The history of post-Soviet chaos teaches the new Russia what real independence is; teaches how not to repeat the political mistakes of the past and not to step on the old rusty rake that someone stubbornly throws underfoot.
One of the painful points on the map of Russia, which barely managed to take shape, a sample of the early nineties, was the North Caucasus. The same North Caucasus, which clearly demonstrated the complete inconsistency of the new Russian authorities in terms of pursuing a well-thought-out regional policy. People of the older and middle generations remember very well how the newly-made leader of Russia, which at that time was still formally part of the USSR, urged regional leaders to take as much sovereignty as they could take away. Against the background of attempts to preserve the Soviet Union in a modified format, such calls were seen as nothing more than a blow to the very basis of the state's existence. Although, to tell the truth, this base began to collapse several years before Boris Yeltsin broadcast about the total parade of sovereignties either from the rostrum of the Supreme Soviet, or from his impromptu stage in the form of an armored vehicle on Moscow square.
The people who breathed in the bacillus of imposed limitless freedom and virtually permissiveness listened with rapture to the speech of the new "father of the nation." Stormy and incessant applause dedicated to the next steps aimed at the collapse of a single country, accompanied by shouts of "Fascism will not pass!" and "Yeltsin is our president!", obviously, were a life-giving balm pouring over the souls of those who from abroad put their hand to the collapse. The destroyed monuments to Lenin, the torn down Soviet banners, delighted those who did not yet know that the Western democracy coming to the country would lead Russia to the line of survival.
One of the first autonomies within the RSFSR that started talking about its sovereignty was the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (CHIASSR). For the first time in the history of this territorial entity, in March 1990, a person who is an ethnic Chechen, Doku Zavgayev, became the head of the republic.
Before Dzhokhar Dudayev came to power, this man led the Supreme Soviet of Checheno-Ingushetia to the decision of the deputies of this legislative body to endow the Chechen-Ingush ASSR with the status of a sovereign republic. In order for such a decision to be supported by the majority of residents of Checheno-Ingushetia, Zavgaev said that sovereignty is a temporary measure, because soon the Soviet Union will have to disintegrate and turn into a new territorial entity, into which the Caucasian republic will join. The people, who for the most part were not going to break ties with Moscow, supported this idea, which was originally voiced not by Doku Zavgaev himself, but by Mikhail Gorbachev, who became the president of the USSR. Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union needed to be transformed into some kind of either a federal or a confederate state, some parts of which would be able to exercise sufficiently broad powers on a completely new basis with a multi-party system and the strengthening of regional centers. As a result, the Supreme Soviet of the Chechen-Ingush Republic adopted a document conferring sovereign status on this territory.
It would seem that nothing terrible has happened: everything goes to the fact that Chechnya, together with Ingushetia integrated with it, will again join the new USSR (SSG), and everyone will heal better than before. But no JIT was formed, and the parade of sovereignties after the failed putsch in August 90s gained incredible momentum.
Immediately after it became clear that a large country was beginning to fall apart before our eyes, a man appeared in Checheno-Ingushetia who declared the representatives of the Supreme Soviet of the republic outlawed. The crowds gathered on the main square of Grozny are loudly informed that the deputies of the Supreme Soviet (let's not forget: the very deputies who adopted the law on the sovereignty of Checheno-Ingushetia) are embezzlers and corrupt politicians, and they need to be removed from power in the near future. With such slogans, Dzhokhar Dudayev came to the regional, and, as it turned out later, to big politics.
Dudayev, as an ambitious soldier, took advantage of the total confusion and, with the support of a group of like-minded people, literally threw the deputies out of the building of the Supreme Soviet of Checheno-Ingushetia, declaring that from now on the republic was heading for the implementation of its own policy. The move with the dissolution of the legislative body that gave Chechen-Ingushetia independence, according to political analysts, is due to the fact that Dudayev decided to burn bridges that could turn the tide of time and lead the renewed republic to integration with Moscow. But it should be noted that far from the entire Republic was ready to abandon integration with the union (federal) center. In particular, the Ingush side announced that it is not going to build its relations with official Moscow, as with the capital of another state. This led to the fact that representatives of the so-called National Congress of the Chechen People, with the active promotion of the idea on the part of Dzhokhar Dudayev, announced the withdrawal of Chechnya from Chechen-Ingushetia with the simultaneous creation of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
Against the background of the flags of the new republic, people with weapons in their hands began to appear on the streets and squares of Grozny. The first shouts of "Allahu akbar!"
But, despite the fact that these heralds of radical Islamism on the territory of Chechnya could initially be counted on the fingers of one hand, the crowd effect ultimately worked. The new ideology of sovereignty, spiced with accented extremist slogans, began to spin its flywheel. The parade of sovereignties announced by Boris Yeltsin created a great ulcer on the body of the once united country.
It would seem that this frank demarche in the form of radical actions in Grozny on the part of Dudayev was supposed to demonstrate to the state authorities that Chechnya's mood is to show a breakdown in relations with Moscow, but the authorities were reassured by Dzhokhar Dudayev in a very peculiar way. Dudayev followed the classic scenario of double standards, announcing to the Chechen people that they are aiming for the republic's complete independence, and in several Moscow media outlets assuring Russians that he sees a continuation of the dialogue with Moscow and the search for an optimal solution in the form of integration between Moscow and Grozny. At the same time, Moscow itself was more concerned with the events taking place on its streets than with reactionary meetings in one of the Caucasian republics. The union center was so weak that it was simply not capable of solving such serious problems as keeping a huge country within common borders. Undercover, and often quite open squabble between Gorbachev and Yeltsin, led to the fact that the so-called periphery began to move further and further from Moscow, giving birth to new and new independent quasi-states within the framework of a large quasi-state.
In October 1991, very original elections were held in Checheno-Ingushetia, which the "international" observers (representatives of Georgia and the Baltic countries) declared valid. The strangeness of these elections was that not all voters who had the right to vote took part in the voting. In particular, residents of several districts of the new republic (mostly flat) did not participate in the elections. This led to the fact that about 12% of the total number of voters dropped their ballots in the ballot boxes. And most of the residents of Chechnya (about 90%) who came to the polling stations expressed support for the course of Dzhokhar Dudayev. If we translate everything into real percentages, taking into account the entire electorate of the CRI, then we can say that Dudayev was supported by no more than 10% of the total number of Chechen voters. This, however, did not prevent Dudayev from declaring himself president and making a decision on the final withdrawal of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from not only the USSR, but also Russia.
Subsequent events resemble a hazy phantasmagoria. In just a few months, Dudaev's associates managed to take advantage of an amazing legal incident and launder up to a billion Soviet rubles, which by that time still had full weight. The fact is that the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria as an independent state was not recognized by Moscow, and therefore in the union (federal) center it was believed that it was economically connected with the State Bank. At the same time, the new Chechen authorities did not deny that they did not want to break their economic ties with the center, but at the same time, they were not going to let any controllers of financial activities from Moscow into Chechnya (as an independent republic). As a result, Dudayev's "economists", using counterfeit papers, easily cashed millions of rubles in Moscow, after which they calmly took them out, almost in sacks, to Grozny. The treasury of the new quasi-state was replenished at a pace that other republics could only dream of.
According to the senior investigator for especially important cases of the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR (RF) Sergei Ampleev, only in the first years of the existence of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, about 5-6 billion dollars were imported into it illegally using financial frauds involving employees of Russian banks. It turns out that Dudayev's separatism was originally sponsored not by Saudi money, but, paradoxically, by the financial resources of Soviet and Russian taxpayers. That is, the money that went in the form of taxes to the state treasury (or rather, to bank accounts) was left from these accounts in a variety of fraudulent directions, one of which was money laundering for the Dudayev regime in Chechnya.
With such full-fledged economic "support" from Moscow banks, Dudayev felt that success could be developed. And the famous Yeltsin decree of November 7, 1991 on the introduction of a state of emergency in Chechnya helped him in this. No more than three hundred servicemen of the Internal Troops were sent to the republic on military transporters, who, according to the plan of one of the ideologists of this mediocre operation, Alexander Rutskoi, were to take all key positions in Grozny and return the republic to the bosom of Russia.
But it is obvious that it was simply pointless to expect a solution to such a serious problem from a relatively small group of Russian servicemen who were opposed by tens of thousands of armed residents of Chechnya. Initially, it was planned that a large group of military personnel stationed in North Ossetia would enter Chechnya, but this convoy was stopped using a new method of fighting - women and children on the streets of settlements. As a result, the servicemen of the Internal Troops were simply cut off from other military units, which gave Dzhokhar Dudayev a reason to declare his complete victory over Moscow and send Russian soldiers home in disgrace. By the way, Moscow actually admitted defeat in that regional "cold" war of the 1991 model. Officials did not comment on the failure of the operation …
Since that moment, Dudayev has used the growing rating for his own purposes and has done everything to annoy Moscow. This position of the newly-minted regional Russophobe attracted the West and the countries of the Persian Gulf, and financing of militarism in Chechnya began to gain momentum from external sources. The republic was systematically turning into a stronghold of extremism in the Caucasus, with radical Islamism intoxicating the minds of local residents. Where political resources did not help, loud cries of "Allah akbar!" That had nothing to do with moderate Islam and bursts of automatic weapons into the air were increasingly used.
About 3 years remained before the start of the big war. Before Dudayev was awarded the title of Generalissimo of CRI (posthumously) - 5 years …
