Media
and Further Reading
Relevant
media and news sources
There
are a number of websites that offer background materials and research
reports, continuous news coverage and information about the Chechen
exile community. Some of them are operated by Western NGOs, others
by Chechen organizations and the Chechen exile community, and there
is also extensive coverage in the Russian media. Because of the nature
of the conflict, information about the political and humanitarian
situation in Chechnya is often contested, and some of what is available
online is biased or does not comply with the highest journalistic
standards. Some websites combine activism or outright propaganda with
news coverage.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting:
UK-based NGO founded
by journalist and Caucasus expert Tom de Waal. Provides training
for journalists in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans, Afghanistan
etc. and publishes stories from these areas by local and Western
journalists.
www.iwpr.net/caucasus_index1.html
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:
Online
and broadcast news source reporting from the former Soviet Union,
the Balkans, the Middle East etc. Funded by the US Congress, but
editorially independent. Continuous coverage of Chechnya.
www.rferl.org/specials/chechnya
Eurasianet (Open Society Institute):
Online news and
analysis about the Caucasus, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Turkey and
the Middle East. Funded by the Open Society Institute, the New York-based
headquarters of the Soros network.
www.eurasianet.org
Chechen Press [pro-Maskhadov]:
Official
news agency of the Maskhadov government-in-hiding/in-exile.
www.chechenpress.info/english
Chechen Times [pro-Maskhadov/independent]:
Europe-based
newssite, also available in print (contingent on funding). Publishes
materials by Chechen, Russian and Western authors and tries to maintain
a moderate, open perspective (also available in Russian).
www.chechentimes.org/en
Kavkaz Center [separatist, pro-Basayev]:
Large,
frequently updated website based in the UK. Strong Islamist/ideological
slant. Questionable facts, but excellent source for learning about
the perspective of this important sector of the anti-Russian forces.
www.kavkaz.org.uk
Prima News Agency:
Based
in Moscow.
Founded in February 2000 and sponsored by Western and Russian foundations.
Distributes news related to the human rights situation in Russia,
the former Soviet Union, and abroad.
prima-news.ru/eng
Caucasian Knot:
Collaborative
website of Russian human rights and civil society groups providing
up to date information and analysis about political and civil society
developments in the Caucasus (also available in Russian).
eng.kavkaz.memo.ru
The Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations:
Based in Moscow.
Founded in 2000 as a human rights organization within the Russian
Union of Journalists. Reports on media, free speech and human rights
in Chechnya and other parts of Russia and the former Soviet Union
(in Russian and English).
www.cjes.ru
Chechenskoe Obshchestvo
Chechenskoe
Obshchestvo is one of the best independent Chechnya-based newspapers.
Timur Aliev, who also writes for IWPR and Prague Watchdog and has
won several international journalism awards, is the senior editor
(in Russian and partially in English).
www.chechensociety.net/
Caucasus Times:
Based
in Prague, Czech Republic and run by the “Medium-Orient” Information
Agency. Reports news from Chechnya and the whole North Caucasus
region. Apparently not updated since January 2004 (in Russian and
English).
www.caucasustimes.com
Caucasus Foundation:
Newssite
based in Turkey. Covers Chechnya, Abkhazia and other conflict regions.
Most of the site is only available in Turkish, but some sections
are in Russian, English and Arabic as well.
www.kafkas.org.tr
Ichkeria Independent News Agency:
Strongly
separatist, infrequently updated site that provides insight into
the rhetoric and thinking of parts of the Chechen leadership rather
than news or facts (in Chechen, Russian, English and Danish). Currently
offline.
www.ichkeria.dk
Books
about Chechnya
Over the last decade, a number of books about Chechnya have
been published in the US, Europe and Russia. Most of them are by journalists
reporting from Chechnya, political analysts and historians. The Chechnya
Advocacy Network aims to provide information for a mostly Western
audience, hence the selection below is largely in English. A much
larger number of books are available in Russia and Chechnya, many
of them small, privately published editions.
Khassan
Baiev, The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire (Walker,
2003)
Chapter 5: THE
EVE OF THE FIRST WAR
An excerpt from Khassan Baiev's book The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire
describes the conditions of working as a doctor during the war.
This book is considered the first by a Chechen author in English.
Khassan
Baiev, Grief of My Heart. Memoirs of a Chechen Surgeon
(Walker 2005)
Paperback edition of The Oath.
Click
for reviews
Thomas
M. Barrett, At the Edge of Empire. The Terek Cossacks
and the North Caucasus Frontier, 1700-1860 (Westview Press
1999)
Click
for review
Vanora
Bennett, Crying wolf: the return of war to Chechnya
(Pan Macmillan, 2001)
Svante
Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers: A study of
ethnopolitical conflict in the Caucasus (Curzon Press, 2001)
Georgi
Derluguian, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus:
A World-System Biography (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
Click
for review
Click
for review
John
Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist
Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Click for review
Matthew
Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way
of the Soviet Union? (Brookings, 2002).
Click
for review
Ben
Fowkes (ed.), Russia and Chechnia: The permanent crisis:
Essays on Russo-Chechen relations (St. Martin's Press, 1998)
Carlotta
Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the
Caucasus (New York University Press, 1998).
Click
for review
Click
for review
Tracy
C. German, Russia's Chechen War (Taylor &
Francis, 2003)
Click
for review
Thomas
Goltz, Chechnya Diary: A War Correspondent's Story
of Surviving the War in Chechnya (Thomas Dunne Books, 2003)
Interview
with the author
Stanley
Greene, Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003
Yo'av
Karny, Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest
of Memory (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2001).
Stasys
Knezys and Romanas Sedlickas, The war in Chechnya
(Texas A&M University Press. 1999)
Andrew
C. Kuchins, Russia After the Fall (Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 2002)
Anatol
Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (Yale
University Press, 1999).
H-Net
Review by Thomas M. Barrett of Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian
Power
Anna
Matveeva, The North Caucasus: Russia's fragile Borderland
(RIIA, 2000)
Andrew
Meier, Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After
the Fall (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003).
Yu.
V. Nikolaev, Chechnya Revisited (Nova Science
Publishers, 2003)
Anne
Nivat, Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behind the
Lines of the War in Chechnya (Public Affairs, 2001).
Edgar
O'Ballance, Wars in the Caucasus. 1990-1995 (New
York University Press, 1997)
Olga
Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars 1994-2000: Lessons from
the Urban Combat (Rand Corporation, 2001)
Christopher
Panico, Conflicts in the Caucasus: Russia's War in
Chechnya (Conflict Studies 281. Research Institute for the
Study of Conflict and Terrorism, 1995)
Anna
Politkovskaya, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya
(Harvill, 2001).
Anna
Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from
Chechnya (University of Chicago Press, October 2003).
Robert
Seely, Russo-Chechen conflict, 1800-2000: a deadly
embrace (Taylor & Francis, 2001)
Sebastian
Smith, Allah's mountains: The Battle for Chechnya
(I.B. Tauris, 2001)
Valery
Tishkov, Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society (University
of California Press 2004)
Dmitry
Trenin and Aleksei Malashenko, Russia's Restless Frontier:
The Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia (Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 2004).
Eurasianet
review of Russia's Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in
Post-Soviet Russia
V. V.
Trepavlov and A. N. Sakharov, Russia and North Caucasus:
400 Years of War? (Edwin Mellen Press, 1999)
Paul
Wilson, Vesselin Nedkov, 57 Hours: A Survivor's Account
of the Moscow Hostage Drama (Viking Canada, 2003)
Anna
Zelkina, In Quest for God and Freedom. Sufi Responses
to the Russian Advance in the North Caucasus (New York University
Press 2000)
"Chechnya
i Rossia"
The entire contents of the book Chechnya i Rossia: Obshchestvo i
Gosurdarstvo, which is also the proceedings for a conference that
was held at the Sakharov Center in Moscow in December 1999. (In
Russian)
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