American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus by Carlotta Gall; Thomas de Waal; Chechnya: Tombstoneof Russian Power by Anatol Lieven; Wars in the Caucasus, 1990-1995 by Edgar O'Ballance;Allah's Mountains: Politics and War in the Russian Caucasus by Sebastian SmithReview by: James SatterwhiteThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 406-409Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/309575 .

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406 Slavic and East European Journal

Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal. Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus. New York: New York UP, 1998. 418 pp., index, $26.95 (cloth);

Anatol Lieven. Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998. 436 pp., index, $35.00 (cloth);

Edgar O'Ballance. Wars in the Caucasus, 1990-1995. New York: New York UP, 1997. 238 pp., index, $45.00 (cloth);

Sebastian Smith. Allah's Mountains: Politics and War in the Russian Caucasus. London: I. B. Tauris, 1998. 288 pp., index, bibliography, $29.95 (cloth).

These four books all deal with the war in Chechnya, 1994-1996, and the background to that war. O'Ballance and Smith treat the war within the context of the entire Caucasus region, while the other two books focus more on Chechnya. Though all of the authors are journalists who had experience reporting on the Caucasus, each of their accounts attempts to go beyond merely reporting to provide some analysis of the conflict(s).

Since O'Ballance's book provides the larger context, it might appear to be the place to start in trying to understand what went on in Chechnya. This impression is only partly warranted, however. While the book does provide an overview of the various conflicts on both sides of the Caucasus mountains, each of the cases is examined separately. One wishes that more effort had been made to integrate the discussion into an overall analysis and tie the cases in more together. The book is useful and informative, and it does a good job of examining each of the sub-regions in the context of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with all of the dynamics that entailed. It is written firmly in the style of investigative journalism, which is informative but sometimes reads like a "blow-by-blow" account.

Allah's Mountains attempts to understand the war in Chechnya in the context of the entire North Caucasus region. As the flyleaf describes it:

Moving beyond Chechnya, Allah's Mountains examines the rest of the North Caucasus, where approximately 40 other tiny ethnic groups struggle to preserve their identities. Over the last ten years minorities such as the Dagestanis, Adygei and Balkars have rebuilt their national cultures, languages, and Moslem religion, which the tsars and the Soviets tried hard to wipe out. There has been genuine cultural revival, but also violent nationalism ...

Approximately the first half of the book is devoted to an examination of this overall context, while the second half of the book focuses on the war in Chechnya. The regional overview, appropriately enough, begins with a chapter called "The Jigsaw," and is followed by chapters entitled "Fires of Liberty" and "The Jigsaw in Pieces." As can be surmised from the chapter headings, Smith provides a comparison of the different cultures of the region against a back- drop of their encounter with Russia historically, as well as an examination of interethnic conflicts within the area itself. As he notes at one point, "ethnic self-determination: this sounded worthy, but almost immediately anyone could see that in a place as complex as the North Caucasus, one group's demands automatically infringed on the rights of another" (84). In commenting on the Ossetian-Ingush conflict, he remarks on another fault-line in the area: "A renewed fear and distrust of Moslems is part of [the Ossetian] hatred [of the Ingush], as if North Ossetia's role as a Christian bastion in a Moslem region was a self-fulfilling prophecy" (112).

Smith's account of the war in Chechnya is also historical in form. It attempts to analyze the social and political factors which led to the outbreak of war, as well as the political/military aspects of the war itself. The analysis is woven into the fabric of a journalistic account of the conflict, and is done very well. He does not spare criticism where it is due, whether against the

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Reviews 407

Russians or the Chechens. Commenting on the attempt by some Russian officials and military officers to undermine the negotiated settlement to the war, he says that "the episode had illustrated a crucial but bitter truth: if the war was going to be ended, Moscow would either have to capitulate or take the [General] Pulikovsky route * the wholesale massacre of city, and eventually, genocide" (256). He does not spare the international community from criticism either. He states at one point that "the international community had long since put Chechnya on the back burner," and continues in the same vein, noting,

perhaps the most hypocritical act was the vote by the Council of Europe [a pan- European organization which is meant to promote respect for human rights] to admit Russia as a member in January 1996. The decision had been frozen after the start of the war, but somehow the diplomats persuaded themselves that the Russian "internal affair" was now sufficiently stale so as to not be an obstacle to Russia joining their cosy club. (226)

All in all, the book provides useful insights into both the war in Chechnya and the nature of the region as a whole. It is particularly good at giving the reader the sense of "being there," and understanding the region from within. It is not primarily a scholarly analysis, per se, but provides useful material for such an undertaking.

The two other books reviewed here both deal more specifically with Chechnya alone, although both of them give some attention to the place of this conflict both in the region as a whole and in its history. Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus deals with the war in Chechnya in the context of the history of Russian involvement in the region, beginning with Russian expansion into the area in the eighteenth century. As the authors put it, "the roots of the conflict dig deep. Long before they came to fight a guerrilla war with Russia at the end of the twentieth century, the Chechens were among the most rebellious people in the Russian empire" (20). The same theme is continued with regard to Stalin's deportations of the North Caucasus peoples during the Second World War: "The deportations are better explained as an attempt to destroy the troublesome Chechens once and for all. They were the most numerous as well as the most militant people in the North Caucasus and had put up a stiff resistance to Stalinist collectivization. Mass deportation of the Chechens deprived the mountain peoples of a natural leadership in any future insurgency" (63). Chapter Two (entitled "The French of the Caucasus" because of supposed similarities between the Chechens' lively character and that of the French) gives some attention to a description of Chechen cultural traits, but it is a fairly superficial survey.

The bulk of the book constitutes a history of the war itself, and in this task the book gives a good account. As with Wars in the Caucasus, it reads like the "blow-by-blow" account of investigative reporting, but it is nonetheless informative. For example, it provides insights into the factors motivating such main players as Dudayev and Yeltsin. The book ends with an epilogue on "Chechen Independence" that attempts to summarize some of the issues remain- ing after the fighting ended in August of 1996:

. . . the cause of the war, Chechnya's bid for independence, remains unresolved. Independence is a tricky concept. Chechnya is now de facto independent of Rus- sia... .. On the other hand, no foreign state has recognized Chechen independence or is likely to until Russia does so. ... And in many ways Chechnya is less indepen- dent than before. The short-term outlook for the country is very bleak.... Chechnya is now dangerous in a new way. Since the end of the war, law and order has virtually collapsed and the new leadership has not been able to impose disci- pline. (368-69)

Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power provides the most ambitious and most comprehensive analysis. It is at the same time both a book about the war in Chechnya and a much larger

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analysis of the meaning of this war in the context of the transitions taking place in Russia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Although also written by a journalist, it is much more scholarly in tone, and avoids the narrative style favored by the other two.' At the same time, in his analysis of contemporary Russian history Lieven takes issue with several different approaches to the subject found in Western writing. "Much of the thrust of this book [and I would say, of the facts themselves] is directed against three closely intertwined and extremely influential Western schools of thought concerning Russia. The first. . . sees deep continuities running through and even largely determining the course of Russian history ... The second school, which derives to a great extent from the first, sees the Russians and Russian culture as deeply, perennially and primordially imperialist, aggressive and expansionist." The third school that Lieven takes issue with seems at first glance to be opposed to the first two, but according to him it really is not that different. It represents "the approach [that denies] that Russian history and special characteristics of contemporary Russia are of major importance when it comes to the nature and progress of Russian reform. They assert, by contrast, that Russia is well on the way to becoming a 'normal' country" (5).

Part I, comprising the first three chapters, focuses on the war and on the period from 1991- 1994, leading up to the war. This narrative section represents good investigative reporting, and does not differ much from the other two books. Part II is more analytical. As the author describes his approach,

the chapters therefore take the following pattern: chapter 4 examines the hollowing- out of the Russian state by its new elites, and draws analogies between Russia and other weak, corrupt states produced by the liberal revolutions of the past two hun- dred years; chapter 5 analyses the transformation of Russian society and public attitudes [above all, towards the military] in the context of modernization and social, cultural and especially demographic change; chapter 6 takes a particular example, that of the Cossacks, and through them examines the general failure of Russia to generate forces of paramilitary radical nationalism d la Serbe, in part because of specific historical features of Russian nationalism, which is a very weak plant by European standards; chapter 7 extends this to an analysis of the political weakness of the 'Russian diasporas,' . . .; and chapter 8 looks at the particular problems of the Russian armed forces in the 1990s. (147-48)

Added to this undertaking is an excellent analysis of Chechen history and culture, which far surpasses the one offered in Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus.

Lieven is interested in analyzing the specific factors that led Russia to defeat in Chechnya, and in turn showing how this debacle sheds light on the current state of Russian society. In taking issue with some other Western commentators he wants to avoid the kind of sweeping generalizations that purport to explain Russian history, but.which actually offer only another species of deterministic accounts of why Russia is the way it is. In his Conclusion Lieven draws the threads together well, saying that he is interested in examining the issue "of whether the new order of things in the Russia of the 1990s is stable: first, whether the new social, political and economic order is liable to change radically; secondly, whether Russian nationalism could in the foreseeable future take forms dangerous to the peace of Europe" (369). In examining various scenarios for how Russia could develop in the future, he discusses the parallels with the way in which the modern nationalist state of Turkey took the place of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of this century, and wonders if the emergence of a strongly nationalist Russia in the same mold would be altogether to the good. "The danger then is that if Russia were in fact forced to abandon her present very weak and qualified 'imperial' identity, it might swing to something very much worse" (382).

All four of these books are useful and informative in understanding developments in the

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Reviews 409

Caucasus attendant to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. If reading only one, choose Lieven's Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power as the most comprehensive and insightful.

James Satterwhite, Bluffton College

David R. Shearer. Industry, State and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926-1934. Ithaca and Lon- don: Cornell UP, 1996. 263 pp., $42.50 (cloth), $18.95 (paper);

Kenneth M. Straus. Factory and Community in Stalin's Russia: The Making of an Industrial Working Class. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997. 355 pp., $55.00 (cloth).

Long a productive subject of inquiry, the early years of Stalinist industrialization continue to inspire new scholarship. In the first of two books under review, David Shearer focuses on the administrative-command economy during the first Five-Year Plan. Indicating the extent to which "industry" was actually a construct composed of a disaggregated and shifting mosaic of councils, agencies, associations, trusts, and individual factory shops (as well as auxiliary institutions including cafeterias, barracks and collective farms), Shearer describes this behe- moth's performance as characterized by unreasonable expectations and the contradictions that poor planning inevitably produces. Particularly well-illustrated is the way failures led to the creation of a vicious circle: shortfalls and panic-induced errors precipitated by unrealistic goals sparked fears of sabotage, which led to the purging of qualified administrators and engineers, which, in turn, led to poorer planning and more shop floor mishaps.

Perhaps as interesting as Shearer's analysis of the overall system (addressed in several phases between 1926 and 1934) is his treatment of individual personalities within the bureau- cratic labyrinth. One G. A. Spektor, for instance, was a well-published technocrat with some thirty years of experience in supervising and coordinating industrial projects. Despite his expertise, Spektor was hounded by a vigilant low-level party member named G. F. Davydov for his background in tsarist industry and Menshevik political organizations. Paradoxically, Davydov's efforts to ruin Spektor were repeatedly hamstrung by higher-ranking party officials who relied on Spektor's experience (192-7). A story reminiscent of The Ghost of the Executed Engineer, Loren Graham's 1993 biography of P. Palchinskii, Shearer's account of pervasive patron-client networks, lobbying, and jockeying for appointments is fascinating. Only graft and corruption seem left out, subjects treated obliquely in Golfo Alexopoulos's "Portrait of a Con Artist as a Soviet Man" (Slavic Review vol. 57, no. 4 [1998]).

Shearer argues in his conclusion--in a more-or-less direct challenge to Stephen Kotkin's ambitious 1995 Magnetic Mountain -that the Soviet economy's distinguishing features were "statist" rather than "socialist." Piece rates, differentiated wages, and a low commitment to community infrastructure "shifted the criterion of the state's legitimacy away from social and economic justice ... to the production of industrial might on a world scale" (239). Even more provocative is Shearer's declaration that scholars ought to resist the urge to conflate the statist administrative-command system with a planned economy. After all, the Soviet leadership failed to develop accounting procedures to efficiently manage the resources it monopolized following its elimination of the free market (236-7). Subtle but sweeping, Industry, State and Society in Stalin's Russia is a significant contribution to the scholarly literature.

Approaching Soviet industrialization from a different perspective, Kenneth Straus's Factory and Community in Stalin's Russia focuses on worker identity during the same time period. Straus's treatment of the formation of the Soviet working class aspires to show that the high profile of individualist movements among workers during the 1930s-upward mobility [vydvizhenie] and Stakhanovism - obscured a more important phenomenon: the emergence

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