Chechen Nation-Building under Kadyrov: A Belated “Korenizatsiya”?

ABSTRACT

Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime in Chechnya has been shaped by a republic-level nation-building process. To outbid his nationalist and religious rivals, the Chechen leader has followed a political strategy that bears some similarities to korenizatsiia, the early Soviet policy of establishing a strong interconnection between administrative structures and ethnicity. Under Kadyrov, Chechen nationalism has thoroughly penetrated the state institutions of the republic. A new ethnic Chechen bureaucracy has emerged, one with durable connections to federal institutions. Thus, with this sustained emphasis on Chechen nationalism, Kadyrov has made Chechen society far more deeply integrated with Russia than it has been in decades.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. “Zhurnalist LifeNews rasskazal, chto ikh derzhali v zemlianoĭ iame” [LifeNews Journalist Says They Were Kept in Pit], RIA Novosti (May 24, 2014), https://ria.ru/20140525/1009227062.html, accessed January 10, 2022.

2. The local term for those who support an independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya, the proponents of the secular nationalist political project.

3. From a private conversation with Akhmet Yarlykapov.

4. Territorialʹnyĭ organ Federalʹnoĭ sluzhby gosudarstvennoĭ statistike po Chechenskoĭ Respublike. Rynok truda i zaniatosti [The Branch of the Federal State Statistics Service in the Chechen Republic. Labor and Employment Market], https://chechenstat.gks.ru/folder/38735, accessed January 12, 2022.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the MGIMO-University [1921-01-05].