Catalogue · ID 533

Вайнахи и имперская власть

Author: Козлов В. А. (рук.), Бенвенути Ф., Козлова М. Е., Полян П. М., Шеремет В. И.
Year of publication: 2011
Published in: составитель Зюзина И. А. (ответственный составитель) и другие; Москва: РОССПЭН; Фонд «Президентский центр Б. Н. Ельцина»; серия «История сталинизма. Документы»
Describes Russian colonization of peoples: Nokhchi (Chechens)
Publication rights: not allowed (a 2011 publication under copyright)

Files not published

Where we got it

Edition: https://books.google.com/books?id=Arg4zgEACAAJ

Where the knowledge base cites it

This material is cited in 30 places.

Campaigns

• Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936)

  the attempt at the administrative closing of mosques"

• "Bombs Rained Down on the Auls": Repression and Air Strikes on Mountain Chechnya on the Eve of the Deportation (1941-1942)

  The USSR was taking Chechens to its war: during the first mass mobilization, from 29 August to 2 September 1941, the military commissariats took almost 8 thousand men - 269 managed to evade, and another 450 fled on the way to the dispatch point

  In October they took another 4.4 thousand - 362 did not report to the recruitment stations

  In early October 1941 the mountain villages of Chechnya rose against the collective farms and the mobilization - according to the report of the commander of the 141st Regiment of the NKVD Internal Troops (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia), Lieutenant Colonel Khalukhaev, dated 26 June 1943, the protest covered the Shatoy (Shatoevsky), Itum-Kale, Galanchozh, Cheberloy and Sharoy districts

  "In the period from 30 October to 15 November 1941 the 141st rifle regiment, together with other units, crushed the c[ounter]-r[evolutionary] uprising in heavy multi-day fighting," Khalukhaev reported to Sheredega, head of the NKVD Internal Troops of the USSR

• Operation "Chechevitsa": the Total Deportation of the Chechen People and the Special Settlement Regime (1943-1949)

  The deportation was total - the numbers show it: the 1939 census counted 387.5 thousand Chechens in Checheno-Ingushetia

  Polian writes that already in November 1943 Deputy People's Commissar (Minister) of Internal Affairs Chernyshev was discussing with the heads of regional NKVD directorates "questions connected with the planned Operation 'Chechevitsa' - the deportation of some 0.5 million Vainakhs (Chechens and Ingush)"

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965)

  The secret police admitted: "In 1949 a series of measures was carried out to track down and detain fugitives, as well as to establish a strict regime in the places of settlement"

  Under the resolution of the government of the USSR of 8 January 1945, "any unauthorized absence of a deportee beyond the bounds of the resettlement district served by the special commandant's office shall be regarded as escape and shall entail criminal liability," and that district was at times limited to a few streets in a town or a single village soviet

  Those whom the agency listed among the "malicious evaders of work on the collective farms" faced 8 years of imprisonment

  and in July 1952 the occupiers' court sent ten religious mentors and their followers to the camps for terms of up to 25 years with confiscation of property

  … 6 more

Procedures

• Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936) — technique Legal Segregation of the Population

  …Autonomous Oblast, sent on 7-9 March 1931 to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - the supreme organ of the occupation power of the RSFSR, states: "The lishentsy [people stripped of the vote] in the re-election campaign of 1928/29 numbered 11,279 people, on average 6.8% across the oblast; in some settlements of the okrugs the percentage reached 30, and in the Galanchozh okrug up to 40%"

  Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District, who fought against the insurgent Chechens, in his report to the krai committee of the party named among the causes of the uprising "the incorrect disenfranchisement of middle peasants, and in a number of cases of poor peasants as well", which in the Itum-Kali okrug had become mass practice

• Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936) — technique Seizure of Religious Institutions

  Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District, in the district command's report to the krai committee of the party (the "North Caucasus kraikom VKP(b)") on the results of the military operation of spring 1930, named the closing of mosques on the colonizers' orders among the causes for which the Chechen auls had risen in arms

• Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936) — technique Destruction of Local Knowledge Systems

  …that inspected the Chechen oblast, in a secret memorandum to the presidium of the North Caucasus krai executive committee of 4 August 1928 cited the tally: on 1 January 1927 Chechnya had 138 Arabic schools with 2,068 pupils, on 1 January 1928 - 180 schools with three thousand pupils, against 105 Soviet schools; the growth of the Arabic schools Nagayev called "the most serious political question"

• Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936) — technique Expropriation of Resources

  The report admits: "The growth of livestock numbers in all categories that had begun in 1929 found no continuation in 1930; on the contrary, a significant decline in numbers occurred, sparing only the horses"

  - and the cause is named right there: the decline occurred "chiefly in the spring of 1930, when the kulaks, offering frenzied resistance to the growth of kolkhoz construction, predatorily destroyed the livestock"

  The directive to "curtail" the Chechen peasants declared well-off when seizing land stands in the same VTsIK report

• Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936) — technique Punitive Expeditions

  The first attempts of the Soviet troops to seize the auls failed - Shali and Goity fought them off; the staff of the North Caucasus Military District admitted in its memorandum on the first operation of 30 March 1930 that "the successful armed resistance to the local authorities in the auls of Shali and Goity during the seizure of inventoried property served as the final push" toward calling in field units

  Up to 60 people killed and wounded"; the troops' losses - 43 men, of them 21 killed or dead of wounds

  The occupation command of the district admitted the scale of the outbreak in its report to the krai committee of the party (the "kraikom VKP(b)"): "In Chechnya, as in Karachay, we had not isolated bandit counter-revolutionary outbreaks, but a direct uprising of entire districts (Galanchozh), in which almost the whole population took part in the armed action"

  By the district staff's memorandum on the second operation in Chechnya, by 14 March rifle battalions with batteries, cavalry divizions and an aviation flight had been massed into Chechnya: "in all, 3,920 fighters with 16 [artillery] pieces were drawn into the operation"

  … 2 more

• Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936) — technique Hostage-Taking

  Rank-and-file participants who appeared voluntarily are not counted, they number hundreds"

• Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936) — technique Neutralization of the Opposition

  The assembly of the village of Shali - 800 people - vouched for the arrested man: "to confirm that citizen Gopsumov Sungant [thus is Gaysumov recorded in the document], aged 107, has been an honored elder in the present village and has never been noted in anything discreditable, either criminal or political"

  Nagayev, inspector of the North Caucasus krai executive committee, filed this assembly into his report as evidence - "in the person of these 'assemblies', led by the kulaks and the clergy, the outlines of a real organization opposing our party are beginning to crystallize"

  The empire struck at the authorities' rights as well: at the elections of 1928/29 in the Chechen Autonomous Oblast it disenfranchised 11,279 people, and in the breakdown of the lishentsy stand the lines: "Servants of religious cult, 1,569" and "Members of lishentsy families, 5,658"

  descendants of Muhammad and other religious authorities - 250, folk healers - 150"; the conclusion, in the same place: "In order to wage a struggle against such a huge army of mullahs, sheikhs and the like, it is necessary to have trained cadres"

• "Bombs Rained Down on the Auls": Repression and Air Strikes on Mountain Chechnya on the Eve of the Deportation (1941-1942) — technique Mass Killings of Civilians

  Regiment losses: killed — 6, wounded — 7"

  while Khalukhaev's report names the Galanchozh district among those engulfed by the uprising

• "Bombs Rained Down on the Auls": Repression and Air Strikes on Mountain Chechnya on the Eve of the Deportation (1941-1942) — technique Imposition of Its Own Picture of Reality

  This version became fixed in the documents: in the report of the commander of the 141st Regiment of the NKVD Internal Troops (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia), Lieutenant Colonel Khalukhaev, dated 26 June 1943, October 1941 is described thus: "an armed counter-revolutionary uprising was raised by German-fascist agents"

  The desertion the colonizer imputed to the Chechen people was the desertion of recruits, not of frontline soldiers - the certificate of Dementyev, head of the Grozny Region directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, dated 1956, states: during the first mobilization "450 men deserted en route to the dispatch point, 269 men evaded the call-up"

  The military commissariats carried out three call-ups: 29 August - 2 September 1941 (8 thousand men were subject to call-up), in October 1941 (4,733 men) and on 17-25 March 1942: "14,577 men were subject to call-up, of whom only 4,395 were called up"

  In April 1942 the USSR cancelled the call-up of Chechens and Ingush altogether - Dementyev's certificate states: "In connection with this, in April 1942 there followed an order of the NKO of the USSR cancelling the call-up of Chechens and Ingush into the army"

• "Bombs Rained Down on the Auls": Repression and Air Strikes on Mountain Chechnya on the Eve of the Deportation (1941-1942) — technique Punitive Expeditions

  The first came the military operation of 30 October - 15 November 1941 across the districts of the declared "uprising": according to the report of the 141st Regiment of the NKVD Internal Troops (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia), 36 people recorded as "bandits" were killed and 251 detained - "insurgents — 127, bandits — 7, bandit-insurgents — 13, deserters — 104"

  On 5 December 1941, in the village of Gikhi in the Urus-Martan district, the regiment in a two-hour battle destroyed a group of ten people that the report calls the "cadre band" of Kaidov Azak: three were killed, seven detained

  The regiment's count for 1941, from 25 October to 1 January 1942: 59 people killed, 390 detained

• Operation "Chechevitsa": the Total Deportation of the Chechen People and the Special Settlement Regime (1943-1949) — technique Deportation

  On 29 January 1944 People's Commissar (Minister) of Internal Affairs Beria approved the principal document of Operation "Chechevitsa" - the "Instruction on the Procedure for the Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush"

• Operation "Chechevitsa": the Total Deportation of the Chechen People and the Special Settlement Regime (1943-1949) — technique Killing of Prisoners and Detainees

  …girl; in the village of Belty a convoy headed by Soviet militia section commander Dubasov shot four people "without any pretext whatsoever" and delivered their corpses to the district branch of the NKVD; at the Kuloi hamlet Meishvili, a battalion commander of the NKVD troops (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia), shot the brothers Baisar and Baim Bataev, Dzhamalani Pitalov and Mavla Chebiev

  …"attempted escape," and Kolesnikov issued "findings that the use of weapons had been proper"; all this was established by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office following a letter from the Chechen Dokhtukaev, written from exile - the results were reported in 1957 to Bulganin, head of the government of the USSR, but no one was ever brought to court: the ten-year statute of limitations had expired

• Operation "Chechevitsa": the Total Deportation of the Chechen People and the Special Settlement Regime (1943-1949) — technique False Compromise / Entrapment

  …Those who believed the promises were arrested or deported together with their compatriots to Kazakhstan and Kirghizia (today's Kyrgyzstan) in the course of the genocidal Operation "Chechevitsa." The report of Dementiev, head of the Grozny Oblast internal affairs directorate (1956), states: in September-October 1943 alone "30 bands were legalized, comprising 183 men, plus 60 lone bandits"

  All or nearly all of them were arrested shortly before the deportation or in its course"

  Polian writes that in June "tried and tested" religious authorities, deported in February, were brought from Kazakhstan to Grozny, and they induced hundreds of Chechens in hiding "toward legalization and, hence, deportation"

• Operation "Chechevitsa": the Total Deportation of the Chechen People and the Special Settlement Regime (1943-1949) — technique Artificial Famine

  The Special Settlements Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs tallied the toll for the Kazakh SSR: by 1 July 1949, of the Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Karachays initially resettled there, 101,036 people had died - 23.3% of those brought in; "the highest mortality was among the deportees from the North Caucasus and the Kalmyks"

  of the eating of roots and grasses"

  …for that left behind in their former places of residence," while the funds allocated to them were handed out by local bosses to others - in the Kazalinsk district "one ton of bread was issued to the local party activists," and in the collective farms of the Bazar-Kurgan district "food was issued only to able-bodied special settlers, while those unfit for work were deprived of rations"

• Operation "Chechevitsa": the Total Deportation of the Chechen People and the Special Settlement Regime (1943-1949) — technique Administrative-Territorial Division

  : lowland Chechnya went into the newly created Grozny Okrug of Stavropol Krai - a month later the colonizer transformed it into Grozny Oblast

• Operation "Chechevitsa": the Total Deportation of the Chechen People and the Special Settlement Regime (1943-1949) — technique Erasure and Renaming of Place Names

  …Ingush place names were repressed as well; they were replaced with Ossetian or Russian ones" - by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of 29 April 1944 the Psedakh district became Alansky, Nazran district - Kosta-Khetagurovsky, Achaluki district - Nartovsky, and by the decree of 30 August 1944 the colonizer renamed "all the districts and their centers" of Grozny Oblast

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Pitting Neighboring Peoples Against Each Other

  The Directorate of Special Settlements of the MGB (predecessor of today's FSB) of the Kazakh SSR admitted that same summer to "mass brawls between deportee-Chechens and local residents (at Kushmurun station, Kustanai oblast, and in Ust-Kamenogorsk and Leninogorsk, East Kazakhstan oblast), accompanied by killings and grave injuries" - and laid the blame for them on the Chechens themselves

  This mass disorder was put down only after the intervention of an MGB unit"

  In December 1954 in the village of Yelizavetinka, Akmolinsk oblast, students of the mechanization school called the Chechens "traitors and betrayers of the motherland" - and with these accusations Russians went into a mass clash with the Chechens

  As a result of the brawl 3 Chechens were killed and 4 injured"

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Legal Segregation of the Population

  …memorandum summarized it thus: "Many local party and soviet organs display a disdainful attitude toward work among the special settlers, pass over numerous instances of arbitrariness toward this part of the population, of infringement of the special settlers' lawful rights, of indiscriminate political distrust toward them, which artificially breeds moods of discontent among the special settlers"

  In 1954 the Ministry of Internal Affairs declared unfounded the complaints that Chechens and Ingush were allegedly terrorizing the local population: 506,043 people deported from the North Caucasus stood on the special-settlement rolls in 1954, and of them only 5,418 - about one percent - had been convicted and were in confinement

  Many Chechens were dismissed from work, expelled from the party, arrested and then sentenced to long terms of imprisonment"

  A decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR restored the republic that same day

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Labor Exploitation

  By its resolution of 21 February 1948 the government of the USSR ordered the organization of the "correct and obligatory labor utilization of the special settlers"

  Those whom the agency listed among the "malicious evaders of work on the collective farms" were, by joint order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the Prosecutor General, to be tried under Article 82 - "deprivation of freedom for 8 years" - but the secret police admitted that on the ground people were sent into a new 8-year exile without any trial at all, by decisions of collective-farm meetings

  Even the relaxation the colonizer tied to labor: by the resolution of 5 July 1954 "On Lifting Certain Restrictions in the Legal Status of the Special Settlers" the government of the USSR allowed people to live not within the bounds of the commandant's office but within their oblast - yet only those engaged in socially useful labor

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Sham Trials

  The Ministry of Internal Affairs admitted in a 1950 report: "deportees maliciously evading work on the collective farms are being banished by decisions of collective-farm meetings for 8 years to remote regions of the country" - this was done in the Kzyl-Orda, Kustanai, Pavlodar and South Kazakhstan oblasts of Kazakhstan

  The ministry itself called banishment without trial merely an "erroneous practice" and an "incorrect application of the measure of punishment": under its own order such people were supposed to be put on trial

  Kozlov writes from the ministry's documents: "The more far-sighted police officials were forced to admit that punishing the Chechens and Ingush for evasion of work was inexpedient" - or else "a natural defense mechanism will kick in - the single monolithic community will behave as one person - you cannot punish them all!"

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Neutralization of the Opposition

  …Kunta-Haji brotherhood Yusup Akhmatov - with having "categorically forbidden the murids [his followers] to attend cultural and educational institutions" and "forbidden children to attend school"; the outcome: "to 25 years of deprivation of liberty to be served in an ITL [corrective labor camp], with subsequent loss of electoral rights for a term of 3 years and confiscation of all property, each"

  Kozlov writes: two "most characteristic" such files on Chechens, opened in 1952 by the MGB (predecessor of today's FSB) directorates of the regions of the Kazakh SSR, "received highly eloquent code names: 'The Stubborn' and 'The Fanatics.' Both cases were run under the coloring 'Muslim clergy'" (the coloring - what the secret police called the subject of a file)

  …of the Kazakh SSR Byzov reported on 12 August 1950 on the same kind of files, "Bloc," "Avengers" and "Caucasians" - under the last of them the secret police was likewise running a file on former leading officials of Chechen-Ingushetia - and gave the number of those arrested: "In all, in Kazakhstan, for anti-Soviet activity the organs of the MGB arrested in 1949 and 7 months of 1950 874 deportees"

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Destruction of Local Knowledge Systems

  In the summer of 1956 inspectors toured the places of exile and reported to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR: "Teaching of children in schools in the native language was not conducted," in the 1955/56 school year "of 61 thousand children of school age only 50 thousand, or 81%, were being taught," and among the illiterate "in some districts their number reaches 40-50%"

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Restriction of Settlement Geography

  …of the CPSU") to allow "persons of Chechen and Ingush nationality returning to their former place of residence without the permission of the Organizing Committee to be detained, removed from trains, steamers and other means of transport and returned to the places of their former settlement," and on 9 April 1957 reported: in three days "2,139 persons were identified and detained" on trains

  The Organizing Committee stretched the return out over four years and made it paid: the returnees complained to the formal head of state Voroshilov that the Organizing Committee's representative Nemukhin had in March 1957 "announced to us the procedure of our return over 1957-1960, with all expenses connected with the move charged to us, the movers ourselves"

  on 26 January 1957 the Organizing Committee and the bureau of the party's oblast committee (the "Grozny obkom of the CPSU") established that "arrival for permanent residence on the territory of the republic may take place only by permission of the Organizing Committee of the ChIASSR [the Chechen-Ingush republic]," and ordered the occupier's police to register newcomers only on those permits

  on 5 September 1960 the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR extended the deadline for return "until 1963"

  … 2 more

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Administrative-Territorial Division

  …the Chechens and Ingush in the districts where they lived before the deportation is not possible," because "these districts are settled by migrants from the central oblasts of the RSFSR," while on the lands that had passed to North Ossetia, where before the deportation "77,578 Chechens and Ingush lived," "the local [and] party organs consider the return of the Chechens and Ingush inexpedient"

  The Russian parliament, in setting the republic's borders, did not return to it the former Aukh district either - it is absent from the list of transferred lands

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Administrative Corruption and Extortion

  …of the Organizing Committee, and they themselves, filled their suitcases handsomely with money - one pass was sold by them for 2 thousand rubles on average," - and he relayed the words of the returnees: "During our deportation even Beria did not inflict such great material damage on our people as the Organizing Committee of the ChIASSR [the Chechen-Ingush republic] has now inflicted on us"

  An official of the government of the RSFSR, Belov, replied on 4 October 1957 that the bribes taken for passes had already been examined by the leadership of the Bolshevik party (the "Central Committee of the CPSU"), that on the Organizing Committee members Tongiev and Dukuzov the party's oblast committee "imposed a strict party reprimand," and proposed "to confine ourselves to the measures taken"

  from the departed population of Ossetian, Avar and other nationalities"

• "Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965) — technique Imposition of Alien Governance

  An official of the government of the RSFSR, Fedin, reported on 29 August 1957 that three members of the Organizing Committee from among the Chechens and Ingush - Dukuzov, Malsagov and Tepsaev - "for more than eight months have not been appointed to any posts and in essence are responsible for nothing concrete," although "the republic feels a great shortage of cadres from among the Chechens and Ingush"