Conclusions

We have tried throughout this essay to draw attention to the strategy and tactics  by which Moscow prevailed in Chechnya and to point out that they are and were to a considerable degree the latest iteration of a long-standing and constantly evolving approach to  the problems of COIN in the Russian imperial setting.  We have also tried to suggest to historians and other interested analysts that projecting  this strategy back into the Muslim borderlands of the Soviet Union in the interwar period 1921-41, and especially the 1920s also pays substantial heuristic and anlaytical dividends.  Such a process may also benefit researchers with a more contemporary interest,  namely trying to learn some lessons from Russian and Soviet experience for contemporary practice as to what tactics and strategies might work among Muslim communities threatened by insurgencies and terrorism and what might not work. 

The scope for such research is vast and we do not make the error of suggesting that our conclusions, however well-grounded we may think they are,  are by any means definitive.  Indeed, with the opening of Soviet  archives it is now possible to  get a fuller picture of the actual sequences and processes  by which Soviet power developed in the North Caucasus and Central Asia and to use that knowledge to refine or improve our own suggetstons. 

The important point is that this field is now open, the opportunities for finding important  information and conclusions are abundant, and the importance of future research findings possess an importance that  may well far transcend their applicability only to the field of Soviet and/or Rusissn studies.