A Small Victorious War

by Thomas de Waal and Carlotta Gall

A very thorough, practical guide to the first of two post-Soviet wars in Chechnya. The authors interviewed everyone connected with the war, except maybe Boris Yeltsin. Their book tells the story of how and why newly independent Russia, in 1991, first gave its various ethnic minorities what the president called “as much independence as you can swallow” and then, a couple of years later, reined them back in – and how Chechnya, alone, refused to give in, leading to war.