Mobilisation and Radicalisation in Late Soviet Chechnya (1986 – 1991)

During the years that preceded the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Chechen-Ingush Au-tonomous Republic has experienced an intense movement of civil society mobilisation and nationalist radicalisation. Referring to the society ‘Kavkaz’ as an example of the emerging movement of civil society, this paper traces the mobilising role of history and historical memo-ries during the period of reform under Mikhail Gorbachev in the late-1980s, until the ‘Chechen Revolution’ in 1991. It argues, that the use of historical memory is not so much a cause than an indicator of conflict and radicalisation in society, and that these processes of radicalisation are closely linked to their context at a local, national and international level. Drawing on data col-lected from conversations with representatives of the Chechen national movement, from local newspapers, and legal acts, the paper tracks the evolution of civil society movements in Chech-nya in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Doing so, it departs from a relational approach to con-flict analysis (Della Porta 2018; Alimi, Bosi, and Demetriou 2012; Tilly and Tarrow 2015; Hughes and Sasse 2016).