This collection is located on-site.
Interviews are only available onsite at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, via links in the container list below.
Temporary permission to provide online access for the Columbia Community to digitized material granted in April 2020.
The digitized content of more than 70 hours of audio cassette tape interviews conducted by Mr. Thomas de Waal with some sixty participants and policymakers during the struggle between former Soviet Republics Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, and conflict of Russia with the breakaway republic of Chechnya. The digitized interviewees include Dzhokhar Musaevich Dudaev, the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, in the North Caucasus, who was assassinated by Russian warplanes in April 1996; Mikhail Gorbachev; Eduard Shevardnadze, then-President of Georgia; as well as numerous military figures, human rights advocates, and others directly involved in the conflicts. The interviews are primarily in Russian, but a small number is in English or includes segments in English. 67 Russian-language interviews were fully or partially transcribed in 2017.
The collection is arranged in one series, by interviewee.
You will need to make an appointment in advance to use this collection material in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room. You can schedule an appointment once you've submitted your request through your Special Collections Research Account.
This collection is located on-site.
Interviews are only available onsite at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, via links in the container list below.
Temporary permission to provide online access for the Columbia Community to digitized material granted in April 2020.
Copying by permission from the Harriman Institute Director or Associate Director.
The RBML maintains ownership of the physical material only. Copyright remains with the creator and his/her heirs. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Thomas de Waal Interviews; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. Contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.
Gift of Thomas De Waal.
Thomas de Waal, Gift, 5/19/2016, 2016.2017.M004.DIGITAL and 2016.2017.M145.DIGITAL
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Processed in 2016-2017
2017-06-14 File created.
2019-05-20 EAD was imported spring 2019 as part of the ArchivesSpace Phase II migration.
2019-09-18 Links to DLC added. kws
Thomas Patrick Lowndes de Waal (b. 1966) is a senior associate with Carnegie Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. He is based in London. A graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, he conducted these interviews while based in Moscow and reporting for the Moscow Times, the Times of London, and the Economist, specializing in Russian politics and the volatile situation in the Caucasus. He is the co-author (with Carlotta Gall) of the book Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (NYU Press, 1997), for which the authors were awarded the James Cameron Prize for Distinguished Reporting. Mr. de Waal also authored an authoritative book on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (NYU Press, second edition 2013), which has been translated into Armenian, Azeri, Russian, and Turkish, as well as The Caucasus: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010). The interviews conducted on these tapes directly informed each of these publications.
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
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