ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 6 ( 2017/2 ) |
“CHECHNYA: LIFE IN A WAR-TORN SOCIETY”, By Ayse Dietrich*, University of California Press, California. Written by Valery Tishkov, Year of Publishing: 2004. Subject Area: History of Chechnya and Russia. Book Type: History. Total Number of Pages: 284. ISBN: 0 520 23888 5, $34.95, Paperback.
The book includes a foreword by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, a
Preface, fourteen chapters, Notes, Main Characters, Informants and
Interviewers, Select Bibliography and Index.
As Mikhail S. Gorbachev asserts in the Foreword, “The war
in Chechnya was a difficult trial for the new Russian state and for all its
citizens, especially the Chechen people; and the desire to enjoy democratization
after the collapse of the Soviet Union, have been misused by the leaders to create
nationalist hysteria and anti-Russian feeling; and the thirst for power of some
Russian national leaders and the cruelty of Russia’s armed forces are the main
guilty parties in this war.” In addition to his brief historical view of the
Chechens and the war, he talks about the value of the book for offering a new
perspective on the war in Chechnya and Chechen society. He indicates that the
importance of this book comes from its firsthand accounts obtained by the
author from many Chechens in different areas; from actual fighters and people
who stayed out of the fighting, supporters of Dudayev and his opponents.
As
mentioned in the Preface, the author Valery Tishkov’s main goal in writing this
book was to present the real voices of various participants in this tragedy and
allow them to give their personal views on the events they had witnessed.
In the
first Chapter, “Ethnography and Theory” the
author, who was a delegate in 1992 under Boris Yeltsin and participated in
talks with the Chechens in December 1994, begins by claiming that previous writers
who have dealt with the issue of the Chechen war remain outsiders since they
are not the participants: “the war is not their war” and “they are on the front
lines, but not in the war”. He correctly asserts that as outsiders they manipulate
the conflict for their own purposes. The author uses the methods of the
delegated interview for his book; and asks questions such as: “Where were you
during the war, what were you doing at the time, and how did
you earn living?; what happened to your family?; what did you think of the
rulers and their aims?; what has changed in Chechnya, and what can be expected
in the future?”. The author’s analysis is based on the evidence of fifty-four
people: fifty of them Chechens, one Ingush, one Buryat, and two ethnic
Russians. Their professions varied, from statesman to housewife, and the geographical
span was quite wide.
The
author mentions that there were limiting factors for this research; among them
were that there were few sociocultural anthropologists who had studied armed
conflict, particularly in the former USSR; there was a serious lack of reliable
ethnographic data; and that storytelling, or ethnography, is an important
aspect of information-gathering which is often dismissed by analysts. In
addition, he correctly points out that many studies primarily highlight
cultural differences, specifically the differences in religion, and present the
conflict as a struggle of Orthodox Christian Russians against Muslim. Finally,
he claims that his analysis indicates that
the Chechen people, or Chechen society as a collective body, no longer exist as
an agent or locus of social action.
Regarding
the issue of Chechens and modernization, the various theories of modernization are
derived from the common epistemology of a society’s physical and intellectual
progress. The author claims that the Chechen situation reflects de-modernization,
since change in Chechnya rushes forward too swiftly for society to deal with
violently imposed dynamics that resulted in social disintegration. The most
prominent characteristic of de-modernization are a mental world dominated by
simplified and limited versions of events, past and present, and individual decisions
made under the pressure of limited information about available choices and
acute time pressure. Another important characteristic of de-modernization is the
flight of those (intellectuals, professionals etc.) capable of implementing the
agenda of modern life through society’s key institutional structures.
Another
feature of Chechen society in conflict is the tendency to turn to the abused
past for arguments that can be applied to the present. The arguments of the
Chechen militants were based on a dramatic representation of the past - the 19th
century Caucasian war and the trauma of deportation under Stalin. The search
for a lost ideal (which never existed) is still the driving force of
intellectual debate in Chechnya. Chechen society also borrowed foreign models,
before, during, and after the war, and the borrowing of ideas that are at odds
with long-adopted norms and values may also be considered a symptom of de-modernization.
Yet another characteristic of de-modernization is apathy, together with the
disregard for human life and common decency that readily develops from it.
Despair becomes the dominant mood in Chechnya.
In the
second chapter, “Indigenization,
Deportation, and Return”, the author introduces the
historical background of the Chechens and the 1944 deportation which changed
the social and demographic structure of Chechnya. He talks about his
methodological approach to the historical and ethnic factors to understanding
the conflicts in the region, but claims that a historical explanation is not an
objective of his study, and that history cannot serve as a basis of controversy
for today’s political events, rather these conflicts have contemporary actors
who grapple with contemporary problems. In order to understand why a historical
explanation should not be used to explain the current crises, he provides examples
from scholars such as Shternberg, Munchayev and Furman, who wrote academic
articles about Chechen culture and the community. He criticizes their
perspective which he claims often carries an underlying political message that
“the terrible external threat of Russian conquest” (the author quotes Furman) should
be condemned, that the course of Chechen history was diverted, and that these
“historical injustices” should be corrected.
The
author considers the period of Stalin’s deportation of the Chechens as the beginning of the history of
the modern generation of Chechens and the
Chechen conflict. The author claims that after the 1917 Revolution, many
Chechens had supported the Bolsheviks; it was only during the recent conflict
that “new genealogies” were “discovered” that traced families back to Chechen abreks
(Caucasian Robin Hoods) who had resisted tsarist and Soviet authorities in the
region, raiding and plundering. If Chechens “assisted in the victory of the
Bolsheviks,” they had been “trapped” into doing so[1].The
author thinks that this is a very good example to show the “climate of de-modernization
in which abuse of history gives scope to irrational perceptions of
contemporaneity and
self-destructive political projects”.
The
author points out that there are two Chechen attitudes toward Stalin’s
deportation: before 1980s when people kept quiet, it was as if the tragedy was
some sort of collective stigma for which they had to pay, an attitude common
among many deported peoples. After the liberalization of the late 1980s the
deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people became the subject of many
dramatic, literary, and poetic narratives, and was considered a genocide. In this chapter, the author also relates the
memories of many people’s painful journeys and daily experiences of the
deportation and their search for answers to the deportation.
In
chapter three, “Contradictory
Modernization”, the author begins by discussing the difficulty of
finding printed sources to write about the Chechens after their return from
deportation in 1957 and after the Soviets passed a decree on repatriation of
the Chechens. This new chapter in their history began with difficulties in
terms of social relations, and the resettlement of Chechens in new areas, since
their old territories were occupied by other people.
Also in
this chapter the author also talks about political status in Chechnya being
linked to belonging to the republican committee of the Communist Party and to
Moscow in the 1970s and 80s. This same period saw the development of the nepotism
and corruption which would become the norm for the central and periphery elites
in Chechnya; conflicts and rivalry for power increased among the Chechen elite.
Next,
the author goes on to describe the contradictions of modernization in Chechen
society. In relation to economic development in Chechnya, he points out that
companies preferred not to employ Chechens, resulting in unemployment. The
author indicates that some of these unemployed young Chechens left Chechnya for
other regions; others joined criminal gangs. Later these two groups became the
main manpower pool for the armed struggle. In addition, the local justice
system was biased against ethnic Chechens; taken together, these circumstances help
explain the high level of crime among Chechens when compared to other ethnic groups
in the Russian Federation.
The
author asserts that after their return from exile, the Chechens, along with the
Ingush, remained the object of special attention by local party organs, as well
as by the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) of the Soviet Union,
which continued to consider them insufficiently “loyal” to the regime and prone
to “nationalistic prejudices.”
The
author claims that the actual social and psychological reasons for “Chechen
criminality” or “disloyalty” were never investigated, and it would be
misleading to judge the general situation in the republic and the social
behavior of the Chechens solely on the basis of KGB and MVD documents. He
describes the actual situation for the returnees where much of the land they
formerly held was inaccessible. For example, despite the fact that the
government implemented a number of measures to help the returnees financially
and provided supplies for agricultural needs, the Akkintsy Chechens who
returned to Dagestan could not return to their native villages because these
lands had been settled by the Laks.
The
author also asserts that the information he received from a peacekeeping
mission working in the Interior Department in the North Caucasus does not
support KGB reports on the high level of “Chechen criminality” and “Chechen
clashes with Russians”.
Further
on in the chapter the author provides information about education and the new
generation based on the article published in The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1978). He claims that the corruption
of the late Brezhnev period; disgust with the bureaucratic system (nomenklatura); the
lack of educational opportunities, and the low living standards created
dissatisfaction among the Chechens, but they welcomed the changes introduced by
Gorbachev during glasnost and democratization period.
At the
end of this chapter the author briefly discusses historiography and language. During
the democratization period, in order to raise the status of the Chechen
language, intellectuals brought up the question of introducing the Chechen
language in the city schools’ curriculum. In addition to language, Chechen
intellectuals rejected the existing depictions of their past and began to openly
debate the Soviet historiography which claimed that the Chechen people and
their territories had voluntarily joined Russia.
In the
chapter four, “Chechen Images”,
the author discusses the effects of the war in the emergence of Chechen
identity, and states that the conflict produced contemporary perceptions of the
Chechens. He states that there are two rival trends concerning Chechen
identity. In order to widen its geographic span and deepen its cultural legacy
one trend includes as many historic communities as possible in the Chechen
entity. The other focuses on narrower group boundaries based on locality and
“clan” ties. The author claims that religion was a minor factor in the formation
of a new Chechen identity; the word “Chechen” became a political identification,
a metaphoric category linked to the tragic past of the “revolution”. The
Chechen war created a new group identity based on both historic and invented
precedents. In this chapter, the author also talks about historical
discrimination in regard to the internal distinctions and contradictions among
the Chechens on the issue of who is more genuinely Chechen - the highlanders
who supported Dudayev, or the lowlanders who are considered by some to be less
cultured, illiterate people. He states that this issue is a general phenomenon
for those post-Soviet regions where ethnic Russians or other “non-natives” have
left local societies and this absence of “outsiders” has helped to precipitate
tensions within an indigenous group that is itself based on perceived small cultural
differences.
The
Chapter five, “The Road to War”, is devoted to the Chechen national revolution,
secession attempt and Moscow’s reaction to it. The author describes Dudayev’s
election as a leader during the second National Congress of the Chechen People
in 1991, and his declaration of Chechen independence from both the USSR and the Russian Soviet Federal
Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The events following this declaration, and
particularly Moscow’s inconsistent responses, many the product of political infighting
between Gorbachev and Yeltsin and the dissolution of the Soviet Union are
discussed. The author points out that this Yeltsin-Gorbachev rivalry made Moscow
unable to send troops into Chechnya, indirectly contributing to Chechen
separatism. Dudayev’s actions – his violation of the constitution, domination
of the political arena, dissolution of the parliament and declaration of his
direct presidential rule – also contributed to the crisis. Several political opponents
were killed opposition parties and newspapers were closed. This violence and
social disruption was responsible for an economic crisis, the mass exodus of qualified
Russian professionals in Chechnya, unemployment, the collapse of the health and
educational system, corruption and plundering.
Regarding
the solution to the Chechen crisis, the author claims that there were various means
available to solve the Chechen crisis without using armed force right up to
December 1994. He points out that in the time leading up to and throughout the
crisis, not a single top government official contacted President Dudayev directly
to hear his views and propose ways of resolving the crisis. In addition, a
political double standard was evident in how the problems were dealt with. The author, based on David Laitin’s observations, points out that
in the handling of the rebellion, Moscow lost sight of the critical distinction
between seeking to impose legality and undermining it. He claims that the
Russian authorities seriously subverted their own claim to legality when they
started to utilize the rebels’ tactics, not only against Chechen fighters, but
also against sympathizers and neutral civilians in Chechnya. In part and these mistakes
can be explained by the complexity of Russia’s internal situation, and by the lack
of experience on the part of Russia’s new politicians.
The sixth
chapter, “Dzhokhar, Hero and Devil”,
examines the self-proclaimed leader of a Chechnya in conflict, his media image;
his perceptions, his war experience, his charisma. It answers the questions of how
a new breed of national leaders emerged from liberalization, how the
post-Soviet populace perceived them, and why the masses followed such leaders. He
claims that in the Russian academic circle it is rarely admitted that a leader
creates a so-called “revolutionary movement” on his own. The author asserts
that Dudayev’s charisma came from his anti-Russian stance, his knowledge of the
military trade, his perception of war as his primary occupation and his treatment
of politics and government as a sort of semi-military game. After his death on
April 21, 1996 Russian authors took an uncritical attitude toward Dudayev, while
Chechen writers and propagandists canonized him, and poets praised his virtues.
The author also provides some excerpts from the interviews about Dudayev to
support his arguments.
To
conclude, the author states that the Chechen war was a highly personalized
conflict, and it was Gorbachev’s liberalization movement that opened the door
to “many new would-be architects of social space”. He states that Dudayev constructed
a closed subculture that developed its own language, code, and practices, with
minimal connection to the outside world in order to establish stability. The
author claims that it is precisely this irrational, closed subculture of a charismatic
leader in constant conflict with the dominant milieu, that
so effectively provokes the phenomenon of de-modernization.
In the
Chapter seven, “The Sons of War”,
the author, to write about those who were actively involved in the war, he had
to rely on informants from the ranks of Chechen fighters (boyeviki) and discusses
their exhibitionist behavior such as videotaping their performative violence.
The author met personally with the fighters and participants in anti-Dudayev
meetings who witnessed the Dudayev regime’s brutal assaults and killings, and
learned that the Chechens had committed violence against one another as well as
against non-Chechens. The author comments on the Chechen participants’ ability
to overcome their fear and master the techniques of guerrilla warfare, noting the
tenacity and effectiveness of the Chechen armed resistance. He asks how a small,
badly organized part of the Chechen male population emerged victorious in what
logically appeared to be a hopeless fight. Faith, fanaticism, tradition, and
romantic clichés are insufficient to explain the mass mobilization.
The
author continues by examining the apathy and internal division that emerged after
the war, in place of the expected enthusiasm and solidarity. He also points out
that the goals of the Chechen resistance leaders were significantly different
from the interests of the ordinary fighters. War meant more than “motherland
and freedom,” it meant protecting home and family, taking revenge for their
loss,; for some it produced a certain satisfaction in wreaking violence on
others, and/or a consuming pleasure in plundering. For many fighters it proved
impossible to escape the cycle of violence they found themselves in, and what followed
was chaos and de-modernization.
Chapter
eight, “The Culture of Hostage-Taking”,
deals with the lucrative business of holding hostages for ransom that developed
among Chechens during the First War. When the author was collecting information
on hostage-taking in Chechnya it was still an ongoing issue and “centuries-old”
tradition in Chechnya. His initial sources were reluctant to talk about the
practice because while the federals initiated the practice, the hostage-taking
industry is perpetuated by criminals, who also abduct Chechens. Reliable information
on this topic is difficult to obtain, since it is carefully guarded secret. To
illuminate the character of the inaccessibility of information and the fear the
informants have, he provides excerpts from his interviews. The author claims
that abductions in Chechnya increased after 1991 (in fall 1999, there were 851
people missing and the total income gained from abduction activity was $200
million) and none of his informants could recall any such cases before 1991.
The motive behind abducting Chechen citizens was usually ransom money. Besides monetary
gain, the abduction of high-ranking officials and foreigners is also linked to
political maneuvering. In addition, the author provides information about the
type of civilians who are kidnapped and their abductors.
Chapter
nine, “Violence in Secessionist
Warfare”, discusses the violence conducted in the Chechen war. The
author emphasizes that the Chechen war was never a conflict between two ethnic
groups and between two states, rather “it was a group-versus-state
conflict”. He accuses President Yeltsin in launching a military invasion into
the breakaway region without sufficient technical and logistical preparation, a
factor which immediately complicated matters substantially. He also wonders how
the Russian government set the moral and political tone for the Russian forces’
brutal conduct within their own country. He quotes Oleg Lobov’s (secretary of
the Security Council) comments about the war: “We need a small victorious war,
as in Haiti, to raise the president’s ratings” and states that this “small
victorious war” turned into an uncontrolled, large-scale war. He characterizes
the war as “de-modern phenomena” since accepted limitations on violence is abandoned
and society was driven into anarchy and chaos. He talks about the image of the
enemy, and states that his data show that atrocities blamed on “historically
rooted,” “ethnically coded” group animosities, frequently cited and said to be
“in their blood,” are often post-factual rationalizations based on superficial
observations. The chapter also discusses the disbelief felt by Chechens who
considered themselves Russian citizens and were unwilling to reject federal
authority when the Russian army marched into Chechnya. In addition, the author
examines the cruelty that characterized both sides’ actions; the federal
troops’ treatment of the civilian population; and the Chechens’ view of the
conflict as an obligation to protect their homes and families, as ghazavat (holy
war), preserving their women’s honor, or defense of the homeland. He looks at how
political leaders deceived the public with slogans and promises, intentionally
turning the populace into killers against their will in this civil war; and
clarifies the phenomenon of collective violence and its search for moral justifications
to gain legitimacy. The author states that to understand the violence and
conflict it is necessary to recognize the primary role of the specific social
situation in interpreting human behavior and institutions. The key point is an
examination of human responses to common existential problems under different
social conditions. Words can be a very important component of violence and can,
eventually, be transformed into bullets. Armed conflict in Chechnya started
with its legitimization through verbal expressions and the introduction of such
slogans as “national revolution” and “national self-determination,” as well as
charges of “nation-killing” and Russian “imperial domination.”
Chapter
ten, “The Impact on Family Life”,
is dedicated to the issue of the impact of terror on family life. The author at
the beginning discusses the characteristics of traditional Chechen families.
Then, he states that his ethnographic materials show that there has been more
involvement and active participation of women in collective violence since the
time of the “national revolution”, and were used as human shields in seizing
the Russian army arsenal in Chechnya. Women united and preserved families in
the prewar period, and brought Chechens into the violence after the
introduction of federal troops. The conflict in Chechnya also created “child
soldiers” out of teenagers who were given arms and trained in their use. Parents
were the most important factor, but were unable or unwilling to prevent their
children from becoming involved in the violence. The war was the outcome of
collective behavior, mob psychology, at a time when young people were escaping
routine life, stimulated by exciting appeals and unclear expectations. The
author states that the war in Chechnya also brought about a revival of the
Islamic way of life; and after gaining control of Chechnya in August 1996,
separatist leaders introduced Shari`a law; before the war, family life in
Chechnya had never been dominated by Shari`a law. To conclude, the author
states that the war destroyed many families, but they are struggling to reestablish
meaning and purpose in their lives.
In chapter
eleven, “Religion and the Chechen
Conflict”, the author discusses the spread of Islam in the North
Caucasus. He states that at the beginning of the 20th century, Islam played a
mobilizing and ideological role during local armed uprisings against tsarist
Russia and Bolshevik rule in the early Soviet period. The establishment of
Soviet power in Chechnya was accompanied by a bitter civil war, which took on a
quasi-religious character; the new communist rulers saw Islam as a harmful
“rudiment of the past,” and it was driven to the periphery of Chechen life. The
mosques and Muslim clergy were placed under state control, and their religious
and political activities were much reduced. During Stalin’s time, Islam as a
doctrine and institution was subject to brutal suppression. The young and
middle-aged elements of the population became atheists. Shari`a law and the
unwritten code of conduct of the adat were portrayed as reactionary.
Although religious worship declined under Soviet rule, many families maintained
their adherence to certain ritual aspects of Islam. However, the modern
generation of Chechens, those who were brought up under the Soviet system, tend
toward atheism or at least become nonbelievers. These “new Muslims” had little
to do with the spiritual practice of Islam, and joined as a political movement,
becoming a force that encouraged its corruption. The use of Islam served
pragmatic purposes for both the civil authorities and the clergy. In this
chapter, the author also discusses Wahhabism as a force competing with
traditional Sufi Islam, and its loss of influence after the first Chechen war, and
the fragmentation of Chechen society by the war and by foreign influences.
Chapter
twelve, “The Myth and Reality of the ‘Great
Victory’”, addresses issues of postwar Chechen society such as the
devastated infrastructure, economic collapse, the mass exodus from the
republic, the disintegration of civil institutions and increased criminal
activities. He examines why a new cycle of violence erupted, claiming that the
war in Chechnya did not truly end. Rather, it was revived daily in the
propaganda about the “great victory” that asserted Chechen superiority over the
rest of the world. Chechens had cultivated the image of an enemy (Russia and
the Russians), the resumption of fighting was encouraged by outsiders who
supported complete secession from the Russian Federation, and the Chechens’
struggle had garnered sympathy from the Western world. The channeling of humanitarian
and other aid to Chechen militants perpetuated the violence, and the illusion
of a “great victory” limited efforts at restoring public order after the war.
In addition, the violation of the Khasavyurt agreements to start a period of
restoration in Chechnya and further militarization also contributed to the
cycle of violence. Finally, the author claims that the world closed their eyes
to images of a functioning Chechnya; journalists and press photographers did
not produce pictures of schools in operation or of farmers working in the
fields; most Chechens were preoccupied with the hard work of restoring their
disrupted lives.
In chapter
thirteen, “An Ideology of Extremes”,
the author examines a number of topics, among them the outbreak of cultural and
political theorizing after August 1996, and the abundance of materials published
on Chechen history, origins and achievements that were used in political
mobilization. He also looks at the ideologies based on territorial expansionism
and cultural mythmaking that dominated Chechen intellectual life, the Chechens’
sense of superiority over other peoples in the Caucasus; the status of the Russian
language and the failure to revive the Chechen language; the expansionist idea
of liberating the Caucasus from Russian, and creating a single “Caucasian
Home,” or “Caucasian Confederation”. Finally, he discusses the creation of
Chechnya’s public discourse that focused on Islam for political and cultural
resistance, and the subsequent appearance of a new brand of post-Soviet
anti-Semitism under the influence of radical Islamism and a pro-Arab orientation.
In the
Chapter fourteen, “Chechnya as a Stage and a Role”, the author begins with his traumatic
experience in Moscow that made him to think that “the war is not confined to
remote fringes of the country” and the October 2002 incident at a Moscow
performance of the musical Nord-Ost that proved that not only Chechnya but also Russia can be seen as a war-torn
society today. He continues with his concluding observations about the
conflict, and states that he deliberately avoided excessive theorizing and
introduced a live version of the facts to explain the naked truth behind the Chechens’
social life, events and conditions they live in. He states that it is difficult
to hope that in the future, the people of Chechnya and Russia will agree on any
kind of common history of the conflict which would allow them to move beyond
that tragedy. He uses the words of Michael Ignatieff (1999) to support his
research and claims that “The truth that matters to people is not factual or
narrative truth but moral or interpretive truth”, and that it is important to
hear the versions of the common people who deeply involved in the conflict as either
fighters or victims. He also states that it cannot be expected that an outsider
can put forward an impartial, objective version of the conflict in Chechnya,
and states that the truth must be authored by those who have suffered its
consequences. He states that it is a serious mistake to ignore the Chechen
authors who described Russia as their own country, voicing strong disapproval
of the war and the people who were involved in the conflict, and, instead, emphasize
texts by foreign and Russian authors pushing their own versions of the Chechen
war. The author states that his collected work indicates that for the prewar (1990s)
generation of Chechens ethnic identity and their deportation issues were not a
central element of their identity. It was under Gorbachev-Yeltsin that the
reification of Chechenness arose under conditions of conflict and social
transformation, and the Chechen past came to be used to forge an image for
living Chechens and prescribe their present-day roles. The author censures
those who through superficial historical analyses and cultural essentialism
reduce an entire people to the level of a “pre-modern nation” with a unique martial
spirit and a society in crisis.
In the
Conclusion, the author states that “the
postwar reconstruction can only
be achieved through the renewal of empowering self-analysis, which is the primary condition for
reconstruction in the postwar era”. For the researchers, the conflict is
not yet over and, apparently, should not be over unless scripted by some
international news service, or when they say so, which amounts to the same thing.
For them, the “Chechen nation” is somewhere in the mountains and the ravines,
continuing the armed resistance, which includes terrorizing the Chechens
themselves. The fact that Russian courts have established that terrorists from
Chechnya participated in blowing up residential buildings in Moscow and other
cities is already old news that “experts on Chechnya” do not consider worthy of
analysis, because it does not correspond to the widely shared consensus,
constructed and imposed by academics and the media, as to what constitutes a
Chechen nation. It seems that the war will only come to an end when the doves
overpower the hawks, as difficult as that is to imagine, and not when either
the “Russian side” or the “Chechen side” overpowers the other.
The
author of the book is a very knowledgeable scholar in his field; and has
experience as a former chairman of the state committee of RSFSR on
nationalities and the multinational state. His research is based on firsthand
accounts obtained by him from different layers of Chechen society who witnessed
the bloody war and its consequences. As an outsider he never had the intent to
manipulate the informants with his questions. He avoided excessive theorizing,
and provided excerpts from his interviews (direct voices) to cover the events,
describe Chechen society and support his arguments. The author, in his book, makes
a skillful, convincing presentation of his arguments on the destructive methods
used by both sides, and shows how a violent conflict could have been avoided by
using preventative measures that acknowledged the primary role of the specific
social situation in the interpretation of human behavior and institutions, without
orchestrating an armed intervention to create more violence. Finally, the
author’s approach to examining and understanding the Chechen conflict could be
very productive in understanding other areas in the world that have suffered,
or continue to suffer from, continued conflict.
*Ayse Dietrich - Professor, Part-time, at Middle East Technical University, Department of History. Editor and the founder of the International Journal of Russian Studies. e-mail: editor@ijors.net, dayse@metu.edu.tr, dietrichayse@yahoo.com
© 2010, IJORS - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES