Chechen Conflict and “Deviant Social Groups” in Reflection of the French and British Periodical Press in 1990s

Abstract. The Chechen conflict of the first half of the 1990s was a vivid manifestation of two double-edged processes. The first of them was associated with the situation of the collapse of the USSR and the lack of mechanisms for regulating interethnic and administrative-territorial relations corresponding to new political realities. The second – with the increased role of local “deviant social groups” in the context of the relationship between the “center” and the “periphery”. The question arises whether the events that took place in the Chechen Republic can be called the point of choice between maintaining a single community (since the beginning of the 1990s – the Russian people), or the formation of a new supranational entity that combines an orientation towards universality with an emphasized rootedness in locality. During the first half of the 1990s, the European (French and British press) considered the issue of confronting Chechen separatists led by J. Dudaev and the Russian government. The article considers the evolution of the image of the conflict in a chronological aspect, gives a comparative analysis of the press in relation to different categories of the population involved in the conflict: the army, militants, civilians, European journalists themselves. It is concluded about the origins of the Chechen conflict and the contradictions associated with the point of bifurcation about two ways of Russia’s development: as a confederation with the formation of supranational societies of a new type, and a federation with strong central government.

Keywords: Chechen conflict, center, regions, confederation, federation, sovereignty, separatism, deviant social groups.