Chechnya and Dagestan

Here you see a map of ethnic autonomies - republics and okrugs - within the Russian Federation. They can be grouped by several major clusters

The best known one is the Northern Caucasus. Why? Well, obviously because of the armed insurgency and its bloody suppression, which has been happening since the 1990s, especially during the two Chechen Wars

To a foreigner these republics may seem undistinguishable. Nothing however, can be further from reality. Two biggest and most important of them - Dagestan and Chechnya are opposite in literally everything. To start with, Chechnya is monoethnic - only Chechens live there

Meanwhile Dagestan is the most diverse region of Russia. It has dozens of ethnicities that speak mutually unintelligible languages, belonging to completely different families - Indo-European, Turkic, Nakh-Dagestani and so on. This makes ethno-political situation very complicated 

Dagestan is somewhat anarchic. Chechnya - is the opposite of that. In Dagestan there are tons of big bosses, nobody of whom really controls the situation. In Chechnya - there is an absolutist regime of Kadyrov 

Chechnya certainly feels more 'orderly'. The locals complain - we used to be the most unruly, independent people in the Caucasus. Now nobody breaks the speed limit, nobody crosses on the red light. Regime managed to impose extreme compliance among the population 

In Dagestan every mayor, every MP, every minister ofc is a rich man. They have villas, cortèges of armoured cars, sometimes palaces. In Chechnya - there is only one rich man - Ramzan Kadyrov. He has a palace in Grozny and in every county seat in his region 

Palaces are massive. If you climb the 'Grozny City' tower you can see the one in Grozny. It has palace, a few cottages, a park, a football field, a mosque with the replica of Kaaba, replicas of traditional Chechen stone towers, etc. It is a real royal residence 

Meanwhile Chechen officials are prohibited to display wealth. Near the ministries you can see cheap Russian-produced cars. Not because officials are poor, but because they're not allowed to demonstrate wealth. The most luxurious car allowed to his closest aides is Toyota Camry 

So Dagestan is a somewhat anarchocapitalist oligarchy, while Chechnya is an absolute monarchy with the extreme concentration of power in a hands of one man. One could assume - 'in the hands of one clan'. Not true at all 

That's an important point. One could assume that in such a tribalist society we will have a dominance of a certain clan with the kinship outweighing all other factors. But that's not the case. Ruling group in Chechnya consists of people who abandoned all their kinship allegiances