Ant in a Glass Jar: Chechen Diaries 1994–2004 (Russian: "Муравей в стеклянной банке.

Чеченские дневники 1994–2004" is a 2014 documentary book that is an author's diary about the years spent in Chechnya from 1994 until 2004.

"I saw the actual writing, and I can confirm that this is a real diary of a real girl and not just some hoax" – said Svetlana Gannushkina, who is co-founder of the Civic Assistance Committee, committee member and head of the network "Migration and Law" of the Human Rights Centre "Memorial", to refute claims about inauthenticity of the published material at the book's presentation, according to Russian newspaper "Rossiyskaya Gazeta".

Chechen Diaries 1994-2004" in the list "100 best books of all time" based on rating and voting results.

The story begins on 25 March 1994 in Chechnya's capital city Grozny, in Polina's Zherebtsova's multinational family, which was in the midst of heavy fighting during military actions.

Polina's ancestors are of different ethnicities: Russians, Chechens, Jews, Ukrainians and Tatars.

But even having a life under the bombs, she reads books, falls in love, makes friends and enemies.

Polina describes in her diary what is happening around with the neighbours, army men, friends and enemies.

[7] Polina Zherebtsova, a documentarian, poet and author of the famous diaries, covering her childhood, adolescence and youth that witnessed three Chechen wars.

She has been awarded the Janusz Korczak international prize in Jerusalem in two categories (narrative and documentary prose).

Polina’s maternal grandfather Zherebtsov Anatoly Pavlovich, with whom she had formed a friendship, worked in Grozny for more than 25 years as a TV journalist-cameraman.

In 2006, she has been awarded the Janusz Korczak international prize in Jerusalem in two categories (narrative and documentary prose).

Publishers highly valued the diary, however, for a long time, one after another, they refused to print it, being "loyal to the government of modern Russia.-" Alissa de Carbonne, "Reuters", United Kingdom..

"When the word "death" from the books broke through the cardboard covers and got reunited with its sister that was swooping down on the city from the dirty sky, and it had overgrown with bones and settled in Grozny for a long time, Polina already had an antidote.

They hit the market where she worked with her mother, the streets she walked down daily, until Grozny was reduced to rubble, a hometown no longer recognisable.

She filled dozens of diaries in a messy, scribbled cursive, sometimes embellished with doodles – bomb blasts that look like flowers, blocks of flats seen from a distance.

Diary of Polina Zherebtsova is valuable by the fact that it upsets the balance of the roles and calls for the voices of other characters: girls, women, old women, waiting for the death from young, strong Russian men in military uniforms.

Russians as "Germans", shooting in poor or old women or cackling over the girl who skedaddle from them on all fours - these paintings are not so easy to accept even for the most liberal and unblinkered consciousness, but it makes the effort of every reader to open "Diary" even more valuable.

A scriptwriter of Moscow's theatre "Praktika" is willing to put on a play based on the book "Ant in a glass jar.