From The Medical Dictionary of the Union of Soviet PhysiciansIf I had ever thought about Chechnya before, I thought of the terrorists with explosives strapped to their chests taking a movie theater or a primary school hostage; willing to blow up themselves and scores of innocents in the names of independence and their God. I thought of Putin -- post-9/11 -- saying to the United States (paraphrased), "Maybe now you understand why we've had to be so hard on the extremists who have been attacking Russians within our own borders". I was unsurprised when the Boston Marathon bombers turned out to be radicalised Chechens; these people are all crazy, right? What a feat, then, that in A Constellation of Vital Phenomena author Anthony Marra was able to penetrate my ignorance and humanise the Chechen people for me, and now I only wonder, "Why did I need this lesson? When did I start listening to Vladimir Putin?"
Life: a constellation of vital phenomena -- organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.
Before reading this book, I knew nothing about the history of Chechnya, and through many characters' back stories (including references to one character's 3300 page history of the republic that stretches back to prehistoric times), I learned enough to feel great sympathy for the Chechens, and in a nutshell: Chechnya has always sat at the political and religious intersections between Turkey and Russia and has been resisting Russian rule for nearly 500 years. Although they fought with the Soviet Union during WWII, ethnic Chechens were distrusted and expelled to Kazakhstan in 1944 -- where 60% of them died -- and Russians were encouraged to emigrate to Chechnya to take their places. Chechens were allowed to return in 1956 but their country had been "Russified", with top jobs going to ethnic Russians. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990 and Boris Yeltsin encouraged the republics to "grab as much sovereignty as they could swallow", Chechnya attempted to declare independence but Moscow said, "Not you guys: you're too small, and besides, all of our pipelines run through Chechnya to bring oil from the Caucasus". Since then, there have been two Chechen Wars, with Russian troops suppressing the rebels who would force independence. As ethnic Chechens tend to be Muslim, radical Middle Eastern groups began to arm the rebels in the name of jihad, and although Russia has so far succeeded in preventing the republic's separation -- and the leader of Chechnya is a Moscow-appointee -- there is a growing movement to declare Chechnya a Muslim caliphate.
But although the history of Chechnya up to 2004 is slowly revealed in A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, this isn't the story of the rebels or the "Feds"; this is the story of the ordinary people who suffer outside of the headline news; the villagers and urban dwellers, and what it takes to survive in a world of landmines, torture, and informants. Through an interconnected web of characters -- the true constellation that signifies life -- Marra is able to rationalise the actions that at first appear despicable and also to end tragedies with a note of hope: the dead will live on through the people that they've touched.
We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.This is my very favourite type of book: I learned something, I felt something, and the language and the structure were also intellectually and emotionally satisfying. Of course all Chechens aren't terrorists, and to the people who were just trying to survive, it made little difference to them whether the men marching into the village -- or demanding medical attention at the bombed-out hospital -- were rebels or Feds. And somehow, in the middle of all this, characters crack jokes, feel both lust and love, and are able to believe that normal life will return one day. This is an emotionally heavy book without being depressing and I would recommend it to absolutely everyone. (Notice how I didn't really include any of the plot? I don't want to give anything away on this one -- read it!)
No fundamentalist undercurrent ran through the national culture before the first war. Sufism had always been the predominant Muslim sect, and Wahhabism was a foreign, wartime import. A few times a year, Arab Wahhabis came through the village in search of recruits. They promised rations, shelter, an eternity in Paradise, and, until that day of glorious martyrdom, a monthly salary of two hundred and fifty U.S. dollars. Few young men followed the monochromatic Wahhabi faith, but many were quite willing to be radicalized for a monthly salary that eclipsed what they would otherwise earn in a year. The war of independence so quickly conflated with jihad because no one cared about the self-determination of a small landlocked republic. Arab states would gladly fund a war of religion, but not one of nationalism. And in this way it didn’t matter who won the war between the Feds and fundamentalists: the notion of a democratic and fully sovereign Chechnya would be crushed regardless.And I also wanted to add that, when looking into the history of Chechen terrorism, I saw quite a few sources that believe Russia has engaged in a bunch of false flag attacks against itself in order to justify crushing Chechen independence. I may not trust Putin, but the anti-conspiracy theorist in my heart doesn't want to believe he would blow up his own people for so little gain. Looking for the exact quote that Putin used in the wake of 9/11, I found multiple sources saying that Putin is currently ready to reveal Russia's satellite pictures from 9/11 that show it was a false flag attack that the U.S. perpetrated against itself. This I refuse to believe but I only bring it up to show how hard it is to know what the truth is out there -- and to reiterate that I am grateful for the education on Chechnya's history that I gleaned from A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (and the further research that it prompted) and am abashed that it took a work of fiction to tell me what I already knew: people are people all over the world, just trying to live their lives, even when it's their crazy-eyed leaders who get all the press.
