ABSTRACT
The broad intersubjective process which evolved during autumn 1999 and brought Chechnya into being as an existential terrorist threat was not limited to the myriad of Russian statements and images reviewed in previous chapters. It also included a whole row of material practices of war undertaken against Chechnya. The next three chapters will lay out what these ‘emergency measures’, in the terminology of securitization theory, amounted to. Such an account cannot summarize every single Russian policy or practice toward Chechnya from autumn 1999 onward: it must, in line with securitization theory, focus on those that go beyond the ‘rules that otherwise have to be obeyed’.1 Here we want to identify ways of dealing with Chechnya and practices undertaken against Chechnya and Chechens that would usually have been considered illegitimate, but which seemed called for by this urgent situation. We expect to find two distinct aspects to this moving beyond the rules: first, that measures that had been socially unacceptable only a while ago were suddenly accepted as reasonable and even necessary by the Russian political elite and the Russian public (social rules); second, that measures contrary to the legal foundations of the Russian state or Russian laws became accepted and even explicitly endorsed by the Russian political elite (legal rules). In sum, the next few chapters examine different types of emergency measures that were made possible and legitimate through the representation of Chechnya/Chechens as an existential threat, measures that went beyond the rules that otherwise have to be obeyed. Given the theory framework of this study, ‘emergency measures’ are seen as equivalent to ‘knowledgeable practices’ in post-structuralist discourse theory: They are the material expressions of significative practices, and are seen as complementing these. Thus, ‘emergency measures’ should be studied by exploring the link between two aspects: the linguistic representations in the securitizing narrative investigated in the previous empirical chapters; and implementation of these in policies and security practices aimed at countering the threat – which is the focus of the next three chapters. My choice of incorporating quotes into the account of material practices below is based on this conceptualization. While linguistic practices have been presented apart from the material practices detailed in these chapters, they are theorized as being
intertwined: not because linguistic practices cause certain policies or material practices, but because they open up or constrain the range of policies and material practices deemed possible and legitimate. Simultaneously, the material practices are central to the constitution, production and maintenance of the linguistic identity construction that they enact. We will therefore also explore how language (on the micro-and macro-levels) enables and legitimizes material security practices as they are carried out. Another key exercise is to reveal how the undertaking of these practices transmits and cements the dominant discourse on Chechnya and Chechens to the micro-levels of Russian society. The present chapter starts by briefly discussing the immediate endorsement by the Russian Federal Assembly of policies and practices ‘beyond rules that otherwise have to be obeyed’ explicitly indicated by the Russian leadership at the beginning of the Second Chechen War. It then moves on to investigate the practice of ‘sealing off ’ Chechnya and Chechens from Russia. The chapter considers the physical isolation of the republic and the militarization of the bordering regions, as well as the re-assigning of all relations with Chechnya to the sphere of security. It also discusses how requirements of re-registration for Russian citizens and the fabrication of criminal cases became practices that served to seal Chechens off from Russian cities, constituting them as ‘different’ and ‘dangerous’ within Russian society.
