Juan Cole suggests that the tragedy in Boston may have been the result of intergenerational conflict that Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev wrote about in his novel, Fathers and Sons. That was certainly part of the problem, but there were other issues.

For those playing at home these are the main members of the family, their relationship to the suspects, and their location: Anzor Tsarnaev & Zubeidat Tsarnaeva [father and mother, Russia], Maret Tsarnaeva [aunt, Canada], Ruslan Tsarni [uncle, US].

The suspects are Tamerlan [26 years-old] and Dzhokhar [19 years-old] and are in the US. [Dzhokar’s name should really be spelled ‘Jokhar’ in English and generally is. It is a common Chechen given name, and the Chechen name for their capital city]

You will note that the mother and aunt have an ‘a’ at the end of their family name. Russian has gender assignments even for last names. The uncle uses the Chechen form of the last name, while the others use the Russian form.

When Chechnya was introduced I was interested, but then it was reported that the father and mother had returned to Russia, so I knew to put it aside. The repression they were apparently fleeing when they entered the US in 2002 was from the Chechen separatists. The aunt made an unclear reference as to what the father did in Chechnya, but it seemed to involve a government security function with the official Russian government.

The Atlantic Wire reports that the family arrived in the US during April of 2002 when the sons were 15 and 8 from Kyrgyzstan. Jokhar was born in Kyrgyzstan, which means that Tamerlan left Chechnya when he was 7 or younger. He wouldn’t have had much of a connection to the area.

In the report it was noted that Jokhar became a US citizen in April of 2012, but Tamerlan was denied citizenship because of a domestic violence arrest. Now, if you were looking for a grievance against the US this would certainly be on my list.

McClatchy reports that:

…

In January 2012, the elder brother returned to Makhachkala from Cambridge, Mass., for six months to update his expired Russian passport …
…

On Friday, a federal law enforcement official said Tamerlan Tsarnaev had in the past been interviewed by the FBI at the request of a foreign government. The official would not name the government, but added that “nothing derogatory . . . came out of that interview.”

A Russian security officer interviewed Saturday said Russia must have been the party that made the inquiry.

So, he wasn’t a ‘person of interest’ to the FBI, he was a ‘person of interest’ for the Russian FSB [Federal Security Service]. He was a Chechen who had come of age, and the FSB would be interested.

There are other reports that Tamerlan considered moving back to Russia, but his father basically vetoed that idea. It didn’t seem like anyone wanted him around except his brother, and may not have seen a way out. The move to Islam was probably a reaction, a search for an anchor point or a purpose.

There is one thing that has bothered me about this case and no one seems to be digging into it – where were these brothers getting their money? Guns, black powder, and pressure cookers cost money, not to mention rent, utilities and food, where did it come from? That is an important piece of the puzzle.

I haven’t seen anything that would convince me that this wasn’t a young man lashing out at the world, and dragging his brother into it.