Ironically, the Chechens, a fierce warrior people, were unknown to the world before President Boris Yeltsin invaded and destroyed their homeland in 1994. The violence of the Russian reaction to Chechnya's self-declared independence was born of a long history of hostility and misunderstanding.

Chechnya recounts the story of the violent struggle for independence and the Kremlin politics that precipitated it. Historically, the Chechens' right clan and religious structures made them especially resistant to assimilation by Russia. In 1944 they were one of the largest ethnic groups to be deported en masse by Stalin. Their history should have warned any Moscow strategist that, if forced to, many would fight a savage war to the end to defend themselves. And in the end the Chechen fighters achieved the almost impossible when they defeated the Russian army and forced them to withdraw.

The product of investigative and on-the-scenes reporting by two established journalists in Chechnya over a three year period between 1994 and 1997, Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal's captivating account of the Chechens is also a portrait of Russia's failed attempt to make the transition to a democratic society.