Anzor and Zubeidat came to the United States in early 2002, not the best time to be Muslim in America. With the help of some friends and relatives, they arrived in Massachusetts. Although they fled the war in its opening stage for Kyrgyzstan, the Tsarnaevs’ goal was to get to the United States. Moving to Chechnya at the most inopportune time-just prior to the outbreak of conflict between that breakaway region and Russia-made financial and personal security difficult. In the collapsing Soviet Union, this search was not easy. After marrying, Anzor and Zubeidat wandered, trying to find a place that was suitable for earning a living and raising a family. Although they met in Siberia, their mother, Zubeidat, was from Dagestan and the father, Anzor, was an ethnic Chechen who had grown up in Kyrgyzstan, to which Stalin had deported his people. In telling the Tsarnaevs’ story, Gessen stresses the upheaval that both they and their parents experienced. Instead, she counters that young men who oppose the policies of the state in which they live and whom promises and opportunities have passed by can decide to achieve the “greatness” that is elsewhere eluding them through terrorism. Her insights will likely be disturbing: she doubts that Tamerlan became radicalized and that radicalization was even necessary. Gessen provides sufficient context and explanation to allow readers to understand why the Tsarnaevs became terrorists. This topic must have been particularly compelling for her as someone who came to the Boston area from the Soviet Union as a girl and upon adulthood spent 20 years as a journalist covering post-Communist Russia, with special attention to the violence in the Caucasus. Masha Gessen has written a thought-provoking and disturbing book about the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 and those deemed responsible, the brothers Tamerlan and Jahar Tsarnaev.

The Brothers by Masha Gessen