Ethnic competition, radical Islam, and challenges to stability in the Republic of DagestanIntroductionContemporary Dagestan: ethnic distributions, political competition, and radical IslamDesign of opinion survey and research questionsEthnic identity in Dagestan and the wider North CaucasusAnalyzing support for ethno-territoriality in Dagestan: testing the institutional hypothesisInterpreting Dagestan’s Wahhabi challengeDiscussion and conclusion: the nation, religion, and the practice of groupismAcknowledgementsVariables used in the analysis and their distributional valuesDependent variableSupport for creation of ethnically homogeneous territoriesIndependent variablesReferencesEthnic competition, radical Islam, and challenges to stability in theRepublic of DagestanEdward C. Hollanda,*, John O’LoughlinbaInstitute of Behavioral Science and Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Campus Box 487, Boulder, CO 80309-0487, United StatesbInstitute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, United Statesarticle infoArticle history:Available online 23 August 2010Keywords:DagestanNorth CaucasusNationalitiesRadical IslamGroupismPublic opinion surveyabstractPrevious academic work on stability in Dagestan has focused on two potential cleavages,the republic’s ethnic diversity and the challenge from radical Islamist groups. Using resultsfrom a December 2005 survey, and focusing on Dagestan’s six main ethnic groups, thispaper investigates attitudes towards the dual topics of the politicization of ethnicity andthe relationship between terrorism and Islamism. We find that Dagestanis maintainlayered conceptions of identity, and do not attribute violence predominantly to radicalIslam in the republic or the wider North Caucasus. Scholars should be aware of RogersBrubaker’s concept of groupism in analyzing not just ethnic groups, but religious move-ments as well.Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Regents of the University of California.IntroductionResearch on Dagestan in the post-Soviet period has noted that the republican leadership has had to “walk a tightropebetween nationalism and Islam” (Gammer, 2002: p. 139) in order to maintain political stability. Discussions of nationalism arecommonly juxtaposed against institutionalist studies of the breakup of the Soviet Union, which emphasize the role of the Sovietfederal structure in cultivating distinct identities resulting from the national territorialization of political space (Roeder, 1991;Suny, 1993; Kaiser, 1994; Brubaker, 1996). This institutional model was examined by Bremmer (1993) using the concept ofmatrioshka nationalism, which summarized the layering of identities, including national ones, associated with Soviet feder-alism, and explained how nations asserted their political autonomy. National activists representing titular groups with theirown union republics positioned their political actions against the Soviet center, while those on the lower three tiers, theautonomous republics, autonomous oblasts,andautonomousokrugs, positioned themselves against the union republics andtheir titular nationalities.1This model of political geographic organization, however, was not uniform across the Soviet space;Dagestan’s noted ethnic diversity, with thirty-four ethno-linguistic groups, made the assignment of a singular titular nationalityto the area impractical.2Despite its location abutting conflict-ridden Chechnya and its dire economic situation during and afterthe transition from communism, a significant national challenge to the post-Soviet Russian state has not emerged in Dagestan.The necessary territorial ‘perforations’ were not in place to spur nationalist opposition; rather, identities in the republic wereoverlapping, territorialized at multiple scales, and associated with various social and political communities (Walker, 2001).*Corresponding author.1In the Soviet model the ‘most developed’ nations, or those theorized as closest to international socialism, were incorporated as union republics. Thenext three tiers, mentioned above, were also designated according to level of national development.2The political and demographic structuring of ethnic groups in Dagestan is complex. Though there are thirty-four ethno-linguistic groups, this numberwould be larger if local dialects of the same language are counted as distinct. Ware and Kisriev (20 01) and Ibragimov and Matsuzato (2005) discuss morethoroughly the Soviet federative model.Contents lists available at ScienceDirectCommunist and Post-Communist Studiesjournal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/postcomstud0967-067X/$ – see front matter Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Regents of the University of California.doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2010.07.006Communist and Post-Communist Studies 43 (2010) 297–308Political instability in Dagestan during the post-Soviet period is therefore most frequentlyattributed to the rise of Islamismin the Northeast Caucasus, associated with the radicalization of certain elements in Muslim communities in the region asa result of the two Chechen wars (Yemelianova, 2007; Russell, 2007). An Islamist state has been viewed as a potential solutionto the social and economic problems, including high unemployment, endemic poverty, and corruption, confronting therepublic (Yemelianova, 1999; Gammer, 2007). Yet Islam in Dagestan is simultaneously affected by an internal divisionbetween traditionalists, who follow the strictures of Sufism, which has been localized and adapted to the Northeast Caucasiancontext, and Wahhabism, the austere Sunni Islamic movement that appeared in the area following the breakup of the Sovietstate. The followers of the latter tradition are most closely linked with the network of jamaats, or militant Islamist organi-zations, which oppose both the Russian government and official Muslim organizations in an effort to establish a sharia-basedIslamic state in the North Caucasus (Hahn, 2007). To summarize, while nationalism is rarely perceived as a threat to Dage-stan’s political system, Islamism and the violence associated with terrorist actions are interpreted as dangers to the republic’sstability (Rotar’, 2002; Gammer, 2002; Hahn, 2007).This general distinction between nationalism and Islamism, however, downplays particular, group-specific positionstowards Dagestan’s political system, specifically on questions of political power and institutional control in the region,