Much has been written about the Muslim Murid movement and its leader Shamil, who resisted the Tsarist Russian expansion into Chechan and Daghestan for more than quarter of a century. This study, based on research in multilingual archives, offers a fresh insight into a subject that generates constant controversy in Russian historiography and has often been misinterpreted by Western scholars.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, new states - most of them muslim - emerged in central Asia and the Caucasus. These new states proved to be both oil-rich and central in the strip of conflict and instability that stretches from central Europe to the Far East. This volume draws attention to previously neglected issues which could result in conflict:
* the water problem and negotiation in central Asia
* the issues of 'Southern Azerbaijan', Ajaria and Javakheti
* the many problems of multi-ethnic Daghestan
* two attempts at unity in the Northern Caucasus....

The Caspian Region, Volume 2 - together with Volume 1 - offers new issues and approaches to give readers a fuller understanding of this part of the world, as well as correcting some erroneous notions.

The studies in this volume originated from an international conference on 'Community, Identity and the State' held at Tel Aviv University in 2001. The first two chapters examine whether modernisation, Westernisation and democratisation are identical, and whether democracy is connected to a certain, specific type of social structure. The third examines similarities in the political, economic and social development of 'Second World' and 'Third World' countries, while the fourth discusses the relationship between criminal and 'normal' structures in Russian society. Subsequent chapters focus on...