Highlanders—A Journey to the Caucasus (In Quest of Memory) By Yo’av Karny Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY 2000

Yo’av Karny’s distilled memories of his multiple journeys to the post-Soviet Caucasus—the hour-glass chunk of territory descending southward in and from Russia toward Iran, framed by the Caspian and Black Seas—is a powerful testament to the results of the obsessive ethnic particularism that has brought such misery to the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, and more. His devotion to his subject—the disappearing nations and languages of the complex region--and his keen eye for human and comparative detail allow distant readers to understand, imagine and even love the chaotic Caucasus in light of experiences closer to home.

This is no small feat, when dealing with ‘nations’ like the Shapsugs of the Russian Black Sea coast (who consist of some 6,000 members); the mysterious ‘Albans;’ or proto-Caucasians (who, with no connections to the Balkan Albanians, are claimed by three or four inimical, contemporary national entities in the Caucasus as forefathers); the ethno-lingual chaos of Dagestan (clearly a favorite stomping ground for the author), the Chechen Diaspora community of the Golan Heights and Jordan (one of the most important sections of Highlanders); and even the dying communities of ‘Judaized’ ethnic Russian peasants known as the Subbotnik, or ‘Saturdayists’ who were forced into the territories now known as Armenia and Azerbaijan due to their rejection of the New Testament (and thus Jesus as Messiah) more than 150 years ago.

Highlanders is also a personal journey, a quest for collective memory, as expressed in the title of Karny’s excellent book. Self-defined as a Washington DC-based reporter from Israel, the author was originally drawn to the post-Soviet Caucasus in mid-1992 in order to cover the expanding crisis between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed territory of Mountainous (‘Nagorno’) Karabakh. He thus became an eye-witness to the paroxysm of violence that swept the region in the 1990s, often referred to as ‘the Bosnia that no one wanted to know about.’

Karny has learned much on the highways and byways of the Caucasus, including the capacity for a little self-criticism, even about his interview style. Sitting on a bench in the dreary, thoroughly Russified and utterly corrupt Dagestan capital of Mahachkala, he openly wonders why no one wants to talk to him. The interlocutors in his book should be glad they did take the time in their chaotic lives to try and explain the confused, post-Soviet dynamic they were living through. Even when caustic and disparaging, Karny is fair in making his assessments. Stylistically, Highlanders is often beautiful and evocative, showing the author to be a cartographer of the complexity of confused human hearts in the chaotic world of ethnic claim and counter-claim that is the post-Soviet Caucasus.

However, the book contains one significant gap -- the almost complete omission of Georgia. There is also perhaps too much material on Dagestan. In addition, Karny’s writing is, on occasion, too glib. For example, he sticks the words "Ataturk has a bad rap" into the mouth of the pan-Turkic-prone first President of Azerbaijan, Abulfez Elchibey, in a discussion on Turkic nationalism. The late Elchibey said no such thing and certainly not in that casual mode; the reviewer was present during Karny’s interview with Elchibey.

The book makes a curious choice in its transliteration of names. In many cases, Karny opts to use the Russian version of Muslim names in a book devoted to the concept of disappearing (mainly Muslim) minority communities and languages. As a result, names such as Muhammad or Ibrahim (or the various versions thereof) appear in the text as ‘Magomed’ and ‘Ibragim.’ No explanation is given. Yet, had Karny been conducting his interviews in, say, Lezgin, Avar, Dargin, Chechen, Balkar or even Azerbaijani (which he variously calls Turkic or Turkish and sometimes Azeri) the spelling result would have been quite different. If the impulse of Highlanders is to celebrate or even discuss such subjects as disappearance of marginal languages and peoples, then the local pronunciations of people and place names perhaps should have been taken into account.

The transliteration choice seems all the more curious because elsewhere (indeed, throughout Highlanders) Karny is meticulous in busting down clichés and challenging the conventional wisdom about everything from the ‘we got here first’ logic of modern ethnic nationalism, to the more global obsession with ‘Wahabism,’ especially as it impacts on social development (meaning war and devastation) in Chechnya. Courageously, Karny not only avoids the ‘Muslim fundamentalism’ cliché so popular in Russian and American circles, but goes a long way to debunk the myth of the alleged Wahabification of Chechen and other Caucasian societies—and the causes for the second round of war that has now reduced the blighted landscape of Chechnya to rubble.

On a related, tangential note, he is the first outside observer I know of to really and truly get to the essence of zikr, or pious remembrance and devotion so vividly expressed in the mis-named and misunderstood ‘war dance’ of the Chechen ‘rebels,’ as the psychological and emotional basis of the Chechen resistance to continued Russian rule.

Editor’s Note: Thomas Goltz is the author of Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventurers in an Oil-rich, War-torn, Post-Soviet Republic (M.E. Sharpe, 1998; paperback 1999).

	The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, politcal and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the position of the Open Society Institute and are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.