The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict, and Nationhood in the Caucasus [Hardcover]

A brief history of the Caucusus region during and after the Post-Soviet Wars

The Post-Soviet Warsis a comparative account of the organized violence in the Caucusus region, looking at four key areas: Chechnya, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Dagestan. Z?rchers 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. Z?rcher carefully looks at the conditions within each regioneconomic, ethnic, religious, and politicalto 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.

Democracy is commonly paired with order while ethnic violence is paired with strife and chaos. The Post-Soviet Wars painstakingly documents that both violence and stability have institutional reasons and must be organized politically by specific human agencies. This lesson is obviously relevant to the contemporary discussion of democratization as well as & failing states, let alone the effects wrought by the American war on terror. With his exciting narratives and compelling analysis of the twentieth century's & Caucasian Wars, Z?rcher brings events on the periphery of Europe into the mainstream of social science and comparative politics. Disputing existing explanations of internal wars, he shows that rather than mountainoul“!