Abstract This thesis will examine Vladimir Putin's controversial political decisions regarding the Second Chechen War justifying the conflict both inside and outside of Russia. It opens with Putin identifying with the United States after the terrorist activities of September 11, 2001 and how he used the American War on Terror to explain his own decisions regarding the Caucasus. For further understanding the paper looks at the history of Russian-Chechen relations to show how the centuries of hostility and mistrust culminated in two Chechen Wars within a ten year time period (1994-2004). It will also study the Russian view, held by Putin, which Chechnya was not declaring independence but was attempting to secede from the Russian Federation. It concludes with a look at Putin's solution to the conflict, the Chechnization of the Second Chechen War, where the Russian military withdrew from the region to be replaced by Putin's handpicked regime, the Kadyrovs.

This thesis is about terrorism metaphorically conceptualised as drama, theatre, spectacle and performance. It focuses on terrorism as a process of communication aimed at manipulating political attitude and behaviour. Even though it is terrorist actors who usually initiate that communication, various audiences play an important part in it, too. Not only do they receive and interpret the terrorist message, but they also have an impact on the content of that message and how it is transmitted. What attests to an important role of audience in terrorism is that in order for terrorism to work, those watching – the audience – need to change their behaviour to suit the political goals of terrorists. Arguably, if it were not for the people who alter their political behaviour as a result of having been terrorized, terrorism would not work, not to mention succeed. Another reason why there can be no terrorism without an audience is because the necessary presence of an audience is exactly what differentiates terrorism from other forms of political violence, such as war, secret killings or torture. While, at least for the time being, terrorism research remains “actor-focused” (Hülsse and Spencer, 2008), there is clearly a need to make it more “audience-focused”, to reflect the importance of the audience in terrorism, as highlighted above. This thesis examines the extent to which this can be achieved using the metaphors of drama, theatre, spectacle and performance. By applying the four dramaturgical metaphors to the terrorist attacks in Budyonnovsk, Dubrovka and Beslan, it investigates the potential of the metaphors to enhance the understanding of the dynamics between terrorism and counter-terrorism as well as the interplay between their respective actors and audiences.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the phenomenon of female suicide terrorism in Chechnya, particularly with the focus on motivation of individual terrorists and organizations. Besides these two levels of analysis, it looks for facilitating and necessary conditions in the specific socio-political environment of Chechnya.