ABSTRACT
The study of the law of historical process and an attempt to ‘objectivise’ reasons for the changes could be traced back to fifteenth-century European thought; this attempt to find the single model for the changes had been finally shaped up in the twentieth century. This approach implies not just the attempt to find out the single reason for the changes, but also affirms that the historical process has just one avenue to move along. Here the historical process is seen as being quite similar to that of the process in nature — both the biological process and, of course, the laws of cosmology that have clearly defined patterns of development. One could clearly see such a view of history in the grand theories of Marx, Hegel and many others. In Marx's theory the triumph of communism is as inevitable as the rise of the human being after millions of years of evolution. The approach also implied the attempt to find the fixed patterns for the development of particular phenomena such as revolutions. Still, as the recent theories prove, there is no fixed pattern in the development process. The diverse revolutions can follow different patterns and their ideological frameworks change accordingly. Some move from internationalist millenarianism to traditional nationalism into which early revolutionary creed is incorporated. This is indeed the usual model and could be seen in the Russian, Chinese and Iranian revolutions. Still, there is the other possible scenario. In this case the original nationalistic animus is transformed into internationalist revolutionary ideology and practice. As this chapter shows, the developments in the post-Soviet Chechnya are amply instructive of this phenomenon, further adding another crucial dimension to conflict discourse. Though parallels could be drawn between conflicts across time and space, the differences in socio-political and cultural setting significantly impact the process, as well as the outcome.
