Marie Bennigsen-Broxup (1944 – 7 December 2012) was an expert on the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (country), Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range ...

and

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

, with particular emphasis on Muslim communities within these regions. She pioneered an area studies focus on the former Soviet south, founding new research publications dedicated to these regions, and later becoming active in advocacy for the post-Soviet Chechen leadership in the 1990s.

Biography

She was born in Paris in 1944, the daughter of the

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

n émigré scholar of Islam,

Alexandre Bennigsen Alexandre Bennigsen (russian: Александр Адамович Беннигсен) (20 March 1913 – 3 June 1988) was a scholar of Islam in the Soviet Union. Biography Count Bennigsen was born in an aristocratic family in St Petersbur ...

. Following her marriage in 1973 to Michael Broxup, she lived in Hong Kong and Moscow, where she worked for the ''Financial Times'', before returning to London in 1980. Bennigsen joined the Society for ''Central Asian Studies'' in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

in 1981 and founded the

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

-based

Central Asian Survey ''Central Asian Survey'' is an academic journal first published in 1982 concerning Caucasus and Central Asian studies. It is published by Taylor & Francis, and has four issues a year. According to the editorial staff, "The central aim of the jour ...

quarterly soon afterwards. She also edited ''Central Asia and Caucasus Chronicle'' from 1981 to 1990, and served as a consultant on Caucasian affairs to the French ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs. In 1983 Bennigsen published ''The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State'', co-authored with her father. The Bennigsens’ study hypothesised that unruly Muslim nationalities could come to constitute a major threat to the Soviet Union, a view achieving wide popularity among Sovietologists in the 1980s. It was in the North Caucasus, however, that this prediction would eventually ring truest, and in particular, in Chechnya. Bennigsen first travelled to Chechnya and neighbouring Dagestan in 1992, just after the Soviet collapse and as Chechnya was embarking on a path towards separation from Russia. She became a close associate of the Chechen leadership, engaging in international advocacy for their cause, as well as numerous charitable causes for relief to the population of Chechnya. In 1998–1999 Bennigsen conducted interviews with 20 Chechen field commanders and staff officers, including Aslan Maskhadov, the mastermind of the Chechen victory over Russian forces in the first Chechen war, later elected president of the republic in 1997 and assassinated by Russian special forces in 2005. Bennigsen was married to Michael Broxup and the couple had two sons. Marie Bennigsen died in Oxford in December 2012 after a short illness.

Main works

*''The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State'' (Croom Helm, London, 1983 coauthored with Alexandre Bennigsen) *''The North Caucasus Barrier. The Russian Advance towards the Muslim World'' (Hurst & Co, London, 1992)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bennigsen-Broxup, Marie Central Asian studies scholars Caucasus 20th-century British historians British orientalists 1944 births 2012 deaths