The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union?Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin improvised a system of asymmetric federalism to help maintain its successor state, the Russian Federation. However, when sparks of independence flared up in Chechnya, Yeltsin and, later, Vladimir Putin chose military action to deal with a brushfire that they feared would spread to other regions and eventually destroy the federation. Matthew Evangelista examines the causes of the Chechen Wars of