Goodbye, ISIS
What Remains is Future
Katerina Sergatskova author Kate Tsurkan translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Academic Studies Press
Publishing:21st May '26
£21.99
This title is due to be published on 21st May, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Why did more than 15,000 people from the former Soviet bloc join ISIS - nearly a third of the group's foreign fighters?
In Goodbye, ISIS: What Remains is Future, award-winning journalist Katerina Sergatskova investigates one of the most underexplored chapters of global terrorism. Drawing on years of reporting across Georgia, Turkey, Iraq, and Ukraine, she traces the personal stories of ISIS recruits, their families, and even those falsely accused of affiliation.
Through vivid interviews and groundbreaking reporting, Sergatskova reveals how post-Soviet fighters shaped ISIS, how the movement spread into the Caucasus, and why Ukraine has become an unexpected landing place for some of its veterans. Alongside this narrative, she connects today’s extremist networks to earlier figures like Dzhokhar Dudayev and Shamil Basayev, showing how past conflicts laid the groundwork for ISIS’s reach.
Both deeply human and geopolitically urgent, Goodbye, ISIS challenges assumptions about terrorism, migration, and security in the post-Soviet world — and why understanding it matters for global stability.
“With first-hand reporting of gripping personal stories, this book traces exactly how the Russian wars in Chechnya steadily fueled the rise of ISIS. Overwhelming military force did not end terrorism. Generational rage, suffering, and dislocation fueled its global spread to Syria, Iraq, and beyond. Highly recommended.”
—Audrey Kurth Cronin, Award-winning author of How Terrorism Ends
“Beneath the headlines of terrorism are the stories of ordinary people, often coerced, conned or co-opted into militant ranks. In this work of fearless reporting and empathic engagement, Katerina Sergatskova explores how men from post-Soviet Eurasia helped shape ISIS, and dragged so many women into a world of fear and violence in the process.”
—Professor Mark Galeotti, University College London
"A fascinating book filled with untold stories of ISIS recruitment in post-Soviet territories."
—Thomas Hegghammer, Senior Research Fellow in Politics, All Souls College, Oxford
ISBN: 9798887198842
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown