Anatole Lieven's book is dedicated to the so-called First Chechen War of 1994-1996 - an attempt to suppress the separatist rebellion in the North Caucasus by the Russian Federation. It appeared on the fresh traces of events (first published in 1998) and was written by their eyewitness: the author was in Chechnya at the time described and in his book sets out mainly his own impressions of what was happening. Many of Lieven's predictions and estimates made immediately after the first war in Chechnya did not come true or require clarification, but his book is extremely valuable material not only on Chechen events, but also on Russia as a whole in the 1990s. A. Lieven writes about what the Russian Federation was after the collapse of the Soviet Union, what impact the reforms carried out then had on the psychology of the population, how the Russian government was organized, how the emergence of the separatist regime of D. Dudaev in Chechnya became possible.