This Week's Suggested Book
from the Ashbrook Center
(Monday, November 16, 1998)
 | | Chechnya:
Thombstone of Russian Power
by Anatol Lieven |
Yale University Press
416 pages, January 1998
Hardcover, 35.00
ISBN: 0300073984
A percentage of the proceeds from your purchase of this book from Amazon.com will benefit the
Ashbrook Center.
The war between Russia and the Chechen forces, from December 1994 to August 1996, was a key moment in Russian and even world history, shedding a stark light on the end of Russia as a great military and imperial power. In this penetrating new study, Anatol Lieven sets Russia's humiliation at the hands of a highly motivated, yet tiny group of guerilla in a plausible framework for the first time.
The book offers both history and analysis in a riveting eyewitness account of the war itself and a sophisticated and multifaceted explanation of the Russian defeat. Highlighting the numerous ways in which Russian society and culture differ today from the simplistic stereotypes still common in much of Western analysis, Lieven explores the reasons for the current weakness of Russian nationalism both within the country and among the Russian diaspora.
In the final part of the book Lieven goes beyond all other accounts of the war to examine the Chechen tradition and the character of the Chechen nation. Providing the first in-depth anthropological portrait in English of the is extraordinary fighting people, he makes a vigorous, original and important contribution to debates on the origin of nationalism, the nature of national identity, and the destiny of the Russian empire.
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
-
- Part I: The War
- 1. A Personal Memoir of Grozny and the Chechen War
- 2. Russia and Chechnya, 1991-1994: The Origins of War
- 3. The Course of the Chechen War
-
- Part II: The Russian Defeat
- 4. The Masque of Democracy: Russia's Liberal Capitalist Revolution and the Collapse of State Power
- 5. `Who Would Be a Soldier If You Could Work in a Bank?': Social and Cultural Roots of the Russian Defeat
- 6. Failure of the Serbian Option, 1: The Collapse of the `Cossacks'
- 7. Failure of the Serbian Option, 2: The Weakness of the Russian Diasporas
- 8. `A Fish Rots from the Head': Military Roots of the Russian Defeat
-
- Part III: The Chechen Victory
- 9. The Two Hundred Years' War: The History and Context of the Russian-Chechen Conflict
- 10. `We are Free and Equal like Wolves': Social and Cultural Roots of the Chechen Victory
- 11. `The Prayers of Slaves Are Not Heard in Heaven': Chechnya and Islam, a Religious Nation or a National Religion
- Conclusion
|
