Russian North Caucasus Research Articles

Reintegration of Russian children returned from war zones in the Middle East: Directions, actors, barriers

This article analyzes the integration process of children returned from ISIS territory in three regions of the Russian North Caucasus from where the largest number of ISIS fighters with Russian citizenship originated. Following the concepts of “reintegration of returned migrants” and “cultural citizenship”, it explicates the role of key actors in the processes of adaptation and integration of children and their families, as well as analyzes the nature of the barriers they overcome to restore their lost civil status and identity. The findings demonstrate that the process of reintegration of returnees is completely monopolized by the federal and local (republican) authorities and religious leaders. They limit the access of international organizations and local NGOs, minimize public discussion in the media, and control the influence of the local communities. Such a strategy of total control in the name of security as a target component of Russian domestic policy creates new grounds for vulnerability of returned children and their families, increasing their stigmatization and preserving hotbeds of tension, but does not allow this tension to be resolved through public dialogue and building constructive forms of civic integration.

Fear and loathing in North Ossetia: how ethnic activism can turn into religious nativism

ABSTRACT This contribution examines how ethnic activism in a republic of the Russian North Caucasus region, namely North Ossetia-Alania, is viewed by various social groups as a religious protest movement. This interpretation is influenced by anti-colonial discourse and an ideological agenda linking issues of religious identity and political loyalty. At the centre of these disputes are ideas about whether the ethnic religion of the Ossetian people is the local version of Orthodox Christianity or the original Ossetian religion of pre-Christian genesis that has survived to this day in the form of Ossetian ethnic traditions. Proponents of the latter concept argue that the spread of Orthodox Christianity among Ossetians should be seen as the result of spiritual colonisation by external political forces. Orthodox leaders and many ordinary believers in North Ossetia strongly protest against this interpretation of the role of Orthodoxy in the republic. Under these conditions Ossetia’s Orthodox Christians perceive any anti-colonial public gesture as aimed at contesting the completeness of their ethnic identity.

CONFLICT IN UKRAINE, RUSSIAN-LANGUAGE JIHADIST PROPAGANDA, CHECHENS BATTALIONS AND THE LINK WITH THE RUSSIAN NORTH CAUCASUS

Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, international media have reported the presence of Chechen battalions among the ranks of Kyiv and Moscow’s forces. The Chechen presence in the conflict has nourished the jihadist propaganda in the Russian language and created a debate in the Russian North Caucasus and among the Russian Muslim umma (community) regarding the legitimacy of fighting with or against the Russian Federation. This paper wants to analyse the Russian jihadist propaganda’s narrative over Ukraine, the Chechen battalions’ role in support of the Ukraine army, and the geopolitical risk for the entire Eurasian region from terrorist groups’ exploitation of the Ukraine conflict.

Quantifying elevational effect on the geometric body shape of Russian beetle Carabus exaratus (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

The study of phenotypic changes in organisms at different organizational levels (population, community, and ecosystem) in combination with genetic and genomic tools have helped researchers to understand how microevolutionary processes may lead to adaptation. Insects have been used in many studies as change bioindicators in the ecosystem and they have been the focus of many genetic, ecological and morphological studies. In the following research, we studied how an endemic beetle species Carabus exaratus Quensel, modified its phenotype in response to the altitudinal clines in the Russian North Caucasus. Altitude plays an important role in the size and shape of many species. Shape changes were studied across three altitudinal gradients from 90 to 1018 m.a.s.l using geometric morphometric tools in order to identify if there are specialized phenotypes to altitude. Our results showed a principal relationship between centroid size and altitude where specimens from higher mountains were bigger than the other two groups, also an independent body shape was noted between the three populations where organisms of the mountain had a bigger and convex shape in comparison with smaller and oval shape from the foothill and plain. These results were analyzed using geometric morphometrics for the first time on endemic beetles from the Russian North Caucasus, helping us to understand morphological changes. They suggest that these changes may depend on climatic conditions at high altitudes, where univoltine and bivoltine reproductive behaviors were noticed, implying larger and shorter breeds which are directly reflected on morphological changes. More studies are needed to identify the ontogenetic pattern that affects the body shape in these environments.

Wrestling Gym in Dagestan as a Space for Masculine Socialization

Abstract The paper analyzes the process of sports gender socialization of boys and adolescents in the case of freestyle wrestling in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian North Caucasus Republic of Dagestan. The methods and practices of educating future men in the wrestling gym are functionally related to the model of hegemonic masculinity rooted in the local gender and social order, which is under pressure from urbanization and modernization. The wrestling gym insulates students from both the “demoralizing” influence of the home environment and the marginalized scripts of masculinity associated with street life. Through training, boys and adolescents acquire a masculine habitus that can later become the basis for their careers in sports and other spheres of social life, as well as the social capital necessary for successful participation in coalition clinches. They internalize the principle of consistency in gender and age stratification and the lifestyle associated with the ideology of “muscular Islam.”

Mapping Asia plants: Floristic studies of the Russian Caucasus at the regional level

The Ciscaucasus and the Russian North Caucasus covers an area of approximately 258.3 sq. km (≈ 1.5% of Russia’s total area) with a length from north-east to south-west of — 350 km, and from north-west to south-east of — 1100 km. Systematic floristic studies of this area began in the 19th century, when Lipsky (1899) for the first time compiled a complete “Flora of the Caucasus…”, which numbered 4430 species. A very important source of the first half of the 20th century is “Flora Caucasica Critica” (Kuznetsov et al., 1901—1916, not finished). The most important modern sources of floristic information in this territory are the “Flora of the Caucasus” (Grossheim, 1936—1967, not finished) and “Synopsis of the Flora of the Caucasus” (Takhtadzhyan, 2003—2012, not finished). The most important macro-regional and regional floristic reviews: “Manual-key to Higher Plants of the Northwestern Caucasus and Ciscaucasia” (Kosenko, 1970), “Flora of the North Caucasus” (Galushko, 1978—1980), 3th edition of “Stavropol Flora Checklist” (Ivanov, 2005), “Flora of the Northwest Caucasus” (Zernov, 2006); "Dagestan Flora Checklist" (Murtazaliev, 2009), “Illustrated Flora of the South of the Russian Black Sea Region” (Zernov, 2013), “Vegetation Cover of Kabardino-Balkaria” (Shkhagapsoev, 2015), “Manual-key to Vascular Plants of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic” (Zernov et al., 2015). From 9 regions of the Ciscaucasus and the Russian North Caucasus, 6 have high-quality flora or synopses of flora, 1 region studied at the average level, and 2 — are problematic. In the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, floristic research focuses on invasive plants, and we do not have rich information about the Chechen Republic.

Islam Radicalization Factors in Post-Soviet Tajikistan

This article explores the problem of Islamic fundamentalism in Tajikistan. The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that in this Republic there is the greatest activity of Islamist movements among all CIS countries. The potential destabilization of the situation in Tajikistan threatens the entire sub-region of Central Asia, and may also lead to the transit of instability to the Russian North Caucasus. In this paper, the author examines the influence of religious, socio-economic and other factors on the radicalization of Islam in this post-Soviet Republic, as well as the activities of fundamentalist groups with a focus on the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT).

Ethnicity or Religion? A Theory of Identity Choice with Evidence from the Russian North Caucasus

AbstractPrevious research has either equated religion- and language-based group identities or asserted that their social effects are the same. This article proposes a novel differentiation between religious and ethnic self-identification that accounts for in-group income inequality and the social role of the group. The study argues that ethnicity-based identities tend to be associated with economic activities, thereby increasing the demand for income equality within such groups. Religious identities, on the contrary, are centered around noneconomic activities and have the ideological framework for reconciling material inequalities. The observable implication of this distinction is that the high-, low-, and middle-income categories of the multicultural society will display differential association with ethnic and religious identities. Ethnic groups will have lower in-group income inequality as a result of the exclusion of the poor and the departure of the rich. Religious groups, on the contrary, will have higher in-group income inequality due to the capacity of religion to accommodate both poor and rich. Relevant empirical tests from the ethnically and religiously diverse Russian North Caucasus region indicate support for the proposed theory.

When Does the Crime-Terror Nexus Fail to Materialize? Drug Trafficking, Militants, and the State in Russia

AbstractWhat are the conditions that obstruct the formation of a crime-terror nexus? To answer this question we carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Russia's North Caucasus (2008–2016) where no durable crime-terror nexus materialized despite the presence of conditions conducive to the emergence of linkages between criminals and militants. We demonstrate how the sheer diversity and fluidity of violent actors, with some deeply immersed in the political, economic, and security institutions of the Russian state, fragmented the elements of a crime-terror nexus to such a degree that collaboration among them proved too difficult and costly. Our argument makes several contributions to analyses of the crime-terror nexus. First, our study illuminates the various actors within a purported nexus, demonstrating how cooperation between them may not be forthcoming. Second, our framework demonstrates how a multiplicity of the centers and agents of state power, both formal and informal, is intimately interwoven into the fragmented security landscape. Third, the diversity of the so-called terrorist and militant groups that are competing for power and resources call for rethinking and reconceptualization of what we call a “terrorist group” and the data that we use to study terrorist violence.

Chechnya's terrorist network: the evolution of terrorism in Russia's North Caucasus

Chechnya's terrorist network: the evolution of terrorism in Russia's North Caucasus

The Political Economy of Support for Sharia: Evidence from the Russian North Caucasus

AbstractMany scholars have argued that orthodox Muslims harbor attitudes that are more economically communitarian and politically illiberal, since individuals are seen as embedded within a larger community that places a premium on social order. Yet most studies have ignored the potential of Islam as an ideological platform for political reformers. Religion in general and Islam in particular has mostly been treated as a predictor rather than a derivative of political-economic preferences. This article suggests that, in the absence of credible secular political ideologies and representative political mechanisms, reformist-minded individuals are likely to use religion as a political platform for change. When Muslims are a minority in a repressive non-Muslim society, Islamic orthodoxy can serve as a political platform for politically and economically liberal forces. We test these conjectures with original micro-level data from the Russian North Caucasus and find strong support for them.

High prevalence of W1282x mutation in cystic fibrosis patients from Karachay-Cherkessia

Cystic fibrosis (CF; OMIM #219700) is a common autosomal recessive disease. The spectrum and frequency of CFTR mutations vary significantly in different populations and ethnic groups. A genetic epidemiological study was conducted in the indigenous ethnic group of people known as the Karachais. They live in the Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia, which lies in the northwest of Russia's North Caucasus region. Karachai's are Turkic-speaking and consist of 194 thousand people (approximately 40% of the population of the Republic). Molecular genetic analysis was performed in 10 unrelated Karachai families with CF patients from three districts in the Republic. A high frequency of W1282X mutation was found (18 of 20 mutant alleles): eight patients were homozygous for the W1282X mutation, and two were compound heterozygous (the second alleles were R1066C and R709X). Analysis for 13 common CF mutations in the sample of 142 healthy Karachais identified two 1677delTA and two W1282X mutation carriers. Thus, the most common CFTR mutation, F508del, was not detected among the CF patients or in healthy Karachais. The most frequent mutation among Karachai patients is W1282X (90%). Its frequency in healthy Karachais is approximately 0.007. Haplotype analysis using the CFTR intragene DNA markers IVS1CA, IVS6aGATT, IVS8CA and IVS17bCA showed that the origins of the W1282X mutation in Karachay-Cherkessia and the Eastern European part of Russia are different.

Global surgery in a postconflict setting - 5-year results of implementation in the Russian North Caucasus

BackgroundCollaborations for global surgery face many challenges to achieve fair and safe patient care and to build sustainable capacity. The 2004 terrorist attack on a school in Beslan in North Ossetia in the Russian North Caucasus left many victims with complex otologic barotrauma. In response, we implemented a global surgery partnership between the Vladikavkaz Children's Hospital, international surgical teams, the North Ossetian Health Ministry, and civil society organizations. This study's aim was to describe the implementation and 5-year results of capacity building for complex surgery in a postconflict, mid-income setting.DesignWe conducted an observational study at the Children's Hospital in Vladikavkaz in the autonomous Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, part of the Russian Federation. We assessed the outcomes of 15 initial patients who received otologic surgeries for complex barotrauma resulting from the Beslan terrorism attack and for other indications, and report the incidence of intra- and postoperative complications.ResultsPatients were treated for trauma related to terrorism (53%) and for indications not related to violence (47%). None of the patients developed peri- or postoperative complications. Three patients (two victims of terrorism) who underwent repair of tympanic perforations presented with re-perforations. Four junior and senior surgeons were trained on-site and in Germany to perform and teach similar procedures autonomously.ConclusionsIn mid-income, postconflict settings, complex surgery can be safely implemented and achieve patient outcomes comparable to global standards. Capacity building can build on existing resources, such as operation room management, nursing, and anesthesia services. In postconflict environments, substantial surgical burden is not directly attributable to conflict-related injury and disease, but to health systems weakened by conflicts. Extending training and safe surgical care to include specialized interventions such as microsurgery are integral components to strengthen local capacity and ownership. Our experience identified strategies for fair patient selection and might provide a model for potentially sustainable surgical system building in postconflict environments.

Communicative Strategies and Misunderstandings. Discourse Analysis of the Russian North Caucasus Case

The paper proposes the critical discourse analysis as the method for the reconstruction of communication on the social problem. This approach provides explanation why the particular informational campaign was ineffective and the how the communication strategy has to be reconsidered. In presented study three types of social actors are defined: the authorities, the mass media and the citizens. These actors interpret the situation, produce discourse and make the influence on the formation of a social conception of problematic situation. The empirical case is media reflection of the situation in the North Caucasus region of Russia in 2011-2012. For the analysis of three discourses two corpuses of texts thematically connected to the problem were chosen: news articles and Internet posts during two chronological periods - August-November 2011 and April-June 2012. Analysis of mass media texts, official statements and comments on these communications by Internet audience enabled to draw out conclusions on the process of interpretation of social problem: the priority of the power institutions (institutional) discourse in the determination of social problem; the absence of interaction between the discourses. The disconnection between three discourses on the one social problem can be viewed as a symptom of ineffective communication strategy of the federal authorities. Empirical study has shown the way the communication strategy towards the social problem to be corrected in order to become more effective.

Chechnya's terrorist network: the evolution of terrorism in Russia's North Caucasus

Chechnya's terrorist network: the evolution of terrorism in Russia's North Caucasus

Russian North Caucasus in the First Third of the XXI Century

The article considers the current situation in the Russian North Caucasus. It reviews the main trends and possible prospects of its political development, ethnodemographycal and socioeconomic evolution, sociocultural dynamics, and the potential for new administrative-territorial reforms. It is stated that despite many displays of social archaisms, the integrated development of the region in the post-Soviet period has not stopped. And the main factor for its further modernization success consists in the stability and internal dynamism of the Russian Federation. Conclusion about rather high probability of complex stabilization of this problem Russian region for 15-25 years’ prospect has been made. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s2p149

Islamists and Nationalists: Rebel Motivation and Counterinsurgency in Russia's North Caucasus

This article offers the first disaggregated, quantitative comparison of Islamist and nationalist violence, using new data from Russia's North Caucasus. We find that violence by Islamist groups is less sensitive to government coercion than violence by nationalist groups. Selective counterinsurgency tactics outperform indiscriminate force in suppressing attacks by nationalists, but not Islamists. We attribute this finding to rebels’ support structure. Because Islamist insurgents rely less on local support than nationalists, they are able to maintain operations even where it is relatively costly for the local population to support them. These findings have potentially significant implications for other contemporary conflicts in which governments face both types of challenges to their authority and existing political order.

Reconceptualizing, Measuring, and Evaluating Distance and Context in the Study of Conflicts: Using Survey Data from the North Caucasus of Russia

How does political violence affect the attitudes and beliefs of affected populations? This question remains of central concern to the discipline of conflict studies. In response, we make the case (by empirical example) that the choice of spatial and temporal ranges of analysis influences conclusions about the associations between exposure to political conflict and subsequent opinions. Using 2005 survey data from Russia's North Caucasus and georeferenced conflict data for the preceding 2 years, we find that violence affects levels of ethnic pride, trust in public institutions, and preferences for ethno-territorial separation, as well as other postwar attitudes. By designating a wide range of distance and time boundaries for capturing a conflict/attitude relationship, we argue for a more inductive style of analyzing theoretical propositions than is usually found in the field of conflict research. Our research is framed within the theoretical and empirical discussions of contextual-, neighborhood-, and community-level drivers of individual-level outcomes from the political geography and conflict studies literatures.

Russia and the Caucasus

IntroductionRussian influence in the South Caucasus region has a long history. Czar Ivan IV initiated construction of the Tarki fortress on the Caspian Sea as early as 1559. In the subsequent centuries Russia gradually extended control over the surrounding area, culminating with the 1829 Treaty of Turkmenchay that established the Aras River as the expanding empire's boundary with Persia.1 Russian policy toward the region has been dominated by the goal of maintaining a position of influence ever since.Challenges to Russian control have arisen from both internal and external sources. Between 1817 and 1863 Russia fought what it calls the Caucasian War against coalitions of local tribes led by the famous Imam Shamil, eventually prevailing in armed conflict that was prosecuted with incredible savagery.2 Modem ethnic nationalism emerged in a Caucasus subjected to czarist control, with local identities conditioned by the status of Russia as a foil for resentment.3 A tradition of armed resistance to Russian control can be traced from the Caucasian War to the present. Against the background of the Russian Revolutions of 1917, the peoples of the Caucasus launched unsuccessful attempts to consolidate independent states, and during the 1920s and 1930s there were numerous local uprisings in defiance of Soviet power.4 The tradition of militant opposition to Russian domination has reemerged in the post-Soviet period and remains important source of regional instability.The greater Caucasus has also been a subject of geopolitical competition between external actors. During the Crimean War (1853-1856) Ahmed Pasha led Ottoman armies into the Caucasus with the goal of pushing Russia north of the Terek and Kuban Rivers, a campaign whose logic (and unsuccessful outcome) was replayed by Ottoman forces under Enver Pasha during the First World War. The Caucasus was also the target of offensive by Hitler's Wehrmacht during the Second World War, who were beaten back by the Soviet armed forces at cost.5 Parvrn Darabadi characterizes these episodes as part of a larger struggle waged on the global chessboard to control a great Eurasian Central-Eurasia megazone including the Black and Caspian Seas.6 Today's conflicts for influence in the Caucasus region between the U.S. and its Western allies and the Russian Federation fit neatly into this tradition.The promise of a new beginning offered by the dismantling of the Soviet Union has not been fulfilled. Between 1994 and 1996 Boris Yeltsin's Russia fought the First Chechen War in attempt to squelch separatism in the Russian North Caucasus, with catastrophic results. In the Second Chechen War (1999-2009) Russia achieved greater success, but armed resistance in the region has not been eliminated. Against the background of the Soviet collapse Armenia and Azerbaijan waged war over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while Georgia lost control over the rebellious provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, giving rise to protracted or frozen conflicts that remain unresolved.7 Since the accession of Vladimir Putin to power in the Kremlin in 2000, Russia has committed to a long-term effort to restore something like its traditional dominant status. When the Georgian government of Mikhel Saakashvili sought to regain control over South Ossetia in 2008, Russia responded with a devastating invasion that seemed to make its goals, and the capacity that it possessed to pursue them, crystal clear.8Russia pursues assertive regional policy in the Caucasus consistent with its historical traditions, which portray the region as an inalienable part of the history and fate of Russia, as well as its contemporary geostrategic interests.9 Meanwhile, its longstanding role as a major player in the region continues to shape its perceptions and priorities. Russia's policy toward the South Caucasus is also aligned with a larger vision for post-Soviet Eurasia, which is viewed as the crucible within which Russia will eventually be able to reassert itself as a world power - a dynamic exposed once again by Russian reactions to the conflict that has been unfolding in Ukraine since 2013. …

Islam, nationalism and state in the Muslim Caucasus

Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991 the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus – corresponding to present-day Azerbaijan and the Russian North Caucasus – have been in a continuous process of renegotiating their Islamic identity and the role of Islam in the processes of nation-building. This has involved a complex set of factors, including the correlation between the rise of Islam and socio-economic well-being (or the lack of it), the level and longevity of Islamic heritage, the relationship between Islam and the nature of the ruling post-Soviet Caucasian regimes, and the degree of susceptibility to the region’s exposure to foreign influences, Islamic and Western. This article examines some of these factors from an historical perspective, concentrating on how the political elites and the populace variously dealt with essentially external influences in the course of their centuries-long incorporation within successive political empires. From the seventh century AD these were Islamic, emanating from the Umayyad, Abbasid, Timurid, Ottoman and Safavid empires; and from the nineteenth century, Russian Orthodox and Soviet atheist. An analysis of the dynamics set up by these influences and the distinctively Caucasian Muslim responses to them is crucial in understanding how current elites and their antagonists in the region embrace, reject and otherwise instrumentalise Islam.