Contested Sovereignty: The Tragedy of Chechnya

The Tragedy of Chechnya I I T h e creation of the Soviet Union (USSR)in 1923 as a federation of sovereign republics, however fictitious in practice, proved to be highly consequential six decades later when Mikhail Gorbachev, then secretary-general of the Communist Party of the USSR, initiated a program of ideological and political liberalization. As the process of reform gained momentum between 1988 and 1991, it unleashed a growing tide of national self-assertionin which the tension between the formal rhetoric of republic sovereignty and the reality of a highly centralized state produced growing pressures to give substance to the claim.' With the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991,its fifteen constituent union republics were proclaimed sovereign, independent states, and their recognition by the international community bestowed upon them an acceptance, status, and legitimacy barely dreamt of even three years earlier. Although this process of dissolution and reconstitution was remarkably peaceful and consensual, especially by comparison with Yugoslavia, it was nonetheless accompanied by a number of serious, and in some cases deadly conflicts, many of them over demands for sovereignty or independence by ethnopolitical groups within the new states. Even though the overwhelming number of potential confrontationshave been managed peacefully, six conflicts escalated into regional wars involving regular armies and heavy arms: the civil Gail W. Lapidus is Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies and Director of the Project on Ethnzc Conflicf in the Former Soviet Union at the Center for International Security and Arms Control, both at Stanford University. Recent publications include The New Russia: Troubled Transformation (Boulder,Colo.: Westview Press). This article is adaptedfrom a study prepared for the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. A different version will be published by the Commission in Bruce Jentleson, ed., Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized: Preventive Diplomacy in the PostCold War World (Lanham, Md.: Rowan and Littlefield, forthcoming). I would like to thank Arthur Khachikian, Flavia Pellegrini,Vadim Rubin, and Inna Sayfer for their research assistance, and Coit Blacker, George Breslauer, Alexander Dallin, Leokadia Drobizheva, John Dunlop, James Goldgeier, Fiona Hill, Bruce Jentleson, and Shashi Tharoor for their helpful criticisms and suggestions. I would also like to express particular appreciation to the Carnegie Corporation for its support of the broader study of conflict and conflict resolution strategies in the former Soviet Union. 1. For an account of this process, see Gail W. Lapidus, "Gorbachev and the 'National Question': Restructuring the SovietFederation," Soviet Economy, Vol. 5, No. 3 (July-September 1989),pp. 201250 ; and Gail W. Lapidus, "From Democratization to Disintegration: The Impact of Perestroika on the National Question," in Gail W. Lapidus and Victor Zaslavsky, eds., From Union to CommonInternational Security, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 5 4 9 0 1998by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute o f Technology 5 International Security 23:l I 6 war in Tajikistan, and the secessionist struggles in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, Transdniester, South Ossetia, and Chechnya.* Along with the civil war in Tajikistan, the war in Chechnya has been the most serious conflict fought since World War I1 on the territory of what was once the Soviet Union, with casualties and fatalities approaching 100,000? refugees and homeless numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and the capital city of Grozny-as well as countless smaller towns and villages-virtually destroyed. As of this writing it remains uncertain whether the peace agreement negotiated in May 1997 will bring a political resolution of the conflict or whether Chechnya-like Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdniester-will continue to exist as a quasi state, exercising de facto control over its territory but not recognized as an independent state by Russia or by the international community. The war in Chechnya has not only had profoundly destabilizing repercussions in the Caucasus as well as in Moscow; it has also raised broader and disturbing questions about Russian politics and policymakmg, about civil-military relations, and about Russia’s reliability as a partner to a whole range of international agreements. Moreover, as this article suggests, the failure of Western governments and of international institutions to respond effectively to the mounting crisis raises equally troubling questions about...