Media Portrayals of the Russian-Chechen Conflict. Representations of Political Violence and Identity - a Discourse Analysis

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Media Portrayals of the Russian-Chechen

Conflict

Representations of Political Violence and Identity

-

a Discourse Analysis

Anja Westberg Supervisor: Maja Povrzanovic Frykman Malmö University Total words: 20 197

Peace and Conflict Studies 91-120 Autumn 2009

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Abstract

The thesis aims to examine discourses about internal and “ethnic” violent conflicts as seen in media representations of the Russian-Chechen conflict. Employing the method of discourse analysis, the study analyses news coverage of the two post-Soviet wars in Chechnya between 1995 and 2009. The theoretical approach is supported by the work of political scientist Michael Evangelista (2002) as well as anthropologists Valery Tishkov (2004) and Jakob Rigi (2007).

The empirical material consists primarily of a selection of articles published by CNN and two Swedish dailies; Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. The thesis argues that this material tends to rely on a rather simplistic portrayal of the parties in the conflict. Violent responses to the Russian troops are frequently represented as a “collective resistance” from a unified group with shared aspirations, an image which stand in contrast to stories from the ground. Representations of Chechens varies between the image of “rebels” and “victims”, but this group is exclusively portrayed as an ethnic group which historically has persisted as culturally different from the rest of the population in Russia. Such images contribute to portray Chechens’ drive for independence as the primary cause for the wars, which in turn downplays the role of Chechen leaders throughout the conflict. The thesis suggests that the news coverage is embedded in dominant discourses about identity formation and war which shape the selective process of storytelling in the media. The thesis concludes that discourses which are produced during violent conflict should not be taken as evidence for the true nature of difference and antagonism between groups.

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Sammanfattning

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka diskurser om interna och ”etniska” konflikter som återfinns i representationer av den rysk-tjetjenska konflikten i media. Med diskursanalys som metod analyseras nyhetsrapportering av de två post-sovjetiska krigen i Tjetjenien mellan 1995 och 2009. Uppsatsens teoretiska utgångspunkt baseras på studier av statsvetaren Michael Evangelista (2002) samt antropologerna Valery Tishkov (2004) och Jakob Rigi (2007).

Det empiriska materialet består framförallt av ett urval artiklar publicerade av CNN samt två svenska dagstidningar, Dagens Nyheter och Svenska Dagbladet. Uppsatsen argumenterar för att detta material tenderar att presentera en förenklad bild av konfliktens parter. De väpnade motattackerna mot de ryska trupperna porträtteras som ett kollektivt motstånd från en enad etnisk grupp med gemensamma mål, en bild som ofta står i kontrast till berättelser från ”marken”. Representationer av tjetjener varierar mellan bilden av ”rebeller” och ”offer”, men gruppen beskrivs uteslutande som en etnisk grupp som historiskt har bestått som kulturellt skilda från resten av den ryska befolkningen. Dessa skildringar bidrar till att tjetjeners strävan efter självständighet tolkas som den främsta förklaringen till krigen, vilket tonar ner de tjetjenska ledarnas roll i konflikten. Uppsatsen menar att nyhetsrapporteringen ger uttryck för mer dominanta diskurser om identitetsskapande och krig vilka formar historieberättandet i media. Uppsatsen argumenterar för att diskurser som produceras under väpnade konflikter inte ska tolkas som bevis för till synes naturliga skillnader och antagonism mellan olika grupper.

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1. Introduction

The topic of this thesis covers the two wars in Chechnya, the first one that took place between 1994 and 1996, and the second which started in 1999 and officially came to an end in April 2009. In recent years Russia’s second military campaign in Chechnya has also been widely referred to as the “war in the northern Caucasus”, which in turn was named as an “anti-terrorist operation” by the Russian government after the September 11 events. The wars in Chechnya can be, and certainly have been, framed in a variety of different ways. Within the international academic community, the most frequently used theoretical categories are civil or

internal war, secessionist or separatist war, and also ethnic or ethno-political war. In political, popular and media discourses, categories such as anti-terror war, imperial war and liberation

war are also frequently used, depending on the political standpoint of the commentator. The wide range of labels describing the wars also reflects the intensity of debate on what has actually happened during the war times. In fact, one could ascertain that the violence taking place in Chechnya and its neighboring regions during the past 15 years has created a parallel conflict over contesting views about the true nature of these wars.

In the midst of this “war on words” is the population of Chechnya that has been subjected to extreme violence for periods of time. The experiences of violence among civilians in Chechnya include not only the direct violence in the form of indiscriminate air strikes and fire attacks, but also the indirect1 violence of living in fear and coping with the hardship of everyday life in a war-torn society. Whatever the reasons, purposes, intentions and responsibilities for the wars, the overwhelming result in tens of thousands of dead and wounded is something that almost everyone can agree on. This thesis is not, however, primarily concerned with determining the question of guilt or innocence. Rather, the purpose

1

The concepts of direct and indirect violence are widely used in the field of peace and conflict studies, but were originally developed by peace researcher Johan Galtung (1969)

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is to delineate and explain the discussions on these issues, as well as the various explanations for the wars in academic and journalistic writing. Therefore, the main focus of this thesis will lie on the possibility of understanding different interpretations of the Russian-Chechen conflict as discursive knowledge.

1.1 Background and research problem

In the large majority of the political science literature on internal conflict, causes and possible solutions are in focus. In one of my earlier theses in Peace and Conflict Studies at Malmö University, dealing with academic and media accounts of the wars in former Yugoslavia, I made a call for increased emphasis on the transformative character of violent conflicts (Westberg, 2008). I argued that Swedish mass media produced simplified representations of these wars, which reinforced primordialist ideas of ancient “ethnic hatred” between various ethnic groups in the Western Balkans. These accounts, which to some extent were also found in academic literature, consequently ignored stories that refuted this dominant theory about ethnicity being the cause of the violent conflict. Furthermore, I had observed that many internal wars, including those in former Yugoslavia, were categorized primarily as “ethnic wars”. The thesis suggested that the often indiscriminate use of this category resulted in a discursive knowledge, or “truth”, about the nature of these conflicts which consistently failed to explain what was actually happening on the ground. In my study, one common feature of both news articles and political science literature was a tendency to treat ethnic groups as clear-cut parties to the conflict, and ethnic groups were often represented as having one common position towards their “enemies”. In this dominant discourse on “ethnic wars”, ethnicity is itself posing a latent or manifest threat to peace within sovereign states.

In my effort to deconstruct discourses about such wars, I have taken a particular interest in anthropological studies on political violence, nationalism and ethnicity. They have

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contributed considerably to the understanding of social identification in the context of violent conflicts in the post-Cold War era. Reviewing the anthropology of political violence, Kay B. Warren argues that “when we need to interpret wars in terms of culture and change, the traditional political science accounts on macro-level become inadequate” (Warren, 1997: 1).

In this thesis, my interest in discourses about ethnicity in the context of violent conflicts focuses on the Russian-Chechen conflict, since this conflict is popularly referred to as an “ethnic conflict”. This categorization implies that this conflict is actually one between two distinct ethnic groups, Russians and Chechens, and that the wars have in fact been violent “clashes” between these groups, resulting from conflicting ideas about the future status of Chechnya within the Russian federation. The problem with this top-down definition is that it treats ethnicity as a fixed or essential entity. A more plausible presumption, and one which I intend to explore in this thesis, is that the meaning of being “Chechen” or “Russian” has not been stable during the course of this violent conflict. Another way of expressing this theoretical point of departure is with the words of the Russian anthropologist Valery Tishkov: “It is the conflict that constructs Chechens, not vice versa” (Tishkov 2004: 10).

1.2 Purpose and research questions

The larger objects of study in this thesis are dominant discourses about the Russian-Chechen conflict in Western media and in academic literature, particularly in political science. The main focus will be on the representations of Chechens as a distinct ethnic group, and the various traits and aspirations attributed to them as a party in the Russian-Chechen conflict. The intention is not to find a single “image” which will be assessed as either false or true, but rather to distinguish the different kinds of representations that are prevalent in journalistic and academic writing, and relate them to a theoretical framework on internal conflict. Furthermore, the thesis aims to examine how representations of Chechen history and current

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situation contribute to the shaping of dominant discourses about the Russian-Chechen conflict before and during the wars.

The following questions are posed:

-How has the Russian-Chechen conflict been accounted for in academic literature and the in the news media?

- How is the population of Chechnya represented in the empirical material?

-How can media representations of the Chechen wars be related to dominant discourses about internal and “ethnic” conflicts?

1.3 Disposition

The method applied and material analyzed in the thesis is introduced in the following chapter along with a critical source analysis. Next follows a background with a chronological description of the development in Chechnya during the past 15 years. Chapter 4 is a theoretical framework which reviews a number of academic texts on the Russian-Chechen conflict, and in which the thesis’s theoretical points of departure are further clarified. Chapter 5 is an analysis of the empirical material. In the Chapter 6, the findings of the analysis are presented along with concluding remarks.

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2. Methodological framework

2.1 Introduction

The method applied in this thesis is a discourse analysis of media representations of the Russian-Chechen conflict in the period between 1994 and 2009. To begin with, it should be clarified that as a qualitative research method in social sciences, discourse analysis is rather heterogeneous (Silverman, 2006: 224). Several reasons for this can be identified. First, discourse analysis is not a systematic method subjected to a certain set of rules, and is thus more often described as an approach to the study of social reality. Second, as been pointed out by sociologist David Silverman, there is some disagreement among researchers about what constitutes acceptable data for a proper discourse analysis. While some conduct interviews, which is associated with more conventional qualitative methods, other researchers argue that only “naturally occurring data” is acceptable for a discourse analysis (Silverman, 2006: 224). The news articles used for this thesis constitute such naturally occurring data since they are not produced for the purpose of research. Moreover, the manner in which discourse analysis is applied may vary considerably depending on what discourse theory is being employed in the study. However, although discourse analysis is not easily defined, the method still rests upon some key assumptions about the study of social reality:

1. Accounts of reality are only versions of reality, meaning that they can neither be “false” or “true”.

2. Discourse analysis presupposes a constructivist approach towards the participants in discourses.

3. The seemingly objective, “out-there reality” presented in texts is constructed in a process of selectiveness (Silverman, 206: 224).

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2.2 The object of study in discourse analysis

In general, discourse analysis looks at structures of power in texts, but also in other forms of communication such as visual material. Barbara Johnstone makes an essential point about the importance of making a distinction between language and discourse, since the term discourse analysis has been critiqued for saying nothing more than “the study of language” (Johnston, 2008: 2). When applying discourse analysis as a method in social sciences, however, one seeks to go beyond the purely linguistic meaning of language. For the purpose of this thesis, discourse is seen as something more than language in the sense that discourse is not the text

itself, but rather the meaning-making that takes place through texts. The primary object of study is thus the process of knowledge production by the means of texts rather than the producer (here: news agencies) as such. The relationship between the reader and the sender is another interesting aspect in the study of news coverage, but that is a different study. For the purpose of this thesis it is thus necessary to point out the advantages of the term discourse in the first place. Therefore, the discourse theory applied in this thesis is discussed in more detailed below.

2.3 Defining discourse

The term discourse is most famously associated with postmodernism and the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault has contributed to the understanding of discourse as an expression for the essential connection between knowledge and power. In this sense, discourses can be understood as expressions of power since knowledge is constantly used for producing facts or “truths” about reality. A common misconception about the term discourse is that it is used simply for discrediting all claims of knowledge. This conclusion is however missing the point. It is certainly true that discourse analysis aims to reveal and deconstruct knowledge that is presented as self-evident, yet the reason for this is that the term discourse

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itself implies that there is no knowledge expressed in words, which is “liberated” from the surrounding discourse on the subject. While the extreme postmodernist perspective would still hold that we cannot actually “know” anything, the contribution from discourse theory for this thesis is rather the possibility of examining how knowledge is produced and presented.

Johnstone defines discourse as something which is both the source of knowledge and the result of it (Johnstone, 2008: 3). It means that the generalizations we make are based on the discourse we participate in, but also that new discourses are created on the basis on what we already “know”. The term discourse is not only used for the purpose of identifying and describing knowledge-making, but also for a better understanding of how discourses create specific perspectives for interpreting reality. Therefore, discourse analysis is applied in order to reveal the relation between discourse, behavior and the society (Walliman, 2006: 144).

2.4 The contribution of discourse analysis

to social sciences

In the practical sense, discourse analysis can be described as a deconstructive reading and interpretation of a problem. The analysis is then not primarily concerned with seeking answers to a specific problem, but rather with revealing the source and implications of the way in which a problem is discussed. The contribution from studying discourses is well described by Silverman (2006), who underscores the importance of looking at the underlying rules, or “formulas” which provide the basis of how a problem is presented in a particular discourse. The point of departure here is that the process of defining social problems is something more than the simple establishing of “facts”. This is not to suggest that there exist no “real” problems, but it means that the researcher needs to ask how widely accepted definitions of problems arise (Silverman, 2006: 17). As for this thesis, it can be argued that the notion of so called “ethnic conflicts” constitute such a problem.

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It could be argued that in order to make generalizations about media discourse, a large body of empirical material will necessarily be required. This is definitely the case when applying, for example, the method of content analysis. However, in that particular method for analyzing texts and documents, the reliability of the study relies on a number of specific rules and procedures that must be followed. Gillian Rose explains that while content analysis is methodologically explicit, discourse analysis is “silent”, meaning that discourse analysis relies instead on what she calls the “good eye” (Rose, 2007: 59). According to Rose, it can thus be argued that discourse analysis, in contrast to content analysis, not necessarily requires an extensive empirical material in order to conduct the analysis.

2.5 Empirical material

The empirical material for this thesis contains primarily of a selection of journalistic articles published by CNN online and by the online editions of two Swedish dailies, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. The Swedish material is supplemented with one article published by the printed edition of Sydsvenska Dagbladet. Although this thesis’ research questions focus on representations in Western media, the material also includes a more limited number of articles published by the online edition of the Russian news paper The St. Petersburg Times. These articles have been selected in order to provide a comparable basis in the analysis. The total empirical material comprises 34 articles, including news articles as well as background, analytical and opinion articles covering events between 1994 and 2009. In addition to the articles, the material also includes a documentary film about the second war in Chechnya. The film is titled “Greetings from Grozny” (2002) and is produced by the American private media enterprise PBS.

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2.6 Source critical analysis

The research reviewed in chapter four is based on a combination of general theories as well as scholarly work specific to the Chechen wars. This variety of titles was selected for the purpose of providing a basis for assessing the value of different general accounts for the case of Chechnya.

The theoretical foundation of this thesis relies to a relatively large extent on the Russian historian and anthropologist Valery Tishkov’s book Chechnya – Life in a War-Torn Society (2004). This choice of literature requires some clarification, considering the fact that Tishkov has beside his academic work also served in several important political posts in the Russian government, among others as Minister of Culture. A critical reading of his book indeed confirms that Tishkov is more informed about, and almost certainly more open to, the official Russian version of the conflict than Western scholars. It is also important to be aware that Tishkov is rather critical to some of his Western colleagues and their tendency to uncritically frame the conflict as a “genuine national uprising against foreign occupation” (Tishkov, 2004: 212). Tishkov’s contribution to this thesis is however primarily the anthropological perspective on the study of armed conflict, and not the overall framing of the conflict. In addition, the book is concerned with the deconstruction of popular and media discourses on “ethnic hatred” accounts in both Russia and in Western countries. In this regard, Tishkov makes several interesting points, although it should be noted that he has not done any actual fieldwork in Chechnya during the war years. Instead, his study is primarily based on interviews brought back from Chechnya (made by his colleagues who had access to the field), conducted mainly in the years 1996-1997. For the reasons discussed above, this thesis pays particular attention to those of Tishkov’s findings which can be supported by other scholars, such as anthropologist Jakob Rigi (2007) who in fact stayed in Chechnya in 1995.

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Political scientist Matthew Evangelista’s book The Chechens Wars: Will Russia go the way of

the Soviet Union? (2002) also deserves a special mentioning here. Evangelista takes an important and clear stand against the violent manner in which Russia has confronted the potential threats of decentralization during the Russian-Chechen conflict. His analysis is of particular value for the clear theoretically distinction between conflict and violence, assuring that the wars were by no means unavoidable. Furthermore, Evangelista avoids the fallacy of generalizing about ethnicity and nationalism as the single explanatory factors for the conflict.

The author who most certainly had the deepest knowledge about the actual situation in Chechnya during the war years was Anna Politkovskaya, the late Russian journalist and human rights activist. The news about her being shot in her apartment building in Moscow 2006 attracted intense international attention. It soon led to widespread speculations that Russian politicians and FSB agents were involved in her killing, but today the murder still remains unsolved. In much of the international media, Politkovskaya’s death served as a testimony to the lack of any real democracy and freedom of speech in Russia. Her reporting from Chechnya after 1999 and onwards was published in the investigating paper Novaya

gazeta and in several books - most famously Vtoraya Chechenskaya (2003), in English titled

A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. The Swedish translation, which is used in this thesis, is Tjetjenien: sanningen om kriget (2002). This book is a horrifying reading about the living conditions for the civilian population during the second war, and it reveals detailed stories about of the extreme brutality of the federal soldiers as well as of Chechen fighters.

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Politkovskaya’s book is an important source used in this thesis, not only in the direct sense but also in the sense that it raises the question whether any outside observer, either media or academic, has been able to describe or even understand the extent of the suffering in war-torn Chechnya. Politkovskaya herself said that she was driven by a call to describe the war for those who could not see it for themselves. The stories of brutality and suffering she brings back from Chechnya are almost hard to believe, but serve as a constant reminder of the devastating effects of the war.

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3. Background: 15 years of violence in Chechnya

The expression “Russia’s war on Chechnya” can easily give one the impression that Russia has been engaged in a war with a foreign power, when, in fact, Russia’s military operations in Chechnya have been the result of its determination to keep Chechnya as a part of the Federation. The cost of tens of thousands of dead and wounded throughout this drawn-out conflict has consequently raised questions about interpretations of international law and Russia’s responsibility towards the Chechen population, who are, after all, nearly all Russian citizens. Both political and scholarly efforts to place the Chechen case in a larger context that could provide some answers to these questions have proven further conflict-generating. Outside commentators supporting the idea of a sovereign Chechen state have used the analogy of colonies breaking free from Western imperial countries in the aftermath of the Second World War to illustrate the war. The contrasting version, with reference to public international law and supported by most Western governments, is the image of Russia struggling to establish stability within its internationally recognized borders. In this latter political discourse on the Russian-Chechen conflict, condemnations of Russia’s actions in Chechnya have focused almost exclusively on Russia’s means rather than its ends (Evangelista, 2002: 167).

The question of Chechnya’s status is ultimately a question about Russia’s territorial integrity in the post-Soviet context. To better understand the constitutional status of the Russian Federation, a short background to the Soviet system is necessary. The reason for doing this is because parts of Russia, including northern Caucasus, have essentially inherited the political and administrative division shaped and reshaped during the Soviet era. Therefore, one must take into account that the debated legitimacy of various secessionist movements in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union is heavily dependent on the different entities’ status under the former Soviet system.

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3.1 The Soviet heritage

The Soviet republics were divided into a hierarchical structure of 1) Union republics (SSR), 2) Autonomous republics (ASSR) and 3) Autonomous regions (AO) (see map in Appendix 1). When the population from the Chechen-Ingush autonomous republic was deported to Central Asia during the Second World War, the republic was dissolved and became the territory of the Russian SSR. It is important to recognize that the experiences of mass deportation, and later resettlement during the de-Stalinization campaign, have served as a keystone for the idea of a common Chechen identity. However, the notion of a historical “collective suffering” as a factor in the post-Soviet conflict will be discussed later in this thesis (Chapter 5.2.1).

In the post-Stalinist era, the Chechen-Ingush republic was restored. The autonomous republics in the Soviet system had their own parliaments and governments, while being juridically subordinated to union republics. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen-Ingush republic formally existed until 1992.

3.2 The “Chechen revolution”

The period of 1990-1991 is often referred to as the “Chechen Revolution”. At the time when the political authority in the Chechen-Ingush republic, the Supreme Soviet, was still a part of the USSR system, it adopted a declaration of sovereignty demanding a removal of the epithet “autonomous”. Its leader Doku Zavgaev was not primarily appealing to any national or religious identity (Evangelista, 2002: 16), but first and foremost promoted decentralization in the spirit of Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms. In 1991, the Ingush part of the republic voted for a separate Ingush republic within the Russian Federation. This turn of events opened the opportunity for an emerging political rhetoric about a Chechen nation. Portraying itself as a rival to the old authorities still in place, a “National Congress of the Chechen People”

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(OKChN) convened in Grozny. The congress officially aimed at creating a foundation for democratic transformation and protection of Chechen national rights (Tishkov, 2004: 58). The Chechen nationalist movement intensified when a general in the Soviet army, Dzhokhar Dudaev, was invited to become its leader. As Dudaev seized the leadership of the renamed “National Congress of the Chechen people”, he mobilized political support for a future separation from Russia. Dudaev started to act more and more independently in Chechnya, and when the old political institutions were dissolved, he and his supporters took control over the government buildings in Grozny. Moscow supported the replacement of the former communist leaders, but regarded Dudaev too radical in seeking control over Chechnya. Given the fact that Dudaev was still a general, attempts were made to promote him within the Russian army for deployment elsewhere (Evangelista, 2002: 18). Dudaev refused, and even though he had never lived in Chechnya during Soviet times, he was determined to stay and lead the national movement he had started. After holding an election in October 1991, Dudaev was appointed president. The elections were later pronounced illegal by the Russian parliament. Federal troops stationed in Chechnya were now expelled by Dudaev, leaving most of their weapons under his control.

Political scientist Mathew Evangelista defines the period under Dudaev as “a working anarchy ruled by an unsuccessful dictatorship” (Evangelista, 2002: 29): social disruption and violence increased. Russian anthropologist Valery Tishkov argues that the national movement’s assertion of Chechens rights soon turned into an aggressive slogan targeting non-ethnic Chechens, mainly Russians (Tishkov, 2004: 65). At the same time, Tishkov is convinced that the anti-Russian stance was not shared by ordinary Chechens (Tishkov, 2004: 214).

Acting as the first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin refused the declaration of independence made by the National Congress in Chechnya. In the 1993 Russian constitution,

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both Ingushetia and Chechnya were consequently defined as separate republics subjected to the Russian Federation (see map in Appendix 1).

3.3 The first war

After the increase of tension between the Russian government and Dudaev, Russian troops invaded Chechnya in December 1994. What was planned as a quick campaign to crush the separatist forces in Chechnya instead ended up in a devastating 13-month war. The estimated number of people killed range from 30 000-100 000, almost all civilians. President Dudaev was killed by a Russian rocket attack in 1995. The capital Grozny was completely destroyed. The Federal troops withdrew in 1996, and to most outside observers, Russia’s defeat was a clear demonstration of its poor military strength. Furthermore, the support for the war among the Russian population had been almost non-existent (Rigi, 2007: 37).

3.4 The interwar years

Even though Chechnya was not internationally recognized as a sovereign state after the war, it was now de facto politically independent. In the beginning of 1997, parliamentary and presidential elections were held. The majority of the population in Chechnya voted for Aslan Maskhadov as president for the renamed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

The increasing “islamification” of society and state in Chechnya during the inter-war period is widely recognized. However, the character of this development and how it can be accounted for is a matter of some academic and political dispute. During the first war, Dudaev indeed appealed to the Islamic world for financial and moral support. According to political scientist Richard Sakwa, this was primarily the result of lacking support for Chechen independence from Western governments (Sakwa, 2003: 177). It should also be noted that the constitution

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drawn up under the rule of Dudaev had made no reference to Islam, and it recognized religious liberty for all citizens (Tishkov, 2004: 64). Given the fact that Maskhadov had won the elections in 1997, the majority of the population in Chechnya had in fact voted for secularism and more moderate policies towards Russia (Rigi, 2007: 51). Maskhadov was nonetheless immediately faced with internal political struggle when the field commander under the first war, and now his main political opponent, Shamil Basaev, began questioning his authority. The declaration of Shariah law throughout Chechnya in 1999 is described by Evangelista (2002) as a desperate attempt of Maskhadov to avoid an open split with Basaev, who had already taken control over the military gangs in Chechnya. In yielding from the pressure to adopt Islamic Shariah law, Maskhadov also accepted a (anti-constitutional) dissolution of the parliament and the formation of an alternative governing body, the Shura, headed by Basaev.

The period leading up to the declaration of the Shariah law in 1999 can thus be characterized as a highly political process, resulting primarily from the absence of secular-legal institutions (which had been completely destroyed during the first war) and dependence on financial and moral support from the Islamic world (Sakwa, 2003: 177). Furthermore, Tishkov points out that the Wahhabi form of Islam promoted by Basaev was, in contrast with the traditional Sufi form of Islam practiced in Chechnya, in fact alien to the Chechen society (Tishkov, 2004: 223)

Anthropologist Jakob Rigi (2007: 51) describes the inter-war-period as a state of complete chaos, a time during which the business of hostage-taking emerged intensively in Chechnya. Even though explaining the complexity of the domestic violence taking place during this period is beyond the scope of this thesis, the escalating brutality and lawlessness in Chechnya between 1996 and 1999 must be recognized in the sense that it contributed to a continuous

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war-like situation for the population. In order to simplify matters, this violent period will still be referred to as the interwar period throughout this thesis.

3.5 The second war and current conflict

The beginning of Russia’s second war with Chechnya was marked by a ground offensive in October 1999. Prior to the invasion, a militia led by Basaev and his “colleague” Khattab had invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan. This invasion had been an unsuccessful attempt to support the Shura of Dagestan which sought independence from Russia. Chechen rebels had also been accused of the bombings of several apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities. Russia’s determination to take control over Chechnya now once again took a brutal turn as several indiscriminate attacks by the Federal forces killed and wounded civilians. Despite the fact that the invasion violated two peace agreements signed in 1996 and 1997, the Federal government now gained, in contrast to the first war, a wider popular support for a violent solution to the “Chechen problem”. The Ichkerian regime in Grozny fell apart in February 2000, but that did not put an end to the violence.

The fighting between Russian troops and Chechen rebels continued outside the larger cities, but Putin maintained that he would never negotiate with either rebel leaders or President Maskhadov. The violent resistance to Moscow’s rule was dramatically brought to the whole world’s attention with the seizure of the Moscow Theater in 2002, and the hostage-taking in a school in Beslan 2005. Anna Politkovskaya became one of the most famous domestic critics of how the government and President Putin responded to the hostage crises, since Putin refused any attempts to negotiate with the terrorists.

During the first years of the 21st century, the federal government began reconstruction of Chechen cities and installed a pro-Moscow leadership in Grozny. After some intense political turmoil, the current president Ramzan Kadyrov was appointed by Moscow in 2007.

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Separatist leaders in exile continued to sustain the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria until 2007, when its leader Doku Umarov proclaimed a Caucasian Emirate in the northern Caucasus. At this time, most separatist leaders including president Maskhadov and Basaev had been killed. The Caucasus Emirate was not accepted by one of Umarov’s ministers, Akhmed Zakayev, who instead emerged as the new leader of the Chechen separatist movement. In April 2009, Russia officially ended its drawn-out “ant-terrorist operation” in the northern Caucasus, after which Zakayev called for a halt to the armed resistance.

From 2006 and onwards, the organization Human Rights Watch as well as the Russian organization Memorial has repeatedly reported about the use of torture and extrajudicial violence in preventing separatist activities in Chechnya. After the killing of the Russian human rights activist Natalja Estemirova in July 2009, the leadership under Kadyrov has faced increased international condemnation for the lawlessness and inability to defend human rights in Chechnya.

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4. Theoretical framework

This chapter provides a review of research relevant to this thesis. It encompasses research specific to the Russian-Chechen conflict as well as general theories about internal wars. It also includes discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of these theories, in addition to a clarification of the theoretical point of departure for the analysis in chapter 5. Throughout this thesis I will continue to treat the Russian-Chechen conflict as an “internal conflict”. It is certainly a broad category, yet it is liberated from any predetermined explanations to why such conflicts exist. The only limitation lies in the fact that internal conflicts occur within sovereign states. It is therefore worth mentioning that between the two wars Chechnya was not de facto an independent state, even though many outside observers considered it as such after the Russian troops left Chechnya in 1996 (Tishkov, 2004: 181).

4.1 General theories about “ethnic conflicts”

As already mentioned, the Russian-Chechen conflict is often popularly described as an “ethnic conflict”, mainly because of the wide-spread view of Chechens as a distinct ethnic group with common aspirations for their future within the Russian Federation. Regardless of the theoretical value of this categorization, the common reference to the ethnic dimension of the conflict in both academic, popular and media discourse requires a presentation of the main approaches towards such conflicts. These approaches, or theories, will be discussed in more detail below.

General theories about conflicts popularly categorized as “ethnic” fall into three main categories. They are primordialism, instrumentalism and constructivism. This division is clearly a simplification, yet it provides a useful tool in understanding the logic of more complex set of arguments in both popular and academic discourse. Even though the

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primordialist approach is losing legitimacy in the academic sphere, it is still frequently prevalent in journalistic accounts of internal conflicts. From an academic viewpoint, one could describe primordialism as appealing in its simplicity. In situations when brutal violence along ethnic lines seem fanatical and irresolvable from the outside, the easiest option might be to write it off as “ancient ethnic hatred”. However, within the academic community and particularly within the field of anthropology there is a consensus that such simplistic interpretations of conflicts only reinforce essentialist ideas about group differences (Warren 2001: 16205). The explanatory power of the primordialist approach is indeed weak, since it fails to explain why the importance of ethnic identification changes over time, and how violent conflict arises in some cases, and not in others. The constructivist approach, in contrast, regards ethnicity as a social construct. The strength of social constructivism is that it allows us to understand that an ethnic group only exists in relation to other groups; an argument well developed by anthropologists Fredrik Barth (1996), and more recently Tomas Hylland Eriksen (2003). The contribution of anthropology to the understanding of ethnicity and nationalism is key to this thesis, and will be further examined later in this chapter.

In the context of violent conflict, however, one should remain aware of the fact that a full-fledged constructivist approach might deconstruct the meaning of ethnic identification beyond recognition. It is then important to acknowledge that people often act on real feelings of fear, resentment, etc., even if those feelings by no means are “ancient” or imbedded in the character of a particular ethnic group. The constructivist approach still has a good explanatory power in terms of describing the changeable character of identities. At the same time, the constructivism approach is sometimes critiqued for downplaying the role of political leaders and their individual responsibility for resorting to violence. It also risks overplaying the manipulative power of group behavior, resulting in generalizations about the (still

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constructed) attitudes within a particular group during conflict. Instrumentalists, on the other hand, are criticized for ignoring the important question of why so called “ethno politics” can be so appealing. The instrumentalist approach also recognizes the changeable character of identities, yet it focuses more on group leaders. In response to the critique from social constructivists, scholars focusing on elite-driven processes have shown that that ordinary people are not always as responsive to ethnic mass mobilization as the constructivist approach holds. This could in turn explain why particular leaders choose to resort to extreme measures, such as violence. This view is well argued by political scientist V.P. Gagnon (2004) in his analysis based on documents and archive material concerning the political background of the 1990s conflicts in former Yugoslavia.

4.2 Scholarly accounts of the Russian-Chechen conflict

Given that some time has passed, the secondary literature on the first war of 1994-96 is more extensive than the literature on the second war 1999-2009. The literature dealing with the first war is relevant, since it provides analyses of the whole underlying conflict leading up to the wars, and thus complements the more recent literature on the subject. For these reasons, the following presentation has an emphasis on the underlying conflict and the outbreak of the first war in 1994.

4.2.1 State centralization and the role of leaders

In the book International Dimensions of Internal Conflict (1996), Michael Brown develops a theoretical model of permissive (underlying) and proximate (triggering) causes and the role of what he chooses to call “bad leaders”. Brown argues that most of the literature on internal conflicts favours “mass-level explanations” of internal conflicts, "but it has less to say about the roles played by elites and leaders in instigating violence" (Brown, 1996: 573). This

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perspective supports the possibility that leaders sometimes choose not to exhaust all peaceful means possible before they resort to violence. Looking at the first war in Chechnya, Brown’s theory could strengthen the claim that neither Yeltsin nor Dudaev were sufficiently interested in a peaceful resolution of the escalating conflict. As mentioned earlier, the political scientist V. P. Gagnon (2007) has advanced the theory that the brutal violence used during the wars in former Yugoslavia was not the result of constructed mass hatred between ethnic groups, but rather an elite-driven strategy aiming at dividing the Yugoslavian population. Similarly, Brown claims that many seemingly “ethnic” conflicts are not driven by ethnic grievances at all, but by “power struggles, ideological crusades, and criminal agendas” (Brown, 1996: 573).

Brown’s general argumentation about the causes of internal conflicts fits well with political scientist Matthew Evangelista’s (2002) analysis specific to Chechnya. He argues that the Chechen resistance to Russian authority should more correctly be characterized as a rejection of communism and centralization, rather than the result of intensified Chechen nationalism (Evangelista 2002: 111). The point being made here is that regional leaders’ strife for independence is not necessarily rooted in genuine ethnic separatism, but rather in aspiration for local control – regardless of the ethnic composition in that region (Evangelista, 2002: 111).

Political scientists David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild have developed a theory about collective fear as the primary cause for violent ethnic conflict. In their well-known article

Containing Fear – the Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict (1996) the authors attempt to explain these conflicts with a “rational choice” oriented approach. Their main argument is that groups become fearful for their survival when central authority declines (Lake and Rothchild, 1996: 43). Central to this theory is that state weakness is a necessary precondition

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for violent ethnic conflict, and without going any deeper into the case of Chechnya, the article mentions the former Soviet Union as a prime example of this sort of “collapse” (Lake and Rothchild, 1996: 57). A problem with this general approach, however, is that the parties of violent conflicts become rather faceless. This is certainly not to say that any theory which is not specific to a particular conflict is invalid, yet much of the secondary literature on Chechnya is pointing to the fact that more attention needs to be given to the role of leaders in internal conflicts. This is particularly the opinion of anthropologist Valery Tishkov (2004) who defines the war in Chechnya as a personal struggle between the Russian government and the leadership in Chechnya (Tishkov, 2004: 75). Another anthropologist specialized in the Chechen wars, and also focusing on leaders, is Jacob Rigi. In the article The War in Chechnya – the Chaotic Mode of Domination, Violence and Bare Life in the Post-Soviet Context (2007), he maintains that the wars have been an exclusionary struggle between “ruling networks in Moscow and those of Chechens for control of the territory of Chechnya” (Rigi, 2007: 46).

Furthermore, it should be pointed out that Lake’s and Rothchild’s claim that state weakness is the precondition for violent conflicts in the post-Soviet context is a matter of academic dispute. In fact, Brown argues that in general, it is the strengthening of central authority, rather than the weakening or collapse, which is the permissive cause of internal war (Brown 1996). When applying Brown’s theory to the Russian-Chechen conflict, we can identify Russia’s campaigns in Chechnya as a continued struggle for increased control and centralization, rather than the result of a collapse of the state.

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4.2.2 Why violence? Accounts of the escalation to war in Chechnya

Despite little support for the “mass mobilization” argument in the case of Chechnya, it is still important to recognize that the idea that leaders only express the collective will of the people they represent is fairly common. At least this is what Tishkov discovered in both media and academic discourse in Russia (Tishkov, 2004: 75). From the perspective of a Western scholar spending time with anti-war activists in Chechnya and Russia as a whole during 1995, Jacob Rigi has observed that voices on the ground often stand in stark contrast to the view prevalent in the West. To put it simply, Rigi characterizes this Western view as the conviction that the first war was the result of a clash between the Chechens’ drive for independence and Russian imperial rule (Rigi 2007: 38). In contrast to this interpretation, Rigi argues that the conflict became nationalized for Russians and Chechens only as a result of the combatants’ violations of civilians on both sides, and not because of any mass support for their leaders’ war efforts (Rigi 2007: 4). Scholarly writing on Chechnya is indeed challenging general constructivist views of mass hatred, put forward by, among others, political scientist Stuart J. Kaufman. In his book Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (2001), Kaufman asserts that “ethnic wars only happen when the attitudes of elites and masses are aligned in hostility” (Kaufman, 2001: 39).

In the case of the first Chechen war, Matthew Evangelista interestingly points out that many of president Yeltsin’s advisers were, as a matter of fact, highly skeptical of using military force in Chechnya and some were even openly against it (Evangelista 2002: 36-37). The decision-making was fashioned in a way that systematically prevented those skeptics from having any real influence, according to Evangelista. In fact, as many as 557 officers expressed some form of protest or refused to execute orders by the time of the first invasion in December 1994 (Evangelista, 2002: 38). These circumstances are truly significant for the

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understanding of the Russian-Chechen conflict, as they demonstrate the absence of an unavoidable violent clash between the federal government and the Chechen leaders. Brown’s focus on “bad leaders” is highly relevant here, since the academic community still debates over to what extent Yeltsin and president Dudaev were willing to negotiate in order to avoid war in 1994. The academic literature covering this issue provides very diverse pictures of the period prior to the Russian invasion in 1994. While Tishkov claims that Western scholars have failed to recognize that Dudaev and his representatives in fact avoided some important opportunities for talks with the federal government’s negotiators (Tishkov, 2004), anthropologist Tamara Dragadze claims that Dudaev had repeatedly asked for negotiations, and to state otherwise would be “simply untrue” (Dragadze, 1995: 463). Rigi, on the other hand, is convinced that Dudaev knew only two alternatives - full independence or war (Rigi, 2007: 48). Evangelista takes a middle position, claiming that Dudaev would probably have shown more flexibility if Yeltsin had shown him more respect (Evangelista, 2002).

The previous discussion highlights the need to make a theoretical distinction between conflict and violence, or war. Denying mass support for the leader’s war efforts is not to deny the conflict over Chechnya’s status in the wake of the Soviet collapse. However, the violent manner in which the conflict has been managed must be treated separately. This is one of the points made by the earlier mentioned anthropologist Kay B. Warren, who argues that explanations of violence must take into account that political actors often seek to foster authoritarian and militarized solutions to conflicts for their own reasons and interests (Warren, 2001: 16205). Consequently, when violence is seen as an unavoidable consequence of social conflicts, as in many “ethnic hatred” accounts, there is a risk that ordinary people belonging to a particular party of the conflict are mistakenly portrayed as violent.

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4.3 Identity and violence – an anthropological perspective

An important contribution to the study of violence is provided by ethnographic and anthropological studies, showing that the civilian population in internal conflicts often experiences violence as something appearing from “the outside”. The perspective of civilians is easily ignored in generalizing macro-level accounts, since groups and communities are often treated as a single party in the conflict, giving the impression that all imaginable members of that group share common goals. This is particularly evident in Lake’s and Rothchild’s work in the way they explain that groups “invest and prepare” for violence (1996: 43). According to Tishkov, however, this inability to see beyond groups as collective bodies constitutes a methodological weakness in the study of violent internal conflict (Tishkov, 2004: 9).

It can be argued that the “rational choice” approach represented by Lake and Rothchild, tends to view ethnicity as a fixed category. Their article mentioned above speaks of “ethnic peoples”, without clarifying what this specific “ethnic” category means. Taking the relational view on ethnicity as a point of departure here, one is inclined to ask whether only some people are “ethnic”, and then as opposed to what? Non-ethnic people? From an anthropological perspective, it is suggested that this rather primordialist categorization of people risks generating an ethnocentric interpretation of internal conflicts. The reason for this is that ethnicity is seen as a primary determinant only for certain groups, while others are assumed to be more flexible. This view is also, to some extent, evident in the work of political scientist Chaim Kaufmann. In the article Possible and Impossible solutions to Ethnic Civil

War (1996), Kaufmann makes a distinction between conflict between communities and conflict within communities. Consequently, he argues that civil wars are either a power struggle between groups who consider them being different, or between groups who have different political goals. These definitions of internal conflicts may be useful in answering the

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top-down question: What is at stake? What are the leaders’ official reasons for fighting? The answers to these questions, however, rarely contribute to a deeper understanding of what is actually happening on the ground. This is because Kaufmann’s proposed dichotomy of ethnicity/ideology ignores the complexity of which people make sense of different overlapping identifications. It also ignores the fact that violence itself may change the importance of such categories due to the fact that conflict is subjected to constant

transformation. It is certainly difficult to categorize the wars in Chechnya using Kaufmann’s definition, since one can presume that the importance of both ethnic/national and other types of identification has not been constant during the course of the conflict. Another reason for questioning Kaufmann’s argument is that he defines “ethnic wars” as wars with almost no flexibility of individual loyalties, since according to him, the only loyalty lies with the ethnic group (Kaufmann, 1996: 140). Without accusing Kaufman of being a primordialist, since he still acknowledges the flexibility of social identification, one could argue that his view of loyalties overestimates the space for individual actions in the extreme situation of war. Anthropological studies have well contributed to the understanding that loyalties and identities are often forced upon people, leaving them with very limited options. Therefore, it must be acknowledge that the support for a particular leader, for example, can be the result of a person’s calculation for increased personal security. In a similar way can the emphasis or de-emphasis of a certain identity (civilian, woman, intellectual, Russian, Chechen etc.) be part of a strategy for survival in a particular context.

It is also worth mentioning the social anthropologist Stef Jansen’s work on former Yugoslavia. He has provided well-supported arguments for the conclusion that “despite appearances, national identification does not always contain the most relevant explanatory factors or the most glaring inequalities” (Jansen, 2005: 63). Furthermore, Jansen points to the

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importance of focusing on how, and under which circumstances, and to what extent different types of identifications become more or less meaningful. It must be recognized, of course, that ethnic and/or national identification has demonstrably played an important role in the Russian-Chechen conflict, at least in the sense that the wars became nationalized for people who defined themselves as either Russian or Chechen. However, it is important to take into consideration that this is not necessarily an explanatory factor for the violence, but rather an effect of the violence, as anthropologist Jacob Rigi argues (Rigi, 2007: 38).

4.4 Analytical categories in the study of conflict and violence

The ethnographer Catherine Lutz has well described how the traditional Clausewitzian understanding of war has been constricting the ethnography of war. She argues for a more critical approach towards the established categories of soldiers and civilians, perpetrators and victims (Lutz, 1999: 614). Lutz’s point is central to the theoretical approach used in this thesis, since it is indeed hard to find traditional reductionist explanations convincing in the complex circumstances of the Russian-Chechen conflict. “Reductionist explanations” in this context means the explanation of conflict and violence as simply a competition over resources (Warren, 2001: 16203).

In academic works on the topic of internal wars, a number of different analytical categories are inevitably used. The point made above then raises the question whether every analysis of conflicts requires a critical examination of these categories? At least, this is the view of Tishkov who argues that the analytical categories such as pride or liberation are not self-explanatory (Tishkov, 2004: 227). By accepting these categories, he argues, scholars allow personal feelings and ideology influence their work. However, it is important to make a distinction between treating such categories as having fixed theoretical meanings, and

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acknowledging their symbolic value. Then it is still possible to go beyond such categories and examine what they mean and how they are used in a particular social context.

A key issue to the Russian-Chechen conflict is self-determination or independence. Given the discussion above, the concept of independence cannot be treated as an absolute term. When using the concept of independence as an analytical category, it is therefore useful to recognize the unfixed meaning of independence as an aspiration in the context of this violence conflict. This is because the relevance and importance of a political goal will inevitably change as the circumstances change. The transformation of the way in which civilians cope with violent conflicts is, for example, well illustrated in the work of the late journalist Anna Politkovskaya. In her book Tjetjenien – sanningen om kriget (2002), she tells the stories of civilians who, notwithstanding their political opinions or origins, first and foremost have ended up fighting purely for their physical survival (Politkovskaya, 2002: 46). When traveling around in Chechnya during the second war, the only battle she observed among ordinary people was the one for continued existence. Such stories indeed contribute to a deeper understanding of the dimensions of violent conflict.

4.4.1 The category of civilians

While the civilian identity is often represented as clear-cut from the outside, there often exists uncertainty about the civilian identity in many wars. This ambiguity of civil identity is well examined by Hugo Slim, a British scholar of international humanitarianism. In the book

Killing Civilians – Method, Madness and Morality in War (2007), Slim illustrates how skepticism about the category of civilians at the heart of many wars often prove potentially deadly for large parts of the population (who are supposed to be protected by the Geneva Convention). Slim identifies economic, military, social and political aspects of ambiguity in

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war. These are the main types of voluntary or coerced support which all put civilians at risk of being regarded as collaborators and therefore not as “real” civilians by the enemy side (Slim, 2007: 189-97). Slim maintains, however, that the idea that all civilians are equally harmless is a fallacy. Despite this, he underscores that from a humanitarian law perspective, this fallacy in necessary if we want to show compassion for all those non-combatants who are more or less forced to be a part of the war (Slim, 2007: 188).

The ambiguity of civilian identity is indeed highly relevant for the wars in Chechnya, since the widespread killing and abuse of civilians in Chechnya has often been the result of attacks on villages and houses suspected of housing separatist rebels. In the effort to show that many people in Chechnya never favored a violent resolution to the conflict, it is thus important to avoid generalizing categorizations of more or less “guilty” civilians. In the thesis on media discourse about the wars in former Yugoslavia, it was argued that “ethnic hatred” representations of the war portrayed the civilian population as more or less collectively responsible for the violence in their capacity of belonging to a particular group (Westberg, 2008). In this discourse, little distinction was made between the conflict and the violence, implying that only civilians who did not take a political stand in the conflict was innocent and therefore the “real” victims of violence. Using Slim’s words, this discourse can be understood as an expression of the political ambiguity of civilian identity. Discourses of guilt and innocence in war are equally relevant for the case of Chechnya, because when political opinion in itself is considered dangerous and causes for violence, then all those that have always favored a political resolution to the conflict become invisible.

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4.5 Concluding remarks

Even though determining the question of guilt is beyond the scope of this thesis, it is important to acknowledge the serious disagreement over the political responsibilities for the wars in Chechnya. As suggested in the introduction, the conflict itself has created disagreement over intentions and meanings of events, both within academic, political and popular discussions within and outside Russia. For the purpose of this thesis, it is possible and perhaps necessary to make a distinction between explanatory causes on one hand, and interpretations of what has actually happened on the other. This is because the latter is not primarily a dispute about whether certain events have taken place or not, but rather the

meaning of these events. The fact that certain events took place may be easy to establish, yet the words one chooses to describe these events are by no means neutral. This is true not only for the media but also academic literature.

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5. Analysis: Representations of the Russian-Chechen

conflict in the empirical material

This chapter is an analysis of media representations of the Russian-Chechen conflict appearing in the empirical material selected for this thesis. The chapter is divided into four main sections, each dealing with a certain aspect of the conflict. Interpretations of the texts are supported by the theories discussed in the theoretical framework. The analysis is presented with references to specific quotes as well as with regard to the empirical material as a whole.

5.1 Cause and effect: The origin of the Russian-Chechen conflict

5.1.2 The collapse of the Soviet Union – a “Pandora’s box” for violet conflict? Drawing from the discussion in the theoretical framework, there is much evidence to support the notion that the major factors serving to foster enemy images of Russia among the population in Chechnya were the violations experienced during the first war (Evangelista 2002, Rigi, 2007). This view is also supported by Tishkov, who observed no wide-spread “anti-Russianism” among ordinary Chechens before or even during the first war (Tishkov, 2004: 214). Thus given this wide academic recognition to the effects of violence as an explanatory factor for the transformation of the conflict, this section aims at examining to what extent this process is acknowledged in the articles analyzed here.

An interesting observation can be made about the reasoning in a background story on the violent conflicts in Caucasus and Central Asia, published in the Swedish daily Sydsvenska

Dagbladet in 2004. In this article, the attempt is made to account for these conflicts, and particularly the wars in Chechnya, as a direct consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Consider the following quote:

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“The harsh domestic politics of the Stalin era is an important reason for the profound unrest and strong antagonism in the Caucasus and the former Soviet Central Asia./.../When the tight grip of the central power and the security service eased, the conflicts and antagonism once again came to the surface” (“Stalins gränser tog inte hänsyn till olika folk”, Sydsvenska Dagbladet 040919).2

This portrayal uses a historical perspective to explain the political development in the post-Soviet era, reflecting the idea that violent conflicts are natural or self-evident outcomes of the collapsed Soviet empire. In a larger perspective, it can be suggested that such media representations of political violence are parts of a more dominant discourse about repressed antagonism as the primary cause for war in decentralizing societies. This is a discourse which was also commonly pronounced in the media coverage on the wars in former Yugoslavia (Westberg, 2008). The effect of this discourse is that political violence is rarely represented as a modern social phenomenon, but rather as the result of ancestral conflicts which have previously been neglected by a central power. In the article quoted above, it is suggested that it is this past “neglecting” that causes conflicts in the present. Such a discourse on contemporary political violence is also pronounced in another Swedish article published by

Dagens Nyheter in 2002. This article describes the capital city of Grozny and the changes it has undergone during the war years. In the following quote, the reporter attempts to portray the situation in Grozny before the collapse of the Soviet Union by using the knowledge we have today.

“In Grozny the youth studied at the town’s university and at nights they visited the big, famous movie theater. But the peace between the peoples in the vast Russia was treacherous” (“Staden som världen glömde”, Dagens Nyheter, 021228).

Here, the peace and prosperity experienced in Grozny during pre-war times is represented as something contrary to what would be expected given the real nature of the underlying conflicts in the former Soviet Union.

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Media Portrayals of the Russian-Chechen Conflict. Representations of Political Violence and Identity - a Discourse Analysis