The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? by Matthew s> Evangelista (review)

Abstract

350 SEER, 83, 2, 2005 The only kind of source she might have made more use of for insights and colour is fiction. There is a brief reference to TheMasterandMargarita on Torgsin shops (thepredecessors of the Berezki)on p. 200, and a vivid, pagelong description of a wartime market by Boldyrev, used as an epigraph on p. 250. That is all. Still, the book is full of intriguingdetail as it is. There is the storyof Liliana Isaevna building up an underground business with a workforce of three in 1951, providing feathers for hats made by underground milliners for Party elite wives: she got the feathers from a kosher butcher and the Aragvi restaurant (pp. 290-9I). Admiring mid-1930S official reports on Macy's of New Yorkas a model of culturedtrade (pp. 207, 2 I0) illustratethe anomalies in what Soviet officialstried to do. So do storieslike that of the I940S TsUM shop assistantwho escorteda customerto herbicycle and then slasheditstyres when she refusedhim a tip (p. 322). The photographs help to convey the diversityof this segment of everyday life in Lenin's and Stalin's Soviet Union. They range from 'cultured trade' (the Eliseev food store in 1935 and the TsUM lace department in I948) to grim depictions of trading to survive, including a German army photograph ofapeasantmarket in 194 I. Hessler has documented and partlyquantifiedwhat she calls 'thepersistent privatesector'.She showshow ambiguousthe treatmentof it was, even during NEP. The OGPU were arrestinglargenumbersof privatetradersonlymonths after the introduction of the RSFSR Civil Code in early I923, a piece of legislationthatmight have been seen as entrenchingsome of the rightsneeded forthe conduct of privatetrade.And she also showshow privatetrade,mainly in the form of peasant markets,continued to help (some)people to survivein the 1930s. As a historian, she treatsthe whole story, not as an example of the inevitable effects of a system, but as something that could have turned out differentlyif particularpeople had made differentchoices. Fairenough; but thisexemplaryhistoricalaccount also supportsthe economist's 'systemic'view that when a political regime repressesprivate commerce, the citizens pay a heavy price. Centrefor Russian andEastEuropean Studies PHILIP HANSON University ofBirmingham! RussiaandEurasia Programme, Chatham House Evangelista, Matthew. TheChechen Wars. WillRussiaGothe Wayof theSoviet Union? BrookingsInstitutionPress,Washington,D.C., 2002. Xi+ 244 pp. Maps. Notes. Index. $19.95: f14.50 (paperback). IN this book, Matthew Evangelista, professor of government and director of the Peace StudiesProgramat Cornell University,discussesthree issues.In the firstpartof thebook (chapters2-4), he exploresthe originsof the two Chechen wars -the war of I994-96 and the new war that began in i999 and considerswhetherthey could have been avoided. The centralpartof the book (chapters 5-6) is devoted to an assessment of Putin's version of the 'domino theory' that is, the proposition that the secession of Chechnya would lead REVIEWS 35I to the disintegration of the whole Russian Federation and must therefore be prevented at all costs. In the final section of the book (chapters7 and 8), the authordiscussesRussia'swar crimesin Chechnya and the Westernresponse. The analysis of the origins of the Chechen wars adds little if anything to knowledge thatis alreadywidely available,though it may be usefulto the nonspecialist reader. The conclusion that 'a more responsible and competent leadershipin Moscow' could have prevented the firstwar by negotiation with Dudaev (p. 45) is weakly supported. The author appears to share the widespread supposition that if only El'tsin had consented to meet Dudaev man to man and accord him the respect he craved the conflict would have been resolved. Given what we know of the personalities of both these politicians,thisbelief requiresquite a leap offaith.It alsoleaves out of account the testimony of Taimaz Abubakarov,Dudaev's finance minister and one of his main negotiators,to the effectthat Dudaev was not seriouslycommitted to reaching an agreement with Moscow and did not really want to meet with El'tsin(see the last chapter of Taimaz Abubakarov,Rezhim Dzhokhara Dudaeva: pravda i vymysel. Zapiski dudaevskogo ministra ekonomiki ifinansov, Moscow, i 998). There is an alternativeand (in my view) more plausiblethesisaccording to which a more responsibleand competent leadershipin Moscow could indeed have preventedwar not by negotiatingwith Dudaev but by engineeringhis downfall through more skilfulmanipulation of intra-Chechenpolitics. This is not a...