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Will Russia Win in Chechnya?
article by Melvin Rhodes
Last time they failed to crush the Chechens. Will Russia succeed this time?
It's a scenario reminiscent of Vietnam 30 years ago-television news footage of the covered corpses of young men sent to fight a faraway war against a people with a different culture. This time it's not Southeast Asia and Americans are not involved. Now the war is in the Caucasus, in the southern part of the Russian Federation. The dead soldiers being sent home are Russians-officially over 500 dead at the time of this writing, but many sources put it much higher. The war they are fighting is taking longer than expected, and the victory is as elusive as it was for America in the 1960s.
Once again, a major power is fighting a conflict against what is seemingly a minor force. Six years ago it tried to crush the Chechens and failed, but then Russia itself was in chaos. Now it's better organized and has sent the full force of its military might against the Chechens.
Will they win this time? Recent history is not very encouraging for Russia.
From the time of Peter the Great 300 years ago right through much of the 1800s Russia was an expanding empire, a powerful monolithic state that conquered all before it and ruthlessly suppressed revolt.
A checkered history
In the early years of the 20th century, in 1904-5, Russia fought a war with Japan. The whole of Europe expected mighty Russia to win this little war, with little difficulty. But Russia lost heavily to Japan, a major embarrassment at a time of European domination of Asia and the rest of the world. It was the first of many heavy defeats in the century to follow. A review of the main conflicts Russia fought during the century is helpful as we consider the outcome of the current war.
A few years after its loss to Japan, confident after years of industrial expansion, Russia went to war against Germany and Austria alongside its allies Britain and France. But Russia was to be the first of the warring parties to sue for peace. Following a total collapse of the social order that had given the country stability for over three centuries, Lenin seized power, creating the world's first communist state. One of his first moves was to seek peace with Germany. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in 1918 and ceded much territory to the Germans, also freeing the Axis allies up on the eastern front to concentrate their military might against the Western allies. Russia had lost almost two million men in the First World War. It was to lose hundreds of thousands more in the Civil War that followed as the Red (communist) Army fought against the Whites (Czarist forces).
Concentrating on internal security, the Russians managed to stay out of major wars in the early years of Stalin's rule, but "volunteers" went to Spain to fight in that country's civil war in the late 1930s. The Soviet supported leftist forces lost to Franco's right-wing fascists. At the same time this conflict was being fought far away on the other side of the European continent, Stalin was busily disposing of most of his top military so that they would pose no threat to him. By the time the next major conflict came along, the country had been considerably weakened and was to suffer greatly.
Stalin's 1939 peace treaty with Hitler, (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the foreign ministers of the two nations) kept the Soviet Union out of World War II for parts of two years, during which the Russians attacked Finland and fought the particularly vicious Winter War against the Finns. They won by sheer force of numbers, but the Finns inflicted heavy damage. Russia lost 50,000 men while Finland's losses were less than half that number, 24,600.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Russia fought what became known as the Great Patriotic War (1941-45), a struggle for the survival of the Russian homeland. The Soviet Union lost an estimated 20 million of its citizens during this conflict, including 7.5 million men under arms. (The losses would not have been so great if Stalin had not killed off so many potential opponents in the years immediately preceding the war.)
Soviet domination maintained at high cost
After victory in 1945, Russia ensured its security by keeping troops in eastern European countries that shared its borders. Communism was imposed against the will of the people, backed up by Soviet forces. The economic cost was extremely high, arresting the development of all the participating nations. Official statistics at the time cannot be relied upon, but the Soviet Union was spending a far higher percentage of its gross national product on the military than that spent by any of the member nations of NATO, the Western alliance.
Every single rebellion during this period was crushed throughout the region, increasing anti-Russian feeling and tying down more and more Soviet troops at an ever-rising cost. About 1,500 men were lost in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.
During the period known as the Cold War, the Soviets and Americans fought many proxy wars (minor conflicts through client states) around the globe. These wars were fought in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East. It began to seem as if the Cold War would go on forever. It also became gradually apparent that an increasing number of countries were turning to communism, exactly as Marx and Lenin had predicted they would.
In 1979, confident of a quick victory, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, traditionally a buffer state between the old Russian Empire and British India, left alone by Russia and England. Afghanistan had been in turmoil since the overthrow of its king in 1973, and Moscow saw an opportunity to back leftist forces and impose communism on yet another backward Third World state. It was not to be that simple.
For over a decade Russia fought mounting resistance by Afghan Muslims determined to resist subjugation by the Russians. Eventually the Russians gave in and pulled out, leaving Afghans to fight on among themselves and the U.S.S.R. to collapse under the economic strains of its own internal contradictions. The loss of Russian life in Afghanistan was unacceptable to the people at home. The war was a major contributing factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Now, 10 years later, before the nation has had an opportunity to recover from past conflict and internal upheaval, it is fighting another war against internal separatist forces, people wanting independence for ethnic and religious reasons. Like the Afghans, they are Muslims. Although Russians ruled them since the 19th century, they have never liked Russia. Russian is not their native language and they are of a different culture. Russia tried to suppress them in 1994, but withdrew two years later after heavy losses. The Chechens were not given independence but they were left alone-until recently.
Trends reflect decline
One little-known factor here is that ethnic Russians have had a very low birthrate since World War II, whereas the Muslim regions within the country have experienced a very high one. Abortion has been freely available to Russian women since the Soviet Union was founded after World War I. Most couples had just one or two children. That means that most households would have only one son, increasing the likelihood that wars would be unpopular at home. Meanwhile, resistance would be greater in the regions where the birth rate has been much higher.
There are other noteworthy trends.
Russia has gradually been losing territory occupied mostly by non-ethnic Russians. Following World War I, it lost Finland, Poland, the Baltic States and some other areas of Eastern Europe. More recently, it has lost vast territories occupied by Muslims, who have now formed themselves into new countries, further complicating the politics of the region.
It is not only Russia that has been losing territory. All the great European empires that dominated the globe at the beginning of the 20th century have now gone as the indigenous peoples took over their own nations.
The rise of Islam is another trend against which Russia is fighting. This is not only Islamic fundamentalism, but also simple nationalism, the desire to be rid of foreign rulers and foreign influence. It wasn't so much the Afghans who defeated Soviet forces, as the arms provided by Muslim Pakistan's General Zia, who supported fellow Muslims against the atheistic communist Soviet state. As Jesus Christ prophesied in Matthew 24, at the time of the end "nation shall rise against nation." The Greek word for nation is ethnos, meaning ethnic group. Most of the wars fought in the last 50 years have not been between great nations, but have been conflicts fought along ethnic lines as different tribal groups have wanted to rule themselves. This is one of those wars.
Will Russia win this time?
Russia is often described as a bear-big and clumsy. Its heavy weight alone will win it some wars and it may win this one. Chechnya does not have Pakistan next door to continue to supply its forces with arms. Russia waited until after Kosovo before acting against the Chechens, assured after the NATO conflict in the Balkans that no Western country would risk losing manpower to fight a war thousands of miles from home. So it has a virtual free rein in the region. While the Russians like to compare this conflict to the one fought by NATO against Serbia, there are two noteworthy differences. This is a much longer conflict and the Russians are suffering casualties-a stark contrast to NATO forces a few months ago.
Instead of courting a nation that could have been a neutral docile neighbor, the Russians will have to keep tens of thousands of troops stationed in the area for decades to come, at a time when the Russian government needs to sort out its major financial problems. President Vladimir Putin has proposed a 57 percent increase in defense spending for Russians. Americans, enjoying a booming economy, would not tolerate that. Will the Russians?
It remains to be seen. The war right now is still popular at home as Russians believe that the Chechens were responsible for the terrorist acts committed in Moscow last year. There was, however, no proof that Chechens were behind these acts. If they weren't, then the whole war was rather pointless. Meanwhile, with the number of body bags increasing, what is a popular war as the new year begins may turn out to be yet another failed military enterprise. Like so many other wars Russia has fought in the last century, the same public that was so enthusiastic at the beginning may turn against their leaders as things go wrong. Then the question will be: Will Russia's democracy survive Chechnya? WNP
Battle Deaths for Russian Wars
The following are battle deaths for Russian wars since 1900. Note that the first list is of interstate wars (wars with other nations) and reflect only troop deaths. The second list is of civil wars and includes civilian deaths. The Afghan War was an intervention in another nation's civil war.
War Dates Deaths
Wars With Other Nations
Boxer 1900 302
Sino-Russian 1900 242
Russo-Japanese 1904-05 71,453
World War I 1914-18 1,700,000
Russo-Polish 1919-20 60,000
Sino-Soviet 1929 200
Changkufeng 1938 1,200
Nomonhan 1939 5,000
World War II 1939-45 7,500,000
Russo-Finnish 1939-40 50,000
Russo-Hungarian 1956 1,500
Civil Wars
1905 Revolution 1905 1,000
Kirghiz/Kazakh revolt 1916 103,000
Russian Civil War 1918-21 800,000
Green Rebellion 1920-21 6,700
Soviet-Turkestani 1931-34 20,000
Afghanistan 1979-89 14,454
First Chechen 1994-96 90,000
Figures courtesy of "Correlates of War Project," University of Michigan. Compiled by Philip Schafer.
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