Through the looking glass: Chechen-ruled Russia?

That Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov is having more expensive fun than a politician really should has only recently come to my attention, but taxpayers in Russia have been wondering for years about how much Kadyrov's monster trucks and movies with the washed up heroes and starlets of his youth are costing them.

As a commenter explained, Kadyrov is to Vladimir Putin as, in the New Testament, King Herod was to the Emperor Augustus: a local proxy ruler. But, thinking about Rome suggests a second, more sinister possibility that Muscovites discuss amongst themselves: perhaps the Chechen goon squad based in Moscow, nominally to protect Kadyrov on his visits to his master, is also the germ of a Chechen Praetorian Guard to keep Putin in power in case the Russian masses start getting uppity.

Mass armies drawn from the ranks of the people have always been a concern for rulers because they might prove too merciful in a crisis. For example, in 2011 Mubarak's conscript army appeared unwilling to slaughter civilian protestors Tianamen Square-style. Indeed in 1989, the Chinese Communist state's first attempt to crush the protestors failed because the local soldiers sympathized with the students. The government had to find a distant army comprised of peasants who despised the urban rich kids to do their dirty work.

Here are some excerpts from a reader's email:

I've spent a lot of time in Russia and can tell you the Chechens are the one locals tell you not to make eye contact with.  It's interesting that post-communist Russian nationalism looks a bit different these days than in the 90's and early 2000s--a significant portion of younger patriots want no part of empire, resent the Kremlin's subsidies to the North Caucasus (their slogan "Stop feeding the Caucasus!"), and hope for separation. Solzhenitsyn hoped for union among the Slavs in the old USSR, but not with the Moslems. 

"Victory" in the Chechen war is one of the pillars of the Putin myth, so he can't cut off Ramzan.  A lot of Russians, including a  lot of the "Siloviky," the "power" guys from the "special services" and military, hate Kadyrov and have questioned whether Russia really won the war  Some of the "new nationalists" even call Putin "the president of Chechnya."  

... Chechens act pretty Checheny in Moscow and the residents aren't happy about it:  Some FSB officers have had enough--I haven't seen anything on what happened to the striking officers, though: ... 

"A group of Federal Security Service officers has gone on strike to protest the release of Chechen policemen who had been arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and torturing a Moscow resident, opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported Monday....  But policemen working for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov often have special permissions that allow them to travel around Russia with weapons and without many restrictions on their actions, said Andrei Soldatov, a well-known authority on Russia's security forces."

"The Chechen men implicated in the case are members of a bodyguard regiment for Kadyrov that is permanently stationed at the President Hotel in Moscow and protects the leader on trips to the capital, according to the Novaya Gazeta report. The hotel is located in front of the Interior Ministry building and is managed by the Office for Presidential Affairs." 

It seems to this observer as though a post in the “Kadyrov guard” is a cushy job—Kadyrov may use the posts as a rewards for his people, who get to move to Moscow with official papers, work for the boss when he is in town, then make money off of extortion schemes when he is not). ... 

This may be the origin of the stories we have seen since the wave of protests began on a contingent of Chechen gunmen being stationed in Moscow in case the Kremlin needed them to put down a rebellion—the thought being that local officers might balk at the task, something that did happen in the Russian Far East when higher tariffs for imported cars sparked protests.   

But we had been hearing that Putin might use the Chechens in such a capacity for years before that.  Recall that the anti-Putin “new nationalists” call VVP “the president of Chechnya”—resentments run deep concerning the costs of the war in Chechnya and the privileges the Kadyrov regime enjoys.  ... 

My vague hunch is that Chechens could come in pretty handy for starting a fight. But for ending a war, I wouldn't bet against the Russian people.