Continuity & Change after the USSR: Russia’s Changing Perceptions of Islamism

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

Vassily A. Klimentov, Visiting Fellow, will present a paper exploring Continuity & Change after the USSR: Russia’s Changing Perceptions of Islamism in Tajikistan and Chechnya.

This seminar examines how the Soviet experience of fighting Islamist Mujahideen in Afghanistan has shaped Russia’s perceptions of Islamism in the Tajik and Chechen wars. It will show that, while political elites dismissed Islamism, perceptions were different in the military and the KGB who often saw the Tajik Civil War and, to a lesser extent, the Chechen War as the Afghan War’s continuation. The dichotomy was due to elites’ continuity from the USSR to Russia being stronger in the security sector. The neglect of Islamism during the 1990s remarkably challenges the commonly assumed continuity in Russian perceptions of the Islamist threat.

Vassily A. Klimentov is a Visiting Fellow at the Schuman Centre, conducting research on armed violence and Islamism in the North Caucasus and Central Asia. He has worked for ten years in academia and with humanitarian NGOs, including Médecins sans Frontières, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Humanitarian Outcomes, and the International NGO Safety Organization, as an analyst and a needs and security assessment coordinator.

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