the new russian nationalismthe broadly defined Russian nation from outside threats, or to
Primakov’s chief ally Iurii Luzhkov, the Moscow mayor who had
long been calling for Sevastopol to be returned to Russian hands
from Ukraine – something Putin and his Kremlin supporters were
not doing at the time (RFE/RL 1999a). And once Primakov and
Luzhkov bowed out of contention, Putin’s main challenger became
Communist Party leader Gennadii Ziuganov, widely recognised
for his nationalist and revanchist stands (Urban and Solovei 1997;
March 2002). Equally importantly, Putin did not frame his actions
on Chechnya as being about nationalism as defined here. Instead,
they were portrayed as an operation against ‘terrorism’ and ‘bandit
formations’ (RFE/RL 1999b). Chechens as a nation were not
blamed by Putin, just the specific perpetrators and the corrupt or
incompetent leadership in the republic that enabled or supported
them, and he was always careful not to exclude Chechens from the
Russian nation in his rhetoric (Polit.ru 1999).
The evidence is strong that this is largely how ordinary Russians
interpreted Putin’s actions despite the fact that many held nation-
alist beliefs themselves. According to surveys conducted shortly
after the terrorist bombings in September 1999 by VTsIOM, a
highly reputable survey agency whose key figures later created the
Levada Centre, only 10–11 per cent of the Russian population
equated the terrorists and fighters thought guilty of the apartment
bombings with the actual government of Chechnya. Instead, the
agency found, a majority mainly wanted to punish the perpetra-
tors rather than punish the Chechen people as a whole (Levada
1999).
At the same time, the polling shows that what Russia’s citizenry
was most worried about were perceived threats of terrorism and
crime coming from such Chechen criminals, and they were in fact
willing to be quite pragmatic in how to deal with this threat. To
be sure, some of the acceptable responses lumped good Chechens
together with the bad indiscriminately, a sacrifice many found
worth paying for their own security. Thus, on the one hand,
a VTsIOM survey in September 1999 asking about different
responses to the apartment bombings found that a shocking 64
per cent would have supported deporting all Chechens from
Russia. At the same time, however, an even larger percentage