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Between “ethnocide” and “genocide”: violence and Otherness in the coverage of the Afghanistan and Chechnya wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Philipp Casula
Philipp Casula*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Zurich, Karl Schmid-Str. 4, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland
*
*Email: philipp.casula@uzh.ch
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Extract

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the two Russian wars in Chechnya were the longest, most protracted conflicts of the USSR and Russia after WWII. Both were conducted under conditions of unprecedented violence in peripheral territories. Despite their distance in time and space, both wars are closely linked to each other on the level of cultural representations in contemporary Russia. This paper analyses how the conflicts were represented in a key Soviet and Russian newspaper as the wars unfolded. It analyses the textual and visual coverage of the wars in the Krasnaia zvezda (1980–1986; 2000–2003), in order to disclose changing interpretations of violence and the Other. The paper argues, first, that Krasnaia zvezda told the story of two different types of violence prevailing in each conflict. The Afghan case was presented as one that put the social and cultural transformation of the population at the center of its attention – violence was hence not only physical and excessive but also cultural, as it aimed at the social fabric of society. The Chechen case focused on the recapture of territory and the restoration of sovereignty. Therefore, physical violence appeared more bluntly in the coverage of the conflict. Second, the paper shows that these two different types of violence implied two different visions of the Other. In Afghanistan, the Other was represented as becoming more and more similar to the socialist Self. This dynamic is visually underscored by numerous images of Afghans who have embarked on the path to Soviet modernity. In Chechnya, in contrast, the Other was presented as traditional, backward, and immutable. The Other was usually reduced to complete cultural difference and depicted a dehumanized fashion. This orientalization of the Other was a precondition for the use of excessive physical violence.

Keywords

AfghanistanChechnyaOthernessviolencemedia coverage
Type
Research Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 43 , Issue 5: Special Section: War, violence, and the military during late socialism and transition , September 2015 , pp. 700 - 718
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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