I was reading this with interest until I reached this point, at which I decided that Orhan Pamuk is an ignorant jackass:
"The intolerance shown by the Russian state toward the Chechens and other minorities and civil-rights groups,"
Considering that independent Chechnya was an Islamist gangster state (literally, with open mafiosi in the government) that kidnapped thousands of Russian citizens and sold them in open slave markets in Urus-Martin and Grozny, and that the Russian state only intervened when "the Chechens" attacked Russia (twice), it is more accurate to say that the Russian state showed criminal _tolerance_ toward "the Chechens."
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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