ABSTRACT
The events of November 1996 in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic (KBR) met practically no comment – more important, no interest – in the political and intellectual circles in both capitals (Moscow and St Petersburg). All the information about the ‘following demarche of the separatists’1 circulated for a rather short period of time in the mass communications media,2 while the president of the republic, Valerii Kokov,3 summed up:
Nothing serious, nothing critical happened in Kabardino-Balkaria. A group of un-accredited people gathered and declared some kind of a republic and
elected some kind of leaders. This was the outcome of their agitated mind. No sound person in the republic, I believe, did take it seriously.4
