On the first day of school in September 2004, armed militants seized School Number One in Beslan, Russia and turned what is typically a festive day with lots of kids and family members in attendance into a horrific tragedy. More than 1,200 people were taken hostage, including hundreds of children, and they were held for more than 53 hours, before Russian security forces stormed the building. A series of explosions and fire left over 300 dead and nearly 800 wounded. Beslan is a town of only 36,000 in Northern Ossetia in the Caucasus region of Russia, and the violence touched nearly everyone in the town. In addition, this event was the pretext used by President Vladimir Putin to permanently cancel all gubernatorial elections in Russia, a grim political milestone on Russia’s path towards extreme authoritarianism.

Yet, from the start, the school siege and its aftermath raised many questions: how could it have happened? Who was to blame for the hostage-taking, deaths, and destruction that followed? What kind of justice would there be for the victims? Why did this violence, which could have been interpreted as interethnic, Ossetian versus Ingush or Chechen, not lead to more violence in the area? And, why did peaceful political activism grow from the incident instead? Debra Javeline’s book, After Violence, takes up these questions and more, and is based on interviews and focus groups with an astounding 1,098 adult victims and close family members, as well as quantitative surveys. By allowing survivors and family members to speak and tell their stories of what happened at Beslan and what followed, After Violence serves as a memorial to the victims as well as a social scientific exploration of the aftermath of the events.

Part I of the book lays out what happened, including the ethnic tensions that preceded the school siege and the political aftermath that followed, including non-violent political activism by victims’ families. Even for Russia-watchers, the book brings to light new information, as well as new questions about the role and complicity of regional authorities and the Russian government, which even after twenty-one years we still do not fully understand. In addition, although we have come to expect a certain level of corruption, cruelty, and ineptitude from the Russian government, this case stands out not only for the potential complicity of the government in the scale of the tragedy, but also for the inhumane treatment of victims and families, from the callous handling of remains to the lack of medical treatment and care for survivors to the roadblocks to accountability and justice.

The book’s main focus however, is on the way that victims reacted to the violence. Javeline treats Beslan as a case of ethnic violence and asks, why did victims mainly react with non-violent political activism rather than retaliatory interethnic violence following the massacre? This is the theoretical hook that organizes much of the empirical analysis in parts II and III of the book.

Part II of the book is a systemic study of victims’ responses that is divided into chapters that focus on emotions, ethic prejudice, political and social alienation, efficacy, and prior characteristics of victims (previous negative interactions with Ingush or Chechens and previous political participation). Each of these factors is studied in detail with a large sample of victims. Chapter 11 is a statistical analysis of the variables described above. Overall, Javeline finds no relationship between non-violent political participation and retaliatory violence. They are not substitutes, and one does not lead to the other, instead she finds that the motivations for each are different, which is interesting. Part III extends the analysis beyond Beslan victims to non-victims (Ch. 12), and Ch. 13 considers cases beyond Beslan.

I find the analysis largely persuasive, and it does shed light on the role or effects of violence generally in post-violence or post-conflict political actions. In that sense the work is important for understanding violence as a variable. The argument though is that victims did not primarily understand this violent incident in ethnic terms, which makes sense given the larger questions about the role of the Russian government and individual actors involved, as opposed to ethnic groups per se. As Javeline argues in many places, there are many facets to victims’ responses to violence, and ethnic-based conflict is one, but not the main one. Hence, while it does make sense to ask theoretically why Beslan did not turn into a larger interethnic conflict, the answer, like in many other cases, is that ethnicity is not the answer.