The perpetual insecurity of power
Adam Kadyrov, Palestine, and the logic of control
How is your summer going? After a couple of weeks away (from the newsletter, not the desk, though I did find time for a few days off), I’m waltzing back into your inbox with another issue of Tracing Patterns. I hope you missed me…
This week, I want to look at the Chechen regime’s efforts to take control of donations for Palestine — and what it tells us about the current state of that regime. Specifically, I want to argue that it reveals something about the insecurities and weakness of the Kadyrovs.
With that in mind, here’s what you can expect this week:
- Taking control of collections for Palestine
- Never miss an opportunity for self-promotion
- The (justified) fear of independent processes
Taking control of collections for Palestine
The Chechen authorities recently announced that they are taking charge of local collections to support the people of Gaza — which they claim have already reached RUB 600 million ($7.5 million). Henceforth, only three foundations — Khayra, Daymokhk, and Ayub — will be permitted to collect money. The ubiquitous Adam Kadyrov will oversee this, presumably in the gaps between overseeing everything else. He’s a very talented 17-year-old, as I’m sure regular readers will have noticed by now.
Information Minister Akhmed Dudayev justified the centralisation of collection efforts on the grounds that, without supervision, money might not reach Palestinians or could end up in the hands of banned organisations. It’s a claim not lacking in irony: Few things guarantee that money will be siphoned off for personal enrichment more than placing a Kadyrov in charge of them.
Never miss an opportunity for self-promotion
The move, of course, can be interpreted through this lens of self-enrichment. There are few financial flows in Chechnya that escape the Kadyrovs’ control.
It can also be framed as part of the endless promotion of Adam Kadyrov as heir to the throne. It goes alongside the many awards: Verstka recently added up those given to members of the regime since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine and Adam came second (to Ramzan, of course) with 16. It also accompanies the many other appointments as curator of this and head of that. One anonymous Chechen academic cited by Kavkaz Realii lambasted the tendency to push forward the “uneducated, ill-mannered” Adam at every available opportunity and noted that people had already stopped giving to Palestine as a result of the latest move.
Neither explanation, however, appears complete. In the grand scheme of things, whether the authorities take a percentage might not make a big difference (unless, of course, you’re Palestinian): The sums involved are trivial in the context of the regime’s revenue management system. If you’re Adam Kadyrov, they might not even buy you a good watch. Moreover, the Chechen regime already positions itself as a leader in the Muslim world and has been vocal on the topic, but most people in Chechnya will be probably be well aware that it has not been the driver of local support for Palestine. And no one would take Adam Kadyrov seriously but for one thing: He is, in every sense, his father’s son.
The (justified) fear of independent processes
More persuasive as an explanation, to my mind, is what the centralisation of control reveals about the insecurities of the Chechen regime. To all appearances, the initial collections appear to have been bottom-up, triggered by genuine popular concern over events in Gaza and a sense of Muslim solidarity. As a process, it do not in any way threaten the regime or its narrative. Yet the authorities nevertheless felt compelled to seize control of it. If not self-enrichment and self-promotion, why?
In April, I wrote about the performative brutality of the Kadyrov regime, in the context of it publicly displaying the body of a 16-year-old who had attacked police. I drew on Hannah Arendt’s idea of violence being not a sign of power, but of its absence, arguing that these developments revealed the extent to which the authorities are concerned about absolutely any sign of resistance — ultimately revealing their own weakness.
The latest development, I would argue, can be read in much the same light. However, it is not just manifestations of resistance that the authorities fear; the regime fears any demonstrations of agency outside of its control.
We can look to history for explanations of why this fear might be well-founded. Most authoritarian regimes look unassailable until just before they collapse — but collapse they nevertheless do. In his interpretation of the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe in the 1980s, Jonathan Schell argues that a key factor was the decision of activists not to challenge the main structures of power head on. Instead, they created “zones of freedom” — spaces that were simply outside of the state’s control. It was an idea that existed in the writings of several dissidents – Adam Michnik in Poland, Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia, an Gyorgy Konrad in Hungary — who counselled against trying to overthrow the system.
In other words, when looking for signs of the collapse of the Kadyrov regime, we might be better served by looking at spaces of activism that are not explicitly political, but which simply create such zones of freedom that could eventually spread into the political realm. Judging by its moves over Palestine, the Kadyrov regime, lacking a popular support base, appears to be looking there too.