Operation Barbarossa in Photographs : The War in Russia as Photographed by the Soldiers Book

When I started reading this book, the Boston bombings hadn't yet happened and Chechnya was a country that had been conveniently forgotten like so many war-torn nations of the world. It was therefore with feelings of apprehension and excitement at getting to know a little more about the Soviet Union, my latest interest, that I picked this one up.

Then of course, there was a bomb blast. People died and , suddenly, the internet was flooded with information on this seemingly insignificant nation with an area a tenth of Wisconsin and a population of a little more than a million.

This review is special for reasons I cannot quite describe. The haunting descriptions that Seirstad comes up with through her impeccable accounts of this war-zone will stay with you for a lifetime.

The political reason behind the Chechen Wars is simple:
Dudayev wanted Chechnya to break away not just from the Soviet Union but from Russia as well. Boris Yeltsin, the driving force behind the fall of the Soviet Union, wanted to keep Russia's borders intact at any cost and refused to accept secession.
Dudayev began a war of words with Yeltsin. "Russianism is worse than Nazism", "Boris Yeltsin heads a gang of murderers" and his regime is the "diabolic heir to a totalitarian monster." For its part, the Russian government introduced an amazingly ineffective trade embargo and cut important subsidies; the only thing the Russian state paid was pensions to help local Russians remain in Chechnya. The huge reduction in financial aid added to the chaos and corruption, and soon Dudayev's regime was even less able to pay salaries than Governments elsewhere in Russia. A Moscow bank robbery by Chechen criminals netted almost a billion dollars; most of the money was brought back to Chechnya. Grozny became a center of smuggling, fraud and money laundering, while the government's role in the republic was collapsing.
Meanwhile, the hawks in Yeltsin's administration wanted a "small victorious war", something that would increase their popularity among nationalistic Russians after an ultra-nationalist candidate, Vladimir Zhirnovsky, had won about every fourth vote in the parliamentary election. However, the main reason for invading Chechnya was the political ambitions of Yeltsin and his inner circle. If Chechnya seceded, the spirit of rebellion could spread through rest of North Caucasus, and all of Russia could fall apart.

Chechnya: the wolf, however, would not relent. The separatists chose this beast as the emblem of their republic. The free, wild wolf was the Chechen, the tame, cowardly dog was the Russian. It was after all, the only animal that dared to take on something stronger than itself. What it lacked in strength and size, it made up for with limitless audacity and courage. It loved freedom, could not be tamed, and would rather die fighting that surrender.

Pursuing the subject with an unbiased view, Seirstad presents all faces of the Chechen story: the systematic destruction of the art, history and culture of this little mountain country, the rampant spread of Wahabism and the consequential rise of terrorist activities, societies changing attitudes on women, family and honor and the plight of the people involved in the war: both Chechen and Russian, which has led to considerable hatred on both sides and the incessant rise of racially provoked crimes in Russia, particularly, Moscow.

She writes:
"A census would have revealed many things. Soviet figures from 1989 show that the number of Chechens had just reached one million. Since the wars started, five years after that, around one hundred thousand Chechens have been killed. Among the dead are thousands of children. They could hardly be called bandits or terrorists, as teh authorities label those who resist....
You can try to count the dead. You can argue about the numbers. You can count the maimed. You can argue about those numbers, too. What does it matter to loose a leg. An arm. To become crippled. To become blind. To have your hearing blasted away.
Where in the statistics do you find a violated childhood?"
The Beslan school tragedy where 330 primary school kids were ruthlessly killed is proof enough of her assertions.

As a result of the war, this country is losing that which it values the most: it's cultural treasures.
"The National Museum in Grozny was bombed after the Russian troops looted what they thought worth preserving:European paintings, anything made of gold and silver, precious stones and metals. Chechen and Caucasian art was blown to pieces. Small, unique clusters of buildings, dating as far back as the twelfth century have been leveled to the ground."

A country rattled by war and political uncertainty is bound to give in to religious fundamentalism. As per Jokhar Dudayev's interview in 1996:
"Lack of western help in building a democratic Russian state after the Soviet Union's collapse was what made the Chechen's look towards Sharia- Muslim laws and regulations."
In view of this, the situation is growing from bad to worse. Two ideologies: Wahabism and Sufism are now pitted against each other. In Chechnya the mania for mythologizing has free rein. One theory or story is just as believable as the next. The most important thing for people is that the story fits in with their belief system.
It is therefore no surprise that the society is governed strictly by religious rules that are decreed arbitrarily. Women are repressed and are delegated to a secondary status.
"Woman, subject yourself to your husband. It is wrong for a wife to try to rise to a man's level. Then she degrades her husband; she is a woman, after all. Se can't do everything..."
In a society where women are thought of as carriers of a family's virtue, honor killings and gender repression is on the rise.
Women and children, as always, are the worst sufferers. It being deemed "improper" for women to work, they have no means to earn a livelihood once they have lost their men in the war.
As for the children, one of Ramzan Kadyrov's first acts as president was to close down all public orphanages, as, according to him, they went against Chechen tradition. Leaving thousands of children on the street, with no means of fending for themselves or protecting themselves against physical and mental abuse.

Oppression on the basis of gender is, however, not the only issue plaguing the Chechen society. When Putin came to power, a lot changed.
"Putin has understood something that never concerned Yeltsin: the power of the free word. Whereas you could travel freely to Chechnya at the beginning of the war, it is now illegal and impossible for a foreigner....
I don't have permission to be in North Ossetia, where we are now, or in any of the other Caucasian Republics. For that, I would need a KTO card, that is to say, permission to be in an area of kontra-terroristicheskaya operatsia-counter terrorist operations-and in order to get a KTO card you have to be on a Government organized visit."

The atmosphere is stifling and tense. People disappear overnight- often, forever. Families are watched and harrassed by the FSB and the Kadyrovtsi and it is not uncommon for a family to lose all male members within a span of few months-followed by an agonizing search for their bodies, which are often found dumped in ditches with parts missing and torture marks all over them; if they are found at all.

"People are more afraid now than during the war. It's like Moscow in the thirties. People inform on each other, they disappear in the night and never return. No one trusts anyone anymore, because Putin had a stroke of genius: he let Ramzan Kadyrov do the dirty work. Now its Chechen against Chechen."
It's called "Chechnising" the conflict. Whereas before the Russian forces committed the worst abuses, now the Chechen militia maintains control in a society maimed by fear.
Asne Seirstad travels through this forgotten hell and interacts with those who have lost their all, bringing back harrowing tales of terror and unimaginable violence: fear that keeps the society quiet.
It is the society where the assassination of those who speak against the regime: journalists like Anna Politkovskaya is inevitable.

The situation in Chechnya being what it is, the Chechens don't have it easy elsewhere in Russia either. An estimated fifty thousand racial attacks occur in Russia every year. The number is increasing. Few people dare to report the assaults. The police often sympatise more with the attacker that with the victim. Only a few hundered incidents are reported every year; along with a fifty racially motivated murders. The perpetrators are seldom prosecuted; a conviction is even rarer.
People from the Caucasus in general, and Chechnya in particular top the list of hate figures and have the lowest reputation among ordinary Russians. Chechens have problems registering in Russian cities, enrolling children at school, getting jobs, finding places to live.

They have reason too, they have lost their boys there. In a war against those people who are almost as hated as the Afghans. The roots of their repugnance go a long way back.

Seierstad does develop an anti-Russian sentiment, it is true, as she meets and interacts with the long suffering people of this nation. She has, however, tried to view all angles of this story. A path-breaking book from a woman who was asked to write about spring fashions instead of Chechnya, it is great for starting out and getting to know more about a part of the world that has such rich history and has shaped so much of our modern day beliefs: politically and socially.