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Chechnya. Calamity in the Caucasus' and Goltz, 'Azerbaijan Diary

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Chechnya. Calamity in the Caucasus' and Goltz, 'Azerbaijan Diary H-Russia Mannteufel on Gall and Waal, 'Chechnya. Calamity in the Caucasus' and Goltz, 'Azerbaijan Diary. A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet-Republic' Review published on Wednesday, November 1, 2000 Carlotta Gall, Thomas de Waal. Chechnya. Calamity in the Caucasus. New York: New York University Press, 1998. xiv + 416 pp. $26.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8147-3132-1.Thomas Goltz. Azerbaijan Diary. A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet-Republic. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998. xxx + 528 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7656-0244-2. Reviewed by Ingo Mannteufel (Journal OSTEUROPA. Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsfragen des Ostens, Aachen, Germany) Published on H-Russia (November, 2000) The Caucasus in the 1990s from the Perspective of War Correspondents The Caucasus in the 1990s from the Perspective of War Correspondents Since the last years of the Soviet Union the region around the Caucasus mountains has become an area of violent ethnic conflicts. The Armenian-Azerbaijan War for Nagorno-Karabakh, the hostilities in Georgia (South-Ossetia, Abkhazia), the clashes between Ossetians and Ingush within the Russian Federation, and last but not least the two large-scale Russian-Chechen Wars have drawn the attention of the international public to this up to then unknown region at the edge of Europe. But it was precisely this dangerous atmosphere that attracted journalists from all over the world to report directly from this new hot spot. Thomas Goltz, an American journalist who worked in Turkey during the 1980s, was one of these journalists. In 1991, he was actually on his way to Tashkent, Soviet Uzbekistan, where he was to take up a position as an adjunct professor of history for the next two years, when he made a detour and landed in Baku, capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan. Personal contacts gave Goltz a unique inside view into Azerbaijani society in the last months of Soviet rule. He was so fascinated by the atmosphere that he decided to stay for sometime before leaving for Tashkent. After the failed coup in Moscow in August 1991 he returned from a sleepy Tashkent to a boiling Baku to cover the developments in the Caucasus for the next two and a half years. Based on his experience, Goltz wrote a draft manuscript that was published in Istanbul in 1994 with the title Requiem for a Would-be Republic and covers the period from the Azerbaijani declaration of independence in 1991 to the Azerbaijani decision to join the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1993. In addition to the slightly revised text of Requiem, the present book, Azerbaijan Diary, includes an epilogue about the time from 1994 to November 1997, which he wrote after a short visit to Baku in the autumn of 1997. Reading the book it becomes obvious that Goltz saw and experienced quite a lot during his stay in the Caucasus. The reader is overwhelmed by "new facts", unique first-hand observations, portraits of individuals from all spheres of Azerbaijani society, travel accounts, reports from the battlefront in Citation: H-Net Reviews. Mannteufel on Gall and Waal, 'Chechnya. Calamity in the Caucasus' and Goltz, 'Azerbaijan Diary. A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet-Republic'. H-Russia. 02-17-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/10000/reviews/10229/mannteufel-gall-and-waal-chechnya-calamity-caucasus-and-goltz Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Russia Nagorno-Karabakh (e.g. the Xodjali catastrophe of February 26-27, 1992) and the negotiating table. Goltz also reproduces several interviews, for example with Abulfez Elchibey, the first democratically elected president of Azerbaijan, and Heydar Aliyev, the "Grand Old Man" of Azerbaijani politics, who returned to power in Baku in 1992-93 and rules as Azerbaijani president since that time. The density and richness of his impressions are both an advantage and disadvantage for the book; sometimes the gripping story outweighs analytical clarity and structure. Goltz's aim is not to prove a thesis or a certain argument, but to disseminate as much information as possible about Azerbaijan and thereby to correct misperceptions and misinformation in the Western press. He states: "I have the arrogance to suggest to the reporters, editorial writers, and, ultimately, scholars of the period and place that they take the time to wade through this opus before furthering the promotion of "facts' based on repetitive errors" (p. xii). Thus, the book with its twenty-five chapters, a prologue and an epilogue is a "quarry" for all who are interested in the recent history of Azerbaijan. Three maps of the Caucasus and the Azerbaijan Republic and several photographs help the reader to keep track with the fast-paced account and its changing personal and locations. Some (scholarly) readers will not like the first-person style of writing which reminds us of the annotated diary that was the source for the book, but other readers will enjoy "accompanying" Goltz through his fictitious-like "adventures in an oil-rich, war-torn, post-Soviet republic". Two other journalists who were attracted by the violent events in the Caucasus in the 1990s were Carlotta Gall, a reporter with the "Moscow Times," and Thomas de Waal, who reported from Moscow from 1993 to 1997 for the "Moscow Times," "The Times of London," and "The Economist." Based on their investigations, interviews and on-the-scenes reports they produced a well-written and well- structured book on the (First) Russian-Chechen War of 1994-96 and its historical background. The book begins with the brutal events on New Year's Eve 1994, when the invasion of the Russian army into the Chechen capital Grozny had come to a deadlock, and the Russian leadership had reacted with a massive bombardment of the city without regard for casualties among Russian and Chechen civilians, Russian troops and Chechen fighters. In the next seven chapters Gall and de Waal present the historical context of the conflict. In "The French of the Caucasus" (Chapter Two) they discuss briefly the history and culture of the Chechen people, the importance of their rebellious spirit and their clans (teips), and the complex role of Islam among the Chechens. In Chapter Three, "Conquest and Resistance," and Four, "The Deportations," the authors review the long history of the Russian-Chechen relationship, dating back to the eighteenth century when the region of the Chechen mountain tribes first fell victim to the expansion of the Russian Empire. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Chechens and Dagestanis led by the famous Imam Shamil resisted Russian power for almost thirty years. This brutal "Caucasian War" is one of the two important cornerstones of Chechen historical consciousness with regard to the Russians. The second one, the deportation of the entire Chechen people to Central Asia in 1944 on order by Stalin, is told in the fourth chapter. Over half a million Chechen, Ingush and other Caucasian ethnic groups were deported from the region. Thousands died on the journey to Kazakhstan or perished of hunger and cold in the following winter. The Chechen- Ingush republic ceased to exist and in 1948, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decreed that the Citation: H-Net Reviews. Mannteufel on Gall and Waal, 'Chechnya. Calamity in the Caucasus' and Goltz, 'Azerbaijan Diary. A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet-Republic'. H-Russia. 02-17-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/10000/reviews/10229/mannteufel-gall-and-waal-chechnya-calamity-caucasus-and-goltz Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Russia deportees had no right to return. Only in 1957 was the Chechen-Ingushetian republic officially reinstated and the Chechens and Ingush allowed to return home. Gall and de Waal argue that the collective experience of large-scale deportation and thirteen years of exile gave "the Chechens a sense of common national identity as Chechens -- as distinct from belonging to a certainteip or village -- for the first time" (p. 74). In Chapter Five the authors show that "Dudayev's Revolution" and his rise to power in Chechnya in 1990/91 was preceded by a revolt within the Chechen Communist party against Moscow's candidate for First Secretary of the local Chechen committee. Instead in spring 1989 Doku Zavgayev, Second Secretary of the CP in the republic for fifteen years, was put in charge of the Chechen-Ingush republic. Although Dudayev became Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Chechen National Congress in 1990 the authors state that he was "a little-known figure" at that time and just elected to cover up the split between different political groups in the Congress (p. 83). Here, Gall and de Waal present a very interesting biographical sketch of Jokhar Dudayev showing that he "was much more a product of the Soviet system than a budding Chechen nationalist": He was born in Kazakhstan, had lived in Chechnya only briefly, spoke Chechen haltingly and was married to a Russian. Dudayev made a career as officer in the Soviet armed forces serving not in Chechnya, but in Russia, Ukraine, and Estonia. During the August coup of 1991 Dudayev backed Boris Yeltsin, who in return backed Dudayev in his struggle against Doku Zavgayev, then head of the regional Supreme Soviet. After ousting Zavgayev with the help of Yeltsin's aides Ruslan Khasbulatov and Aslanbek Aslakhanov, Dudayev ignored the power-sharing deal with Khasbulatov and announced that he had taken over power as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Congress of Chechen people.
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