Polygon of Satan: Violent Ethnic Conflicts in the Caucasus

New Fourth Edition Now Available!

Polygon of Satan: Violent Ethnic Conflicts in the Caucasus, 4th Edition investigates the internal and external factors of the genesis of ethnic tensions that later on turned into bloody ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus on the eve, during, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Chapters of Part One explain historical prerequisites of modern violent ethnic conflicts. This Part discovers principal constituents-- recurrent building blocks and cultural markers of difference of local ethnic groups; their reactions to challenging circumstances and attempts to subdue and assimilate them on the part of more powerful neighbors: Imperial and Soviet powers; it illuminates an impact of the all-sided societal crisis and ambivalent ethnic policy of the Soviet and then Russian authorities in the time of collapse of the old socio-political system and controversial transitional period to independence of the former Soviet republics and autonomous polities on ethnic interactions in the Caucasus.

It also deals with the provocative role of the local ethno-political elites and charismatic leaders in the supercharging of ethnic tensions between the groups: They formulated aggressive ethnic paradigms that amidst deepening crisis advanced and spread ethnocentric nationalism- driving ideology of ethnic conflicts and pogroms. This ideology defined behavioral norms and patterns corresponding to different forms of ethnic cleansing in all spheres pertaining to the principal building blocks of ethnicity.

Chapters 4 through 8 of the Part Two described individual devolution of the violent ethnic conflicts in their latest cycle and its recurrent phases, establishing typology and other principal characteristics of each, as well as an impact of outside exacerbating factors on their regressive dynamics.

In Conclusion the author formulates holding and healing mechanisms pertaining to the principal building blocks of ethnicity and corresponding building blocks of violent ethnic conflicts that may prevent their further devolution threatening peace in the region and fraught with dangerous transformation from local to global confrontation between major world powers that support different sides of these conflicts.