BOOK REVIEW: The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict and Nationhood in the Caucasus. By Christoph Zürcher

Gebundene Ausgabe: 285 Seiten
Verlag: New York Univ Pr; Auflage: illustrated edition (15. Dezember 2007)
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN-10: 0814797091
ISBN-13: 978-0814797099
Größe und/oder Gewicht: 22,9 x 15,5 x 2,5 cm

Kurzbeschreibung "The Post-Soviet Wars" is a comparative account of the organized violence in the Caucusus region, looking at four key areas: Chechnya, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Dagestan. Zurcher's goal is to understand the origin and nature of the violence in these regions, the response and suppression from the post-Soviet regime and the resulting outcomes, all with an eye toward understanding why some conflicts turned violent, whereas others not. Notably, in Dagestan actual violent conflict has not erupted, an exception of political stability for the region. The book provides a brief history of the region, particularly the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting changes that took place in the wake of this toppling. Zurcher carefully looks at the conditions within each region - economic, ethnic, religious, and political - to make sense of why some turned to violent conflict and some did not and what the future of the region might portend. This important volume provides both an overview of the region that is both up-to-date and comprehensive as well as an accessible understanding of the current scholarship on mobilization and violence.

Synopsis "The Post-Soviet Wars" is a comparative account of the organized violence in the Caucusus region, looking at four key areas: Chechnya, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Dagestan. Zurcher's goal is to understand the origin and nature of the violence in these regions, the response and suppression from the post-Soviet regime and the resulting outcomes, all with an eye toward understanding why some conflicts turned violent, whereas others not. Notably, in Dagestan actual violent conflict has not erupted, an exception of political stability for the region. The book provides a brief history of the region, particularly the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting changes that took place in the wake of this toppling. Zurcher carefully looks at the conditions within each region - economic, ethnic, religious, and political - to make sense of why some turned to violent conflict and some did not and what the future of the region might portend. This important volume provides both an overview of the region that is both up-to-date and comprehensive as well as an accessible understanding of the current scholarship on mobilization and violence.


Georgian Times , February 25: The earliest books that came out about the Caucasus after the collapse of the Soviet Union were firsthand accounts of events. Now, a second spate of books, which attempts to apply analytical frameworks to the turbulent events that occurred after the breakup of the Soviet Union, are beginning to appear. Christoph Zürcher’s The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict and Nationhood in the Caucasus falls into this category. The book examines where in the Caucasus wars occurred (Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Chechnya) and where they didn’t (Dagestan and Ajara) and places those case studies within the context of international quantitative literature that attempts to explain why internal wars occur.

Those who are knowledgeable about the Caucasus will find much information they have already come across. However, for those interested in international conflict who possess little regional understanding, the tersely written detail provides a good overview.

To whet your appetite for some of the details about why wars started in the Caucasus, Zürcher argues that, in Georgia, anti-Soviet rhetoric allowed for no maintenance of Soviet institutions, increasing the likelihood of conflict, since state institutions utterly collapsed as a result. Furthermore, the fallback on nationalist rhetoric, which was seen as the only way of creating a cohesive political force, then alienated both Abkhaz and Ossetians. Zürcher, perhaps controversially, also claims that Armenian politics looked very similar to Baltic politics (and different from Georgian and Chechen) in that the same type of state weakness did not exist. However, Zürcher makes the claim, which has been echoed in much of the democratization commentary about Armenia, that instead of the Baltic states’ orientation towards Europe, Armenia’s politicians unified around war in Nagorno-Karabakh, creating an anti-reform minded regime.

From a more technical standpoint, the book is a rare breed within political science literature, as it is specifically concerned about testing existing theories about internal wars by examining a series of case studies. In doing so, the volume seeks to refine those theories. While this type of book is out of vogue because the academic nomenklatura does not perceive the endeavor as groundbreaking, it serves an important role in refining theories, something Zürcher does throughout the book.

So what does Zürcher find in relationship to the international quantitative literature? Several variables that are generally cited as determinants of internal war do not appear to hold true in the Caucasus: low economic development and mountainous terrain do not help in explaining the conflagrations in the Caucasus. Despite the Caucasus being mountainous, most conflicts occurred in urban environs or in the plains. In the conflicts where mountains played a role, the guerillas (which conflict theory supposes are aided by mountains) had the mountains against them. In fact, Zürcher seeks to refine the theory about the relationship between mountains and war and suggests several plausible alternative hypotheses, part of the intellectual merit of the book. One interesting hypothesis is that mountains are a proxy for the cheap recruitment of male soldiers, since mountainous areas often have high unemployment rates and hence a male population ready to mobilize.

The volume also reinforces the idea found in the international quantitative literature that states that weakness often plays an important role – perhaps much more so than underdevelopment – as does the role of one ethnic group constituting the majority of the population. This ethnicity argument is well-highlighted in Zürcher’s case study of Dagestan, where ethnicity did not play the same role as in Georgia, Armenia or Chechnya, in part because of the fact that no ethnic group had a majority.

Overall, this reviewer found the findings sound, but would have like to see more analysis of some of the interesting proxy variables discussed above. This, however, could form the basis of a new and fruitful conflict research agenda in the Caucasus.

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