how nationalism and machine politics mix in russiawould have accepted granting independence to Chechnya as a
solution. In fact, remarkably, 53 per cent would have ‘welcomed’
Chechnya’s secession at that time, with another 14 per cent saying
they would not mind such a solution, and yet another 12 per
cent saying that they were against it but were prepared to accept
it. Only 12 per cent thought Chechen independence should be
‘resisted by any means’ (Levada 1999). Putin was certainly calling
neither for mass deportations nor Chechen independence.
Instead, survey research indicates that what Russians wanted
most of all from Putin at that time was not the blood of Chechens
or subduing Chechnya to prevent secession, but leadership capable
of dealing with the threat of terrorism and crime in some way. In
fact, we find public opinion on Chechnya largely following what
Putin did rather than the other way around, as we would expect
if people mainly wanted leadership and as we would not expect
if Putin’s rise was mainly driven by a surge in nationalist senti-
ment. In fact, prior to Putin’s launching the Russian government
assault on Chechnya, VTsIOM found that only 32 per cent of the
Russian population definitively agreed that Russia should start
military operations there. Another 40 per cent were only willing
to back it if there were some ‘guarantee’ that it would not result in
more terrorism in Russia (Levada 1999). But by 26–29 November
1999, after Putin had actually led the military operation and
pursued it decisively, support for continuing it (61 per cent) had
come to far outweigh support for pursuing peaceful negotiations
with Chechen leaders instead (27 per cent). But even this figure
was highly contingent on what Putin himself was proposing to
do: the same survey also asked whether people would support
the negotiations option if Putin proposed it, and it turns out that
if Putin had proposed negotiations, public opinion would flip.
Putin’s endorsement would have generated an outcome in which
48 per cent supported negotiations and 42 per cent opposed them
(VTsIOM 1999b).
What the balance of evidence suggests, then, is that the initial
surge in support for Putin was mostly about leadership, not
nationalism – or any other issue, for that matter. Finally, after
a decade of decline and turmoil, and a president who often
appeared to be drunk or otherwise incapacitated, here was a