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CONFESSIONAL GEOPOLITICS IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA AND THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS
Viatcheslav AVIOUTSKII
Viatcheslav Avioutskii, Associate researcher, Centre de Recherches et d’analyses Géopolitiques (Paris Viii university); lecturer in geopolitics, Ecole Supérieure de Management en Alternance (Esm-A), Marne-La-Vallée (Paris, France)
Due to the conflict in Chechnia, Southern Russia and the Northern Caucasus have become a focus of attention for Russian and western analysts. This region, fraught with geopolitical ruptures, is usually studied from the perspective of ethnoterritorial and ethnopolitical conflicts. However, the Chechen conflict’s progressive shift into the religious realm has made it imperative to study this Russian borderland in the confessional respect. This need has been further amplified by the media’s increased focus on the jihadist component within the Chechen guerrilla contingents.
The radicalization of militant Islam in the region (in Chechnia and Daghestan, and with less intensity, in the Stavropol Territory, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachaevo-Cherkessia) is accompanied by a remarkable rebirth in the Northern Caucasus not only of Islam, but also of Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, and a large number of Protestant, Armenian monophysite, Catholic, Judaist, Krishnaits, and old-believer communities.
Since the end of the 1980s, the region has seen the appearance of several hundred Orthodox churches, mosques, Armenian churches, Khuruls, synagogues, and kostels (Polish Roman Catholic churches). Several thousand religious organizations (parishes and religious communities) have been registered. A great many religious traditions have been brought back, as well as Orthodox and Muslim holidays and religious processions. Hundreds of Orthodox parish schools, maktabs, dozens of Islamic universities, and several Orthodox seminaries have opened. Religious periodicals are being increasingly published, a certain portion of the population regularly participate in religious ceremonies and rites, and priests take an active part in everyday life and have considerable influence on the political process.
After several decades of militant atheism and its destructive influence on the spirituality of the nation, it is still too early to evaluate the results of the religious rebirth in this Russian borderland. It is important to take into account this powerful identity-building factor, even if it isn’t conflictive, since it defines the geopolitical opposition and performs a decisive mobilizing function for the radical components in regional and local conflicts.
Religious Map
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is widely represented throughout the region. In 1989, more than……………….
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