From Stalingrad to Grozny: Patriotism, political pressure, and literature in the war reporting of Vassily Grossman and Anna Politkovskaya

Comparing the work of the 20th century Soviet journalist and writer, Vassily Grossman, with that of his compatriot, Anna Politkovskaya, almost half a century later, this article examines the two journalists’ writing for what it tells us about the changing nature of Russian journalism, and reporter involvement in the coverage of war. Grossman was reporting on his country’s fight for survival in a war with Nazi Germany; Politkovskaya had no peer in her coverage of the bloodiest consequence of the collapse of that country, the Soviet Union: the wars in Chechnya. It also considers the literary nature of Grossman and Politkovskaya’s reporting. The article argues that the two journalists’ work has significance far beyond the time when they were reporting, and should therefore be more widely read and studied for what it tells us about covering conflict, and especially civilian suffering and, in the case of Politkovskaya, counter-insurgency

Chechnya: the causes of a protracted post-Soviet conflict

The conflict in Chechnya is one of the most protracted of all the post-Soviet conflicts and is the only violent secessionist conflict to have occurred within the Russia Federation. The article evaluates the main explanations for the conflict and challenges historicist and ‘ethnic’ war accounts. It presents an alternative analysis which focuses on the interrelationship and combined effect of history, contingency, the instrumentalization of conflict by political leaderships, intra-Chechen cleavages, political economy, sectional interests and international factors. The article views the 1994-6 and 1991-present wars as part of a continuum, and discusses how the dynamics of the conflict have changed over time, as new radicalising elements such as Islamic fundamentalism and Russian nationalism under Putin have become more salient

Hierarchy of governance institutions and the pecking order of privatisation: Central–Eastern Europe and Central Asia reconsidered

This article discusses property rights, corporate governance frameworks and privatisation outcomes in the Central–Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA) region. We argue that while CEECA still suffers from deficient ‘higher order’ institutions, this is not attracting sufficient attention from international institutions like EBRD and the World Bank, which focus on ‘lower order’ indicators. We discuss factors that may alleviate the negative impact of the weakness in institutional environment and argue for the pecking order of privatisation, where equivalent privatisation is given a priority but speed is not compromised.