Corner Of Hell

A Small Corner of Hell by Anna Politkovskaya was originally published in 2002, from Zakharov Publishers (The University of Chicago Press in this version). Politkovskaya, a journalist and activist, collected many of the stories and accounts of people during the Second Chechen War, which began in 1999. The book was one of the major impacts that was revealed to the rest of the world about Chechnya, and the large-scale human rights abuses occurring there. It contains 224 pages, and in each, she reveals the tragedies suffered by all people during this war, but especially of Chechen civilians. Politkovskaya was murdered in 2006, thus making her and her works very controversial, yet incredibly vital in the practice of wartime journalism. She was a
very outspoken critic against the war, some of Russia’s policies, and of Putin himself. Her book is very important to uncovering crimes against humanity and war crimes that took place in Chechnya. In this collection of accounts, she had placed herself directly in the war zone, and in harm’s way, to get the true stories of the regular people living those experiences. By some sources, her work was called “unpatriotic” to her nation, because she was writing on the abuses that many Russian soldiers committed, along with the Chechen rebels. The book was well-structured in terms of organization.
In the first part of the book (pages 32-117), she talks mainly about regular Chechen life during the war, in part two (pages 118-160), she talks about “Russian life against the backdrop of the war,” and in part three (pages 161-202), she talks mostly about the. The book was stark, brutal, graphic, chilling at times and very hard to read through because of the nature of the experiences. It revealed the abductions, torture, murder, and rape of civilians caught in between the conflicts of the war. Politkovskaya had a large advantage compared to many other journalists at the time would have had, and that would have allowed her to dig deeper into these crimes. The fact that she was a woman allowed her to talk to female victims in a way that male reporters may have not been able to. She was able to delve into the horrible truths that especially women and boys suffered during humanitarian crises; mainly about rape, sexual assault, and misogyny. Stories where young women were abducted, raped by soldiers, and then murdered were widespread. The book scrapes the surface of something that is not usually discussed as heavily. Rape as a tool of power and oppression is often not as discussed in accounts as other crimes, and by being able to speak with many women, she was able to bring forth the stories that might have not been heard
otherwise. This book was intended to enlighten the world, including the West, of what was going on. In the book, she mentions several times that the UN could have worked harder, or done more to stop or lessen the hostilities. Especially after the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in the United States, she stated that the world needed to take up more of an effort to prevent crimes like this from happening. Her book became a tool that she used to try and draw attention to something that was often overlooked, or even ignored by the rest of the world. “I don’t know. Nor do I know why our country, along with Europe and America, has allowed children to be tortured in the beginning of the twenty-first century…” Since much of Russia was pro-war and looked down on opposition, I think that she was definitely trying to reach the rest of the world with her writing. In my opinion, the book served as a great tool and reminder to learn about the horrors of war and what the lack of stability can result in. I think one of the major reasons of why this occurred, was because of a combination of issues; including Russian nationalism, pride in the military, and also, even racism. It could be argued that in this case, there was definitely a sense of racial or ethnic superiority at play. The perpetrators of these crimes (either Russian or Chechen) were able to separate themselves based on the categories of “us” and “them.” This book serves to be deeply informative about individual’s terrible experiences, which can then be analyzed to form a larger picture of the events. The war brutalized both sides of the conflict, and innocent people were treated horrifically by means of violence and hatred.