1
For one of the most authoritative and sophisticated expressions of this view, see Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, “Occidentalism,” New York Review of Books, January 17, 2002, 4-7.
2
A deep and fairly readable analysis of Central European democratic transformation, including its many paradoxes and ironies, is provided by Gil Eyal, Ivan Szelényi, and Eleanor Townsley, Making Capitalism without Capitalists: The New Ruling Elites of Eastern Europe (London: Verso, 1998). To get a better and more sobering sense of what was actually achieved even by the most successful countries of the former Soviet bloc, add to your reading list the excellent article by Lawrence King, “Making Markets: A Comparative Study of Postcommunist Managerial Strategies in Central Europe,” Theory and Society 30 (2001): 493-538.
3
Here my discussion of how similar revolutionary processes led to divergent outcomes follows the theorizing of Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
4
See Michael Urban with Vyacheslav Igrunov and Sergei Mitrokhin, The Rebirth of Politics in Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
5
See Chrystia Freeland, Sale of the Century (New York: Crown Business, 2000); David Hoffman, The Oligarchs (New York: Public Affairs, 2002); and Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).
6
Two books are particularly useful to understand the character of Russia’s privatization: Steven Solnick, Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); and David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).
7
Interview with Alexander Korzhakov, Argumenty i fakty, no. 34, August 1996.
8
See Lilia F. Shevtsova, Yeltsin’ s Russia (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999).
9
The best-researched journalistic account of the origins and the course of the first Chechen war is Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
10
See Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earle, The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State, 2d ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
11
See the detailed and penetrating study of Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’ s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500--1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
12
The best account of this war in English remains John Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (London, 1908). Also see Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar (London: F. Cass, 1994).
13
For the ultimate analysis of the Soviet nationality policies, see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
14
See Valeri Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997).
15
The most updated, sober, and thorough analysis of the two Chechen wars from the perspectives of politics, law, and international ethics is Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2002).
16
Komsomolskaia pravda, January 24, 1997.
17
See Gall and de Waal, Chechnya, or Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: The Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
18
The dean told me that when he asked Maskhadov to provide a budget to support the students with some sort of stipends, Maskhadov sadly joked that he could rather make him a brigadier general so that he would get some respect from the veteran-students.
19
This episode is analyzed in detail in Georgi Derluguian, “Che Guevaras in Turbans,” New Left Review, I/237, September-October 1999, 3-27.
20
Shamil Basayev (1965- ): A former unskilled worker who became famous in 1991 with the hijacking of a Russian plane in Turkey. A comrade in arms of President Dzhokhar Dudayev. A field commander of the resistance army of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, a brigadier general, a terrorist, an organizer of kidnappings. Trained in the special camps of the Main Intelligence Department of the Russian Federation General Staff. Participated in the Georgian-Abkhazian War (1992-1993) as a mercenary for the Abkhazians, who were helped by the Kremlin. In 1995, he and his militants organized a bloody raid on Budennovsk (in the Stavropol district), with the seizure of personnel and patients from the district hospital and maternity hospital as hostages.
21
Special operations conducted by Russian subdivisions in Chechen territory to check passports and hunt bandits. However, the Russian forces have departed considerably from the initial goals and tasks of the purge, and the term has become a symbol for murder, kidnapping, and marauding.
22
A Muslim religious sect that has existed in what is now Saudi Arabia since the eighteenth century. Wahhabi emissaries appeared in the Russian North Caucasus in the period between the first and second Chechen wars. They promised the people that the Islam they were preaching was the pure one, unlike the traditional local Islam. The Wahhabis were especially active in Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Chechnya. The term “Wahhabis” means something a little different in Russia today: terrorists. Most of the Chechen population thinks very badly of the “Wahhabis” or “bearded ones,” as they’re called here. They blame these newcomers for drawing Chechnya into the second, bloody war.
23
An Islamic war against infidels. Originally, the term meant “struggle with unbelief within one’s own soul.” But in Chechnya it is used to mean war to the death against Russia.
24
Aslan Maskhadov: The second president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (elected in 1997). Commander of the resistance forces in the first Chechen war; continues to lead the resistance forces. A brigadier general and a former colonel of the Soviet army (an artilleryman).
25
Ruslan Gelayev: A former tractor driver. A field commander of the resistance army of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. A brigadier general, and later commander of the Chechen Special Task Detachment. He is famous for entering his native village of Komsomolskoe of the Urus-Martan district, which fated it to destruction, while retreating from Grozny with his units in winter 2000 on his way to the mountains. The storming of Komsomolskoe was the second most brutal operation of the second Chechen war, after the attack on Grozny of winter 1999-2000. More than a thousand Chechens were killed. Gelayev himself left the village secretly, and now lives in Georgia.
26
Omar ibn al-Khattab: Field Commander of the Chechen resistance forces. A mercenary, born in Saudi Arabia, who fought in Afghanistan. One of the bloodiest figures of the second Chechen war. In March 2002, his comrades reported his death in the Chechen mountains. He was buried there.
27
Dzhokhar Dudayev (1944-1996): The first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (1992-1996), killed by a self-guiding missile in April 1996, during a phone conversation using a satellite communication system. An officer of the Soviet army, a pilot who took part in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A major-general (his last rank), and a commander of the Division of Strategic Bombers of the USSR air force. He ended his military career in March 1991 in order to head the Chechen national liberation movement.
28
The Khasavyurt peace treaty (1996) between Russia and Chechnya is considered the endpoint of the first Chechen war. Khasavyurt is the little village in Dagestan where the treaty was signed.
29
Representatives of Federal troop units and military departments. The term is used both by them and by civilians. In Chechnya, the term is synonymous with “Russians.”
30
Army jargon for a corpse. “We have a Cargo 200” means that there are dead people.
31
An artillery rocket launcher with high striking capacity. It was actively used during the second Chechen war. Its fire was commonly called “hail.”
32
The Federal Security Service (FSS): a new name for the KGB in democratic times; a symbol of the repressiveness of the Soviet regime. Putin was the head of the FSS in the period between the first and second Chechen wars, when banditry and kidnapping were most frequent in Chechnya, and when camps for terrorist training were functioning in its territory.
33
Part of the purge operation, a place for illegal detainment of people. The detained are brought to a “filtration point” (the Feds usually organize them around half-destroyed, abandoned buildings at the outskirts of the purged villages). A filtration takes place there (“passing through a filter,” in military terms), in which people who have been detained are subjected to interrogation, torture, and humiliation with the aim of getting information about the whereabouts of militants. Filtration points are essentially mobile concentration camps during the second Chechen war.
34
Appointed under military pressure by Putin in July 2000. One of the bloodiest figures of modern Chechnya. A former mufti (elected religious leader) of Chechnya and one of the organizers and inspirations of the gazavat (religious war with the infidels) against Russia during the first Chechen war. Was Dudayev and Maskhadov’s closest comrade in arms; he later betrayed them.
35
Chairman of the government of the Chechen Republic, appointed by Putin in 2001. Has a reputation as a tough manager and leader. His personal achievement is the basic normalization of the lives of people living in Chechnya under conditions of war and economic ruin.
36
A town in what is now Belarus that was burned with its inhabitants by Nazi occupation forces in 1943. A memorial to all the towns in Belarus that were similarly destroyed now stands at the site. Trans.
37
Sergei Shoigu: The permanent minister of the Ministry for Emergency Situations since its founding in 1991. A protégé of Yeltsin, he is one of the most influential political figures under Putin. Shoigu is the founding father of the hastily assembled Unity Party (now renamed), which brought Putin to power.
38
Police Special Task Force, military detachments of the Russian Ministry of the Interior. Participated actively in both Chechen wars.
39
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin: a nineteenth-century Russian novelist and satirist. Trans.
40
Grigory Yavlinsky: Russian politician whose Apple Party advocates granting Chechnya full independence if the people choose that in a referendum; as an economic adviser to Gorbachev he called for a market economy. Trans.
41
The clown, a stock character in commedia dell’arte. Also the main character in Carlo Goldoni’s play The Servant of Two Masters or, as it was also called, Truffaldino from Bergamo. Trans.
42
One of the regional subdivisions of the Russian Ministry of the Interior. The task of these subdivisions is to investigate circumstances of kidnappings and to search for victims. They were active in Chechen territory not just in the first and second wars, but also between the wars, cooperating with field commanders and leaders of terrorist detachments.
43
Subdivisions of the Russian Ministry of the Interior. Their ostensible main task is to free hostages. They have taken part in both Chechen wars, along with regular army units.
44
Currently a deputy of the Russian Federation State Duma (the lower house of Parliament) from Chechnya. Elected under military pressure in August 2000. Retired major general of the Ministry of the Interior, scholar and author of books on the mafia and corruption in Russia. He was chairman of the Committee for Legal Questions, Law and Order, and Crime Fighting of the Russian Federation Supreme Council at the beginning of the first Chechen war (1994).
45
In a 1999 press conference on the problem of Chechen militants, Putin announced that “we will flush the bandits down the toilet.” He used the word mochit, which literally means “to make wet,” but is also criminal jargon for “to kill.” Trans.
46
A general name for the Chechens and Ingush, who are ethnically very close. “Vainakh” means “our people.”
47
The official name of Chechnya is “The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.” “Ichkeria” was added in 1994 by the decree of then-president Dzhokhar Dudayev. Trans.
48
The most treacherous person in Dudayev and Maskhadov’s governments. Responsible for the Ichkerian ideology. Was the Chechen minister of information. A liar and political manipulator. Fled from Chechnya when the second Chechen war started; now lives in Qatar and runs the pro-Basayev, anti-Maskhadov Web site Caucasus.
49
Barayev was allegedly responsible for numerous kidnappings and murders, including the decapitation of four Western telecom engineers in 1998. Trans.
50
Lieutenant William Calley led the platoon that killed between one hundred and three hundred people in the Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968. Calley was sentenced to life at hard labor in 1971. His sentence was reduced first to twenty years, then to ten. He was released on bond in 1974 and paroled in 1975, after having been imprisoned for only three and a half years. Trans.
51
A zindan is traditionally a prison in Persia or nearby countries; the word now refers to a hole in the ground where prisoners are kept as part of Chechen antiterrorist operations. Trans.
52
Vakha Arsanov: The vice premier of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria during the time of Maskhadov (1997-1999).
53
The year of Stalin’s death. Trans.
54
In Kaspiisk, Dagestan, forty-two people were killed in an explosion at the 2002 Victory Day (May 9) parade. Trans.
55
Salman Raduev was a Chechen field commander from the Gudermes region who was famed for his exploits against Russian troops in the first Chechen war. He died in 2002 while serving a life sentence in prison. Trans.
56
A former Deputy Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Boris Berezovsky is in voluntary exile in London, where he critiques Putin’s policies, including the Chechen war. Trans.
57
A member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a major Soviet economist. The only Chechen who held the post of chairman of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR (under Yeltsin). An organizer of the anti-Yeltsin putsch of October 1993. Later given amnesty. Influential in Chechnya as a pro-Russian figure. Moved closer to Maskhadov beginning in 2001; now promulgates the idea of Chechen independence as the only means of survival for its people.
58
The Russian musical playing at a Moscow theater that was taken over by Chechen rebels on October 23, 2002. Taking the staff, actors, and audience hostage, the Chechens demanded an end to war in their country. Many of the rebels and the hostages were killed when Russian troops stormed the theater wielding guns and poison gas on October 26. Trans.
59
The Russian word in the original refers to the wake that is held forty days after a death in Russian Orthodox tradition. Trans.