December 2024 marked the thirtieth anniversary of Russia’s first war against Chechnya, begun by President Boris Yeltsin in 1994. Chechnya had been conquered by the Russian empire in the mid-nineteenth century in a decades-long and very cruel military campaign that combined the Russian colonization of the area and the genocidal removal of the indigenous population.
Later, in 1944, the Chechens and the Ingush were collectively accused of collaboration and banditry and exiled to the Asian republics of the Soviet Union. The conditions of their deportation to the new regions were such that approximately every fourth or fifth one of them perished. Permission to return to the homeland was given only in 1956, and the Checheno-Ingush Soviet Socialist Republic was restored in 1957.
In both the Russian empire and the Soviet Union, Chechens faced a situation that was not about maintaining their statehood but about sustaining their existence. The very being of a people hung constantly in the balance. Large nations do not have such fears or such memories.