security service. Even in retirement, Chebrikov continued to oppose
Gorbachev’s policies, often speaking to traditionalist and conservative
party chapters about Gorbachev’s “treason.”CHECHEN WARS. The Chechens are an Islamic people living in the
Caucasus. In the 18th and 19th centuries, they stoutly battled Russian
occupation. The Chechens never fully accepted Soviet power; col-
lectivizationwas resisted and Chechen “bandits” were never fully
defeated by the NKVD. During World War II, Joseph Stalinor-
dered the deportationof the entire Chechen population to Central
Asia for collaborating with the German occupiers; almost a third died
of hunger the first year. The Chechens, like the other Caucasian peo-
ple deported by Stalin during the war, were “forgiven” and allowed
to return in the late 1950s.
The Chechens found on their return that much of their land had
been occupied by Russians. Nevertheless, in the last decades of So-
viet power, the Chechens rebuilt their villages. The end of the Soviet
Union left the tiny Chechen enclave in a dubious political position:
political radicals occupied and ran the “country,” imposing taxes and
raising an army. Moscow seemed to have forgotten about them. But
in 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsindecided to reestablish Rus-
sian rule. When several efforts by the Russian security services failed
to overturn the rebel regime, Russian troops sought to seize the cap-
ital of Grozny by force.
The Soviet intelligence community had not prepared the govern-
ment for the level or intensity of the resistance they would meet. The
1994 battle for Grozny was a major embarrassment for the Russian
army, and a Russian armored brigade was destroyed in several hours
of intense urban combat. Faced with military failure, the Russian
army destroyed Chechen villages, forcing people to flee into the
mountains or accept internment in camps. The situation rapidly be-
came a “dirty war,” with atrocities on both sides. The FSB(Federal
Security Service), in a major test of its competence, was unable to
prevent raids by Chechen battle groups deep into Russia. The FSB
was also blamed for the torture and executionof civilians.
An armistice in the summer of 1996 ended only a phase of the
struggle. The FSB proved incapable of cutting the rebels’ ties with Is-
lamic fundamentalists such as Al Qaeda, or intercepting the move-42 •CHECHEN WARS06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 42