Chechnya is puttin’ Putin back on its streets.
A person who was Prime Minister of Russia when its troops crushed a separatist rebellion in the republic (a region of Russia technically) in 1999, is now on the Chechen map permanently.
Almost a mile-long central street of Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, now holds the name of Putin Avenue, or Проспект Путина (pros-PEKT Putina) in Russian.
The street used to be the Victory Street, a very common Soviet-era name in memory of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) victory. Now, according to Chechnya’s president Ramzan Kadyrov (rahm-ZAHN kah-DI-rof), it commemorates the “person, who’s done so much for the country and all of us.”
The street’s re-opening after reconstruction began a month-long celebration of 420 years since the “establishment of a good-neighborly relationship between the people of Russia and Chechnya,” RIA Novosti reports.
The New York Times article on the event (interestingly enough) omits this fact, but briefly outlines the latest events in the “good-neighborly relationship.”
The First Chechen War of 1994-1996 was a reaction to the shattering of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Chechnya’s declaration of independence and a small-scale civil war of 1992 (quite similar to recent Kosovo and South Ossetia affairs). Russian troops went in to “restore constitutional order,” but were driven out by the extremist and separatist groups. After the war, the republic was in chaos, with abounding internal disputes among warlords, terrorist attacks, assasinations and kidnappings. Russia, in the meantime, received hundreds of refugees and lost some 300 people in apartment building bombings.
1999 was a scary year. I was a middle-schooler at the time, and very vividly remember crying at night, because I lived in a large 9-floor apartment block, just like those blown up one after another in Moscow and around Russia. The Russian government blamed Chechen extremist leaders for the attacks on civilians. The leaders denied their involvement. People were scared.
Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister in 1999 and declared the Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov (us-LAHN mahs-KHA-dof) and his parliament illegitimate. The developing air war became a full-fledged land war, continuing until Russian troops seized Grozny and took over the mountains. In the spring of 2000, Putin (already Russia’s president by then) declared direct rule of Chechnya. In March 2003, Chechnya adopted a new Constitution in a referendum (deemed illegitimate by some international observers). In 2005, a pro-Moscow leader Ramzan Kadyrov started functioning as a de-facto ruler, becoming the official president in 2007.
But back to the street-naming. Komsomolskaya Pravda quotes Kadyrov’s statement:
“In 2003, the Chechen people once more affirmed that they want to be a part of Russia. That is not surprising, because we all remember what happened and what took place when the so-called Ichkerian (a historic Turkic name of Chechnya) independence was declared. Those were years of anarchy and poverty in the republic. This celebration shows and proves well our people’s attitude to Russia. The Chechens have always been seeking normal relations with all peoples living in Russia.”
RIA Novosti also adds Kadyrov’s quote where he calls Putin the “national leader.”
Oh, but wait, doesn’t Russia have a new president?..
