Is Leviathan Back? Circassian Ethnic Mobilization after the 2012 Presidential Elections in Russia

Abstract

This article explores the hypothesis that on-going instability in the North Caucasus can no longer be explained by its violent history of colonization. Instead, instability is carefully negotiated by ethnic elites, who do not see the North Caucasus as an indispensable part of the Russian Federation and who can only make a public show of action on the eve of crucial political campaigns: the 2012 presidential elections and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Focusing on the question of ethnicity and its relation to federal politics in the North Caucasus, the main argument of the article is while Circassian ethnicity and ethnic politics in general, have been partly the outcome of the authoritarian rule of the Russian Imperial and Soviet legacies, the way ethnicity has been and is being politicized by the ethnic, federal, and international actors, have created serious grounds for the rise and the consolidation of Circassian nationalism in the North Caucasus.