The lessons of Chechnya: Russia's forgotten war?

Abstract

The implications of Moscow's military involvement in Chechnya for the Russian armed forces has, until very recently, been virtually ignored in Russian military literature. The experience of the war itself has rarely received a mention even in those articles which address the problems of local wars. Many of the ‘lessons’ of Chechnya which have been identified by Russian officers are really thinly‐disguised complaints about the government's failure to provide adequate financial and political support for the armed forces. During the past year, however, there has been a change in the tone and substance of discussions about the Chechen conflict. Russian military officers are becoming more willing to ask fundamental questions about the army's performance in that war and to consider radical solutions to the problems it encountered, including revisiting some of the key security concepts of the Gorbachev period.