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The Chechen Struggle: Independence Won and Lost
Told from the perspective of its former Foreign minister, this is a uniquely candid account of Chechnya's struggle for independence and its two wars against Russia which will revise our understanding of the conflict and explain how it continues. Features new insights, intimate portraits of key personalities and a foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
- GenresHistoryRussiaNonfiction
286 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 18, 2012
This book is extraordinary. It's a page turner, but we all know the sad ending, and it's all true. We in the West saved Kosovo, the world helped East Timor to independence, but we all failed Chechnya miserably.
Written by the former foreign minister of the democratically elected government of Chechnya. This is no dry geo-political analysis. It's the real thing, told by someone who lived it. Read this book. Seriously. Let's make it sell and piss of Putin.
Written by the former foreign minister of the democratically elected government of Chechnya. This is no dry geo-political analysis. It's the real thing, told by someone who lived it. Read this book. Seriously. Let's make it sell and piss of Putin.
March 11, 2011
Not the best writing technique, but one of the very few books on Chechen struggle written by an insider to the situation.
October 5, 2024
In 1944, Stalin deported almost the whole Chechen nation, more than 500,000 persons, to Central Asia, while falsely accusing it of collaboration with the invading Nazis. This depor-tation, recognized by the European parliament as genocide, resulted in the deaths of a third of the Chechen population during their transportation and the first year of their resettlement.
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Putin declared that the Chechens were “international terrorists” backed by outside inter-ests. Moscow would go all out to crush them. His famous words were, “We will pursue the terrorists everywhere. In the air-port . . . in the airport . . . it means, and you will excuse me, if we catch them in the toilet, we will drown them in the shithouse!
That’s it! The matter is closed.” Putin’s admirers cheered.
---------
The tragedy of Chechnya stands as a failure of the U.S. policy of indifference and neglect. Throughout this conflict, under suc-cessive Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States essentially stood aside, asserting that the Chechen problem was a Russian internal matter. At one point the Clinton White House even compared the conflict to the U.S. civil war and President Lincoln’s determination to preserve the Union. U.S.
*******
And, let us hope, it will inspire a future generation of Chechens and of Russians to fashion an alternative and a better tomorrow. Zbigniew
------------
On our side there were only 1,000 to 1,500 experienced fighters;
the rest were inexperienced, poorly armed, poorly equipped, and totally uncoordinated. Yet we held up the advance for a week, and held on to parts of Grozny for seven weeks.
*****
He had come up to the sentry and asked him, “Young man, how many tanks did you blow up?” The sentry very proudly answered, “One tank.” Dudayev patted him gently on the cheek, “Oh you have barely fought at all!” You could see tears well up in the young man’s eyes, but Dudayev was already on to the next man, who happened to be Maskhadov’s adjutant.
----------
How are things?” he asked. “Good,” I responded. “No!” he corrected me, “Very good!” I understood I had to follow his example. “Very good!” I blurted. I remember Dudayev, who knew some Spanish, singing “Bessame Mucho” (“Kiss Me a Lot”) over the telephone to an American professor whom he occa-sionally consulted. When she voiced fears about explosions that could she heard in the background, he dismissed her concerns and started singing that Mexican love song. This was Dudayev’s style of interacting with people: to distract them from the grav-ity of a situation with any spontaneous, jovial gesture. He did not like it when people complained, and he always projected confidence.
--------
“Za bazar ya otvechayu,” was how Berezovsky responded.
The phrase is jargon for “I’m responsible for my words.”
---------------------
The options for the population are the emirate, which offers them nothing but war, and the Ichekerian national idea, which is now located in London. Everyone needs political space, you can’t have war for-ever and against all—even the emirate will find that it needs the political space; the men with weapons in hand also want to see a political success. The fighters want something more tangible than the feeling of Islamic solidarity, and they will need the experience of those who are in the West.
The dream of an independent Chechen state has merely been deferred.
------------
---
Putin declared that the Chechens were “international terrorists” backed by outside inter-ests. Moscow would go all out to crush them. His famous words were, “We will pursue the terrorists everywhere. In the air-port . . . in the airport . . . it means, and you will excuse me, if we catch them in the toilet, we will drown them in the shithouse!
That’s it! The matter is closed.” Putin’s admirers cheered.
---------
The tragedy of Chechnya stands as a failure of the U.S. policy of indifference and neglect. Throughout this conflict, under suc-cessive Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States essentially stood aside, asserting that the Chechen problem was a Russian internal matter. At one point the Clinton White House even compared the conflict to the U.S. civil war and President Lincoln’s determination to preserve the Union. U.S.
*******
And, let us hope, it will inspire a future generation of Chechens and of Russians to fashion an alternative and a better tomorrow. Zbigniew
------------
On our side there were only 1,000 to 1,500 experienced fighters;
the rest were inexperienced, poorly armed, poorly equipped, and totally uncoordinated. Yet we held up the advance for a week, and held on to parts of Grozny for seven weeks.
*****
He had come up to the sentry and asked him, “Young man, how many tanks did you blow up?” The sentry very proudly answered, “One tank.” Dudayev patted him gently on the cheek, “Oh you have barely fought at all!” You could see tears well up in the young man’s eyes, but Dudayev was already on to the next man, who happened to be Maskhadov’s adjutant.
----------
How are things?” he asked. “Good,” I responded. “No!” he corrected me, “Very good!” I understood I had to follow his example. “Very good!” I blurted. I remember Dudayev, who knew some Spanish, singing “Bessame Mucho” (“Kiss Me a Lot”) over the telephone to an American professor whom he occa-sionally consulted. When she voiced fears about explosions that could she heard in the background, he dismissed her concerns and started singing that Mexican love song. This was Dudayev’s style of interacting with people: to distract them from the grav-ity of a situation with any spontaneous, jovial gesture. He did not like it when people complained, and he always projected confidence.
--------
“Za bazar ya otvechayu,” was how Berezovsky responded.
The phrase is jargon for “I’m responsible for my words.”
---------------------
The options for the population are the emirate, which offers them nothing but war, and the Ichekerian national idea, which is now located in London. Everyone needs political space, you can’t have war for-ever and against all—even the emirate will find that it needs the political space; the men with weapons in hand also want to see a political success. The fighters want something more tangible than the feeling of Islamic solidarity, and they will need the experience of those who are in the West.
The dream of an independent Chechen state has merely been deferred.
------------
February 7, 2025
For me the best inside report about the Chechen wars. The author replies to many controversial events like of these years. Incredibly authentic and honest
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews