This book deals with human rights violations and war crimes, particularly during the second Chechen war (1999–2005), though the roots of violence are traced back to 1990 and the Popular Front movements throughout the former Soviet space, demanding state sovereignty. The incapacity of the Chechen leader, Dzhokhar Dudaev, to maintain control in the republic, combined with his authoritarian methods, engendered an instability that, according to Russian officials, was the primary reason for intervention. This set the context for the abuses and violations addressed in this work by Emma Gilligan. Terror in Chechnya crosses different levels of analysis, examining the human rights abuses in the north Caucasus republic, the broader political setting where these took place—the Russian Federation—and the ways the policies were framed in terms of the struggle against international terrorism, implying an assessment of the international dimensions of the crisis. This means that the book covers the Russian action in the Chechen republic, the response by the Chechens to the atrocities being committed, Russian public opinion reactions, the international response (or lack of it) in the face of developments, and the search for justice, with Chechen charges reaching the European Court of Human Rights. The book analyzes both internal dynamics and external perspectives regarding unfolding events on the ground.

The author looks at Chechnya as a “story of hubris, inordinate violence, and indifference” (p. 4). She focuses on the severe limits of Russian human rights policies despite the official public discourse and international pledges about respect for fundamental rights, with Chechnya constituting a primary example of the violation of Russian international commitments. The book's multilevel approach to the analysis of human rights violations enhances its deconstruction of violence dynamics in Chechnya. The “labeling” associated with the fight against international terrorism, particularly after the terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001, has in fact allowed the use of “exceptional” measures related to the struggle against terrorism, with gross violations constituting a “normal” procedure in face of such a complex and very real threat. As Gilligan writes: “The ideological agenda of the Russian government was the protection of national borders from international terrorism, as well as ostensibly protecting the United States and Europe. This agenda gave legitimacy and license to its actions. It was matched by a growing nationalism, led by President Vladimir Putin, which sought to reassert Russia's national identity, both internally and abroad” (p. 71).

Gilligan argues that the “Chechen tragedy” is not just the result of civil war, and that the “senseless cruelty” that accompanied events reveals an additional explanatory factor—“the role of racial prejudice” (p. 4). As the author notes: “The most ignored question of this conflict is the role of racism as a deep motivating factor. The excessive violence directed at the civilian population of Chechnya was, in fact, collective punishment. I invoke racism not as a fashionable mantra but as one crucial fault line in understanding Russian motivation” (p. 5).

International terror was the ideology of choice, and President Putin's strong nationalist discourse, reviving an agenda of centralized control and regaining of influence, constituted an example of “racial prejudice in Russia” (p. 13): “President Putin was not seeking an ethnically homogenous Russia but a compliant unified state that would not only offer little resistance to his goals but participate actively to enhance them. The Chechens were among the most brutalized victims of this quest for a new Russian destiny” (p. 14). Genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, including enforced disappearances, murder, summary execution, rape, and torture, are some of the violent practices mentioned in this work, along with the “absence of measures to stop the ongoing impunity by punishing the perpetrators” (p. 12). The lack of documentation and investigation procedures for violations is clearly underlined by the author as common practice. The rationale behind uncontrolled violations was, according to Gilligan, racism, which included “subjugation of the population and the elimination of the noncompliant intellectual and political elites” (p. 49), as a way of fracturing local civil society and political movements not loyal to the central authorities in Moscow.

The book mentions the main bibliographic references on Chechnya, referring to the works by Anatol Lieven, Anna Politkovskaya, Anne Nivat, Matthew Evangelista, and others, all of whom utilize a human rights perspective to analyze the situation in the Chechen republic. There is wide consensus in the literature that the abuses perpetrated there exceeded the devastating consequences of any civil war. However, Gilligan goes further in her argument, introducing the issue of racism as an explanatory variable for the mass atrocities committed. This is the main contribution of the book, a well-informed empirical analysis of the human rights violations in Chechnya, based on document and discourse analysis and complemented by interviews conducted outside of Chechnya. As she writes: “By the second war in Chechnya, racial prejudice against Chechens as a long-perceived construct in Russian life was, without doubt, strategically placed at the forefront of public life—diffracted through the prism of political manipulation. The racial question was by 2000 repackaged under ‘terrorist,’ the dominant category by which Chechens would be identified” (p. 73).

The author argues that this was part of the consolidation of President Putin's power and of his careful management of the expectations of the armed forces, whom he allowed a stronger role. Additionally, despite the many references to the unlawful nature of its ballot, the March 2003 referendum held in the republic, with 98% of results in support of keeping Russia's territorial integrity, was understood as the “first of a series of events that sought to institutionalize the new political doctrine” (p. 82). Following this same line, the word “normalization” was adopted as central to the Russian strategy of stabilization, implying the forced return of displaced people. Nevertheless, the Russian actions were not without response: “In the same way that the Russian armed forces punished Chechen civilians, the Chechen separatists blamed Russian civilians for the policies of their government. Russian civilians, too, became the recipients of a philosophy of revenge that deeply penetrated the radical separatists” (p. 143). The bidirectional though asymmetrical nature that the violence assumed made the failure of international actors to monitor and intervene more serious. Even so, for the first time, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the Russian government, in February 2005 (p. 188).

This book plays with the triad constituted by 1) the reassertion of the Russian state, 2) state-sponsored nationalism, and 3) prejudice against Chechens reasserted by the war on terrorism and the discursive use of human rights by Russian authorities in order to link the human rights tragedy to racism, a fundamental motivating factor for massive violence. Gilligan acknowledges the difficulties in making these linkages. Even so, her book is an important contribution to the literature. Her multilayered approach, her ability to highlight competing perspectives, and her insights into the way future investigations of human rights abuses could be conducted make her work a valuable contribution to the study of human rights.