1991 en Tchétchénie Regards sur un basculement, vingt ans après

In Chechnya, the year 1991 provides a stimulating test period for analyzing the convulsions that wracked the USSR, since we observe there both the reversals caused by the accelerated anti-Soviet mobilization, which culminated in the putsch in Moscow, and the dimension of national liberation expressed by Chechens demanding independence. Moscow’s turnabout – after Yeltsin’s government had lent support to the “Chechen revolution” – reflects the difficulties Russia had managing postimperial affairs. Firsthand accounts collected in 2011 from Chechen leaders, some of them living outside their homeland, shed new light on these events as, looking back, we raise questions, two decades later, about what was the “horizon of the conceivable” in 1991.