russia and the caucasus
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Russia and the CaucasusPaul B. Henze aa RAND, 1333 H Street NW, Washington DC, 20005-4792, USAPublished online: 09 Jan 2008.
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Russia and the Caucasus
PAUL B. HENZE
RANDWashington, DC, USA
Russia began moving toward the Caucasus at the end of the 16th Century. Inthe early 19th Century, the Tsars consolidated control over Georgia, Arme-nia, and Azerbaijan, but had to fight a 35-year war against the North Cauca-sian mountaineers to secure control of the entire area The three Transcaucasianrepublics declared their independence before the collapse of the Soviet Union,but have been hard pressed to consolidate it because of Russian interference.In the North Caucasus, the Chechens declared their independence as well.Erratic Russian policies and freebooting by elements of the Russian militaryhave resulted in disruptive intervention in all three of the Transcaucasiancountries. In December 1994, Russia launched a military offensive to subduethe Chechens. The Chechens have fought back furiously, and Russia's waragainst them has become a domestic Afghanistan. Russia has yet to define itsnational interests in the Caucasus and adopt coherent policies toward theregion. Until it does the area will continue to be unstable.
It took the Russian Tsars more than 200 years to conquer the Caucasus. Theybegan the effort at the end of the 16th Century and did not complete it until the1860s. Russia's expansion into the Caucasus was classic imperialism, like theBritish conquest of India and the French expansion into North and sub-SaharanAfrica. During the Soviet period, ideologues developed an elaborate mythology,maintaining that Russian conquest and rule of the Caucasus was somehow anentirely antiimperialist, progressive process: Antiimperialist because Russia.tookcontrol of the Caucasus from the Ottoman and Persian empires, and progressivebecause Russian conquest allegedly opened the way for the peoples of the regionto develop their cultures and expand their economies according to their owndesires and needs. The culmination of this process was claimed to be the Sovietsystem itself, which was said to have brought brotherhood, peace, and prosperityto the region. Today, five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it would behard to find Caucasians who would not find this mythology ludicrous. Scholars inRussia have begun reevaluating it.1
Of course, the Russian conquest of the Caucasus did have a positive side, ascolonialism did in most parts of the world: It brought more peaceful conditions
Received 19 April 1996; accepted 29 April 1996.Address correspondence to Paul B. Henze, RAND, 1333 H Street NW, Washington,
DC 20005-4792, USA.
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Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 19:389-402, 1996Copyright © 1996 Taylor & Francis
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and more orderly administration, and led to the development of infrastructure,i.e., roads, railroads, ports, and the expansion of cities. There was considerableindustrial development mostly with private capital during the last decades of theTsarist Empire. The needs and desires of the people who lived in the region werealways a lower priority, however, than the requirements of the distant centralgovernment.
Many Tsarist Russian officials originally hoped to Russianize all subject peoples,and some would like to have converted them all to Orthodox Christianity. But theTsarist Government was both inefficient and susceptible to pressures from itsown society. At the very time it completed its conquest of the Caucasus with thesurrender of Imam Shamil in 1859 and the subjugation of the Circassians2 in1864, it had begun to launch a program of reform. During the final decades of itsexistence, the Tsarist government moderated autocracy and began to create amore open political and economic system. Political and religious groups wereable to organize and considerable freedom of expression was permitted. The Caucasusbenefitted from the economic upsurge that came toward the end of the 19thcentury, when oil began to be exploited in Azerbaijan and Chechnya, and Geor-gian ports on the Black Sea were opened to international trade. The Revolution of1905 brought groups seeking autonomy and even independence into the main-stream of politics in Azerbaijan and Georgia. Revolutionary organizations wereactive among Armenians. By 1914, there was reason to hope that the RussianEmpire might evolve, like most other European states, into a liberal constitutionalmonarchy with an open society and effective parliamentary government.
World War I created strain that caused the Tsarist Empire to collapse in early1917. After a few months of political confusion, Lenin came back from Germanyand carried out a coup3 that locked the country in the grip of Bolshevik Commu-nism. Through a combination of intrigue and military force, the Bolsheviks, overthe next few years, restored the empire to a more rigidly authoritarian form thanthe Tsars had ever hoped for and called it the Soviet Union. The Soviet systemwas based on deception, intimidation, and force. Manipulation of various formsof terror and the threat of terror became the dominant characteristic of the Sovietart of government.4
The Soviet Legacy
The three Transcaucasian nations that declared independence in 1918 had allbeen occupied by the Red Army by mid-1921 and were brought back into theempire as component republics. Confusion continued in the North Caucasus forseveral years as the Bolsheviks played ethnic groups against each other andmaneuvered to gain control of the Mountaineer Republic, which the Chechens,Dagestanis, and several other North Caucasian ethnic groups proclaimed in 1918.In the end, the Bolsheviks consolidated control over the ethnically complex NorthCaucasus through classic divide and rule techniques. Peoples were allocated sepa-rate autonomous republics and regions, areas of mixed populations were shiftedarbitrarily, and unrelated ethnic groups with few common interests were joined
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Russia and the Caucasus 391
together, so that each would serve to restrain tendencies toward self assertionamong the other.
Divide and rule tactics were applied in Georgia too, where the Abkhaz, witha small minority population, were allocated a large autonomous republic, and thepredominantly Muslim, though otherwise culturally Georgian, population of Ajariawas given the same status. The Ossetes in Georgia received a sizable autonomousregion. Sorting out Armenian and Azeri territories was difficult: The Bolsheviksmanipulated disputed territories and boundaries to create the Karabakh autono-mous region and the autonomous republic of Nakhichevan in Azerbaijan. Sizablenumbers of Armenians, of course, continued to live in cities in Georgia andAzerbaijan. The resentments and tensions that broke out in blood-shed whenCommunist power began to collapse in the 1980s were the result of emphasis onethnic structuralism, which was a recipe for permanent tension in a region asethnically diverse as the Caucasus.
Communist leaders in the Kremlin claimed, almost to the end of their time inpower, that they operated on the basis of "the friendship of peoples," the "flow-ering of cultures" and the development of peoples' economies for the benefit ofthe peoples themselves. Like almost everything else in the Soviet system of lies,the reality was entirely the opposite. Even the Armenians and the Georgians whoescaped the reform of their alphabets into Russian Cyrillic after World War II(the Azerbaijanis and North Caucasians did not) had to riot in the 1970s to retainthe official status of their languages. Religious institutions were tightly controlled,and much religious activity was suppressed. All important economic decisionswere made in Moscow, often to the serious disadvantage of local interests. Allindependent political activity was forbidden, as were most forms of freedom ofexpression. While the Communist Party became increasingly moribund, it stillheld a dead hand over all civic and cultural activities, and the KGB penetratedinto all aspects of life.
Imperial Collapse and Aftermath
As the Soviet Empire began to disintegrate in the late 1980s, the Caucasus wasone of the first regions to experience serious disorder and degeneration. Since thedisappearance of the Soviet system at the end of 1991, no part of the Caucasushas been free of armed conflict, economic decline, and political turmoil andconfusion. As many as two million people have become refugees, and tens ofthousands have died. Food and medicines sent from abroad have kept hundredsof thousands of Caucasians from starving and dying of disease. These disastershave not occurred because the Caucasus is a poor region: It is well endowed bynature. It has agricultural and mineral wealth, and sufficient resources to be amajor exporter of oil. It has industries and the potential for more industrial devel-opment. The peoples of the Caucasus are the heirs of ancient civilizations andhigh culture. They are literate, they are talented, they are famous for their energy,and for their ingenuity and skill as farmers, artisans, workers, and traders. Theirprofessionals and intellectuals are the equals of any in the former Soviet Union.
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Why has freedom from Soviet colonialism resulted in disaster for such a promis-ing region?
The basic answer is simple: the nature of the Russian/Soviet colonial system;it was a much more pernicious system than that of other European colonial em-pires. Britain, for example, systematically created institutions of self-governmentin India over a period of several decades. When Britain granted India indepen-dence in 1947, authority was transferred to Indian leaders and officials who hadalready had long experience in responsible leadership and administration. Be-neath the upper echelons of government, an experienced civil service kept stateand local government in operation during the change from colonialism to inde-pendence. The same was true in many other European colonies, though perfor-mance varied, and some, of course, did experience disruption and degenerationafter independence. Over a shorter or longer period of time, however, almost allEuropean colonial powers prepared their colonies for independence: Russia didnot. The Communist Party developed no counterpart to European colonial admin-istrators or cadres of indigenous civil servants.
The result of nearly 70 years of the Soviet system was that the most impor-tant activities took place in the shadows, or the underground. People depended onfamilies, clans, or colleagues from their ethnic group for the support that en-abled them to live some degree of a normal life. The sense of civic responsibilitythat is necessary for the operation of modern societies atrophied. Peoples gainedlittle experience in governing themselves. Socialist government came to be seenas an enemy to be evaded, exploited, manipulated, or cheated. The early idealism,which some communists may have even believed in, came to be regarded as thesham it was. All officials were regarded as dishonest and self serving. No onewas prepared for the independence that suddenly came in 1991. Nevertheless,some characteristics of the peoples of the Caucasus equipped them for a morepromising response to independence than some of the other parts of the ex-SovietUnion. (For a current layout of the Caucasus, see Figure 1.) Why, then, has theCaucasus been so troubled?5
There are several reasons, most of them interconnected. Each situation has itsown characteristics. There is one important common denominator, however: Rus-sian interference. Russia has found it impossible to let the independent Caucasiancountries go their own way. Furthermore, Russia's leaders have continued toinsist that the erstwhile autonomous republics and regions of the North Caucasusmust remain integral parts of Russia. Old habits persist in the way Russia tries todeal with them: divide and rule tactics, playing ethnic groups against each other.Russia is a poorly consolidated state itself: The Russian Federation, a communistconstruct, is still more a truncated empire than a genuine federal structure. Sinceindependence, however, Moscow no longer exercises effective control over manyterritories that are entirely Russian in population, let alone over those with non-Russian populations. The tendency, since independence, all over the Russian Fed-eration has been toward de facto autonomy. This is not necessarily an unhealthytendency, for it could eventually lead to the transformation of Russia into a genu-ine federation. Various forms of federalism have proven to be the most effective
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s
Makradilati, ts ^L.* s? ^ #s R»CaspianSea
ArmeniaYwwm
Mount Ararat/1V
Figure 1. The contemporary Caucasus.
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form of government for large modern states.6 Federalism was long ago proven tobe a good solution for even small multiethnic states, as the example of Switzer-land, now more than 900 years old, demonstrates.
There is much more that could be said, but a comprehensive discussion ofrecent Russian interference in the Caucasus would require a book length disserta-tion.7 Let us review a few of the most striking examples.
Karabakh and Relations Between Armenia and Azerbaijan
Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan were kept in check as long as theCommunists held a firm grip on both countries. When Mikhail Gorbachev intro-duced glasnost andperestroika, Moscow's control weakened rapidly. Some Com-munists wavered in their loyalty to Moscow and began to seek greater identifica-tion with their own peoples. The KGB tried to bolster Moscow's influence overboth republics by fanning tensions between them that only Moscow could medi-ate. Moscow, however, never developed much skill in true mediation: As ten-sions turned into violence, Moscow sent in troops. Military commanders, out ofhabit and long Soviet practice, resorted quickly to force. Discipline in the Sovietarmy declined rapidly during the Gorbachev period. As far as we know, the KGBremained relatively effective and Gorbachev found it very useful. Nevertheless,the three major institutions that held the Soviet Union together, the CommunistParty, the KGB, and the Soviet Army, often operated at cross purposes.
Soviet military intervention in January 1990 in Sumgait, an industrial townnorth of Baku, Azerbaijan, was bloody and resulted in massive flight by theArmenians who lived there. Karabakh, a district within Azerbaijan populatedmostly by Armenians, had been the object of demands by Armenian politicalgroups since 1988. Disorder in Karabakh steadily intensified, and soon Armenianactivists, encouraged by exiles returning from abroad, launched a major offensiveto gain control of the territory. Soviet Army equipment was transferred orallowed to fall into the hands of Armenian forces, and by the time the SovietUnion collapsed, a full scale war was under way. Russia was unable, or unwill-ing, to stop it. Moscow's early efforts to effect a truce and set a mediationprocess in motion were inept. Until recently, neither the Armenians nor the Azer-baijanis have had confidence in Moscow's motives or feel assured that Moscowis capable of exercising effective control over military commanders in the region.Moscow has been hesitant, however, to let international mediators have a freehand in attempts to find a solution to the conflict.
Comparatively free elections in Azerbaijan, in June 1992, brought a strongdefender of Azerbaijani independence to power—Ebulfez Elchibey. However,Elchibey lacked political experience: His aspirations for closer relations withsouthern Azerbaijan alarmed Iran, and his strong interest in close relations withTurkey alarmed Moscow. After less than a year, he was ousted in a coup mountedby a minor warlord supported by the Russian military. The long time Communist
. chief in Azerbaijan who had been removed by Gorbachev, Heidar Aliev, cameback to power from retirement. If Moscow was fully behind the coup and engi-
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Russia and the Caucasus 395
neered Aliev's return, as many observers maintained at the time, it achieved lessthan the desired result, for Aliev soon became a strong and skillful defender ofAzerbaijan's independence. He improved relations with Iran while maintainingvaluable links to Turkey, and has taken a strong stand against Moscow on the allimportant issue of the development and transport of Azerbaijan's enormous oilexporting potential. He also has been the target of plots and coups every fewmonths; these have been attributed by many Azerbaijanis to Russians, whetheroperating with Russian President Boris Yeltsin's knowledge or not. Azerbaijanisalso see Moscow's hand in the agitation for border changes of the sizable Lezginpopulation of Dagestan, its neighbor to the north on the Caspian coast.
Georgia's Minorities
All of Georgia's minority problems have been exacerbated by Russian interfer-ence: The Russian hand was clearly visible in the case of Abkhazia, and was a bitless blatant in South Ossetia because Russians have operated there partly throughNorth Ossetia. The Ossetes had a reputation of friendliness toward Russia sincethe early 19th century. It was easy for Russian nationalists and communists,helped by the military, to urge both the Abkhaz and the Ossetes to attempt toseparate from Georgia and join Russia. In addition, the Soviet Army generatedintense Georgian resentment with its brutal military intervention in Tbilisi inApril 1989; Russian soldiers slaughtered female demonstrators with sharpenedshovels while Gorbachev looked the other way. Georgia's population was soincensed that they elected the intensely anti-Russian Zviad Gamsakhurdia presi-dent a year and a half later with 87% of their vote.8 Gamsakhurdia was convincedthat Gorbachev and Edvard Shevardnadze aimed to destroy him, though the twowere hardly allies by that time. Gamsakhurdia, a fervent and uncompromisingGeorgian nationalist, was utterly unyielding toward the Abkhaz and Ossetes. Hethus pushed moderates among them into the arms of Communist extremists andtheir conservative Russian friends.
Gamsakhurdia refused to negotiate with Abkhaz separatists, while freebootingGeorgian warlords moved into Abkhazia and unleashed open warfare. With itslong frontage on the Black Sea, Abkhazia contained important Soviet militaryinstallations and was the holiday playground of the Communist elite. Without theequipment and manpower Russian officers made available from former Sovietmilitary bases, the small Abkhaz army could not have withstood even the make-shift forces of the Georgian warlords.9 To complicate matters further, Russiaencouraged North Caucasians to send mercenaries to aid their allegedly MuslimAbkhaz brethren.10 At least two or three thousand came and contributed substan-tially to Abkhaz success.11
The Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow feigned a lack of knowledge orresponsibility for what was happening in Abkhazia, while Yeltsin, particularly afterthe return of Shevardnadze to Georgia, periodically called for a halt to the fightingand for mediation. Whether this was mere ritual or sincere is still not known.Extremist conservative groups and ex-Communists in Russia were more open and,
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in their way, more honest: They championed the Abkhaz cause in meetings,declarations, and in their press, and advocated joining the territory to Russia, as didAbkhaz separatist leaders (as most of them still do). Some Russian Communists/nationalists were motivated by a desire to punish Shevardnadze for his defectionfrom Gorbachev and consequent contribution to the demise of the Soviet Union.
Things went from bad to worse in Abkhazia during the final weeks of 1993.Gamsakhurdia returned to western Georgia from exile in Chechnya, while Rus-sian support enabled the Abkhaz separatists to eject the demoralized Georgianforces from all Abkhaz republican territory. Shevardnadze joined the battle at theend of the year and barely escaped with his life: When Sukhumi fell, he fledsouthward to the airport and boarded a plane with Russian and Abkhaz troopsin hot pursuit. They attempted to shoot his plane down as it flew away. Backin Mingrelia, Shevardnadze had to fight Gamsakhurdia's irregulars, who wereprevented from capturing the port of Poti by the landing of Russian marines.Gamsakhurdia was either killed or committed suicide while a shaken Shevardnadzereturned to Tbilisi and soon had to bow to Russian pressure for Georgian mem-bership in the Confederation of Independent States (CIS)
Abkhazia, one of the most attractive and productive parts of the entire ex-Soviet Union, was left in ruins. More than 250,000 of its Georgian inhabitantsfled to Georgian controlled territory and still crowd hotels, barracks, and campsall over the country. Meanwhile, at least 150,000 Russians, Greeks, and Arme-nians fled northward to Russian territory, as did some Abkhaz. As of mid-1995,the remaining population of Abkhazia was estimated at 130,000, down from al-most 600,000, and Russia, meanwhile having established a stronger position inGeorgia, has reverted to favoring a settlement that would reaffirm Abkhazia as apart of a federal Georgia, the same position Shevardnadze and most moderateGeorgian political leaders have taken. Russian officials, notably Federation Coun-cil Chairman Vladimir Shumeiko, publicly denounced self declared Abkhaz PresidentVadislav Ardzinba and equated him with Chechen President Jokhar Dudaev. Dur-ing the past year, Russian negotiators have shifted position on Abkhazia severaltimes, and the situation there is basically in stalemate. There is little evidence,however, that Moscow possesses the strength or the determination to force theAbkhaz separatists to accept even a nominal reconciliation with Georgia.
Looking back to 1992, during the first year after Shevardnadze's return toTbilisi, Georgia and Russia reached an agreement on a truce in South Ossetiaenforced by both Russian and Georgian troops. Georgia exercises no administra-tive authority in the region. Gamsakhurdia canceled its autonomous status, and ithas since been termed the Tskhinvali Region by Georgia. While the truce is tenu-ous, and South Ossetia has lost population and is economically stagnant, Russiaseems to be realizing, as it has in respect to Abkhazia, that a viable relationshipwith Georgia is more valuable than trying to lop off minority territories that areeconomically and demographically ruined in the process. Shevardnadze has ac-cepted an agreement granting Russia military bases on Georgian territory, but herecently endorsed the conditions the Georgian parliament had placed on it: If Russiacannot settle the Abkhaz problem, Georgia will not ratify the base agreement.12
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Russia and the Caucasus 397
Georgia's relations with Russia continue to be uneasy. Georgians suspectRussians, not necessarily all directed by Moscow, of continued support ofShevardnadze's opponents. Georgian Interior Minister Igor Georgadze fled toMoscow when he and warlord Jaba Joseliani were implicated in an assassinationattempt against Shevardnadze at the end of August 1995. Security officials inMoscow denied involvement, but Georgia's new interior minister officially ac-cused "reactionary forces in Russia" of sheltering Georgadze, and he has not beenextradited to Tbilisi. Credible reports out of Moscow indicate that senior Russiangenerals have been protecting him.
Only one part of Georgia has been free of Russian manipulation: Ajaria, therepublic on the Turkish border that also enjoys the distinction of being the mostpeaceful part of the country. Hundreds of thousands of Georgians cross hereyearly to shop in Turkey, and large quantities of Turkish consumer goods flowinto Georgia and other parts of the Caucasus through Batumi.13 The region'sCommunist chief before independence, Asian Abashidze, has maintained a firmhold on power ever since. Little is known of his relationship to Russia, but he haskept both Georgian warlords and Russian nationalists from attempting to stir uptrouble among the population, which is of predominantly Muslim ethnicity. Ajariaalso has sizable Greek and Armenian minorities, to whom churches and culturalinstitutions have been returned. Abashidze kept his distance from Gamsakhurdiaand became a strong supporter of Shevardnadze upon his return. His GeorgianRenaissance Party moved onto the national scene in the November 1995 elec-tions, attracting over 400,000 votes and becoming one of the three dominantparties in the new Georgian parliament.
Chechnya
While Russian maneuvers in the independent Caucasian countries are poorly un-derstood, and sometimes ignored, the whole world has become tragically awareof the brutal Russian military assault on Chechnya that was launched in Decem-ber 1994. Despite Defense Minister Pavel Grachev's boasts that Chechen resis-tance would be eliminated in a week, the fighting was finally halted by a precari-ous agreement reached at the beginning of its 22nd month, at the beginning ofSeptember 1996. It became a domestic Afghanistan.
The Chechens, among the last of the North Caucasian Muslim peoples to besubdued in the 19th century, never reconciled themselves to Russian domina-tion.14 They were deported en masse to Central Asia in 1944, along with threeother North Caucasian nationalities (the Ingush, Karachay, and Balkars), theKalmyks, the Crimean Tatars, the Meskhetian Turks, and the Volga Germans.One third of them died. They were permitted, by Nikita Khrushchev, to return inthe late 1950s, reestablished themselves rapidly on their home ground, and madeup their population losses with one of the world's highest birthrates. Jokhar Dudaev,who emerged as their leader in 1991, had gone to Kazakhstan as a babe in armsand returned to Chechnya at the age of 14. By exhibiting exemplary Soviet be-havior, he was able to attend the Soviet Air Force academy and rose to the rank
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of general, serving as a commander in Estonia when the Soviet Union collapsed.He never forgot he was a Chechen. The Moscow appointed Communist Partychief in Grozny, Doku Zavgaev, supported the coup against Gorbachev in August1991: Dudaev saw his chance and led a movement that expelled Zavgaev andproclaimed Chechnya's independence, then held elections, the result of whichwas his presidency. Yeltsin's initial attempt to suppress the Chechens by sendingin troops a few weeks later failed miserably. Moscow reverted to old divide andrule tactics by helping the closely related Ingush separate from what had longbeen the joint Chechen-Ingush Republic. This exacerbated violence between theIngush and the neighboring Ossetes, a situation that Moscow has never been ableto settle.
In mid-1994, KGB officials and military commanders in Chechnya developeda scheme to make it appear that disaffected Chechens had abandoned Dudaev andwere ready to rejoin Russia.15 Everything went wrong: Violence and tension rose,Chechens rallied around Dudaev, and the Ingush supported their Chechen cousins.After the Russian bombing of the Grozny airport failed to intimidate the Chechens,Yeltsin gave orders to the Russian Army to mount an all out offensive.
The military debacle that ensued is too well known to need detailed repeti-tion. Grozny was bombed and shelled to the point where it resembled the condi-tion of Dresden after World War II. Russians living there were victims as oftenas Checens, and thousands of members of both groups have suffered miserabledeaths. Thousands of Russian soldiers have also been killed. Prominent Russiangenerals, including Boris Gromov and Aleksandr Lebed, have continually con-demned the war that has destroyed what remained of the myth of Russian mili-tary invincibility and has seriously affected Yeltsin's popularity. Chechen terror-ist sorties into Russian territory have exposed confusion among all elements ofthe Russian government.
A desperate Yeltsin, under attack from his old Chechen enemy, RuslanKhasbulatov,16 dispatched discredited old Communist Doku Zavgaev back to Groznyin the fall of 1995 to create a quisling government. Zavgaev had elections inChechnya manipulated in early December 1995 to attempt to legitimize himself.There is no evidence that Zavgaev has gained significant support. Yeltsin's ma-neuvers reinforced Dudaev's popularity and Chechen determination to resist. Elec-toral manipulation may indeed have been a factor in sparking the new wave ofChechen terrorism against Russians that was unleashed in early January 1996.Some Russian security and military commanders have practically adopted presi-dential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky's call for napalming Chechens into oblivion,but once again violence has only bred further violence. During May 1996, Chechenfighters launched repeated attacks on Russian forces, penetrating into Grozny it-self, and killed large numbers of Russian soldiers. The Russian military respondedwith indiscriminate artillery and bombing assaults. For a time it was not clear thateither side was making significant gains. The Russian killing of Dudaev at theend of April 1996 did not weaken the Chechen will to resist Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev,Dudaev's successor, and other Chechen commanders such as Asian Maskhadovand Shamil Basaev, vowed to continue the struggle.
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Russia and the Caucasus 399
The impasse into which Moscow plunged itself in Chechnya and its maneuversin the independent Caucasian countries underscore Russia's lack of a coherentCaucasus policy. Russia's inability to formulate a Caucasus policy is part of a largerproblem: Russia has not reconciled itself to its loss of empire. It has no consis-tent approach to coping with the aspirations of non-Russian peoples toward manag-ing their own affairs or, for that matter, to dealing with purely Russian regionswhere assertive governors have taken matters into their own hands, opposingMoscow's draft calls and sending minimal tax receipts to the center, for example.
Not only Yeltsin, but also a majority of the Russian governmental, military, andprofessional classes have not yet come to the realization that a modern democraticcountry, which many of them still maintain they want Russia to be, will inevitablyfind the costs of empire too great to bear. Imperialism became a self defeatingsystem during the 20th century as a result of the accelerating technological revo-lution: it cannot be sustained by a democratic society over any length of time, and,as the experience of the Soviet Union demonstrates, for an authoritarian society, itleads to ruin. Russian communists have no formula for dealing with these prob-lems. Their efforts to restore the Soviet Union—approved by a vote of the Duma inFebruary 1996—can only prolong the agony of imperial collapse.
The End of Imperialism
Three great empires that had been rivals for centuries collapsed at the end ofWorld War I: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Rus-sian Empire. Lenin restored the Russian Empire, and it lasted for 70 more years.As successor states to empires that had cost their people heavily, the Austrian andTurkish republics abandoned all interest in reasserting their authority in the Bal-kans (in the case of both) and in the Middle East (in the case of Turkey) andconcentrated on their own development, to the steadily increasing benefit of theirpeople. Over the past 70 years, the leaders of Austria and Turkey have shown nointerest in intervening in the politics of the territories they formerly possessed.Mussolini's New Roman Empire looks like a comic episode today, except to thedescendants of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians who were bombed and gassedas he attempted to create it.17 Several more empires were dismantled in the after-math of World War II, most notably those of Britain and France. Who in Britaintoday would dream of advocating the reconquest of India, or would even want totry to manipulate Indian politics? Who in France would now want to restore ruleover Algeria? Imperial devolution and dissolution has not always been orderly.Belgium, Spain, and Portugal, who released their colonial territories more reluc-tantly, could find no support among their populations for trying to regain them.Nor do former colonies that fall into disarray have the option of having theircolonial status reinstated.
Independent Russia is different. In comparison with the evolution of politicsin the developed world in the 20th century, Russia is politically backward. Thedemise of Communism left Russia psychologically wounded and 100 years be-hind in political skill and sophistication. Millions of Russians, tens of millions
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judging by recent electoral returns, may still dream of restoring the Russian/Soviet Empire. Few politicians attempt to educate the population on the cost ofsuch a course. Even Russia's democratic leaders argue mat Moscow has the rightto intervene in the Near Abroad. Leaders of the independent ex-Soviet countriesmust defend themselves against implied, and often real, Russian threats and in-timidation; their peoples fear Russian subversion. While the Moscow governmenthas, to date, usually maintained legally and diplomatically correct positions, it isoften unwilling or incapable of controlling the statements and actions of militaryand security officials; it does not always set a good example for its politiciansand businessmen. The experience of the Caucasus during the past half decadeprovides examples of all of these unfortunate shortcomings and repeated instancesof deliberate misbehavior.
What is to be done? Independent Caucasian countries need to be congratu-lated not only for defending their interests, but to be helped to defend them. Theirleaders should be frank about Russian efforts to intimidate them and compromisetheir freedom. Russia itself has enjoyed a high degree of international politicaland economic support since it became independent: The world hopes for the bestin Russia. The claims of its elected leaders that they are determined to lead thecountry to democracy and create a society that respects human rights for all arestill taken seriously in Washington and Europe and in international lending agen-cies. Lapses in good behavior have been tolerated in the expectation that they areexceptional, but how long can Russia be excused from measuring up to accept-able standards? Russia's brutality in Chechnya has been much too mildly con-demned; indulgence of Russia has not improved its performance. The time isoverdue to begin judging Russia not by the comforting words of its leaders andsome of its private citizens, but by its performance in the Caucasus and else-where, including all parts of its own territory.
Russia passed a precarious watershed in the two rounds of presidential elec-tions in June and July 1996. These contests were close, but the Russian people in theend rejected a neo-communist president bent upon restoring the Soviet Union. Forhis support, which may have been decisive in Yeltsin's victory, General AleksandrLebed was given the thankless task of attempting to settle the Chechen war. As ofthis writing, it is possible to hope that he has actually succeeded. A settlement inChechnya could pave the way for a more rational Russian approach to its non-Russian citizens and to countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union,especially in the Caucasus. If Russia can find a way to abandon the neo-colonialistmentality that has prevailed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it can be judgedat last to be on its way to becoming an honorable member of the democratic world.If not—if Russia goes on trying to maintain, shore up, and restore its empire—itsfuture is dark. Imperalism and democracy are not a viable mixture.
Notes
1. See, e.g., M. M. Bliev and V.V. Degoev, Kavkazskaya Voina, "Roset," Mos-cow, 1994
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Russia and the Caucasus 401
2. During the 1860s and 1870s, hundreds of thousands of Circassians, Chechens,Karachay, Abkhaz, Dagestanis, and other North Caucasian peoples—over a million inall—fled to the Ottoman Empire. Russia encouraged many, especially the Circassians, toleave, so as to open their lands to Slavic settlers. Today, the descendants of these Cauca-sian refugees can be found not only in Turkey, but also in Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt,Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Probably as many as 20% of the present inhabitants of Turkeyhave some Caucasian ancestry. Almost no historians have dealt with these populationmovements. A recently published study breaks new ground in this respect: Justin McCarthy,Death and Exile, the Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 (Princeton, NJ:Darwin Press, 1995). I chronicled the long struggle of the Circassians in "CircassianResistance to Russia" in Marie Bennigsen Broxup (ed.), The North Caucasus Barrier(London, UK: Hurst & Co., 1992), pp. 62-111.
3. Russia experienced a true revolution in 1917, but Lenin's coup robbed it of itspotential. Lenin's seizure of power was glorified as the Great October Socialist Revolu-tion during the Soviet era and accepted by most of the world as such. It was, actually,one of the most effective political deceptions of modern history. See Richard Pipes, TheRussian Revolution (New York, NY: Vantage Books, 1991).
4. Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime (New York, NY: Knopf,1993).
5. I dealt with this problem at greater length in Conflict in the Caucasus (SantaMonica, CA: RAND, 1993).
6. Among them, the United States, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Australia,and India. Tendencies towards devolution of authority to smaller regions have beenapparent in Britain, Italy, and Spain, among others. Ethiopia has recently instituted acomprehensive federal system.
7. No such book has yet appeared. Compared to the flood of writing on CentralAsia, relatively few books on the contemporary Caucasus have been published. Two ofthe more informative ones are Peter Nasmyth, Georgia, a Rebel in the Caucasus (Lon-don, UK: Cassell, 1992) and Suzanne Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: the Caucasusand Post-Soviet Disorder (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: ZED Books, 1994).
8. Edvard Shevardnadze, still Soviet Foreign Minister at that time, was deeplyaffected by the bloody events in Tbilisi: They contributed to his decision to resign a fewmonths later.
9. Abkhaz accounted for only 17% of the population of Abkhazia in the last Sovietcensus in 1989, while Georgians made up almost half.
10. During 1991 and 1992, Abkhaz Communists and Moscow encouraged the myththat the Abkhaz were predominantly Muslim. This myth was routinely repeated inmost Western press reporting. In addition, the Abkhaz have often been characterizedas Turkic, which they are not. They are Paleo-Caucasians and closely related to theCircassians. Almost all Muslim Abkhaz emigrated to the Ottoman Empire when Russiafinally took control of the region in the 1860s. The remaining Abkhaz are almost entirelynominally Christian, though religion has lain lightly upon them. Nevertheless, this partof the Black Sea coast was Christianized in Byzantine times and contains several im-pressive early churches that were restored by Russia after the 19th century conquest.Russia was then eager to emphasize the ancient Christian character of the region asjustification for occupying it. As of 1993, there was not a single mosque in all of Abkhazia,no Muslim institutions, and none came into being following the collapse of the SovietUnion.
11. They included the now famous Chechen commander Shamil Basaev, who headed
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the assault on Budennovsk in the summer of 1995 and has become a major figure amongleaders of the Chechen struggle against Moscow. He gained his fighting experience as aRussian hired mercenary in Abkhazia in 1992-1993.
12. Russian bases in Georgia have continued in operation since before inde-pendence, however, though the number of troops has fallen sharply. Georgians maintainthat most Russian military personnel on the bases are primarily interested in smuggling,while KGB officers among them engage in intelligence gathering and political subver-sion.
13. Two additional border crossing points further east along the Turkish-Georgianborder were opened in 1995. Plans are being developed for opening a free port in Batumi,and for improving highway and rail systems from Batumi and other border crossingpoints to enable Georgia to serve as a major avenue for transit trade to and from Azerbaijanand Central Asia.
14. For historical background, see Paul B. Henze, Islam in the North Caucasus: theExample of Chechnya (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1995).
15. These events have been vividly and authoritatively recounted in a recent book:Igor Bunich, Khronika Chechenskoi Voyny [Chronicle of the Chechan War], OBLIK, St.Petersburg, 1995.
16. Khasbulatov was speaker of the Russian Duma until he joined the unsuccessfulOctober 1993 coup against Yeltsin. Originally opposed to Chechen independence, Khasbulatovbecame a champion of it after he was excluded from the political game in Moscow.
17. In a decisive demonstration of the extent to which Italy has rejected its imperi-alist past, the Rome government gave financial support to Ethiopia's observance of thehundredth anniversary of Battle of Adwa in March 1996, and Italian diplomats andacademics attended celebrations on the battlefield.
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