Based on interviews with Chechen leaders and former secret service officials in the Ethnic Division, this article examines the emergence of the Chechen business class in Moscow in the 1980s, the unofficial sponsorship it got from the Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti or Federal Security Service (FSB), and its eventual elimination. This article will look at internal policy papers of the FSB, seeking to show that the niche occupied by the Chechens in Moscow as traders suited the authorities, but later became a barrier to the emergence of an indigenous Russian business class. Finally, this article will examine the interaction between the thwarted social ambitions of Moscow's Chechens, and the emerging national movement, by examining different expressions of Chechen identity.