homeauthor press reviews campus praise guest lecture FAQsbuy the booklinks

"Dr. Khassan Baiev, a top surgeon and proud Muslim Chechen, is the author of "The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire." He describes growing up in the Chechen village of Alkhan-Kala; reading his story, the reader inadvertently learns about the Chechens and their culture and about Islam far from the Middle East. The boy who excelled at martial arts and wanted to become a doctor fulfilled his dream by studying medicine in the Russian Krasnoyarsk Medical Institute. Despite the many economic and professional temptations Russia had to offer, he returned to his country and village - the only place where he felt he was truly in his natural environment. There the war caught up with him." Read full review
— Ha’aretz Daily Newspaper (Israel), by Eran Dolev Dolev is the former surgeon general of the Israel Defense Forces and teaches the history of military medicine at Tel Aviv University.

“The Oath provides a remarkable case study, in the most compelling and tragic of circumstances, of the ethical questions posed in the midst of war. Although most relevant to physicians, Khassan Baiev raises fundamental questions about how to maintain personal and professional values, what it means to act with integrity in the midst of chaos and a struggle to survive.  Physicians, ethicists, students of human rights, and others concerned with these wrenching questions will find it indispensable.”
— Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights

“I read Dr. Baiev’s book with great concern and interest. His struggle to keep the Hippocratic oath at all times is both intensely moving and inspiring. What a crime that men and women of his caliber are forced to seek exile in order to stay alive.”
—Vanessa Redgrave, actress and social activist

"Spectacular...Khassan Baiev's autobiographical tale of his work as a field surgeon in both Chechen wars, provides not only a detailed account of the effects of modern warfare on its victims, but also a story of a Caucasian coming-of-age in the old USSR, where Baiev studied medicine in Siberia. His story is particularly valuable for the way it traces the evolution of his own perceptions of the fight against the Russians."
—Christian Cary, New York Review of Books

'The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire' is as much a memoir as it is a painful attempt to try to keep the memory of the human rights violations in Chechnya from being buried under shifts in geopolitical realities...The book provides a quick primer in the history of Russian-Chechen tensions dating back to the times of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great."
—Sandip Roy, San Francisco Chronicle

“A truly moving, compelling, and dramatic account of raw courage and extraordinary human suffering, inflicted on the Chechen people by a ruthless invasion relentlessly pursued by the Kremlin and studiously ignored by the West.”
—Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor

“The Oath is a vivid, compelling act of witness. There have been independent Russian journalists willing to speak the truth about the Kremlin’s war in Chechnya. But now we have a courageous and authentic Chechen whose searing experiences as a doctor treating the wounded from both sides will leave the reader outraged and inspired.”
—Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director, Amnesty International

For more reviews, go to theoathbook.com