Between taboo and re-escalation: how Chechens and Russians remember the wars in Chechnya

Druey, Cécile (26 August 2020). Between taboo and re-escalation: how Chechens and Russians remember the wars in Chechnya (Unpublished). In: Historical memory as a means of inclusion or exclusion?. Innsbruck. Austria. 26-28 August 2020.

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Chechnya’s armed attempts of the 1990s to gain independence, and the Russian coun-ter-insurgency operations and purges that followed caused incredible losses in the local society (Lokshina and Cherkasov 2005; Zherebtsova 2014; Druey and Lindorfer 2009), but also among members of the Russian armed forces (Le Huérou and Sieca-Kozlowski 2012). However, regardless of these grievances, today’s official discourses teach us something else: in Moscow, the state media tirelessly repeat the success story of the victorious "war on terrorism” in Chechnya. And in Chechnya itself, the local ruler Ram-zan Kadyrov sees his tasks of counter-insurgency not only in repressing the armed re-bellion, but also in purging the memory of the war and creating his own, revised version of history (Abdurakhmanov 2018). However, the wider the gap between the official and the societal representations of the past, the higher is the potential conflict, social unrest and violent repression - or, in other words, historical grievances, the need to mourn and the “right to remember” have to be taken seriously as they contribute to prevent radical-isation and a (re)escalation of conflict (Volkan 2001; Bar-Tal and Halperin 2011).
Based on data collected from interviews with Russian veterans and with Chechen civil society representatives, this paper will analyse the explosive role of memory in today’s authoritarian context of the post-Soviet space, where civic criticism and grievances have no space.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Division/Institute:	06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of History and Archaeology > Institute of History
UniBE Contributor:	Druey Schwab, Cécile Elisabeth
Publisher:	University of Innsbruck
Language:	English
Submitter:	Cécile Elisabeth Druey Schwab
Date Deposited:	30 Mar 2021 05:52
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 15:49
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/153795