The Chechen War Launching A Short Victorious War

Launching a “Short Victorious War”

During the period September-October 1994, a surge in the influence of hard-
liners within the Russian leadership became apparent. The new prominence
of “hawks” (“the party of war”) at the top of Russian state increased the
likelihood of a conflict with secessionist Chechnya. The leading members of
this militant group at the top were: General Aleksandr Korzhakov, head of
the Russian Presidential Security Service; Oleg Soskovets, Russian first
deputy prime minister, and Nikolai Egorov, Russian minister for nationalities
and regional affairs. Like all of Yeltsin’s advisors at the time, these “hawks”
were fixated on the fact that “presidential elections were now only two years
away and Boris Yeltsin’s popularity was below ten percent.”
It was believed by Yeltsin’s hawkish advisors that a surefire way to boost his
ratings so that he would be reelected in mid-1996 would be to provoke and
win a “short victorious war,” such as the United States had recently
accomplished in Haiti. On 30 November 1996, the late Sergei Yushenkov,
then chairman of the parliamentary Defense Committee, telephoned Oleg
Lobov, the secretary of Yeltsin’s Russian Security Council. “Lobov told him
that there would be no state of emergency. But then he added that, yes,
there would be a war. On the telephone [Yushenkov related] Lobov used the
phrase that: ‘It is not only a question of the integrity of Russia. We need a
small victorious war to raise the president’s ratings.’”
As can be seen, neither Yeltsin nor his hawkish advisors in late 1994 had any
apparent qualms about launching a war aimed in part at raising the
president’s popularity ratings. Nor, it seemed clear, did they have any
reservations about violating the Russian Constitution. The presidential decree
authorizing the invasion of Chechnya (No. 2137c), issued on 30 November
1994, was a secret (i.e., unconstitutional) one. On 11 December, the day of
the invasion, it was supplanted by another secret and thus also

3 Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: A Small Victorious War (London: Pan,
1997), p. 144. On this group, see also: John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya:
Roots of a Separatist Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.
203-209.
Gall and de Waal, Chechnya, p. 161.
unconstitutional presidential decree (no. 2169c).5 A “short victorious war”
had begun.