Russia's dirty war.

A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches From Chechnya By Anna Politkovskaya University of Chicago Press, 208 pages, $25

Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the Moscow biweekly Novaya Gazeta, has produced a stirring account of the horrors in Chechnya. Although she has been imprisoned, tortured, and threatened with rape and murder by Russian soldiers, she continues to report on the suffering of both Chechens and Russians.

Chechnya has intermittently been at war with Russia for centuries. Key moments of Chechnya's tragic history under Russian dominion include a decades-long rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century, armed resistance to the collectivization of 1929-1932, and Siberian exile for all 500,000 Chechens from 1944 to 1957 after Josef Stalin accused them of collaborating with the Germans.

The latest grim chapter in Chechen history began in October 1991, when the republic declared its independence. Russian president Boris Yeltsin, fearing a wave of secessions, was assured by his minister of defense, General Pavel Grachev, that he would crush the breakaway with "one paratroop regiment in two hours."

Despite temporary truces and the Kremlin's depiction of the war as finished, the killing has not stopped. Thousands of Russian soldiers have lost their lives, and as many as a quarter million Chechens have been killed--from a population of 1.1 million. In March 2003, Chechens stated their desire to remain a part of Russia--in a plebiscite that was not sanctioned by any international body and was widely reported to have been riddled with abuses. Meanwhile, the Chechen population continues to suffer intolerably at the hands of the Russian military, while Chechen rebels commit dastardly acts of suicide bombing and hostage-taking.

Politkovskaya's stories suggest that the 100,000 Russian soldiers in Chechnya are simply out of control, routinely kidnap ping and torturing Chechens, often releasing them only when relatives or neighbors pay a ransom, even for corpses.

The ...