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Russian Public Opinion and the Two Chechen Wars, 1994-1996 and 1999-2002: Formation and Evolution

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Russian Public Opinion and the Two Chechen Wars, 1994-1996 and 1999-2002: Formation and Evolution Russian Public Opinion and the Two Chechen Wars, 1994-1996 and 1999-2002: Formation and Evolution A PhD Thesis By: Jason Clinton Vaughn School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London Supervisor: Dr. Peter J. S. Duncan Secondary Supervisors: Dr. Andrew Wilson Dr. Vesna Popovski 1 UMI Number: U592450 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U592450 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Jason Clinton Vaughn 2 Acknowledgments: In the production of this thesis, I would firstly like to thank my parents for all of their support over the years. Much appreciation goes to my supervisor, Dr. Peter Duncan for having so much patience in reading through all the drafts of this thesis. Also, I would like to thank Professors Martyn Rady and Trevor Thomas for reading sections (and, on occasion, the entirety) of my drafts and giving their advice over the course of my writing. Thanks to Nadezhda Stoyanova for helping me to translate and sift through so much Russian language material and for always being there with a vote of confidence and support. Thanks also go to Violeta Nikolova for all of her support in many practical aspects of my thesis, up to and including the greatest cooking in the Slavic world. Thanks must also go out to all the people I interviewed, from the draftees lucky to survive the Chechen war to the workers of Russian media and civil organizations, without your individual ’15 minutes of time,’ this thesis would have been impossible. With that all in mind, I hope this thesis broadens the reader’s knowledge in ways both expected and unexpected. 3 Transliteration: * Russian Transliteration in this thesis is based on the system developed by the United States Library of Congress, except in cases where a popularised place name is more common (for example, ‘Chechnya’ instead o f‘Chechnia’) and where the names of people are more easily recognizable (‘Yavlinsky’ instead o f‘Iavlinski’). 4 Table of Contents: Chapters : Pages: Table of Contents: 5 Thesis Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Literature Review 10 Chapter 2: Trends of Public Opinion within the Two Chechen Wars 46 Chapter 3: Regional, Social and Other Cleavage Differences: Russian 111 Public Opinion and the Chechen Wars Chapter 4: The Question of Media Manipulation in Russian 190 Public Opinion on the Chechen Wars Chapter 5: Russian Public Opinion and the Chechen Wars: An 261 Examination of Democracy and Authoritarianism in Russia Thesis Conclusions 301 Appendix: 312 Bibliography: 318 5 Jason Vaughn Thesis Title: Russian Public Opinion and the Two Chechen Wars, 1994-96 and 1999-2002: Formation and Evolution Thesis Introduction This thesis is to contribute to academic knowledge concerning Russian public opinion and the two wars in Chechnya, focusing on differences in perception of each war within the coinciding Russian political climate. This thesis adds on to relevant academic literature pertaining to this subject in several ways, and represents a necessary approach on a topic in which the state of Russia’s democracy can be tested, particularly as to what the status is of the Russian state as a democratic state or alternatively an authoritarian state. Frequently, as will be detailed, the subject of Russian public opinion on the Chechen wars will have been mentioned, and even explored in the context of academic writings. However, the author finds it necessary to put exactly this issue on a pedestal and observe how the very nature and status of Russian public opinion concerning the Chechen war issue reflects on the Russian regime, if indeed at all. There are a great many facets to a study of this topic. Firstly (chapter one), in the context of a detailed literature review, finding and elaborating on an understanding of Russian public opinion is necessary in the earliest instance. Secondly (chapter two), a comparative examination of Russian public opinion and its contending views on each of the two wars must be scrutinized. 6 Thirdly (chapter three), the question of the cleavages in Russian public opinion on the Chechen wars must be explored. Based on available data, this section will attempt to establish sectional, gender, age and other separations in which there could exist differences within “general” Russian public opinion on the national level. Coinciding with this third chapter will be a review of other data found during research for this thesis that may have a debated application to increasing understanding of Russian public opinion. Fourthly (chapter four), there will be an examination of the status of Russian public opinion and the Chechen wars in regard to efforts by the Russian government to manipulate the media. Next, in a fifth chapter based on data and research in this thesis, Russia’s status as a ‘democratic’ state must be assessed. Accompanying this chapter (five) will be a short literature review covering democratic theory, which is of relevance to the discussion in that chapter but that has less bearing on the preceding research chapters. Finally, a conclusion must summarize the findings of this thesis, and include some relevant closing arguments in relation to this research. Looking at the two wars in domestic Russian and international public opinion, the first Chechen war is widely considered to be less ‘popular’ than the second. This is due to the relative lack of open protest against the second war internally, as well as a continuing general international ( acceptance (outside of humanitarian groups) that the war, to an extent, is Russia’s own internal I affairs. In some ways, this is the case even disregarding the accompanying international war on 0V-WT ( terrorism in which President Vladimir Putin has sought to add the Chechen war onto its roll call. Such attempts, if successful, would place the Chechen war in a comfortable niche beside America’s expanded global security policies and the military interventions in Afghanistan and '7 Iraq where any misdeeds on Russia’s part more easily could be swept away in public opinion, r '' " both domestically and internationally. 7 What is meant by being less ‘popular?’ It is true that the second war seems to have more ‘popular’ support than the first war, for there have surely been fewer public expressions against Putin on this specific issue than for Yeltsin in his day, and this is the case for a number of reasons, as to be examined over the course of this thesis. The second war seems to have a heightened level of justification in the Russian public’s mindset, and so the main research question of this thesis is to ask why this difference exists. Specifically, this thesis is meant also to explore the avenues of contextualisation in which the two separate Chechen wars are held, how Russian governmental policies have contributed to this changing context, and further to this, what can any differences tell us about the state of Russia’s democracy, which is at the time of this writing (2007) in its sixteenth year. Indeed, many academics and analysts take the subject matter of this thesis even as a commonly accepted ‘given.’ For example, in a UNISCI discussion paper, Javier Morales writes (in a footnote) as part of a larger discussion of President Vladimir Putin’s ‘political project’ in reference to public opinion and the Chechen wars: ‘The change in Russian public opinion towards the Chechen conflict was mainly due to this campaign of terrorist attacks. If the first Chechnya war had lacked public support, the second one started when the Russians rallied around Putin and his promises of an end to terrorism.’1 This is not to say that elements of this statement are not true, indeed some are. Instead this thesis seeks a detailed examination of such statements beyond the simplifications apparent in many such published articles and other texts. 1 Morales, Javier, ‘Who Rules Russia Today? An Analysis of Vladimir Putin and His Political Project,’ UNISCI Discussion Papers, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, January 2004, p. 3, footnote 12, http://www.ucm.es/info/unisci/Javier4.pdf. Further, this thesis seeks to examine, as expressed by Stephen White, ‘What do the Russians think?’2 However, whereas White sought to ask this question in the broad scope of looking at various topics such as trust and ideological bases vis-a-vis Communist times versus ten years later, this paper intends to focus on Russian public opinion specifically in relation to the occurrence, for a great extent initiated by the Russian government, of Russia’s first post-Soviet major internal military engagements. This thesis also will seek to answer the question posed by the analyst Timothy Thomas: ‘How important is public opinion to the overall success of a military operation? In the information age, as Russians and Chechens clearly demonstrate, it is more important than ever [Thomas’s italics].’3 At this point, a review of contemporary and parallel research must be held in which to establish the basis of this thesis. 2 White, Stephen, ‘Ten Years On, What Do The Russians Think?,’ Russia After Communism, (eds.) Rick Fawn and Stephen White, Frank Cass, London, 2002, p.
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