While looking at other interesting topics, I encountered the 26+ minute video linked below. It starts by looking at this area from the perspective of people who do not necessarily agree with Putin’s goals, including those in Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMHxXIgSPws [Chechnya and Armenia]
These two countries/nationalities are looked at from the perspective of peoples who are making Putin uncomfortable. While Putin has used Chechen troops during his East Ukraine conquest efforts, Kadyrov (Chechnya leader) appears to be in unchanging bad health, as his son is looked at as the possible future. Armenia has also disappointed Putin by NOT voting for Putin’s favored candidate in recent elections.
As Putin faces ever more serious conditions within Russia, and growing urging by wealthy insiders to pack up the war and come home, the future of Russia itself is more in question. Thus there will be more likelihood of independent actions and future aspirations by the small countries and ethnicities bordering Russia. This video may continue useful information regarding that future, from what I saw in the first 5 minutes.
you know, if the Chechens were not mohammedan, I would sympathize with them, but I am prejudiced against Mohammedanism.
I read Tolstoy’s works on this and did a lot of reading on the Chechens or rather the VAinakh/Nokhchiy — they are an ANCIENT people, like the Kartveli (”Georgian”). The Vainakh are among the most ancient indigenous peoples of the Caucasus region. Unlike neighboring populations who migrated during various imperial expansions, the ancestors of the Chechens have inhabited the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains for millennia.
i kinda think the Vainakh are related tot he ancient Hurrian and Urartian civilizations (Bronze age and earlier). Before the Mongol invasions, Chechen society had a feudal structure with local kings and lords. The utter devastation of the wars caused a societal revolution. The Chechens overthrew their own feudal elites and established a fiercely egalitarian clan system that defines them to this day.
They latched on to Mohammedanism because of Muscowite — their turn to Islam was purely REACTIONARY - a response to Muscowite expansion. Islam became fully cemented in Chechen society because it served as a unifying ideological banner against the Christian expansion of the Russian Empire.
Just as with the Uyghurs (who were originally Nestorian Christians), the Vainakh were weak Christians under Georgian influence but the actions of the Muscowites pushed them into Islam - the Russians in 1864 basically committed ethnic cleansing.
They, like the Dagestanis, Buryats, Yakuts, etc are not merged with Muscowite slavic entities and if not for the religious angle, I would say they should be independent