During the lifetime of the two Boston bombing suspects, their homeland Chechnya has seen two Russian invasions unleash some of Europe's worst bloodshed in generations, and produced fighters who carried out attacks on civilians that shocked the world.
So far there has been no claim of responsibility for the attacks on the Boston Marathon or evidence made public of the motivations of the suspects, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Both have left a trail on the Internet suggesting they were devout Muslims, proud of their Chechen heritage and supportive of the region's bid for independence from Moscow.
Their uncle, who said the boys brought "disgrace on the entire Chechen ethnicity", said they never lived in Chechnya. Before coming to the United States they were schooled in Dagestan, a neighbouring region that was drawn into Chechnya's violence during the 1990s and has since become the focal point for a simmering Islamist insurgency.
Both provinces are part of the North Caucasus, a mountainous strip of southern Russia populated mainly by Muslim ethnic minorities, with a history of rebellion against Moscow - and brutal Russian repression - dating back centuries.