Abstract
What made Dagestan overtake all the other regions of Russia in generating anti-state violence after the end of the military phase of Moscow’s second campaign in Chechnya, with its residents accounting for more than two-fifths of all attacks targeting the Russian authorities in 2005-2015?This two-phase mixed-methods study aspires to answer this question, which may be the key to understanding the drivers of political violence in post-Soviet Russia, if not facilitating a decrease in this violence. The first, quantitative phase of this study will seek to ascertain whether state-sponsored abuses of the population, violent ideologies and youth unemployment in Dagestan and other regions of Russia all increased the likelihood that individuals based in these regions would engage in anti-state violence. Multiple linear regression will be employed to analyse an original dataset containing a variety of information on more than 80 regions of Russia and their residents in order to ascertain whether, of all potential drivers of anti-state violence derived from the academic literature on the subject, it was indeed these three factors that served as the best collective predictor of anti-state violence in Russia in 2005-2015. This unique dataset includes original, region-level, annualised statistics on acts of anti-state violence and state-sponsored abuses, which have been mined and systemized for the purposes of this thesis. It also includes statistics on extremists and other offenders across Russia in the research period. This region-level annualized data was aggregated after the author gained individual access to the digital archives of Russia’s Supreme Court and its branches in Russian regions. Finally, the set includes data on various social, ethnic, economic and other characteristics of the 83 regions examined in Phase I.
Having quantitatively ascertained that the high levels of state-sponsored abuses of the population, violent ideologies and youth unemployment in Dagestan and other regions of Russia did indeed increase the likelihood that individuals based in these regions would engage in anti-state violence, the author will then transition to the second, qualitative phase of his study. In Phase II, the author will first select five regions for qualitative comparison with Dagestan and then use the lens of strategic theory to ascertain whether the confluence of the aforementioned three factors in these regions not only predicted but also explained decisions that some of these regions’ residents made to employ violent means in pursuit of their desired ends, such as punishing authorities for grievances and/or deterring future mistreatment by these authorities. Specifically, Phase II will seek to ascertain whether state-sponsored abuses acted as the direct primary motivator of these decisions, while belief in violent ideologies, such as Salafi-jihadism and youth unemployment may have facilitated these decisions, per strategic theory. Phase II will also feature an investigation into whether any of these three factors may have influenced these individuals’ choice of ways to employ violent means in pursuit of desired ends once they had made the fundamental decision to initiate engagement in anti-state violence (or to continue such engagement). As in Phase I, this investigation will be partially based on an analysis of original primary evidence collected for the purposes of this thesis. This evidence will include semi-structured interviews on drivers of anti-state violence with former participants in this violence and with their siblings. It will also include information on the social, demographic and religious characteristics of fighters in some of the compared regions.
Ascertaining in Phase II whether state-sponsored abuses, violent ideologies and youth unemployment not only predicted that some residents of Dagestan and other Russian regions would choose to engage in anti-state violence but explained why and how they did so would constitute a modest contribution to the existing body of academic knowledge of such violence in Russia. These findings may also have some practical implications, potentially facilitating Russian authorities’ thinking on how to create conditions for taming this violence in non-violent ways.
| Date of Award | 1 May 2021 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Domitilla Sagramoso (Supervisor) & Michael Rainsborough (Supervisor) |