yashurkayev

For the inhabitants of Grozny, 31 December 1994 was the beginning of the storming of the city, which lasted several months and left it in ruins.

Here are extracts from the diary of the Chechen writer, poet and lawyer Sultan Yashurkayev. Yashurkayev began his diary on the night of New Year's Eve 1994 and continued to write for the next ten months.

This text describes the catastrophe of a frontline town: incessant shelling, hunger and thirst, encounters with soldiers abandoned by their commanders and thus hardened, looting and rape, torture and murder. Against the backdrop of this unfolding tragedy, the author rethinks man's life and purpose, without ceasing to help his neighbours and without losing his human face. And with great affection he also tells of his calf Tioma, his dog Barsik and other animals.

It is a diary of how, even in the darkest times, man has managed to see beauty, to feel love, to care for his loved ones, to be sensitive to all living things, to himself, to God, to the universe, to nature, and to see this terrible world in a poetic way.

On 7 November 1991, shortly after Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev proclaimed the sovereignty of the Chechen Republic, RSFSR President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree declaring a state of emergency in Chechnya. This was the first attempt by the Russian authorities to resolve the conflict by force, using special forces. Partly because of confusion and incompetence, partly because of the separation of powers that still existed in Russia, partly because of the quick reaction of the independence supporters, the Russian authorities failed to establish control in the republic and the situation only worsened. Chechnya's position as a de facto independent enclave continued for another three years, until full-scale war broke out at the end of 1994. Today we offer you the testimony of a man who, step by step, became a victim of the political decisions that led to this tragedy.

The last years of the life of Madina Elmurzaeva, a nurse from Grozny, are summarised in 28 short entries. Peaceful lines about poetry, nature and children's health are replaced by anxious reflections on the political situation in the republic, and later by terrible evidence of the first Chechen war.

When the nurse left the city, she went to work at the hospital for an indefinite period. The wards and beds were soon replaced by the basement of a bomb shelter filled with the wounded, and later by images of the brutal occupation and attempts to leave the city through the mined suburbs. Madina, true to her duty as a doctor, organised a group of volunteers. Constantly risking their own lives, they tried to save everyone they could reach. But in the third month of fighting, the war took her life. Madina Elmurzaeva was blown up by a booby trap placed under her mortally wounded colleagues whom she was trying to help.