Ethnic Parity and Democratic Pluralism in Dagestan: A Consociational Approach

Abstract

What factors permit some ethnically and religiously segmented societies to avoid large-scale violence while others sink into protracted conflict? The collapse of the Soviet Union has given rise to a variety of plural societies, the principal common feature of which has been their rapid, and seemingly irrevocable, descent along a trajectory of ethnic conflict, political separatism, and socio-economic disintegration. Nowhere has this collapse had more tragic consequences than the Caucasus where, with rare exceptions, all administrative units have approximated this trajectory to varying degrees. This study focuses upon perhaps the most dramatic of those exceptions. The absence of protracted ethnic conflict in the Russian Republic of Dagestan stands in stark contrast to its neighbors in the region, and indeed to the Russian Federation considered as a whole. For whereas the latter has been mired in horrific ethnic conflict just across Dagestan’s border, in Chechnya, Dagestan has largely avoided such difficulties. This is especially remarkable in that, even by regional standards, Dagestan is distinguished by its extremes of ethnic diversity and economic deprivation. Indeed, Dagestan has been depicted (falsely, we will argue) as a miniature Soviet Union on the verge of disintegration. With more than thirty-four ethnolinguistic groups, Dagestan is by far the most ethnically heterogeneous of Russia’s republics. Apart from Chechnya, it is also the poorest. Since these conditions have been compounded by the rigors of social transition; by the collapse of a central authority that previously guaranteed order and subsidized most of the Dagestani economy; by an influx of refugees from the three bordering republics that have been mired in violent ethnic strife; by pressures of Islamic fundamentalism; by a virtual blockade during the first