History
Academic Texts on Chechen History
Michaela Pohl,
who teaches Russian history at Vassar College and is also a member
of CAN, has conducted extensive research on the Chechen experience
in their forced exile in Kazakhstan. Her work focuses on oral history
accounts and the Chechens' (and other special settlers) adaption
and/or resistance to the harsh conditions and oppression in exile.
"It Cannot Be That Our Graves
Will Be Here:" Chechen and Ingush Deportees in Kazakstan, 1944-1957
"From
the Chechen People:" Anti-Soviet Protest 1944-1946
Lyoma Usmanov
is the Maskhadov government's representative to the United States.
This is one Chechen's view of Chechen history and cultural identity.
January 1999.
The Chechen
Nation: a Portrait of Chechen Nation
Paul Henze,
scholar of North Caucasian history of the 19th century (particularly
in the Western Caucasus) writes here of his impressions of the bicentennial
celebration in Dagestan in 1997 of the birth of imam Shamil.
Imam Shamil Lives!
Moshe Gammer, professor of History at Tel Aviv University,
and author of the most complete history of Imam Shamil's North Caucasian
state, here writes of the various interpretations which contemporary
nationalist movements have grafted onto Shamil's legacy.
Collective
Memory and Politics: Remarks on Some Competing Historical Narratives
in the Caucasus and Russia and their Use of a 'National Hero.
This chapter, also by Moshe Gammer, and on a related
subject, is part of a book called Secession, History and the Social
Sciences (2002)
Nationalism
and History: Rewriting the Chechen National Past
The entire book, edited by Bruno Coppieters and
Michel Huysseune, is online here:
Secession,
History and the Social Sciences
Selections from
Baron August von Haxthausen's book The Tribes of the Caucasus, with
an account of Schamyl and the Murids, trans. J.E. Taylor (London,
1855). This work provides a contemporary account of Shamil's struggle
against the Russian conquest. It is valuable as much for what it
reveals about the European mindset as for what it tells us about
the Caucasus.
Tribes
of the Caucasus
Of Christianity,
Enlightenment, and Colonialism: Russia in the North Caucasus, 1550-1800,
by Michael Khodarkovsky. The Journal of Modern History 71/2, 1999
download here
Needless to say, the vast majority of literature
from this region has not been translated into English. Some of it
is written in Russian (Bazorkin, for example). Other work is written
in Chechen and then translated, often by the same author, into Russian.
Such is the case with Aidamirov.
The Russian Academy of Sciences has put together
a comprehensive and well annotated bibliography of material related
to the Chechen conflict and to Chechen history.
RAN Bibliography
An introduction to Bazorkin's life and work, also
the preface to his recently published collected works.
Idris Bazorkin
Yashurkaev's account of life under seige in Grozny
during the first war (1995). Broadcast originally on Radio Liberty.
Yashurkaev usually writes in Chechen, and this was first written
in Russian. This is an introspective work, immersed entirely in
the pathos of everyday life.
Diary of
a Chechen Writer
Two works of historiography provide a sampling
of some of the material available in Russian:
A Georgian historian writes about the history of
the Chechen and the Ingush people.
Achabadze,
The Vainakhs
Aidamirov's detailed chronology of Chechen History.
A good place to start for those interested in Chechen history and
still learning Russian.
Aidamirov's
Chronology
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