From “Memory Conflicts” to Violence: How Chechens and Russians Remember the Wars in Chechnya”

Druey, Cécile (5 February 2021). From “Memory Conflicts” to Violence: How Chechens and Russians Remember the Wars in Chechnya” (Unpublished). In: Annual Conference of the Swiss Political Science Association (SVPW). Bern/Zoom. 4.-5.2.2021.

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Chechnya’s armed attempts of the 1990s to gain independence, the terrorist attacks and the counterinsurgency operations and purges that followed caused many losses and suf-fering. This is reflected in different accounts of local and national civil society: not only of those who are usually referred to as victims, thus of local civilians (Lokshina and Cher-kasov 2005; Druey and Lindorfer 2009; Zherebtsova 2014), but also of those who are usually perceived as representing the perpetrators, that is, war veterans representing the Russian armed forces and police serving in Chechnya (Le Huérou and Sieca-Kozlowski 2012).
Departing from the public debates at the occasion of the anniversary in 2019/2020 of key events during the war, this paper will focus on the discourses of different mnemonic communities of post-war civil society. Moreover, it will analyse the link between the “memory conflicts” expressed in the clashing discourses about the Chechnya wars, and the (re)escalation of violence. Theoretical guidance for this second, analytical part will be drawn from different conceptual approaches linking memory and violence, among them the “grievances” explanation (Cedermann et al. 2013), the “instrumentalisation” explana-tion (Kalyvas 2006; Hughes and Sasse 2016) and the “perpetuation of coflict” (Jedlicki 1999).
The analysis will base, on one hand, on data collected from media coverage and public debates on the anniversary of two key events. On the other hand, the article will draw from author interviews with civil society representatives from Chechnya (October 2019) and two focus group discussions led with members of an alternative network of Russian veterans who had fought in Chechnya (March and July 2020).

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
Subjects:	900 History > 940 History of Europe
Language:	English
Submitter:	Cécile Elisabeth Druey Schwab
Date Deposited:	11 Apr 2022 16:00
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 16:16
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/168074