Chechnya: Oh, the Things You'll Learn!

I posted this in response to the following submitted request, raised shortly after the attack by Chechen rebels on a school: "In 30 words or less, explain the situation in Chechnya, preferably with poetry." 

***

Chechnya!
What's there to see?
Let's take a look at history!

First, Nicky I, he made a play
to make it his, one awful day.
With little weeble-wobbled men
he fought the brave caucasians.
Bap! they frought!
Bip! they froed!
And Nicky's men were made to goed!

Next Russians came (the olden ones)
With heavy coats and shiny guns.
They bonked Caucasians on the head
until the streets were filled with dead.
Bop! they hit,
and Bam! was heard.
And Chechnya was conquer-ered.

For fifty years they stayed that way,
'til Bolsheviks took stage to play.
(The Chechnyans were known back then
as scrappy little Dagestan.)

As Lenin read a book on Marx,
the Dagestans, they met in parks,
and darkened halls, and public squares,
and vowed to get right out of theres.

But Lenin smelled a dirty plot,
and all the traitor-ors were caught.
Zip! he ripped the land in two!
And Zap! he stuck them back with glue!
The Dagestans, they took their lick
and were made into a republic.

So under Soviets they'd fallen,
but then along came Mr. Stalin!
Old Uncle Joe! Boy, what a man!
He took the Chechens by the hand!
And beat them hard, in ways so many,
they looked for help from German-any.

Help us! they cried!
Save us! they pled!
For many had been rendered dead.
And Uncle Joe, he saw what's doing,
he smelled the independence brewing.

So in this mass his-teria,
he sent them to Siberia.
And Kazhakstan.
And to the grave.
Their freedom lost, which they did crave.
So in this state of prison-ation
languished weak, this one proud nation.

Their spirits broke, the fate of whims,
and soon along came Musl-ims.
From whence they came? We do not know!
They'd been shipped there
by Uncle Joe.

Now skip ahead, dear boids and girlds,
through coldish wars fought between worlds.
There came a time,
it came to be,
that Chechnya was finally free.

How's that?! you ask.
How come?! you beg.
I do not like green hams and egg!

What happened was (it's plain to see!):
The Soviets, they ceased to be.

Free! they were singin'!
At last! they were gushin'
But wait a sec--here come the Russians.

And so, again, their hope to be
allowed to run to, fro, and free
was gently pushed under the mat
by Bo Yeltsin,
the drunkocrat.

Boris tried to hold together
the states that were once of a feather.
But though he sat
and thinked,
and thunk,
Boris was a little drunk.

And he declared, one fateful day,
"I'll just make bad Chechnya stay!"
5,000 Russians (in '94)
came and knocked upon the door.

Be off! Chechens shouted!
Go 'way! Chechens blared!
But in a war they were ensnared.

Now here it gets a little sticky,
confusing
and a little tricky.

Remember the old musl-ims?
Who said their prayers and sang their hymms?
In Chechnya they were still there,
madly pulling at their hair.
"We've got a deal, we think it's handsome..."
And soon Russkies were taken ransom.
The war it waged, both day and night,
and radicals fought back with fright.

Boom! went the theater!
Bang! went the raid!
A tug of war...
For a decade.

And in the hazy, hanging smoke,
your wizened beard you sit and stroke.
Pondering aloud, "What has it brought
but hate
and death
and fear
and fraught?"

"Who will lose?" you wonder.
You ask, "Who will win?"
But ask any old Chechny-an....

He'll tell you, sadly,
thinking back,
to Nick and Joe,
and that whole pack:

"It doesn't matter, in the end,
who sits inside the Krem-a-lin.
Whether Lenin...
or Gorby...
or Boris..
or Putin...

Expect the same sometime again."