Chechnya

[kalu]

Simple question, does anyone here know of any good sources for reading about Chechnya, both the recent conflict and wider historical review? I'm obviously interested in the national liberation aspect, but I know very little about the conflict. It was big on the scene (US news) during the '90s, but I've not heard anything since.

[makesi]

What are you looking for? General historical overviews, leftwing analyses?

Читаете на русском? Там в русских источниках намного легче найти другие взгляди на обстановку, историю.

If not, Tony Wood from New Left Review has a couple of pieces, Georgi Derluguian has a pretty good book (Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus) that covers the area in general but has a lot of great insights and analysis of Chechnya in particular, too.

Contact me privately if you are looking for articles on certain subjects, e.g. the course of the military conflict, Islam, etc.

The Derluguian book (and he has a decent article published in NLR called "Che Guevaras in Turbans") is quite good.

[khad]

If not, Tony Wood from New Left Review
Tony Wood is a pretentious liberal douche. His stuff is also out of date, considering the dramatic political realignments that have occurred after the Dagestan invasion and the Second Chechen conflict.

[makesi]

Tony Wood is a pretentious liberal douche. His stuff is also out of date, considering the dramatic political realignments that have occurred after the Dagestan invasion and the Second Chechen conflict.

The original poster should keep this in mind because Khad's comment sounds like a nail being hit on the head.

Derluguian is better........He's far from perfect, with his obvious ability to associate with academics (just recently discovered that he buddied up with Anatol Lieven--in the 90s at least) who deserve to be, well, re-educated and his influence by world-systems theorists, but he's still better.

Actually, on second thought, Wood may be close to worthless. I've only read his NLR essay on Chechnya, which came out before his NLR book on Chechnya and his thoughts (and sources) were quite unoriginal.

It's fairly hard to find any leftwing analyses of Russia today in general, much less of a smaller topic like Chechnya.
If you read Russian, however, there are more materials available.

[kalu]

Well thank you both. Makesi, I'll look into the Derluguian book first. Unfortunately I don't read Russian, but I'd at the very least like to get a superficial overview of the topic before digging deeper. I will contact you if anything in particular piques my interest, thanks!