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A Dirty War
A Dirty War
Oct 10, 2024 9:24 AM

Author:Anna Politkovskaya,Thomas de Waal,John Crowfoot

A Dirty War

The Chechen War was supposed to be over in 1996 after the first Yeltsin campaign, but in the summer of 1999, the new Putin government decided, in their own words, to 'do the job properly'. Before all the bodies of those who had died in the first campaign had been located or identified, many more thousands would be slaughtered in another round of fighting.

The first account to be written by a Russian woman, A Dirty War is an edgy and intense study of a conflict that shows no sign of being resolved. Exasperated by the Russian government's attempt to manipulate media coverage of the war, journalist Anna Politkovskaya undertook to go to Chechnya, to make regular reports and keep events in the public eye.

In a series of despatches from July 1999 to January 2001 she vividly describes the atrocities and abuses of war, whether it be the corruption endemic in post-Communist Russia, in particular the government and the military, or the spurious arguments and abominable behaviour of the Chechen authorities. In these courageous reports, Politkovskaya excoriates male stupidity and brutality on both sides of the conflict and interviews the civilians whose homes and communities have been laid waste, leaving them nowhere to live, and nothing and no one to believe in.

Reviews

If you haven't done so yet, read Politkovskaya's books: A Dirty War and Putin's Russia

—— Independent

Read this book to discover the true nature of the Russian state under Putin, a state where corruption, torture and murder are franchised out to his friends and the friends of his friends... Its assault on the Russian state is electrifying

—— Observer

Politkovskaya chronicles the deathly thud of the Russian war machine and the anguished cries of those crushed in its tread...[She] was awarded Amnesty's prestigious Global award for human-rights journalism. Maybe there is yet hope that the truth will out

—— Guardian

One of the most respected and feared journalists in the world...Despite death threats, she defied state intimidation with dispatches that investigated the true nature of the Russian occupation and documented atrocities against the Chechen people

—— Daily Telegraph

Part history lesson, part cultural essay, The Bridge's slender size does not diminish it's riches

—— Viola Fort , Guardian

Bernard Donoughue's superb Downing Street diaries

—— Matthew D'Ancona , Sunday Telegraph

An absorbing political thriller written by someone on the inside track

—— Brian MacArthur , Daily Telegraph

Donoughue's diaries of the death rattles of Labour's last administration should be essential reading at No. 10. Books such as this rise far above mere political gossip: they are essential reading for any member of British government

—— Dominic Lawson , Sunday Times

Historical biography's newest star

—— Bookseller

His conclusions neatly balance the equally pertinent questions of why Communist systems collapse, and why they lasted so long

—— Stephen Howe , Independent

One of Britain's leading experts on communism provides a grimly humorous and richly anecdotal study

—— George Pendles , Financial Times, History books of the year

Scholarly, well-paced and critical...few can match him for insider knowledge

—— Tristram Hunt , Sunday Times

Balanced, insightful, illuminated by intriguing detail and flashes of humour, this worldwide panorama is a miracle of compression

—— Christopher Hirst , Independent

This superb book gives the history of the ideology and the reasons for its decline

—— Simon Heffer , Telegraph

It reads like Sovietology rendered by John le Carré

—— Timothy Snyder

The book is well written with flashes of mordant humour and sufficient records of personal foibles and institutional stupidity to keep the reader going through some dreadful moments of human history

—— Political Studies Review
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