Abstract
This chapter is a study of Russian veterans after the Chechen conflict and the trajectories both of demobilized soldiers and policemen returning to their previous law enforcement functions. The authors explore the hypothesis that the war experience is transposed into episodes of postwar violence. They also bring in related elements, such as prewar experiences in institutions where brutality is common (army, police) and government policies implicitly or explicitly authorizing violence.
“During the Chechen campaigns, it was an error to call on police units normally in charge of maintaining public order. Policemen found themselves in a situation where they had to shoot people, to kill and be shot at. They returned home in a state of total psychological shock, and were expected to go back to maintaining public order. The “Chechen syndrome” is rife in the police force, transmitted from “policemen from Chechnya” to those who had no part in antiterrorist operations. This is evidenced in the many cases of abuse perpetrated against citizens by men in uniform.”2
Ruslan Aushev, former president of Ingushetia, 2004.
The interviews conducted by Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski were carried out thanks to a research grant awarded by the Centre franco-russe de recherches en sciences humaines et sociales de Moscou (USR 3060, CNRS-MAE), October 2008.
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Notes
A. Novikova, “Sovremennyi Omon. Ot sebia ne ubezhish’,” Militsiia mezhdu Rossiei i Chechnei. Veterany konflikta v rossiiskom obshchestve (Moscow: Demos, 2007).
We use the term developed by G. Mosse, in whose view the acts of violence of the First World War were in part responsible for the brutalization of European societies that favored the installation of totalitarian regimes: De la Grande Guerre aux totalitarismes, la brutalisation des sociétés européennes (Paris: Hachette, 1999). For an approach applied to the Russian context, see P. Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
Quoted in T. L. Thomas and C. P. O’Hara, “Combat stress in Chechnya,” Voennyi Meditsinksii Zhurnal 4 (April 1996): 37–40.
F. Daucé and E. Sieca-Kozlowski (eds), Dedovshchina in Post-Soviet Military. Hazing of Russian Army Conscripts in a Comparative Perspective (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2006).
See V. Volkov, “Violent Entrepreneurship in Post-Communist Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 5 (1999); G. Favarel-Garrigues and A. Le Huérou, “State and Multilateralization of Policing in Post-Soviet Russia,” Policing and Society 14, no. 1 (January 2004): 13–30.
K. Bannikov, Antropologiia ekstremal’nykh grupp. Dominantnie otnoshenie sredi voennosluzhashchikh srotchnij sluzhby Rossiiskoi Armii (Moscow: RAN, 2002); K. L. Bannikov, “Regimented Communities in a Civil Society,” The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies 1 (2004): http://www.pipss.org/index40.html.
The category of the inside enemy and its link with violence are taken up by R. Lew in “L’ennemi intérieur et la violence extrême: L’URSS stalinienne et la chine maoïste,” Cultures et conflits 43 (2001): 127–139.
F. Sironi, Psychopathologie des violences collectives. Essai de psychologie géopolitique clinique (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2007), 126. Françoise Sironi, clinical psychologist and researcher in psychology, has worked with veterans of numerous conflicts, from Algerian draftees to child soldiers in the recent wars in Africa, and in the 1990s led a project with Russian veterans of the Afghan conflict in the region of Perm.
In ten years, 620,000 men were sent to Afghanistan, 15,400 were killed, 39,000 wounded, and 270 reported missing. We also have figures for the number of invalids, according to the various categories. See M. Galeotti, “Veteran Society,” in Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s Last War (London: Frank Cass, 1995).
The term s hefstvo applies to organizations, factories, and enterprises that “adopt” army units and ensure moral and material support. See E. Sieca-Kozlowski “Les liens indestructibles entre la société et l’armée en Russie post-soviétique ou la résurgence du chefstvo de Boris Eltsine à Vladimir Poutine,” in A. Le Huérou and E. Sieca-Kozlowski (eds.) Culture militaire et patriotisme dans la Russie d’aujourd’hui (Paris: Karthala, 2008), 147–170.
C. Merridale, “The Collective Mind: Trauma and Shell-shock in Twentieth Century Russia,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 1 (January 2000): 39–55.
D. Morozov, “Aktual’nye voprosy meditsinskogo i sanatornokurortnogo obespecheniya v MVD Rossii,” Professional 1 (2008): 31–33.
I. Amel’shakov, “Sovershenstvovanie sistemy professionalnoj podgotovki, perepodgotovki I povysheniya kvalifikatsii,” Professional 1 (2008): 39–41.
A. Adaev, “Problemy organizatsii psykhologicheskogo obespecheniya deyatel’nosti organov vnutrennykh del,” Professional 1 (2008): 42–44.
The term spetsificheskie sluzhebno-boevye zadachi [specific combat missions linked to service], taken up by the MVD medical review the same year, appeared here, as well as the notion of posttraumatic stress, also introduced for the first time by the aforementioned psychologist. V. Zlenen’kij, “Moral’no-psikhologicheskoe obespechenie vypolneniia lichnym sostavom sluzhebno-boevykh zadach,” Professional (Popularno-pravovoi al’manakh MVD Rossii), 1 (2008): 7–9
D. Morozov, A Kalyaev, and G. Shutko, “Aktual’nye voprosy sostoianiia zdorov’ia sotrudnikov spetsial’nykh prodrazdelenii militsii,” Meditsinskii vestnik MVD, 3, no. 34 (2008): 1–4.
On this subject, see the remarkable work of Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of World War II: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Poliarnaia Pravda, quoted by G. Hønneland and A.-K. Jørgensen, in Integration vs. Autonomy: Civil-Military Relations on the Kola Peninsula (Ashgate: Alderchot, 1999), 167.
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© 2012 Nathalie Duclos
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Le Huérou, A., Sieca-Kozlowski, E. (2012). A “Chechen Syndrome”? Russian Veterans of the Chechen War and the Transposition of War Violence to Society. In: Duclos, N. (eds) War Veterans in Postwar Situations. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137109743_2
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