I was asked by the good folks over at Antelope Hill to review a recent translation of theirs and provide a foreword. The short of it is that Chechen Blues is worth the read and worth the purchase, if you ask me. The long of it I provide below.
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History is replete with forgotten, unpopular wars - America is no stranger to them, having muddled through several in recent memory. Even fewer people know about the forgotten wars of foreign nations like the First Chechen war waged by Boris Yeltsin’s criminally incompetent government and the subsequent successful operation that restored some semblance of order to the region under Vladimir Putin.
Chechen Blues, however, is not your typical unpopular war novel in the same vein as the various Vietnam or Korea war memoirs in the West and is thankfully short on moralizing and philosophizing with Alexander Prokhanov instead throwing us, quite unexpectedly into a world teetering on the edge of the supernatural. Prokhanov demonstrates his own affinity for word-sorcery with his dark, semi-mystical descriptions of the surreal sights that await the Russian soldiers.
Alexander Prokhanov begins his story with the preparations for the disastrous Russian incursion into the Chechen capital of Grozny. There, among the armored vehicles and the veritable tank city parked in the bleak steppe, we meet the officers of the Russian Armed Forces - personalities that seem almost plucked out of the depths of the Russian oversoul itself.
The haunting sight of faded Communist frescos, the murders of crows that harass the Russian tank column, and the madman of Grodno all greet the reader and the Russian soldiers as they make their first foray into the city. Put another way - we begin to realize that we’re not exactly in Kansas anymore. And just like the Russian officers themselves, the reader is given ample warning that this is not going to be a simple joyride through the city.
This translation of Alexander Prokhanov’s work does more than just familiarize English-speakers with yet another forgotten, unpopular war. Its is a trip into a time of unravelling, where reality itself seemed to be falling out for people living through it. Chechen Blues is not just a war story, but a period piece set in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR that captures the confusion and turbulence of the 90s in Russia. We see it in the disorganization of the military command, hear it in the snippets of conversations between the soldiers and we feel it as state-imposed atheism crumbles and gives way to omens, bad luck and cries of “Allah Akbar!" from treacherous Chechen rebels.