Not a threat? : Russian elites’ disregard for the ‘Islamist danger’ in the North Caucasus in the 1990s

The opposition between Moscow and Islamism is often seen in the academic literature and in Russian and Western policy circles as axiomatic. That idea is however largely a construction that has emerged over the past twenty years as the Russian state under Vladimir Putin fought a never-ending war against separatist groups who had embraced Islamism in the North Caucasus. Neither Russian political and security elites, nor its academic research institutes saw Islamism in the North Caucasus as a major domestic threat in the 1990s, including after Russia’s defeat in the First Chechen War. Influenced by the Soviet legacy of relations with Islam, they perceived Islamism as alien to Russia and associated its rise to foreign influence from Muslim countries and, remarkably, at times the West. Instead of Islamism, they continued to emphasize the threat represented by ethnonationalism for the stability of the North Caucasu