When the Soviet regime collapsed in 1991, power in Chechnya fell into the hands of extreme Chechen nationalists, who drove out Russian garrisons and rejected any control by Moscow. In December 1994 the Russian government sent troops to Chechyna in an attempt to reassert its control there. The already demoralized and poorly trained Russian army proved incapable of suppressing determined Chechen opposition either in the Chechen capital of Groznyy or in the countryside. As humiliating defeats and growing casualties made the war more and more unpopular in Russia, Yeltsin’s government sought a way out of the conflict. In August 1996 Yeltsin’s national security adviser, Aleksandr Lebed, brokered a ceasefire agreement with Chechen leaders, and a peace treaty was formally signed in May 1997.
However, renewed conflict in 1999 rendered the peace treaty defunct. A wave of terrorist bombings struck apartment buildings in Moscow and several other Russian cities in August and September, killing more than 200 people. Russian leaders accused Chechen rebels of organizing the attacks, precipitating another full-scale military offensive to reestablish federal rule in the republic. In February 2000 Russian troops took control of Groznyy. Although Russian forces occupied most of Chechnya, the republic was not fully pacified and fighting continued. This time, the war maintained strong public support in Russia. The Russian government characterized the war as an “antiterrorist operation” against Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations.
Subsequently, Chechen insurgents staged a string of deadly suicide bomb attacks in Moscow and other cities, as well as major hostage-taking tragedies. In October 2002 Chechen militants seized a theater in Moscow, taking about 800 civilians hostage and demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Russian special forces stormed the theater after pumping an opiate-based gas into the building. All of the insurgents were killed, as were 129 hostages. In September 2004 a pro-Chechen suicide battalion (including some non-Chechen militants) carried out a siege on an elementary school in Beslan, a town in the southern Russian republic of Alania (North Ossetia). The militants held more than 1,200 hostages in the school gymnasium for two days. Russian security forces then stormed the building, and in the ensuing gun battle explosives set by the hostage-takers detonated in the gymnasium. More than 330 people, mostly children, were killed, and hundreds more were injured.
The deadly hostage crises of 2002 and 2004 led to more rigorous efforts by the federal government to establish political control in Chechnya. In 2003 Chechnya officially adopted a new constitution that firmly designates it as a republic within the Russian Federation. After the 2004 school siege, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced sweeping security and political reforms, sealing borders in the Caucasus region and revealing plans to give the central government more power. He also vowed to take tougher action against domestic terrorism, including preemptive strikes against Chechen separatists.
| J4 | Economic Crisis |
In December 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian economy was in a terrible state. Foreign reserves had been exhausted, impeding the country’s ability to import goods, and economic output had been in decline since the 1970s. Yeltsin’s response was to launch the so-called shock therapy program of Prime Minister Yegor Gaydar. This entailed freeing prices in order to lure goods back into the shops, removing legal barriers to private trade and manufacture, and allowing foreign imports into the Russian market to break the power of local monopolies. The immediate results of this policy included extremely high levels of inflation and the near bankruptcy of much of Russian industry. Subsequently, a program of privatization was pushed through in 1994 under Anatoly Chubais, the deputy prime minister in charge of the Ministry of Privatization. Although in most cases the existing management acquired ownership of the factories they had previously administered, large private banks emerged and began to compete for control of the economy.
By the late 1990s the economic reforms had achieved considerable successes. The old, inefficient system of centralized state planning had been dismantled and a capitalist economy was being created. Nevertheless, the process was far from complete, and the Russian population paid a very high price. Most of the industry inherited from Soviet times used out-of-date technology, employed excessive numbers of workers, and was located with no thought to distance from suppliers and markets. Managers and workers trained in the Soviet era found it difficult to adapt to capitalist imperatives of profitability, marketing, and shareholders’ power. Inflation depressed incomes and wiped out savings at a time when whole sectors of the economy, and even whole cities, were faced with the prospect of unemployment resulting from the massive closing of factories.
| J5 | The Weakness of the State |
Matters were made much worse by the Russian government’s inability to carry out the most basic functions of any state, namely the preservation of order and the collection of taxes. The emergence of small businesses, considered necessary for a capitalist economy, was made difficult by rampant criminal activity, corrupt officials, and arbitrary and exorbitant taxes. The tax system was so erratic and inefficient that the revenues needed to sustain the armed forces and basic welfare services were not collected. Medical services collapsed and life expectancy, particularly of males, fell dramatically. Meanwhile, a number of well-placed individuals made vast fortunes by turning assets previously owned by the state into their private property. Unable to collect revenues sufficient to fund even its most basic requirements, the state was forced to borrow more and more on domestic and international markets.
| J6 | Political Scene |
Russia’s political scene was unstable and conflict-ridden in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In December 1992 the driving force behind the economic reforms known as shock therapy, Yegor Gaydar, was forced out of office by opposition in the legislature. His successor, Viktor Chernomyrdin, was the former head of the natural-gas industry of the Soviet Union; this increased his acceptance by key conservatives. Chernomyrdin pursued basically the same policies as Gaydar but made more concessions to powerful economic and political interests. Nevertheless, no lasting compromise could be achieved between Yeltsin and his supporters on the one hand, and the legislature on the other. In the absence of clear constitutional provisions to delineate powers and resolve conflicts between executive and legislature, the issue was settled by force in October 1993. When Yeltsin dissolved the parliament in September, armed opposition leaders and conservative deputies occupied the parliament building and refused to disband. Troops loyal to Yeltsin stormed the building and arrested the opposition leaders, leaving more than 100 dead.
Yeltsin subsequently drew up a new constitution, which was accepted by the electorate in a December 1993 referendum. Under the new constitution the president’s powers were greatly enhanced at the legislature’s expense; this enabled Yeltsin to accelerate his program of economic reform and to mount his invasion of Chechnya despite parliamentary opposition. Both the December 1993 and December 1995 elections gave Yeltsin’s opponents, the communists and the Russian nationalists, the majority of seats in the legislature. In the more crucial 1996 presidential election, however, Yeltsin defeated his communist opponent, Gennady Zyuganov, a former senior Soviet bureaucrat. Yeltsin’s victory was helped by his alliance with financial interests that controlled the media. Zyuganov’s party was stronger on nostalgia for Soviet days than on realistic answers to Russia’s current problems. In choosing Yeltsin the electorate showed its continued dislike for much of the former communist era, its disbelief that old times could be restored, and its preference for the stability and continuity that Yeltsin represented.