Putschcast
A global podcast about Riots, Rebellions and Revolutions. Putschcast explores how power changes hands, whether through internal social and political decay, external pressure, popular resistance or a pure stroke of luck.
Featuring experts in their field, every episode explores a unique moment in history that led to profound changes in the lives of the people affected by it.
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Putschcast
#14 Chechnya - Humiliation leads to Assassination
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Exactly thirty years ago, a single Russian missile strike, guided by his satellite phone, ended the life of former Soviet General turned rebel leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev.
For five years, he had been in charge of a tiny speck of land in Russia's deep south called Chechnya. His fellow Caucasian mountain rebels put up a fight against the once-mighty Red Army that humiliated Boris Yeltsin in the Kremlin. Moscow responded with aerial bombardments and ruthless urban warfare. Yet unexpectedly, and at least in the interim, the Caucasian David won against the Russian Goliath.
To unpack this chaos, Putschcast is joined by Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus expert who was there during the First Chechen War and met Dudayev face-to-face multiple times. He experienced the rebel leader's defiance and unpredictability firsthand, as well as the atrocities that gained only limited Western media interest at the time.
Eventually banned from doing journalistic work in Russia, Tom takes listeners back to the chaotic days of the early 90s in post-Soviet Russia, when rubble littered the streets of Grozny and fierce nationalism turned into radical Islamist insurgency.
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Welcome to yet another episode of Pudgecast. Yes, my co-hosts are out and about researching topics such as the Mexican Revolution. But we're also going to speak about the Paris Commune. That was in 1870 when the people of Paris took medicine to their own hands. Tried a bit of a socialist experiment that miserably failed. And we want to understand why and how that shaped the whole generation of revolutionary leaders. So stay tuned for that. However, today there's also an anniversary that um has gone somehow unnoticed coming up. And I wonder why. Maybe the person wasn't big enough. Maybe there's no interest in it, or maybe because the country is much too small. And the country that I'm gonna say now, probably pronounce it in the wrong way, and I get fact-checked in a second, is called Ishkeria. And I hereby want to bring in our guest uh Tom Deval from the Carnegie Endowment for International Uh Peace uh think tank. Hello, Tom.
SPEAKER_02Hello there, yes, good to be with you. But let's actually uh let's call it Chechnya, because itchkeria is is is uh a political name that uh certain people attach to it. So I wouldn't personally call it uh Itchkeria. A more neutral name would just be Chechnya.
SPEAKER_00Because we do want to fact-check what we say, and that was one of my first questions I've had, and it was actually quite hard to to find literature on it just on the web. Of what does Ichkeria mean? And um what did it what did it stand for? What does it stand for? And you recommend let's not use that term, let's go with Chechnya.
SPEAKER_02That's right. Well, we're talking about the Chechens, uh a group of about a million people in the North Caucasus, Muslim mountain people with a warrior culture conquered by the Russian Empire in the 19th century, but with a history of resistance to the Russians, deported en masse completely, all half a million of them as they then were back in the 1940s by Stalin to Central Asia along with with other groups that Stalin wanted to punish, returned in the nineties to their homeland, but were lived very much as second-class citizens in the Soviet Union, and then had this right at the end of the Soviet Union, had their own mini-revolution in Russia trying to become independent. Actually, I think they they trade out various names for their republic, but when the war, which I'm sure we're gonna talk quite a lot about, happened in the early nineties between the Russian state and Chechnya, uh they then proclaimed a new independent state called Ichkeria, which which didn't get international recognition, but which lingers on, I guess, in the hearts and minds of some nationalist Chechens.
SPEAKER_00And does it translate to anything, that word Ichkeria?
SPEAKER_02It's just I think a a historic name for for part of this mountain region, so just is just a geographical name. But Chechnya is, you know, it is a safe name which uh which Chechens accept and and the outside world definitely accepts as one.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Google helps us with that too, because you actually find something when you when you search for that. Now, um I'll just ask you to fact-check and also ask you about language because you do have a very strong tie and connection to the region, to the Caucasus, but also the the Northern Caucasus. How come you do speak the Russian language and you know so much about the topic?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, like a lot of people, I studied uh Russian. Like a lot of people, I also I was lucky with my timing. I studied Russian in the 80s, just as Gorbachev was coming to power and Russia opened up suddenly to the outside world. So um went to work in Russia, studied in Russia in the late 80s, still in the in the Soviet period, and then went to work in Russia in the early 90s. I worked for a a fantastic newspaper to begin with, the Moscow Times, Mos Russia's only English language newspapers, where we had a fantastic reporting staff, and a couple of us focused on Chechnya, meet me to begin with, and then Karlos Agal, and we we actually ended up writing the first book in English about about the Chechen War. So I spent a lot of time there. I first went about a year before the the Russians invaded, and so that was in January 1994, and then I worked there pretty intensively until the late 90s, and then I haven't been back. But so I'm very good on the history. You can you can ask me a lot of questions about that period and about Johô Didaev, we're gonna talk about, but I haven't been back since then. Um and since then I worked much more intensively on uh the South Caucasus, the three independent countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, uh, and Georgia.
SPEAKER_00It's uh Calamity in the Caucasus, is that the book you're referring to that you wrote in the late 90s? So is that right.
SPEAKER_02In the first English version, we called it a small victorious war, which was a bit of an ironic title. It was a quotation of one of Yeltsin's advisors saying that's what they needed in Chechnya. They actually compared, unfortunately, they compared it to Bill Clinton's Little War in Haiti, where he he took out the Haitian Haitian regime and thought they they could do the same in Chechnya, ignoring 200 years of history. But but that small victorious war title, I think, was a bit too ironic for the US publisher who who decided to call it calamity in the Caucasus.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we do have, by the way, sorry about the self-promotion, we do have an episode on the Haitian Revolution. Um, also 200 years of history being ignored, and we see where the countries today. So check that out on our website, the Haitian Revolution. Now, very different country, but also very small, and that's how I started the introduction. I grew up in uh in Central Europe, Germany in the 90s, watching a lot of news. Chechen War, I think, was always present. However, it was overshadowed by first the Gulf War and then the Yugoslav War. So it was always on the fringe of the newsphere. And you're working as a journalist. From memory, was it hard to get your news stories placed in Western media? Or what's your memory of the interest of the media in that particular conflict?
SPEAKER_02Well, as I said, I had the luck to be working for Western media, but it was also in Moscow, the Moscow Times newspaper, first of all. So absolutely, you know, that story was front and center for us for such a long time, and which meant that we really got to go into great detail. I I then worked for the Times of London, where I did it it was much harder to to place stories on Chechnya. But then writing a book, it's a small place, and the Kalosh and I, and we went back and we just talked to everyone. And you know, I I talked to we talked to about a hundred people, Chechens, Russians, all sorts of people, and got some incredible stories about this, you know, it was a wild time in Russia in the nineties, but Chechnya was was that wildness squared. It really was the wild frontier where we got some incredible stories about what was going on then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think it is important that there were two wars, which I think people mix up these days. We can probably distinguish that a bit later. But let's let's go back a bit in history because you touched on that. So it's 1944. World War II is not yet over. Stalin has decided to deport yet another people again to Central Asia. He's done it with Koreans, Polish people, Jewish, Germans, there were many other minorities that got deported. Can you reflect on that, how that actually happened? Because during the war in the 90s, that would have been living memory. There would have been a lot of people who actually remembered and experienced that. What was that like for the Chechen people?
SPEAKER_02For sure. Well, as you say, there were a lot of these small nationalities who were the so-called punished peoples, that was the term that was used later. Either they were kind of traditionally deemed to be disloyal to Moscow and potential collaborators with the Germans, or they had some foreign connection. There were Germans, Koreans, Kurds, Greeks were all were all deported en masse. I think the Chechens may have been one of the largest groups along with their little smaller cousins, the Ingush. And what does that mean? It means that in just one day out of the blue in February uh 1944, all these trucks and trains arrive in Chechnya, including US Lendlease vehicles which should have been used in the war effort, and the entire population. When I say entire, I mean every last man, woman and child, even, you know, uh Red Army soldiers who should have who were on the front on leave, they were all deported en masse in these cattle trucks in horrible conditions to Kazakhstan, dumped in the middle of winter in the Kazakh State, and huge casualties on the trains from disease and cold, and people living, you know, in holes in the ground for many years before some you know place was constructed for them. So whole people being stigmatized, being punished. Chechnya was wiped from from the map, suddenly it no longer existed. Libraries were were jettisoned or burned. It was a complete erasure of a people, not not and obviously this happened to other peoples as well. Then Khrushchev came to power, the s the Thor after Stalin, and he pardoned uh pretty much all these peoples, and they came home in 57. When I first went to Chechnya, I did a feature for the Moscow Times, also for the BBC World Service about the 50th anniversary of the deportations. And you just if you wanted to talk about it, you just stopped anyone in the street who was, you know, over 65, and they could tell you uh their story, their heart-rending stories about how one fine day, you know, I was just sitting at home, these Soviet soldiers come, give us 10 minutes to leave to throw a few things into a bag, you know, they shoot my dog, I leave my family house, and and that's it. I'm I'm suddenly packed into this train and go into the middle of nowhere. And so obviously, a massively traumatic experience. And a traumatic experience for a lot of these small peoples, but the Chechens were bigger in numbers and more determined, and so they mobilized around that cause in a way that others didn't. And that's obviously a big driver for the idea that they should, as the Soviet Union breaks up, try and seek independence from Russia.
SPEAKER_00I I I did I did travel uh on those paths a bit as well when I was uh working as a journalist. I went to Kazakhstan, interviewed many people myself from other minorities as well. Some have stayed behind, but the majority, as you said, returned. And I I think people need to understand what sort of place it was. It's hot and dry and arid in summer and freezing cold in winter. Did Stalin bother with an explanation why he just deported an entire people? How did he justify that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and obviously this applies to to many other peoples, as we said. I mean, the alleged reason was that they were collaborators or kind of even potential collaborators, because actually no German soldiers ever actually set foot in in Chechnya, and Chechnians were, as I say, were fighting in the Red Army. So that was that was the reason. But it was applied per capita en masse to every, as I say, every man, woman, and child, so it was absolutely uh total punishment.
SPEAKER_00And Stalin was from the Caucasus himself. Like let's not forget about that. As a j ethnic Georgian, uh, I believe, is there is there a historical conflict between Chechens and Georgians?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's it's it's a good question. Stalin suddenly had certain ethnic prejudices and and the Chechens, English, the the other two people as as we're talking about the subject should be name-checked. Two smaller peoples called the Balkars and the Karachai, both Turkic people in that region, were also deported. So yeah, that there may have been some historic grudge. But but you know, I think the important thing here is the Chechens historically had always resisted whoever was in power in Moscow, St. Petersburg in the Russian Empire. It's been called the longest war of the 19th century, uh which only ended in the 1860s, Russia's conquest of the North Caucasus, Georgia and Armenia, and those places actually further away to the south were already well incorporated into the Russian Empire, and the Chechens and other mountain peoples were still resisting this pretty brutal campaign by by the Russian Empire to incorporate them way all the way into the 1860s. Various points they tried to get British help during the Crimean War, but that the British kind of remembered them and then forgot them. Um so it it's the story of of of a people who, against their will, had been incorporated into this Russian Empire, and who had this very horizontal structure. They didn't particularly have aristocracy leaders. They had this kind of village-based system, which meant that it was actually quite difficult to buy them off. You you you know, you you you couldn't buy off the leaders because the leaders were representing a collective.
SPEAKER_00And I think Leo Tolstoy started his his writing and military career exactly during that period, didn't he? Like that's when he started writing his diaries uh before he moved on to the Crimean War. And I just quickly want to understand a bit more in Russian culture because doing my research I came uh across this lullaby that apparently was still very popular, or maybe still is uh in in in Russian culture until now. It's a lullaby. Like I'm not sure if you've heard of that. And for sure, yeah. In the in the audio version, we can we can insert a bit of that so our listeners get an idea.
SPEAKER_02It's it's a beautiful song, but if you don't know what it's about, you don't understand the lyrics, then uh it's it's quite gruesome, like old fairy tales and stories and yeah, I mean that that they're they the bandits, the outlaws, and it has to be said that the Chechens have kind of turned that round on themselves and they kind of celebrated that and said, Yeah, we we are the outlaws, but we're the Robin Hoods, we're the ones who who, you know, break the break the rules because the rules are unfair. And so that was very much their self-image, and it was an image they kind of cultivated when they plotted their revolution. And so there was kind of two stereotypes about the Chechen, both of which I think are are are are kind of not true. One that they are kind of all bank bandits and gangsters, although you know some of them were. One is that they were kind of these heroic romantic Robin Hood figures, and you know, they've been vilified, they've also been romanticized. But you know, actually you spend time there, and of course there are young men like that, but the mass of the population is, you know, it's a a peasant mountain group of people who are getting on with their lives. You know, it's um, you know, it it's a fascinating, interesting, beautiful place, but it was a bit of a danger to to to apply those stereotypes to it as well.
SPEAKER_00Now, Tom, you've spent a fair bit of time there, and we will go into your experience in a bit as well, but we've talked about the culture, we talked about the background, so it's um it's a people that has been resisting uh Russian domination since the imperial days, went through Hallenbeck literally under Stalin, so under Soviet rule. However, after Khrushchev, they ended up with their own SSR, correct? So they're they be they became their own um socialist Soviet republic? Is that correct?
SPEAKER_02This is where we get into the the complex architecture of the Soviet Union because there were layers. So there were the 15 Union Union republics, which were part of those which kind of formed the Soviet Union and on paper had the right to separate, and no one took that seriously until the last minute. They suddenly did and became independent states. And but beneath them there were the autonomous regions within those republics, which didn't um and this is where the big tension was and where the conflicts all started, particularly in the Caucasus. So Chechnya was an autonomous republic within Russia. So you also had places like Abkhazia had the same status status within Georgia. And so these are where the conflicts started. The Union republics won the Lottery, they were they were the ones who got to be independent states, and then one level down, those ethnic groups that had their own region within those union republics and wanted to separate, they were told, nope, no, no way, you're just I did not know that piece of uh bureaucracy, but that then explains if there was someone in the Kremlin at the time who was a stickler for the rules, never mind the political circumstances in the early 90s.
SPEAKER_00They're like, everyone else is okay, Chechnya, no, you just happen to be autonomous, you remain with Russia no matter what. Because I always wondered that it's like why did they make such a fuss about Chechnya and then they let others like Georgia, etc., go. And was that the reason? Or or was it one bridge too far because too many have already seceded and they knew that if if we lift let Chechnya go, it all falls apart now.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, you have to set rules, you have to break up have criteria for how you break up a a state, same what happened with Yugoslavia and Kosovo again was was was was the sticking point there. Although of Kosovo, of course, did actually end up um breaking away. But you know, it was they decided to go by the Soviet constitution, and you know, Chechnya and a few other places got unlucky, but they decided that they were gonna challenge the the new order anyway, and um you had this Chechen revolution happening at the end of 1991.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. 1989 wall falls, one regime after the other gets toppled. There's a coup in in uh in in the Soviet Union itself in in August that we will definitely dedicate an episode to one day. It's a very exciting topic, the role that Yeltsin played and uh how Gorbachev was treated and uh the actions he did or did not take. And then so the the timing here is no coincidence, right? So the the timing was in an utter moment of chaos. And the leaders, and we talk about the leader in a second, but the Chechen leaders they just seize the moment. Is that what happened, or was this planned in the long term and they just waited for the right moment?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, it's obviously a very complicated story, but first of all, I think the point was that that all of these other Soviet republics had long before had national leaders, whether that be in Georgia, the Baltic states, or whether or Ukraine or whatever, and they could, you know, who who then took over the leadership. Chechnya was still Chechens were still second-class citizens in this in the Soviet Union. Uh it took them until I think 1989 to have a ethnic Chechen leading republic. It was still treated like a colony. It was a an ethnic Russian before that. That hap when that finally happened, it was this kind of pent-up national feeling. They had this thing called the Chechen National Congress, and they invited this guy, Johar Dudaev, who was the first Chechen Soviet general, to be the kind of special guest at this Congress, and he became their what they thought there was their symbolic leader. But everything snowballed, and he and and from a symbolic leader, he became a revolutionary leader of this new movement. And here Yeltsin's role, I think, is is really important because, first of all, in early 1991, Yeltsin was going around and he had this phrase to all the leaders of Russia's regions and and and not only in Russia, saying, take as much autonomy as you can swallow, you know, kind of weaken the system. And then suddenly, when the the the system did begin to crumble, suddenly up Yeltsin realized, I'm going to be leader of Russia now, and and he kind of reversed that course. But of course the Chechens had had taken him at his word, and suddenly Yeltsin had the opposite problem. He wanted to shore up Russia, he wanted to recentralize Russia, but but but at that point the Chechens, in this deeply chaotic situation, Soviet Union, basically stormed um stormed the government buildings, threw out the communist leadership. Literally, in one case, I think one one poor official ended up being thrown out of the window and killed and and took power. This nationalist group took power in Chechnya in August, September 1991.
SPEAKER_00August-September 1991 is the moment when Chechnya ceded. It reminds me of a historic moment in Prague a few centuries earlier.
SPEAKER_02Yes, the defenestration of Grozny is what we should call it.
SPEAKER_00So that actually happened, and this is how they told the Soviets where to go. That's just quickly for all our non-Soviet listeners out there, which is the vast majority. I think it's it's and that's in Western media that's often missed. It's that that that understanding of the difference between Russia and the Soviet Union, because it's used interchangeably these days by many, and it has been during the Cold War as well, by Western leaders. The the people of Chechnya, we we know how hard their existence was. There were second-class citizens that were deported. However, did they in in any shape or form identify with the Soviet Union? Did some of them feel at home? Because there must have been some sort of elite that still prospered, because otherwise we wouldn't have ended up with the protagonist that we were about to talk about.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I mean, you know, I think when you talk to Chechens as I did at that point, really what they wanted was to be treated with respect and dignity, to have the crimes against them acknowledged publicly, Stalinist deportations, you know, to be taken seriously, not to be looked down on. And there was this huge pride in this people that we resisted, and now we deserve to be taken seriously. Some Chechens for that some kind of historic recognition was enough, and they were quite happy for the Soviet Union or Russia to continue. Others were more radical and and were inspired. They looked to Estonia or Georgia and thought we could do the same, we could be Independent. So, you know, there was a whole whole spectrum. And, you know, it could have turned out very differently. The moderates could have been the ones to prevail. Russia could have handled it much more cleverly, and there would have been no Chechen war. But as it as it happened, it was the radicals who took power. And Russia's response was also in the end a very aggressive and counterproductive one, which provoked this cycle of violence, which meant that we had two Chechen wars.
SPEAKER_00You're watching and listening to Putchcast. Yes, you've just heard the word watching. We are trying a video format. So if you only use listening to us, you can now also watch us. You can find us on YouTube, but even on your Spotify channel, you could probably change the option back to watching and then see where we are and what we look like. Nothing to miss, just stick with your audio. But anyway, I'm very glad that our expert of today, uh Tom DeVall, has uh made a camera available as well. Uh, Tom works for the Carnegie Europe uh institute, where he he's an advisory expert on the Caucasus. Is that correct, Tom?
SPEAKER_02I would I'm I'm a I'm a writer. I write more than I advise, but yeah, you you can read me about this region. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And we've just learned about the the history of the Chechen people. We've learned why the conflict erupted, someone got kicked out of the window, quite literally, and uh Chechnya declared independence even though they legally didn't have the right to do so. And now we're talking about the man that you've already mentioned a few times. Um, pronunciation correct it again, please, once more. Joker Dudaev. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_02That's correct.
SPEAKER_00For anyone not speaking the local language, Joker, has that anything got to do with the English word Joker?
SPEAKER_02Not at all. This is this is a Chechen name. He was a Chechen mountain boy.
SPEAKER_00And you you just said Chechen name. There was is a Chechen language still?
SPEAKER_02Oh, absolutely. There's a Chechen language. The North Caucasus is an incredibly linguistically diverse region, home to literally dozens of languages, um almost none of them related to uh Indo-European, Russian or English.
SPEAKER_00I'm glad to hear that that language, that piece of culture, did survive the deportations by Stalin because many people did lose a lot of their culture. And language is usually the first thing to go, because often they're then obviously banned from speaking their own language, which I assume is what also happened. So he is born and bred in the Caucasus?
SPEAKER_02Well, he's actually he I think he's actually w about one month old. He's born in in a mountain village, and then these Stalinist deportations that we've mentioned happened. So he's a babe in arms, and he grows up in Kazakhstan in a family, I think, of about 14 kids in desperate poverty in Kazakhstan.
SPEAKER_00And that makes it even more personal. Obviously, the whole struggle of his people is this personal struggle. I think revenge is always an important motivator here. He was, and that's probably why he's elected leader of his people at the time, probably the most successful Chechen in Soviet society. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, as a real paradoxical character, uh this man, he was the big Chechen nationalist leader, but he was also a kind of Russian romantic, had a Russian wife, loved Russian romantic literature about the Caucasus, and he was also a Soviet general who, you know, uh rose up the ranks through the Soviet Air Force and was in command of this airborne division in in Soviet Estonia. Just um so he was many things, you know, we also completely fluent in Russian, probably more fluent in Russian than in Chechen. Everyone used to speak to him in in in Russian, quite secularized, you know. We think of Chechnya as an Islamic place, they are Muslims, but he liked to drink. Um he had very little knowledge about Islam. So a very paradoxical character. He was modelling himself on some of these independence movements. He did live in Estonia, which I think was important to him, so he um he kind of imbibed the Estonian nationalist culture around him as well.
SPEAKER_00What uh not just geographic but also societal juxtaposition that is, because from my understanding, Estonia was sort of one of the beacons in the Soviet industry, uh standard of living, levels of education where Chechnya was obviously considered the backwaters. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_02That's correct. Yeah. I mean, it you know, there's not much to, apart from hatred uh uh a kind of history of oppression by Russia and and hatred of Russian rule, there's not much to to connect Estonia and Chechnya, but obviously that's where he lived. Um but he came back to Chechnya and you know had this aura about him, and he had this he had this very, you know, uh stable but magnetic personality. You know, he had he um dressed uh he was a very dapper man, he used to dress in these very smart suits, he had a wore a fedora hat, he had this very thin, neatly tailored moustache, these glittering black eyes, a very charismatic person, but also, you know, very deeply unstable when he talked to him. He he would lose his temper, he would lash out at the Russians, he would make threats. Um he would make threats not just against Russia, he would say things I want to destroy the str State of Israel, and you know, he would took sides in the Gulf War, he suddenly decided that Saddam Hussein was a great guy. So he he was driven by this inner conviction about himself, but he was one of those um, you know, romantic radical politicians who who who are you know quite become quite dangerous to deal with.
SPEAKER_00Unpredictable, it sounds. And um all jokes aside, but until I started this this this podcast here, I was never aware of the significance of moustaches. Like, this is the third episode. Uh to I think we should write a book on uh the political side of moustaches. We we we did an episode on Turkey, and we've learned from one of our experts of that you actually express your political alliance with with the shape of your moustache and your beard. We're doing the same thing with the Mexican Revolution, where also men grew their beards to symbolize which side of the uh the political corridor they're on. Um being a Turkey people, uh, the Chechens that might be related to that pride, but so he was a very extravagant figure then. He wasn't this this this bureaucrat who just moved um soldiers around on maps. He was he was actually out there, but he must have been good at what he was doing because in the Soviet forces he only rose to the top as well, especially as a Chechen. I think that would have been such an extra hurdle that he had to overcome compared to ethnic Russians. So he must have been really successful in some way.
SPEAKER_02Successful, incredibly driven, but also bearing a lot of grudges against people. Also, yeah, I think, you know, also maybe rather an insecure Chechen because he'd actually never lived there, left there as a child. And so projecting this rather romantic view on on what it meant to be a a a Chechen as leader, so you know, always trying to prove himself, you know, and that's obviously a phenomenon we've we've seen elsewhere. It's it's the m man from the periphery who becomes the big nationalist.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And because he has something to prove, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Like, yeah, that's right. And it was also very personal, and this you know is is a tragedy of of the first Chechen War of 1994, which I think was entirely avoidable, is it became very much a personal personality clash between uh Boris Yeltsin in Moscow and Jochhar Dudaev in Chechnya, neither of them wanting to back down. Dudaev saying independence is non-negotiable. In fact, the independence was completely on paper. The borders of Chechnya were open, they still used the Russian ruble, there was no Chechen economy to speak of, it was a big black marketing place. It was just that there were no Russian troops there and a lot of Chechen flags. It it really wasn't a viable proposition. But he said this, you know, state is non-negotiable, this independence, and Yeltsin saying, you know, the integrity of Russia is also non-negotiable. And these two big egos, you know, there were a couple of attempts to sit them down and for them to negotiate, which I think could actually have resolved it. But but the tragedy was that that um you know they ended up going to war.
SPEAKER_00Now, you've just mentioned and we talked about the key dates before. So second half of 91, under his leadership, Dudaev's leadership, the Chechen Autonomous Republic declares independence. A few months later, the whole Soviet Union falls apart officially. Yeltsin becomes president of Russia, therefore Chechnya becomes his business because now it's a province that's trying to break away from his new motherland, so to speak. You've just mentioned the year 1994 as the start of the first Chechen War. Now, what happened in those years between that? And just aligning that to your biography, were you already there at the time? Was there three years of bliss and happiness before the war started in Chechnya? What was it like?
SPEAKER_02So I was living in Russia from '93, again, as it were, the second time. But Chechnya, you know, we have to remember this, no one was prepared for this breakup of the Soviet Union economically, politically. Uh the the come up the socialist economy broke down. So there was this kind of massive um free market, which basically meant a criminalized um black market all across ev everywhere, very criminal, very criminalized place. And Chechnya was that play kind of place squared. There were um, you know, unfortunately, confirming a bit the stereotype of Chechens as as bandits, you know, there was um unmarked Mercedes cruising the streets. Um there was a you know, you went went through the market and some guy, probably with a mustache and uh and uh Fedora hat would sort of you know say, um, what would you like to buy this pistol off me, which is, you know, with a gold handle for six thousand dollars. Yeah. That was this was the superficial thing you saw, but of course underneath it there were there were plenty of people who were trying to survive, teachers and and state workers who'd lost their jobs, whose salaries were worthless.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um and so but obviously it benefited enormously a lot of people in Russia to have this kind of black market zone where they could launder money or send stolen vehicles and so on. And Dudayev kind of, you know, said he disapproved, but be but also benefited from this. You know, he was an idealist, but he surrounded himself with a lot of dodgy people, a lot of gangsters. So this so for this situation, you know, Yeltsin had so many other things on his mind that the dealing with this situation in Chechnya was was low low down the list. A lot of people were making money from it. He decided it might sort itself out. It was only when the Russian state began to get a bit stronger that people said, we've got to deal with with Chechnya, and there were people who said, let's negotiate, let's sit this one out. You know, this isn't the Chechnya is not viable, it will just come back eventually. And those who wanted to, you know, use force. And here is where, as I said, this clash of egos, Yeltsin threatening to use force. And Judayev, when I met him a few months before the invasion, was just loving this situation. He was just loving facing down the Russian bear, he was loving, saying, you know, let them come, we will fight, we fought them for hundreds of years, you know. Um, that they're ridiculous, mocking Yeltsin and the Russians, you know, making jokes. Uh, he was just loving this standoff. Yeah. You know, I at some level, I'm sure he actually also wanted to negotiate, but he but this enormous kind of demonic pride about him meant that he he he wanted to face down Yeltsin as well.
SPEAKER_00I'm just um trying to give him benefit of a doubt here. So is it true that when he lived in Estonia, and again he was commanding planes that had nuclear capability, if that's correct. Yeah, yeah. Again, confirming how important this man really was. So he was extremely powerful from that point of view. Apparently he refused orders to to suppress the Estonian independence movement and uprising. Is that true? Do you remember that?
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, in January 1991 there were as some people may recall, there were these um um kind of street demonstrations in Lithuania and Latvia, which were suppressed by Soviet troops and and several people got killed. And one, you know, in Estonia there was talk of the same thing happened, but you know, he he just basically told his base just to shut down, not get involved, which actually may have helped stabilize the situation. He actually, bizarre story, he actually lent a car to Boris Yatsin was visiting Estonia to show support. Boris Yotsen was warned not to fly back Russia because you know there might be problems with his plane. So he was lent a car by Johar Dudaev with a Chechen driver. And so Boris Yotsin actually owed Johar Dudaev a big favor for for getting him out of Estonia in the beginning of 1991.
SPEAKER_00Uh, this is uh these are the stories that you can only hear from someone who who was there and has that in-depth knowledge, uh, Tom DeWell. You just mentioned to us that you've met Dudaev in person. Now, do you remember how that actually happened? How did that come about and what was it like?
SPEAKER_02You know, I was a j I was a journalist. I went down to Chechnya, as I said, many times. I never saw him one-on-one. I saw him, you know, with what one uh one or two others in the room. So the first time was, as I say, before the war started with a couple of other people, he received us in his so-called presidential palace, and he was this was the period when he was mocking the Russians just before the war, literally days before the the war started. He gave this big press conference, and I was one of the journalists there. And again, he was just in very high spirits. He he was a warrior at heart. He he he um and he was again uh th this is this you know, all these bizarre personal connections. The head of the Russian Air Force was someone he knew personally, and the Russians had some dropped some bombs, and he said, you know, you know, why are you doing this? You know, don't bomb us from the air. You know, we should fight. Let's meet on the ground. You know, that was his again. He was kind of saying, you know, if you want a war, bring it on. We we Chechens are warriors. Uh very macho culture, very male culture. I recall in those days walking through the streets of Grozny, and the men, you know, were dancing, they were they all had weapons, they were so, you know, and then you would go to a few yards off into the side streets, and the women were all terrified. They said, you know, these guys are gonna get us all killed. Unfortunately, that's what happened, you know, because Russia obviously, you know, it it wasn't a game. Russia was a very brutal power, and uh the Russian Air Force, you know, was capable of destroying large parts of the city with aerial bombing, which is what they did.
SPEAKER_00And of all people, he should have been the one to know that. Of all people with his uh his background. Now, also I think for our listeners, it's important to understand that when we talk about this this duel between those two strongmen, the one in the Kremlin in Moscow, the other one in the presidential palace in Grozny, that that at that time Yeltsin wasn't the uh the drunkard that the world was laughing about. I think at that time he was really almost at the height of his power in the early 90s. So the West was hoping that he would bring Russia, you know, into the Western family. And also the Russian people, I think, after the collapse of the Soviet Union put all this hope in him. And then therefore he he wasn't as derailed as he seemed of his presidency.
SPEAKER_02He was already getting pretty erratic, I say. You know, he the the the the the height of Yeltsin um you know his greatest hour was in 1991 when he's he faced down the the attempted coup in August 1991 in Moscow. Already he was pretty erratic as president. You know, he had some he had some good ideas, he wanted to be friendly with the West. He he encouraged the free press in in contrast to to Putin. Um he you know he saw oversaw free elections, but he was also also had a huge big ego and and was I think persuaded by his advisers that this small victorious war in Chechnya, that that Russia's overwhelming military might could crush the Chechens in a couple of days, which of course was was a huge mistake. So obviously, you know, I we it it was a duel, but it was as a very unequal duel, and we have to put them, you know, by far the biggest responsibility on the Russian side for the ones for starting it. But I'm I don't but I guess my point is that I don't excuse Dudayev from responsibility here. He could have handled it differently, um, and he could also help um avoid the war, which killed you know tens of thousands of people in the end.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you you spoke so the the presidential palace, which I assume was the status symbol of the Soviet Union in town, where they've always had their non-Chechen leaders, and then him taking that over is obviously a very strong symbolic uh sign to his people, his court, so to speak. Um do you have any other memories? What was that like? Was it really decadent and they were living like kings there, or was it very barren and uh disappointing, or what what was that like?
SPEAKER_02It you know, it was a place, Chechnya was a place of huge contrast. You know, most people were living, you know, I I went there in in January of 1994, uh, and you know, even the guest house where I was staying uh basically didn't have heating. You didn't go out after dark because and you heard gunshots and it was unsafe to go out. Um I remember sitting in the kitchen of that place and lighting the gas rings to keep myself warm, and yet you went out and there were people with their flashy cars and with their guns, you know. So, you know, it it was a place of huge contrasts, and you know, and Didiaf, you know, large parts of his so-called presidential palace were were cold and miserable, and then yeah, there were the where there were the kind of flashy rooms as well. But he himself was, you know, he wasn't he wasn't a gangster. There were many gangsters around, but he himself was a true believer, you know, which is possibly why he didn't want to do a deal, which but you know, made possibly is why why things were more dangerous, actually.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So fascinating that you met him in person because all too often our experts on Putschcast don't have the chance because it's a historical figure, or it's so hard to get to them. We did have an interview with Luke Waters, an Australian journalist who was face to face with Bashar Al-Assad. So I'll I'll recommend everyone to listen to that episode on Putschcast about Syria and what's it like meeting Assad in his presidential palace. And you know what? He described very similar images, and what he remembered was that it's just very empty. Like it's this, this was obviously during the height of the Syrian civil war, but he said it's yes, he had his security there, a couple of press officers. But other than that, that's just a very lonely man at the center of a big palace. Now, Grozny is the capital. You've you've just mentioned that, you know, uh that's where obviously the center of power was. Grozny means terrible. Is that true?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was founded as a Russian fortress um in I think around 1817, if I got that right. And they called this fortress Grozny, which means terrible. It's actually the in the same word as in Ivan the Terrible, Ivan Grozny, he's called in Russian, so it's actually the same. Um Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it did become a terrible place for people to live in, especially women and children, like you've mentioned before, from 1994. So we have this semi-autonomous republic that no one really recognizes except for the president, his friends. You said there's no real borders in place. They're using the the Russian currency. First of all, I I'm interested in how did they even manage to form an army? Because we all know that they put up a good fight. So how did they have the organizational skills? And was there any external backers of that government?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, Chechnya's men are naturally very good warriors, and the Soviet army left the bases when they left Chechnya, left a lot of their weapons behind. And they did weapons deals with with places, you know, there were weapons shipments illegal, obviously coming from places like Estonia as well. So so they were actually pretty well supplied with weapons. Uh amazingly, the morale was so low in Russian forces during the war that actually Russians were even selling their own weapons to the Chechens for dollars. I wrote a story on that for the Moscow Times. I couldn't believe it myself. I met a m I met a Chechen guy who was, you know, showed me the dollars and the w that he was paying and and the weapons he was receiving from from Russian soldiers. So um, you know, that was that was the story on the ground, which is why the Chechen, small Chechen group of guerrillas actually defeated the Russians incredibly in 1996 uh at the end of this uh very, very destructive first. But of course, as we'll mention, uh Dudaev by that time was dead.
SPEAKER_00And it is, I mean, is there another David vs. Goliath story like that? The opposing forces are just so like the contrast, you said it was one million people maximum, right? So how big could their forces have been, even if every second bloke picks up a gun? But then versus the literally it was still the biggest country in the world. And then you think on paper, you know, it's a five-day war, which is what you said, what the Kremlin thought, went in very arrogantly. Why were the Chechens so successful?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think, you know, look at Vietnam, look at Afghanistan, look at Algeria, where you have a a guerrilla type army who are in their own homeland, know the geography, have know where they have to retreat to, won't give up, have a lot of support. Amongst the population against an incoming army which doesn't know why it's there is made in this case is made up of young Russian conscripts who all they want is in many cases is to get drunk or sell their weapons and not be there. And so that supposed superiority can completely melted away.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Now, were you there when actual fighting happened?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You know, I um in the division of responsibilities in a in our little uh two-person team covering Chechnya, I would I was the more of the political person. Uh Colotta Gaul, who then went on has gone on to have a very distinguished career at the New York Times, um in in many places, um chiefly Afghanistan. Colotta was was mainly the war reporter. But yeah, I did I did see see fighting. You know, wars are localized things, so you know, try and stay a little distance away from it. But yeah, um it was a very, very brutal war. Um there was this aerial bombing, there were atrocities, um, you know, it was it you know, it was a two warrior cultures which you know didn't take prisoners, it was a pretty terrible war.
SPEAKER_00Because I assume they didn't have an air force, um, you know, given what he said. So they just kept bombing without much resistance. So Grozny, after two years, looked very different from when you first saw it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was even in in in a few months, it was this completely criminal aerial bombardment had completely leveled the city, leveled all the apartment blocks in the middle of the city. You know, one ridiculous tragic fact is is is that the majority of the population living in those apartment blocks were the ethnic Russians of of of Grozny, um a lot of them on pensions.
SPEAKER_00So there there would have been an ethnic Russian population as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and they didn't have villagers to flee to. They they so they were they were heavy casualties amongst the ethnic Russians from the Russian Air Force.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And so I assume there that led to ethnic hatred as well between Russians and uh the local people, or did they distinguish between that as the Russian army sent from Moscow? These are Russians that lived among us for generations, perhaps.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean obviously the these uh Russians who survived were evacuated, most of them eventually, but and you know, the Russian population in Chechnya went way down eventually. But yeah, the ethnic hatred was between Chechens and Russians, which, you know, had always been simmering below the surface. Obviously, they'd, you know, had reasons to live together, to cooperate. But as soon as the war started, then you know, that then there was this complete ethnic breakdown. Any Russian soldier identified a Chechen as an enemy and and and vice versa.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And two years is a long time in a in a tiny country to do a lot of damage. I assume there was no such thing as an economy by the end of it. I still don't know how that that temporary state actually operated. I've got that's why I asked you before, was there any any external like now it's usually Gulf states or someone else who's got interest in funds, uh protest movements like this from the from the behind the scenes, but w w how how did they survive economically?
SPEAKER_02Well, the Chechnya had had a bit of a bit of oil that was running out. The resistance movement, it started as this kind of nationalist movement, then almost inevitably got funding from various Arab states, and you got some people from the Middle East, including diaspora Chechens. You got, you know, one or two people who were if they weren't Al-Qaeda, maybe were affiliated with Al-Qaeda coming in. So what had started as a nationalist movement ended up becoming large parts of it became quite radical Islamist, which was another unfortunate and absolutely not inevitable consequence of that Russian aggression. You know, we won't go into the second Chechen War, but that but by that time the Chechens were much more Islamic, much more radicalized than they had been in the first war.
SPEAKER_00So and this is in in under 10 years, so it's a it's a very quick radical transformation. And in my research, I even heard of of women then also picking up arms and becoming very brutal fighters uh alongside some of the men. Now, Jokar Dudaev. We're talking about him today because it has been exactly 30 years since he was assassinated. Um, he was part of an overthrow. They declared independence from the mighty Russia, but a Russia that was struggling at the time, lots of distractions all over the place, even in Moscow. We had a coup. Forces were withdrawing from all over the Eastern Bloc as well. People just wanted to get home, and um, the rule of law simply broke down. This is when all the oligarchs popped up that we're still dealing with today. Uh, and then this this small people in the very south of Russia decided to declare independence. It's 1991. And a man, a former decorated uh general in the uh Soviet Air Force in the Red Army, was um elected president of the Chechen people. Jokka Dudaev then reigned for about five years. And our guest today, Tom Deval, actually had the chance to meet him in person on a number of occasions in his presidential palace. But then, Tom, you've just described also that Gorozny was obliterated, there was mass casualties just by the style of war that Russia introduced in that province. And now we're talking about how it all ended, how this putist, so to speak, um Jokar Dudaev finished his career. So April 1996. He was assassinated in a style that reminds me of what just happened in Iran, what happened in Lebanon before that. It was very sophisticated. Do you remember what happened?
SPEAKER_02For sure, yes. And I I remember actually with Carlotta, my co-author, we actually visited the death site, which was this gully that he used to drive around the mountains of Chechnya, and he had a satellite phone, and then he loved getting people on the phone, which was obviously his downfall. He there was this opposition Russian politician that he loved talking to, and he he called him on his satellite phone. I I think he was warned that he shouldn't talk for too long because the Russians could pick up his GPS coordinates from the satellite calls he was making. That call obviously went on too long. They got his GPS coordinates and they fired a missile which um unlike a lot of other Russian missiles, actually had precision accuracy and and you know, blew up his car and he was killed.
SPEAKER_00There are lots of conspiracies around that assassination, even 30 years on. There are rumors of uh USA being involved and actually providing intelligence to the Russians because apparently they weren't sophisticated enough and pinpointing people. However, there's an image going around on the internet, Tom, where because they said there was a camera installed at the very tip of the of the rocket of the missile that shows him a split second before it hit him. I'm not sure if you've come across this, and this would be one of those fact-checking missions maybe for our listeners, if that's actually true. This is really slightly blurry image, but apparently that was sent to the Kremlin to confirm that that was him gone because it could have been anyone in that car being blown up. Um, do you remember that part of the story? Or have you heard about that before?
SPEAKER_02No, I mean I mean part of the reason I guess we went to the death the side of his death was was to see what we could find. And nothing unusual we could see there was just, you know, bits of twisted metal there. People around him, including his widow, said that he was dead, that that that part of the conspiracy theory definitely didn't stand up. Um The one thing that I found interesting at the time was that we could then confirmed that Yeltsin had basically got a twin-track strategy. He was actually setting up negotiations with Dudaev and also still plotting to kill him. I I guess, you know, maybe again parallels with what Trump is doing in Iran. One moment he's negotiating the next moment he's assassinating. Um but that was the same with Dudaev. Um, you know, maybe there's nothing uh so unusual in that. It seems quite cynical, but you know, which strategy works first? But they were actually setting up negotiations with Dudaev, but they they ended up killing him first.
SPEAKER_00But the good old strategy, um, that's been proven wrong so many times in history, you cut off the head of the snake, and then therefore the snake is dead. But no, snakes re-grow heads, as at least in world history. First of all, how was his death how did people respond in Chechnya at the time? Was there mourning? Was there state funeral? What what was that like? Or did he was he popular?
SPEAKER_02There couldn't be a state funeral. He was buried in secret. I think most Chechens I knew found Udaya frustrating. They resented him, they thought he had been a bad leader, but they also um resented even more maybe the the fact that the Russians didn't treat him like a leader and had and had killed him. Uh so he obviously then became a martyr in death in a way that you know he hadn't been a hero in life for many. Um and and you know, in all sorts of places like Poland and the Baltic states, you know, Ukraine now, obviously he's now regarded as a hero, which I definitely wouldn't have regarded him as a hero. The result actually of his assassination was that a much more sophisticated, moderate, thoughtful guy, the military commander Aslan Maskarov became the Chechen leader, and actually they had they ended up having negotiations. Maskarov went to the Kremlin and and actually met Yeltsin, and um that the war was wound up within a few months. It was basically a Russian capitulation, but it was also made possible because there was a leader who followed Dudayev who was much easier for the Russians to talk to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that is I think the the unlikely outcome that no one foresaw is that the Chechens won that first war, like you said. So the the Russians just withdrew and stopped bombing them.
SPEAKER_02That war had become incredibly unpopular in Russia. Let's not forget the media in Russia was still diverse at that point. The media undermined that war pretty much from day one because they were reporting on the fact that uh, you know, not just Chechens, but Russians were being killed by the bombs, that Russian soldiers were dying needlessly. Um, you know, the Russian public pretty quickly realized that this was a a war that nobody needed. And so when Yeltsin was standing for re-election in 96, he decided to wind up that war, and it ended up being a pretty much a capitulation by the Russian side, obviously with a continuation when Putin went back to war three years later.
SPEAKER_00One of his first uh decisions uh in 1999 to pick that war up again and then go on mid with an even m harder, more more iron fist than than anyone did before. That that brings us pretty much to a close of this fascinating chapter of Caucus' history where the Chechen people, small people that went through hell and back, took on the most powerful nation at the time, and uh it still is today. Obviously, Russia is still a major military player, at least. And they won a war, even though there was no happy end in the end. Uh, we've learned a bit about the leader today, and uh I want to thank you once more for your time, Tom. Dudayev, you've just mentioned him. He's he's almost celebrated in some of the countries that are now feel threatened or are actually threatened, threatened and invaded by Russia as Ukraine, for example. But in Russia itself, how is he viewed and how do you think this 30 year anniversary will be marked?
SPEAKER_02I think it's a vr it's not a war that people want to remember in Russia. Dudaev is still regarded as a villain but by the Russian Russian state. So it's it's you know, it won't be an anniversary that's particularly marked in Russia or even in Chechnya, because Chechnya is nominally now loyal to the Russian state. But obviously a lot of people will be remembering, as I do, what happened 30 years ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I also saw in in Turkish media, this is a few years ago, they they wanted to name a street after him in Turkey. And uh there was yeah, I think the foreign minister got involved in Russia, and so it was a big deal. Um it's obviously very uh a sensitive topic still, so many years on. And um, thanks again for your time, Tom. And just a little bit more about yourself. You speak Russian, you said that you spend a lot of time there. What do you do at Karnegy Europe?
SPEAKER_02So at Carnegie Europe, I'm a kind of analyst on Eastern Europe, particularly South Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan. I went on uh having covered uh Chechnya to to work on particularly on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, the conflict over Karabakh, wrote a book about that. Uh following that, um, you know, that's a also a very tragic story, which may have a somewhat positive ending as, you know, there's there's hopes of Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreements um this year or next. Um so that's but you know, all all around the Black Sea, Ukraine, Moldova, those are the places that I continue to visit, continue to find fascinating and write about.
SPEAKER_00And just fact-checking, uh I read about you that you were actually banned from entering Russia for a long time. Is that true?
SPEAKER_02That's right. I guess I was banned from Russia when it was not yet fashionable to be banned from Russia. That was in the mid-2000s. That lasted uh a decade. I did go back once only in 2018. But you know, given the state of Russia, what's happening in Ukraine, uh, I wonder when and if I'll ever go back to Russia, which which is obviously a shame. But you know, that's that's the state of Russia today, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Thanks again for your time. And uh to to all our listeners and now viewers out there, thank you for your time. Thank you also for commenting. Look at that notorious photograph of a rocket hitting the Chechen leader. Is it true? Is it fake news? I'm not sure. For me, it looks plausible. But also follow us on all the social channels that you usually follow podcasts on. And if you want to find out more about Tom and his work, we will link it on our website as well, putcast.com. I look forward to uh introducing another coup or revolution to you next. Bye.
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