The taking of civilian hostages is a horrific act and has rightly been condemned throughout the world. But by looking at the past 150 years, during which the Russians have crushed the oppressed Chechen people, one can understand their anguish and frustration.
Jonathan Steele, writing in London's Guardian, believes that the hostage-seizure of the theater-goers is "a grim reminder to the Kremlin of how badly its hard-line policies in Chechnya have failed."
No form of tyranny has escaped the Chechen experience. These people of the Caucasus mountains have been systematically brutalized in successive Czarist, Soviet, and Russian campaigns. Mass deportation pogroms led to one of the world's greatest experiments in ethnic cleansing; Chechen women have been raped; villages have been pillaged; books and libraries have been burned; and their culture - museums included - have been destroyed.
Writing in the Zurich-based NZZ Online, the Georgian historian, Konstantin Gamsakhurdia, describes the systematic decimation of a Chechen population that stood at 1.5 million in 1844: "In 1864 hundreds of thousands were expelled and driven into the Ottoman Empire, and, by 1867, their number on home soil had dwindled to only 116,000, mostly widows, children, old men and cripples."
Jonathan Steele, writing in London's Guardian, believes that the hostage-seizure of the theater-goers is "a grim reminder to the Kremlin of how badly its hard-line policies in Chechnya have failed."
No form of tyranny has escaped the Chechen experience. These people of the Caucasus mountains have been systematically brutalized in successive Czarist, Soviet, and Russian campaigns. Mass deportation pogroms led to one of the world's greatest experiments in ethnic cleansing; Chechen women have been raped; villages have been pillaged; books and libraries have been burned; and their culture - museums included - have been destroyed.
Writing in the Zurich-based NZZ Online, the Georgian historian, Konstantin Gamsakhurdia, describes the systematic decimation of a Chechen population that stood at 1.5 million in 1844: "In 1864 hundreds of thousands were expelled and driven into the Ottoman Empire, and, by 1867, their number on home soil had dwindled to only 116,000, mostly widows, children, old men and cripples."