written with a Latin alphabet.
The Romanian language spoken on both sides of the Prut river, which divides Moldova from
Romania, is the same tongue. Since 1989, for reasons that will be explored later, the Moldovan
Romanians and the Romanians of Romania speak the same language with different accents.
What this boils down to is that the Romanian spoken in Moldova is a different dialect of that
spoken in Romania. This situation is analogous to the different dialects of American English
spoken in such US regions as New England and Texas (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
During the period of Soviet control of Eastern Europe following World War II, Romania
was a “fraternal ally” of the USSR. Despite the close ties between the Soviet Union and
Romania, including Romania's membership in the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact and Comecon,
relations were strained due to the Bessarabian Question. Under Gheorghe Gheoghiu-Dej,
Romania's first Communist dictator, the Romanian government “considered” the Bessarabian
issue to be resolved. As mentioned earlier, Romania had no educational or cultural relations with
the MSSR. In 1964, Romania changed its tune on the Bessarabian Question. In that year, the
Romanian Academy of Sciences published Karl Marx's essay on the Bessarabian issue, where
Marx condemned and denounced the Russian tsarist empire for annexing Bessarabia. Mao
Zedong chimed in, and he criticized the Russo-Soviet takeovers of the Bessarabian region.
Halippa, in Romania, pilloried the USSR for the 1940 annexation of his homeland. Ceausescu
criticized the 1940 Soviet takeovers of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina until his own downfall
in December, 1989. A Romanian-language radio station in Iasi broadcast to the Moldavian SSR
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starting in the mid-1960s, an action the USSR government criticized. At the nadir in SovietRomanian relations in 1967, Bodiul ordered Moldovan scholars to “illustrate” that the Moldavian
SSR was tied to the USSR rather than Romania. In August, 1976, Ceausescu visited Kishinev
(Chisinau) and Bodiul toured Bucharest, actions that resulted in the establishment of some
collaboration between the MSSR and Romania. Despite the Romanian friction with the Soviet
Union over Bessarabia, Romania was a loyal ally of the USSR during the Cold War era (King,
2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007). Like the “Moldovanization” efforts of the 1920s and 1930s in
the MASSR, the Soviet Union failed to convince the Moldovan Romanians in the MSSR that
they were a distinct people from their ethnic kin in Romania (King, 2000). This realization
influenced political, economic, and cultural developments in Moldova from 1989 until the
present time (2011), and contributed to Moldova's secession from the Soviet Union, and the
rapprochement between Moldova and Romania following the USSR's demise.
6.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Moldova Case
As with the armed struggle between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabagh, territoriality
is the catalyst that set off the Moldovan Civil War. Both sides in the Moldovan dispute have
diametrically opposed views of what constitutes the “proper” boundaries of the Moldovan polity.
On one side, the Bessarabians, who control the Moldovan central government in Chisinau, see
the Transdnistrian issue as one of preserving the territorial integrity of Moldova. They argue that
the present-day Republic of Moldova encompasses Bessarabia and Transdnistria. For a
precedent, they draw on the boundary established by Stalin in 1940. As the dominant ethnicity in
Moldova, the Bessarabian Romanians view themselves as its ruling nation. Being part of the
Principality of Moldova and the Kingdom of Romania in the past, the Bessarabian Romanians
claim the current Republic of Moldova as a Romanian homeland, perhaps more generally as a
homeland for an Eastern Latin people. Because the Moldovan Romanians and the Romanians of
Romania are the same nation, one can reasonably argue that Moldova is a Romanian-inhabited
republic. Moldova’s central government has argued that since the Moldovan Romanians are in
the majority, the principle of majority rule applies. Moldova claims to be a democracy, so the
majority has the dominant say in political affairs in the republic. Snegur and his successors
argue that Moldova protects the rights of its ethnic minorities, and point to the settlement they
agreed with the Gagauz Turks in 1994, and which was enacted into law in 1995. Moldova’s
1994 constitution contains a clause allowing for an autonomous Transdnistrian region. Probably,
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the Bessarabian Romanians want to negotiate a deal with the Transdnistrians that is similar to the
one they have reached with the Gagauz. Such an agreement with the Transdnistrian people
would preserve the unitary character of Moldova, while allowing the Transdnistrians the right to
elect their own leadership, which would have positions in the Moldovan central government. In
other words, the Bessarabian Romanians are willing to go only so far in granting autonomy to
the Transdnistrians (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007; Dima, 2001).
On the other side, the Transdnistrians view their region, which is mostly east of the
Dniestr, as their homeland, and have done so since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before the
USSR’s disintegration, the Transdnistrians wanted to create a union-republic that was distinct
from Moldova, while remaining part of the Soviet Union. With the breakup of the USSR in
1991, this dream was shattered, so they redefined their identification of the homeland with
Transdnistria. Smirnov and his associates have not given up on the dream of Transdnistria
joining a reconstituted Soviet Union that would at the least include Russia, Ukraine, Belarus,
plus Transdnistria. It appears that Sovietism is the dominant ideology in Transdnistria, as can be
ascertained by the flag and “national” emblem it has adopted. Most Transdnistrians want the
USSR restored. Along with Belarus, Transdnistria is one of the most Sovietized regions of the
former Soviet Union. By supporting the Communist hard-liners’ coup against Gorbachev in late
August, 1991, the Transdnistrians manifested their support for the continued existence of the
USSR. In a sense, the Transdnistrian republic as it is currently constituted is a fallback position
for the region’s inhabitants. They prefer to live in a polity that is not under the jurisdiction of
Chisinau, and are awaiting the day when the Soviet Union is reconstituted, or, at the least, the
three East Slavic republics join together to form a unified state, one with which Transdnistria
would gladly associate itself. Smirnov and his team are not inclined to accept any deal that
would entail Transdnistria’s reunification with the Moldovan state, even if such an agreement
would grant the Transdnistrian region autonomy (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007; Dima,
2001).
Facilitating Conditions in the Bessarabian-Transdnistrian Dispute
Five of the six facilitating conditions are present in the Moldova case. The only one that
could be considered absent is the availability of information. Of the five present facilitating
factors, the role of the elites was crucial, as it was in the Nagorno-Karabakh case. In the
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Moldova instance, the intelligentsia provided the impetus for mass action by the Moldovan
Romanians. In the face of this mobilization of the Moldovan Romanian masses, the
Bessarabians took over leadership of the Moldovan central government from the incumbent
Transdnistrians. In response to losing their power, the Transdnistrian elite fell back, and
established the Dniestr Moldovan Republic, with the approval of Transdnistria’s Slavic majority,
who composed 53 % of the region’s population in 1989 (King, 2000).
The language issue proved to be the first significant instance of the Moldovan Romanians
asserting themselves against the Soviet central government. In the summer of 1988, two main
“informal” organizations were formed in the MSSR: the Moldovan Movement in Support of
Restructuring and the Alexei Mateevici Literary-Musical Club. These “informals” were political
parties in all but name, for the constitutionally-mandated clause that the Communist party was
the only and leading political organization in the USSR was still in force. Both the Moldovan
Movement and Mateevici Club, which were composed of intellectuals, journalists, and writers,
organized unsanctioned rallies, which drew Moldovan Romanian commoners, workers, and
farmers. These demonstrators demanded that Romanian be made the state language of the
Moldavian SSR, and that the Romanian written by the Moldovans be composed in the Latin
script rather than the Soviet-imposed Cyrillic alphabet. Grossu authorized a commission to
“study” the language issue, but this commission merely reiterated Soviet policy, that the
Romanians and Moldovan Romanians were separate nations, and that Russian and “Moldovan”
were the official languges of the MSSR. For his adamant assertion of Soviet policy, Grossu lost
the acquiescence of the Moldovan Romanian public. In the March, 1989 partially free elections
to the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies (CPD), the Moldovan “informals” won ten of sixteen seats
they contested, ousting the chairman of the MSSR KGB and several CPM Politburo members
from their parliamentary seats (King, 2000).
In January, 1989, the MSSR Supreme Soviet commissioned a panel of experts to draw up
the language law. These experts drew up three laws for the MSSR legislature to consider. The
first law declared Moldovan Romanian to be the state language of the Moldavian SSR, the
second decreed that Moldovan Romanian be written in the Latin script, and the third authorized
the use of Moldovan Romanian in government, education, and the union-republic’s economy.
Before considering the language law, the MSSR Supreme Soviet solicited the opinions of nonparty members of Moldovan society. In response, 250,000 people wrote letters to Moldavian
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SSR newspapers supporting passage of the language law as it stood. During the spring and
summer of 1989, the Moldovan Romanians, Gagauz Turks, and Eastern Slavs formed separate
political parties, for the language law alienated the ethnic minorities in the MSSR, and the
Moldovan Romanian majority thought the CPM was not representing its interests. On May 20,
1989, the Moldovan Movement, the Mateevici Club, and smaller “informals” united to form the
Popular Front of Moldova (PFM). This new party issued a twenty-point program that called for
sovereignty, political restructuring, clean up of the local environment, and passage of the
language law. In the same month, the Gagauz formed a political party called Gagauz Halki
(Gagauz People) in Comrat, the main center and future capital of Gagauzia. Slavs formed
Yedinstvo (Unity) in July, 1989. This party was the local branch of the Soviet political
organization Interfront, which opposed any cultural reforms in the USSR. The formation of the
three political parties led to the fracturing of the body politic in the Moldavian SSR, and their
moblizations inflamed inter-ethnic tensions (King, 2000).
During the summer of 1989, the Russians and Ukrainians went on strike, especially in the
Transdnistrian cities of Ribnita, Tiraspol, and Bender, to protest the language law. More than
100 Transdnistrian enterprises and collectives joined this syndicalist action. In response, the
PFM held a massive rally in front of the MSSR Supreme Soviet building, which was attended by
500,000 people, many of whom carried Romanian flags and Latin script placards. Mircea
Snegur, who was elected chairman of the Moldavian SSR Supreme Soviet one day before, spoke
at the rally. For the first time, the language issue slipped in importance, and the primary demand
of the PFM became “sovereignty,” which entailed the MSSR controlling its natural resources and
the Moldavian SSR possessing a veto over Soviet central government decrees and laws. The
PFM issued a summary of its program called “On State Sovereignty and Our Right to the
Future.” One demand was a Soviet central government exposure and condemnation of the secret
protocol of the Molotov-Ribentropp Pact that “awarded” Bessarabia to the Soviet Union. A
younger generation of intellectuals led the PFM. They were nationalistic, and either supported
an independent Moldova or union of the MSSR with Romania. Older intellectuals, who spouted
the Soviet “Moldovan” party line, were sidelined by these Young Turks. On August 31, 1989,
the Moldovan SSR Supreme Soviet passed the language law. PFM deputies in the central
government CPD cooperated with Baltic nationalists. Together, they got the Congress of
Peoples’ Deputies to take up the Molotov-Ribbentrop issue in December, 1989. In sum, the CPD
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revealed the secret protocol and condemned the 1939 Soviet-German agreement, but stopped
short of calling for territorial revisions. In November, 1989, Gorbachev replaced Grossu with a
Bessarabian, Petru Lucinschi, as head of the CPM. With the election of Snegur as MSSR
Supreme Soviet Speaker in the summer of 1989, and with the appointment of Lucinschi as CPM
First Secretary, political power in the Moldavian SSR passed from the Transdnistrians to the
Bessarabians. With a majority in the Moldavian SSR legislature, the Bessarabians could have
their way (King, 2000; Dima, 2001; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
Concurrent with the transfer of political power to the Bessarabians was the decline of the
Soviet Communist Party, and the filling of the power vacuum in the USSR by the union-republic
presidents. On February 7, 1990, Gorbachev dropped the CPSU’s monopoly on political power.
This development influenced the elections held in the union-republics in 1990. While the CPM
was nominally the only legal political party in the February-March, 1990 MSSR election,
“independents” could contest 373 of the 380 seats in the Moldavian SSR legislature. As it turned
out, the PFM won 27 % of the seats, while reform Communists secured another quarter of the
Supreme Soviet seats. The Slavic, Gagaguz, and unreconstructed Communist deputies walked
out of the MSSR legislature, and the reformers gained control of the Supreme Soviet’s agenda.
Snegur, sensing where the winds were blowing, sided with the reformers, including the PFM.
The MSSR Supreme Soviet enacted changes to the Moldavian political system, starting with
renaming the legislature’s newspaper Sfatul Tarii. In May, 1990, the Moldovan Supreme Soviet
dropped the CPM’s monopoly on power, and adopted multiparty democracy. On June 23, 1990,
the MSSR legislature declared “sovereignty,” with Moldovan laws taking precedence over Soviet
central government laws. In September, 1990, Snegur was elected republican president of the
Moldavian SSR. Moldova did not participate in the March, 1991 referendum on the Soviet
Union. And in May, 1991, the Supreme Soviet dropped the name MSSR and took up the official
name “Republic of Moldova,” and it adopted the Romanian tricolor with Stefan cel Mare’s
oxhead and eagle on the yellow stripe as Moldova’s flag. This eagle and oxhead was affirmed as
Moldova’s national emblem. Moldova’s central government decided against signing the Union
Treaty Gorbachev was negotiating with nine union-republic presidents, including Yeltsin, in
August, 1991 (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007; Dima, 2001).
These moves toward establishing a separate Moldovan Romanian identity alienated
Moldova’s ethnic minorities, particularly the Russians, Ukrainians, and Gagauz. These
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ethnicities were pro-Soviet, and wanted to preserve Russian as an official tongue of Moldova. In
August, 1990, the Gagauz proclaimed the formation of a “Republic of Gagauzia” with its capital
at Comrat. Transdnistrian agitation for a separate state began during the campaign to pass the
1989 language law. As mentioned earlier, Transdnistria, which makes up 4,118 square
kilometers or 12 % of Moldova’s territory, has a history distinct from that of Bessarabia. What is
now Transdnistria was part of Kievan Rus and the proto-Ukrainian principality of GaliciaVolhynia in medieval times. The Romanian people never considered the land east of the Dniestr
to be part of their territorial heritage, and Romania rejected a request from Transdnistrian
Romanians to annex the Transdnistrian region after World War I. Given this background, it
comes as no surprise that Transdnistria drew away from Bessarabia once the latter’s Moldovan
Romanians started to reassert their national identity. It is ironic that more ethnic Russians and
Ukrainians live west of the Dniestr than inhabit Transdnistria, but both nationalities made up a
majority of the Transdnistrian region’s population. Controlling the local Communist party and
state apparatus, they used it to establish a separate Transdnistrian republic. Hearing about the
1989 language law, the local Transdnistrian councils expressed their opposition to it, and wanted
Russian to remain the primary language of their region. Clashes erupted between the Moldovan
police and local self-defense units. In August, 1989 came the first formal Transdnistrian
organizations. Opposing the Moldovan language law, the Transdnistrians went on strike. A
Women’s Strike Committee, led by Nina Andreeva, blocked Bessarabia’s railway access to the
rest of the USSR, and called on the Soviet central government to help the Transdnistrians against
the Moldovan Romanian “chauvinists” (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007; Dima, 2001).
In August, 1989, Transdnistrian local councils formed the United Council of Work
Collectives (OSTK), a coordinating committee for the strikes and demonstrations. The OSTK
metamorphosed into the leading political party of Transdnistria, and it continued in this role until
the late 1990s, when Smirnov replaced it with “Respublika” and two other “opposition” parties.
Igor Smirnov, who came to Transdnistria in October, 1987 from Ukraine to take over the
management of Elekromash complex in Tiraspol, was the leader of the Transdnistrian movement,
and he was elected chair of the OSTK at its founding congress. Yedinstvo members moved from
Chisinau to Transdnistria at this time. Transdnistrians opposed the cultural and political reforms
of the Moldovan central government, so they moved to establish a separate polity. In January,
1990, the OSTK held a referendum, in which 96 % of Transdnistrians expressed their desire for
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an autonomous or independent Transdnistrian state. In reaction to Moldova’s declaration of
“sovereignty” in June, 1990, a congress of Transdnistrian leaders proclaimed the formation of a
separate Dniestr Moldavian Republic (DMR) on September 2, 1990. Moldova’s central
government condemned the declaration of the DMR. Transdnistrians formed their own
legislature in November, 1990. Russians and Ukrainians made up the majority in this
Transdnistrian legislature, though Moldovan Romanians were represented. With these moves,
Transdnistria considered that it was no longer part of Moldova (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu,
2007).
Moldova’s central government lost control over Transdnistria in 1990, and the
Transdnistrians, who took weapons from Soviet 14th Army stores, consolidated their authority
over the region of Moldova east of the Dniestr. Armed Transdnistrians took over police stations
and local government institutions in Transdnistria, while Moldovan police units took up positions
on the western bank of the Dniestr, exchanging shots with the Transdnistrians. In the spring of
1991, the Transdnistrians assumed control over Bender and the surrounding area, territory that
was situated to the west of the Dniestr. By the summer of 1991, Bessarabia’s rail links with the
rest of the Soviet Union were cut, for the rail lines passed through Transdnistria. The August
coup of 1991 was a major turning point in the Bessarabian-Transdnistrian conflict. Snegur and
the Moldovan Supreme Soviet condemned the putsch against Gorbachev. Grigore Eremei,
Lucinschi’s successor as CPM First Secretary, and the CPM Politburo severed their ties with the
Soviet Communist Party. Smirnov and the Transdnistrians supported the putschists, and offered
to send military assistance to help the State Emergency Committee (GKChP). When the August
coup collapsed, and the USSR ceased to exist in all but name, the Transdnistrians moved to shore
up their position. On August 27, 1991, Moldova declared its independence from the Soviet
Union, and nationalized Soviet and Communist party assets. Smirnov and the Gagauz leader,
Stepan Topol, suggested that Moldova be constituted as a tripartite federation, an approach the
Moldovan central government rejected. Snegur had Smirnov, Topol, and other Transdnistrian
and Gagauz leaders arrested. In response, Transdnistria threatened to cut off gas and electricity
supplies to Bessarabia, and Transdnistrian women blocked the rail lines. Snegur released
Smirnov, Topol, and the others (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007; Dima, 2001).
In the aftermath of the August coup and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the
Transdnistrians formed their own army, the Dnestr Guards. Weapons were procured from 14th
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Army stocks, and several 14th Army officers resigned from the Soviet army and joined the Dnestr
Guards. In early 1992, the head of the 14th Army, Yakovlev, resigned, and took over as chief of
the Dnestr Guards, while his chief of staff, Colonel Stefan Chitac, became Transdnistria’s
defense minister. Junior officers in the 14th Army followed these examples, and ended up in
officer positions in Transdnistria’s army. Cossacks from Russia and Ukraine came to
Transdnistria to defend the self-styled republic from a Bessarabian attack. In the meantime,
Moldova’s central government formed its own army, instituting a draft, receiving assistance in
the task of building up a military from Moldovan interior ministry troops (Carabinieri), and
taking weapons from Soviet stores on its territory. Moldova got some military help from
Romania. In April, 1992, the Russian Federation asserted its claim over the 14th Army, while
starting the withdrawal of Russian troops from Bessarabia, a process completed by 1994. Given
the military situation developing in early 1992, the stage was set for the kind of war that would
break out once the fuse was set. On December 13, 1991, the first serious fighting erupted
between the Bessarabians and Transdnistrians in Dubosari. Moldovan police tried to disband
armed Transdnistrians. This event triggered firefights along the Dniestr, with Moldovan police
on the west bank exchanging fire with armed Transdnistrians on the east bank of the river. In
addition, the Transdnistrians blew up or mined the bridges that crossed the Dniestr to stop any
possible Bessarabian assault. Despite cease-fires, fighting continued into early 1992, with 100
people being killed in the skirmishes. In March, 1992, Snegur declared a state of emergency,
which extended to the entire territory of Moldova, including Transdnistria, and two months later,
the 14th Army came out in support of the DMR. On June 19, 1992, the Moldovan military began
its assault on Bender, hoping to take this Russian-inhabited city first, then proceed to take over
Transdnistria east of the Dniestr. The Dnestr Guards fought back, while the 14th Army joined the
Transdnistrians in defense of their homeland. Thus, the Moldovan Civil War began, and Russia
carried out its first intervention beyond the borders of the federation. While the war did not last
long, it had effects that are still being felt to this day (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
While the elites took the initiative, their actions had resonance with the popular classes in
Bessarabia and Transdnistria, who mobilized behind their respective ruling classes in Chisinau
and Tiraspol. Three other facilitating factors played a role in stoking the 1992 Moldovan Civil
War. The Moldovan Romanians constitute the majority in Bessarabia, making up 78 % of the
region’s population as of 2004. In Transdnistria, the Russians composed 30 % of this region’s
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populace in 2004, while the Ukrainians made up 28 %. On the other hand, the Moldovan
Romanian share of Transdnistria’s population declined from 40 % in 1989 to 30 % in 2004.
Thus, the Russians and russophone Ukrainians compose 58 % of Transdnistria’s populace, while
many Moldovan Romanians have left Transdnistria for the “greener pastures” of Bessarabia.
There is no doubt that Smirnov and his henchmen have used their local majority in Transdnistria
to enact legislation that discriminates against the Moldovan Romanians. For instance, the
Transdnistrians in Romania must use the Cyrillic script which the Soviet central government
imposed on them in 1938, and the region’s Orthodox Christians fall under the jurisdiction of the
Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. Russians and Ukrainians receive preferential
treatment in terms of job placement in Transdnistria. These factors may explain the exodus of
many Moldovan Romanians from Transdnistria to Bessarabia (Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
In Bessarabia, the Romanians have used their majority in the region to help out their
ethnic kin. As a result of the 1989 language law, Romanian-speakers have received preferential
treatment in management and government jobs. In addition, the adoption of the Latin alphabet
for the Romanian spoken in Bessarabia links Moldova with Romania, and steers the republic
away from Russia. In the region west of the Dniestr, two Orthodox metropolitans are vying for
control of the locality’s Orthodox adherents. One metropolitan is pro-Russian, and his
jurisdiction controls 80-82 % of Moldova’s churches, while the other metropolitan is proRomanian, and he runs 18-20 % of Bessarabia’s churches and claims 1 million followers as of
2004. Being under different religious jurisdictions, Bessarabia and Transdnistria have little
incentive to compromise, for the Orthodox divisions harden the resolve of both sides, and make
coming to an agreement that much more difficult (Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
Bessarabia and Transdnistria have different ethnic majorities. Since ethnicity is
ascriptive, it is very difficult to reconcile the differences between the two regions. There exists
an economic disparity between Bessarabia and Transdnistria. On the one side, Bessarabia is
more agricultural, rural, and Romanian, while Transdnistria is more industrial, urban, and Slavic.
Transdnistria possesses a hydroelectric plant, which supplies Bessarabia with energy. In
addition, the region east of the Dniestr has heavy industry, which produces armaments for
internal use and for export. During the MSSR period (1940-89), the Transdnistrians ran
Moldova, and they considered their region to be more advanced than Bessarabia, and thought of
the Bessarabians as “yokels.” On the other hand, the Bessarabian Romanians thought of the
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Transdnistrian ascendency as a form of foreign, oppressive, Russian rule, and viewed the
Transdnistrians as “satraps” of the Soviet center. 1989 marked a turning point in Moldova.
Snegur, a Bessarabian agronomist from Edinet, was elected president of the Moldovan republic
in September, 1990, while Gorbachev appointed a Bessarabian, Petru Lucinschi, who was born
and grew up in Floresti, as CPM head in November, 1989. These appointments marked the
passing of power over the Moldavian SSR from the Transdnistrians to the Bessarabians. Such a
series of events had economic repercussions, for the Bessarabian Romanian leadership has
worked to elevate the socio-economic position of the Moldovan Romanians, and to take them out
of their peonage. This factor is indicated in the demographic decline in the number of Russians
and Ukrainians in Bessarabia. From being 13 % of the republic’s population in 1989, the
Russian share of Moldova’s populace has gone down to 9.3 % as of 2004, while the Ukrainian
share has declined from 13 % in 1989 to 11 % in 2004. In Bessarabia, the Moldovan Romanian
share of the population has increased to 78 % as of 2004. Altogether, the Moldovan Romanians
composed 64.5 % of Moldova’s population in 1989, and 71 % in 2004. Since the Slavs have the
vote in Bessarabia, the Moldovan central government’s promotion of Romanian advancement in
the economic sphere largely explains the Slavic exodus from the Bessarabian region. Several
Bessarabian Russians have moved to Transdnistria, as is indicated in the increasing share of
ethnic Russians in Transdnistria’s population. In 1989, 25 % of the Transdnistrian region’s
populace was Russian, while the Russian made up 30 % as of 2004. What these figures point to
is the effect of economic policies that favor one’s ethnicity. This dynamic is present in both
regions of Moldova (King, 2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
Moldova is located on the periphery of the former USSR. Transdnistria is situated at the
easternmost end of Moldova. This factor has made it possible for the Transdnistrian region to
secede from Moldovan central government control. Had Transdnistria been situated in the
middle of Moldova, it would have had a more difficult time separating itself. Moldova’s army
would have surrounded the region, and been able to cut off foreign assistance from arriving for
the beleaguered Transdnistrians. If this were the case, then Transdnistria would have probably
settled for autonomy in a deal similar to the one the Gagauz Turks arranged with Chisinau. In
the Gagauzia case, the local inhabitants choose their own representatives for a local assembly,
which in turn selects the bashkan (Gagauzia’s president), who has a seat in the Moldovan
parliament. Moldova is a unitary state, so Gagauzia’s autonomy is limited. Transdnistria has set
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its sights on independence from Chisinau’s control, and Smirnov will not settle for autonomy.
He envisions Transdnistria’s union with a revived Soviet union-state. Russia sees itself as the
protector of ethnic Russians and russophones in the other former Soviet republics, which it
defines with a special phrase, the “Near Abroad” (Russian, bolee zarubezh’e). Russia can send
reinforcements and additional supplies to Transdnistria by way of an air corridor over Ukraine.
This air corridor does not cross Bessarabian territory. Transdnistria borders Ukraine on its
eastern frontier, a factor that makes Russian negotiation of the air corridor easier. Russia has to
conduct negotiations with one country, Ukraine, to reach Transdnistra. It is possible that Ukraine
has an affinity for the Ukrainians in Transdnistria, and willingly tolerates the Russian corridor
over its air space. In 1998, Ukraine joined the peace-keeping force supervising the cease-fire
between Transdnistria and Bessarabia. Due to the presence of Ukrainians in Transdnistria,
Ukraine has a stake in the region’s dispute with the Moldovan central government (King, 2000;
Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
Bessarabia’s Romanians have an ethnic “diaspora” nearby, the Romanians of Romania.
During the Moldovan Civil War, Romania provided some military support to the central
government in Chisinau. Since that time, Romania has sent Latin script books, newspapers, and
other cultural materials to Moldova, and has established educational links with the Moldovan
republic. Romania joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007. Because this is the
case, Romania can make the Bessarabian-Transdnistrian issue a NATO priority, which would by
definition involve the United States. Romania has indicated a desire to absorb Bessarabia, such
as displaying a map of Romania that includes Bessarabia at a National Salvation Front congress
in 1991. In the same year, Snegur spoke of Moldova becoming independent in a speech before
the Romanian parliament. In a 1994 referendum, 90 % of Bessarabians voted for an independent
Moldova, while only 10 % opted for union of Bessarabia with Romania. Thus, Moldova has an
ambiguous relationship with the other “eastern Latin” state. Most Bessarabians welcome
Romanian assistance, but want to preserve an independent, soverign Moldovan polity (King,
2000; Brezianu and Spanu, 2007).
Besides having the Ukrainians nearby, the Russian corridor over Ukrainian air space links
Transdnistria with the Russian Federation. Although Ukraine is situated between Russia and
Transdnistria, the air corridor enables the federation to send arms, personnel, and other materiel
to Transdnistria. Russia uses its air corridor over Ukraine to bolster Trandsnistrian defenses and
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to send Russian troops from the Russian Federation should the need arise. Showing its interest
in the fate of Transdnistria’s Russians and Ukrainians, Russia has deployed six battalions in the
peace-keeping force that separates the Bessarabians from the Transdnistrians. Due to the power
disparity between Moldova and Russia, the Chisinau government realizes it does not possess the
capabilities to take on Russia, so it tolerates Russian backing for Transdnistria. While it would
like for the OGRF to depart the region east of the Dniestr, such a scenario is highly unlikely, for
Russia considers Transdnistria, with its East Slavic majority, to be a key example of its position
as the protector of ethnic Russians and russophones in the “Near Abroad” (Brezianu and Spanu,
2007).
As I have indicated, five of the facilitating conditions are present in the Moldova case.
Only the availability of information, or rather the lack of it, limits the ability of both sides to hear
other viewpoints. Bessarabia’s media and press are theoretically free, but the lack of a large
market limits this freedom of maneuver. Moldova’s central government and business interests
with links to the Chisinau regime fund the Bessarabian media and press. This government and
business funding leads journalists and others to practice self-censorship, for they are aware that
they are dependent on the Chisinau government for their monetary sustenance. In practice,
freedom of the press is limited in Bessarabia. In Transdnistria, there is no press and media
freedom. Transdnistrian press and media outlets are under the control of Smirnov and his
henchmen, and they can only present the Tiraspol government’s slant on the issues, particularly
the Transdnistrian region’s conflict with Bessarabia. Thus, it appears that the availability of
information is limited in both Bessarabia and Transdnistria. However, Bessarabian youths used
computer communication sites to launch their protests against the Communist-run regime in
April, 2009. Their action induced the incumbent PMC to hold new elections later in the year,
which were won by a four-party pro-Western coalition. It appears that computer
communications media have increased the availability of information in Bessarabia in recent
years (Brezianu and Spanu, 2007; Shoemaker, 2010).
Five of the facilitating conditions played a role in touching off the Moldovan civil war.
The only facilitating factor that was absent was the availability of information. It can be argued
that computer media have increased the availability of information in Bessarabia in recent years,
as is indicated by the 2009 “Twitter and Facebook” revolution. At the time of the 1992
Moldovan war, the media and press of both Bessarabia and Transdnistria spouted nationalist
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propaganda that ignored the other side’s concerns. Perhaps, computer media will ease this
situation in Bessarabia, but it has failed to do so in Transdnistria up to the present time (2011)
(Brezianu and Spanu, 2007; Shoemaker, 2010).
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CHAPTER SEVEN
CHECHNYA
The north Caucasian republic of Chechnya has been the Russian Federation's major
flashpoint of violent ethnic conflict since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Thousands
have been killed, and Chechen separatists have launched some of Russia's most sensational and
severe terrorist acts. In fact, the war that began in Chechnya in December, 1994, and restarted in
August, 1999, has spread to the neighboring Russian ethnic republics of Ingushetia and
Dagestan. This contagion effect is a concern to the affected republics' presidents, the Russian
central government, and the world's major powers. What makes the Russo-Chechen dispute so
serious is the Islamic jihadist dimension. Chechen separatist rebels have remade their movement
into a pan-Islamic fighting force with aspirations to recreate the Muslim Caliphate, which was
abolished by Turkish president Mustapha Kemal Ataturk in 1922. Nationalist-minded Chechen
leaders like Dzhokar Dudayev and Aslan Maskhadov are dead, killed in Russian army attacks,
and jihadists have taken over the Chechen separatist movement and transformed it into a
religious crusade, which has the aim of creating a multi-ethnic pan-Islamic state encompassing
the North Caucasus. This phenomenon poses a challenge to this project's territorial argument.
What began as a Chechen quest to create an independent, sovereign state free of Russian control
in the mid-1990s became a Muslim jihad (holy war) in the late 1990s and into the 21st century.
Under different leadership, Chechen separatists have shifted their crusade from a secular
movement with territorial aspirations into a religious cause.
For Russia, the territorial imperative is paramount. Russia fears that if it grants Chechnya
independence, then other ethnic republics in the Russian Federation will agitate for their own
sovereignty, and separate from the Muscovite Russian state. Russian presidents Yeltsin and Putin
started the first and second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen wars with the aim of restoring central
government control over Chechnya, and thus preventing the disintegration of the Russian
Federation, which is composed of 83 “subjects.” Among the “subjects” are the 21 ethnic
republics, which include Chechnya. Yeltsin saw, and Putin and Medvedev see the current
international boundaries of the Russian Federation as their country's proper frontier lines, and
have taken drastic measures, including military campaigns, to preserve them. Remembering how
the USSR collapsed and broke up into its 15 constituent republics, Putin and Medvedev want to
prevent a recurrence of such an event in the Russian Federation. In sum, the Russo-Chechen
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dispute takes on a territorial hue for the Russian side, while the Chechen separatists have
transformed their cause from a territorial one into a religious, Islamic jihadist one. What
accounts for the mutation on the Chechen rebel side? Chechnya's current war (1999-) has taken
on the character of the late 18th century-19th century Caucasian armed conflicts, in which the
Chechens participated in a pan-Islamic, multi-ethnic effort to expel the Russians and set up an
Islamic state. This radical Muslim coloring to Chechen nationalism can be seen in the strict
Islamic state the Chechens established during the 1917 Russian Revolution, and with which the
Russian Communists aligned their Soviet government during the subsequent Russian Civil War
(1918-21). It is my argument that the Chechens have reverted to a previous form of political
organization that was first manifest in the late 18th century with Sheik Mansur's jihad against the
Russians, and which the current Chechen separatist leaders have resurrected. This dynamic
explains how a Chechnya-centered cause mutated into a pan-Islamic North Caucasian one that
has spread to Chechnya's neighbors in the Russian Federation. Thus, there is half-corroboration
for the territorial argument in the case of Chechnya. This chapter will explain the territorial basis
of the post-Soviet Russo-Chechen conflicts, and the dynamics at work that transformed the
Chechen national cause into a North Caucasian jihad. An explanation for the character of the
post-Soviet Chechen wars is rooted in Chechen history and how the Chechens interpret that
history.
7.1 Historical Background
The Chechens are an ethnicity in the North Caucasus region of Russia, who speak a
Caucasian language, which is related somehow to Georgian. There are other Caucasian-speaking
ethnic groups in the Northern Caucasus, including the Chechens' closest-related ethnicity, the
Ingush, and other groups, among them the Circassians (Adygei, Cherkess, and Kabardins), and
several of Dagestan's peoples, including the Avars and Dargins (Hahn, 2007). It is uncertain
when the Chechens initially settled in their present homeland, Chechnya. Based on
archeological evidence and some guesswork, analysts and historians date the first Chechen
arrival in the North Caucasus to circa 2000 BCE (Gall and de Waal, 1998; Goltz, 2003). Instead
of forming a state, the Chechens were a stateless people until the arrival of the Russians in the
Chechen-inhabited region in the 1780s, when they accepted a supreme authority in the form of
an Islamic warlord, Sheik Mansur (Lieven, 1998; Gall and de Waal, 1998). At some time in their
history, the Chechens converted to Islam, possibly when the Arab Muslims entered the North
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Caucasus in the 7th century. Surely, the conversion of the Golden Horde to Islam in the 14th
century reinforced the Muslim identity of the Chechens (Goltz, 2003; Lieven, 1998).
Naqshbandi Sufism was introduced to the Chechen lands from its place of origin, Central Asia,
sometime in the late Middle Ages (Lieven, 1998). Sufism is the Muslim brand of mysticism,
which seeks union with God in the obliteration of the boundary between the self and the Deity
(Schwartz, 2008). Naqshbandism is more sedate in its practices than other forms of Sufism.
Chechens follow a code of conduct, adat, which is pre-Islamic in origin. Adat prescribes how a
Chechen is to behave toward himself/herself and others. It is based on reciprocity, which is the
guiding principle in stateless societies. For example, if someone kills an individual's relative,
that individual must kill someone from the offender's family or even the offender himself. Given
the stateless nature of Chechen society, the family is the primary unit of social control and
cohesion, with the family head assuming much power in Chechen households. The basic family
unit in Chechnya is the teip (clan), which consists of an individual and their extended family,
which includes uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. Chechens managed to avoid direct
control by a foreign power until the 1780s, and they maintained their adat practices, which they
combined with Muslim rites (the Five Islamic Pillars) undisturbed until the Russians entered
their homeland (Lieven, 1998, Gall and de Waal, 1998; Goltz, 2003).
It was in the 1780s that the Russian Empire reached the North Caucasian region. This
was not the first time the Russian army reached the Caucasus, for Peter the Great sent his army
to occupy the eastern coast of what is now Azerbaijan and the south coast of present-day Iran.
However, Russia was too weak to establish control in the Caucasus during Peter the Great's
reign, so the Tsarist army withdrew into Russia proper. Earlier, during the late 16th century,
Russian Terek Cossacks entered the North Caucasus, only to be driven back by the Muslim
peoples of the region. The Russians had some familiarity with the Caucasus region when they
entered it a third time in the 1780s, during the reign of Catherine the Great. Russia was on
expansionist campaigns during her reign, annexing eastern Poland-Lithuania in 1772, 1793, and
1795, and directly taking over the Crimea in 1783. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that
Catherine the Great's Russia embarked on a campaign of conquest in the Caucasus in the late 18th
century. One indication of this was the Treaty of Georgievsk in 1783 between Russia and
Georgia, the terms of which made Christian Georgia into a protected state of Orthodox Christian
Russia (Suny, 1994). In order to protect Georgia, Russia needed to control the North Caucasus.
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A Russian force entered the Chechen homeland in the mid-1780s (Lieven, 1998; Gall and de
Waal, 1998).
The Chechens did not sit by and passively accept Russian rule, particularly since the
Russians were Eastern Orthodox Christians. In the Islamic social scheme, Muslims are the
superordinate people, while Christians and Jews are subordinate to the Islamic peoples. Russia's
march into Chechnya was seen by the Chechens as a perverse inversion of Allah's will for the
world's peoples. Chechens, like all Muslims at the time, saw themselves as the ruling group in
society, and Christians as a subjected people. For the Chechens in the 1780s, Christian Russian
rule was unacceptable, so they organized to resist the Russian onslaught into the North Caucasus.
Their leader was a Muslim Avar named Sheik Mansur. He accepted the role of leader of the
Chechen resistance to Russian rule. His Avar ethnicity is evidence of the transnational character
of Chechen Islam. Chechens accepted his leadership because they saw him as a competent
military chieftain who could effectively resist the Russians. Under Sheik Mansur began the first
Caucasian War, which pitted the Muslim peoples of the eastern North Caucasus against the
Russian army. At the Battle of the Sundzha River in 1785, Sheik Mansur beat the Russians. This
was a temporary victory, for the Russians bested the Chechens under Sheik Mansur by capturing
the Muslim warlord in 1791, an event which resulted in the collapse of Chechen resistance and
the end of the first Caucasian War (Lieven, 1998; Goltz, 2003, Gall and de Waal, 1998). The
only ethnicity in the North Caucasus that welcomed the Russians was the Eastern Orthodox
Osset groups, the Tuol and the Iron. Islamic Osset Digors and the other Muslim peoples of the
North Caucasus saw the Russians as an “infidel” imperial power. Of the native North Caucasian
peoples, those that were in the region before the arrival of the Russians, only the majority of
Ossets are Christian. The rest of the North Caucasian peoples are Muslim. This dynamic
influences North Caucasian attitudes toward the Russians. Since the late 18th century, the
Christian Ossets have supported Russian rule over the region, while the North Caucasian
Muslims have resisted Russian control at some time in recent centuries. This difference in
attitude between the Ossets and the other North Caucasian peoples toward the Russians has bred
North Caucasian resentment against the Christian Osset groups. Since the Russian conquest of
the North Caucasus, more Ossets have become Eastern Orthodox Christian, so they resemble the
Russians religiously and see them as their Christian “big brothers.” Because of this dynamic at
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work between the Russians and Christian Ossets, Ossetia is historically pro-Russian and has
served as a firm base for the Russians in the North Caucasus (Brady, 1999).
Ossetia is near Chechnya, and Russia has used the Osset region as a military base for
campaigns against the Chechens. An uneasy peace settled over the Chechen region after the
defeat of Sheik Mansur until the appointment of Russian General Yermolov in 1816. He thought
the Chechens were a troublesome group that deserved to be “punished,” so he launched punitive
expeditions against the Chechens. These Russian actions led the Chechens to rise up in 1824.
Qazi Mullah took over the Chechen cause in 1829. After the Russians killed him in 1834,
leadership of the Chechens passed to the Dagestani Avar, Shamil, who proclaimed himself Imam.
His movement included Dagestani Muslim peoples, in addition to the Chechens. With the
accession of Imam Shamil began the formal opening of the second Caucasian War. Shamil and
his followers carried out a guerrilla war against the Tsarist Russian army that continued until
1859, when the Russians captured Shamil, who was sent into internal exile in the Russian
Empire. To defeat Shamil's insurgency, the Russians cleared several thousand acres of forest.
This action changed the Chechen landscape, and the present distribution of trees, which are
concentrated in the mountainous south of Chechnya, explains why the present-day Chechen
insurgents operate from the southern region of the Chechen republic (Gall and de Waal, 1998,
Goltz, 2003; Lieven, 1998). While most Chechens view Imam Shamil as a national hero, some
Chechens resent that he imposed an autocratic government structure on a stateless Chechen
society (Lieven, 1998). After Shamil's capture and the end of the second Caucasian War, it was
the turn of the Circassians of the western North Caucasus to face the Russian army. Russian
forces eventually subdued the Circassians in this, the third Caucasian War. As a result of defeat,
several thousand Circassians left their homeland in the western North Caucasus, and settled in
the Ottoman Empire, where they joined Chechens who chose to emigrate from Russia.
Descendants of the Chechens and Circassians who settled in the Ottoman Empire can be found
today in modern-day Turkey and Jordan (Lieven, 1998).
Chechnya was swept up in the 1917 Russian Revolution, like the rest of the former
Tsarist empire. After the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in a coup in October,
1917 (Old Style), the Chechens sided with the Bolshevik faction in the subsequent Russian Civil
War. The chief reason they did so was the perceived Bolshevik promise to protect the national
rights of the Chechen people. In the chaos of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the following
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Civil War, the Chechens established a strict Islamic regime that had several of the characteristics
of the later Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Lenin tolerated the Chechen radical
Muslim regime during the life and death struggle between his Bolsheviks and the Russian
Whites, who were nominally under Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. Vladimir Lenin did not want
the Chechens to defect to the White side. Once the Russian Civil War ended with a
Bolshevik/Communist victory, Lenin cracked down on all political movements that did not
strictly follow the Communist line. The radical Muslim regime of the Chechens was suppressed,
and Communist rule was firmly established in Chechnya and the rest of the North Caucasus, a
task no doubt made easier after the Bolshevik seizure of the southern Caucasian republics of
Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia in 1920-21 (Goltz, 2003; Lieven, 1998). Chechens did not
meekly accept Soviet Communist rule. In 1920, they rose up against the Communists. Said Bek,
a great-grandson of Imam Shamil, led the Chechen insurrection. Bolshevik forces defeated the
Chechens by May, 1921. Stalin instituted a Mountainous Autonomous Republic, which included
Chechnya, but not Dagestan (Gall and de Waal, 1998). In 1924, Stalin created the ChechenIngush autonomous region. This was the first time that a certain territory was associated with the
Chechens. Five years later, the Chechens rose up when Stalin initiated collectivization, but the
Red Army subdued the Chechen people. In spite of the Communist suppression of Chechen
resistance at the beginning and end of the 1920s, korenizatsiya (indigenization) was the rule in
the Chechen-Ingush autonomous region. Communist cadres from the Chechen and Ingush
ethnicities held the top posts in the North Caucasian region, and made up the majority of local
Communist party members. Despite the appearance of affirmative action, the Russians ran the
Chechen-Ingush region behind the scenes. In fact, the autonomous region was part of the
RSFSR, and remained so after the RSFSR became the Russian Federation in 1991. Stalin added
Grozny and the Cossack-inhabited region north of the Terek River to the Chechen-Ingush region
in 1934, and he elevated Checheno-Ingushetia's status to an autonomous republic of the RSFSR
at the same time. He made Grozny the capital of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR. One year later, he
had 14,000 Chechen and Ingush executed in the Great Terror (Goltz, 2003; Gall and de Waal,
1998; Lieven, 1998).
World War II ushered in a cruel and traumatic chapter in the Chechens' history. Though
some Chechen and Ingush soldiers deserted to the Nazis, Stalin and the Politburo used this as an
excuse to deport the entire Chechen and Ingush nations from Checheno-Ingushetia to Central
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Asia. Stalin ordered his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, a fellow Georgian, to carry out the ethnic
cleansing operation against the Chechens and Ingush only after the tide of war had turned, and
the Nazis were being driven out of the USSR. On February 22-23, 1944, the Soviet authorities
began deporting the Chechens and Ingush to the Kazakh SSR in Central Asia, a dumping ground
for nationalities that Stalin had deported from their homelands. By February 29, 1944, 387,229
Chechens and 91,250 Ingush had been `cleansed' from the North Caucasus, and sent to the
Kazakh SSR (Gall and de Waal, 1998). Stalin had fulfilled a dream of many Russian officials
from Tsarist times to the Soviet era to get rid of the troublesome Chechens. During the process
of deportation by cattle-cars, several thousand Chechens and Ingush died of hunger, exposure,
and disease. While the Chechens did the best they could in the Kazakh SSR once they were
dumped there, the Soviet government carried out a campaign to eradicate the memory of the
Chechen and Ingush presence in the North Caucasus. For example, Chechen gravestones were
removed and used in building projects, while Checheno-Ingushetia was abolished, and replaced
with Grozny region. Russians and Dagestanis settled in North Caucasian homes that had
belonged to the Chechens, and, in 1948, the Soviet government declared that the Chechens
would never return to their North Caucasian homeland (Gall and de Waal, 1998; Goltz, 2003;
Lieven, 1998).
The Chechens were not the only nationality deported to the Kazakh SSR and Siberia
during World War II. This cruel fate befell the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars, the Kalmyks,
the Balkars, and the Karachai, among others (Dziewanowski, 2003). In 1957, Nikita
Khrushchev, Stalin's successor as Soviet leader, redressed the injustice done to most of the
deported nationalities, and allowed their members to return to their homelands, and the ethnic
entities that were abolished during World War II were re-instituted. For the Chechens, this meant
that they went back to Chechnya, and the Checheno-Ingush ASSR was reinstated. However,
unlike some of the other returnees, the Chechens were granted limited titular rule in post-1957
Checheno-Ingushetia. Instead, ethnic Russians filled the top leadership posts in this ASSR. Of
the aforementioned deported nationalities, only the Volga Germans and Crimean Tatars were
refused permission by Khrushchev to return to their homelands. While being denied a political
role in the running of their titular republic, the Chechens were lucky that Khrushchev let them
leave the Kazakh SSR and resettle their North Caucasian home region (Gall and de Waal, 1998;
Goltz, 2003; Lieven, 1998).
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Once Gorbachev assumed power in 1985, he launched his perestroika (restructuring) and
glasnost' (openness) campaigns, along with `new thinking' in Soviet foreign policy. Perestroika
only came to Chechnya in 1989, when Gorbachev appointed a native Chechen, Doku Zavgaev,
as Communist party leader of Checheno-Ingushetia. From 1957 until Zavgaev's appointment,
the top rulers of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR were ethnic Russians. At the time of Zavgaev's
assumption of power as general-secretary of the Checheno-Ingush Communist party, a top
Chechen general in the Soviet armed forces named Dzhokar Dudayev was imbibing the national
ferment in the Soviet union-republic in which he was stationed, the Estonian SSR. He was a
Soviet air force general in charge of a bomber division in Tartu, one of Estonia's major cities.
Dudayev was sympathetic toward the Estonian Popular Front's goal of an Estonia independent of
the Soviet Union, and his experiences in the Estonian SSR served as a basis for his later
nationalist thinking. He derived lessons from the Estonian nationalist movement that turned him
from a loyal Soviet general who led bomber missions in Afghanistan before his assignment to the
Estonian SSR into the first leader of the post-Soviet Chechen nationalist movement. A Soviet
colonel of Chechen origin, Aslan Maskhadov, was stationed in Vilnius, Lithuanian SSR. He was
an artillery officer who observed the Lithuanian agitation for an independent, sovereign state.
Initially, Maskhadov supported the Soviet government in its efforts against the Lithuanians, but
he later regretted this position after the breakup of the USSR. While he was pro-Soviet during
the Lithuanian independence struggle, Maskhadov learned from the Lithuanian example, and this
experience turned him into a Chechen nationalist. He became the second nationalist leader of
Chechnya after Dudayev's death in 1996 (Gall and de Waal, 1998).
It was Dudayev and Maskhadov who led the Chechen separatist movement in its initial,
secular phase. During Maskhadov's tenure as Chechen nationalist leader, the movement for an
independent Chechnya assumed a pan-Islamic character with emphasis upon religion as the
keystone of Chechen nationalist thinking (Hughes, 2007). As will be illustrated in the evaluation
of territoriality, what began as a territorial issue for both Chechens and Russians turned into a
jihad for the Chechens once the Chechen nationalist movement attained an independent, though
unrecognized, state called the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI) in 1996. When Russian
prime minister Vladimir Putin ordered a second Russian invasion of Chechnya in September,
1999, he was up against a jihadist foe bent on creating a North Caucasian caliphate at the
expense of Russian concerns. Between the first and second post-Soviet Chechen wars, the
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Chechen nationalist movement underwent a metamorphosis, so that Putin faced a different
Chechen enemy in 1999 than Russian President Boris Yeltsin confronted in 1994-96 (Shevtsova,
Putin's Russia, 2005).
7.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Chechnya Case
Chechnya is a territorial dispute for the Russian central government, while the 1994-96
Russo-Chechen war was a conflict over territorial status for the Chechen rebels. However, the
second Russo-Chechen conflict that began in August, 1999 is a religious struggle for the
Chechen rebels involved in it. During the first post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war of 1994-96,
Russia was confronting a secular Chechen separatist movement. When Putin ordered the
Russian army to invade Chechnya in September, 1999, he was up against a pan-Islamic North
Caucasian movement, which showed its aspirations for a multinational caliphate by erupting into
neighboring Dagestan the previous month. It was the Chechen Islamist invasion of Dagestan
that touched off the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen conflict. The Chechen insurgents
involved in this campaign had different goals from the Chechen fighters in the 1994-96 war, for
they set out on a jihad, while the Chechen troops involved in the first post-Soviet Chechen war
saw their mission as defending the homeland against Russian aggression (Hughes, 2007;
Evangelista, 2002; Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 2005). Given the attitude of the Chechen fighters
in the 1994-96 war, this is an indication that the Chechens initially saw their dispute with Russia
as a territorial conflict. Many members of a polity view a foreign invasion as a threat to the
polity’s existence and independence. In the Russo-Chechen case, the Chechen independence
activists saw Russia as a foreign occupier, a factor exacerbated by the religious differences
between the Chechens and the majority of ethnic Russians, for the Chechens are a Sunni Muslim
nationality that belongs to the Qadiri Sufi tariqa (religious order). After Imam Shamil’s defeat in
1859, most Chechens joined the Qadiri order after leaving the Naqshbandi one. Founded by
Jilani in the 13th century, the Qadiri order, also known as the Qadiriyya, has a jihadist reputation.
Imam Shamil was egged on by the Naqshbandis, a Sufi tariqa with its origins in Central Asia.
Both the Naqshbandis and the Qadiris are jihad-oriented when it comes to defending the umma
(worldwide Muslim community) against non-Muslims (Lieven, 1998; Schwartz, 2008). On the
other hand, the majority of ethnic Russians identify themselves as Russian Orthodox. About
two-thirds of the citizens of the Russian Federation belong to the Russian Orthodox Church
(Garrard and Garrard, 2008).
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While this religious difference between the Russians and the Chechens was to assume
primary importance during the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war, religion was only a
cheerleader during the 1994-96 Russo-Chechen conflict. Chechen presidents Dudayev and
Maskhadov presented their nationalist struggle in secular, territorial terms. They advocated for
an independent, sovereign state that would take its place along with the other sovereign polities
of the world. Rarely did they mention Islam as a motivating factor. While Sunni Islam was an
identifying characteristic of the Chechen people, for Dudayev and Maskhadov it was one among
others, including the Chechen language and attachment to the specific territory of Chechnya,
which had separated from Ingushetia in September, 1991, and which the Chechen nationalist
parliament declared an independent republic (Lieven, 1998; Hughes, 2007; Gall and de Waal,
1998). On the Chechen side, territoriality assumed the manifestation of sovereign independence
for the Chechen homeland from the Russian Federation. Thus, concerning my territoriality
theory, Chechen agitation for an independent state is an indication of sub-national activity, with
the irredentist element absent. A major illustration of this latter element was the Chechen
nationalists’ decision to let Ingushetia decide its own fate. Ingushetia opted to become an ethnic
republic of the Russian Federation (Lieven, 1998). To sum up, most Chechens involved in the
first post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war viewed their dispute with Russia as a territorial one, while
the Chechen separatists in the second, on-going Russo-Chechen conflict see their war with
Russia as a jihad, which has the aim to establish a North Caucaisian caliphate independent of the
Russian Federation.
For the Russian government, Russia’s war with Chechnya is a territorial conflict that has
first priority for its goals of what constitutes the Russian Federation. Yeltsin viewed, and Putin
and Dmitri A. Medvedev, Russia’s third post-Soviet president, view a Chechnya that separates
from Russia and becomes an independent, sovereign state as a threat to the Russian Federation’s
territorial integrity. What the Russian central government fears is setting a “bad” precedent. It
reasons that if Chechnya secedes from the Russian Federation, other ethnic republics will follow
the Chechen lead. In addition, it sees the boundaries between former Soviet union-republics
established by Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s second leader, and as modified by Khrushchev,
the USSR’s third leader, as sacrosanct. To be more correct, Russia’s government sees the 1956
boundaries as modified by Khrushchev for the RSFSR, Russia’s Soviet predecessor state, as
inviolable. With its actions toward Chechnya, it has demonstrated its determination to defend
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Russia’s 1956 frontiers by any means. Yeltsin, Putin, and Medvedev have defined Russia’s 1956
frontier as the “proper” boundaries of the multi-ethnic Russian homeland, a homeland,
nonetheless, in which ethnic Russians predominate, making up 80 % of Russia’s population
(Toft, 2003). The 2008 Russo-Georgian war does not necessarily invalidate this Russian
conception of its “proper” boundaries, for Russian President Medvedev recognized de jure the
independence of the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and did not annex them to
the Russian Federation. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are Russian satellites, protected with
Russian military power. What Russia showed in its actions against Georgia in 2008 is that it will
pursue its great power interests in what it considers as its “sphere of influence” without regard
for the interests of the states that fall in it and for those of the other great powers (Cornell and
Starr [editors], 2009). In sum, both post-Soviet Chechen wars take on a territorial nature for the
Russian state, which slants its case as an instance of state ideology, viewing Khrushchev’s 1956
boundaries for the RSFSR as the “proper” frontiers of the present-day Russian Federation.
Russia’s government also fears that the Federation would disintegrate just like the USSR did if
Chechnya successfully seceded from Russia (Lieven, 1998; Shevtsova, Yeltsin’s Russia, 1999;
Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 2005; Gall and de Waal, 1998; Evangelista, 2002).
Facilitating Conditions in the Chechnya Case
Like the Moldova case, five of the six facilitating factors are present in the Chechnya
case. There appears to be a lack of availiability of information on both sides. Russia’s central
government and the Chechen rebels used their respective media and press outlets for propaganda
purposes. As a result, the Russian and Chechen publics were presented with only their
government’s side of the story, and do not have much access to the other side’s account of
events. Thus, both sides ignore the other side’s concerns, and the Russian and Chechen public
consciousnesses are tendentious. During the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war, there exists
competition between the pro-Kremlin Chechen government and the Chechen Islamists for the
allegiance of the Chechen public. Chechnya’s pro-Russian regime, headed by the Kadyrov clan,
follows the general policy of the Kremlin, and thus come out with pro-Kremlin propaganda,
while the Islamists present their case in one-sided terms.
The Russian central government and Chechen rebel elites have played key roles in
mobilizing their followers behind them. Dudayev was the focal point of power in the post-Soviet
Chechen republic from September, 1991 until his death in April, 1996, when a Russian army
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rocket struck and killed him. He came to power during the post-August coup fallout that
followed the collapse of the putsch against Gorbachev. In September, 1991, Chechen nationalists
affiliated with the Chechen National Congress, a body headed by Dudayev since its formation in
1990, overthrew the Zavgaev administration and dissolved the Checheno-Ingush Supreme
Soviet, through which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) exercised control over
the Checheno-Ingush ASSR. With Yeltsin’s ban on the CPSU in the RSFSR, the framework
through which the Russians controlled Checheno-Ingushetia collapsed. In fact, the Yeltsin
administration backed the Chechen nationalists in their struggle against Zavgaev, a Gorbachev
appointee. Only after Dudayev assumed power, nominally ruling through a Chechen National
Congress-dominated legislature, and calling for Chechen independence from Russia, with a
secular Chechen national state assuming its place in the international community, did Yeltsin turn
against Dudayev, and set out to crush the Chechen secessionist government. At this time, the
Ingush set up their own republic with its capital in Nazran’. Unlike the Chechens, the Ingush
wanted their self-organizaed republic to remain in the Russian Federation. Yeltsin feared other
nationality republics in the RSFSR would follow Chechnya’s example and agitate for
independence. In November, 1991, Yeltsin sent RSFSR Interior Ministry troops into Chechnya’s
capital, Grozny, by airplane to secure the Chechen republic for the RSFSR. Chechen nationalists
met the airplane at Grozny’s airport, and sent the Russian Interior Ministry soldiers back to
Moscow. Yeltsin’s first attempt to assert Russian sovereignty over Chechnya was a fiasco. The
final phase of the Soviet Union’s dissolution in December, 1991, and Yeltsin’s power struggle
with the Communist-dominated Russian parliament took up his attention until December, 1993,
giving Dudayev and the Chechen nationalists breathing room in which to build up an army to
resist the Russians. Yeltsin withdrew Russian troops from Chechnya in early 1992, leaving
behind huge stores of weapons and ammunition, which the Chechens got hold of, and used
against the Russian army after the latter invaded Chechnya in December, 1994. In short,
Dudayev had the resources to contest Russia’s claim over Chechnya, and his guerrillas used
Russian arms to beat the federal army in August, 1996, shortly after Dudayev’s death, which
occurred after a Russian missile honed in on his satellite phone frequency, and scored a direct hit
on Dudayev (Gall and de Waal, 1998; Lieven, 1998; Shevtsova, Yeltsin’s Russia, 1999).
The Russian and Chechen leaders played a decisive role in defining the Russo-Chechen
conflict as a territorial dispute. Other members of the elites in Moscow and Grozny fell behind
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their leaders, particularly the power ministries (interior, defense, and intelligence) in the Russian
central government. Liberal-minded members of the Russian governmental elite, such as Yegor
Gaidar, architect of Russia’s capitalist reforms, and Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the liberal
Yabloko party, opposed Yeltsin’s campaign to subdue Chechnya. So did the Russian oligarch,
Vladimir Gusinsky, who owned the then-independent NTV (Independent Television). In
Dudayev’s government, there was a consensus that Chechnya’s army would fight the Russian
army once it got around to invading Chechnya. Even Dudayev’s vice-president and successor,
Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, the architect of secular Chechen nationalism who invited Dudayev back
to Chechnya in 1990 to take up leadership of the Chechen National Congress, was in favor of
armed struggle against Russian attempts to reassert control over the Chechen republic (Lieven,
1998; Gall and de Waal, 1998).
Like Yeltsin, Dudayev confronted the legislature, faced off against it, and shut it down in
1993. Dzhokar Dudayev and his Chechen National Congress overthrew the local Communist
government headed by Zavgaev with the help of the Chechens in Grozny. As the Chechen media
was in state hands, the alteration of political power caused by the Chechen revolution led
Dudayev and his nationalist separatists to seize control of Chechen press and media outlets.
Given the Chechen nationalists’ absolute control over Chechnya’s press and media, Dudayev and
his henchmen had a monopoly in supplying nationalist propaganda and setting the agenda for the
Chechen people, most of whom supported the goal of the Chechen nationalists for an
independent state (Lieven, 1998). Only a Chechen clan in the region of Chechnya north of the
Terek river backed the Russian goal of keeping the Chechen republic in the Russian Federation.
In the northern Chechen village of Znamenskoye, Umar Avturkhanov, a former policeman, set up
a Provisional Council that had the aim of overthrowing Dudayev and maintaining Russian
sovereign control over Chechnya. His following was small, made up as it was of gangsters,
former Communists, and intellectuals (Gall and de Waal, 1998). He had to depend on Russian
national media, to which few Chechens at the time were receptive, while Dudayev used the local
republican media to get out the Chechen secessionist message, to which the majority of
Chechens paid attention. Dudayev concentrated media control in his hands by creating a
Department of Information and News Reporting. Through it, he was able to tell the Chechen
public what he wanted it to hear (Goltz, 2003).
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On February 23, 1994, the Chechens commemorated the anniversary of the start of the
Deportation for the first time. During the Soviet era, the Chechens remembered the Deportation,
but held no public events to honor the victims of Stalin’s action. Instead, they privately
recollected what Stalin had done to the Chechen people in 1944. With the collapse of the USSR,
the Chechens could freely hold commemorations of the Deportation. Dudayev was involved in
his own struggle with the Chechen National Congress-dominated parliament during 1992 and
1993. In the end, Dudayev bested the Chechen parliament and dissolved it, an event which
resulted in a consolidation of power in Dudayev’s hands. He got around to organizing a
commemoration of the Deportation in 1994, the 50th anniversary of the event. Dudayev gave the
main speech at the rally, which drew 10,000 Chechens. To the Grozny Chechens, he declared
that Chechnya would attain independence from Russia, and that a repeat of the 1944 Deportation
would not occur again. In addition, he claimed that all Chechens were being mobilized for the
Chechen separatist cause. Dudayev hinted that the Chechen people would back him in resistance
to a Russian invasion of Chechnya (Goltz, 2003).
One indication of Chechen determination to resist a Russian invasion was the buildup of
a Chechen army by Dudayev. At the February 23, 1994 rally, the Chechen military showed off
its wares. Chechen soldiers were armed, and the Chechens displayed tanks and airplanes. They
received these weapons from the stockpile left by the Soviet military in Chechnya in 1991
(Goltz, 2003; Lieven, 1998). Gorbachev withdrew the Soviet central government soldiers from
Chechnya at that time. The humiliation that the RSFSR Interior Ministry troops received in early
November, 1991 induced Yeltsin to continue the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from the
Chechen republic, for he was not powerful enough to prosecute a war against Chechnya. He had
to deal with Gorbachev and his disintegrating Soviet government and with an RSFSR parliament
that did not see eye-to-eye with Yeltsin on such issues as creating an independent Russia and
market reform, which included the first step of price deregulation. It was only with Gorbachev
and the Soviet-era Russian parliament out of the way that Yeltsin could concentrate on bringing
Chechnya back into the Russian fold by force (Lieven, 1998; Shevtsova, Yeltsin’s Russia, 1999;
Colton, 2008).
Yeltsin was willing to use violent means to bring Chechnya to heel. Initially, he tried to
topple Dudayev’s regime by means of Avturkhanov’s soldiers. In 1994, the Avturkhanov forces
tried to take Grozny several times with the Russians providing air support. Each time,
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Dudayev’s army repelled the Russian-backed forces. The November, 1994 attempt by
Avturkhanov to overthrow Dudayev was the boldest one up to that point, and Dudayev’s forces
captured Russian soldiers who were helping the Avturkhanov military campaign. As a
consequence of this policy, Russian media portrayed the Avturkhanov Provisional Council as a
viable opposition and alternative to the Dudayev government. However, most Chechens backed
Dudayev and supported his goal of making Chechnya an independent, sovereign state outside of
the Russian federal framework. In other words, the Chechen opposition to Dudayev was feeble
and lacked popular support among the Chechen public. That is why Russian central government
attempts to topple the Dudayev regime were bound to fail (Colton, 2008; Lieven, 1998; Goltz,
2003; Shevtsova, Yeltsin’s Russia, 1999).
Chechnya was the only Russian republic where the Soviet forces left major armaments
behind. Chechens seized control of this materiel, ammunition, tanks, and airplanes. Rocketpropelled grenades proved helpful for the Dudayev forces during the early phases of the first
post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war, for they used them to put several Russian tanks out of action,
immobilizing the Russian soldiers’ advances. In November, 1994, Yeltsin turned his ear to hardliners in his inner circle who advocated that the Russian army invade Chechnya. Finding that his
aid to the Avturkhanov military campaigns was proving to be ineffective, and that Avturkhanov
was not the man to topple Dudayev, and that no Chechen oppositionist could overthrow the
popular Dudayev, Yeltsin decided in late November, 1994 to send the Russian military into
Chechnya to impose Russian rule by force. On December 11, 1994, the Russian army entered
Chechnya with the aim of capturing Grozny and toppling the Chechen nationalist government
led by Dudayev. Three Russian columns advanced on Grozny from the west, north, and east. In
December, 1994, the Russian expeditionary force in Chechnya numbered 40,000 troops. Yeltsin
augmented this force as the advance on Grozny ground to a halt, and Russian forces increased to
70,000 personnel by February, 1995. Theoretically, every Chechen male was avaialable to help
Dudayev preserve Chechnya’s de facto independence. Russia’s expeditionary force in Chechnya
confronted a Chechen nation in arms. The Chechens gained confidence in their ability to defeat
the Russians because they inherited the weapons the Soviet forces left behind in 1991.
Chechnya’s task was made easier, for 200,000 ethnic Russians had fled the Chechen republic
between 1992 and 1994. Thus, Russia lost a potential base of support. While ethnic Russians
were present in Grozny during the Russian army assault in early 1995, they were more of a
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hindrance rather than a facilitator of Russian military aims in Chechnya. The exodus of ethnic
Russians from Chechnya weakened the Russian central government’s hold on the Chechen
republic. As a result of it, the Chechens formed a greater proportion of their titular republic’s
population, and could thus strengthen their claim to their homeland. According to the 1989
Soviet census, Chechens made up 73 % of Checheno-Ingushetia’s population. With the
secession of Ingushetia and the Russian exodus, the Chechens composed more than 75 % of
Chechnya’s populace in 1994. Russian state media fell in line behind Yeltsin, expressing its
support for his campaign to subdue Chechnya by force. Russia was confronting a stubborn foe
in the Chechens, who proved difficult to subjugate. With the Russian invasion of Chechnya, a
war was joined that would prove difficult for the Russians and for the Chechens (Colton, 2008;
Toft, 2003; Goltz, 2003; Lieven, 1998).
After Dudayev’s death in April, 1996, Yandarbiyev took over as interim president. Aslan
Maskhadov, the commander of Chechen rebel forces, launched an attack on Russian-occupied
Grozny in August, 1996. Chechen rebel troops surrounded the Russian forces in Grozny, and
threatened to kill them on live television if the Russian soldiers did not surrender. Yeltsin threw
in the towel, and sent his national security adviser, Aleksandr Lebed’, to negotiate with
Maskhadov. Lebed’ and Maskhadov negotiated the Khasavyurt Agreement, which deferred
Chechnya’s status for five years, and which called for the withdrawal of Russian forces from
Chechnya by the end of 1996. Negotiations between the Russian central government and the
Chechen nationalist government were supposed to resolve Chechnya’s status by 2001 (Goltz,
2003; Lieven, 1998; Gall and de Waal, 1998).
Maskhadov won the Chechen presidential elections in January, 1997, securing 57 % of
the vote. Despite his strong mandate, Maskhadov proved to be an ineffective leader, which was
indicated by his inability to halt a wave of kidnappings in Chechnya. More importantly, he was
unable to reign in the Islamist field commanders Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduyev, among
others. Lawlessness was the rule in Maskhadov-run Chechnya, and the Islamists took advantage
of this to fill in the power vacuum. Many among the Chechen population were receptive to the
Islamists’ message, for the Islamists promised to restore law and order, and to bring stability to
the Chechen republic. Probably unbeknownst to Maskhadov, Salman Raduyev led Chechen
Islamist troops into neighboring Dagestan, seizing control of Chechen-inhabited Khasavyurt.
Raduyev hoped that the Dagestani Muslim peoples would join in his revolt, and help establish a
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North Caucasian caliphate. Instead, the Dagestani Muslims rallied behind the Russian central
government, and helped Russian forces to drive the Chechen Islamist rebels back into Chechnya.
One day after the August, 1999 Chechen Islamist invasion of Dagestan, Yeltsin fired Russian
prime minister Sergei Stepashin, and appointed FSB head Vladimir Putin in his place. Putin
proceeded to prepare plans for a second Russian invasion of Chechnya. In September, 1999,
bombs blew up apartment buildings in Moscow and the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk,
killing 300 people. The Russian central government blamed Chechen Islamists for the terrorist
attacks. Russia’s public rallied behind their government’s campaign to subdue Chechnya. On
September 30, 1999, Russian forces invaded Chechnya, occupying the northern Nadterechny
region, then moving on to take Gudermes, Chechnya’s second-largest city. After making
Gudermes Chechnya’s temporary capital, Putin ordered the Russian expeditionary force to take
Grozny, which was accomplished in February, 2000. In January, 2000, the Chief Mufti Akhmad
Kadyrov and his family defected from the Chechen rebel side to the Russian central government
side. Putin made Akhmad Kadyrov head of a pro-Kremlin Chechen government, and started to
build up what would become the kadyrovtsy, a Chechen militia loyal to the Kadyrov clan and to
the Kremlin. Kadyrov had social capital because he was a mufti, which is a high position in
Muslim leadership circles. Many Chechens rallied behind Kadyrov based on his mufti status, for
they craved stability and security, and thought that Maskhadov failed to deliver on these
prerequisites of peace. Unlike Yeltsin, Putin systematically pursued a policy of Chechenization,
which entailed a pro-Kremlin Chechen government employing its militia, the kadyrovtsy, to hunt
down and kill the Chechen Islamist guerrillas. The kadyrovtsy work hand-in-hand with the
Russian army and Interior Ministry forces. With Putin’s invasion of Chechnya and his policy of
Chechenization, the basis was laid for the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war. Chechen
Islamist rebel operations have spread to neighbors Ingushetia and Dagestan. Thus, the Chechen
Islamist leaders have created what has become another Caucasian war. The second post-Soviet
Chechen war resembles the Caucasian conflicts of the late 18th and 19th centuries. My prognosis
is that the latest Caucasian war will last another 10 to 20 years. Russian and pro-Kremlin
Chechen forces will probably subdue the Chechen Islamist rebels in the end, but it will take a
long time (Evangelista, 2002; Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 2005; Goltz, 2003; Hughes, 2007).
As the above description of elite behavior indicates, the Russian central government and
the Chechen rebels conceive of their differences in zero-sum terms, where each side views its
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side’s gains as losses for the other side, and vice versa. This kind of thinking makes it very hard
to resolve territorial disputes and it tends to prolong conflict. Other facilitating conditions were
at work in touching off the Russo-Chechen wars. According to the 1989 Soviet census,
Chechens made up 73 % of Checheno-Ingushetia’s population. Given that the Ingush seceded
from the combined Checheno-Ingush ASSR in September, 1991, the Chechens represented a
greater proportion of Chechnya’s population after this event than they did in the combined ethnic
republic. Chechens were a majority in their Chechen republic, while ethnic Russians formed a
distinct minority. In addition, Chechens live apart from the Russians in Chechnya, though
intermarriage between both communities was possible during Soviet times, as Dudayev’s
marriage to a Russian woman, Alla, suggests (Toft, 2003; Goltz, 2003). Their numerical
superiority in their titular republic encouraged the Chechens to agitate for independence and to
fight for it once war broke out in December, 1994. Checheno-Ingushetia, like the rest of the
North Caucasus, was one of the poorest regions in the RSFSR during Soviet times. This
situation has continued in post-Soviet Russia, with the Chechen and Ingush republics near the
bottom in terms of economic development. War has only worsened the economic plight of
Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan (Toft, 2003). Many Chechens may reason that the Chechen
nation would develop faster economically once Chechnya seceded from the Russian Federation.
Profits from Chechnya’s economy would no longer go to Moscow but into the coffers of
Chechnya’s government in Grozny. Economic resource differences contributed to the Chechen
desire for an independent state. Looking at a map of the Caucasian region, one sees that
Chechnya abuts the Republic of Georgia on its southern border. Just as important, Muslim
Azerbaijan is located nearby, and provided a supply base for foreign volunteers and military
supplies to use to get to Chechnya. Unlike Tatarstan, which will be examined in a later chapter,
Chechnya borders a non-Russian sovereign republic, Georgia. This factor also encouraged the
Chechens in their struggle for an independent state. There exists a Chechen diaspora in Turkey,
which uses it as a base to publicize the Chechen rebel cause in other Islamic countries and
around the world. In addition, this Chechen diaspora probably sends military supplies and
volunteers to the Chechen rebels. Thomas Goltz (2003) went from Istanbul to rebel-held areas of
Chechnya via Azerbaijan and Dagestan during the first post-Soviet Russo-Chechen conflict. He
first made the acquaintance of Chechen exiles in Istanbul, who managed to arrange his entry into
war-torn Chechnya. Afghan mujahedin volunteers probably went to Chechnya by way of
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Azerbaijan. Thus, the Chechens of Russia have an ethnic diaspora nearby, in Turkey, who have
helped the Chechen rebels to continue their war. Azerbaijan is in something of a pickle. It does
not want to offend Russia. On the other hand, it wants to show solidarity with fellow Muslims,
including the Chechens, and thus burnish its image in the wider Islamic world. Chechen rebel
groups have set up base camps in neighboring Georgia. While 85 % of Georgia’s population is
Eastern Orthodox Christian, the Georgian government wants to portray itself as a champion of all
Caucasian peoples, including the Chechens. Georgia has to act so as not to offend Russia.
Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia alienated Tbilisi from the Russian Federation. Georgian
president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is anti-Russian, may turn a blind eye to Chechen Islamist
guerrillas using Georgian territory as a springboard for Chechen rebel attacks on Russian forces.
Chenchnya’s rebels have foreign support, particularly from its exile community in Turkey (Goltz,
2003; Evangelista, 2008; Gall and de Waal, 1998; Lieven, 1998).
In the lead up to the first post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war, Yeltsin and Dudayev controlled
the flow of information made available to the public. Chechens heard Dudayev’s side of the
story, while the Russian public heard Yeltsin’s slant on his dispute with the Chechen republic
(Goltz, 2003). Yeltsin and Dudayev talked past each other to reach their respective publics.
Neither the Chechens nor the Russians took the opportunity to hear what the other side had to
say. There was a polarization in public opinion between the Russians and the Chechens, and thus
little room was developed for compromise until the Chechen rebels unexpectedly defeated
Russian forces in Grozny in August, 1996. Then Yeltsin had little choice but to yield to the
Chechen insurgents, or face the prospect of the Russian public viewing the slaughter of federal
forces by the secessionist rebels on state-run national television (Goltz, 2003; Gall and de Waal,
1998; Lieven, 1998). While state control of the media in Russia as a whole and in Chechnya did
not play an overriding role in the Chechens’ strategic victory over Russian forces, it played a role
nonetheless in stoking the flames of nationalist sentiment that was the primary motive on both
sides. Under Putin, state control of television increased, for the Russian central government took
over NTV, which was owned by Russian oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky. Government-owned
natural gas supplier Gazprom bought a controlling share in NTV in 2001, which placed the once
independent television network under state control. During the first Russo-Chechen war, NTV
opposed the Russian government attempt to subjugate Chechnya. Putin did not tolerate any
opposition to his rule. That is why he secured control of NTV, and put Gusinsky out of the
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broadcasting business. Since 2001, Russian television has been monopolized by the Russian
executive, which has used the television medium to rally the Russian public behind its military
campaign to pacify Chechnya (Goltz, 2003; Gall and de Waal, 1998; Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia,
2005).
Most of the facilitating factors are present in the Chechnya situation. The only one that is
absent is the availability of information. Both sides have monopolized the communications
medium, and used it to produce propaganda. In general, the Russian media and press have
followed the government line as promulgated by the executive. There have been exceptions,
such as Gusinsky-owned NTV. Another dissident Russian voice on the second Russo-Chechen
conflict was the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who worked for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta
until her death in 2006. She criticized human rights abuses in Chechnya that were committed by
the Russian security services and the kadyrovtsy. Putin and his successor, Medvedev, have
worked to silence the Chechen Islamist media. They do not allow the Chechen Islamists to make
their case to the Russian public, and hope to stifle the rebel voice. The Chechen Islamist rebels
have their own website, which they use to make announcements, such as Doku Umarov’s
proclamation of himself as a North Caucasian caliph in 2007. Thus, the Russian central
government has a near monopoly on the flow of information in Russia and Chechnya (New York
Times, 2006, 2010; Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 2005).
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CHAPTER EIGHT
NON-EVENT 1: TATARSTAN
As discussed in the Soviet nationalities section, Tatarstan is a product of Soviet ethnofederalism. Its sovereignty project is a way of giving meaning to Russian federalism, which was
absent in Soviet times. Although the USSR was a nominal federation, the structure of the ruling
CPSU ensured that the Soviet Union was run as a unitary state. Ethnic stirrings that occurred
during the early Gorbachev years erupted into calls for sovereignty by the union-republics, even
Russia, by 1990. By the end of 1991, all fifteen union-republics were independent countries, and
the Soviet Union was an entity consigned to history's dustbin. Tatarstan, the titular republic for
the Volga Tatars, was caught up in this sovereignty fever in 1990. After Yeltsin told the RSFSR's
“subjects” to take as much sovereignty as they wanted, Tatarstan issued its own sovereignty
declaration on August 30, 1990 (Daulet, 2003; Graney, 2009). For Yeltsin, it was a tactical move
to garner the support of the RSFSR's “subjects,” as a way to consolidate backing in his struggle
against the Soviet center headed by then President Gorbachev. Yeltsin may also have been
looking to a future without a Soviet center, and he wanted to ensure that the RSFSR's “subjects”
did not secede from his domain. As the Chechnya chapter illustrates, he failed in that instance to
stanch secessionist sentiment. However, it is to his credit that the rest of the RSFSR's regions did
not attempt to break away, and settled their differences with the Kremlin. The Republic of
Tatarstan did not sign the March, 1992 Federation Treaty, and Yeltsin threatened military action
against Kazan, but he backed off from doing so, and thus prevented a Chechnya scenario from
occurring. It is unlikely, for reasons to be discussed, that Tatarstan will become another
Chechnya. Mintimer Shaimiyev, then president of Tatarstan, tried to take as many powers as was
possible, but he realized that sovereign independence was an impossibility, so he negotiated with
the Kremlin. On February 15, 1994, Yeltsin and Shaimiyev signed a federal treaty that gave
Tatarstan some powers, and reserved the most important ones for the Russian center (Daulet,
2003; Graney, 2009).
In 1999, Tatarstan and the Russian central government renewed the 1994 treaty for
another five years. Time ran out on this agreement, but Shaimiyev was able to conclude a new
agreement with Putin that reserved some powers with Kazan. The Russian Duma ratified this
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Putin-Shaimiyev treaty in 2007. Compared with the Yeltsin-Shaimiyev agreement of 1994, the
2007 treaty gives more powers to the Russian center. Putin succeeded in re-consolidating control
with the Kremlin at Tatarstan's expense. In addition, Tatarstan in the early 2000s had to make its
constitution conform more closely with the 1993 Russian constitution. Instead of merely
modifying its 1992 charter, Tatarstan replaced it with a new constitution in 2002. By this
constitutional shift and the negotiation of a new federal treaty, the Kremlin accrued more powers,
and Russia basically became a unitary state, though having an exterior federal shell. Putin was
insistent on restoring the “power vertical,” by which he meant that the federal center would have
predominance over the Russian Federation's “subjects,” and would dictate to them in most policy
instances. In this endeavor, Putin has been successful, though he kept Volga Tatar sensibilities in
mind when he told the Duma to pass the new Russo-Tatar treaty in 2007. Tatarstan has utility for
Putin and his protege, Dmitry Medvedev, for the fact that the Volga Tatars are Sunni Muslims
eased Russia's entrance into the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). In addition, the
Tatarstan government is working to revive jadidism, the Russian imperial Muslim ideology that
sought to combine Islam with Western modernity. Putin and Medvedev hope that Russia's
Muslims adopt a jadidist approach rather than jihadism, and Tatarstan could point the way in this
direction. Tatarstan's leadership is pragmatic, and realizes that secession is not an option, for
Tatarstan is surrounded by Russian territory, and the Russian center would easily crush a Volga
Tatar secessionist movement were Tatarstan to raise separatism. East of Tatarstan is the Republic
of Bashkortostan, the home republic of the Bashkirs, who are a Sunni Muslim people akin to the
Volga Tatars. The Bashkirs want to remain separate from the Volga Tatars, and pride themselves
on being the first “Russian” national minority to receive a titular region. Lenin created the
Bashkir ASSR in 1919, and the Tatar ASSR in 1920. In Bashkortostan, there exists a Volga Tatar
minority, and its treatment by the Bashkir government is a bone of contention with Kazan. In
other words, it is unlikely that Tatarstan and Bashkortostan would unite, and present a unified
challenge to the Russian center. In the event that happened, Russia's central government would
be in a position to crush such a joint Tatar-Bashkir secessionist effort. Tatarstan's leadership was
aware of the geographical and demographic realities it confronted vis-a-vis the Russian center
and the ethnic Russians, so it pursued a policy of accommodation. This pragmatic
accommodation with the Kremlin will probably continue into the future, and Tatarstan's new
president, Rustam Minnikhanov, who took over from Shaimiyev in January, 2010, is probably an
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accommodationist when it comes to relations with the Kremlin. Minnikhanov may be weaker
than Shaimiyev, for Shaimiyev was elected by the Tatarstani people a few times in the 1990s and
early 2000s, while Minnikhanov is an appointee of Dmitry Medvedev, and he is totally beholden
for his job to the Kremlin. When the 2007 treaty is renewed, the Russian center may keep it
unmodified or it may take even more powers to itself. Only time will tell (Daulet, 2003; Graney,
2009; tatarstan.ru/english).
8.1 Historical Background
The current Republic of Tatarstan was constituted in 1920 by the Soviet authorities in
Moscow. Unfortunately for the Volga Tatars, they did not receive as large a homeland as they
desired, and only one-quarter of the Volga Tatars were in the eponymous republic named for
them. This situation continues to the present day. One reason the Volga Tatars got their
truncated political entity was because they had two states in the past. One was Bolgar, which
was centered on present-day Tatarstan, and was existent from the 9th through the 13th centuries.
In the 1230s, the Mongols overran Bolgar, and intermingled with the local Bolgar (Volga Tatar)
population. In the 15th century, there emerged the Kazan Khanate, which covered a larger area
than present-day Tatarstan. On October 15, 1552 (New Style), the Russian army took over
Kazan, and overthrew the Kazan Khanate, annexing the khanate to the Muscovite empire ruled at
that time by Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. Initially, the Russian imperial government was intolerant
of the Volga Tatar Muslims, and this antipathetic attitude spawned rebellions by the Volga Tatars.
In response to the Pugachev revolt, Catherine II the Great granted religious tolerance to the
Volga Tatars and other Muslim peoples in the Russian Empire. In the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, the Volga Tatar region was a center of jadidist thinking. This Islamic school that
sought to reconcile the Muslim religion with Western modernity was stanched by the Bolsheviks.
Soviet ethno-federalism was more of a fiction than a reality, for the Communist party exercised
absolute control over virtually all aspects of human life. In 1990, Tatastan declared sovereignty,
and subsequently tried to gain as many powers as possible from the Russian center. Both the
Russian federal government and Tatarstan signed treaties in 1994 and 2007. Since the Soviet
collapse in 1991, Tatarstan has lost some of its powers to the Russian center, especially under
Putin and Medvedev, who set out to restore the “power vertical” (central authority) in the
Russian Federation. Tatarstan's leadership under Shaimiyev, then under Minnikhanov, has been
pragmatic and accommodating toward the Russian center, trying to preserve as many powers as
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the Kremlin will tolerate in the Tatar republic. On the one hand, the Tatarstani leadership has
carried out a civic national project, showing to the world that Tatarstan is a home for all of its
ethnicities, particularly the Volga Tatars and Russians. On the other hand, Shaimiyev and
Minnikhanov have worked to make Tatarstan into a national homeland for all of Russia's Volga
Tatars. So far, Tatarstan has been successful in balancing ethnic and civic nationalisms,
managing the tensions in such an arrangement. Tatarstan offers an example for other ethnic
regions in the Russian Federation (Graney, 2009; Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003;
tatarstan.ru/english).
The ancestors of the Volga Tatars migrated to present-day Tatarstan in the first half of the
th
8 century CE. They were a Turkic people who allegedly left their “original” homeland near the
Sea of Azov to get away from Arab Muslim incursions. Initially, the ancestors of the Volga
Tatars were called Bolgars. One branch of the Bolgars left for present-day Bulgaria, and were
the first ruling group of the Bulgarian state. Eventually, this branch of the Bolgars was
assimilated into the Slavic population they governed, though their name survives for the
Bulgarian Slavs and their state, Bulgaria. Those Bolgars who settled along the Volga established
a state called Bolgar in the early 10th century CE. Their first capital was called Bolgar, and one
other variant name for the state of Bolgar was Volga Bulgaria. Both nomenclatures (Bolgar and
Volga Bulgaria) can be used interchangeably. In 922 CE, the Volga Bolgars under their ruler
(Tatar, yltyvar) Almush, accepted Islam, specifically the Sunni variety. Of the four Sunni legal
schools, the Volga Tatars are Hanafis. Ibn-Fadlan, the Abbasid caliph's emissary to the Volga
Bolgars, left a record of his mission. He instructed Almush in Islamic ways. Almush used his
new Muslim faith to consolidate his hold over the peoples of Volga Bulgaria. According to
tradition, Kazan was founded in 1005, and it became the capital of Bolgar, the Volga Bulgarian
state. This Volga Bolgar political entity was a vassal of the Turkic Khazars until 965 CE, when
Kievan Rus Grand Prince Svyatoslav defeated Khazar forces, and destroyed the Khazars as a
serious political actor. Relations between Volga Bulgaria and Kievan Rus were characterized by
fighting, in which both sides conducted raids into the others' territory. On the other hand, Kievan
Rus and Bolgar conducted trade with each other. Both entities buried their differences when
confronted with the Mongol army of Batu in the 1230s CE. Batu defeated the Volga Bolgars in
1236 CE, and devastated Kazan and the rest of the Bolgar realm. Volga Bolgar was incorporated
into Batu's domain, the Golden Horde (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003; Graney, 2009; Hahn, 2007).
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Batu made Bolgar city his temporary capital until he established a “permanent” one at
Saray, which was located on the southern Volga. After the Mongol conquest in 1236 CE, many
Bolgars moved north, and settled among the Finnic Udmurts and among other Finnic peoples.
Others remained in the land that had formerly been the Volga Bolgar state. Puppet rulers, who
belonged to the Bolgar royal family, served the Golden Horde rulers as vassals, paying tribute to
the Golden Horde khan in exchange for autonomy. Under Golden Horde khan Berke, the Golden
Horde Mongols and Turks accepted Islam, and the later Golden Horde khan Ozbek made Islam
the official religion of his realm. After the Golden Horde converted to Islam, the Volga Bolgars
intermixed with their Turko-Mongol overlords. Russians called this mix of Bolgars and TurkoMongols by the name they are known to this day, the Volga Tatars. Soon, the Bolgars took this
nomenclature, and applied it to themselves. In 1437 CE, Ulus Muhammed fled Saray, and
moved to the Volga Tatar homeland, which is located at the confluence of the Kama and Volga
rivers. He moved to establish his power over the Volga Tatars, but it was only with his son,
Mahmud, formally taking the Kazan throne in 1445 CE that the Kazan Khanate came into being.
This Kazan Khanate maintained its independence until 1552 CE, when Muscovy conquered it.
Although it was sovereign, the Khanate of Kazan faced interference in its political affairs by
Muscovy. Tsar Ivan III the Great affected Muscovy's attitude toward the Kazan Khanate, and he
backed one Volga Tatar candidate for the throne, Muhammed Emin, in his struggle for the Kazan
throne. After Muhammed Emin's death in 1518, Muscovy competed with the Crimean Khanate
for influence in the Khanate of Kazan. Pro-Muscovy rulers alternated with pro-Crimean
monarchs during the first half of the 16th century CE on the Kazan Khanate's throne (Rorlich,
1986; Daulet, 2003).
When Ivan IV the Terrible formally was crowned Tsar of Muscovy in 1547, he set out to
conquer the Kazan Khanate. Relations between Muscovy and the Khanate of Kazan became
hostile, and Ivan the Terrible prepared his army to take over Kazan. Ivan IV was motivated by
Eastern Orthodox Christianity to avenge what he saw as Muslim slights to Muscovy, the “Third
Rome.” His father, Vasily III had taken over the last Russian principalities that were independent
of Muscovite control, Pskov and Ryazan. At the time of Ivan IV's coronation in 1547, Muscovy
had conquered all of the other Russian principalities, creating a political entity that was nearly
ethnically Russian and religiously Eastern Orthodox Christian. With the war against the Kazan
Khanate, Muscovy set out to acquire territory that was non-Russian and non-Christian.
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Muscovite armies besieged Kazan, and took the city on October 2 (Old Style)/ October 15 (New
Style), 1552. With this action, the Kazan Khanate ceased to exist, and its territory was
incorporated into Muscovy. Thus, the Muscovite state acquired its first non-Russian and nonChristian territory, and this polity became a multinational empire with the ethnic Russians as the
ruling people. From Ivan the Terrible to Catherine II the Great, the Muscovite government tried
to convert the Volga Tatars to Eastern Orthodox Christianity with a mixture of coercive and
incentive measures. Periodically, the Volga Tatars rebelled against the Muscovite policy, finding
it to be oppressive and contrary to Muslim belief. One such Volga Tatar uprising occurred in
1556. Finally, in response to the Pugachev revolt, which many Volga Tatars joined, the Holy
Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church issued a toleration ukaz (decree), which granted religious
liberty to all theological systems in the Russian Empire in 1773. In 1789, Catherine the Great
authorized the formation of a muftiat (Muslim Ecclesiastical Council) to handle the religious
affairs of Russia's Muslims. Although its members were appointed by the Russian monarch,
which was contrary to Shariah law, in which the Muslim community was supposed to elect its
muftis, the Volga Tatars rejoiced in the religious toleration which Catherine the Great extended to
the Russian Empire's Muslims. Tsar Nicholas I and his successors enacted a policy of offering
material and educational incentives to those Muslim Volga Tatars who converted to Eastern
Orthodox Christianity. One famous champion of this conversion campaign was N.I. Il'minski, a
professor of Turkic languages at Kazan University, who established schools as the primary
means of inducing the Volga Tatars to accept Christianity. This Christianization campaign was a
failure, for those Volga Tatars who converted to Orthodox Christianity returned to Islam, and
most Volga Tatars remained adamant about preserving their Muslim faith. This tsarist policy
continued until the fall of the Russian monarchy in February (Old Style)/ March (New Style),
1917. Meanwhile, the Volga Tatars espoused jadidism (new method) as the Muslim religion's
way of coming to terms with the modernizing West (and Russia) (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003).
Jadidism was an intellectual movement among Russia's Muslims to reconcile Islam with
Western modernization. This modernist Islamic reform movement arose from the challenge
Russification posed to all of the Russian Muslim peoples. Volga Tatars were in the vanguard of
the jadidist movement. There was opposition to the jadids from conservative ulama (Muslim
jurists), who saw the modernist Islamic movement as a threat to Muslims' purity of religious
thought and practice; these opponents of the jadids were called qadims (defenders of the old
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method). According to Sunni ulama, the gates of ijtihad (personal interpretation) had closed in
the 14th century. The Muslim jurists of the 14th century CE thought that Islamic thinkers had
resolved all issues of importance to the umma (Muslim community). This interpretation of
ijtihad puts Muslim modernists in a bind, for they have to show the relevance of their program to
a community that may not be receptive to it. However, segments of the Volga Tatar public were
receptive to jadidism, while other segments backed the qadims. This debate between Volga Tatar
jadids and qadims continued until the incumbent Bolsheviks halted all religious activity after
seizing power in October (Old Style)/ November (New Style), 1917 (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet,
2003).
Jadidism began in the late 18th century, with Abu-Nasr al-Kursavi as its first expositor.
He studied Islamic theology (kalam) in Central Asia, specifically in Bukhara and Samarkand.
Kursavi alienated the Central Asian ulama, and he fled to the Volga Tatar homeland, where he
taught in a local madrasa (Muslim school of higher learning). He thought that ijtihad should be
open to the entire umma, and not be the preserve of the ulama. This line of thought was taken up
by jadids who followed him. Like Kursavi, Shihabeddin Merjani spent time in Bukhara and
Samarkand, and he challenged the ulama's monopoly on theological interpretation. Unlike
Kursavi, Merjani was influenced by the current of thinking at the University of Kazan, which
was in direct contact with science and Russian culture. Merjani advocated a Muslim espousal of
science and argued for Russia's Muslims to learn the Russian language to acquire knowledge on
the latest Western scientific developments. He criticized Muslims for ignoring science, and
thought that such a policy would lead to Muslim backwardness. Merjani criticized the kalams
(Muslim theologians) for veering from the purity of original Islam, and argued for the use of
rationality in pursuing the scientific endeavor. It was Merjani's disciples, Rizaeddin Fahreddin
and Musa Jarulla Bigi, who advanced jadidism to the point that set it into direct confrontation
with the qadims, in other words, the conservatives. Fahreddin stressed education, including the
teaching of Volga Tatar history, and he rejected miracles unless they were attributed to the
prophets. Among the influential Muslim thinkers Fahreddin consulted were Jamal al-Din alAfghani and Muhammad Abduh. Ismail Bey Gasprali, a Crimean Tatar, editor of the newspaper
Terjuman, and a pan-Turkist, was another thinker who guided Fahreddin's thought. Fahreddin
believed that the mufti should be elected by the umma, and that Russian Muslims should reform
the Shariah (Muslim law). Musa Jarulla Bigi advocated the translation of the Quran into Volga
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Tatar, and he argued that Allah's mercy extends to all people. Both qadims and fellow jadids
criticized these proposals, and Fahreddin was one of Bigi's few defenders. Bigi also spoke
against any form of religious oppression, and he espoused Sufism (Muslim mysticism) and
miracles. In general, many of the Volga Tatar populace were supportive of the jadids, and one
indication of this was the isolation of a radical Sufi group, the Vaisites, who argued against any
recognition of the Russian state. With regard to women, several jadids stressed the education of
girls as well as boys, the abandonment of the burqa (veil), and they criticized Muslim polygamy
(Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003).
Another important jadid was Kayyum Nasiri. His contribution to the jadidist movement
was his advocacy of using the Tatar language as a vernacular vehicle for Volga Tatar literature.
He published Tatar-language grammars, stylistic studies, and dictionaries. Nasiri studied
science, and thought that attention to the scientific enterprise would be beneficial for Muslim
society. He was famous for a calendar he published, which focused on current events. This
calendar idea was taken up after his death in 1902, but the focus of these subsequent calendars
was on Tatar historical events. Other jadid champions of the elevation of the Tatar language
were Ibrahim Khal'fin, Muhammad Gali Mahmudov, and Husein Feizhanov; the last one
consulted Russian as well as Islamic sources, being the first Volga Tatar to do so. Just before and
after the 1905 Russian revolution, the majority of Volga Tatar madrasas adopted the jadid
method. Thus, they outnumbered the qadim madrasas by a substantial margin just before the
First World War. It was around 1900 that Volga Tatar book publishing began to flourish, with
Islamic and secular tomes being printed. This publishing activity concerned the tsarist
authorities, who were especially worried that Christian Tatars would be targeted by the jadidist
press. In addition, the Russian authorities considered many of the Tatar publications to be
subversive. Abdullah Bobi argued for a reinterpretation of zakat (alms tax) to include not just the
destitute as recipients, but also benevolent societies and mosque-building campaigns. Many
benevolent societies emphasized secular education rather than religious topics. After 1900, the
Volga Tatar jadids organized cooperatives and credit associations (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003).
The literacy level among the Volga Tatars was high, but it was limited to knowledge of
reading and writing, specifically to learn the Quran. Volga Tatars, also known as Kazan Tatars,
sent their children to mektebs (Muslim elementary schools) and madrasas, where they learned
the Quran and subjects related to Islam, including Islamic history. They were reluctant to send
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their children to Christian mission schools and Russian gymnasia. Starting in the late 19th
century, the jadidists enacted reforms of the education provided in the mektebs and madrasas.
Among their reforms was the learning of Russian and Volga Tatar by students, and the
introduction of the secular sciences into the curriculum. By 1905, jadid mektebs and madrasas
were dominant, and the qadims were in retreat in the educational field. In 1912, 90 % of Volga
Tatar schools employed jadid principles. Kazan Tatar intellectuals wrote many textbooks with a
jadidist bent in the first two decades of the 20th century. Many madrasa students protested for a
more secular education, but the jadid school authorities put down their rebellion by expelling
many of them. These disaffected madrasa students provided cadres for the Tatar political left in
subsequent years. With the rise of jadidist schools, the education of Volga Tatar girls became a
priority, and girls' schools with female teachers were established, which taught Islamic and
secular subjects. Volga Tatar jadids played a leading role in organizing Russia's Muslims. They
were the only Islamic group that wanted to unite the Muslims of the Caucasus, the Volga region,
and Central Asia. They organized a pan-Muslim congress for Russian followers of the Islamic
religion in Nizhnii Novgorod during the 1905 Russian revolution. At this congress, the Muslim
delegates constructed an Islamic political alliance called Ittifak (Union). At the second Muslim
congress in Saint-Petersburg, the Muslim representatives aligned Ittifak with the Russian Kadet
Party, over the objections of Ismail Bey Gasprali, but with the support of Kazan Tatar leader
Yusuf Akchura, who became a member of the Kadet party's Central Administrative Committee.
Some Volga Tatar political activists joined the Socialist Revolutionary and Social Democratic
parties. Given the political activism of the Kazan Tatars in Ittifak, they assumed the leadership
role in Russian Muslim life. This leadership role alienated non-Volga Tatar Muslims, who felt
that their Kazan Tatar counterparts were hogging the top leadership posts. Volga Tatar hegemony
of the Russian Muslim political movement continued until the 1917 Communist putsch. Kazan
Tatars took part in the four Dumas that were held before the 1917 revolutions. They generally
aligned themselves with the Kadets, but were ineffective, especially as Tsar Nicholas II
decreased Muslim representation in the Third and Fourth Dumas. Ittifak was not a political
party, and it mainly advocated the use of native Muslim languages and the preservation of
Islamic mores among Russia's Muslims. The 1917 Russian Revolution raised the hopes of the
Volga Tatars, but Lenin and Stalin were to confine the Kazan Tatars to a specific homeland, the
Tatar ASSR (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003).
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With the fall of the tsarist monarchy in February (Old Style)/ March (New Style), 1917,
the Volga Tatars took a leading role in organizing Russian Muslims. Immediately after Tsar
Nicholas II abdicated, Russia's Muslims of Kadet, Socialist Revolutionary, and Social
Democratic persuasions formed a Muslim Central Executive Committee (ISKOMUS) to
coordinate their actions in a changing situation. This did not prevent the Volga Tatar Social
Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries from organizing their own political committee, the
Kazan Socialist Committee (KSC) on April 7, 1917. Two months later, Mirsaid Sultangaliev, a
future prominent Communist of Muslim background, joined the KSC. The Bolsheviks backed
the Kazan Socialist Committee, seeing it as a vehicle for the diffusion of Marxism to the Muslim
masses. An All-Russian Muslim Congress was convened on May 1, 1917 in Moscow. Kazan
Tatar delegates spoke out against the burqa and polygamy, and supported a unified non-territorial
Russian Muslim political organization. On these points, the Volga Tatars lost, for the Crimean,
Caucasian, and Central Asian delegates supported national-territorial units for Russia's Muslim
peoples. Despite this setback, the Kazan Tatars held a second Muslim congress in Kazan from
July 21 through August 2, 1917. This congress was dominated by the Volga Tatars, for the
Muslim delegates from other Russian regions boycotted it. At the second congress, the Volga
Tatars proclaimed the formation of a Muslim extra-territorial entity for the Islamic peoples of the
Volga region and Siberia. The Bolsheviks disapproved of this measure, which proved to be a
dead letter in the long term (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003).
On October 25 (Old Style)/ November 7 (New Style), 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power
of Russia in a successful coup. This event altered the fate of all Russia's Muslims. On
November 20, 1917, Lenin's government issued an Appeal to the Muslim Workers of Russia and
the East, which was a measure to curry favor with the world's Muslims. A National Assembly of
the Muslims of Inner Russia and Siberia was held in Ufa from November 20, 1917 until January
11, 1918. The Volga Tatars dominated this congress, and they voted in favor of a territorial unit
for the Kazan Tatars and Bashkirs, which they dubbed the Idel-Ural state. This entity
theoretically encompassed the middle and south Volga regions plus the Ural region, anywhere
with Volga Tatar and Bashkir concentrations. Lenin and Stalin were opposed to this initiative,
and in reaction they formed the Central Commissariat for Muslim Affairs (Muskom) on January
17, 1918. In March, 1918, the Sovnarkom had abolished all independent Muslim organizations.
On April 28, 1918, Lenin established the Central Muslim Military Collegium (CMMC) as a
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means to lure the Muslims to the Communist side and to organize Muslim military units to fight
on the Bolshevik side. Between August 7 and September 10, 1918, the Russian Whites occupied
Kazan. After the Communists re-took Kazan on September 10, 1918, they reestablished the
CMMC, this time under the chairmanship of Mirsaid Sultangaliev. After winning the Russian
Civil War, the Communist government abolished the CMMC on October 1, 1920. This CMMC's
main activities were in the field of propaganda. Kazan Tatars and Bashkirs composed the bulk of
the Red Army's Muslim soldiers during the Russian Civil War. At the end of this conflict, the
separate Muslim military units were abolished. On March 23, 1918, Stalin proclaimed the Soviet
intention to form a Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Republic that would be under the RSFSR's jurisdiction.
Most representatives of the middle Volga and Ural Soviets, who were meeting in Moscow,
approved of the proposed Tatar-Bashkir republic. Even the Finnic Udmurts and Mordvins
wanted to join it. Eventually, on December 13, 1918, Lenin nixed the proposed Tatar-Bashkir
republic. He faced opposition from Tatar and Bashkir Communists who favored the plan, but, as
supreme leader of the Soviet Communists, Lenin had his way. On March 23, 1919, Lenin
authorized the creation of the Bashkir ASSR, with its capital at Ufa. Lenin set out to divide the
Turkic peoples of the RSFSR, the Caucasus, and Central Asia so as to better rule them. He did
not want too strong a Turkic unit in the RSFSR, fearing that it would act as a rallying point for
all of the former tsarist empire's Muslim peoples. On January 26, 1920, the Sovnarkom decided
to create the Tatar ASSR. Its proposed boundaries were established in a decree submitted to
Lenin on March 22, 1920. Sultangaliev tried to persuade Lenin to change his mind, and support
the creation of the Tatar-Bashkir republic. Lenin would have none of it, and on May 27, 1920,
the Sovnarkom issued its decree proclaiming the formation of the Tatar ASSR, with its capital at
Kazan. This political decision pleased few Volga Tatars, for the Tatar ASSR was populated by
1,459,000 out of 4,200,000 Kazan Tatars who inhabited the middle Volga region. In the Tatar
ASSR, Volga Tatars made up 53 % of the republic's population, and ethnic Russians composed
39.2 %. Three-quarters of Kazan Tatars lived outside the Tatar ASSR, with the Bashkir ASSR
having a large Volga Tatar population. The Tatar ASSR was 68,000 square kilometers in area.
By contrast, the proposed Idel-Ural state would have been 220,000 square kilometers in area.
Most Volga Tatars at the time probably felt that Lenin gave them a raw deal. Despite this
setback, the Kazan Tatar Communist leadership tried to get Lenin and Stalin's permission to
establish a Muslim Communist movement. Stalin crushed this Muslim agitation, and worked to
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Russify the Tatar ASSR under the pretense of sblizheniye (coming together of the Soviet peoples)
and sliyanie (fusion of Soviet peoples) (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003; Mawsdley, 2005).
Sultangaliev was a leading exponent of national Communism, which in the context of
Islam, would combine Muslim beliefs with Marxism. A jadid teacher by training, he converted
to Communism in November, 1917. He was active in Volga Tatar affairs, and he believed that
the world's Muslims were a colonial, oppressed people who should unite around their religion,
and not bifurcate into bourgeoisie and proletariat. Sultangaliev thought that Marxist class
struggle did not apply to Muslims, and that the colonized peoples, Muslims included, should
dominate their Western colonizers. In 1918, he and other Russian Muslim Communists tried to
set up a separate Muslim Communist party, but Lenin and Stalin nixed the idea, and were intent
to centralize power in the hands of the Russian Communist party leadership. From 1920 until
1923, Sultangaliev and his followers dominated the political affairs of the Tatar ASSR. He urged
the central Communist leadership to pursue a cautious policy toward Islam. In 1923,
Sultangaliev made preparations to mark the 1,000th anniversary of the Kazan Tatars' conversion
to Islam. As a result of this action, the Soviet central authorities removed Sultangaliev from his
posts, arrested him, and canceled his plans to mark the Volga Tatars' Islamic millennium. He was
expelled from the Communist party in 1924, but his followers dominated Tatar ASSR political
life until 1929. In place of allowing the development of a separate Muslim Communism, the
Soviet Kremlin pursued the policy of korenizatsia (indigenization). In the context of the Tatar
ASSR, this meant the staffing of the party, state, and intellectual posts with Volga Tatars, and
their domination of the Tatar ASSR's affairs. G. Ibragimov, an orthodox Communist, argued for
the Tatar language to continue to be written in the Arabic script. Volga Tatars had been using the
Arabic alphabet since their conversion to Islam. Stalin rejected Ibragimov's arguments, and in
1929, the Soviet Kremlin ordered the Kazan Tatars to use a Latin script for their language.
Because of this decision, the Volga Tatars were cut off from their pre-Soviet heritage, and were
further isolated from the Islamic world. In 1938, the Soviet central government required the
Kazan Tatars to write their language with a Cyrillic alphabet, a script which the Volga Tatars
employ to this day. Ibragimov was concerned that the Soviet government would pursue
Russification in its effort to create a proletarian culture. He wanted the Tatar ASSR to promote
the Tatar language, and make it the vehicle for Volga Tatar national ideas. Korenizatsia lasted
from 1920 to 1929, and the Tatar ASSR authorities acted to promote Kazan Tatars to leadership
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posts and to champion Tatar culture, especially the Tatar tongue. In 1928, Sultangaliev was
arrested and banished, and the Soviet Communist government began a purge of Volga Tatar
national Communists in the Tatar ASSR. Many were fired, while others were executed. The
Kazan Tatar intelligentsia was the next target for purges, which continued in the Tatar ASSR until
1932. By 1932, Sultangaliev and his followers were expunged from the Soviet Communist
party, and Muslim national Communism was dead (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003; Saunders and
Strukov, 2010).
As far as the Volga Tatars were concerned, sblizheniye and sliyaniye meant full-scale
Russification under the cloak of Communist ideology. Despite Soviet atheistic propaganda, the
Kazan Tatars continued to identify with Islam, and Tatar scholars continued to study the Volga
Tatar national heritage. During the post-Stalin era, the Kazan Tatars took part in Islamic
circumcision, marriage, and funeral ceremonies, and many of them prayed the required five
times a day. Many Volga Tatars observed Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting), and
celebrated a festive meal, iftar, once the sun had set. In addition, Volga Tatars tended to
fraternize with their ethnic kin, and they frowned on mixed marriages involving a Muslim and a
non-Muslim. In 1970, around 85 % of Kazan Tatars spoke their Turkic tongue as their primary
language. Because Volga Tatars had to pass a Russian-language entrance examination to enter an
institution of higher learning, they were underrepresented in the Tatar ASSR's institutes and
universities. Only one-third of college students in 1970 in the Tatar ASSR belonged to the Kazan
Tatar nationality. Volga Tatar scholars and academics wrote studies on Kazan Tatar historical
subjects, usually composing works on pre-1917 topics, especially the Bolgar and Kazan Khanate
periods. Some scholars even pushed up against Soviet limits, and wrote about jadidism, and its
crucial role in the development of the Volga Tatar national consciousness. Sufism (Islamic
mysticism) was one topic Kazan Tatar intellectuals found interesting, and they focused on Sufi
practice, including fana (union with God). Starting in the late 1970s, samizdat (underground
published works) literature in the Tatar ASSR focused on linguistic and religious issues. These
underground authors were attracted to Sultangaliev's idea of a pan-Turkic Muslim state that
would encompass the USSR's Islamic peoples. Despite Soviet efforts to construct the Soviet
Man through sblizheniye and sliyaniye, s/he remained a sterile abstraction, and the Volga Tatars
held onto their Turkic and Islamic heritage. Kazan Tatar scholars argued for unity in diversity
rather than for the merging of the Soviet peoples into a homo sovieticus. This was the basis of
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Kazan Tatar existence in the post-Stalin Soviet Union until Gorbachev and his perestroika
campaign radically changed every Soviet life (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003).
By 1989, Volga Tatars made up 48 % of the Tatar ASSR's population, and ethnic
Russians 43 % (Toft, 2003). In the same year, Mintimer Shaimiyev was elected Speaker of the
Tatar ASSR Supreme Soviet. By this time, he was also head of the Tatar ASSR Communist
party. In June, 1988, Kazan Tatar intellectuals from Kazan State University and the Kazan
branch of the RSFSR Academy of Sciences organized a de facto political party called the Tatar
Public Center (TPC) at the request of students, who felt that the CPSU did not represent Volga
Tatar interests. On October 15, 1988, 800-900 Volga Tatars met at the Kazan Kremlin, and
finalized the TPC's platform. It was heavily influenced by Baltic popular front precedents.
Among the most important of the TPC's demands were that the Tatar ASSR be considered a
“sovereign state,” that the USSR's constituent units grant a limited amount of powers to the
Soviet center, that the Volga Tatar tongue be declared a state language of the Tatar ASSR, that
Kazan Tatars maximize their economic sovereignty and enhance their social positions, and that
education for Volga Tatar children give more focus to Kazan Tatar history and culture. Although
Shaimiyev and the Tatar ASSR leadership were wary of the TPC's designs, they allowed the TPC
to hold its founding congress in Kazan in February, 1989. Shaimiyev held off on allowing the
TPC to officially register until the Tatar ASSR Writers' Union demanded such legal recognition
in May, 1989. In July, 1989, the TPC was legally registered in the Tatar ASSR. After being
legally registered, the TPC called for the Tatar ASSR to be upgraded to union-republic status,
and 100,000 Volga Tatars signed a petition for such a move. Around this time a more radical
Volga Tatar nationalist organization, Ittifak (Unity) was formed. Together, the TPC and Ittifak
attracted thousands of Kazan Tatars to their rallies. By late 1990, 12.2 % of the Tatar ASSR's
population belonged to these two Volga Tatar political parties. In February, 1990, Shaimiyev
publicly endorsed the TPC. By June, 1990, he was calling for the ASSR's to exercise more
control of their economic and cultural affairs, while claiming that the Tatar ASSR was an
inviolable entity of the USSR. After Yeltsin's election as Speaker of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet
on May 29, 1990, and the RSFSR's declaration of sovereignty on June 12, 1990, Shaimiyev
made preparations to declare the Tatar ASSR's sovereignty. In August, 1990, Yeltsin made a
speech in Kazan, in which he told the RSFSR's “subjects” to “take all the power you yourselves
can ingest.” This was a move by Yeltsin to rally the RSFSR's “subjects” to his side, and to thus
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undermine Gorbachev's authority. During Tatar ASSR Supreme Soviet deliberations on the
sovereignty declaration, thousands of Kazan Tatars rallied for its passage. These crowds were
organized by the TPC and other Volga Tatar nationalist organizations. On August 30, 1990, the
Supreme Soviet of the Tatar ASSR passed the sovereignty resolution, a move that contributed to
the chaos enveloping the USSR at the time. This Volga Tatar declaration of sovereignty, in
which Tatarstani laws had precedence over Soviet ones, was a move by the Kazan Tatars to
assert themselves as a national minority, and to claim national self-determination, although
within the Soviet rubric (Daulet, 2003; Graney, 2009).
The August 30, 1990 declaration marked the beginning of the Volga Tatar sovereignty
project. For Shaimiyev, Kazan Tatar sovereignty was negotiable with the Soviet and Russian
centers. He aimed to maximize the number of possible powers Tatarstan could obtain from the
Kremlin. Shaimiyev did not advocate Tatarstan's secession from either the USSR or its main
successor state, the Russian Federation. Shaimiyev faced opposition within Tatarstan from Tatar
nationalists. The TPC, Ittifak (which was led by Fawzia Bairamova, a militant secessionist
nationalist), and Azatlik (Freedom) advocated that Shaimiyev act more aggressively toward the
Kremlin. In February, 1991, Ittifak convened a kurultai (assembly) that declared Tatarstan to be
independent of the USSR and the RSFSR, and it formed a Milli Mejlis (National Assembly) to
act as an alternative parliament to the Tatarstan Supreme Soviet. Shaimiyev rebuked the Milli
Mejlis, and the alternative legislature sank into insignificance. When the RSFSR participated in
Gorbachev's March, 1991 referendum on the Union, 87.5 % of Tatarstan's voters approved of
preserving the Soviet Union in some form. During the negotiations over the new Union Treaty,
Shaimiyev unsuccessfully tried to get Tatarstan elevated in status to a union-republic of the
USSR. Yeltsin and Gorbachev refused Shaimiyev's request, which the Volga Tatars in general
supported. In the June 12, 1991 RSFSR presidential election, which Yeltsin won, only 36.6 % of
Tatarstan's voters, mostly ethnic Russians, participated, and Yeltsin received the support of only
45 % of those Tatarstanis who voted. When Communist hard-liners acted to topple Gorbachev
on August 19, 1991, Shaimiyev supported the coup against Gorbachev, thinking he would get a
better deal from the GKChP than from Yeltsin. He disbanded an anti-coup demonstration in
Kazan during the putsch. When the hard-liners' coup collapsed on August 21, 1991, there was
the danger that Yeltsin could have removed Shaimiyev. Instead, Yeltsin allowed Shaimiyev to
retain office, realizing he needed the RSFSR's regions behind him in his struggles against
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Gorbachev and the Russian Soviet parliament. However, Yeltsin also adopted a confrontational
attitude toward Tatarstan's government that became apparent in the succeeding year. As Yeltsin's
struggle with the Russian Soviet parliament dragged on, the Russian president realized he needed
the support of Russia's regional leaders, so he worked to woo them, including Shaimiyev. There
were inter-ethnic clashes between Kazan Tatars and ethnic Russians in Tatarstan, but Shaimiyev
defused the situation by talking about inter-communal accord and dealing firmly with the
nationalist extremists in both the Volga Tatar and Russian camps. This was the situation that
Shaimiyev confronted as Tatarstan entered the post-Soviet era (Daulet, 2003).
In March, 1992, the Russian federal government under Yeltsin and most of Russia's
regions signed a Federation Treaty, which was to serve as a modus operandi between the Russian
center and Russia's “subjects” until the promulgation of a new constitution to replace the one
enacted in 1978. Tatarstan and Chechnya did not sign this Federation Treaty. In Kazan, the
Tatarstan legislature under Shaimiyev's direction made preparations for a referendum on
Tatarstan's “sovereignty.” Yeltsin and other Russian federal officials warned against holding the
referendum, and Yeltsin deployed interior ministry troops on Tatarstan's borders just before and
during the referendum. On March 21, 1992, the vote was held, and 80 % of the Tatarstani
electorate participated; 61.4 % of Tatarstani voters approved the question of whether Tatarstan
was a sovereign state with the right to make a treaty with the Russian center, while 37.2 %
disapproved of the Tatarstan sovereignty project. No violence broke out before, during, and after
the referendum. A few days before the Tatarstan referendum, the Russian Constitutional Court
ruled that holding the referendum was illegal, but Shaimiyev held his ground, and got his way.
Shaimiyev proceeded to draft a constitution for Tatarstan (Daulet, 2003).
On November 6, 1992, the Tatarstan government promulgated a post-Soviet constitution
that embodied liberal principles and contained articles on the “sovereignty” of Tatarstan. Human
rights, liberal freedoms, and multiparty democracy were guiding principles of Tatarstan's 1992
constitution. In addition, the constitution provided for a social safety net program. Articles 59
and 61 of the Tatarstan constitution dealt with the republic's sovereignty. According to Article
59, Tatarstan's laws had precedence over those of the Russian center, while Article 61 declared
Tatarstan to be a sovereign state affiliated with the Russian Federation, which would define its
relations with the Kremlin based on treaties. In other words, Article 61 acknowledged that
Tatarstan was part of Russia, but that the Tatar government and the Russian center would divide
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up powers between them based on treaties. Tatarstan created a 130-member Supreme Council to
act as its legislature, a powerful presidency, and a weak prime minister. During 1993, Yeltsin
created a constituent assembly to draft a new post-Soviet constitution for the Russian Federation.
It did its work, while Yeltsin faced down the Russian Soviet parliament. On September 21, 1993,
Yeltsin dissolved the Soviet parliament, which retaliated by impeaching Yeltsin and putting VicePresident Rutskoi and parliamentary speaker Khasbulatov in his place. Yeltsin authorized the
army to storm the headquarters of the Soviet parliament on October 4, 1993, an action which put
an end to the Soviet legislature, and made Yeltsin the unchallenged leader of the Russian
Federation. After the “October days,” Yeltsin proceeded to implement his constitution, which
became Russia's legal charter, and still is to this day. In December, 1993, elections to Russia's
new parliament were held, and 58.4 % of those Russian voters participating approved of the
1993 constitution in a referendum held simultaneously. Tatarstan did not participate in this
constitutional referendum or in the Russian parliamentary elections. Only 13.8 % of the
Tatarstan electorate, mostly ethnic Russians, participated in the Russia-wide December, 1993
parliamentary election and referendum. Given that the fascistic Liberal Democratic Party and
that the Communist party held a majority of seats in the Russian legislature's lower house, the
State Duma, Yeltsin realized he needed Shaimiyev's support, so he conducted negotiations with
the Tatar president on a treaty between Tatarstan and the Russian center that would divide up
powers between the two levels of government (Daulet, 2003).
On February 15, 1994, the Russian center and Tatarstan signed a treaty that apportioned
powers between the two entities. In general, the 1994 Treaty is vague in some places about how
powers are to be divided between the Kremlin and Tatarstan, and some passages contradict other
ones. These inconsistencies allowed for latitude in how the treaty was implemented. It appears
that Yeltsin and Shaimiyev concluded a treaty that muddled through the contentious issues, and
permitted both sides to save face, and say they received concessions from the other side. In the
agreement, Tatarstan is declared to be a state associated with the Russian Federation through
Tatarstan's 1992 constitution, the 1993 constitution of Russia, and the 1994 treaty. Tatarstan is
not called a sovereign state, just a state in this accord. Powers were apportioned between the
Russian center and Tatarstan, and other powers were shared by both jurisdictions. The 1994
agreement is not clear about how these powers were divided. Powers enumerated in Article 3
that fell under joint Tatar-federal jurisdiction were said to belong solely to the Russian center in
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other articles of the treaty. Russia's federal government was in charge of defense and foreign
affairs, while Tatarstan could conduct foreign economic relations, collect taxes, and control a
substantial share of state enterprises and natural resources that fall under its jurisdiction. The
treaty gave the federal government and Tatarstan control over the Tatar republic's judicial system.
However, one article assigned this responsibility to the Russian center, while another gave it to
Tatarstan. Supplementary agreements that were signed at the same time gave the Russian
Central Bank sole responsibility over Russia and Tatarstan's monetary policy, and one gave
Tatarstan some say in Russian defense policy vis-a-vis the Tatar republic's government (Daulet,
2003; Graney, 2009).
This 1994 treaty began Yeltsin's policy of asymmetric federalism. In other words, each
“subject” of the Russian Federation would conclude a separate agreement with the Russian
center apportioning powers based on local circumstances. For example, the Republic of Tuva
would possess a different power profile than Kostroma oblast' or Krasnodar krai. Tuva would
have some powers that Kostroma and Krasnodar would let the Russian center have. Following
the federal-Tatar treaty of February, 1994, 46 other “subjects” of the Russian Federation
concluded similar treaties with the Kremlin. In 1999, the 1994 Tatarstan treaty was renewed for
another five-year period. Yeltsin was criticized for concluding treaties with the elites of Russia's
regions that excluded the masses, and that asymmetric federalism endangered the territorial
integrity of Russia. Putin, Yeltsin's successor, acted to bring asymmetric federalism to an end,
and to harmonize the “subject” constitutions with the 1993 Russian constitution. One
contentious policy during the later Yeltsin years between the Russian center and Tatarstan was a
separate Tatarstani citizenship. Russia's federal government opposed separate citizenship for
Tatarstanis, while Tatarstan's government argued that the 1994 agreement allowed for it. This
issue was not settled until December, 2000, a year after Putin became acting president of Russia.
Putin agreed to include a supplement to Russian passports in Tatarstan that would be in the Volga
Tatar tongue and would include Tatarstan's state symbols. He concluded a similar citizenship
accord with Bashkortostan. This was to be Putin's only real concession to Russia's “subjects”
during his term (2000-2008). In budgetary matters during the Yeltsin years, Tatarstan tried to
gain as much control over fiscal policy as was permissible for a “subject” of the Russian
Federation. According to the 1994 treaty, Tatarstan collected all taxes on its territory, and gave
some of the money to the Kremlin. In other words, Tatarstan operated under a “single-track” tax
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system. In the late 1990s, Shaimiyev threatened to withhold tax payments to the Kremlin
because the Russian federal government failed to pay wages to Tatarstani workers and it did not
pay off debts of defense industrial firms on Tatarstani territory. Tatarstan's government
recognized the limits on its budgetary powers because the Tatar republic is a part of Russia, and
Kazan depended on Russian federal subsidies (Graney, 2009; Daulet, 2003).
One of the first steps by the Tatarstani government when it embarked on its sovereignty
project was in the symbolic sphere. Shaimiyev and his government adopted a new flag and state
emblem after the Soviet collapse. The flag has an upper wide red horizontal stripe, a narrow
white horizontal stripe in the center, and a lower wide green horizontal stripe. Red represents the
Russians, green Islam (and by implication the Volga Tatars), and white the harmony between the
two ethnicities. Shaimiyev debated whether to include a crescent moon on the green stripe, but
decided against this Islamic symbol because its inclusion may have offended the republic's ethnic
Russians. He felt that the green stripe was a sufficient symbol to represent the Muslim identity
of the Volga Tatar people. For the state emblem, the Tatarstani government adopted the griffin
that was the symbol of the Kazan Khanate. By adopting the griffin, Tatarstan was laying claim
to its heritage, seeing itself as a successor state of the Khanate of Kazan, and the griffin recalled
the glory days of the Volga Tatars. According to the 1992 Tatarstan constitution, both Volga
Tatar and Russian are the official languages of the Tatar republic. In Tatarstani schools, all
students have to learn Volga Tatar in addition to acquiring proficiency in Russian, and they have
to learn Kazan Tatar history and literature. This policy has been continued under the 2002
Tatarstan constitution, which replaced the 1992 one. Shaimiyev pursued a gradualist economic
reform policy in the 1990s, rejecting the “shock therapy” of the Russian center. That Shaimiyev
was able to do this is an indication of the leeway he enjoyed under the asymmetric federal
arrangement. Tatarstan's main industries are oil and natural gas extraction, petrochemical works,
machinery-building factories, and defense industrial concerns. Tatarstan produced 7 % of
Russia's petroleum. Automobiles and trucks are among Tatarstan's top machinery products. In
2001, there were 14,700 small and medium-sized firms in the Tatar republic, and Tatarstan is one
of the top targets of foreign investment among Russia's “subjects.” Privatization of state firms
occurred at a slower pace in the 1990s in Tatarstan than it did for the Russian Federation as a
whole. Tatarstan provides more generous social welfare benefits for its inhabitants than Russia's
federal government does for all Russian citizens. Under Yeltsin and Putin, the Russian center has
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ceded control over 70 % of its social welfare programs to the “subjects.” Shaimiyev aimed to
make Tatarstan self-sufficient in food production, and he succeeded in this goal in the 1990s.
Tatarstan's chief agricultural goods are grain, sugar beets, meat, potatoes, and vegetables. During
the 1998 ruble crash, Tatarstan fared better than other “subjects” of the Russian Federation,
exporting some food to other Russian regions that were short of this commodity (Daulet, 2003;
Graney, 2009).
In terms of national policy, Tatarstan has pursued both an ethnic project and a civic one.
On the one hand, it sees the Tatar republic as the homeland for Russia's entire Tatar population.
It must be kept in mind that only one-quarter of Russia's Tatars live in the Republic of Tatarstan.
According to the 2002 census, Tatarstan had 3,780,000 inhabitants, of which 51.3 % were Kazan
Tatars, and 41 % ethnic Russians. Thus, Tatarstan is essentially a bi-ethnic republic, where Islam
and Eastern Orthodox Christianity meet. Besides making Kazan Tatar an official language and
including Tatar subjects in the educational curriculum, Tatarstan's government has built a
museum dedicated to the Volga Tatar ethnicity in Kazan, and constructed the Kul Sharif mosque
in the Kazan Kremlin. In addition, the Tatarstan ministry of education established the Magarif
(Education) publishing house that prints textbooks related to the Volga Tatar people and the
Republic of Tatarstan. In 2005, the Tatar republican government celebrated the 1,000th
anniversary of the founding of Kazan, an event attended by Putin. Rafael Khakimov, who was a
top Shaimiyev aide, sponsored a revival of jadid thinking called neo-jadidism. This philosophy,
like its predecessor, calls for a reconciliation between Western modernity and Islam. This neojadidist movement is in its infancy, but it offers promise in the future, and helps contribute to
stability in Tatarstan and in the republic's relations with the Russian center. On the other hand,
the Tatarstani government has pursued a civic national project. According to this
conceptualization, Tatarstan is a homeland for all of its inhabitants: Volga Tatars, Russians,
Chuvash, and others. Shaimiyev saw the fostering of a Tatarstani identity that transcended ethnic
differences as imperative, for a disaffected Russian population would pose a severe problem for
Tatarstan's government. In addition to making Russian Tatarstan's second official language,
Shaimiyev provided funds for the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the
Annunciation in the Kazan Kremlin. He gave priority to building and restoring mosques over
churches, but he justified this policy on the grounds that mosques suffered greater damage under
the Soviet Communist government than did churches in Tatarstan. By constructing a civic
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Tatarstani identity, the Tatar republic hopes to maintain political stability at home, and ward off
intervention by the Kremlin. In its task of simultaneously encouraging ethnic and civic
nationalism, Tatarstan has been successful so far, and it provides a model for Russia's other
ethnic “subjects” such as Tuva and Bashkortostan, among others (Graney, 2009; Daulet, 2003).
Upon being inaugurated as Russia's second president in May, 2000, Vladimir Putin set
out to restore the “power vertical.” This meant he was centralizing power in the Kremlin at the
expense of the “subjects,” and that he was scrapping asymmetric federalism in favor of a de facto
unitary state, though he would preserve Russia's federal structure as a formality. On May 13,
2000 Putin enacted his first ukaz (decree) to re-centralize power in the Kremlin. He divided
Russia into seven federal districts, and subordinated all of Russia's then 89 regions into them.
Tatarstan fell into the Volga Federal District. This action had the unintended consequence of
bringing 6-7 million Tatars under one jurisdiction. Shaimiyev promised to help the Tatars who
live in Russian “subjects” outside Tatarstan. A plenipotentiary was appointed by Putin to each
federal district, and their job was to ensure that the “subjects'” legislation was in line with the
1993 Russian constitution and Russian center legislation. On January 19, 2010, Putin's
successor, Dmitry Medvedev, created a North Caucasian Federal District, which includes
Chechnya, bringing the number of federal districts in Russia up to eight. Tatarstan has continued
to fall under the Volga Federal District's jurisdiction. On May 31, 2000, Putin removed the
“subjects'” governors and republican presidents from the upper chamber of Russia's parliament,
the Federation Council. During 2000, Tatarstan's government worked to replace the Cyrillic
script in which Volga Tatar was written with a Latin alphabet. The Kremlin opposed this move,
and in December, 2002, the Russian central government passed a law requiring all of Russia's
languages, Volga Tatar included, to be written in a Cyrillic alphabet. In July, 2000, the Russian
parliament amended the federation's taxation policy, creating a unified tax system for the Russian
Federation. Tatarstan had to abandon its “single track” system, and accept that 70 % of the tax
revenue went to the Russian center, while 30 % went to Russia's “subjects.” Putin also launched
his “harmonization” campaign in 2000, which aimed at bringing the “subjects'” constitutions and
laws in line with federal legislation and the 1993 federal constitution. On June 27, 2000, the
Russian Constitutional Court found specific provisions of certain republics' constitutions,
Tatarstan included, to be in violation of the 1993 Russian constitution. In May, 2001, the
Russian Constitutional Court found that 40 passages in the 1992 Tatarstan constitution violated
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federal constitutional law and federal legislation. In response to this finding, Shaimiyev worked
to replace the 1992 Tatarstan constitution with a new one. In April, 2002, the Tatarstan
legislature passed a modified constitution that deleted reference to the sovereign character of
Tatarstan and no longer claimed that Tatarstan was a subject of international law. The 2002
Tatarstan constitution declares the Tatar republic to be a subject of the Russian Federation. It has
a clause calling Tatarstan the homeland of Russia's entire Tatar population, it declares Russian
and Volga Tatar to be Tatarstan's two state languages, and it incorporates a clause creating a
separate Tatarstani citizenship. Most importantly, the April, 2002 Tatarstan charter has a clause
prohibiting a modification of the Tatar republic's borders without the consent of the Tatarstani
government. In 2003, Putin abrogated the February, 1994 treaty, a move which necessitated
Tatarstan to negotiate a new agreement with the Kremlin (Daulet, 2003; Graney, 2009; Heaney,
2010; Hahn, 2007).
The Beslan tragedy turned out to be a milestone in terms of federal-regional relations in
addition to being a spillover calamity of the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war. After the
Beslan events of September, 2004, Putin altered the post-Soviet Russian constitution, doing away
with the popular election of governors and republican presidents, and replacing their popular
election with a system in which the Russian president would appoint the regional presidents and
governors. In addition, Putin repealed the single-member district system in the federal Duma,
and made the entire Duma electoral system one of proportional representation. Shaimiyev, who
won popular elections in 1995 and 2001, had to face the fact that he needed Putin's permission to
continue in office. In early 2005, Putin appointed Shaimiyev to a five-year term as president of
Tatarstan. Shaimiyev became a leading member of Putin's United Russia party, and he tried to
get the Duma to pass region-friendly legislation. This effort was largely unsuccessful. In
August, 2005, the Tatarstani government celebrated the 1000th anniversary of the founding of
Kazan with a ceremony that cost US $ 2 billion. Putin gave an address at the ceremony.
Tatarstan's State Council approved a new treaty to govern relations between the Russian center
and Tatarstan in October, 2005. In its provisions, this treaty resembled the 2002 Tatarstan
constitution. It did not include an explicit reference to Tatarstan's sovereignty, though it referred
to the March, 1992 referendum, which declared Tatarstan to be a sovereign state. According to
the treaty's provisions, Tatarstan is to protect and promote Tatar culture throughout the Russian
Federation, it can conduct economic relations with foreign countries, its two state languages
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remain Volga Tatar and Russian, and the Tatarstan president must be fluent in both tongues
(Russian and Tatar). In July, 2007, the federal assembly passed the new Russo-Tatar treaty; the
Duma had passed it by a vote of 306-110 in February, 2007. In the Federation Council, the treaty
was ratified by a vote of 122-4. In March, 2010, President Medvedev replaced Shaimiyev with
Rustam Minnikhanov, who had been Tatarstan's premier until becoming the second president of
post-Soviet Tatarstan. Medvedev and Putin have been working to replace the old-time regional
bosses with new appointees beholden to them. This was probably Medvedev's motivation in
appointing Minnikhanov as Tatarstan's president. With the eclipse of Shaimiyev from the
political scene, Tatarstan lost a powerful champion for its sovereignty project. Minnikhanov will
probably continue with it to a certain extent, though he lacks the social capital Shaimiyev had
built up through popular elections. In a sense, Minnikhanov is a puppet of Putin and Medvedev,
and has to do their bidding to keep his job. However, the 2007 treaty gives him some latitude in
the regional sphere, and he will probably work to maximize the leeway offered by the Russian
president and prime minister (Graney, 2009; Heaney, 2010; tatarstan.ru/english).
8.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Tatarstan Case
As mentioned in the history section, there has been ethnic violence between the Kazan
Tatars and the ethnic Russians. This occurred after the Russian conquest of the Kazan Khanate
in 1552, and continued until 1773, when Catherine the Great issued an ukaz (decree) granting
religious toleration to Russia's Muslims, Volga Tatars included. Kazan Tatars rose up several
times during this time period, protesting against the tsars' and tsarinas' policy of attempting to
Christianize them. It is clear that the Russian government's religious intolerance of Muslims
fueled numerous Volga Tatar revolts. Catherine the Great met the Kazan Tatars half-way by
allowing them to practice their Islam, and the Volga Tatars met the ethnic Russians half-way by
espousing jadidism, and recognizing that the Kazan Tatar people were part of the Russian realm.
This background influences Russo-Tatar interactions in the post-Soviet era. Shaimiyev utilized
the Volga Tatar past of seeking accommodation with the ethnic Russians as the basis of his
policies, and Minnikhanov will probably continue with the legacy established by Shaimiyev. In
the future, Russian Muslims will probably constitute a larger share of the Russian Federation's
population, so their attitude towards the Kremlin will assume increasing importance. Rafael
Khakimov, a top Shaimiyev aide, has worked to revive jadidist thinking. He published a
manifesto for neo-jadidism entitled Gde nasha Mekka? (Where is Our Mecca?) in 2003, in which
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he declared that “I (Khakimov) live in Tatarstan and do not want to be like an Arab of the Middle
Ages” (Hahn, 2007, 183). He emphasized the Mecca passages of the Quran over the Medina
ones. The former passages call for religious tolerance, equality between the sexes, and the free
acceptance of Islam by people. In a sense, the Mecca passages conform with jadidist ideas. In
contrast, Ittifak, at its Fourth Congress in December, 1997, argued that “We (the Volga Tatars) are
Muslim nationalists, and we are beginning a struggle for the creation of an Islamic state in
Tatarstan” (Hahn, 2007, 183). This passage shows that Ittifak aims to make Tatarstan into an
Islamist state. It has an affinity with the Chechen Islamists, but has refrained from the kind of
terrorist acts that have provoked the wrath of the Kremlin in the North Caucasus. Ittifak's call for
a Muslim theocratic state has been rhetorical, though there have been some terrorist acts by
Islamists in Tatarstan. Naberezhny Chelny, Tatarstan's second-largest city after Kazan, is a
center of Islamist activity, and the Tatarstan government has banned the Naberezhny Chelny
branch of the TPC from organizing because of its Islamist leanings. Compared with the North
Caucasus, Islamist terrorist activity has been at a minimum in Tatarstan. For the sake of the
Volga Tatars and for the ethnic Russians, neo-jadidism will hopefully become the dominant
Islamic paradigm in Tatarstan, and it is desired that the Kazan Tatars will exert a dominant
influence on Russian Muslim behavior, and the ethnic Russians and the Muslim minority will
find a modus operandi that accommodates the concerns and interests of both communities.
There exists a territorial component to the Tatarstan situation. This has been the case
since the Volga Tatars proposed the creation of an Idel-Ural state in 1917-18. There was conflict
between Lenin and Kazan Tatar leaders about the role of the Tatar peoples in the RSFSR. On the
one hand, the Volga Tatars wanted to create a homeland that encompassed 220,000 square
kilometers of territory and included most of the areas with Tatar and Bashkir concentrations.
Lenin turned down the proposal. Stalin appeared to raise Kazan Tatar hopes with his
recommendation for the creation of a Tatar-Bashkir republic that would be part of the RSFSR.
Again, Lenin nixed the idea of a combined Tatar-Bashkir republic that would cover a substantial
portion of RSFSR territory. He signaled his intentions by creating a separate Bashkir ASSR in
1919. By the time he got around to the Volga Tatar issue, he insisted that the Kazan Tatars have
their own republic that would include only one-quarter of the RSFSR's Tatars and that would
have a substantial ethnic Russian minority. The Tatar ASSR which the Sovnarkom decreed on
May 27, 1920 was only 68,000 square kilometers in area, and it basically encompassed the
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territory where the Volga and Kama rivers meet. Volga Tatars were probably unhappy with
Lenin's settlement because the Tatars were separated from the Bashkirs, and three-quarters of
RSFSR Tatars were outside of their eponymous republic, with the Bashkir ASSR having a
substantial minority of Kazan Tatars. Lenin created the conditions that started a rivalry between
the Volga Tatars and Bashkirs. In addition, the Tatar ASSR's ethnic Russian minority was large,
making accommodation of their interests by Kazan imperative. A negative policy toward the
ethnic Russians of Tatarstan would provoke intervention by the Kremlin on their behalf, and the
Tatar republic would lose the autonomy it was able to receive from the Kremlin. In other words,
the Volga Tatars had to be more accommodating toward ethnic Russian interests than they would
have desired, and had to water down their own demands. Lenin adopted a divide-and-rule policy
toward the Muslim peoples of the Volga region, and his intention of starting a Volga TatarBashkir rivalry has come to fruition. It is particularly in the Islamic jurisdiction field that there
has existed competition between the Kazan Tatars and Bashkirs in the post-Soviet era.
Shaimiyev had to work around the parameters that Lenin defined in his territorial settlement in
the middle Volga region (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003; Hunter, 2004).
The Volga Tatar claim for an Idel-Ural state in 1918 was based on the historical precedent
of the Kazan Khanate (1445-1552). This polity was more extensive in area than present-day
Tatarstan. Kazan Tatars commemorate October 15, the anniversary of the Russian seizure of
Kazan in 1552, in a somber way. For them, the date marks the day their independent statehood
came to an end. Since that time, the Volga Tatars have been subjects of Russian rulers, whether
tsarist, Soviet, or post-Soviet. To bolster their national consciousness efforts over the years,
including the intellectual endeavors of the jadids, the political agitation of Sultangaliev and his
cohorts, and the work of Shaimiyev and Rafael Khakimov, the Kazan Tatars refer to their long
habitation of the Volga river region, which began in the early 8th century CE. Their state of
Bolgar (Volga Bulgaria) figures into this line of argumentation. Volga Tatar civilization began
with Bolgar, which gained its independence from the Turkic Khazars in 965 CE. Islam plays a
central role in Kazan Tatars' sense of place. They consider the territories where they are
concentrated to be part of the worldwide dar ul-Islam ((Abode of Islam). Not that Muslims are
the only inhabitants of this realm. However, the Volga Tatars remember when they possessed
their own sovereign state that was part of the Islamic realm. Being inhabitants of a polity with a
non-Muslim ruling class probably appears “unnatural” to them. This partially explains their
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numerous uprisings against Russian rule from the mid-16th century to the late 18th century. With
Catherine the Great's ukaz of religious toleration in 1773, the Volga Tatars began to accept their
status as mudejars (Muslims under non-Islamic rule), or at least tolerate it. It appears that the
Muslim modernist movement, jadidism, focused Kazan Tatar energies away from territorial
issues, but the Bolshevik coup of October (Old Style)/ November (New Style), 1917 altered their
demands. Like the other Muslim peoples of the former tsarist empire, the Volga Tatars
demanded their own territorial entity. They probably felt cheated by Lenin, who set up a
truncated version of a Kazan Tatar homeland. In addition, he separated the Bashkirs, who are
similar to the Volga Tatars religiously and linguistically, from the Kazan Tatars. Sultangaliev and
his national Communist comrades kept the dream of a pan-Turkic republic in the Volga region
alive, but Stalin eliminated them and their supporters by 1932 (Rorlich, 1986; Daulet, 2003;
Hunter, 2004).
Tatarstan's sovereignty project encompasses the policy of making the Tatar republic a
center for Tatars all over the Russian Federation. A homeland requires that an ethnicity inhabits
a particular territory. Shaimiyev has promised that Tatarstan will be a homeland for all of
Russia's Tatars. This explains why the 2007 Russo-Tatar treaty includes a clause about Tatarstan
having the final say over its boundaries. Were the Russian president to absorb Tatarstan into a
neighboring oblast (however unlikely this event is in practice), the Volga Tatars would lose their
distinct territory, and hence, their homeland. While the Tatarstan leadership accommodates all
ethnicities on its territory, it makes special efforts to encourage Kazan Tatar language, history,
and culture. It has turned a museum formerly dedicated to Lenin into one specializing in Volga
Tatar culture and history. In addition, the green in Tatarstan's flag indicates that the Kazan Tatars
are staying in their homeland, and will continue to agitate for the permanence of the Republic of
Tatarstan. The Tatar republic has its own publishing company, Magarif, which prints books in
the Volga Tatar language. To carry out this activity with as little hindrance as possible requires a
home base and a sponsoring government. For these reasons, the Kazan Tatar sovereignty project
will include the demand to preserve Tatarstan as a distinct entity and for the Volga Tatars to
possess a territory they can call their own (Graney, 2009).
Facilitating Conditions in the Tatarstan Case
Of the six facilitating conditions, four play a role in maintaining the peace in Tatarstan,
and between the Volga Tatar republic and the Russian center. There appears to be a lack of
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availability of information, with the Tatarstan government having a monopoly on
communications media. Opposition voices, particularly those of the TPC and Ittifak, are
marginalized, and kept out of the public spotlight. Tatarstan has an ethnic diaspora, which is
concentrated in the Volga region and Siberia. In a reversal of roles, the Volga Tatar republic acts
as the champion for Tatar rights in the Russian Federation, and it provides assistance to the
Tatars of Russia rather than the other way around.
In Tatarstan, the Volga Tatars composed 51.3 % of the population, according to the 2002
census, while ethnic Russians made up 41 %. Thus, the Tatar republic is essentially a bi-ethnic
polity, with the Russians being the dominant people in the Russian Federation as a whole,
making up 82 % of the federation’s population. Tatars are the second-largest ethnicity in the
Russian Federation, at 3.8 % of the population (Graney, 2009; World Almanac, 2010). In
addition to these dynamics, the Kazan Tatars and ethnic Russians are intermingled with each
other in the Tatar republic (Toft, 2003). Given this situation, the Tatarstan president has to act
carefully to balance Volga Tatar and ethnic Russian interests. So far, the Kazan Tatar leadership
has succeeded in this task by fostering a sense of Tatarstan as the homeland for Russia’s Tatars,
while encouraging a Tatarstani civic nationalism that recognizes the contributions of all
Tatarstan’s nationalities to the common Tatar republic. For example, Shaimiyev turned a
museum in Kazan formerly dedicated to Lenin into one specializing in Volga Tatar national
culture, and he oversaw the construction of the Kul-Sharif mosque in the Kazan Kremlin. At the
same time, he gave funds for the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the
Annunciation in the same Kazan Kremlin complex, and his government allocated money for
Russian-, Mordvin-, and Udmurt-language classes. Tatarstan’s multinational project has enabled
it to implement a specific one that caters to the Volga Tatars inside and outside Tatarstan. Had
Shaimiyev focused too much on ethnic nationalism, he would have invited Russian federal
government intervention into Tatarstan’s affairs. His balancing of ethnic and civic national
projects has enabled Tatarstan to enjoy some autonomy in the Russian Federation, and has made
it possible for him and his successor, Minnikhanov, to get away with korenizatsia
(indigenization), staffing top government and cultural positions with Kazan Tatars. Because they
make up only one-half of Tatarstan’s population, and have ethnic Russians living among them,
the Volga Tatars have to be prudent in pursuing their sovereignty project. Under Putin and
Medvedev, it has evolved into cultural autonomy, leaving political and economic affairs largely
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in the hands of the Kremlin. This cultural autonomy has proven its utility to the Kremlin, for
Tatarstan was given observer status in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in 2004,
a step that enabled the Russian Federation to become a full member the next year (Graney,
2009).
There exists a large Volga Tatar diaspora outside Tatarstan, but it is largely confined to
the Russian Federation. Kazan Tatar communities exist in Bashkortostan, where the Volga Tatars
make up 28 % of the population compared with 21 % for the Bashkirs, Udmurtia, other regions
of the Volga area, and Siberia. Lenin included only one-quarter of the Kazan Tatars in the Tatar
ASSR in 1920, and this situation continues in the present-day post-Soviet situation, where threequarters of Volga Tatars live outside the Republic of Tatarstan. In Bashkortostan, the republic’s
Tatars want their tongue to be recognized as a state language alongside Bashkir and Russian.
The Bashkir republic’s leadership has refused to elevate the Tatar language to this status, causing
resentment among Bashkortostan’s Tatars, and concern in Kazan. Rather than the Volga Tatar
“diaspora” helping Tatarstan, it appears that the Tatar republic is the champion of Tatar rights for
their ethnic kin who live outside of its jurisdiction. Shaimiyev admitted as much in his speeches
while he was president of Tatarstan. In the Tatar republic, the Kazan Tatars are the titular
nationality, and korenizatsia guarantees that they will continue to control Tatarstan’s affairs.
Nowhere else in the Russian Federation do the Volga Tatars enjoy such cultural self-expression
and dominance of a polity. For this reason, Tatars outside Tatarstan look to the Tatar republic as
a homeland and champion of their cultural and political rights (Graney, 2009; Hahn, 2007).
Unlike Chechnya, which borders another sovereign polity, the Republic of Georgia,
Tatarstan is located in the middle of the Russian Federation. In other words, the Tatar republic is
surrounded by other Russian “subjects” on all of its borders. This situation makes it very
difficult, if next to impossible, for Tatarstan to successfully secede from Russia, even if the Tatar
leadership and public had the will to do so. Of the Volga Tatar political organizations, only
Ittifak and Milli Mejlis advocate for an independent Tatar state whose foundational principles
would be those of Islamism. While the TPC is more moderate than Ittifak, its Naberezhny
Chelny branch was receptive to Islamist ideology, with its call to throw off Kafir (“Infidel”) rule.
These Islamist circles appear to have a limited audience to which to appeal because most Volga
Tatars realize that their republic is in the middle of Russia, and that the Russian federal
government would use its overwhelming resources and personnel to crush any Kazan Tatar
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secessionist attempt. In addition, the Volga Tatars and ethnic Russians are intermixed in
Tatarstan, making a separation of the Tatar republic from Russia a near impossibility.
Theoretically, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan could join up and form a unified Tatar-Bashkir
republic. Given the Tatar-Bashkir rivalry, such a scenario is highly unlikely. Were the Kazan
Tatars and Bashkirs to unite, the Russian federal government would have the resources to halt a
separatist move by both peoples. In addition, 44 % of Bashkortostan’s population is ethnic
Russian, and this Russian population would join with their ethnic kin in Tatarstan to support the
Kremlin’s moves to restore central authority over the Volga Tatars and Bashkirs. In geographical
terms, Tatarstan cannot successfully secede from the Russian Federation because it is in the
middle of Russia (Hahn, 2007; Graney, 2009).
In terms of economic differentiation between Tatarstan and the Russian Federation as a
whole, the Tatar republic is a developed part of Russia, whose inhabitants have a fairly high
standard of living. Tatarstan’s economy is heavily industrialized, with petroleum and natural gas
extraction making it possible for the Tatar republic to develop a petrochemicals industry. In
addition, there are machine-building works in the republic, and cars and trucks are major
products that come out of Tatarstani factories. Many industries are involved in making militaryrelated products. Tatarstan is the third-largest target of direct foreign investment in Russia, with
only Moscow and Tyumen oblast’ attracting more of it. Unlike most of Russia’s “subjects,”
Tatarstan’s government allows farmers to buy and sell land. During the 1990s, at the height of
Tatarstan’s autonomy, Shaimiyev adopted a gradualist approach to privatization. This policy
differed from the rapid privatization and shock therapy of the Kremlin under Yeltsin. Shaimiyev
also provided more generous social welfare benefits during this time than did the Russian center.
What all of this boils down to is that economically Tatarstan is a top producer of goods in the
Russian Federation. It is richer than the North Caucasian Muslim republics, which are among
the poorest “subjects” of Russia. Tatarstan’s relative affluence compared with North Caucasian
poverty may help explain why Islamist ideology has largely fell on deaf ears among the Volga
Tatars, and why it has fueled violence in the North Caucasus region (Daulet, 2003; Hahn, 2007;
Graney, 2009).
The availability of information plays a role, but it is subordinate to the fact that the Kazan
Tatars, in general, are not responsive to the Islamists’ message. Like everywhere else in postYeltsin Russia, the media and press are under government control, and the journalists in the
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television, radio, and news publication businesses practice self-censorship. Political dissidents
receive little or no media coverage in the government-controlled press, radio, and television. For
example, at the federal level, democratic activist Garry Kasparov and his organization, the Other
Russia, do not receive media attention because they advocate for genuine liberal democracy, and
thus endanger the hold the siloviki (security men) have on power. At the republican level in
Tatarstan, Shaimiyev and his successor, Minnikhanov, control the local media, and they have
kept Bairamova and Ittifak from receiving air time and having their views widely published.
Government control of the Volga Tatar publishing firm, Magarif, ensures that the Tatar leadership
is able to put out its version of Kazan Tatar history and politics. In addition, Shaimiyev joined
United Russia, so he, in effect, had to accept direction from Putin. Since Minnikhanov owes his
position to Medvedev and Putin, he has more of an incentive than Shaimiyev did to tow the
United Russia party line. In other words, Ittifak and Melli Mejlis are marginalized in the press
and media of Tatarstan, and the Volga Tatar people have little opportunity to hear their views.
Besides, the Kazan Tatar public understands that it is impractical to implement Ittifak’s program
in the Tatar republic, given that Volga Tatars make up only one-half of Tatarstan’s population,
that ethnic Russians compose 41 % of the republic’s people, and that Kazan Tatars and ethnic
Russians are intermixed in Tatarstan. The Volga Tatars belong to the Hanafi school of Sunni
Islam, which is more moderate than its Islamist counterpart. Tatarstan is surrounded by other
“subjects” of the Russian Federation, making sovereign independence a virtual impossibility. In
sum, availability of information, or rather the lack of coverage of Ittifak, plays a part, but only in
combination with the Kazan Tatar public view that independence for Tatarstan is impractical
(Graney, 2009; Hahn, 2007).
Of the six facilitating conditions, the role of the Tatarstan elite is the most important. The
other facilitating conditions define the limits in which Shaimiyev and Minnikhanov can operate,
but their stewardship of the Tatar republic, like that of all polities, requires political acumen in
terms of decisions and policies. An incompetent leader may cause political disaster to happen,
while a smart director ensures peace in and the survival of the polity. In the post-Soviet era,
Tatarstan has been fortunate to have a sensible political elite in charge. This Volga Tatar political
elite is aware of the limitations in which Tatarstan must operate. Shaimiyev maintained and
Minnikhanov keeps the peace in Tatarstan with their simultaneous promotion of civic and ethnic
national policies. Such a policy matrix pleases the Volga Tatars and ethnic Russians in Tatarstan,
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and the Russian center. It also holds the Islamists at bay. Thus, Tatarstan’s elite, operating
within the parameters set by the other facilitating factors, has been effective in preserving ethnic
peace in an essentially bi-ethnic subnational unit.
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CHAPTER NINE
NON-EVENT 2: CRIMEA
Crimea has been called the `dog that did not bark.' What this means is that the conditions
for ethnic conflict were existent on the peninsula, but ethnic violence did not escalate into civil
war. There have been ethnic clashes on the Crimean peninsula, but these events have been
isolated incidents, and have not contributed to the initiation of civil war, as occurred in Bosnia
(Uehling, 2004). Crimea could have erupted into conflict had a pro-Russian government under
Yuri Meshkov controlled the security services in Crimea. Instead, his regime fell apart, and he
lost his position as president of Crimea. Because of this denouement, war between the Crimea
and the central Ukrainian government in Kyyiv was averted. Russia and Ukraine could have
gone to war over the distribution of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet in the early 1990s, but both
countries resolved their differences over it in 1997, and the pro-Russian regime under Viktor
Yanukovych has extended Russia's lease over the Crimean naval base of Sevastopol' until 2042.
Many Crimean Tatars, a Turkic Muslim ethnicity, have returned to Crimea since 1989, sparking
tensions with the Russian majority and the Ukrainian minority. Since some 250,000 Crimean
Tatars have settled on the Crimean peninsula in the early 1990s, there have occurred clashes
between the Crimean Tatar returnees, on the one hand, and the Russians and Ukrainians, on the
other. However, the Crimean Tatars have not initiated a terrorist campaign, and have not
demanded their houses back from the local Russians and Ukrainians. Instead, they have
established settlements on vacant land, and have reclaimed deserted houses and apartments
(Sasse, 2007; Shoemaker, 2010; Uehling, 2004). It is these three issues, the Russian majority in
Crimea versus the Ukrainian central government, Russia versus Ukraine over Sevastopol' and the
Black Sea Fleet, and the Crimean Tatars versus the Russians and Ukrainians, that have shaped
political conflict on the Crimean peninsula, and have the potential to escalate to war and
violence. It is the argument of this chapter that territoriality goes a long way toward explaining
these conflicts and their resolutions. Crimea offers an instance of ethnic differences not erupting
into violence and war, and hence offers hope for resolving them.
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9.1 Historical Background
Crimea has been on the historical scene since Antiquity, since before the Christian era.
This peninsula entered history with the establishment of Greek colonies on the southern Crimean
coast circa 400 BCE. Upon landing in Crimea, the ancient Greeks encountered the Tauri, who
were the first recorded ethnicity on the peninsula. These Tauri were fierce, and this reputation
for ferocity spawned the Greek legend of Iphigeneia, a murderous Tauri priestess who sacrificed
Greek and other wayward travelers to the Hellene goddess Artemis. It is probable that some
Cimmerians settled on the Crimean peninsula, having been driven from their original homeland
by the Scythians. Most of the Cimmerians adopted a nomadic life-style after their exile from
their abode. In the 700s BCE, the Scythians, a nomadic Iranian people, displaced the
Cimmerians in the Crimea. They were famous for making golden objects, some of which they
traded with the Greek colonists. Ancient Greeks left their homeland, and established colonies on
the Crimean peninsula. It was common for Greek colonists to leave their polis (city-state), and
plant a new settlement someplace else that itself acquired the status of a sovereign city-state.
Thus, Megara colonists settled the western coast of Crimea, and set up the polis of Chersonesus
(modern-day Sevastopol') in the 5th century BCE. The Milesians followed, and established the
city-states of Panticapaeum (modern-day Kerch) and Theodosia (modern-day Feodosia). These
poleis (city-states) were situated on good harbors, and were near bounteous fishing grounds.
Greek colonizers came relatively late to Crimea due to the vicious reputation of the Scythians
and other Crimean peoples who settled on the peninsula first. Although the Crimean Greeks
considered the native peoples to be “barbarians,” they traded and intermixed with them,
acquiring some of their characteristics. Despite their “barbarization,” the Greek poleis on the
Crimea grew in fame and wealth. A legend grew around a son of a Scythian king, Anarcharsis.
Ancient Greek writers used this Scythian who lived in ancient Greece as a mouthpiece for social
criticism of the Greek establishment. It is doubtful that Anarcharsis was a real person, but the
use put to him by the ancient Greek play writes, story tellers, and other social critics has resulted
in a practice employed by critical intellectuals to this day in Western civilization. The Crimean
Greek colonies themselves spawned their own intellectual writers and philosophers. Their
prosperity rested on supplying grain to the Greek homeland and maintaining cordial relations
with the native groups of Crimea. Over time, the Crimean colonies lost out to Egypt as ancient
Greece's breadwinner, and ties with the natives became embittered (King, 2004).
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Alexander the Great's conquests did not have a direct impact on the Crimean Greek
poleis. However, after Alexander's death, the Hellenistic kingdom of Pontus emerged, which
took over the Crimean colonies. In the 1st century BCE, King Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus
annexed the Greek poleis on the southern coast of Crimea. The Roman general Pompey fought
Mithridates, and defeated him. By 62 BCE, Pompey had taken over all of Pontus, and the
Crimean colonies fell to him by default of besting Mithridates in battle. Thus, the southern
Crimea became part of the Roman Republic, and the subsequent Roman Empire. During a
Roman persecution of the Christians, Pope Clement I was exiled to Crimea, where he died. This
same fate befell another pope during the Byzantine period. An East Roman emperor sent Pope
Martin I to the Crimean peninsula, where he remained for the rest of his pontificate (Kozelsky,
2010; King, 2004). When the Roman Empire was divided in half for the final time in 395 CE,
the Crimea passed to the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire, and southern Crimea remained under
Byzantine control until 1204 CE. Many nomadic ethnicities passed through the area north of the
Crimea on their way to Europe, among them the Avars and Magyars. In the later centuries of the
Roman Empire, the Iranian-speaking Sarmatians replaced the Scythians, and in the 4th century
CE, the Goths established a presence in southwest Crimea. During Justinian's reign, the walls of
Chersonesus and Panticapaeum were restored. Around the time of Byzantine emperor
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, the Turkic Pechenegs had become the dominant presence in
the northern Crimea, and they traded animal hides for grain from Anatolia. In the 7th century CE,
the Syrian refugee Callinicus invented “Greek fire,” which the Byzantines used to devastating
effect against enemy ships. The source of the naphtha employed in making “Greek fire” was
along the Black Sea coast. For some time, from the 7th through the 10th centuries CE, the Turkic
Khazars were a major presence in the area north of Crimea, and they even dominated
Chersonesus for a time. In 860 CE, the Rus (the ancestors of the Russians, Ukrainians, and
Belarussians) besieged the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, only to be driven off by “Greek
fire.” During the 10th century CE, in 988, Grand Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus, the Rus's state,
converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and he forced his subjects to accept this version of
the Christian religion. He received a Byzantine princess, Anna, as his reward for accepting
Christianity. According to one tradition, Vladimir's baptism occurred in Chersonesus. Scholars
generally hold that his conversion took place in Kiev (Kyyiv). Whatever the case, Vladimir's
baptism signified that the Eastern Slavic peoples had become Eastern Orthodox Christian. In
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1204, a Western Crusader army seized and sacked Constantinople, ending the Byzantine
presence in the Black Sea region, including Crimea. From now on, control of the Crimea passed
to other peoples, and the Byzantines were no longer able to exert influence over Crimean affairs
(King, 2004; Kozelsky, 2010).
After the Crusaders took Constantinople and set up a so-called Latin Empire in the city
and the surrounding areas, the Empire of Trebizond, one of the Byzantine successor states,
exerted control over the southern Crimean cities. This dominance did not last long, for the
Italian Genoese secured authority over Chersonesus and the other southern Crimean cities. A
podesta, a Genoese governor based in Pera, administered the Crimean colonies. A consul, based
in Caffa (Feodosia), ran local Crimean affairs for the Genoese government. The main concern of
the Genoese in the Crimea was trade, and they worked to make the Crimean cities commercially
profitable. In the early 13th century CE, the Mongols appeared on the scene, and they established
a world empire that stretched from China and Korea to the Russian principalities, and which
included Persia and Mesopotamia. A group of Turkic nomads replaced the Cumans, another
Turkic ethnicity, on the Crimean peninsula. These Turkic newcomers who accompanied the
Mongol armies were the ancestors of the Crimean Tatars. It is possible that the Crimean Tatars
assimilated many of the peoples already existent in the Crimea, including the Cumans and Goths.
Whatever may be the case, the Crimea was to remain under Crimean Tatar control until 1783,
when Russia annexed the peninsula. Around 1300 CE, the Ottoman state emerged in Anatolia,
and it played a dominant role in Crimean matters from the time after the Ottoman seizure of
Constantinople in 1453 until the Treaty of Kuchuk Kanairji with Russia in 1774 (King, 2004;
Uehling, 2004; Fisher, 1978).
During the Mongol period, many Seljuk Turks left Anatolia, and settled in the Crimea.
The peninsula was considered to be part of the Golden Horde, and the khans in Sarai appointed
governors to oversee Crimean affairs. Eski Kirim (Turkic, “Old Crimea”) was the administrative
center of Crimea until the establishment of Bahcesaray in the early 16th century CE. Haci Giray
is viewed as the founder of the Crimean Khanate, which he established in 1443. He asserted his
independence from the Golden Horde. Many Tatars from the Golden Horde came to the Crimea
after his accession to power. With the Ottoman seizure of Constantinople in May, 1453, the
Crimean Khanate had to deal with the up and coming Ottomans. In 1475, the Ottomans took
over the Crimean cities that were under Genoese jurisdiction. Three years later, in 1478, they
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confirmed Mengli Giray on the Crimean Khanate throne, and concluded an agreement with him
that established Ottoman suzerainty over the khanate. Despite having the Ottoman sultan as an
overlord, the Crimean khan minted his own coins, and conducted his own relations with
Muscovy and Poland. One source of Crimean Tatar revenues was the conscription of Christian
slaves from Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy. These slaves were exported to Istanbul
(Constantinople), earning money for the Crimean Tatar slave-traders and the khanate
government. The Giray dynasty ruled the Crimean khanate until the Russian take over of the
peninsula in 1783. During the khanate period, the Crimean Tatars, who are Sunni Muslims of the
Hanafi school, became the majority population in the Crimea. There also existed a Christian
minority of 50,000, mostly Greeks and Armenians, and two Jewish groups, the Karaim and the
Krymchaks, both of which spoke Turkic languages. Khan Sahib Giray, who ruled in the early
16th century, was probably the one who built Bahcesaray, and moved the capital from Eski Kirim
to there. Russian authorities have preserved the palace built by Sahib, and it is a historical
monument that demonstrates that the Crimean Tatars once dominated the peninsula. In 1502, the
Crimean khan sacked Sarai, an action that ended the Golden Horde polity. Crimean rulers
intervened in the affairs of the Kazan Khanate, supporting certain claimants to the throne in
Kazan. This intervention in Kazan's politics was one factor that precipitated Ivan the Terrible's
conquest of the Kazan Khanate in October, 1552. Despite sharing the name Tatar, the Crimean
Tatars are as distinct from the Kazan Tatars as the Serbs are from the Russians. Both Kazan and
Crimean Tatars speak Turkic languages, but they are separate peoples (Fisher, 1978; Uehling,
2004; King, 2004).
Russia began to show a serious interest in the Crimean Khanate during the reign of Peter
I the Great. In 1687 and 1689, Prince Vasily Golitsyn led a Russian army in invasions of the
khanate. His forces were defeated both times. Peter the Great seized Azov in 1696. After this
acquisition, Crimean Tatar raids against Muscovy ceased. Tsarina Anna was the next Russian
monarch to pursue an active policy toward the Crimean Khanate. In 1736, Russian forces took
Bahcesaray, then withdrew from the khanate due to disease and shortage of supplies. Following
a concentration on European affairs, Tsarina Catherine II the Great focused her attention on the
Crimean Khanate. In September, 1768, a Russian army marched through Balta. The Crimean
khan considered this action a breach of his territory's “sovereignty,” so his troops attacked this
Russian army. In response, the Russian army sacked Balta. During the following month, in
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October, 1768, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia. Thus began the Russo-Turkish War
of 1768-74. Agents of Catherine the Great made an alliance with the Nogay Tatars, who
wandered the north Crimean steppe. This action weakened the Ottoman-Crimean Tatar military
effort. Ottoman and Crimean Tatar forces did little to coordinate their actions against the
Russian military. Russian general Dolgoruki led an invasion force into the Crimean Khanate in
early 1771. During July, 1771, the Russians took Kefe (Feodosia) from the Ottoman Turks, and
occupied Gozleve (Evpatoria), Perekop, and Bahcersaray, and on July 13, Crimean khan Selim
Giray surrendered to General Dolgoruki. By the Treaty of Karasu Bazaar, which the Russian and
Crimean Khanate governments signed in November, 1772, the Crimean Khanate became
nominally independent, but the khanate was forced to accept an alliance with Russia, which
ensured Russian dominance over the Crimean Khanate. In mid-1774, the Ottoman Porte made
peace with Russia, and by the Treaty of Kuchuk Kanairji, accepted Crimea's independence,
though retaining religious influence over the Muslim Crimean Tatars. The Crimean Independent
State was politically unstable, and Russia invaded it four times before annexing it. Russian
general Grigorii Potemkin led the final Russian invasion force in 1782, which occupied
Bahcesaray, and installed the last puppet khan, who was subject to Russian control. In April,
1783, Catherine the Great formally annexed the Crimean Khanate, adding it to the Russian
Empire, and realizing a Russian dream for a warm-water port and completing the subjection of
the Muslim Crimean Tatars, an aim of Russian foreign policy since the reign of Peter the Great.
After the formal Russian annexation of Crimea, the Muslim Tatars became mudejars, and were
subject to a Christian-majority polity, one which worked to transform the peninsula in the 19th
century (Fisher, 1978; Uehling, 2004; King, 2004; Kozelsky, 2010).
Over the course of the 19th century, Russia altered the Crimea, and turned it into a
Russian province. Crimea, with some territory north of the peninsula, was organized into a
province called Tauride gubernia (province). Russian authorities moved the capital from
Bahcesaray (rendered as Bakhchesaray in Russian) to Akmechet (“White Mosque”), which they
renamed Simferopol' (“City of Connections”). The village of Akhtiar, which was near the ruins
of Chersonesus, was renamed Sevastopol' (“August City”), and the Russian Black Sea fleet was
placed in its harbor. Other Crimean cities were renamed, including Kefe, which became
Feodosia, and Gozleve, which was renamed Evpatoria. Christian colonists were encouraged to
settle in Crimea. Most of the Greeks and Armenians who lived in the Crimean Khanate moved
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to sites in New Russia. However, the peninsula still had Greek and Armenian communities in
the 19th century. Russians, both Orthodox and Old Believers, migrated to Crimea, as did
Germans and Bulgarians. At the same time, many Crimean Tatars left the Crimea for the
Ottoman Empire. It is estimated that 110,000 Crimean Tatars moved to the Ottoman Empire
between 1783 and 1802. By 1854, there were 250,000 people on the Crimean peninsula, of
which 150,000 were Crimean Tatar, 70,000 were Russians, and the rest were Greeks, Armenians,
Bulgarians, and Germans. Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church set out to make the Crimea
into a “Russian Athos,” a project the Russian government encouraged. Russian Orthodox
monasteries were built on the peninsula, including Dormition Monastery, near Bakhchesaray, and
Inkerman Monastery. A Saint Paraskeva convent was built near some springs, and the Russian
Orthodox Church took over the Cosmas and Damian springs, and turned them into a shrine.
Saint Vladimir church was built at the site in Sevastopol', where Russian Orthodox tradition
holds that Grand Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus was baptized in 988 CE. This process of
transforming Crimea was interrupted by the Crimean War (King, 2004; Fisher, 1978; Kozelsky,
2010).
The main cause of the Crimean War was Russia's desire to control the affairs of the
Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Such control would have made Russia the
dominant foreign power in Ottoman affairs because the territory under the Porte contained many
Orthodox Christian believers. Alarmed at the prospect of Russian domination of the Ottoman
Empire, the British and French came to the Porte's aid. In 1853, Russia moved troops into the
principalities of Moldova and Wallachia. In turn, the Ottoman Porte demanded that the Russian
government withdraw its forces. In the end, the Russian soldiers stayed in the Romanian
principalities, and the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia. The Russian Black Sea Fleet
destroyed the Ottoman naval force at Sinop, a move which brought Britain and France into the
war on the side of the Porte. Later, Piedmont-Sardinia joined the Ottomans, British, and French.
In the course of 1854, the allied armies invaded Crimea, with the aim of neutralizing the Russian
Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol'. Most of the fighting on the Crimean peninsula was
centered on the allied siege of the Crimean city of Sevastopol' and its naval base. After the allies
beat the Russians at the Alma river, the British proceeded to seize the harbor at Balaklava to use
as a logistics base. It was at this battle of Balaklava that the famous “Charge of the Light
Brigade” occurred, a senseless military act in which the British light cavalry was decimated.
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British and French forces held off a Russian army at the battle of Inkerman, after which they
began the siege of Sevastopol' in earnest. By September, 1855, the French had captured the
Russians' main strong point defending Sevastopol', a move which required the besieged Russian
forces to scuttle the Black Sea Fleet and evacuate the southern part of the city. Russia and the
allies proceeded to negotiate a peace treaty, and one was signed in Paris in February, 1856.
According to its terms, Russia had to scrap its Black Sea Fleet, and both the Ottoman Empire and
Russia could only allow patrol craft on Black Sea waters. This peace settlement proved
temporary, for Russia was allowed to withdraw from the Treaty of Paris's provisions in 1871, and
the Russian Empire then proceeded to rebuild its Black Sea Fleet (Royle, 2000).
One important consequence of the Crimean War was that 100,000 Crimean Tatars had
emigrated to the Ottoman Empire in the late 1850s. By 1860, only 100,000 Crimean Tatars
remained on the peninsula. In total, 400,000 Crimean Tatars had left their homeland in the 18th
and 19th centuries, and settled in the Ottoman polity. Also in 1860, the Russian Orthodox Church
set up an eparchy (diocese) in the Tauride gubernia. For the first time, the Crimea had a Russian
Orthodox hierarchy in place. After the Crimean War, Russians and Ukrainians settled in Crimea,
altering the demographic balance on the peninsula. During the latter part of the 19th century, a
Crimean Tatar nationalist movement developed at the time of the Slavic in-migration. Its most
influential exponent, Ismail Bey Gaspirali, was jadidist in orientation. He was born into an
impoverished Crimean Tatar noble family, went to Istanbul and Paris to study, learned Russian
and French, and relied on Merjani's ideas to develop his Crimean Tatar nationalist vision. After
serving as mayor of Bakhchesaray from 1877 to 1881, he went on to found an influential
newspaper called Terjuman in 1883. In addition, he established a madrasa whose curriculum
combined learning the Quran and sharia in the Arabic language with mastering the Russian and
Crimean Tatar languages and the natural and social sciences. He argued that the Russian
Muslims had to learn the Russian language, and combine Muslim learning with Russian and
Western modernity. Gaspirali envisioned a Western-educated Russian Muslim elite that spoke
Osmanli Turkish. This pan-Turkic orientation linked Gaspirali with the Turkic Muslim peoples
of the Volga region, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. He was an important jadidist who made a
major contribution to the movement to reconcile Islam with Western modernity (Fisher, 1978;
Kozelsky, 2010; Uehling, 2004).
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Gaspirali's ideas led to the development of the Tatar nationalist movement, which split
into three factions: the Gaspiralists; the Young Tatars; and the Tatar nationalists. His followers
founded 350 jadidist schools in the Crimea that combined Muslim subjects with Western ones.
He was instrumental in the foundation of the pan-Islamic organization Ittifak, and he attended the
all-Muslim congresses held in Nizhnii Novgorod and Saint-Petersburg in 1905-6. At the
congresses, he articulated Crimean Tatar interests. Ittifak aligned itself with the Kadet party, a
move that was in line with Gaspirali's thinking, which envisioned cooperation between ethnic
Russians and Russian Muslims in the tsarist empire. Abdurresit Mehdi was the leader of the
Young Tatars, who found Gaspirali to be too cautious and reactionary politically. Mehdi was a
mayor of Karasu Bazaar, and he called for Crimean Tatar social, political, and economic
liberation from Russian rule. The Young Tatars were decidedly nationalistic, and they allied
themselves with the Socialist Revolutionaries. The third group, the Tatar nationalists, emerged
after 1907, and they established a conspiratorial political party called Vatan, which advocated
explicitly for the creation of an independent Crimean Tatar state. In 1917 occurred the
democratic and Communist revolutions that transformed the Russian Empire, and turned it into
the USSR (Fisher, 1978).
When the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers during World War I, the Russian
government held the Crimean Tatars under suspicion because they were Muslims, and were
suspected of sympathy for the Porte. Tsarist authorities suppressed Crimean Tatar social and
cultural life. Crimean Tatar soldiers were deployed on the western front with Austria and
Germany rather than on the southern front with the Ottoman Empire. After the fall of the tsarist
regime in February (Old Style)/ March (New Style), 1917, the Crimean Tatars held a national
congress, which elected Celebi Cihan as the new mufti of the Crimean Tatars, and which adopted
a cultural and religious autonomy movement for their people. At the time of the Crimean Tatar
congress, the Provisional Government established its own government structures on the Crimean
peninsula, appointing V. Bogdanov, a Ukrainian Kadet and Kerensky supporter, as head of a
Commissariat of the Tauride. Bogdanov's government was hostile to Crimean Tatar nationalist
aspirations. In the southern cities of the Crimea, the Mensheviks and the Socialist
Revolutionaries founded revolutionary committees. At the All-Muslim Congress held in
Petrograd in May, 1917, the Crimean Tatar delegates voted for territorial autonomy, which
entailed organizing nationality-based territorial units that enjoyed self-rule within a Russian
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federal republic. In calling for territorial self-rule, the Crimean Tatars were joined by delegates
from the Caucasus and the Bashkir area. Only the Volga Tatar representatives voted for nonterritorially-based cultural autonomy. In June-July, 1917, open hostilities broke out between the
Crimean Tatars and the Bogdanov government. Bogdanov had Cihan (the Crimean Tatar mufti)
and Sabarov (the commander of the Crimean Tatar forces) arrested and brought to Sevastopol'
for trial, an action that precipitated rioting by the Crimean Tatars. In the face of the disturbances,
Bogdanov released the two Crimean Tatar leaders. Leftist Tatar nationalists founded a new party
in early 1917 called Milli Firka, which rejected cooperation with the Provisional Government
and espoused establishing close ties with the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats.
This party was the first Crimean Tatar revolutionary party. After the Bolsheviks seized power in
October (Old Style)/ November (New Style), 1917, many Milli Firka members joined the
Russian Communist Party, and took up positions in the Soviet Crimean government (Fisher,
1978).
By the time of the Bolshevik putsch, the Russians and Ukrainians made up 50 % of
Tauride gubernia's population, while Crimean Tatars composed 25 %. The rest were made up of
Jews, Germans, Armenians, Greeks, and Bulgarians. On December 9, 1917, the Crimean Tatar
leadership convened a national parliament called the Kurultay, which created a Tatar republic on
the Crimean peninsula. An executive, the Directorate, was formed on December 26, with Celebi
Cihan as chair. At the same time, in October and November of 1917, Russian and Ukrainian
liberals in the Crimea set up the Constituent Crimean Assembly. In the elections for this body,
the Socialist Revolutionaries secured a majority of seats, Milli Firka received 31 %, and the
Kadets came in third. P. Novitsky was made chair of the provincial parliament. The Bolsheviks
dominated Sevastopol', while the Crimean Tatar Directorate and the Constituent Crimean
Assembly, both based in Simferopol', controlled the rest of Crimea. Cihan attempted to
cooperate with the Sevastopol' Bolsheviks, but he was forced to resign his chairmanship of the
Directorate. On January 25, 1918, Sevastopol' Bolshevik forces took over Simferopol', and
disbanded both the Constituent Crimean Assembly and the Kurultay. The Sevastopol'
Bolsheviks established a Communist government for the Crimea that went on a killing spree,
slaying Crimean Tatars, including Cihan, and Slavs. On March 3, 1918, the Russian Bolsheviks
and the Germans concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This agreement spelled the end of
Bolshevik rule in Crimea. In April, 1918, the Crimean Bolshevik government held elections to
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the soviets in Crimea. Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks secured control of the
Sevastopol' soviet, while the rest came under the control of non-Bolshevik parties and factions.
Crimean Tatars, unhappy with Bolshevik rule, rebelled in mid-April, 1918, and killed the
members of the local Sovnarkom (Fisher, 1978).
German forces, with the assistance of a Crimean Tatar-staffed Muslim Corps, led by a
general Sulkiewicz, a Lithuanian Tatar, took over Crimea in early May, 1918. Under the
leadership of Cafer Seidahmet, the Crimean Tatar elite negotiated with the Germans for as much
national autonomy as was possible. Seidahmet was named prime minister of a Crimean Tatar
national government, and the Kurultay reconvened shortly afterward. Germany did not
recognize Seidahmet as premier, and instead appointed Sulkiewicz. This Lithuanian Tatar
general initially formed a government with a Crimean Tatar majority, but the Germans forced
him to reconstitute the cabinet, and include representatives of all of the Crimean communities.
The German occupation authorities allowed the Sulkiewicz government to establish local organs
throughout the peninsula. Sulkiewicz's government fell when the German forces evacuated
Crimea in November, 1918. On November 16, a Russian-dominated assembly, which was
constituted by Russian military officers and aristocrats in late October, formed a Crimean
government composed of Russian and Ukrainian liberals, mostly Kadets, and appointed a
Crimean Karaim, Salomon Krym, as prime minister. The Krym regime immediately declared
Crimea to be an integral part of Russia. On November 22, 1918, the Russian Whites entered
Crimea, and occupied the peninsula. In April, 1919, the Bolsheviks took over the Crimea for a
second time, but were driven out by the Russian Whites, who were led by General Denikin.
Denikin dissolved the Tatar Directory on June 28, 1919. In early 1920, Denikin resigned as
White commander, and Baron Vrangel took his place. Bolshevik forces took control of Crimea
in October, 1920. Many Russian Whites evacuated Crimea before the Bolshevik takeover, and
went into exile. After this third Bolshevik invasion, the Soviet government in Moscow made
Crimea a part of the RSFSR. Crimea was to remain, with the exception of the Nazi occupation
of 1941-44, under RSFSR jurisdiction until 1954 (Fisher, 1978; Uehling, 2004; Mawdsley,
2005).
During the final phase of the Russian Civil War, the left-wing of Milli Firka, led by Veli
Ibrahimov, allied with the Bolsheviks, who rewarded these leftist Crimean Tatar nationalists with
leadership posts in the Crimean government apparatus. Before settling on the administrative
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status of Crimea, the Cheka, led by Bela Kun and Nikolai Bystrykh, carried out a massacre of
Crimean opponents of the Soviet regime, killing both Russians and Tatars. It is estimated that
Kun and Bystrykh murdered 60,000 people between November, 1920 and summer, 1921. In
response to this killing spree, Crimean Tatar guerrillas, who called themselves the “Green
Forces,” and were led by Ismail Nazal, fought the Bolsheviks to a draw. Lenin sent Sultangaliev,
the Kazan Tatar Communist leader, to Crimea in order to investigate the situation in early 1921.
Sultangaliev suggested that Crimea be made an autonomous republic, and that Crimean Tatars be
placed in leadership positions in the Crimean government. Lenin acted on these suggestions. In
July, 1921, the Crimean Bolshevik government announced an amnesty for Crimean Tatar
opponents of the Soviet Communist regime, and an assembly of the Crimean communities,
including the Tatars, convened in Simferopol' on September 23, 1921. On October 18, 1921, this
assembly proclaimed the formation of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
(Crimean ASSR), which was made part of the RSFSR, and had its capital in Simferopol'. In
practice, the Crimean ASSR enjoyed little autonomy, and was an integral part of the Soviet state
(Fisher, 1978; Uehling, 2004).
Crimea suffered particularly from the 1920-21 famine in Soviet territory. The Crimean
Communist government seized half of the arable land on the peninsula, and planned to convert it
into state farms (sovkhozy). Combined with the shipping of Crimean food to the central regions
of the RSFSR, this early attempt at collectivization resulted in the deaths of 100,000 Crimeans
from starvation. Another 50,000 Crimeans fled to Romania. In 1923, as part of the New
Economic Policy, Veli Ibrahimov was made leader of the Crimean ASSR. He was appointed to
both party and state positions. Ibrahimov staffed the top Crimean ASSR posts with his ethnic
kin, drawing heavily from the left-wing of the outlawed Milli Firka. He returned industrial
firms and farms to their former owners, if possible, and even gave land that had been owned by
Russian absentee landlords to Crimean Tatar peasants. Finally, under his rule, Crimean Tatar
schools, theaters, journals, newspapers, and publishing houses, were established. A Tavrida
University, which taught the Crimean Tatar language and Tatar cultural subjects, was founded in
1924. This “Golden Age of the Crimean ASSR” ended in 1928, when Ibrahimov complained
about a plan to resettle Belorussian Jews in southern Crimea, a scheme that would result in the
removal of Russian and Crimean Tatar families. Stalin used Ibrahimov's obstinacy as a pretext to
remove the Crimean Tatar national Communist leader, and to purge the Crimean ASSR party208
state apparatus of Ibrahimov's followers. On May 9, 1928, Ibrahimov was executed. While
another Crimean Tatar, Mehmet Kubay, took Ibrahimov's place, 3,500 Crimean Tatars were
purged from the Crimean ASSR government. In removing Ibrahimov and his supporters, Stalin
carried out a Sovietization and Russianization of Crimea. Already, in 1926-27, the Crimean
Tatars were forced to switch from an Arabic script to a Latin alphabet. Ten years later, in 1936,
Stalin ordered the Crimean Tatars to adopt a Cyrillic script. These alphabet changes made the
Crimean Tatars illiterate, and cut them off from their past literature, which was the repository of
their heritage, history, and culture. Crimean Tatar cadres in cultural leadership posts were
ousted, and were replaced with Russians and the few Tatar intellectuals Stalin left behind.
Tavrida University's Crimean Tatar faculties were closed down, and their staff was purged.
Between 35,000-40,000 Crimeans were removed to Siberia and Central Asia for being “kulaks.”
Widespread famine broke out as a result of forced collectivization in 1931-33. When
collectivization was completed in 1932, fruit production declined to 33 % of that of 1931.
Crimean Tatars in the village of Alakat rebelled against Soviet authority in December, 1929January, 1930. NKVD troops slaughtered and banished these villagers. With the introduction of
the Cyrillic alphabet for Crimean Tatar, Russian words and grammatical forms were introduced,
and Turkish, Persian, and Arabic words were excised from the Crimean Tatar language. During
the Great Purge of 1936-39, Stalin eliminated what remained of the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia.
To add insult to injury, Stalin bound the Crimean ASSR more closely to the RSFSR in his 1936
Soviet Constitution. In all, between 1921 and 1939, 150,000 Crimean Tatars died or were
deported as a result of Soviet policies. Around 150,000 Crimean Tatars remained on the
peninsula by 1940. The autonomy the Crimean ASSR was supposed to enjoy was illusory and
ephemeral, and for most of its existence, this autonomous republic was a fiction, being in
actuality controlled by the Soviet authorities in Moscow. This was the situation in the Crimea
when the Nazis invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941 (Uehling, 2004; Fisher, 1978).
Hitler intended to turn Crimea into a German settlers' colony that would be under Berlin's
direct rule. To realize this plan, he envisaged deporting all of the Crimean peoples, including the
Crimean Tatars, and planting German colonies staffed by South Tyrolese and Romanian
Germans. In the end, Hitler left the Crimean Tatars, whom he considered “subhuman,” in place
because he set out to court Turkey, which was deeply interested in the Crimean Tatar issue.
From September to November, 1941, the Wehrmacht and Romanian forces conquered all of
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Crimea, except Sevastopol', which they besieged. After intense fighting, the Soviet seaport and
naval base fell to the Nazis in July, 1942. When evacuating Crimea, Soviet forces destroyed
infrastructure, factories, and foodstuffs, anything that the Germans would find useful. This
action alienated the Crimeans, who welcomed the Nazi Germans as “liberators.” The Wehrmacht
recruited between 15,000 and 20,000 Crimean Tatars for self-defense units, which hunted down
Soviet partisans. As policy, the Nazi occupiers granted the Crimean Tatars religious and cultural
autonomy, while denying them political and administrative power. Crimean Tatars were allowed
to establish Muslim Committees, but their prerogatives were limited to cultural matters, and they
were more for show rather than for genuine Crimean Tatar self-rule. To eliminate “subhumans,”
the SS murdered 130,000 Crimeans, most of them Karaim, Krymchaks, and Roma. Crimean
Slavs also collaborated with the Nazis, some serving in official posts during the German
occupation, and others joined self-defense units. Many Crimeans were sent to the Reich as
forced laborers. Initially, the Soviet partisans in the Crimea were almost exclusively made up of
Slavs, and Crimean Tatars were refused enrollment in partisan formations. By 1942, many
Crimean Tatars joined the Soviet partisans, which included not just Slavs, but Greeks and
Armenians as well. Around 20,000 Crimean Tatars served in the Soviet army on the Nazi-Soviet
front. Soviet forces reached Perekop, the “key to Crimea,” in November, 1943, entered Crimea
in April, 1944, and had beaten the Wehrmacht in Crimea by May, 1944. They proceeded to
massacre Crimeans suspected of collaboration with the Nazis. These were the antecedents of the
deportation of several Crimean peoples, principally the Crimean Tatars, in 1944 (Fisher, 1978,
Uehling, 2004).
On May 18, 1944, the NKVD deported the entire Crimean Tatar population, who were
sent to the Uzbek SSR and the Ural Mountains region of the RSFSR. Stalin also deported other
Crimean peoples, specifically the Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, and Germans. Around half of
the Crimean Tatar deportees died in transit from Crimea to Central Asia and the Urals. Stalin
abolished the Crimean ASSR formally on June 30, 1945, and turned the Crimea into an oblast' of
the RSFSR. After World War II, many Russians and Ukrainians settled in Crimea, several taking
over dwellings that had recently been inhabited by Crimean Tatars. Russian settlers arrived in
Crimea from the central RSFSR from 1944 to 1949, and Ukrainian “colonists” came during the
1950-54 period. Between 1954 and 1989, ethnic Russians constituted a little over two-thirds of
Crimea's population, while Ukrainians composed around one-quarter (Sasse, 2007, Appendix I).
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The Crimean Tatars' deportation was “justified” because of their ostensible wholesale
collaboration with the Nazis. As indicated in the above paragraph, the real story of Crimean
Tatar collaboration was more complicated than the blanket Soviet condemnation of them as
“traitors” of the Soviet Fatherland. Stalin may have reasoned that the Crimean Tatars would
serve as a fifth column, working as agents of Turkey, which was a chief target of Stalin's foreign
policy machinations. He wanted Russians and Ukrainians to take the place of the Crimean Tatars
as a way to make Crimea a more “secure” asset of the Soviet Union. To drive home his point
that the Crimean Tatars and other deported Crimean peoples would not return, Stalin had their
cultural patrimonies destroyed (Sasse, 2007; Fisher, 1978; Uehling, 2004).
Stalin died on March 5, 1953. A power struggle followed his demise. Nikita
Khrushchev, who assumed Stalin's post of general-secretary of the CPSU, ceded jurisdiction of
the Crimea oblast' to the Ukrainian SSR on February 19, 1954. Crimea has remained a part of
Ukraine to this day. Khrushchev allegedly gave Crimea to Ukraine as a “present” to
commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Union of Pereyaslav, the first agreement that tied
Ukraine to Russia. However, Sasse (2007) argues that Khrushchev made the arrangement to
curry favor with the Ukrainian SSR apparat, and line it up behind him in his struggle against the
Stalinists and Malenkov. This argument is plausible, for Khrushchev was a contender for the
Soviet throne, and his “bribery” of the Ukrainian SSR leadership helped him to secure power. In
Khrushchev's famous and crucial speech before the 20th CPSU Congress in February, 1956, the
general-secretary denounced Stalin, rehabilitating most of the deported peoples. He did not
mention the Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, or Meskhetian Turks. The next year, all of the
deported nations, save the three Khrushchev did not mention, returned to their “homelands,”
which were reconstituted. In June, 1957, the Crimean Tatars in the Uzbek SSR sent a petition to
Moscow demanding a right of return. Subsequent petitions, one with 25,000 signatures,
followed in the succeeding years. Khrushchev allowed the Crimean Tatars to publish a
newspaper in their own language in Tashkent. In 1962, the KGB arrested Crimean Tatar
activists, including Mustafa Cemilev, who became the leader of the Crimean Tatar nationalist
movement. In the face of Soviet obscurantism, the Crimean Tatars told their children about the
deportation of 1944, and organized committees whose purpose was to advocate for the right of
return. One indication of the pull of these committees is that one petition they sent to the Soviet
leadership carried 120,000 signatures, the whole of the Crimean Tatar adult population. Crimean
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Tatar representatives went to Moscow to press their case with the Soviet authorities. This
persistence on the part of the Crimean Tatars payed off halfway, for they were partially
rehabilitated on September 9, 1967, when the Soviet government absolved the Crimean Tatar
population of wholesale collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. However, the
Crimean Tatars were denied the right to return to Crimea. From 1968, some Crimean Tatars tried
to return to the peninsula illegally, without Soviet permission, while Crimean Tatars in the Uzbek
SSR demonstrated for wholesale repatriation to Crimea. During the 1970s and 1980s, the
Crimean Tatars continued to send petitions to Moscow and to lobby top Soviet officials. In
response, the Soviet authorities cracked down on the Crimean Tatars, fearing that this Turkic
people would set a “bad” precedent. In the summer of 1978, a Crimean Tatar man who returned
to Crimea illegally, Musa Mahmut, set himself on fire to protest Soviet policies toward his
people. He subsequently died of his injuries. Mahmut became a martyr for the Crimean Tatar
cause, and his action spurred further Crimean Tatar agitation. On July 23-24, 1987, a group of
several hundred Crimean Tatars tried to demonstrate in Moscow, but the Soviet police broke up
the protest. From 1957, Crimean Tatar agitation met a stone wall. This would have been the
likely trend into the future were it not for Gorbachev's perestroika (Sasse, 2007; Uehling, 2004;
Fisher, 1978).
Crimea was a strategic asset of the USSR, for its possession by the Soviet Union provided
the Soviet Kremlin with a firm foothold on the Black Sea. The Soviet Black Sea Fleet was based
in Sevastopol'. With the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, the peninsula fell into the southern
region of the Soviet union-republic. Along with the eastern region of Ukraine, the southern part
is more Russified than the central and western areas. What this means is that the southern and
eastern regions of Ukraine have concentrations of ethnic Russians and the Ukrainians in these
areas tend to speak Russian rather than Ukrainian. In the central and western areas of Ukraine,
there are far less ethnic Russians and the Ukrainians tend to speak their native language. In
addition, western Ukraine has a heavy Catholic presence, with most Ukrainian Catholics of the
region belonging to a Byzantine-rite church in communion with the Pope in Rome. The rest of
Ukraine, including Crimea, is heavily Eastern Orthodox Christian. Crimea remained an oblast'
once it became part of the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. In 1991, the Crimeans held a referendum, in
which a majority voted to make Crimea an autonomous republic of Ukraine. With Ukraine's
independence in December, 1991, Crimea retained this new status. It became a matter of
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contention between the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (ARC) and the Ukrainian central
government in Kiev over the substance of Crimea's self-rule and its specific relationship with the
Ukrainian central authorities. These issues not only involved the parties concerned, but also the
Russian Federation and the Crimean Tatars. In short, the Crimean peninsula's status has interethnic and international implications (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007).
Complicating the Crimean situation is the return of many Crimean Tatars to the
peninsula. Interestingly enough, the Crimean Tatar return began after the June, 1987 protest in
Moscow. Gorbachev formed an investigative commission under President Andrei Gromyko,
which found that the Crimean Tatar deportation of 1944 was unjust, but that the Crimean Tatars
as a whole collaborated with the Nazis, taking part in burning Nazi victims in ovens. The
charges of collaboration with the Nazis were an oversimplification, and the oven allegation was a
complete fabrication, for the Nazis shot their victims in Crimea or gassed them in trucks. This
false charge alienated the Crimean Tatars from Soviet rule, and increased their support for the
Crimean Tatar national movement. In May-June, 1989, the all-Union Soviet of Nationalities
appointed a commission, chaired by Gennadi Yanayev, to address the Crimean Tatar issue. This
commission cleared the Crimean Tatars of wholesale collaboration with the Nazis, urged the
Crimean Tatars to return to Crimea, and called for the recreation of the Crimean ASSR. Crimean
Tatars saw this commission's findings as the signal to start repatriating to the Crimean peninsula.
Between 1989 and 1991, 250,000 Crimean Tatars returned to Crimea from the Uzbek SSR and
the Tajik SSR. The 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union made the creation of the Crimean
ASSR obsolete. Crimea's Russians and Ukrainians did not welcome the Crimean Tatars, seeing
them as “intruders.” Crimean authorities urged the peninsula's Slavs to build dachas to make
land unavailable to returning Crimean Tatars, and refused to grant the returnees the propiska
(housing permit) they needed to get a residence and a job. Led by Mustafa Cemilev, the Crimean
Tatars settled on a squatter strategy, building houses on any vacant land they could find, and
seizing abandoned apartments in the cities. For the Crimean Tatars, settling on the peninsula has
been a difficult task, for their settlements lack infrastructure, jobs and housing are hard to come
by, and there existed a lack of cultural institutions upon their return to Crimea (Uehling, 2004;
Sasse, 2007).
In response to their difficult situation, the Crimean Tatars on the peninsula organized a
kurultay, and held elections to it, with the adult Crimean Tatar population forming the electorate.
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This second kurultay, with the first one being the one held in 1917, selected members for the
highest Crimean Tatar representative and authority body, which was called the Milli Mejlis. This
33-member body is at the top of the Crimean Tatar authority hierarchy, with regional and village
bodies under it. This Crimean Tatar “government” has an ambiguous relationship with the
existing Crimean autonomous republican government. The latter is composed mostly of
Russians and Ukrainians, and considers the Crimean Tatar political structures to be an
“illegitimate” state within a state that impedes on the prerogatives of the ARC. Crimean Tatars
see a need to maintain structures that represent their interests. This Crimean Tatar parallel
government continues to coexist with the official ARC one. Kiev sees the need to accommodate
the interests of the Crimean Tatars in Ukraine. In 2000, Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma
allowed Mustafa Cemilev and another Crimean Tatar national leader, Refat Chubarov, to run as
candidates for the Ukrainian national parliament, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian, Supreme
Council). Both Cemilev and Chubarov, who were sponsored by the RUKH party, won their seats
in the Rada, an event which gave the Crimean Tatars a national profile and access to political
power at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government. However, they still lack political
power in the ARC and Ukrainian national structures that is commensurate with their numbers.
Crimean Tatars still face challenges to their return to their “homeland.” When confronted with
ARC authorities who tried to remove them from their “squatters'” settlements, they threatened to
set themselves on fire, just as Mahmut did in 1978. Crimea's Russians and Ukrainians still view
the Crimean Tatars with suspicion, seeing them as “barbarians from the East” and “traitors who
worked with the Nazis.” There have been clashes between Crimean Tatars, on one side, and
Crimean Russians and Ukrainians, on the other. In June, 1995, two Crimean Tatar vendors in
Feodosia were killed for refusing to pay protection money to a Slav mafia group. This incident
fueled riots by the Crimean Tatar population, who burned businesses owned by the mafia group.
Ukrainian special forces cracked down on the riots, and restored calm. This clash could have
spiraled out of control, but prompt action by the Ukrainian government contained the violence
(Sasse, 2007; Uehling, 2004).
The Crimean situation is a multifaceted territorial dispute with local, national, and
international implications. Not only do the Crimean Russians and Ukrainians dislike the
Crimean Tatar returnees, and wish that they would leave for Central Asia, but the Crimean
Russian majority has its differences with the Ukrainian central government in Kyyiv (Kiev). In
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addition, the Russian Federation sees itself as the protector of all ethnic Russians in the “Near
Abroad,” and views Sevastopol' as part of the Russian patrimony. Currently, Russia rents three
of Sevastopol's five harbors from Ukraine, and both Russia and Ukraine have divided the Soviet
Black Sea Fleet between them. Yeltsin saw and Putin and Medvedev see Sevastopol' as a
Russian national shrine redolent with historical symbolism. It was Sevastopol' that Catherine the
Great chose as the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in 1783. The city was the
primary scene of fighting between Russia and the allies (Britain, France, Piedmont-Sardinia, and
the Ottoman Empire) during the Crimean War, and Sevastopol' was the scene of two battles
during World War II. Sevastopol' is part of the Russian national memory of the Second World
War. Culture plays into the multifaceted Crimean situation. Both the ARC and the Crimean
Tatar national movement display their own flags. The flag of the ARC has three horizontal
stripes of blue, white, and red (top-down), with the white stripe taking up most of the ARC
banner. Blue represents the future, white the present, and red the past. The Crimean Tatar flag
has a blue field, with a yellow Cyrillic “T” in the upper left-hand corner. Blue in the Crimean
Tatar banner is the common color representing all Turkic peoples, and Crimean Tatars call the
Cyrillic “T” the tarak tamga, which is their national emblem (Znamierowski and Slater, 2009).
Religion has made a comeback in Crimea since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Crimea has
about 2 million people, and has 1,180 registered religious organizations, of which 60 % are
Christian. Most churches are Eastern Orthodox. Of 563 Eastern Orthodox churches, 512 belong
to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, the Ukrainian branch of the Russian
Orthodox Church that is under the Patriarch of Moscow and All the Russias. The rest of the
Eastern Orthodox churches belong to two Ukrainian-led “schismatic” Orthodox religious
organizations: 25 Eastern Orthodox churches are under the authority of the Ukrainian Orthodox
Church-Kyyiv Patriarchate and 12 belong to the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church. In
addition, there exist three Old Believers' churches, and Greek and Armenian churches. Crimea
has 300 Protestant organizations, and 21 Catholic churches. Of the non-Christian organizations,
there are 350 mosques that cater to the Muslim Crimean Tatars, and a few synagogues for the
small Krymchak and Karaim minorities. The Russian Orthodox Church has rebuilt the holy sites
in Crimea, including Dormition and Inkerman monasteries, and Saint Vladimir's church in
Sevastopol'. Russian Orthodox view Crimea as a “Russian Athos” that is holy because Grand
Prince Vladimir was allegedly baptized there and they figure that Russia, a major world power, is
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deserving of its own version of Mount Athos, seen as the holiest monastic territory in Eastern
Orthodox Christianity (Kozelsky, 2010).
As the above-mentioned figures indicate, religion is an important part of Crimeans' lives.
However, religion on the Crimean peninsula takes second place to the territorial ambitions of the
Russians, Ukrainians, and Crimean Tatars. Rather than driving the ethnic disputes in Crimea,
religion reinforces the political differences between Crimea's main ethnic communities. Since
Crimea is in the Russified south of Ukraine and has a Russian majority, who currently make up
58 % of the ARC's population, it comes as no surprise that most of Crimea's Eastern Orthodox
churches fall under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate. It
appears that most Crimean Ukrainians, who compose 24 % of the peninsula's population, also
accept the authority of the Russian Orthodox patriarch, while a minority of the ARC's Ukrainians
belong to the two Ukrainian “schismatic” Orthodox churches. That the Crimean Tatars, who
make up 12 % of Crimea's population at the present time, have built 350 mosques is an
indication of their efforts to reestablish a cultural presence on the Crimean peninsula, an action
that complements their political steps in constructing a Milli Mejlis to represent their interests.
This mosque-building is all the more remarkable given the limited amount of land the Crimean
Tatars occupy and their lack of adequate infrastructure. Building mosques is a way for the
Crimean Tatars to show the ARC authorities and the Ukrainian government that they intend to
stay, and that Islam is a central part of their identity. Of the deported Crimean peoples, only the
Crimean Tatars have returned in substantial numbers. As the above church statistics indicate,
there exists a small Armenian community, which is composed of refugees from the Karabagh
war, and the peninsula has a few Greeks (Kozelsky, 2010; Sasse, 2007).
In the post-Soviet era, the ARC's relations with the Ukrainian central government, the
status of Sevastopol', and the apportionment of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet take center stage in
Russo-Ukrainian relations. Fortunately, the Russians and Ukrainians have settled their
differences on these issues amicably. Ethnic Russians make up 20 % of Ukraine's population.
Their presence gives Russia an opportunity to interfere in Ukraine's internal political situation.
Ukraine's central government has an interest in placating Russia to preserve the ethnic peace.
Crimea has a Russian majority, so it is a major bone of contention between Russia and Ukraine.
It is to the credit of the Russian and Ukrainian leaderships that they settled their disputes over
Crimea in a mutually beneficial way. Instead of seeing the Crimea as a zero-sum game, both
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Russia and Ukraine view the peninsula in positive-sum game terms. One variable that may
influence Russo-Ukrainian bargaining over Crimea is the fact that Russians and Ukrainians are
both East Slavic peoples. They may have an affinity for each other, and see each other as
siblings. In other words, they share a common ancestry and their languages are similar to each
other. In addition, the majority in both ethnicities belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, which
is overseen by the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul (Constantinople) (Kozelsky, 2010; Sasse,
2007).
In response to the Ukrainian declaration of “sovereignty” on July 16, 1990, the local
Communists on the Crimean peninsula made plans for a referendum on upgrading Crimea's
status from oblast' to autonomous republic. Leonid Kravchuk, the chair of the Ukrainian SSR
Supreme Soviet, reluctantly supported the Crimean referendum drive, which was spearheaded by
the local Communist party leader Nikolai Bagrov, and his deputy, Leonid Grach. On January 20,
1991, the Crimean referendum was held: 81 % of Slavic Crimeans participated in it, and 93 % of
them supported autonomous republican status for Crimea. In the aftermath of the referendum,
Crimea oblast' became the Crimean ASSR. However, the local Communists retained power.
The Crimean oblast' council was elevated to the status of a Supreme Soviet. Crimean Tatars
boycotted the referendum because it did not consider their status or promise to restore the
Crimean Tatar leadership structure. When the August, 1991 coup occurred, the Crimean ASSR
leadership supported the hard-liners. This political miscalculation did not lead to its removal, for
Kravchuk was lenient toward the backers of the putsch. In September, 1991, the Crimean ASSR
declared “sovereignty” from Ukraine. Only 54 % of Crimeans endorsed Ukraine's independence
declaration in the Ukraine-wide referendum held on December 1, 1991. Overall, 90 % of
Ukrainian voters supported independence for Ukraine from the USSR (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse,
2007).
Crimea began agitation for separation from Ukraine in the aftermath of the disintegration
of the Soviet Union in December, 1991. A Republican Movement for the Crimea (RDK)
initiated a petition drive to collect 180,000 signatures on an “independence” referendum.
Ukraine's central government opposed this referendum drive, and ethnic Ukrainians in north
Crimea threatened to hold their own referendum on union of the sub-region with Ukraine. Igor
Kasatonov, then Commander of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, supported the Crimean separatist
drive. In February, 1992, the Crimean Supreme Soviet changed the title of the Crimean ASSR to
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the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (ARC), and it dropped reference to Crimea's inclusion in
Ukraine in its preamble to the new Crimean constitution. There were rumors of a military build
up on Crimea by the Ukrainian central government, and only a minority of Black Sea Fleet
officers took an oath of allegiance to Ukraine. Both the Ukrainian and ARC governments
conducted negotiations, which successfully reduced tensions. Before the completion of the
negotiations, the Crimean Supreme Soviet declared the “independence” of Crimea on May 5,
1992. Kravchuk denounced this declaration as unconstitutional. However, the Crimean
Supreme Soviet made its move to gain leverage in its negotiations with Kyyiv. After addressing
Crimean objections, Kravchuk concluded the talks with the ARC leadership. Bagrov and his
cohorts backed away from their “independence” proclamation, “suspended” an independence
referendum despite the RDK's collection of 240,000 signatures, and obtained control over
Crimean property and natural resources from Kravchuk. This situation had the potential to spiral
out of control, and RUKH pushed for a forceful solution to the Crimean separatist drive.
However, Kravchuk was willing to compromise, and the ARC leadership was in an
accommodating mood. It was for this reason that violence was averted on Crimea, and a RussoUkrainian war was avoided (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007).
In September, 1992, the ARC Supreme Soviet enacted a constitution that was in line with
the Kravchuk-Bagrov agreement, and it repealed the May, 1992 charter, which it had enacted
after Crimea declared “independence” from Ukraine. It appeared that the Crimea question was
settled, but the situation developed in a more critical direction. In the ARC, the Soviet
Communist party split into two groups: the Party for the Economic Revival of Crimea (PEVK),
led by Bagrov, and the Crimean branch of the Ukrainian Communist Party, led by Grach. There
also emerged Russian and Ukrainian nationalist parties. On November 28, 1993, Ukrainian
parties and civic groups formed the Civic Congress of the Crimea, which called for direct rule by
Kyyiv over Crimea, and for abolition of Crimea's autonomy. Russian nationalists on the
peninsula formed the above-mentioned Republican Movement for the Crimea (RDK), and the
Russia Bloc, which was led by Yuri Meshkov. He advocated Crimea's accession to the Russian
Federation as his ultimate goal. Kravchuk thought that Bagrov had the political situation in
Crimea under control, so he acceded to Bagrov's request to hold a presidential election in
January, 1994. Meshkov ran against Bagrov to become president of the ARC. On January 30,
1994, Meshkov of the Russia Bloc gained 75 % of the Crimean vote compared to 23 % for
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Bagrov. In the subsequent Crimean Supreme Soviet elections, the Russia Bloc obtained 57 of 98
seats. It appeared that Meshkov had a strong mandate to call for negotiating a federal treaty with
Kyyiv along the lines of Tatarstan's agreement with the Russian center, and for bringing Crimea
into the Russian orbit. However, he mismanaged the political situation in Crimea, and ended up
losing power. Meshkov called for a Crimean boycott of the 1994 Ukrainian parliamentary
elections. Most Crimeans, 62 % in the first round and 65 % in the second, went to the polls, and
Grach's Crimean Communists won the 23 seats allocated to the ARC in Ukraine's national
legislature. Along with the majority of Crimeans (90 % in the second round), Meshkov backed
Leonid Kuchma's bid for the Ukrainian presidency in June-July, 1994. Kuchma beat Kravchuk,
Meshkov congratulated Kuchma, then Kuchma moved against Meshkov. Kuchma was less
inclined than Kravchuk to tolerate a separate presidency for Crimea. Meshkov weakened his
position, which enabled Kuchma to oust Meshkov. The Russia Bloc coalition fell apart, and
Meshkov could not handle the economic decline and troubles brought on by his election and
Kravchuk's previous neglect of economic reform. Few Russian and Ukrainian tourists came to
Crimea during Meshkov's tenure. In addition, Meshkov was vague about his plans for Crimea's
political status, and changed his mind on the matter more than once. In March, 1995, Kuchma
fired Meshkov, and abolished the post of Crimean president (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007; Lieven,
1999).
By ousting Meshkov, Kuchma had resolved the question of Crimea's relations with
Kyyiv. One factor in Kuchma's victory over Meshkov was the Ukrainian central government's
control over the security forces in Crimea, including the interior ministry forces and the
Ukrainian intelligence service, the SBU. While the Black Sea Fleet sailors could have come to
Meshkov's aid, a move that would have touched off a Russo-Ukrainian war, the Russian
government was at the time preoccupied with Chechnya. In other words, Yeltsin's troubles with
Chechnya gave Kuchma an opportunity to break the Crimean separatist movement. It is ironic
that the Crimean Tatars were guaranteed 14 seats in the Crimean Supreme Soviet in the 1994-98
period, and that from the 1998 Crimean elections afterward, they had to settle for a few seats, a
feat achieved by aligning themselves first with RUKH and then with the Our Ukraine party.
Since the ouster of Meshkov, two political movements have dominated the Crimean scene. One
is the Crimean branch of the Ukrainian Communist Party, led by Leonid Grach, and the other is a
pro-Ukrainian `party of power,' made up of former Communist apparatchiks who presently
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support the policies of the Ukrainian central government. This `party of power' has mutated
since 1994. The PEVK was the main pro-Ukrainian party in Crimea until 1998, when its place
was taken over by the pro-Kuchma National Democratic Party (NDP). In the 2006 Crimean
election, the pro-Yanukovych Party of Regions secured control of the Crimean government, and
still holds power to this day. In the 1998 election, the PEVK, which had dominated Crimean
politics since Meshkov's removal in March, 1995, lost control of the Crimean parliament to
Grach's Communists. In an odd case of `cohabitation,' the NDP dominated the ARC
government, while the Communists had a majority of seats in the Crimean legislative assembly.
In 2002, the NDP secured authority in the ARC legislature. In 1998, most Crimean Tatars on the
peninsula were Uzbek citizens, and thus ineligible to vote. However, 90 % of them obtained
Ukrainian citizenship by 2002, and could thus participate in the elections held that year. Cemilev
and Chubarov supported the Our Ukraine party, and most Crimean Tatar voters chose this party
as their preferred one (Sasse, 2007; Kuzio, 2007).
After the Orange Revolution of 2004, the pro-Kuchma party Peoples' Union `Stability,'
with 38 seats, joined up with the pro-Yushchenko Power in Unity party, with 15 seats, to garner a
slim majority that backed the policies of President Yushchenko. In the March, 2006 elections
held in Crimea, the Party of Regions, led by Viktor Yanukovych, won control of the Crimean
executive and legislature with 40-50 % of the vote. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party and the
Tymoshenko Bloc came in second with a combined total of 14-20 % of the vote, while Grach's
Communists garnered 5 % of the vote. Crimea had four constitutions in the 1990s. Besides the
May and September, 1992 constitutions, the Crimean Supreme Soviet adopted another one on
May 20, 1994 that was similar to the May, 1992 charter. Kyyiv rejected this third Crimean
constitution, which had the support of Meshkov. After the ouster of Meshkov, the Ukrainian
parliament passed two enabling bills outlining a limited form of autonomy for the Crimea on
March 17, 1995. Crimea's legislature passed a draft constitution on November 1, 1995, and the
Ukrainian parliament passed a `Law on the Autonomous Republic of Crimea,' on April 4, 1996,
which approved 116 of the 136 articles in the Crimean charter. After Grach became chair of the
Crimean legislature in March, 1998, he worked to get a permanent constitution for Crimea
passed. Grach was pro-Ukrainian because he feared that Crimea's secession would lead to
another `Kosovo.' He accepted that Crimea was a part of Ukraine. On October 21, 1998, the
Crimean Supreme Soviet, by a vote of 82 for to 18 against, adopted a permanent charter for
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Crimea that recognized that the ARC was a part of a unitary Ukraine, that Crimeans were
citizens of Ukraine and could not obtain dual citizenship, and that the security ministries in
Crimea were controlled by the Ukrainian central government. On December 23, 1998, the
Ukrainian parliament ratified the 1998 Crimean constitution by a vote of 230 for the charter (out
of 450 members). Since then, Crimeans have celebrated their `Constitution Day' on October 21.
With the adoption of the 1998 Crimean constitution, the issue of the ARC seceding from Ukraine
and joining Russia was buried once and for all. Kyyiv had its way on the important matters. Not
only was Russian not made a state language of Crimea, but the Ukrainian central government
dominated Crimea's security services and ministries, and all Crimeans were exclusively citizens
of Ukraine. Thus, Crimea's Russians have reconciled themselves to being Ukrainian citizens, a
decision made easier by the ethnic affinity between Russians and Ukrainians, and by Russia
being preoccupied with its own matters in the 1990s. With the accession of Putin in Russia in
2000, Russia has acted to exert influence at the Ukrainian central government level rather than
fan the flames of separatist agitation in Crimea (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007; New York Times,
2004; ark.gov.ua, 2010).
Despite the calls of democratic nationalists to employ force to bring Crimea to heal
during the critical 1992-95 period, the Ukrainian central government was reluctant to adopt
coercive measures. Although it controlled the security ministries and services in Crimea, Kyyiv
backed away from force, which would have sparked ethnic violence. Kuchma used the SBU to
undermine Meshkov's government from within, and these active measures helped to bring down
Meshkov. The differences between the Ukrainian central government and the Russian Crimeans
could have spiraled out of control had the Russian sailors of the Black Sea Fleet provided armed
support to the Crimean separatists. This did not happen because Russia and Ukraine worked to
settle their differences over Sevastopol's status and the division of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet.
These disputes had the potential to ignite a Russo-Ukrainian war, but neither side saw any
advantage to resorting to force against the other. Russians view Ukrainians as ethnic kin, and the
Ukrainian government knew Russia was the more powerful of the two countries. It was in this
context that the dispute over the Black Sea Fleet was carried out (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007).
Of the Soviet naval fleets, only the Black Sea Fleet was based in a non-Russian port.
Russia assumed full control of the Pacific, Northern, and Baltic Soviet fleets after the Soviet
collapse in December, 1991. The Black Sea Fleet was different. It was based in Sevastopol', the
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Crimean port Ukraine inherited when it became independent. As mentioned earlier, Russia
considered Sevastopol' as part of its national patrimony, and a major feature of its national
mythology. It reasoned that Catherine the Great established the Russian Black Sea Fleet there in
1783, and that it properly belonged to Russia. In addition, Sevastopol' was the scene of a Nazi
takeover and a Russian reconquest during World War II. In other words, Russians are
sentimental about Sevastopol'. Ukraine viewed Sevastopol' as part of its territory, since
Khrushchev handed over all of Crimea, including Sevastopol', to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954.
Kyyiv thought it was entitled to part of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, since the naval squadrons
were on its territory. The 1998 Crimean constitution does not give Sevastopol' special status.
Therefore, it recognizes Sevastopol' to be part of the ARC, which in turn is an integral part of
Ukraine. Russia went along with this because it had settled its differences with Ukraine over
Sevastopol' and the Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine and Russia came to an agreement in May, 1997
after a tortuous five-year period of wrangling. Following the collapse of the hard-liners' putsch
in Moscow in August, 1991, the Russian commander of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet was amenable
to accepting Ukrainian control over the naval formation. Kravchuk demurred because he wanted
the support of the Black Sea sailors for independence in the December 1, 1991 referendum on
Ukraine's status. In the end, 70 % of Black Sea Fleet officers and sailors backed Ukrainian
independence. However, most of them refused to take an oath of allegiance to Ukraine in
January-February, 1992. Ukraine's government received a bonanza in July, 1992, when many
Sevastopol' sailors professed to serve in the Ukrainian armed forces, and these sailors and their
ships went to Odesa to join the nascent naval force being assembled there. In April, 1992, Russia
and Ukraine issued decrees assuming control over the Black Sea Fleet. Before the month was
out, both countries agreed that the fleet was a mutual inheritance. Yeltsin and Kravchuk made a
series of agreements on the status of the Black Sea Fleet, but these accords collapsed due to
diametrically opposed interpretations of the character of Sevastopol'. Russia wanted a 99-year
lease to Sevastopol's bays, while Ukraine was intent on a shorter lease period. Under Meshkov,
the Sevastopol' council passed a resolution declaring the port part of Russia, a decision the
Ukrainian government denounced as being in contravention of Ukrainian jurisdiction over
Crimea. Russia wanted to integrate Ukraine into supranational structures, a position Ukrainian
parties of all ideological hues opposed (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007).
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When Kuchma was elected president of Ukraine in July, 1994, 80 % of Black Sea ships
were flying the Russian flag of Saint Andrew. Russia hoped that Kuchma would be more
amenable than Kravchuk to giving into Russian demands. Kuchma opposed letting Russia have
Sevastopol', and, like Kravchuk, he wanted the city to remain under Ukrainian jurisdiction. By
1994, both countries were in agreement over the division of the fleet's ships, but they still
disagreed about Sevastopol's status and Ukraine's relations with the CIS, that is, over whether
Ukraine should give up some of its sovereign powers to Russian-dominated supranational
structures. In addition, Kuchma insisted that Ukraine would still deploy a fleet in Sevastopol',
and would not let only the Russians base their naval squadrons in the port. Ukraine and Russia
began negotiations over Sevastopol' and the Black Sea Fleet after the Sochi summit in
November, 1995. In the meantime, Russia turned over several facilities, including those in
Evpatoria and Kerch, to the Ukrainian armed forces. Russia and Ukraine came to an agreement
on May 28, 1997. Russian premier Viktor Chernomyrdin and Ukrainian prime minister Pavlo
Lazarenko signed an accord that recognized Sevastopol' as part of Ukraine, gave Russia a 20year lease (1997-2017) over three of the five bays of the port, and divided up the Black Sea Fleet
between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine kept control of the other two bays, which it used for its
own naval formation. Russia received 271 ships, Ukraine 254. To pay energy debts to Russia,
Ukraine gave the Russians 117 of the ships allocated to it. In the end, Russia got 388 ships, and
Ukraine received 137. Yeltsin traveled to Kyyiv to sign the treaty with Kuchma, and he also
signed an agreement recognizing the Russo-Ukrainian border as drawn by Soviet ethnographers
under Lenin. In agreeing to the boundary treaty, Yeltsin also accepted Khrushchev's 1954
cession of Crimea to Ukraine. After Yanukovych won the Ukrainian presidential election in
2010, he acted to extend Russia's lease over Sevastopol's port facilities. In April, 2010, there was
an acrimonious debate in the Ukrainian parliament, but in the end, it passed a law extending
Russia's lease for another 25 years, beginning in 2017. In other words, the Russian lease over
Sevastopol' will last until 2042 (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007; Shoemaker, 2010).
9.2 Evaluation of Territoriality with the Crimea Case
It is the main point of the following section that territorial dynamics best explain what has
happened on the Crimean peninsula since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Crimea's
three main ethnicities, the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Crimean Tatars hold different
conceptualizations of the “proper” place Crimea has in their collective identities. For the
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Crimean Tatars, the peninsula is their “homeland.” As is indicated in the historical background
section, this nationality did not always consider Crimea to be its mother country. In the late 18th
and 19th centuries, Crimean Tatars left the Tauride gubernia in droves, and migrated to the
Ottoman Empire. They figured that it was better to dwell in a Muslim-ruled polity and a
Muslim-majority area than to be mudejars in a Christian-majority state. With the advent of
Crimean Tatar nationalism in the late 19th century, the remaining Tatar people began to
conceptualize Crimea as their home territory, pointing to the previous existence of the Crimean
Khanate as the antecedent to their claim to be the “indigenous” ethnicity on the peninsula. The
1944 deportation and the subsequent agitation for the right to return has only reinforced Crimean
Tatar identification of the ARC as their homeland (Uehling, 2004; Fisher, 1978).
The return of 250,000 Crimean Tatars to the peninsula since 1989 has placed this
ethnicity on a collision course with the Russian and Ukrainian “colonizers,” who together view
the Crimean Tatars as intruders, and who have their own ideas of the “proper” status of Crimea.
Crimean Russians, who make up 58 % of the ARC's current population, think that their majority
status gives them the right to decide on how Crimea will relate to Ukraine and Russia.
Meshkov's victory in the January, 1994 Crimean presidential election may indicate that the
Crimean Russians would prefer that Crimea rejoin Russia, and thus regain the status it had before
Khrushchev ceded the peninsula to the Ukrainian SSR in February, 1954. Grach's acceptance of
Ukrainian rule over Crimea in 1998 signifies that numerous Crimean Russians came around to
the view that the ARC is part of Ukraine, a sentiment made more acceptable by the fact that the
Russians and Ukrainians are ethnic siblings who share similar languages and the same religion,
Eastern Orthodoxy. In addition, many ethnic Ukrainians in the eastern and southern parts of
Ukraine tend to speak Russian as their first language, a practice that makes these Ukrainians
“acceptable” to the Russians in these areas of the country. On the other hand, the Crimean
Ukrainians consider Crimea to be an integral part of Ukraine that must be retained at all costs.
They view Khrushchev's transfer of Crimea from RSFSR to Ukrainian SSR jurisdiction to be a
legitimate act, one that not only gives Ukraine access to the Black Sea, but one that also is in
accord with historical justice, for the Ukrainians tend to see the Kievan Rus heritage as
exclusively theirs, and they exclude the Russians and Belarussians from it. Since Grand Prince
Vladimir (Ukrainian, Volodymyr) was supposedly baptized in Chersonesus (Sevastopol'), Kyyiv
views him as Ukraine's ancestor, and they see Russian ethnogenesis as arising in the Moscow
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region, not in the territory that Ukraine now controls. The implication of this reasoning is that
Crimea belongs by right to Ukraine. Crimean Ukrainians founded their own political party in
1993, and they threatened to detach northern Crimea from the southern part of the peninsula after
Meshkov and his Russia Bloc won control of the ARC government in 1994. These actions show
that the Crimean Ukrainians are a major lobby for Kyyiv's continued domination of Crimea. In
other words, Crimea's Russians and Ukrainians do not see eye to eye. While both ethnicities
detest the Crimean Tatars, their mutual interests are not one and the same (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse,
2007).
As is implied in the above introductory comments, the Crimean question is fundamentally
a territorial dispute. Crimea's three main ethnicities have different conceptions of what is the
“proper” status of the peninsula. Crimean Tatars see the ARC as their “homeland,” and they
have done so since the rise of Ismail Bey Gaspirali in the late 19th century. The implication of
this claim is that the Crimean Tatars think of Crimea as their eponymous republic, which they
should control, just as they did in the 1443-1783 and 1923-28 periods. Perhaps this is taking the
point too far, for the Crimean Tatars may be satisfied with peacefully coexisting with the
peninsula's Russians and Ukrainians, while retaining their parallel government structures.
Probably it is the case that many Crimean Tatars are more or less happy with the status quo,
while a minority envisions the kind of Crimean republic that Ibrahimov led in the 1920s. These
Crimean Tatar visions rankle the Russians and Ukrainians who live on the peninsula. Neither
ethnicity is willing to give their dwellings to Crimean Tatar returnees, and the ARC government
encouraged both East Slavic groups to construct dachas on empty land as a way to keep the
Crimean Tatars from building homes on it. There has been one significant clash between the
Slavs and the Crimean Tatars, and that was in June, 1995. Ukrainian-controlled security forces
suppressed this ethnic violence, and kept it from escalating and spreading beyond Feodosia. On
the other hand, the Crimean Tatars have exerted leverage on the Slavic-dominated ARC
government by threatening to immolate themselves if the Crimean interior ministry personnel
moved against them. Musa Mahmut set the precedent in 1978, and the present Crimean Tatars
have followed in his footsteps, although not being pushed to the point of actually setting
themselves on fire. Religious differences between the Eastern Orthodox Christian Slavs and the
Muslim Crimean Tatars play a role in the dispute between the two groups, but religion in the
Crimean case is more a badge of ethnic identity than the root cause of the tensions. Had the
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Crimean Tatars been thinking in primarily religious terms, then they would have remained in
predominantly-Muslim Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and would not have returned to Crimea, for
after 1945, the peninsula had a non-Muslim majority, and the Crimean Tatars would not have
wanted to be mudejars. That 250,000 Crimean Tatars returned to the present-day ARC is proof
that they consider Crimea to be their territory, and that they do not care whether they are a
minority ethnicity on the Crimean peninsula. In addition, they appear to be content to be the
only Muslim ethnic group in the ARC. Religion serves as a back up to the fundamental
territorial dispute between the Slavs and the Crimean Tatars (Uehling, 2004; Sasse, 2007).
On the other hand, the Crimean Russians and Ukrainians employ religious identity as a
means of cementing their territorial claims to the peninsula in their dispute with the Crimean
Tatars. Both groups view the Crimean Tatars as intruders bent on seizing their land and
dwellings, and not primarily as some religious “other.” While the Crimean Russians and the
Russian government justify their claim to dominance of Crimea partially on religious grounds,
their sentiment for the peninsula extends into the secular realm. Russians tend to see the Crimea
peninsula as their version of Athos. Mount Athos is a semi-autonomous monastic republic that is
within Greece's jurisdiction. Eastern Orthodox, Russians and Ukrainians included, see this semiautonomous republic as the epitome of Eastern Christian monastic practice. Orthodox believers
all over the world look up to the monks on Mount Athos, and take inspiration from them. Given
the importance of Mount Athos in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, it comes as no surprise that the
Russians wanted to establish their own version of the Athos monastic community on territory
that belonged to the tsarist and Soviet empires. Tsar Nicholas I chose Crimea for his Russian
Athos in the early 19th century partially because the Greeks had long inhabited the peninsula and
also because two popes (Clement I and Martin I) were exiled there. In other words, Crimea had
a Christian history even before Russia annexed Crimea in 1783. Like the Ukrainians, the
Russians hold that Grand Prince Vladimir was baptized at Chersonesus (Sevastopol') in 988 CE.
Russians view him as their ancestor, as well as the forebear of the Ukrainians and Belarussians.
It is for these reasons that the Crimean Russians have re-established their “Athos” community on
the Crimean peninsula. This Athos complex includes Dormition and Inkerman monasteries, the
former of which is in Bakhchesaray, the Saint Paskareva convent, the Cosmas and Damian
shrine, and Saint Vladimir's church. While these monuments have religious significance, they
also cement the Russian claim that Crimea is theirs. This Russian affirmation extends into the
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secular realm, and centers on the city of Sevastopol'. This urban area was the site of the tsarist
and Soviet Black Sea Fleets, and is the current base of the post-Soviet Russian Black Sea naval
formations. In addition, Sevastopol' was the focus of the major battles of the Crimean War, it
was the last holdout of the Nazi takeover of Crimea in 1942, and it was the last target of the
Soviet reconquest of the peninsula in 1944. In other words, Russia utilizes World War II as a
pillar of its modern identity, and Sevastopol' is part of the Russian mythology surrounding the
Second World War. What this thinking points to is that territoriality is the overriding Russian
concern when it comes to Crimea, and that they take from both the religious and secular realms
to bolster their argument for possessing the peninsula (Kozelsky, 2010; Royle, 2000; Fisher,
1978).
Ukrainians hold onto their own conception of territoriality that is at variance with that of
the Russians. While both ethnicities are united in their detestation of the Crimean Tatars,
viewing them as “intruders” and “traitors of the (Soviet) motherland,” their claims to Crimea are
more or less mutually exclusive. This even comes out in the religious realm. While both
Russians and Ukrainians hold to the tradition that Grand Prince Vladimir (Volodymyr) was
baptized in Chersonesus (Sevastopol'), the Ukrainians see him as exclusively theirs, and
conclude that Russian origins began in the Moscow region. On the other hand, Russians
perceive that Grand Prince Vladimir is the common ancestor of the three East Slavic groups who
brought Eastern Orthodox Christianity to them all. Ukrainians share with the Russians in the
Crimean Athos project, though the Russians were the ones who took the lead in constructing it.
While it appears that the Moscow Patriarchate exercises firm control over the Russian Athos on
Crimea, the two secessionist Ukrainian Orthodox churches may lay claim to it one day as a
means to cement Ukrainian dominance over the peninsula. Like the Russians, the Ukrainians use
Crimea's religious context to bolster their claim to the ARC. In addition, the Ukrainians extend
their territorial argument into the secular realm, claiming that Khrushchev legitimately gave them
Crimea on February 19, 1954. For Kyyiv, the international norm that “post-colonial” boundaries
are inviolable strengthens its argument for keeping control of Crimea. Grach appeared to desire
to avoid another Kosovo scenario in 1998, which would have entailed fighting between Crimea's
Russians and Ukrainians. This stance indicates that most Crimean Russians had accepted
Ukrainian rule by this date. While the election of Meshkov and his Russia Bloc in 1994 scared
the Ukrainian government and people, Kuchma managed to outmaneuver Meshkov, remove him,
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and abolish the ARC presidency. Crimea's Russians may have realized that they were beaten, so
they resigned themselves to Kyyiv's jurisdiction. It is also likely that the Crimean Russians
submitted to Ukrainian rule because Kuchma was from the Russified eastern Ukrainian region,
an area that shares that characteristic with the southern part of the country, of which Crimea is a
member. In other words, Kuchma was one of their own in Crimean Russian calculations, so he
was a Ukrainian president with whom the ARC government could conduct business (Kuzio,
2007; Sasse, 2007; Kozelsky, 2010; McGuckin, 2010).
Crimea is at the center of the territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine.
Khrushchev, although ethnically Russian, was first secretary of the Ukrainian SSR under Stalin,
and he may have seen this Soviet union-republic as his main power base in his struggle for
paramountcy with Malenkov and the Stalinists in the mid-1950s. He probably saw the Ukrainian
SSR apparat as a political formation staffed with his “own” officials, and possessed an affinity
with them that extended to ceding Crimea to Ukraine as a bribe for their support, as Sasse (2007)
has contended. This line of reasoning is probable, and is grounded in terms of Soviet political
calculations. Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev, was an ethnic Russian from the
Ukrainian SSR. This background may explain why he let the Ukrainian SSR keep Crimea after
he assumed power from Khrushchev in October, 1964. In addition, the Russians were the de
facto ruling ethnicity of the Soviet empire, and the USSR's internal boundaries did not have
much real meaning, since political power was concentrated in the Kremlin in Moscow. One
implication of this reality is that Khrushchev and his Soviet successors saw no need to transfer
Crimea back to the RSFSR. Because Gorbachev did not foresee the disintegration of the USSR,
and Yeltsin was preoccupied with other matters, neither official saw the cession of Crimea back
to Russia as a necessity. In addition, Yeltsin may have reasoned that newly-independent Ukraine
would have given some powers to supranational CIS bodies, an event that did not occur, for in
the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, Ukraine pressed for and secured all of the prerequisites of a
sovereign state. One indication of this was the formation of a separate Ukrainian navy, which
was formed in Odesa of ships that had left Sevastopol' after their crews took oaths to serve
Ukraine, and not Russia. Ukraine also formed its own army, especially after the CIS members
rejected a Commonwealth-wide armed force in favor of separate armies for its members at the
Tashkent conference of May, 1992. With the signing of the Tashkent Accord, the CIS became a
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dead letter, and Yeltsin's dreams of CIS-wide supranational bodies that Russia would dominate
evaporated (Sasse, 2007; Kuzio, 2007).
What all this means for Crimea is that many Russians, including those on the peninsula,
were in for a nasty surprise when the Soviet Union broke up. Ukraine became a fully sovereign,
independent state at Kravchuk's instigation, and he had the support of most of the Ukrainian
public. Kravchuk lobbied for Ukrainian independence before the December 1, 1991 referendum,
and he received the endorsement of 90 % of the Ukrainian electorate for making Ukraine into a
sovereign republic that was independent of the Soviet state, and that gave no powers to a Soviet
center. In effect, as a part of Ukraine, Crimea became foreign territory in the eyes of the
Russians in the newly-established Russian Federation. Crimean Russians indicated that union of
the Crimean peninsula with Russia was their first choice by electing the Russian nationalist Yuri
Meshkov by an overwhelming vote (75 % for him contrasted with 23 % for Bagrov) in January,
1994, and giving his Russia Bloc 57 of 98 seats in the Crimean Supreme Soviet. What kept this
series of events from leading to civil war between the Ukrainians and the Crimean Russians was
the firm control the Ukrainian central government had over the interior ministry forces and the
SBU on the Crimean peninsula. Kuzio (2007) emphasized this point, and it is the key to
Ukraine's retention of Crimea during and after the Meshkov presidency. Kyyiv will continue to
retain control of Crimea's security services into the future. It will probably let the Moscow
Patriarchate maintain ownership of the Russian Athos on Crimea, viewing this as a sop to
Crimean Russian sensibilities. The Ukrainian central government is happy to exercise effective
and de jure control of the ARC, including Sevastopol', and probably thinks it got a good deal by
inheriting Crimea from the USSR. Such a denouement gives Ukraine full access to the Black
Sea, an aspiration shared by all Ukrainians of all ideological hues (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007;
Kozelsky, 2010).
Territoriality takes central stage in the Russo-Ukrainian dispute over the Crimean
peninsula. Sevastopol' was the chief flashpoint of this contentious territorial issue between
Russians and Ukrainians in the 1990s. This was the case because the Black Sea Fleet was based
there, and both newly independent states claimed this naval formation as their own. Both Russia
and Ukraine wanted to acquire the ships of the Black Sea Fleet as a way to quickly and cheaply
establish a flotilla presence on the Black Sea. In addition, Sevastopol' has sentimental value to
the Russians, for it was Russian armies that took over Crimea from the Ottoman Turks and the
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Crimean Tatars, it was a Russian monarch, Catherine the Great, who established the Black Sea
Fleet in the first place, and Russian-led Soviet armies defended the city before it fell to the Nazis
in 1941 and reconquered it from the Wehrmacht in 1944. Russia sees its role in World War II as
a pillar of its modern legitimacy, and thus attaches strong sentimentality to identifying
Sevastopol' with the Russian people. These factors may explain why it was hard for Russia and
Ukraine to resolve their differences over Sevastopol' and the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. It is no
coincidence that both countries came to an agreement over Sevastopol's status and the partition
of the Black Sea Fleet after Meshkov's fall from power. Being from Russified eastern Ukraine,
Kuchma was probably seen by Yeltsin as a trustworthy partner with whom it was possible to
come to terms. Had a western Ukrainian nationalist come to power in 1994, the possibility of a
treaty between Russia and Ukraine over these issues would have been more remote. Kuchma
may have identified partially with Russian interests, seeing the Russian people as fellow Eastern
Slavs rather than as miscreants bent on imperial domination of Ukraine. Yanukovych continues
with the Kuchma tradition of accommodating Russian interests, as is indicated by his extension
of the Russian lease over three of five of Sevastopol's harbors until 2042. Yushchenko,
Yanukovych's predecessor, catered more to the Ukrainian nationalist lobby, which was based in
central and western Ukraine. He may have wanted to have the Russian Black Sea Fleet expelled
from Sevastopol' in 2017. His defeat in January, 2010, made this possibility a distinctly remote
one, and Yanukovych sought to place Ukraine in the Russian orbit by extending the Russian
lease, cementing Ukraine's ties with Russia, and placing the Ukrainian republic in the Russian
sphere of influence. Yanukovych, who is from eastern Ukraine, like Kuchma, desires to place
Ukraine in the Russian orbit, having an affinity with Russian concerns and interests (Shoemaker,
2010; Sasse, 2007; Kuzio, 2007).
Facilitating Conditions in the Crimea Case
In the Crimean case, the role of the elites and the coercive instruments at their disposal
provides the key to why Crimea has remained the `dog that did not bark.’ The other five
facilitating conditions would appear to fan the flames of ethnic conflict on the Crimean
peninsula. In fact, they had the potential to make ethnic differences worse and to exacerbate
nationality conflicts and cause them to explode in ethnic violence. Thus, the five facilitating
conditions other than the role of the elites, would point to a high likelihood that ethnic conflict
would break out between the Slavs and Crimean Tatars, and between the Russians and
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Ukrainians. The conditions for ethnic conflict were existent in the Crimea after the Soviet
collapse of 1991. It would appear intuitive that the prerequisites for a tripartite ethnic war were
present in the Crimean situation, and that the outcome has been counter-intuitive. However, elite
behavior dampened the fires of ethnic antagonism on the Crimean peninsula. This major role for
the elites in Kyyiv, Moscow, and Crimea may indicate the role that human contingency can play
in world affairs. While territoriality is present, the role of the elites kept it from touching off
sustained and prolonged ethnic violence. So far, there has been one major incident of ethnic riots
in Crimea, the Crimean Tatar demonstrations against the Slavs in June, 1995 (Uehling, 2004;
Sasse, 2007). However, the posturing by Russia and Ukraine over Crimea had the potential to
stoke ethnic clashes between the peninsula’s Russians and Ukrainians, an event that would draw
in Moscow and Kyyiv on the side of their respective co-ethnics. Such a scenario is unlikely,
though not impossible. Russians and Ukrainians are similar, but they speak different languages,
and a minority of Ukrainians is Catholic, while most religious Russians are Eastern Orthodox
Christian. However, the commonalities between the Russians and Ukrainians may establish an
affinity between these two nationalities that makes Russian acceptance of Ukrainian control over
Crimea palpable. The continuation of this situation depends on Kyyiv respecting the human and
cultural rights of the Russians in Crimea. An implication of this situation is that the role of the
Ukrainian and Russian elites is crucial to peace on the Crimean peninsula.
Elite behavior and the coercive instruments at their disposal is the key facilitating
condition that has kept Crimea’s ethnic tensions from escalating out of control. Kuzio (2007)
makes a similar argument, and this following discussion will show that this researcher is in
agreement with Kuzio (2007) on this point. Ukraine’s central government secured control of the
interior ministry forces and the SBU on the Crimean peninsula in the aftermath of the Soviet
collapse. It is possible that violent ethnic clashes could have escalated to civil war had the
Crimean Russians seized management of Crimea’s coercive instruments. That they did not has
kept Crimea as an integral part of Ukraine, and “prevented” Russia from intervening on their
behalf, thus causing a war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Both Russians and
Ukrainians have attachments to the peninsula based on historical events and places. Given these
attachments, there is intense interest in Crimean developments in Moscow and Kyyiv. Of the
two axes of ethnic conflict in Crimea, the Slav-Crimean Tatar and the Russo-Ukrainian, the
second has more serious repercussions. Any clash between Crimean Russians and Ukrainians
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would draw in Russia somehow, and present the Ukrainian central government with a serious
headache. Renewed conflict between the Crimean Slavs and the Crimean Tatars is more likely,
given the disadvantaged position of the latter group in relation to the Slavs. However, such
Tatar-Slav ethnic riots could be confined to Crimea, and the Ukrainian security services could
clamp down on any violent Crimean Tatar protest. Cemilev and the rest of the Crimean Tatar
elite has largely chosen passive resistance to Crimean Slav injustices against them, though the
ghost of Musa Mahmut still haunts the Crimean Tatar imagination. Instead of immolating
themselves, the Crimean Tatar leadership has decided to work with and within the Ukrainian
political system. Its parallel government gives organization to Crimean Tatar interests, and the
presence of Cemilev and his top aide, Chubarov, in the Ukrainian Rada shows that the Crimean
Tatars recognize the Ukrainian state. Another indication of this phenomenon is that most
Crimean Tatars on the peninsula have taken on Ukrainian citizenship. This event indicates that
the Crimean Tatars are determined to stay in Crimea. Elite behavior has been the chief
facilitating condition that has contributed to relative ethnic peace on the Crimean peninsula
(Uehling, 2004; Sasse, 2007; Kuzio, 2007).
The other five facilitating conditions would appear to make ethnic conflict more likely on
the Russo-Ukrainian axis and two of them on the Slav-Tatar axis. Territoriality is present in the
Crimean situation, for the Crimean Tatars consider the peninsula to be their “homeland,” the
Russians share an affinity for Crimea based on historical events, especially the two World War II
battles for Sevastopol’, while the Ukrainians justify their retention of the ARC based on a
territorial transfer of Crimea from RSFSR control to Ukrainian SSR jurisdiction by Khrushchev
in February, 1954. Religion plays more of a role in reinforcing the ethnic differences between
the Crimean Tatars, Russians, and Ukrainians rather than as a catalyst for nationality tensions.
Islam is a badge of Crimean Tatar identity, while the Russian Athos project provides landmarks
that justify Russian territorial interest in the Crimean peninsula. Although the Crimean Russians
and Ukrainians largely belong to Moscow Patriarchate jurisdiction, they interpret the role of
Grand Prince Vladimir differently. According to tradition, Vladimir was baptized at
Chersonesus, Crimea. Ukrainians claim Vladimir (Volodymyr) as exclusively theirs, and that
this fact makes them the “rightful” owners of Crimea, while the Russians assert that Vladimir is
their ancestor as well, and that this justifies their claim to Crimea, or, at the least, a say in the
peninsula’s affairs. As I imply, religion is a tool rather than a catalyst of the territorial
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differences between the three main Crimean ethnicities (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007; Kozelsky,
2010; Uehling, 2004).
Ethnic Russians form the majority of the Crimean population, making up 58 % of the
peninsula’s populace. This factor may give the Crimean Russians an incentive to defy the central
government in Kyyiv, and to do so with support from the Russian Federation, for Russia has
posed as the champion of Russian interests in the other former Soviet republics. Acting on this
policy, Russia has an inducement to come to the Crimean Russians’ aid were the peninsula’s
Russians to stand up to the Ukrainian government. Russia’s interest in Sevastopol’ and the
Russian Black Sea Fleet berthed there would appear to give the Russian Federation an added
motive to interfere in Crimea’s affairs. Were Russia to be more forceful vis-à-vis its Crimean
policy, Ukraine’s central government would have an incentive to intervene if for no other reason
than the presence of ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea, who compose 24 % of the peninsula’s
population. In other words, the presence of nationals of both Russia and Ukraine gives both
countries a compelling reason to involve themselves in Crimean affairs. Given this situation, it
would appear that the Crimean Russians would agitate for dual Russo-Ukrainian citizenship. In
fact, in the early 1990s, they did. By the latter half of that decade, most Crimean Russians
accepted that they were citizens of Ukraine, a fact attested by Grach’s persuasion of the Crimean
Communists to consent to an ARC constitution that made Crimea an integral part of Ukraine.
Grach placed his fate in the hands of Kyyiv rather than Moscow. He did not want a repeat of the
Kosovo scenario. That the Crimean Communists had representation in the Ukrainian Rada may
have been an added inducement for Grach to accept that Crimea was Ukrainian territory, and that
Crimean Russians are Ukrainian citizens. The emergence of the pro-Russian Party of Regions
and the election of its presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych in 2010 are events that have tied
Crimea more closely to Ukraine. Russia does not appear to mind this series of developments,
seeing more advantage in exerting influence at the national level in Ukraine rather than at a
regional level (Sasse, 2007; Kuzio, 2007; Shoemaker, 2010).
As is implied in the above discussion, majority and minority status in Crimea has the
potential to ignite ethnic conflict in the Russo-Ukrainian case. However, the presence of
“diaspora” communities nearby makes the Crimean situation potentially more explosive. There
are millions of ethnic Ukrainians in southern Ukraine, who would come to the Crimean
Ukrainians’ aid were trouble to break out between them and the ethnic Russians. Although many
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southern Ukrainians speak Russian and tend to belong to the Moscow Patriarchate church rather
than the Ukrainian secessionist Orthodox churches (if they are religious), they would probably
have no qualms about helping their ethnic kin in Crimea were Russo-Ukrainian clashes to erupt
on the peninsula. Ethnic affinity, familial ties, and historical precedent (Khrushchev’s cession of
Crimea to Ukraine in 1954) may work together to induce Ukrainians on the “mainland” to come
to the assistance of beleaguered co-ethnics in Crimea. On the other hand, the Russian Federation
is close to Crimea. In fact, Russian territory is located to the east of the peninsula. Thus, Russia
has an incentive to send help to embattled Crimean Russians if they perceive a need to intervene.
That there exists a Russian “diaspora” that is near Crimea makes intervention by the Russian
Federation in Crimean affairs more likely. Russians would rally around the Crimean Russians,
and send them help if they perceived that such assistance was needed. Russia’s government
could covertly send money or arms to their ethnic kin in Crimea in case Russo-Ukrainian clashes
become serious. As mentioned in the Moldova chapter, the Russian government already did so
in the case of Transdnistria. Thus, Russian help to their Crimean co-ethnics cannot be
completely ruled out. In sum, Crimea’s two main ethnic groups have “diasporas” close by that
could intervene in the peninsula’s affairs, and create a critical situation (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse,
2007).
Location plays a role in this equation. Crimea is situated on the southern periphery of
Ukraine, but it is near Krasnodar krai, a region of the Russian Federation. The peninsula gives
Ukraine full access to the Black Sea. Had Russia retained control of Crimea, Ukrainian contact
with the Black Sea would have been much more circumscribed. Khrushchev’s cession of Crimea
to the Ukrainian SSR from the RSFSR jurisdiction was a blessing for the authorities in Kiev
(Kyyiv). During the days of the Directory, the Ukrainian authorities laid a claim to the Crimean
peninsula, seeing it as a useful outlet to the Black Sea and to world trade destinations. From
1920 to 1954, the Ukrainian SSR authorities had to accept RSFSR control over Crimea.
Khrushchev’s gift of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 was probably unexpected by the Ukrainian SSR
top officials, but they willingly accepted it when the event occurred. This cession of Crimea in
February, 1954 was a “bribe” by Khrushchev to win the support of Ukrainian SSR apparatchiks
in his struggle against his rivals. It helped that Khrushchev was first secretary of the Ukrainian
SSR in the 1930s. He probably felt an affinity with the Ukrainian apparat, and considered the
Ukrainian SSR a part of his personal inheritance. By this action, Khrushehev gave Ukraine full
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access to the Black Sea. Thus, Khrushchev fulfilled a Ukrainian dream to have Crimea (Kuzio,
2007; Lieven, 1999; Sasse, 2007).
Had Crimea been in the center of Ukraine rather than on its southern periphery, Russia
would have had a harder time sending assistance to its ethnic Russian inhabitants. Ukraine
would have even more readily controlled the region’s security forces, and the Crimean Russians
would have more readily accepted rule by Kyyiv. An election of Meshkov and his Russia Bloc
probably would not have occurred. Meshkov’s victory in the January, 1994 Crimean presidential
election was most probably facilitated by the Crimean peninsula’s proximity to Russian territory
on its eastern end. The presence of Russia nearby must have emboldened the Crimean Russians
to choose Meshkov over Bagrov. They must have reasoned that the Russian Federation would
have come to their help if push came to shove with Kyyiv. Given the chaos that beset the former
Soviet Union in the 1990s, such ideas of the redrawing of republican boundaries must not have
seemed far-fetched. Russia already redrew the map with its assistance to Transdnistria in 1992.
Even in the post-chaos Putin era, Russia has shown itself that it is not averse to remaking
boundaries in the post-Soviet space, for the Russian Federation recognized Abkhazia and South
Ossetia as “independent” of Georgia in August, 2008. Yushchenko must have been concerned
with this Russian action because Crimea has a Russian majority, and Russia showed itself willing
to annex desired territory in the Russo-Georgian War of 2008. Location matters, and Crimea’s
position on Ukraine’s periphery and proximity to the Russian Federation makes the Crimean
situation more touchy and inflammatory than it would have been had Crimea been in the middle
of Ukraine (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007).
Both Russian and Ukrainian media are readily available to Crimea’s inhabitants. This
presence makes it possible for Russian and Ukrainian television and radio to fan the flames of
ethnic hatred should tensions occur between the Crimean Russians and Ukrainians. As the
owner of Crimea, Ukraine could theoretically jam Russian broadcasts into the peninsula and
prevent the circulation of Russian newspapers. Such a move would probably backfire, and
embolden the Crimean Russians to agitate for intervention by the Russian Federation into their
affairs. This factor may explain why Ukraine has not prevented the circulation of Russian media
in Crimea. Ukraine’s openness to Russian media in Crimea is a double-edged sword. Russian
journalists and broadcasters may call for ethnic peace on the Crimean peninsula. On the other
hand, they could be highly critical of Ukrainian government actions, and such talk may be taken
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as a signal by Crimean Russians to protest against the Kyyiv regime. In response, Crimean
Ukrainians may clash with the Russians on the pretense of preserving the “honor” of Ukraine. It
appears that Crimean Russians and Ukrainians have a decent standard of living, certainly one
that is better than that of the Crimean Tatar returnees. However, economic competition between
the Russians and Ukrainians is a distinct possibility. Enmity toward the impoverished Crimean
Tatars unites them, but Kyyiv’s patronage of its ethnic kin in Crimea at the expense of the ethnic
Russians may cause trouble between Crimea’s two largest ethnicities. Complicating this picture
is the roll of Russian and Ukrainian mafias. They control much of Crimea’s economic activity,
and turf wars between them may bring in the Ukrainian government on the side of Ukrainian
Mafioso and the Russian government on the side of Crimean Russian mobsters. It would appear
that Kyyiv allows the Crimean Russians to have economic freedom and opportunities as a way to
keep Crimea’s ethnic majority happy, and to prevent it from appealing to Russia for assistance.
Economic differences between Crimean Russians and Ukrainians may not be that great, but
Ukraine’s possession of Crimea gives the peninsula’s Ukrainians a leg up on its Russians.
Ukrainians in Kyyiv ultimately control the purse strings and economic resources of Ukraine.
Ethnic Ukrainians compose 77 % of Ukraine’s population, so the Ukrainian authorities in Kyyiv
have to cater to their interests, which may clash economically with those of Ukraine’s ethnic
Russians. Economic competition between Ukrainians and Russians in the Ukrainian republic is a
real possibility, and probably happens, for the ethnic Russians are still used to being the ruling
group in the former Soviet Union, with all of its economic advantages. Ethnic Russians in
Ukraine probably feel like second-class citizens at times, and fear losing out economically to the
more numerous Ukrainians, who control the central government apparatus in Kyyiv. Economic
resource differences between Russians and Ukrainians in Ukraine may be a source of ethnic
friction, a development that would affect Crimea as well (Sasse, 2007; Kuzio, 2007; Lieven,
1999).
With regard to the Crimean Tatars and their relations with the Crimean Slavs, two of the
five facilitating conditions appear to point toward increased ethnic conflict between the Crimean
Tatar returnees and the Crimean Russians and Ukrainians. As in the case of Russo-Ukrainian
relations on the Crimean peninsula, it appears that elite behavior is the contributing factor to
relative ethnic peace, and that the availability of information and economic resource differences
could have touched off civil war in Crimea. However, the dynamics of the facilitating conditions
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is different in the Crimean Tatar relations with the Crimean Slavs than in those between the
largest East Slavic groups. Crimean Tatars are a distinct minority in Crimea, composing 12 % of
the ARC’s population, and their Turkic Muslim identity sets them apart from the Eastern
Orthodox Crimean Slavs. It must be pointed out that religious differences between the Crimean
Slavs and Crimean Tatars are more markers of ethnic identity rather than the cause of conflict
between the two groups. Religion tends to feed into the territorial definitions of both sides. It is
a source of diverging historiographies that the Crimean Tatars and the Crimean Slavs draw on to
justify their territorial aspirations at the expense of each other. Crimea’s Tatars realize they are a
distinct minority on the peninsula, and their behavior reflects this, for they do not covet Crimean
Slav domociles. Instead, they have occupied vacant land and have constructed dwellings or they
have occupied empty apartments in Crimean cities. Their parallel government has not spoken of
taking over Crimea. Rather, this Crimean Tatar government is most of all a representative of
their ethnic kin’s interests, and gives the Crimean Tatars a voice in Crimea’s affairs. Crimean
Tatars know the Slavs outnumber them in the ARC. All they want is to develop the modern
conveniences in their settlements, and for the Crimean Slavs to leave them in peace. There is no
Crimean Tatar talk of driving the Slavs off the peninsula. Instead, they profess peaceful
coexistence between the Crimean Slav majority and the Crimean Tatar minority. This is a
pragmatic position for an ethnic minority, especially one made up of returnees. In this behavior,
the Crimean Tatars are not unique, for ethnic minorities whose share of the population is minimal
tend to seek accommodation with the ethnic majority in a territory (Uehling, 2004).
The Crimean Tatars have ethnic kin in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Thus, there is a
Crimean Tatar diaspora in Central Asia, but it is far away from the Tatars resident on Crimea.
This Crimean Tatar diaspora is better off than their co-ethnics on the Crimean peninsula. It
numbers about 100,000 people. While this diaspora can provide people and money for the
Crimean Tatars in the ARC, it cannot provide military assistance, an advantage the Crimean
Russians and Ukrainians enjoy from their “diaspora” communities. Unlike the Russians and
Ukrainians, the Crimean Tatars are stateless. Unlike the Chechens, the Crimean Tatars do not
possess a constituted ethnic entity. In effect, the Crimean Tatar returnees are settlers who claim
Crimea as their “homeland.” Their main weapon in publicizing their cause and inducing the
Crimean Slavs to leave them alone is the threat of immolating themselves, just as Musa Mahmut
did in 1978. One reason for this strategy is because the Crimean Tatars do not have a diaspora
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nearby, and they do not have a formal army. In the early 1990s, the Chechens managed to obtain
munitions from stockpiles the Russian army left behind in their republic. On the other hand,
Ukraine secured control of the SBU and interior ministry forces in Crimea around this same
time, keeping the Crimean Tatars (and Crimean Russians) from accumulating weapons. That is
why the Crimean Tatars had to resort to threats to set themselves on fire as a means of obtaining
a place in Crimean society (Uehling, 2004; Lieven, 1998; Kuzio, 2007).
While Crimea is located on the southern periphery of Ukraine, it holds a strategic position
in the eyes of Kyyiv. Ukrainian possession of Crimea gives Ukraine complete access to the
Black Sea. Had Russia held onto Crimea, Ukraine would have been confined to Odesa as its
main port on the Black Sea. In territorial terms, Ukrainians consider their retention of Crimea to
delimit their “natural” seaside boundary. The strategic value of Crimea for Ukraine gives the
Crimean Tatars a higher profile on the national scene than they would have had were Crimea
located in a less strategic position. Kyyiv pays attention to the Crimean Tatars because it wants
to preserve the ethnic peace between the Slavs and the Tatars, and thus ensure a strategic location
is stable. That is why RUKH sponsored the election of Cemilev and Chubarov to the Verkhovna
Rada (the Ukrainian national parliament) in 2000, and why the Our Ukraine party of Viktor
Yushchenko continues to back Crimean Tatar representation in Ukraine’s national assembly.
That Crimea’s Tatars are an electoral constituency of some importance is indicated by their
courting by the RUKH and Our Ukraine parties. Crimean Tatars have tended to vote for the Our
Ukraine party during and after the 2004 Orange Revolution. They are the reason why Our
Ukraine has a constituency in the ARC, an autonomous republic whose Slavs currently tend to
back the Party of Regions of Viktor Yanukovych. It is because of the Crimean Tatars that Our
Ukraine has a presence in Crimea, and why the Party of Regions does not have a total monopoly
on Crimean politics. That the Crimean Tatars intend to stay on the Crimean peninsula is
indicated by 90 % of them taking Ukrainian citizenship in the early 2000s. Crimea’s strategic
importance to Kyyiv guarantees that the Crimean Tatars will continue to have a voice on the
national Ukrainian scene (Uehling, 2004).
It appears that Crimean Tatars’ minority status in Crimea, their residence in a strategic
region of Ukraine, and the fact that their diaspora is far away in Central Asia combine together to
dampen the probability of ethnic conflict between them and the Crimean Slavs. On the other
hand, the availability of information and economic differences may aggravate ethnic tensions
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between the Crimean Slavs and the Crimean Tatars. Crimea’s strategic location for Ukraine
shines the spotlight on the Crimean Tatars, and thus deprives the Crimean Slavs of “cover” to
carry out a pogrom against this Turkic Muslim people. Crimea’s Tatars possess a parallel
government, which acts as a conduit for the communication of events to the wider Crimean Tatar
community. This Crimean Tatar government would spread the word of any incident between
their “constituency” and the Crimean Slavs, and could thus fan the flames of ethnic conflict.
While Cemilev has called for moderation, other members of the parallel government may seek
revenge, and incite the Crimean Tatars to attack Crimea’s Russians and Ukrainians. On the other
side of the ethnic divide, Russian and Ukrainian media could call support for their fellow coethnics in Crimea if ethnic violence breaks out between the Slavic majority and the Crimean
Tatar minority. In June, 1995, violence broke out between the Crimean Tatars and their Slavic
compatriots in the Crimean city of Feodosia. Ukrainian control of the means of coercion
dampened down and suppressed this ethnic riot, and prevented it from escalating to wider
clashes (Sasse, 2007; Uehling, 2004; Kuzio, 2007).
Economic differences between the Crimean Tatars and the Crimean Slavs is the most
combustible facilitating condition, for Crimea’s Tatars live in substandard conditions, with a lack
of paved roads in their settlements, a shortage of running water and electricity for their
dwellings, and a lack of indoor plumbing and heating. On the other hand, the Crimean Slavs
possess modern infrastructure. Crimea’s Slavs control the local ARC government, and have been
reluctant to build infrastructure for the Crimean Tatar settlements, and have allowed the Crimean
Tatars to occupy apartments in urban areas that the peninsula’s Russians and Ukrainians do not
want. In fact, when the Crimean Tatars began to return to Crimea in the early 1990s, the Slavicdominated Simferopol’ ARC government encouraged the Crimean Slavs to construct dachas on
vacant land as a way to keep the Tatar returnees from building settlements. Such a plan did not
work, for the Crimean Tatars managed to construct dwellings on empty land, and to thus claim a
place on the Crimean scene. Crimean Tatars harbor a major grievance against the ARC regime,
for their economic and infrastructure needs are neglected, and they are left to fend for
themselves. This was true under Bagrov and Meshkov, and still is true today. The Crimean
Tatars have difficulty finding jobs in Crimea, so several of them have gone into business
themselves. High unemployment among the Crimean Tatars, their lack of opportunities, and
their lack of basic infrastructure may combine to induce them to protest and riot against the ARC
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government. Crimea’s republican regime may use Crimean Tatar ethnic riots as an excuse to
repress the Turkic Muslim minority. In response to such a crackdown, the Crimean Tatars may
resort to terrorist tactics as a way to publicize their economic grievances. Economic differences
between the Crimean Tatars and Crimean Slavs has the most potential to touch off ethnic
violence in Crimea, and the Ukrainian central government should pay closer attention to the
Crimean Tatars’ economic plight as a way to make nationality conflict less likely in the future
(Sasse, 2007; Uehling, 2004).
Interactions between Crimea’s ethnic elites have been the crucial factor in preserving
peace on the Crimean peninsula. Ukraine made sure it controlled the means of coercion in the
ARC, a position that gave Kyyiv a commanding lead in Crimean affairs. By securing ownership
of the local interior ministry forces and the SBU, Ukraine’s central government has shown the
Crimean Russians and Crimean Tatars who is boss. Such control of Crimea’s coercive forces
gives Kyyiv the upper hand in any conflict with the Crimean Russian majority and the Crimean
Tatar minority. Not that Ukraine’s monopoly on the use of force is 100 % secure, for
Sevastopol’s Russian sailors could come to the aid of their ethnic kin in Crimea were trouble to
break out between the ARC’s Russians and Ukrainians. Were there to occur additional clashes
between the Crimean Russians and Crimean Tatars, Kyyiv would use its security forces to
suppress such ethnic confrontations, and thus prevent possible Russian intervention in Crimean
affairs. Russia may be happy to allow the Ukrainian central government to crack down on
Russo-Tatar violence in Crimea, for Moscow would probably figure that the Ukrainian regime
could handle the “dirty work.” Ukraine’s upper hand in the possession of coercive instruments is
not airtight, but it is fairly secure. Possession of the means of force is only part of the story
though. Artful use of the means of coercion is necessary for Ukraine to maintain ethnic peace in
Crimea. Ukraine has illustrated an artful use of force already, for Kuchma employed the
Crimeman branch of the SBU to undermine Meshkov’s Russian nationalist government by use of
active measures. In addition, he nipped Russo-Crimean Tatar unrest in the bud in June, 1995 by
utilizing interior ministry forces to clamp down on ethnic unrest between the Russian majority
and the Crimean Tatar minority. Kuchma acted decisively and cunningly in both cases, and
ensured that Crimea became the `dog that did not bark.’ In firing Meshkov in March, 1995 and
abolishing the ARC presidency, Kuchma sent a signal to the Crimean Russians that he was in
charge of Crimea, and that they would have to accept Ukrainian citizenship on Ukrainian terms.
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He may have also wanted to let Russia know that Ukraine was adamant about holding onto
Sevastopol’. In his negotiations with Yeltsin, Kuchma probably held his ground on the issue of
Sevastopol’s status. At the time of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea,
the Yeltsin regime became embroiled in the first post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war. Given this
situation, Yeltsin did not want to occupy Russia in another trouble spot. Kuchma used this
breathing space to assert Ukraine’s ownership of Crimea. By May, 1997, when Russia and
Ukraine signed the friendship treaty that regulated Crimean affairs and those of the Black Sea
fleet, Kuchma had ensured that Ukraine largely had its way with Russia. In addition, Yeltsin
recognized the Russo-Ukrainian frontier as defined by Lenin and Stalin. Thus, Yeltsin gave his
final assent to an independent and sovereign Ukraine in terms that Kyyiv found favorable.
Yeltsin alienated Russian nationalists who refuse to view Ukraine as a separate independent
polity and the Ukrainians as a separate East Slavic ethnic group (Kuzio, 2007; Sasse, 2007;
Uehling, 2004).
Many Russians are having a difficult time accepting that Ukraine is a distinct and
independent country. That this is the case can be seen in a term the Russians employ for the
Ukrainians, “Little Russians.” This nomenclature indicates that several Russians see the
Ukrainians as another branch of the Russian ethnicity. On the other hand, Ukrainians find the
use of “Little Russians” to be demeaning and a denial of their existence separate from the
Russians. Ukrainians are divided in their attitude toward Russia and the Russian people. Those
Ukrainians in central and western Ukraine tend to see the Russians as a completely distinct
nation that Ukraine should keep at some distance, while the Russified Ukrainians of southern and
eastern Ukraine, which includes Crimea, tend to have a more favorable attitude toward the
Russian Federation and the ethnic Russians, and want closer ties with Russia, even at the
expense of the West. Yanukovych represents eastern and southern interests, and his regime has
cultivated close ties between Ukraine and Russia. This is the background to his decision to
extend the Russian lease on three of Sevastopol’s five bays for another 25 years beginning in
2017. He has spoken of Ukraine as a bridge between Russia and the West, which is code for
leaning toward Russia, just as the democratic Czechoslovak government did so during the 194548 period. That there was acrimony in the Verkhovna Rada indicates the regional division
between central and western Ukraine, on the one hand, and southern and eastern Ukraine, on the
other, over Ukraine’s policy toward Russia (Shoemaker, 2010; Sasse, 2007; Kuzio, 2007).
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Like the Ukrainian public, the Ukrainian elite are divided over Russo-Ukrainian relations.
In the Crimean Tatar case, it appears that Cemilev has adopted a cooperative approach toward
the Ukrainian central government in Kyyiv. He urged the Crimean Tatars to drop their Uzbek
citizenship in the early 2000s, and adopt that of Ukraine. This enabled the Crimean Tatars to
participate in Ukrainian elections. Crimea’s Tatars have thrown their lot with the Ukrainian
nationalists who are predominant in central and western Ukraine. On the other hand, RUKH and
Our Ukraine have backed Crimean Tatar claims for a presence on the Crimean peninsula,
partially because there are very few Crimean Tatars in central and western Ukraine, and also
because the Ukrainian nationalists empathize with the plight of the Crimean Tatars, seeing this
Turkic Muslim ethnicity as a victim of Stalinist and Brezhnevite repression, and viewing the
return of Crimean Tatars to the ARC as “compensation” for their exile in the first place.
Animosity toward the Communists and the Party of Regions may be one factor behind Ukrainian
nationalist backing for the Crimean Tatars. Cemilev realizes he has support from a certain sector
of the Ukrainian body politic, so he knows that terrorism would be counterproductive, and that
the Ukrainian nationalists are a group with whom he can do business. Thus, Cemilev has a
constituency that listens to Crimean Tatar grievances and has influence on the central Ukrainian
governmental apparatus. With Yushchenko as president of Ukraine, the Crimean Tatars formed a
constituency that Yushchenko needed to win the Ukrainian presidency and to hold onto power.
He was probably more receptive to Crimean Tatar calls for justice than Yanukovych has been, for
Yanukovych depends on the support of the Crimean Russians. These dynamics explain why the
Crimean Tatars are staunch supporters of the Our Ukraine party and the Tymoshenko Bloc and
why the Crimean Russians tend to back the Party of Regions. Cemilev is a strong Crimean Tatar
leader who enjoys support from his ethnic constituency. It is still an open question of whether
Cemilev’s successor will command the loyalty and support that Cemilev currently enjoys among
the Crimean Tatars. Only time will tell how a post-Cemilev Crimean Tatar leadership relates to
the Slavic Crimeans and the Ukrainian central government in Kyyiv (Uehling, 2004; Kuzio,
2007; Sasse, 2007).
Elite behavior, conditioned as it is by Ukrainian central government control of the
security services, has kept the peace in Crimea (Kuzio, 2007). In the case of Russo-Ukrainian
relations on the peninsula, the other five facilitating factors would appear to make the Crimean
situation more combustible. In the Slav-Crimean Tatar case, the availability of information and
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economic resource differences, particularly the latter, would appear to stoke ethnic conflict,
while the other three facilitating conditions discourage Tatar-Slav clashes.
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CHAPTER TEN
CONCLUSION
Ethnic violence has been endemic to human affairs since prehistory. Usually, its earliest
manifestations are termed “tribal conflict,” but tribal wars boil down to violent nationality
disputes. It is true that ethnic wars are a subset of human conflict, and have been especially since
the rise of human civilization around 5,500 years ago. It is highly likely that intra-family and
inter-family disputes were the first to set off violent conflict, and that “tribal”/ethnic wars erupted
after the coalescing of families into nationalities. Given the human record, it is families of
different lineages that probably came together to form ethnicities. Along their migration routes,
primitive ethnicities most likely picked up other groups of families, and assimilated them. As the
ethnogenesis of the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples show, a migratory nationality assimilates
the people that already live on a territory that the migratory group chooses to “permanently”
settle. Thus, the Thracian Armenians intermarried with the Caucasian peoples who were in their
“homeland” first, and the ancestors of the Azerbaijani Turks assimilated the eastern Caucasian
Albanian people (Payaslian, 2007; Altstadt, 1992).
It has frequently occurred that nationalities have clashed with each other. They primarily
fight over territory, a piece of land which an ethnicity settles and calls its “homeland.” Another
ethnic group may attack a certain nationality to take over its resources, to subjugate and rule it,
or even to assimilate it. A target will most likely fight back, and resist the aggression of the
challenger. It is within this framework that ethnic violence has occurred, which has claimed
millions of victims since the formation of nationalities. Thus, there arose my research question:
Why does ethnic conflict occur? Many answers have been proffered to this question, several of
them superficial. The idea that “tribes” fight each other because they are “tribes” is circular,
repetitious, and poorly-conceived. More serious scholars have developed more extensive and
rationally-demonstrated theories for the etiology of ethnic conflict. Among the suggested
explanations are that economic elites instigate violent nationality disputes, that the desire for
resources ignite them, that environmental degradation sets them off, and that religious
differences turn one ethnicity against another. In my view, each of these theories has merit, but
they are on the whole incomplete. In place of these four explanations, I propose that
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territoriality, the idea people possess of what constitutes the “proper” boundaries of a polity,
causes ethnic violence to break out. This theory of territoriality takes into account the concerns
of the economist, elitist, environmentalist, and theological explanations, and offers a more
general and applicable factor for why nationality wars break out in the first place. This territorial
idea is derived from the research of Huth (2000) and Hensel (2000), who found that territorial
disputes are a common source of human conflict. This researcher takes territoriality, and applied
it to conflict between ethnic groups. It was the contention of this project that territoriality drives
violent nationality disputes.
Territoriality is a constant because it is a psychological construct that is a given of
humanity. However, it depends on what I coin state ideology (the ideas that drive an ethnicity's
policy), the desire for natural resources, and subnational activity (an ethnic minority agitates for
its own independent, sovereign polity). Despite being a constant, territoriality takes different
forms, whether the challenger wants part or all of a target's territory, whether the territorial
dispute is over land or sea frontiers, whether it stays latent or erupts in violence, and whether it
involves major or minor powers in the international arena. Given that territoriality is a constant,
there exists six facilitating conditions that act as intermediaries between territoriality and ethnic
violence. They are: 1) size of an ethnic population (majority/minority status); 2) role of the
elites; 3) availability of information (communications); 4) availability of an ethnic diaspora
nearby; 5) location of the nationality; and 6) economic resource differences. Territorial disputes
will erupt, but the conflicts may stay latent or result in violence. The six facilitating conditions
must be present in some combination for war to erupt between ethnic groups.
To test the territoriality theory, I employed a heuristic, most-similar systems comparative
case study approach. By its nature, this study is exploratory, and it is not the last word on ethnic
conflict. Theory development has to reach a more sophisticated stage for the appearance of a
definitive case study. I have set out to introduce the territoriality theory, and to compare this
explanation with cases taken from Russia and the other Soviet successor states. Given that
human societies tend to cluster with those similar to them, it comes as no surprise that
generalizations that encompass all of the world's societies are liable to fail to adequately explain
what they set out to define. Such a state of affairs necessitates that the comparativist utilize midlevel theorizing. For this project, I test territoriality in the post-Soviet space. There exists
enough commonality between the fifteen Soviet successor states to make a most-similar systems
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approach appropriate. All post-Soviet republics were part of the USSR, which was controlled by
a single Communist party, and the Soviet economic machine was centrally-planned rather than
based on free market principles. Marxism-Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union,
and Russian was its official language. All fifteen union-republics of the USSR became
independent in the same year, 1991. This was the year that the Soviet Union fell apart. For a
temporal domain, I chose to analyze the 1988-present time period. It was in 1988 that the USSR
began to disintegrate, an event that was precipitated by the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over
the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. For this reason, I have included the Nagorno-Karabakh
(Karabagh) war in this study. In addition, I have also examined the Bessarabian-Transdnistrian
conflict in Moldova, and the two post-Soviet Russo-Chechen wars. Of these three conflicts, the
second Chechen war continues, while those in Moldova and Karabagh have been tentatively
silenced with cease-fires.
Non-events shed as much light on a phenomenon as events do. For this reason, my study
employs two of them: Tatarstan and Crimea. In these two instances, territorial disputes are
present, but they are latent. In other words, nationality differences did not break out in ethnic
violence on any sustained scale. Elite behavior in Tatarstan and Crimea goes a long way toward
explaining why these areas of the former USSR have remained largely peaceful.
It is my view that any analysis of war includes examination of the three stages of a
conflict. Any researcher of nationality wars asks: What are the causes of ethnic violence? What
course does ethnic violence take? How do ethnic conflicts end? This volume looks at the
etiology of ethnic conflict, and a future volume will examine the course and
outcomes/consequences of it. The first question I asked was whether the conflicts I examined
have a territorial component to them. I found that all but the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen
war are territorial by nature, with the antagonists fighting over a piece of land. Even the nonevent cases have a territorial basis, with the major ethnicities in Tatarstan and Crimea holding
different, and even opposing, ideas of the status of the polity. Crimean Tatars consider Crimea to
be their “homeland,” while the Crimean Russians and their ethnic kin in Russia think of the
peninsula as part of the Russian national patrimony. Ukrainians view Crimea as an integral part
of their polity, and see Khrushchev's cession of the peninsula to Ukraine in 1954 as an act of
historical justice and fulfillment of a national goal. In Tatarstan, the Volga Tatars see the republic
as their “homeland,” and as the champion of Kazan Tatar rights throughout the Russian
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Federation, while Tatarstan's ethnic Russians view the Tatar republic as a part of Russia. Of the
cases of ethnic differences that erupted in war, there were competing territorial visions. The
Kremlin views the stakes in Chechnya as one of preserving the territorial integrity of the Russian
Federation, and using military force to keep the Chechen republic in Russia. On the other hand,
the Chechens tended to see their first post-Soviet war against the Russian central government as
a struggle for a sovereign Chechen state independent of Russian control. In Moldova, the
Bessarabian Romanians see their republic as encompassing Bessarabia and Transdnistria, while
the Transdnistrian Slavs view their region of Moldova as an entity independent of Chisinau's
jurisdiction, and one that is a building block of a reconstructed Soviet union-state. Armenians
see Karabagh as part of their historic “homeland,” and cite the region's Armenian majority as
proof to buttress their claim to it, while the Azerbaijanis want to retake control of Karabagh
because doing so would guarantee the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
Thus, mutually exclusive perceptions of who controls a piece of land have fueled conflict
between different nationalities in the post-Soviet space. Of the active and latent ethnic conflicts I
have examined, the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war stands out as an anomaly because the
military clash on the Chechen side has metamorphosed into a jihad, an armed Islamic campaign
to drive the Russian “infidels” out of the North Caucasian region, and replace Russian rule in the
North Caucasus with a regional caliphate. Thus, one of the competing explanations, the
theological, is corroborated on the Chechen side, while the Kremlin has viewed both post-Soviet
Chechen wars through the territorial integrity lens. The second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen
conflict has taken on the character of the Caucasian wars, which involved the Chechens and
other North Caucasian Muslim peoples in jihads against the Russians during the late 18th and
19th centuries. History is repeating itself in the North Caucasus at the present time, though not
exactly as in the earlier Caucasian conflicts. My prognosis is that the second post-Soviet
Chechen war may rage for another 10 to 20 years before the Kremlin pacifies the eastern part of
the volatile North Caucasus.
10.1 Causes of Ethnic Conflict
Having discussed the issue of whether the ethnic wars are territorial in nature, I will next
summarize the causal findings for the three active, violent conflicts in the former Soviet Union:
Chechnya, Karabagh, and Moldova. After looking at these three nationality wars, I will
summarize the findings for the non-event cases, Tatarstan and Crimea. In general, the Soviet
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rubric kept ethnic conflicts under control. With its disintegration, ethnic violence broke out and
escalated to war. These dynamics were at work in Moldova and Karabagh. In the latter case, the
anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan in 1988 and 1990 made the Armenians fearful that the
Azerbaijanis would resume the genocide the Osmanli Turks carried out against the Ottoman
Armenians during World War I. Right after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the conflicts in
Moldova and Karabagh escalated, and heavier weapons were deployed, and casualties mounted.
Chechnya's wars with the Kremlin broke out after the Soviet rubric had disappeared. They
quickly escalated to violence, and heavy weapons were utilized by the antagonists from the first
day of hostilities. The chaos that beset the post-Soviet space in the 1990s made the outcome of
the first post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war unpredictable until the Chechen rebels definitively
bested Russian forces in Grozny in August, 1996. On the other hand, it was more or less
preordained that the Russian central government would beat the Chechen rebels in the second
Russo-Chechen conflict (1999-). Fighting was intense in the first years of the second conflict,
and it has settled down somewhat after the killing of Chechen rebel leaders in 2005 and 2006.
However, this second Russo-Chechen war is more widely spread than the first one. Military
action was largely confined to Chechnya during the 1994-96 conflict, while it has spread to
Chechnya's North Caucasian neighbors, Dagestan and Ingushetia, in the present war, which
began with a Chechen rebel invasion of Dagestan in early August, 1999.
Colliding visions of territoriality are the main catalyst for the first Chechen war, the
Karabagh conflict, and the Moldovan civil war. What makes territoriality such a potent force for
armed conflict is that the national elites and the masses that follow them harbor a zero-sum
game, all-or-nothing thinking which leads to each side seeing itself as being exclusively in the
right. Neither side is willing to compromise, and neither party to a dispute views sovereignty as
a negotiable good. Rather, they see sovereignty as an exclusive good that belongs to their side
alone. The cease-fire that marked the end of active fighting in the Karabagh war occurred due to
mutual exhaustion, while Moldova's central government agreed to a cease-fire because it realized
that further fighting against the Russian 14th Army was futile. While Yeltsin and Maskhadov
signed a peace treaty in April, 1997 formally ending the first Chechen war, Chechnya and the
Russian center prepared for Round 2, which began in 1999. What these outcomes suggest is that
cease-fires and even peace treaties may only be tactical moves in a territorial dispute, and that
armed conflict may resume in the future. All-or-nothing thinking remains in place on both sides
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of the antagonistic divide, which makes a final resolution of the territorial conflict very hard to
realize, even with outside intervention.
From the sources I consulted, it was apparent that there were speeches calling for
territorial revision by at least one side in a territorial dispute in the post-Soviet space. If the other
side opposed territorial revision, then it justified its position by falling back on the territorial
integrity argument. In the Russo-Chechen and Karabagh wars, one side was revisionist, and the
central governments opposed the other side with the idea that secession of the affected region
would jeopardize the territorial integrity of the country. In general, the international community
recognizes the existing sovereign states in their current boundaries, and is opposed to secession
and territorial revisions, even when such moves may appear to be justified. During the first
Chechen war, the Chechen rebels aimed to make the so-called Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
independent of Russian control. In other words, they attempted to make Chechnya into an
independent country. Russia feared that the secession of Chechnya would encourage other
Russian regions to break away from the Kremlin's control, and lead to the disintegration of the
Russian Federation. Putin and Medvedev hold onto this view, and will work to ensure that
Chechnya remains a part of Russia. With regard to the Karabagh war, Azerbaijan has the
international community on its side, and sees Azeri retention of Karabagh as an issue of
territorial integrity. Armenians and their ethnic kin in Karabagh want the Armenian republic to
ideally annex the region. Due to the international community's reluctance to see Azerbaijan's
boundaries altered, Armenia has settled for de facto control of Karabagh. Speeches by elite
leaders have supported the positions laid out in this paragraph, and the masses they lead have
supported them, and contributed lives and funds for their respective causes.
In the case of Moldova, the roles of revisionist and partisan of the status quo switched
after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. At first, the Bessarabian Romanians were the revisionists
because they wanted Moldova to separate from the Soviet Union, while the Slavic
Transdnistrians desired that the USSR be preserved. After the August, 1991 putsch against
Gorbachev failed, Moldova's central government declared the union-republic's independence.
Snegur and his successors want to assert central government control over the Transdnistrian
region, and they desire that Moldova remains independent of Romania. Moldova's presidents
have spoken about their republic being composed of both Bessarabia and Transdnistria, and
Snegur stressed that Moldova would maintain its independence from Romanian control. His
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successors have repeated this assertion. On the other hand, Transdnistria's leadership has spoken
of joining their region to a reconstituted Soviet union-state, which would encompass the East
Slavic republics. Given that the Romanian majority in Bessarabia and the Slavic majority in
Transdnistria back their leaders' hard-lines, it comes as no surprise that neither side is willing to
compromise, and the public which supports them expects their national elites to hold the line
against any concessions to the other side. By their speeches, both sides in each territorial dispute
have indicated that compromise is out of the question, and they also showed by their actions that
they were willing to resolve each ethnic confrontation by means of armed struggle.
10.2 Non-Events
For this project, I employed two non-event cases, Tatarstan and Crimea. Both of these
instances contain the seeds of ethnic disputes, but the incidence of sustained violence and ethnic
war was absent. There are ethnic differences between the Volga Tatars and ethnic Russians of
Tatarstan, and Tatarstan had jurisdictional differences with the Russian center. In Crimea, the
ethnic Russians and Ukrainians have their diverging agendas, but both nationalities are united in
their mutual dislike of the Crimean Tatars. This mix of divergent political agendas has at its core
clashing views of territoriality. On the one hand, the Volga Tatars view their eponymous republic
as their homeland and as a beacon for all Tatars throughout the Russian Federation. Ethnic
Russians tend to see the entire Russian Federation as their homeland, and the Kremlin works to
ensure that they are secure throughout the federation's territory. In other words, Tatarstan's
ethnic Russians are in a sense agents of the Russian center, and the Volga Tatar leadership has
had to balance Tatar interests against those of the Russians resident in Tatarstan. In Crimea, the
ethnic Russian majority indicated its desire to reunite the peninsula with Russia by choosing
Meshkov in 1994. Because of his mismanagement, the Ukrainian president fired him, and
replaced him with a pro-Ukrainian leadership. At present, Russia prefers to influence Ukrainian
affairs at the national level rather than at a regional one. Crimea's ethnic Ukrainians want the
peninsula to remain under Kyyiv's control and jurisdiction. When Meshkov was elected
Crimea's president, the Crimean Ukrainians threatened to secede from Simferopol's control, and
join the areas they inhabited to direct jurisdiction by Kyyiv, the Ukrainian central government.
The Crimean Tatars, unlike their 18th and 19th century ancestors, consider Crimea to be their
homeland. A majority of the Crimean Tatars have returned to the peninsula from Central Asia,
and have acquired Ukrainian citizenship. In general, the Crimean Tatars support the “orange”
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parties, while the Crimean Slavs tend to vote for the Party of Regions. In sum, the non-eventls
contain elements of clashing territorial visions.
The reason the Crimea and Tatarstan have remained largely peaceful is the behavior of
the elites. In both cases, sovereignty is seen as divisible, which enables compromises to be
worked out. Most of the time, the Tatarstani and Crimean elites have proven to be level-headed.
They know they can obtain only part of what they want from Moscow and Kyyiv. Tatarstan and
Crimea do not control their security services, for the Russian and Ukrainian central governments
have responsibility for the internal security of their respective areas. This limits the maneuver
room of the Tatarstani and Crimean elites, and makes them open to compromise, to obtaining the
best deal they can out of their central governments. In the Tatarstan case, the eponymous
republic for the Volga Tatars is located in the middle of Russia. Its chances of successfully
seceding from the Russian Federation are nil. Crimea is located in the extreme south of Ukraine,
and its eastern bounds are near Russian territory. One factor that may have contributed to a
modus vivendi between the Ukrainians and the Crimean Russians is the two groups' ethnic
affinity. Russians and Ukrainians share much in common. Crimea's Tatars possess an elite that
is willing to work with Kyyiv, and this helps to maintain ethnic peace on the peninsula.
There are groups in Tatarstan and Crimea who espouse revisionist agendas. In Tatarstan,
Ittifaq has called for the Tatar republic to secede from the Russian Federation. Led by
Bairamova, it has espoused an Islamist program, one which calls for Sharia law to replace
Russian civil law, and it explicitly demands that Volga Tatars be given preference in all areas of
Tatarstani life. Crimea's revisionists were represented by the ethnic Russian Yuri Meshkov and
his Russia Bloc. He was elected Crimea's president, and the Russia Bloc obtained a majority in
the Crimean Supreme Soviet. His bumbling did in his plan to detach Crimea from Ukraine and
join the peninsula to Russia. Since Kuchma fired Meshkov in March, 1995, and abolished the
post of Crimean president, Crimea has been run by pro-Ukrainian parties, with the Party of
Regions being the latest incarnation of a Ukrainian “party of power.” Russia and Ukraine were
amenable to dividing up the use of the Crimean port of Sevastopol', and splitting the Soviet
Black Sea Fleet between them. Since the Ukrainian parliament voted to extend Russia's use of
three of Sevastopol's five bays in 2010, Russo-Ukrainian relations are expected to remain cordial
at least until 2042, when Russia's lease is set to be reconsidered.
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Despite the rise of revisionist groups in Tatarstan and Crimea, the elites of the two
republics have marginalized them with level-headed thinking that is conceptualized in positivesum terms. Both the Tatarstani and Crimean publics have been amenable to compromise with
the central authorities, realizing that the regional elites have limited maneuvering room.
Tatarstanis and Crimeans realize that the autonomy they enjoy is the best deals they could obtain
from the respective Russian and Ukrainian central governments. However, the two non-events,
Crimea and Tatarstan, may not remain peaceful. Ethnic conflict could break out between the
major ethnicities in both republics. Ethnic Volga Tatars and Russians clashed in late 1991, while
Islamist groups have carried out bombings against infrastructure in Tatarstan. In June, 1995, the
Crimean Tatars attacked Slavic businesses in Feodosia, but the Ukrainian security services
promptly restored order. Before Meshkov was elected Crimean president, the Crimean
Ukrainians formed their own political organization. There was the potential for conflict between
it and the Russia Bloc. Since Meshkov's removal from office, the peninsula's Russians and
Ukrainians have generally voted together for the same “party of power.” Crimea's Tatars tend to
vote for the “orange” parties, which affords them a measure of protection from the Crimean Slav
majority, for the Our Ukraine and Tymoshenko Bloc parties champion the rights of the Crimean
Tatars. Shaimiyev cracked down on the 1991 ethnic riots, and he championed a civic
nationalism that afforded room in the Tatar republic for the Volga Tatars and the ethnic Russians.
Neo-jadidism may act as a powerful intellectual movement that will motivate the Volga Tatars to
maintain their accommodation with the Russian center, and the Volga Tatars could be a model for
the other Muslim peoples of the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian central government's control
of the Crimean security services has acted as a guarantee that Crimea remains part of Ukraine
(Kuzio, 2007). Thus, the Tatarstani and Crimean leaderships have acted sensibly in dealing with
the revisionist groups, which still have the potential to cause trouble. In Crimea, a successor to
the Russia Bloc could emerge, and Ittifaq is still active in Tatarstan. Given the past track record,
Tatarstan and Crimea will continue to enjoy amicable relations between its dominant ethnic
groups.
10.3 Concluding Remarks
Given that one post-Soviet ethnic conflict has been concluded with a peace treaty, the
Ingush-Osset dispute of 1992-97, it appears that nationality conflicts in the former USSR are
intractable. While the Russo-Chechen war resumed in 1999, and is ongoing, the other ethnic
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wars in the post-Soviet space have ended in tenuous cease-fires, and there is the possibility in the
Karabagh case that armed conflict might resume. That ethnic violence in the former Soviet
Union has implications not just for the polity concerned, but also for the international order was
revealed in Russia's brief August, 2008 war with Georgia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Georgia appears to have lost effective control of these two break away regions permanently, and
Russia acts as the protector of Abkhaz and South Ossetian interests. In the South Ossetia case,
the Russian republic of North Ossetia-Alania lobbied the Kremlin to help the northern Ossets'
ethnic kin in Georgia. Abkhazia has had tense relations with the Georgians, as is illustrated by
the 1979 riots and the Abkhaz-Georgian war of 1992-93. As a result of the brief Russo-Georgian
conflict of 2008, Russia's relations with the West were strained, and Russia even had trouble
recruiting other CIS members to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries.
Of the Soviet successor states, only Russia has extended diplomatic recognition to the two break
away regions of Georgia. Even Belarus' has refused to go along with Russian policy in this
instance (Cornell and Starr [editors], 2009).
Territoriality is behind most of the cases of ethnic conflict I have examined in this study.
Only the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen war is not of a territorial nature for the Chechen
side. Islamists have hijacked the Chechen national movement, and they control it. Doku
Umarov is the latest Islamist Chechen rebel leader. He indicated his Islamist sympathies by
calling for the creation of a Muslim Caliphate for the North Caucasus region (New York Times,
2010). For the Russian central government, the second Chechen war is viewed primarily in
territorial terms, with Putin and Medvedev seeing the integrity of the Russian Federation as the
overriding concern. In the other cases I have examined, the first post-Soviet Chechen war, the
Karabagh conflict, and the Moldovan civil war, territoriality is of primary importance in
motivating the belligerents to fight each other. This involves the masses' involvement as well as
elite actions. In all the instances of ethnic violence in the former USSR, both the elites and the
masses worked together to attain their goal. There existed a synergy between the elites and the
popular class, and territoriality provided the glue that resulted in unified action. The nature of a
conflict determined how much popular support the elites needed to sustain the war efforts. In
general, guerrilla operations require less mass support than do conventional conflicts. Wars
involving conventional forces require the support of the vast majority of the popular class.
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Territoriality is a political psychological construct that humans manifest whenever they
conceptualize land (and even sea) territory issues.
Territoriality manifests itself in different ways based on context, but the impulse behind it
is constant. This psychological construct, which functions as a program in the human mind, is
present in the instances of ethnic violence I have examined. Territoriality is present in the cases
of nationality war and ethnic peace. The non-event instances are territorial disputes, but they did
not erupt in sustained violence. For ethnic violence to breakout, there must exist some
combination of the facilitating conditions. I have identified six facilitating factors: 1) the role of
the elite; 2) location; 3) availability of information; 4) the role of an ethnic diaspora nearby; 5)
the size of an ethnic population (majority/minority status); and 6) economic resource differences.
As I have shown in the empirical chapters, the facilitating factors are present in some form in all
of the cases of ethnic violence and in the two non-event examples. One way the elites play a
major role in touching off nationality wars is their espousal of all-or-nothing zero-sum thinking
that makes compromise on the territorial issues next to impossible. In the instances of actual
ethnic conflict, the masses have agreed with the elites over the adoption of zero-sum policy
positions. The non-events offer hope for the resolution of territorial disputes in the former
USSR. In the cases of Tatarstan and Crimea, the elites and masses agreed to conceptualize
political differences with other ethnic communities in positive-sum terms, with the antagonists
resolving to come up with solutions that benefit all of the sides.
It appears that zero-sum thinking still prevails among the elites and the popular classes in
the three cases of ethnic war I have examined even after hostilities have ceased. This is true in
Chechnya, Karabagh, and Moldova. Such a view of the issues at stake makes it very hard to
achieve the compromises needed to resolve the disputes. There also exists a threshold at which
an ethnicity will decide to compromise rather than fight. If a nationality is 50 % or less of a
territory's population, then it will tend to compromise with the central authorities. On the other
hand, if an ethnicity is in a concentrated majority in a territory, it will most likely decide to
armed contest with the polity's center. This relationship does not hold in all of the post-Soviet
cases, for the Abkhaz were a distinct minority in their homeland before hostilities broke out in
1992. Russian military support for the Abkhaz ensured the latter's victory over the Georgians in
1993. Crimea offers a case of an ethnic majority in a region coming to terms with with the
254
national center. Thus, the size threshold is not watertight, but it holds in the majority of the cases
I have examined.
Having an ethnic diaspora nearby makes a major difference in how ethnic disputes are
resolved. In the cases I have examined, diaspora support encourages a nationality to pursue a
confrontational stance with the other side. This holds for the instances of post-Soviet ethnic
conflict I have analyzed in this study, and even for the Crimean case. While ethnic war was
averted in the Crimea, the mid-1990s offered a moment when ethnic tensions on the peninsula
could have exploded into war. Russia was concerned with its ethnic kin in Crimea, and the
Crimean Ukrainians threatened to separate themselves from the peninsula's Russians, and join
their sub-region (the northern Crimea) with Ukraine. In the end, cooler heads prevailed, and
Russia conceded that Crimea belongs to Ukraine in exchange for a lease on Sevastopol's
facilities. In the Karabagh case, ethnic diaspora emboldened both sides to fight to the finish.
Turkey backed the Azerbaijanis, while Armenia proper and the Armenian diaspora enabled the
Karabagh Armenians to achieve their goal of seceding from Azerbaijan. Ethnic Chechens in
Turkey are a vital lobbying group that helps funnel aid from the Islamic world to the rebels in
Chechnya. Russia's 14th Army propped up the Transdnistrian state during its moment of crisis in
June, 1992. Thus, the Transdnistrian russophone region had a powerful backer in Russia. The
Russian Federation still maintains an operational group in Transdnistria.
In contrast to the Soviet period, when information was controlled, the loosening of
censorship that began in 1988 in the USSR made it easier for ethnicities to communicate with
each other and with a wider audience. Unwittingly, Gorbachev unleashed an ethnic storm he did
not anticipate, for the freer atmosphere of the perestroika years enabled the Soviet nationalities to
mobilize and carry out collective action that benefited their individual ethnic groups alone.
Added to this was the demonstration effect, as events in the Baltics and Armenia were observed
by other nationalities, who employed the lessons of the pioneers in their own national struggles.
The culmination of this process was the RSFSR's declaration of sovereignty in June, 1990, which
was the primary event which signaled that the USSR was bound to disintegrate, which happened
in the aftermath of the August, 1991 coup. While most post-Soviet states are authoritarian, they
cannot put the genie completely back in the bottle. The days of complete control of information
as happened during the Soviet era are a thing of the past.
255
Economic resource differences play a role in touching off ethnic conflict. In the cases I
have examined, this rule applies. This facilitating condition can work both ways. An
economically successful nationality may resent the siphoning of funds from its region to poorer
areas of a polity, while poor regions may think they are being exploited by the more affluent
areas, and desire independence as a way to break free of economic exploitation. In the three
instances of post-Soviet ethnic violence, economic differences play a role, and even the nonevent cases have an element of this phenomenon that creates ethnic tensions between the
nationalities of a region. In Moldova, Transdnistria is more industrialized, while Bessarabia is
more agricultural. In Karabagh, the Armenians feared that the region's Azerbaijanis would take
away good jobs with the connivance of the authorities in Baku. Chechnya is a poor republic of
the Russian Federation, and its poverty has provoked resentment of the richer regions of Russia.
On the other hand, Tatarstan is economically advanced compared with the North Caucasian
republics. The Volga Tatars have shared in the prosperity that the ethnic Russians of the Tatar
republic enjoy. In Crimea, the Tatars are poorer than the Crimean Slavs, while Russian
dominance of the Crimean economy is a cause of concern to the peninsula's Ukrainians.
Finally, the location of an ethnic group matters. Of the five cases I have examined,
Tatarstan stands out on this dimension. It is in the middle of Russia, and the majority of Volga
Tatars realize that secession is not a practical option. That is why the leadership of Tatarstan has
been accommodating of the interests of the republic's ethnic Russians and of the Russian center.
In the other four cases, secession was a viable option because the Crimea, Transdnistria,
Karabagh, and Chechnya are located on the periphery of the polities to which they belong, and
they share at least one border with a neighboring sovereign state. Crimea may not have
experienced war because of the ethnic affinity between Russians and Ukrainians, and the fact
that the Crimean Tatars are a distinct minority on the peninsula. What is probably crucial to
ethnic peace in Crimea is Ukrainian central government control of Crimea's security services,
and the Ukrainian concession of a Russian lease over Sevastopol'. Chechen rebels are
encouraged to continue their struggle because the southern frontier of Chechnya borders Georgia.
Azerbaijan is nearby, and probably serves as a conduit for arms and volunteers for the Chechen
rebel cause. Karabagh is in close proximity to Armenia, and this factor enabled Armenia to
readily support its ethnic cohorts in Karabagh. Transdnistria is on the eastern edge of Moldova,
and shares a border with Ukraine. What proved to be even more important was the presence of a
256
Russian air corridor over Ukraine that attached Transdnistria to the Russian Federation.
Tatarstan's location and its contrast in this regard with the four other cases I have looked at
explains why certain ethnic minorities challenge the central government, while others seek an
accommodation with the center's political authorities.
With the exception of the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen conflict, territoriality offers
a sound explanation for ethnic violence in the post-Soviet space. However, the exception points
to a phenomenon of world-wide significance. With the collapse of Soviet atheism, the
nationalities of the former USSR are rediscovering their religious roots. As time progresses, the
majority of post-Soviet people will profess religious belief, and such conviction has the power to
unleash the demons of theological intolerance and even war. This process can be partially seen
in the Karabagh instance, where the Armenians are Christian, and the Azerbaijanis Muslim.
While the Karabagh war of 1988-94 was not a case of full-blown religious conflict, theological
differences played a role in stoking the war. In the future, the Karabagh conflict may
metamorphose into a religious war, as the second Russo-Chechen conflict has. With the
mutation of the Chechen nationalist cause into an Islamist jihad, fighting has spread to
Chechnya's neighbors, Ingushetia and Dagestan, and even further afield into the regions and
republics west of Ingushetia. Beslan was chosen as the target for the 2004 Chechen Islamist
attack because the majority of Ossets are Christians and the Ossets are pro-Russian. It is too
soon to fully ascertain the nature of religious conflict in the former USSR, but it is a real
possibility. It is important to keep track of religious developments in the post-Soviet space,
especially as the post-Soviet nations become even more aware of their theological roots.
I have examined territoriality in only one region, the former Soviet Union. One way of
testing my conclusions is to look at instances of nationality wars outside the post-Soviet space.
If they apply in other regions, then my theory of territoriality is more generalizable, and will
have broader theoretical support. It appears logical to apply the territorial propositions to EastCentral Europe, particularly to the former Yugoslavia, where ethnic wars have killed hundreds of
thousands of people. In this project, I have used the territorial concept to analyze the Nigerian
civil war briefly. A more extensive analysis of this instance of nationality war is warranted. A
more recent example is the Sudan. A Muslim Arabized north fought a Christian and animist
black-inhabited south for fifty years. Sudan bifurcated in July, 2011 along north-south lines.
There are disputes over the boundary between North Sudan and South Sudan, particularly the
257
Abyei region (New York Times, 2011). Leaders in Khartoum, the North Sudanese capital, have a
different conception of the “proper” boundary than do the leaders in Juba, the South Sudanese
seat of government. Such a clash of territorial visions may provoke war between the two
Sudans. There are other instances where territoriality as the cause of ethnic conflict can be
tested.
Given the limitations of qualitative research, my conclusions can be explicated only for
the cases I examined in the post-Soviet space. While the Georgian situation has been mentioned,
it is worthy of further analysis. This project is exploratory, and the conclusions reached are
tentative in nature. To further examine them, case studies of examples taken from outside the
post-Soviet space is necessary, and this work can be combined with quantitative studies. In
general, it is easier to generalize from quantitative studies, while qualitative studies can be a
useful hypothesis generator. It is the interplay of quantitative and qualitative methods that I will
employ to further research into the territorial origins of ethnic conflict. In a subsequent volume,
I will look at the course and consequences of the five cases of ethnic differences whose causes I
have analyzed in this volume. This specific project is a first step in the territoriality research
program. Hopefully, further research into it will contribute to a better understanding of politics.
258
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
RICHARD H. HAWLEY, JR. is a political scientist who specializes in post-Soviet politics.
This project is his first publication, and he expects the award of his doctoral degree in December,
2011. He was born on September 18, 1967 in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in
Connecticut. He attended the University of Connecticut, and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1992
with a double major in political science and history. He enrolled in Boston College, and obtained
a Master of Arts in 1995 in the field of political science. During 1996-97 and 2001-2011, he
attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, where he received his Doctorate in
political science.
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