In early 1990, when it came to press, 20 writers contributed to this book on many of the nationalities found within the bLast days before the big bang
In early 1990, when it came to press, 20 writers contributed to this book on many of the nationalities found within the borders of the USSR. They wrote a bit about the various histories, how they fared in Tsarist times as well as in the Bolshevik days, and each wound up by talking about how everything was going under Gorbachev. There were 15 major republics that made up the Union and then numerous other ethnic groups existed too, not endowed with so much political prominence. Among them were the Tatars, the Yakut, the Buryat, the Crimean Tatars, and the Jews. Multiple others, in the North Caucasus, in Tuva, in the far north and east, and along the Volga, hardly rated a mention. The three Baltic nations had been independent for twenty years, from 1920 to 1940, while Ukraine and the three Transcaucasian nations had “enjoyed” a very few years of chaotic independence before being swallowed or “re-swallowed” by Russia. The five Central Asian republics were artificial creations that had had local rulers, big or small, up to the mid-19th century, but had never been ethnic entities. Under the Soviets, they suddenly emerged as “nations” with distinct ethnic identities, a most dubious claim. Moldova was just that part of Romania that Russia had managed to grab, and as “Moldavia” labored under the pretense that it was somehow different from the rest of Romania.
Within a year and a half, the Soviet Union was no more and the 15 republics were launched on the seas of “independence” with flags, airlines, seats in the UN, and all the paraphernalia of nationhood in the late 20th century. The amazing thing is that not a single one of the 20 writers could foresee this outcome! Maybe nobody could, it’s true, but still, no prediction came close in this book. This lack of foresight is one of the interesting things about this book which otherwise gives the reader a basic background to each of the nationalities it covers. In general, the blunders of the Soviets and their utter conviction that Russian culture was superior and that they knew the answers, are made all too plain, even if industry, education, and health did get transformed in many parts of the USSR. How many dead intellectuals and potential leaders were “rehabilitated” posthumously? For me, that in itself is a judgment.
Putting this book together was no doubt an excellent idea at the time, but that time, due to history, was exceedingly short. That’s why I’m only giving three stars—not because of quality, but because everything has changed so much as to make this a very outdated book unless you want to zero in on the USSR on its last legs....more
Jewish Chameleon Pens Azeri Love Story and Vanishes
Let’s have a film fade out here and emerge fifty years ago in 1971. (The much younger) Bob Newman Jewish Chameleon Pens Azeri Love Story and Vanishes
Let’s have a film fade out here and emerge fifty years ago in 1971. (The much younger) Bob Newman is reading a love story that takes place in the Caucasus around the turn of the 20th century. It’s an engrossing read and he (Bob, that is) feels pleasure thinking that he was able to find a novel from Azerbaijan, one that nobody else around him had ever mentioned. In fact, he never hears another word about Kurban Said, the author of “Ali and Nino”.
Now let’s fast forward to 2005 or 2006. Suddenly Bob reads a review of this book, “The Orientalist” and realizes that whoa!, that’s about the author of the book he read 35 years before. And hey!, it’s a shock to learn that “Kurban Said” was actually a Jewish guy named Lev Nussimbaum who lived most of his life in Europe. It took Bob a while, but well, that’s his turtle-like m.o. He finally got hold of the book and read it now, in 2021.
THE ORIENTALIST is a fantastic tale of a very interesting, if slightly unbelievable, character. The author of the biography did a great deal of research, digging up just about everyone and anyone who, still alive in the 1990s, had known Nussimbaum or those who’d known him. He combed obscure archives for the slightest bits of material. You see, Nussimbaum died in Positano, Italy in 1942. He was born in 1905 in Baku—then Russia—now Azerbaijan, the original petroleum capital of the world. His father was an oil millionaire, his mother a leftwing revolutionary who killed herself when Nussimbaum was young. Other than that, very few people, before this book got published, knew much about the “Jewish chameleon” who at times seemed to be Russian Jewish, at times, Muslim Azerbaijani or Turkish, Persian, or German. He had several aliases, many passports or identity papers, and moved about Europe, Central Asia, and America for most of his short life of 37 years. He escaped the murderous Bolsheviks with his father by sailing across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, then traveling by camel caravan to Bukhara, from there back to Persia. They crossed into Azerbaijan once more in the short period when the three Transcaucasian countries “enjoyed” independence, then fled to Georgia and hence by ship to Istanbul. Eventually the youthful Nussimbaum spent some time at a strange German school on an island off the coast.
In Berlin, he finished high school while simultaneously enrolled in a school of Oriental Studies. He became a writer, though the transition is not well-described in the book, so that the reader wonders how he jumped from “student” to “writer”. This seemed one of the weaknesses of the book. The chaotic German revolution and economic collapse are covered very well, as is the picture of the Caucasus in 1917-1921. These are some of the most interesting and well-written parts of the book.
As a Jewish refugee of uncertain status in a country of rising anti-Semitism and ultimately Nazism, Nussimbaum had to be quick, brave, and sly to stay one step ahead of the bureaucracy. How he did so is what you will learn by reading the book, as well as what he wrote, his rather weird marriage, his trip to America, and his lifelong hatred of Communism. Nussimbaum embraced a highly romantic Orientalism (nothing to do with Edward Said), converted to Islam, changed his name, and believed in the melding of the Jews with other Asiatic peoples due to his idealized vision of a pre-1917 Caucasus. I’ve only scratched the surface here. After he died, several other people claimed to be Kurban Said, and said they’d written “Ali and Nino”. The Azerbaijanis apparently had taken it as their national novel. Tom Reiss’ task was to separate fact from fiction.
The thing is that it was extremely difficult to get to the bottom of a lot of Nussimbaum’s life. He definitely made up a lot of stuff, claimed to have been many places where he could not have been, to have fought when he was just a kid, etc. Reiss had to fill in many gaps. Is that biography or fiction? Sometimes I felt it was the latter. Plus I ran into some passages like “territories like Turkestan were sparsely populated badlands whose inhabitants were either nomadic hunters or primitive farmers….” (p.54) Maybe he meant Turkmenistan, but there the people were mainly herders. Turkestan had been the home of elaborate civilizations for a couple of millennia. And again, on page 106 he blithely says that the Japanese joined the anti-German/Turkish coalition at the end of WW I. This is completely untrue. Japan joined in the second month of the four year war. And probably a careless phrase on p.109 about Young Turk leaders escaping to Berlin on German torpedo boats. So, you know, I had a few doubts about accuracy here. However, as a biography of a very interesting and little-known person, THE ORIENTALIST is well-worth reading.
For many Americans “Caucasus” may signify those tight little groups that meet during party conventions every four years.A thoughtfully-written history
For many Americans “Caucasus” may signify those tight little groups that meet during party conventions every four years. For others, it might bring to mind a skin disease or a kind of weird cookie that their Ruritanian grandma used to bake. If the name is far from American minds, what can we say about the history of an area between Europe and Asia, between the Black and Caspian seas, and between historical fact and popular fiction? If de Waal’s “The Caucasus: An Introduction” is a top quality journalistic work, this book covers history in an academic, but exceedingly well-written way. Starting in the 17th century, King analyzes the sweep of history that saw Turkey, Persia, and Russia vie for control over 200 years until Russia emerged victorious in the mid-19th century. He uses descriptions by travelers as well as various old histories to tell his tale. A section on “The Imaginary Caucasus” traces the origins of various misconceptions and views of the area, going into a mountain climbing boom in the late 1800s, the “exotic” mountaineers who appeared in the West seeking aid against the Tsars, and the myth of the Circassian beauty. I found that section extremely interesting and thought that many other historians ought to introduce it to their work. The oil boom in Baku, the long struggle by Russia to control the mountain tribes of the north Caucasus, and the quick rise and fall of nations in the 1918-1921 period---these plus many other interesting topics make King’s book an outstanding one.
An important point that he raises repeatedly is that ethnic/religious hatred or enmity, associated with the Caucasus and its recent series of wars, is not an “age old” phenomenon. It was created by the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, fanned by meddling outside powers, and stirred as well as suppressed by Communism. In the past, groups may have lived and married separately, but there was an incredible mixture of peoples and languages. The ethnic divisions and clashes came later. As late as 2010 (now so far away), the author could not predict the rise of illiberal democracy and outright dictators in so much of the world. The three small Caucasus nations of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, plus the other political units dominated by Russia can never be world actors, but only re-actors. Their fates must be determined by others; they must always seek larger protectors. Their future is uncertain, but their past is so well-described and explained in this book....more
The mighty range of the Caucasus mountains runs between the Black Sea and the Caspian. For millennia numerous peoples took reFrom Abkhazia to Zangezur
The mighty range of the Caucasus mountains runs between the Black Sea and the Caspian. For millennia numerous peoples took refuge in its fastnesses, to the north and to the south. Others inhabited the valleys and plains. De Waal’s book covers only those who lived on the south side, the people who today live in the modern nations of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Though those three nations may be dominated by the eponymous groups, there are many others—for example, Abkhaz, Ajarians, Ossetians, Lezgin, Kurds, and Svans. After a quick general history, the book turns to the development and political history of the three modern states---during Tsarist times; in that brief period between 1917 and 1921 when three weak, disorganized states emerged and were overwhelmed by the Bolsheviks; under Communism; and finally after the end of the Soviet Union. If you read newspapers or serious news magazines over the last 30 years, you no doubt ran across articles dealing with all these countries and their multitude of quarrels---among themselves and with their neighbors, Russia, Turkey and Iran. Names like Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nakhichevan, Ajaria, Gamsakhurdia, Shevardnadze, Ter-Petrosian, Kocharian, Aliev and a lot of others that don’t fly off the tongues of Westerners flew across the pages and often disappeared with no trace. Owing to the fickle attention spans of Euro-American news media, you probably were left wondering at times. What the _______ is going on? You did not, without some independent research, find out. For an antidote to this lack of knowledge, I advise you to get hold of this excellent book. It is extremely well-written, avoids national bias, and covers the ground in such a way that you’ll feel that at last you have some idea of the politics and problems of the South Caucasus. The author, a British journalist, obviously knows the area well. In addition to the reportage on the wars, the political struggles, and overall problems, he provides numerous riffs on such subjects as Lermontov (famous 19th century Russian writer), Rustaveli Avenue (the Ginza of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital), how Georgian was Stalin?, Baku jazz, Shusha (the old capital of Nagorno-Karabakh), the Greeks of Abkhazia, and many other, perhaps esoteric, but highly interesting subjects. Several good maps are included....more
Some small countries, by luck or by pluck, have made it onto the world stage and are recognized as “bona fide nations”. You caWhen a nation disappears
Some small countries, by luck or by pluck, have made it onto the world stage and are recognized as “bona fide nations”. You can think of such places as Uruguay, Surinam, Albania, Liechtenstein, Bhutan or Kiribati. Other peoples are not so lucky, for example, the Lakota and Dine of the USA, the Guna of Panama, the Kurds, Tibetans and the Tuvans. There is no reason that the second group are not independent nations while the first are. Of course, in the modern world, there is a question as to what “independence” really means and if nationalism in ever-decreasing circles is a good idea at all. But what of those nations who have almost disappeared entirely? They are perhaps countless especially in the Americas and Australia, but probably throughout the world over the millennia. THE LAST OF THE DEPARTED is an interesting, but tragic novel about the fate of one such “vanished” nation, the Ubykhs of the Caucasus region. It is written by an Abkhaz author, a member of another small, but still very present nationality of the same area. He posits an Abkhaz linguistic researcher from Leningrad who comes to Turkey in 1940 to see if he can find any remaining Ubykhs. He locates only one, lonely centenarian in a remote Anatolian village who still speaks the language as well as Abkhazian. This researcher later dies in WW II and the author “finds” his manuscript at the home of his mother. Zaurkan Zolak, the 100 year old man, tells the story of his life and the expulsion of the Ubykhs from their homeland to the Ottoman Empire, where they died of thirst, starvation, disease, and war, where they never managed to fit in. Zaurkan is the last one of those who departed from the Black Sea shores in 1864. It is certainly a tragic tale which sticks close to historical reality. While it may not be great literature in the sense of psychological depth and complex plot, nor will the reader find much romance, it is well-worth reading (if you can find a copy) just to know events and conditions in a long-forgotten time and place. It is a straight-out narrative of a life story; the biography of a man who did not exist, but might have. You may learn a lot about the Ubykhs---their culture, their religion, and their general behavior. As the book was written in the early 1980s, there was no way that the author could escape praising the Russian Revolution, heralding the rise of freedom and independence for all the peoples "blessed" by its arrival. To criticize its course and results would have meant the book never seeing light of day. I had to cringe a few times when the story reached that section, when Zaurkan was around 80 in any case, but I think we have to realize that the author had little choice. While Shinkuba, the author, refers to Zaurkan as “the last”, in fact, the last Ubykh speaker died in 1992. Though a few people in Turkey are trying to revive the language, I don’t foresee great success. Ubykh had 82 consonants, the most extreme example of phonetic richness ever found, with only two vowels to accompany them! We are poorer for its loss. ...more
Georgia may have been famous in the former Soviet Union as a land of wine, poets, filmmakers, and beautiful sceneryGreat illustrations-----wooden text
Georgia may have been famous in the former Soviet Union as a land of wine, poets, filmmakers, and beautiful scenery. Some Georgian words seem to have circulated among all the republics of that now-vanished empire---tamada, Kinzmarauli, chacha, khachapuri, and so on, but outside that Soviet world, few people know much at all about Georgia. Certainly English-language books on the country are far and few between. In all my life, I've only ever seen one coffee table book on Georgian art and architecture. I found it in a most unlikely place---a weekly country fair on the forested outskirts of Melbourne, Australia---and I traded an original photograph for it. This is it, THE ARTS OF ANCIENT GEORGIA, published in the 1970s with a foreword by the doyen of Georgian studies in the Anglophone world, David Marshall Lang, and with a large number of most excellent photographs by Rolf Schrade. If you are interested in Georgia or its arts, I believe this book is a must. It is thorough, it is incredibly detailed, and very well-organized. It is a book for professionals, for art historians, or for those wanting an extremely painstaking description of Georgian architectural treasures.
Before you rush right out and buy it, let me add one more thing. I don't know if the original were written in Georgian or Russian, but it was translated into German, and this book is the English translation of that ! If you think that might make for a wooden style, you are right. Reading this text is like swimming with your boots on. Not only that, but the authors had to toe the line of political correctness then prevalent in the USSR. That meant looking at the world through spectacles of social Darwinism and Marxist-Leninist theory. Phrases such as "levels of development", "standards of achievement" and "progress made by the Georgian people...in the development of cultural life in their country" pepper the text---all kinds of terminology that implies a hierarchy of cultures in the world (with Europe no doubt at the top). The endpiece map has no boundaries of any kind on it to avoid stimulating the kind of ethnic nastiness that sprang up after 1991. If you want an example of both wooden language and Soviet vocabulary, here is a quote from p.47 "Certain variations emerge in the historical development of these installations [fortifications] which were determined by the particular features of individual stages in the evolution of the feudal system." If you can hack a lot more of this, you are ready to read THE ARTS OF ANCIENT GEORGIA. Otherwise, look at the pictures and use it as a reference book. You won't be sorry....more
In THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN, Carlos Castaneda takes forever to realize that what he is going to learn is not the pharmacopia of YaqGetting to Know Me
In THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN, Carlos Castaneda takes forever to realize that what he is going to learn is not the pharmacopia of Yaqui Indians. We, the readers, get pretty darn fed up with his obtuse wonderings about "what the heck is going on here ?" Castaneda used this literary device to introduce what turned out to be a very long series of books about other ways of seeing the world. I felt somewhat the same about the style in PASSAGE TO ARARAT, though as far as honesty goes, I would put all my money on Arlen, rather than Castaneda. After finishing Arlen's short, but hard-hitting book, I still felt that he had somehow graded, planed, hammered, and sandpapered my emotions into accepting the transition from "I don't give a damn about the past. I didn't really love my father or understand him. I can't identify with Armenians." to feeling Armenian, to feeling outraged about the early 20th century genocide of "his" people. He wrote of this transition as a result of a trip he took to Soviet Armenia in the 1970s. I like how he wrote about Armenia and the people he met there. I even like how he wrote about Istanbul, which he visited afterwards. But I could hardly believe in that gradual transition. I still do feel that it is a literary device to make a "story" out of this work, and I feel that such a device wasn't necessary. I am not Armenian, but as a Jew I can feel pain when I think of genocide, the many other genocides that sit right in front of us----Native Americans, the Middle Passage, Cambodians, Tasmanians, Rwandans, Darfur---you can add your own. How can a man (a literary man who deals naturally in expressing feelings, ideas, longings, and the pain of the human soul) say that the genocide of Armenians meant little to him ? Maybe we don't want to confront our own past, OK, but do I have to be African to mourn the 800,000 dead Rwandans ? If I am not Cambodian, can I never feel shock and sadness at what was done by the Khmer Rouge ? Where are our American Indian brothers and sisters ?---I ask you in God's name.
Other than this comment, I can only say that this is a fine book about Armenia as it was in the 1970s. You get a lot of well-written, easily-digestible Armenian history, up to and including many pages on the genocide. How long is there going to be an argument about "whether it occurred or not ?" What, did a million people just up and commit suicide ? There is very little about the Soviet aspect of being in the Soviet Union, which since 1991 is beside the point now. I see there is an updated edition, which I did not have. It is also a fine book about changes of heart, even if I still do doubt it could have been that sequenced....more
Detectives and divorce lawyers like to probe into their cases, pulling out causes and motivations, faults and crimes. Getting to the bottom of Armenia
Detectives and divorce lawyers like to probe into their cases, pulling out causes and motivations, faults and crimes. They talk about "getting to the bottom" of it all. Maybe they can do it too. When authors of novels build characters, tell their stories, they can succeed in getting to the bottom of everything---if they want---because, after all, they've created everything from scratch. On the contrary, I know as an anthropologist that you can never, ever get to the bottom of an entire people or culture. You can hardly even get close. Large groups of people are just too diverse. History is too complex, particularly if that history extends over several thousand years. So, what I'm saying is that you can find out what makes a clock tick, you can learn if such and such a people produced pottery or not, but you can't discover what has kept Armenians going through centuries of trouble. Reading Marsden's THE CROSSING PLACE only confirms what I think---he doesn't even get close. On the other hand, maybe that desire was only an excuse to travel around Europe and the Middle East to see what remained of the ancient communities of Armenians that once traded, lived, and built churches from Europe to China. If so, then fair enough, it was a good idea which has produced an interesting, well-written book of travels. Marsden visits not only the scenes of the 1915 genocide, weirdly quiet in Syria and Lebanon just before the first Gulf War in 1990, but also Venice, Israel, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, and several parts of the former USSR. He meets the last remnants of the Armenian population, most of which has left for greener pastures with the fall of Communism or because of the Lebanese civil war. At last Marsden arrives in Armenia itself, just emerging from the ruins of the Soviet Union, fighting for its survival as a nation with Azerbaijan, which was backed by Soviet forces at the time. Marsden travels through the country, eventually reaching the very bottom, by the southern frontier with Iran. He DID get to the bottom of Armenia, but only physically.
The author's approach is extremely haphazard, extremely romantic. He meets a number of important Armenians, but gets little substantive information from them. He visits sites of massacres and seiges, interviews a few ancient survivors, but says nothing new. He meets a number of people he didn't like--and they always speak pidgin English, unlike his own well-modulated tones. Everything American earns his special disdain. Marsden's travails with visas, bad transport, scarce food, or dirty hotels loom large, as does the hospitality of the Armenians everywhere he goes. The Armenians are indeed a hospitable people; they are tough; they are survivors, like the Jews, they have had to use their wits to get by for centuries; despite the genocide they are very much still around. But why them when other peoples have disappeared ? Marsden offers no clue. Armenian readers may warm to the author's attentions, but he doesn't fill in the gaps for others. He ignores works of history, anthropology, or any academic subject whatsoever. Being academic is certainly not required, but you must have SOME facts, some kind of argument, otherwise, you wind up with travel episodes---"I went here, I went there". Why ? Maybe because Philip Marsden likes to travel rough in out of the way places. In short, THE CROSSING PLACE may reveal many facts about Armenians, about Armenia in 1989-90, about the genocide, for readers who aren't aware of them, you may enjoy vivid scenes and some intelligent philosophical musings but don't expect to get to the bottom of anything....more
In the mid-19th century, Armenians had already been divided for a long time. Their traditional homeland in Anatolia was Armenia rises again, and again
In the mid-19th century, Armenians had already been divided for a long time. Their traditional homeland in Anatolia was split up between three empires---Russia, Iran and the Ottomans. Most people there lived either as peasants or townsmen in forgotten corners. Another large segment of the Armenians lived in distant large cities such as Istanbul, Izmir, Isfahan, or Tiflis. The two sections did not often mix. Awareness of Armenia's history, culture and even language was at an all-time low. Inspired by the struggles and movements of other peoples, mostly in Europe, the Armenian intellectuals began to build an "identity", to create a nation where none had existed for half a millennium. Strands of socialism and Marxism wove their way through the national struggle, but they always played second fiddle to the cause of the nation. Rallying around the Apostolic Church and the ancient Armenian language with its own script, but developing strong disagreements among themselves over tactics and directions, the Armenians moved towards a nation state of their own, to be located in Anatolia. Unlike the many Balkan nationalities, the Baltics, Israel, and indeed Italy and Germany too, the Armenians were doomed to failure. Taking advantage of the chaos of World War I, some nationalists demonstrated and fought for a new Armenia, to arise on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. The idea backfired and led to genocide. The remnants of the Anatolian Armenians, if they did not flee south to Arab cities, to North America or Europe, wound up in a corner of historic Armenia that remained under control of Russia. After a two year period of independence, that Armenia became part of the Soviet Union. Suffering the vicissitudes of life in the USSR, but transformed into an urban, literate, and nationalistic society, Armenia finally re-emerged on the world stage in 1991, impoverished and embattled once again.
Suny's book on Armenia in Modern History deserves high marks for trying to avoid the nationalistic slant that disfigures so many "modern histories". As he himself notes, "the field of Armenian history is marked by unquestioning nationalism, narcissism, and ethnic-pride boosting." Challenging the accepted mythology always makes interesting reading and LOOKING TOWARDS ARARAT is no exception. Suny concentrates on the Armenians of Anatolia and the Caucasus---those who lived further away from the traditional homeland appear only in passing. The book has three themes: the nature of Armenian-ness and the "idea" of Armenia, the struggle to create an Armenian state, and the transformation of the Armenian people from peasants and urbanites in diaspora to an urban, industrial, literate people living in a truncated-but-viable national state. Two issues that are also discussed are the genocide (Chap. 6) and the events that led to a) Armenia's separation from the USSR and b) the war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s. The author covers this last part in blow-by-blow detail. Other than the glaring lack of a good map, I have only praise for this book and for the author in trying to cross through what is no doubt a minefield of angry nationalist opinion. I learned a great deal and can recommend the book to anyone who is seriously interested in the topic. It isn't bedtime reading. It's academic, but still the most useful, well-written book I've found that deals with modern Armenian history....more
OK, so Nicholas Griffin's got a knack for writing. You can't fault him on his skills: he vividly traces the life of the famous (Dazedly Seeking Shamil
OK, so Nicholas Griffin's got a knack for writing. You can't fault him on his skills: he vividly traces the life of the famous (to some) Caucasus mountain warrior leader, Shamil, who held off the Russians for over three decades in the nineteenth century. He weaves in the lives of various Russians and others (including a French woman captive) who knew him or had to deal with him, shows how the Russians consistently misjudged their ability to capture or kill him and bring the resistance of the Muslim mountaineers of the north Caucasus to a halt. In their misguided tactics, the Russians wasted the lives of thousands of their own men, and killed huge numbers of Chechen, Avar, and Lezgin villagers (not to mention a host of other, smaller peoples) to almost no avail. Shamil was able to unite the usually-fractured tribes of the region under the banner of Islam, though he was not above murdering dissenters. Griffin has brought the amazing, violent story of the long anti-Russian resistance to Western readers again, albeit with a fair measure of mythology and little background information for those "few readers" who aren't up on Caucasian ethnography.
But that's not all. He set off with four companions on a very dazed, unorganized trip around the Caucasus region with minimal preparation and planning. His skillful writing contrasts almost hilariously with the group's utter inability to get along or even to know what to do next. The "interpreter" can hardly speak English and is plastered out of his mind most of the time. Nobody seems to know anything about the customs or languages of the people they meet (and need to survive). They drink vodka, bicker, and fight, and even take up using boxing gloves against each other to the great amusement of some lower-depths locals. Becoming drunken clowns hardly is the way to learn about history or culture, no matter how "untouristy" it may seem to the participants. And, though Shamil came from Dagestan, and many of his supporters came from Chechnya, and many famous battles occurred in those two places, the group failed to get across the border into Russia at all. They did spend a fair bit of time in Armenia, though, where nobody had even heard of Shamil. They didn't seem to be able to figure out why not. Nice going, boys.
So, it's a grab bag. But, I do admit, a well-written grab bag which I enjoyed a lot. The parallels between Shamil the Imam's war against Russia and the two Chechen wars since 1994, are clear. Quite a few errors that I (a non-expert) could pick up. I wonder what the experts would say. On page 129, he's got Shamil at the wrong age. He says Armenian is the oldest alphabet. It's not---google Bishop Mashtots and see. He writes "Arzrum" instead of the international "Erzurum". On page 188, he talks of the railways carrying the Chechen exiles south from Grozny in 1944---uh, that would be east or north. On page 224---he mentions Basayev's attack on Chechnya in 1994. It was Dagestan, no? These may be pedantic quibbles, but they also may indicate that the editing, like the trip itself, was a bit chaotic and ill-considered. But if you get this book, you will enjoy it anyhow....more
Robert Kaplan doesn't travel first class, he keeps his ear to the ground, and he pays attention to details.interesting analysis over traveller's tales
Robert Kaplan doesn't travel first class, he keeps his ear to the ground, and he pays attention to details. Unlike most of our leaders, he knows his history and doesn't believe it's "bunk". He may like to use the words "national character" where I would use "culture", but if you read this brilliant book you'll see he's talking about the same thing. Kaplan cannot be an expert on every place he goes; perhaps his pictures are either inaccurate or stereotypical at times, but he has a feel for the main point, for the big picture. After the 77 reviews already here, nobody needs another one telling you what this book is about. I would prefer to say why I think it's a great book. First, it's very well-written. There are interesting observations and facts on every page. History and religion are woven in very well. Second, he's a reasonable man, even if, as people point out, he's not that optimistic. We don't need more pie-in-the-sky optimism or undue pessimism. We need realism. Third, he doesn't try to come up with solutions. It's not up to some journalist from the USA to decide what would be best for all the countries concerned. They'll have to work it out, or it will be worked out by history anyhow. Sometimes it's impossible to predict the future. Despite all his insights and incisive comments, Kaplan could not foresee the US invasion of Iraq with its many repercussions. Well, who could have seen that piece of idiocy coming? But fourth, I like the book because his comments so often hit home. For example, he predicted decline and near-collapse in Romania and Bulgaria if they didn't get into the European Union and NATO. Europe obviously saw it the same way. They got in. He points out again and again that just because a few blocks of a capital city rock with Western goodies and flashy cars doesn't mean economic success. He picked Israel and Turkey as the most vibrant and successful societies of all he visited. This certainly has held true. As states and blocs slowly realign in the Middle East, their stability will become ever more evident. He writes that Gaza and the West Bank might become alienated from each other and that is exactly what has happened. He asks, "If Vladimir Putin consolidates Russia as a new and aggressive autocracy, what will the West do ?" Exactly again. He appraises the Communist legacy as far more devastating than just Russian colonial rule or lack of capitalist knowhow. He links rising violence in the Middle East with large numbers of unemployed, frustrated youth. And of course, the most important of all---that democracy cannot be implanted from outside. It has to grow. Elections without a civil society and strong institutions mean the rise of nationalist or fundamentalist parties that will bring more chaos, not less. Perhaps others have written similar things, but few create "the big picture" the way Kaplan does. Some of what he says may be wrong, but the idea is to THINK about the problems, to grasp the interrelations of the several countries he visited, to try to gather together the multitude of impressions and glean some overarching tendencies. I think that is why this is an interesting book, why I have given it five stars....more
In the nineteenth century the Russian Empire was expanding east and south. It annexed all of Georgia between 1801 and 180Chechens vs. Russians Round 1
In the nineteenth century the Russian Empire was expanding east and south. It annexed all of Georgia between 1801 and 1804, but in between Russia and its new acquisition lay the Caucasus Mountains, a row of giant peaks lying between the Black Sea and the Caspian. Among these peaks lived numerous peoples speaking a myriad languages, mostly but not all, Muslim. They never agreed to be part of the Tsarist imperium, but their raids and depredations gave the Russians no peace. The Tsar decided that they must be conquered. This was easier said than done. It is estimated that over the next half century, the Russians lost half a million men to disease and in the endless battles with the guerrilla-style Caucasian fighters who, disunited at first, later united under a single, Islamic flag---the flag of a formidable individual named Shamyl. Shamyl, known in Europe as `the Lion of Daghestan', surrendered at last in 1859 and finished his days under house arrest in Kaluga, Russia. [He actually died on the haj in Arabia.] The Caucasians were subdued, but not forever. In World War II, some of them welcomed the Germans as liberators and were exiled en masse afterwards to the barren wastes of Central Asia. After the end of the Soviet Union, Caucasians again rose up, resulting in two more wars between Russia and tiny Chechnya. The struggle continues in the region, if at a lower level. Even the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013 had its roots in this endless struggle against domination.
Blanch picked a topic not often discussed in the West. Growing up, we never heard of Chechens, Daghestan, Cherkess, or Kabards. Shamyl was totally unknown, as was his effort to unite all the Caucasian peoples as Murids (fighters) under his flag.. If you'd like to read about it, you might try this book, but I'll give you a warning. This is Romantic History with capitalization intended. Can this writer ever mention a market without lovingly speaking of spices and silks ? (Whatever happened to buckets and nails ?) Can she avoid detailing the beauty of female costume in the Russian court, the colorful, dashing uniforms, the malachite columns in some palaces, the troves of pearls, emeralds, and amethysts ? Not once, but every time. Do you like sentences that speak of "...the dark force of Shamyl who broods behind everything, a mysterious and satanic majesty enthroned among his mountain peaks." ? What about "...that densely dark glossy hair of the Asiatics, which seems plumage rather than hair..."? Talk about exoticizing "the Other" !! Then there is Shamyl, so many times, "his pale face inscrutable, framed in its dark beard, scarlet with henna, vivid against his sombre black bourka, and huge chieftain's turban. His slit-eyes still glittered as he surveyed his threatened mountain kingdom." Oi gavult ! An Armenian appears...."he possessed the astuteness of all his race." If this sort of lush verbiage and stereotype is your bag, you're going to love this book. I felt it should have been better-edited, her super-romantic tendencies reined in, and more attention paid to standard spelling of names, and getting her facts straight. Many phrases and sentences are repeated. But, you know, it's an interesting subject....more
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