Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the entanglement of state and morality in the transient counter-terrorist zone of Chechnya, tracing the ways violence impinges on moral worlds in a contestation and affirmation of power whereby genealogies of Russian state praxis blend with transforming local ideas and habits.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed paper focuses on the entanglement of state, violence and morality in the transient counter-terrorist zone of Chechnya. It attempts to trace the ways violence impinges on moral worlds in a process of a violent contestation and affirmation of (state) power whereby the ideological and bureaucratic genealogies and praxis of the Russian state blend with the transforming local ideas and habits, including Islamic discourses and practices. The argument is that it is in people's capacity as state agents, engaging in 'normalised'/ legalised corruption, violence and terror, that moral ideals and related social norms are most often ignored or overturned. These processes amount to a complex dialectic of moral destruction and a simultaneous collective and subjective urge for a moral revival.