Russia's humiliation in the Chechen war forms the basis of a
nuanced argument about the end of Russian military and imperial
power. Lieven, a reporter on Eastern Europe for the Financial
Times, offers a compelling view of Russia's defeat in Chechnya
(based on his eyewitness account of the fighting), as well as a
revisionist interpretation of Russia's role as a global power. The
Chechen war, maintains Lieven, is a "key moment in Russian and
perhaps world history" because it has highlighted the collapse of
Russia's military might and its imperial power. Throughout his
study, Lieven interweaves specifics of the situation in Chechnya
(background on Grozny, Dudayev, and the course of the war itself)
with a broader look at Russian society (privatization, the new
capitalist elites, the Russian army, the nature of Russian
nationalism) and the historical roots of the Russian-Chechen
conflict. A final section discusses the striking nature of the
Chechen victory and raises questions about the military and larger
ramifications of clashes between organized armies and rebel
fighters. Of all of Lieven's challenging interpretations, the most
forceful is his suggestion that Russian society has fundamentally
changed, making it impossible to follow traditional Western
approaches that assume lasting continuities in Russian and Soviet
history. Another of Lieven's theses that deserves consideration is
that today's Russia should not be compared with earlier Russian or
Soviet periods, but with models of "liberal" states in Latin
America and southern Europe a century ago (both in terms of
national and economic development). While Lieven falls into
political science jargon in these types of discussion, the
comparative nature of his analysis enlivens them with thoughtful
contrasts. A serious contribution to understanding both the
implications of the Chechen war and the broader debate among
scholars on appropriate interpretations of Russia's role in the
post-Cold War period ahead of us. (Kirkus Reviews)
The war between Russia and the Chechen separatist 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. Anatol Lieven, a distinguished
writer and political commentator, was a correspondent for the
London Times in the former Soviet Union from 1990 to 1996 and was
commended for his coverage of the Chechen War by the British Press
Association. In this major new work of history and analysis, Lieven
sets Russia's humiliation at the hands of a tiny group of badly
organized guerrillas in a plausible framework for the first time.
He offers both a riveting eyewitness account of the war itself and
a sophisticated and multifaceted explanation for the Russian
defeat. Highlighting the numerous ways in which Russian society and
culture differ today from the simplistic stereotypes still current
in much of Western analysis, he 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
examines the Chechen tradition, providing the first in-depth
anthropological portrait in English of this extraordinary fighting
people. In his representation of the character of the Chechen
nation, Lieven contributes to the continuing debate between
-constructivist- and -primordialist- theories of the origins of
nationalism and examines the role of both historical experience and
religion in the formation of national identity.
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