Yaakov C Lui-Hyden
2 min readJan 1, 2023

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Where I disagree is the assertion about subjugating the Chechens. This has been largely successful. The chechen opposition, of which one of my good friends is one, is in the diaspora. He is a chechen born in Jordan and now lives in Georgia(which also has an extensive chechen community.) I lived in Southern Russia, we encountered Chechens almost every day who were more interested in forming criminal gangs or thuggery and rely on numbers. Russians are actually quite afraid of them. They view them as having unpredictable tempers and holding long grudges. And the fight in packs thing. Still, they are largely assimilated into Russian culture with the fight for independence knocked out of them. There was one black widow attack when I lived at Volgograd, blowing up a train station, but the number of incidences was nothing compared to, say, palestinians/Israel or Kurds/Turkiye. By and large, Kadyrov's iron fist has worked. Only the diaspora, outside Russia, is immune.

You also stated a timeline for the break up of Russia. I just don't see it. The government is too centralized with Putin controlling the governors. There was some prospect for Tatarstan years ago but even they have kowtowed to the Kremlin and lost the status of having a President as head of their republic. There were really only three candidates for breaking away- Chechnya/Dagestan, Bashkorostan and Tatarstan. The Bashkor people, related to the Tatars, would only break away if Tatarstan went first. And I don't see that happening now. All the other groups like the chuvash, Mari,yakuts, circassians etc are too fractured without any leadership and small in number. There is a reason Stalin mixed the population around and russified it.

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Yaakov C Lui-Hyden
Yaakov C Lui-Hyden

Written by Yaakov C Lui-Hyden

Yaakov is a world traveller and is accused of being an Australian. Published several novels. He writes about travel, writing, geopolitics and trading.

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