GETTING TO KNOW

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GETTING TO KNOW

• THE ORTHODOX CIVILIZATION

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ADMINISTRATIVE

• Reclamae are Graded
• New average 78
• Essay One

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PAPERS

• Due 11/1 IN CLASS
• No e-mail turn-ins accepted
• I will accept drafts, talk over ideas, etc.
• but you need to get them to me very soon.
• Six Page Essays (5-7)
• Topic Proper Role of Religion in a Democracy
• Another Topic What Explains the Variance in
  Church-State Relations?
• 1st Section Introduce your essay, the point you
  will be making, and how you intend to make it
• 10 of the essay grade
• 2nd Section Summarize and critique the relevant
  readings (both theory and evidence)
• Needs to cover all the relevant readings
• 50 of the essay grade
• Your reaction to the readings/what system you
  would prefer and why.
• Opinion is fine, but must be informed and
  substantiated
• 25 of the essay grade
• Conclusion like the introduction
• 5 of the essay grade
• 10 of your grade will come from how well the
  essay is written

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NEWS
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WEB SITES OF THE DAY

• Russian Religious News
• Compiled and Translated
• http//www.stetson.edu/psteeves/relnews/
• The Russian Orthodox Church
• Official Site in Russian and English
• http//www.russian-orthodox-church.org.ru/en.htm
• Orthodox News
• In English. Some semi-scholarly
• http//www.orthodoxnews.com

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http//www.orthodoxnews.com/
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DISCUSSION OF THE ORTHODOX CIVILIZATION

• Huntington
• Byzantine Parentage (instead of Rome)
• God is Caesars junior partner (p. 70)
• Centered in Russia
• 200 Years of Tartar Rule (mid 13th to mid 15th
  centuries)
• Centuries of Muslim rule in other places
• Bureaucratic Despotism
• Limited exposure to Renaissance, Reformation,
  Enlightenment, and other Western experiences
  (capitalism, democracy, baseball, golf)
• How have new elements added to Russian culture?
• Slavophiles vs Westernizers

• Phase 3 Bolsheviks (1917)
• Western idea in reaction to
• Opposition to West but
• Phase 4 Capitalist Democracy?
• Slavophiles vs. Westerizers
• Torn Country which way will they go?

• Phase 1 Orthodoxy (988)
• Imported Byzantine culture (without )
• Phase 2 Peter the Great (reigned 1689-1725)
• Russia backwards
• Brought in modern military
• Modern bureaucracy (perfected despotism)
• Placed Church bureaucracy under government

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DISCUSSION OF THE ORTHODOX CIVILIZATION

• Gvosdev Readings
• Orthodoxy and Church-State Relations
• The Church is the collective beachhead (ideally,
  not just a trench)
• No Collapse of the Roman Empire in the East
• No Dark Ages (maintenance of civilization) no
  weak governments to support the creation of a
  strong centralized church (decentralized national
  churches/pluralism)
• No Augustinian Doctrine
• City of God vs. City of Man (distinct)
• In West, fall of civilization/blood of martyrs as
  proof of sin
• In East, salvation of civilization seen
  continuation of redemption
• The Fall
• In East Sanctification and Mans Perfectibility
  (through Christ and the Church)
• No fear of papo-caeserism
• Belief that Church and State should work together

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DISCUSSION OF THE ORTHODOX CIVILIZATION

• Gvosdev Readings
• Moscow The Third Rome
• The Second Rome the ideal earthly kingdom
• Relics, churches, center of civilization
• Big Crisis when it fell in 1453 (like Jerusalem
  in 1st Century AD?)
• How can the fall of Constantinople be explained?
• The Doctrine of the Third Rome
• Justification for Imperialism?
• Culturally it, seemed to reward the Russian
  empire (particularism)
• The Rise of Holy Russia
• Augmented by Russia as the New Israel
• Sobornost and Symphonia the egg and the yolk

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• Russias(?) Orthodox Civilization
• Characteristics? Issues? NW? W? CA?

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• Civilizational Conflict in the Caucuses
• Characteristics and Issues Is this the same as
  our war?

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WHERE IS CHECHNYA?

• Chechnya is sandwiched between the northern
  slopes of the Caucasus mountain chain and the
  steppe and bordered by Georgia and the Russian
  republic of Dagestan. Its position is strategic
  in that it straddles the main highway and the
  only railway and oil pipeline through Russian
  territory between the Caspian Sea and the Black
  Sea. It covers 13,000 square kilometers or 5,000
  square miles.
• Why is it important?

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CHECHNYA The Lay of the Land

• Plains to north
• River, ridges, and Grozny in the middle
• Mountains and forest to the south
• Effect of geography on security
• How do you attack?

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IS IT JUST ABOUT OIL?

• Oil rigs and refineries

• Pipeline politics?

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WHO ARE THE CHECHENS?"Their god is freedom,
their law is war."

• Indigenous groups of mountain herdsmen, farmers,
  and fighters who have lived in the North Caucasus
  for thousands of years.
• Blood feuds and strong families
• Language is non-Slavic, non-Turkic, and
  non-Persian.
• The last census in 1989 put their number at just
  over 1 million.
• Religion
• Late conversion to Islam
• Suffi Brotherhoods
• Wahabis?

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A CHECHEN TIMELINE

• 1722 Russian Czar Peter the Great annexes
  Dagestan, then loses it.
• Early 19th century Russia fights for decades
  against an Islamic alliance led by Imam Shamil, a
  legendary Avar warrior from Dagestan.
• 1944 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin deports
  Chechens, along with their Ingush cousins, to
  Kazakhstan. Tens of thousands die.
• 1957 Khrushchev permits surviving exiles to
  return.
• Aug. 1991 Chechnya's Communist leadership
  supports an abortive coup in Moscow. They are
  overthrown by former Soviet Air Force Gen.
  Dzhokhar Dudayev. Declares Independence
• December 1994 Russian troops invade Chechnya.
  Moscow succeeds in occupying all the republic's
  urban areas, but is unable to defeat guerrillas
  in the mountainous south.
• August 1996 The rebels re-take Grozny. Under the
  Khasavyurt Peace Accords, Russia withdraws from
  Chechnya and agrees to discuss its independence
  after five years.
• January 1997 Rebel military commander Aslan
  Maskhadov, a moderate nationalist, wins
  presidential elections.
• August-September 1999 Chechen militants led by
  warlord Shamil Basayev launch two invasions of
  neighboring Dagestan. Apartment bombings in
  Moscow and two other Russian cities kill some 300
  people. The Kremlin blames Chechen extremists.
• Oct. 2, 1999 Russian forces invade Chechnya for
  the second time.

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KEY PLAYERS Aslan Maskhadov

• Elected president of Chechnya in January 1997
  after helping broker a truce to end the
  republic's 1994-1996 war for independence that
  killed an estimated 80,000 people. He served as
  chief-of-staff during the 21-month conflict and
  was the trusted aide of Chechnya's first
  president Dzhokhar Dudayev, killed by the Russian
  army during the war.
• Failed to rally other key players in the
  government around him once elected. Many had
  served as field commanders during the war and
  found Maskhadov too conciliatory toward Moscow.
• Stripped of financial assistance from Russia and
  the trust of his own government, Maskhadov was
  unable to keep the republic from slipping further
  into poverty and crime. Isolated, he chose to
  re-enlist warlord Shamil Basayev into his armed
  forces shortly before Russian forces re-invaded
  Chechnya on October 1.

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KEY PLAYERS Shamil Basayev

• Russia's current enemy No. 1. Basayev is an
  experienced field commander who has staged daring
  raids on Russia yet has always managed to escape
  alive. He shot to international prominence in
  June 1995 when he and a team of guerrillas took
  more than 1,000 people hostage in the southern
  Russian town of Budennovsk.
• Some 200 people died in the incident, which
  humiliated Moscow and helped lead to a brief
  truce in the war. Moscow further accuses him of
  masterminding apartment complex bombings in
  Russia which have left close to 300 people dead
  since the end of August. He denies involvement.
• Basayev led Islamic rebels who captured several
  villages in neighboring Dagestan in August and
  September with the declared aim of creating an
  independent Islamic republic. The bearded
  34-year-old lost to Maskhadov in the presidential
  elections but served as prime minister for
  several months before resigning.

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KEY PLAYERS Khattab

• Basayev's loyal but secretive lieutenant. Khattab
  is accused by Moscow of helping mastermind the
  apartment block bombings. He is reputed to be
  either Jordanian or Saudi, and to be 34, the same
  age as Basayev.
• He also fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan, and
  in 1992 fought alongside Islamists in Tajikistan
  to combat the Dushanbe regime. In 1995 he moved
  to Chechnya, where he set up the first training
  camps for his teams of guerrillas there. With
  long, curly hair and poor knowledge of Russian,
  he is married to a Dagestani and avoids the
  media's glare.
• May be connected to international terrorist
  groups.