29 January 2014
Chechnya Diary — A War Correspondent's Story of Surviving the War in Chechnya
Thomas Goltz
Thomas Dunne Books, New York
October 2003
302 pages
ISBN: 978-0-312-26874-9
The village of Samashki was the site of a massacre during the first Chechen war in which more than hundred residents were executed by Russian …
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2 October 2013
I have written a commentary for AbkhazWorld.com on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the end of the 1992–1993 war between Georgia and Abkhazia.
It can be read here.
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10 July 2013
Abkhazia's Prosecutor's Office has at long last finalised indictments in the investigation of several attempts on the life of President Alexander Ankvab (and Pitsunda Mayor Beslan Ardzinba). The investigation took shape and several people were arrested after the most recent attack in February 2012, that killed two of Ankvab's guards …
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29 May 2013
Kleine landjes — Berichten uit de Kaukasus
Jelle Brandt Corstius
Prometheus, Amsterdam
February 2009
170 pages
ISBN: 978-90-446-1311-7
Kleine landjes is an account of a series of trips made by the Dutch journalist Jelle Brandt Corstius, generally stationed in Moscow, to Chechnya, Kalmykia, Abkhazia, Karachay-Cherkessia and Ossetia. It is not really …
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8 May 2013
Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus — A World-System Biography
Georgi M. Derluguian
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
July 2005
416 pages
ISBN: 978-0-226-14282-1
A description of Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus must begin with an explanation of its somewhat unpractical, yet intriguing title. The admirer in question is …
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27 March 2013
Eight Pieces of Empire — A 20-Year Journey through the Soviet Collapse
Lawrence Scott Sheets
Crown Publishers, New York
November 2011
336 pages
ISBN: 978-0-307-39582-5
The publication of Eight Pieces of Empire is good news, because Lawrence Scott Sheets — currently South Caucasus project director for the International Crisis Group — is one …
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21 February 2013
Caucasus — In the wake of warriors
Nicholas Griffin
Review, London
August 2001
256 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7472-3630-6
(In subsequent years republished with a variety of different subtitles (A Journey, A Journey in the Crucible of Civilisation, A Journey to the Land between Christianity and Islam and Mountain Men and Holy Wars …
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30 January 2013
Let Our Fame be Great — Journeys Among the Defiant Peoples of the Caucasus
Oliver Bullough
Allen Lane, London
March 2010
508 pages
ISBN: 978-1-846-14141-6
Let Our Fame be Great takes its name from an episode of North Caucasus mythology. In the tale, the Narts — the heroes of these stories — are …
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5 December 2012
The Post-Soviet Wars — Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict, and Nationhood in the Caucasus
Christoph Zürcher
New York University Press, New York
November 2007
302 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8147-9709-9
Despite its general title, The Post-Soviet Wars covers only the major wars that took place in the Caucasus: the Karabakh war, the two Russo-Chechen wars …
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24 December 2009
In my post on the Prigorodny District I mentioned the fact that part of the District had been transferred from Ingushetia to North Ossetia following Stalin's 1944 expulsion of the 'guilty' Ingush people to Central Asia. I've found a very useful map of the North Caucasus on Wikipedia (uploaded by …
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