The Long Arm Of The Dead: Traumas And Conflicts In The Caucasus

Anyone who has read about, or seen on TV, the destruction of Grozny in Chechnya during the fall and winter of 1994-5 comes away with at least three impressions. One is that Russia attacked the Chechen capital without serious provocation, forcing the Chechen rebels to fight for the freedom of their territory and people. Another is that the conflict is the outcome of many local ethnic rivalries that are somehow related to rejection of Russia's renewed imperialism in areas of the former Soviet Union. In both these scenarios, the American reader may imag­ine similarities to the struggle of the Baltic states against the Soviets, or to the re­volt of the American colonies against the British