3
Tacit to this construction was the necessity of identifying an essentialized “other”. Yet,
despite the divergence of these identity polemics Russian elites found an expedient and
historic “other” in both indigenous Muslims in general and in the perennially intransigent
mountain peoples of Chechnya in particular.
In this study I argue that in the post-Soviet era, as levels of hostility between
individuals whose most salient identification marker identified them with the Russian
“we” and those who identified themselves with the Muslim “we” increased, so too did the
mutual elite efforts to congeal the binary relationship between “self” and “other” and
increase the distance between the two divergent conceptualizations of group affiliation.
With regard to the Russian wars in Chechnya, this process should plausibly witness a
growth in exclusive identity and the negative construction of not only Chechens but
Muslims as a whole by the Russians and vice versa. Conversely, under conditions of
relative societal harmony – or in the Chechen case, during rapprochement and peace
initiatives –levels of elite, and hence public, hostility should markedly decrease in favor
of a “humanization of the enemy”.
Hypothesis
Based on social identity theory, I posit that if there exists an environment of
hostility between those whose most salient identification marker is attached to the
Russian “we” and those who identify with the Chechen, or Muslim, “we”, then the
expected outcome will witness increasingly deliberate distancing between the
conceptualizations of “self” and “other” respectively. Thus, the independent variable is
elite attempts to congeal the binary relationship between the “self” and “other” and the
dependent variable is the increased ethnic distance between the two divergent
Convention