Book 191: Chechnya (English) – Я – Черченец! = I am a Chechen! (German SADULAEV)

 

It’s hard to be a Chechen. If you’re a Chechen, you must feed and shelter your enemy when he comes knocking as a guest; you must give up your life for a girl’s honour without a second thought; you must kill your blood foe by plunging a dagger into his chest, because you can never shoot anyone in the back; you must offer your last piece of bread to your friend; you must get out from your car to stand and greet an elderly man passing on foot; you must never run away, even if your enemy are a thousand strong and you stand no chance of victory, you must take up the fight all the same. And you can never cry, no matter what happens. Your beloved women may leave you, poverty may lay waste to your home, your comrades may lie bleeding in your arms, but you may never cry if you are a Chechen. If you are a man. Only once, once in a lifetime, may you cry; when your mother dies.

 

Chechnya is the stillborn Caucasus nation under the Russian Federation. Under the USSR the Chechens were bundled with their western Ingush brothers into the snappily named Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. (’Autonomous’ is as meaningless in the Soviet as in the Chinese context). Of course the Russians (both Tsarist and Communist) were famous for exiling unwanted individuals to Siberia, but during WWII Stalin (born in nearby Georgia) exiled the ENTIRE Chechen and Ingush peoples to the USSR’s dumping ground, Kazakhstan. They eventually found their way home and when the USSR fell apart found themselves under the Russian Federation. The idea was that the SSRs (such as Russia, Ukraine and Georgia) would become independent and inviolable (a principle that Putin obviously no longer recognises), while the ASSRs had no such luck, even though the Chechens would seem to have nothing in common with the Russians. Split from Ingushetia, they declared independence from Russia in 1991 but the Russians sent in troops to crush them in 1994, destroying much of the capital, Grozny (which ominously means ‘terrible’ in Russian – who call Ivan the Terrible Ivan Grozny). The fighting ended in a ceasefire in 1996 and peace treaty in 1997, so Chechnya gained de-facto independence as the Republic of Ichkeria. In 1999-2000 Russia invaded again, after the Chechens had meddled in neighbouring Dagestan, again destroying cities and killing many civilians. After the formal end of this Second Chechen War, Chechen guerrillas continued to fight and terrorists spread the war into Russia itself. This, along with many kidnappings and much corruption, didn’t promote much sympathy for the cause even outside Russia. Chechnya is now ruled by Putin’s amazingly corrupt henchman Ramzan Kadyrov, perhaps a foretaste of what he foresaw for Ukraine.

So, on to the novel, I am a Chechen! It begins with an apology for the narrator’s absence to his native land (the author, too, now lives in St Petersburg). The land is good and is so closely personified as the narrator’s mother that it is often not possible to tell which of the two is actually meant. On the other hand, the sky, from which the Russians rained death, is the enemy.

We then follow the stories of a series of innocent victims of the war, including those of two childhood friends, perceived as a Chechen and a Russian, who both turn out to be half of each, but who end up on different sides in a devastating final encounter.

There is some of what might be considered anti-Russianism, which might be expected in the context, but not total (in any case, some of the major Chechen characters are half Russian). But there is also some unprovoked anti-Semitism – whether this reflects the author’s view, or just that of some of his characters, I don’t know.

The Chechen ‘code’, as summarised in the quote above, reminded me of the traditional ethos of some other mountain peoples, like the Albanians and the Afghans. The long-standing love of weaponry, including the claim that Chechen men love their guns more than their women, wouldn’t seem to win them many friends. 

The description of some of the (banned) weapons used by the Russians, such as cluster bombs and vacuum bombs, are graphic. The sick minds who are responsible for the “supply chains” for these inhumane things, in Russia or other countries, from the scientists to the soldiers, really should be put convicted for crimes against humanity. The thought of a vacuum bomb being used on the civilians sheltering in the subways in Ukraine doesn’t bear thinking about.

I felt that the side trip into New Orleans, with some rather nauseating excursions into violence and porn, was irrelevant to the story, unless the point was that so many Chechens are living in exile. I thought it could well have been cut. And I felt the ending was weak.

But on the whole, while the novel is totally depressing and fatalistic, it is very beautifully written and it was well worth reading as the missiles were hitting Kiev.

 

Sadulaev, German (1973 – ), I am a Chechen!, translated from Russian by Anna Gunin, London, Vintage, 2011, ISBN 9780099532354

Originally published in Russian as Я – черченец!, 2006