The History of Chechnya refers to the history of Chechens, Chechnya, and the land of Ichkeria.
Chechen society has traditionally been organized around many autonomous local clans, called taips. The traditional Chechen saying goes that the members of Chechen society, like its taips, are (ideally) "free and equal like wolves".[1][2][3]
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The first known settlement of Chechnya is thought to have occurred around 12500 BCE, in mountain-cave settlements, whose inhabitants used basic tools, fire, and animal hydes. Traces of human settlement go back to 40000 BCE with cave paintings and artifacts around Lake Kezanoi.
The ancestors of the Nakh peoples are thought to have populated the Central Caucasus around 10000 BCE- 8000 BCE. This colonization is thought by many to represent the whole Eastern Caucasian language family, though this is not universally agreed upon. The proto-language that is thought to be the ancestor of all Eastern Caucasian ("Alarodian") languages, in fact, has words for concepts such as the wheel (which is first found in the Central Caucasus around 4000 BCE-3000 BCE), so it is thought that the region had intimate links to the Fertile Crescent (many scholars supporting the thesis that the Eastern Caucasians originally came from the Northern Fertile Crescent, and backing this up with linguistic affinities of the Urartian and Hurrian language to the Northeast Caucasus). Johanna Nichols has suggested that the ancestors Eastern Caucasians had been involved in the birth of civilization in the Fertile Crescent. Definitely, at the time the proto-language split, the people had all these concepts very early on.
Towns were discovered in the area that is now Chechnya as early as 8000 BCE. Pottery, too, came around the same time, and so did stone weaponry, stone utensils, stone jewelry items, etc (as well as clay dishes).
The trend of a highly progressive Caucasus continued: as early as 3000 BCE-4000 BCE, evidence of metalworking as well as more advanced weaponry (daggers, arrow heads found, as well as armor, knives, etc.). Horseback riding came around 3000 BCE, probably having diffused from contact with Indo-European speaking-tribes to the North. Towns found in this period, interestingly, are often not found as ruins, both rather on the outskirts of (or even inside) modern towns in both Chechnya and Ingushetia, suggesting much continuity.
Mention of peoples who are possibly ancestral to the modern Chechens appear in both Greek and Georgian (later) documents, most notably the Zygii as reported by the Greeks.
From the 7th century through the 16th century Chechens and Ingushes were mostly pagans, practicing Vainakh religion.
During the 11th-13th century (i.e. before Mongol conquest), there was a mission of Georgian Orthodox missionaries to the Nakh peoples. There success was limited, though a couple of highland teips did convert (conversion was largely by teip). However, during the Mongol invasion, these Christianized teips gradually reverted to paganism, perhaps due to the loss of trans-Caucasian contacts as the Georgians fought the Mongols and briefly fell under their dominion.
During what was the late (or "high") Middle Ages of Western Europe, the Caucasus (as well as, coincidentally, Russia soon after) was invaded by Mongols and their Turkic vassals. The Islamic area that is now Azerbaijan quickly succumbed, but the Georgian princes put up a good fight, but were crushed in the end by superior Turkic technology. However, their invasion of Ichkeria/Mishketia did not fare so well. Hordes fell in the attempted assault of the densely forested Ichkeria, and the Chechens were determined to not fall to the fate of their neighbors. Eventually, Timurlane, frustrated with a seemingly endless list of near-victories and miserable humiliations, decided to amend relations with the Chechens, and the Mongols withdrew. Nonetheless, the Mongol army had been so heavily weakened (in the region) that their failure to recover from the mistake to invade Ichkeria resulted in the loss of their control of Georgia and other Caucasian areas. The resistance to the Mongols set many of the precedents that were recycled for the tactics later used against the Russians.
Speaking about the musical instruments, one must tell the legend about the terrible devastator of Chechnya, Timur. When the battle of the day was over, Timur asked his commanders: "Have you taken away their ‘pondar’" (musical string instrument). The answer was negative. And then he said: "If you haven’t taken away the ‘pondar’, you only destroyed their army, but you didn’t subjugate them. So we must make them our allies. I welcome them, and I wish as a sign of my respect to their steadfastness and for their edification, to grant them my sabre, which I haven’t given to anyone yet." His men didn’t find the fighting men; they were all killed. They brought the storyteller, who was prohibited from taking part in the battle and had to observe from a distance, so that he could tell the story to the future generation. The storyteller, Illancha, took the sabre of the Iron Lame and gave it to nine pregnant women, who passed it on to nine young boys. Later, Timur ordered freedom for all the Chechen prisoners. The Chechen elders told that this sabre, together with other presents and many Chechen relics were saved up until February, 1944, when the Chechen people were robbed of all their possessions during deportation; the main part of the Chechen treasures were taken to Moscow.
The spread of Islam was largely aided by Islam's association with resistance against Russian encroachment during the 16th to 19th centuries.[5][6]
The onset of Russian expansionism to the south in the direction of Chechnya began with Ivan the Terrible's conquest of Astrakhan. Russian influence started as early as the 16th century when Ivan the Terrible founded Tarki in 1559 where the first Cossack army was stationed. The Russian Terek Cossack Host was established in lowland Chechnya in 1577 by free Cossacks resettled from Volga River Valley to the Terek River Valley. In 1783 Russia and the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kartl-Kakheti (which had been devastated by Turkish and Persian invasions) signed the Treaty of Georgievsk, according to which Kartli-Kakheti was to receive Russian protection.
The Cossacks, however, had settled in the lowlands just a bit off from the Terek river. This area, now around Naurskaya and Kizlyar was an area of dispute between the Mongols' Turkic vassals and their successors (the Nogais) and the Chechens. The mountainous highlands of Chechnya were economically dependent on the lowlands for food produce, and the lowlands just north of the Terek river were considered part of the Chechen lowlands (Chechnya is no longer economically dependent on the region because of somewhat more efficient agricultural production as well as globalization (or regionalization), nonetheless, sensitive to the issue, they were added to modern day Chechnya by Khrushchev's government to compensate for the loss of Prigorodny, in 1957). The Cossacks were much more assertive than the Nogais (who quickly became vassals to the Tsar), and they soon replaced the Nogais as the regional rival. This marked the beginning of Russo-Chechen conflict, if the Cossacks are to be considered Russian. The Cossacks and Chechens would periodically raid each others' villages, and seek to sabotage each others' crops, though there were also long periods without violence.
Nonetheless, the Chechen versus Cossack conflict has continued to the modern day. It was a minor theme in the works of Leo Tolstoy (who managed to be sympathetic both to the Chechens and to the Cossacks). While the Chechens and Ingush primarily backed the Mensheviks and then the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, because of this, and the threat to the Decossackization policies of the Bolsheviks, the Terek Cossacks almost universally filed into the ranks of Anton Denikin's Volunteer Army.
The habit of raids done by the Chechens (and to a lesser extent Ingush) against Cossacks, by the 20th century, had more or less become a cultural tradition. Both hatred of the oppressor (Chechens generally failed to see the distinction between Russian and Cossack, and to this day they may be used as synonyms) and the need to either fill the mouths of hungry children and to regain lost lands played a role. The Chechen raiders, known as abreks were the focal point of this conflict and are almost symbolic of the two different viewpoints. The Russian view on the abreks is that they were simple mountain bandits, a typical example of Chechen barbarism (often compared to Russian "civilization", with general Colonialist racist vocabulary); they were depicted as rapists and murderers by Russian authors. The Chechen view is that they were heroes of valor, much like Robin Hood. As Moshe Gammer points out in his book Lone Wolf and Bear, Soviet ideology fell somewhere in between the two views- and notably, one such abrek, Zelimkhan, was deified. [7]
In order to secure communications with Georgia and other regions of the Transcaucasia the Russian Empire began spreading her influence into the Caucasus mountains; It soon met with fierce resistance from the mountain peoples. The Russians incorporated a strategy of driving the Chechens into the mountains, out of their lowland (relative) food source, thus forcing them to either starve or surrender [8]. They were willing to do neither. The Chechens moved to retake the lowlands: in 1785, a holy war was declared on the Russians by Sheikh Mansur, who was captured in 1791 and died a few years later. Nonetheless, expansion into the region, usually known at this point as Ichkeria, or occasionally Mishketia (probably coming from Georgian; also rendered Mitzjeghia, etc.), was stalled due to the persistence of Chechen resistance.
Following the incorporation of neighbouring Dagestan into the Empire in 1803-1813, Imperial Russian forces under Aleksey Yermolov began moving into highland Chechnya in 1830 to secure Russia's borders with the Ottoman Empire. In the course of the prolonged Caucasian War, the Chechens, along with many peoples of the Eastern Caucasus, united into the Caucasian Imamate and resisted fiercely, led by the Dagestani commanders Ghazi Mohammed, Gamzat-bek and Imam Shamil. While their program of united resistance to Russian conquest was popular, uniting Ichkeria/Mishketia with Dagestan was not necessarily (see Shamil's page), especially as some Chechens still practiced the indigenous religion, most Chechen Muslims belonged to heterodox Sufi Muslim teachings (divided between Qadiri and Naqshbandiya, with a strong Qadiri majority), rather than the more orthodox Sunni Islam of Dagestan; and finally, the rule of Ichkeria by a foreign ruler not only spurred distrust, but also threatened the existence of Ichkeria's indigenous "taip-conference" government structure. Thus, Shamil was regarded by many Chechens as simply being the lesser evil.[9] Shamil was an Avar who practiced a form of Islam that was largely foreign to Chechnya, and in the end, he ended up happy in Russian custody, demonstrating furthermore his lack of compatibility with the leadership of the cause. Worse still, he presented his cause not as a fight for freedom, but also as a fight to purify Islam, and aimed many of his criticisms at fellow Avars as well as Chechen leaders and non-Avar Dagestani leaders. The Chechens, as well as many Dagestanis, fought on even after his defeat, undaunted.[10]. In addition to failing to win the sincere support of not only the Chechens, but also the Ingush, and many Dagestani peoples, Shamil also was thwarted in his goal of uniting East Caucasian and West Caucasian resistance (Circassians, Abkhaz, etc.), especially given the conditions of the Crimean War. A major reason for this failure was Russia's success in convincing the Ossetes to take their side in the conflict, who followed the same religion (Orthodox Christianity) as them. The Ossetes, living right in between The Ingush and the Circassian federation, blocked all contacts between the two theaters of war.[11]
Chechnya was finally absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1859 after Shamil's capture. Imam Shamil, among modern Chechens, is alternatingly glorified and demonized: his memory is evoked as someone who successfully held off Russian conquest, but on the other hand, he ruled Ichkeria heavy-handedly, and was an Avar and worked mainly for the interest of his own people. Nonetheless, the name Shamil is popular largely due to his legacy.
The long and brutal war caused a prolonged wave of emigration until the end of the 19th century.[citation needed] Thousands of highlanders moved to Turkey and other countries of the Middle East, while Terek Cossacks and Armenians settled in Chechnya. During the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 the highlanders rose against Russia once more, but they were defeated again.[citation needed]
After the end of the Caucasus War, the region enjoyed a relative peace. By the end of the 19th century, major oil deposits were discovered around Grozny (1893) which along with the arrival of the railroad (early 1890s), brought economic prosperity to the region (then administered as part of the Terek Oblast).
During the Russian Civil War the Northern Caucasus switched hands several times between Denikin's Volunteer Army, the Bolshevik Red Army and the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, who allied with the Bolsheviks as they promised them greater autonomy and self-rule. Following the end of the conflict in 1921, the Chechnya-Ingushetia had been first made part of the Soviet Mountain Republic, and after it was disbanded in 1924 received the official status of an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union in 1936. The republic included not only the ethnically Chechen mountains but also large stretches of steppe inhabited by the Terek Cossacks.
During World War II, despite the fact that about 40,000 Chechens and Ingush fought in the Red Army (50 of them received the highest recognition of the Hero of the Soviet Union), the Soviet government accused them of cooperating with the Nazi invaders, who had controlled the western parts of Chechnya-Ingushetia for several months of the 1942/1943 winter. It was claimed that some Chechens were eager to show the Nazis mountain passes leading to Azerbaijan, whose oil reserves were the goal of Operation Blue.
In any case, as critics like Tony Wood note, the number of Chechens aiding the Nazis was exponentially less than the number fighting on the Soviet side (and, coincidentally, also much less than the number of Russians and Cossacks fighting for the Nazis).
On orders from Lavrenty Beria, the head of the NKVD, the entire Chechen and Ingush population of the republic were deported by freight trains to Kazakhstan. The operation was called "Chechevitsa" (Operation Lentil)[12], its first two syllables pointing a finger at its intended targets (though while the Chechens were the main targets, they were not the only victims). The operation is referred to by Chechens often as "Aardakh" (the Exodus).
It was initiated on October 13, 1943 when about 120,000 men were moved into the Republic of Checheno-Ingushetia, supposedly for mending bridges. On February 23, 1944 (on Red Army day), the entire population was summoned to local party buildings where they were told they were going to be deported as punishment for their alleged collaboration with the Germans.
Some 40% to 50% of the deportees were children.[13] Unheated and uninsulated freight cars were used. The inhabitants rounded up and imprisoned in Studebaker trucks and sent to Siberia.[14][15] Many times, resistance was met with slaughter, and in one such instance, in the aul of Haibach, about live 700 people were locked in a barn and burned to death by NKVD general Gveshiani, who was praised for this and promised a medal by Beria. Many people from remote villages were executed per Beria's verbal order that any Chechen or Ingush deemed 'untransportable should be liquidated' on the spot.[16]
| they combed the huts to make sure there was no one left behind... The soldier who came into the house did not want to bend down.He raked the hut with a burst from his tommy gun. Blood trickled out from under the bench where a child was hiding. The mother screamed and hurled herself at the soldier. He shot her too. There was not enough rolling stock. Those left behind were shot. The bodies were covered with earth and sand, carelessly. The shooting had also been careless, and people started wriggling out of the sand like worms. The NKVD men spent the whole night shooting them all over again. |
.
By the next summer, Checheno-Ingushetia was dissolved; a number of Chechen and Ingush placenames were replaced with Russian ones; mosques and graveyards were destroyed, and a massive campaign of burning numerous historical Chechen texts was near complete (leaving the world depleted of what was more or less the only source of central Caucasian literature and historical texts except for sparse texts about the Chechens, Ingush, etc, not written by themselves, but by Georgians) [17][18] Throughout the North Caucasus, about 700.000 (according to Dalkhat Ediev, 72.4297 [19], of which the majority, 479.478, were Chechens, along with 96.327 Ingush, 104.146 Kalmyks, 39.407 Balkars and 71.869 Karachais). Many died along the trip, and the extremely harsh environment of Siberia (especially considering the amount of exposure) killed many more.
The NKVD, supplying the Russian perspective, gives the statistic of 144.704 people killed in 1944-1948 alone (death rate of 23.5% per all groups), though this is dismissed by many authors such as Tony Wood as a far understatement [20]. Estimates for deaths of the Chechens alone (excluding the NKVD statistic), range from about 170.000 to 200.000 [21][22][23][24], thus ranging from over a third of the total Chechen population to nearly half being killed in those 4 years alone (rates for other groups for those four years hover around 20%). Although the Council of Europe has recognized it as a "genocidal act", no country except the self-declared, unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria officially recognizes the act as a genocide.
During the repression period(1944–1957), deported nations were not allowed to change places without special permit taken from local authority. Names of repressed nations were totally erased from all books and encyclopedias. Chechen-language libraries were destroyed, many Chechen books and manuscripts were burned.[16] Many families were divided and not allowed to travel to each other even if they found out where they relatives are.[25]
The Checheno-Ingush ASSR was transformed into Grozny Oblast, which included also the Kizlyar District and Naursky raion from Stavropol Kray, and parts of it were given to North Ossetia (part of Prigorodny District), Georgian SSR and Dagestan ASSR. Most of the empty housing was given to refugees from war-raged Western Soviet Union[25]. Abandoned houses were settled by newcomers, only Jews and Meskhetian Turks, both of which groups had previously lived in the area, are treated with respect for the grief repression that saved them from the wrath of the owners returning. There are still settlements produced to representatives of these peoples. In 1949 Soviet authorities erected a statue of 19th century Russian general Aleksey Yermolov in Grozny. The inscription read, "There is no people under the sun more vile and deceitful than this one."[26]
Some of Chechen settlements were totally deleted from, maps and encyclopedia. This was how the aul of Haibach was rediscovered, through archaeological finds in the Ukraine. Archaeologists have found the bodies of Caucasian scouts who died doing the job in the rear of the Nazis. In his pockets were found letters inscribing the name of the aul Haibach. When the scientists decided to inform the families of heroes that have found their relatives, they learned that such a settlement in Chechnya no longer exists. Continuing their investigation, they discovered the bitter truth about what, when soldiers from Chechnya, died on the front, the relatives of theirs were burned alive in their homes by Soviet soldiers.[25]
Many gravestones were destroyed (along with pretty much the whole library of Chechen and Georgian medieval writing (in Arabic and Georgian script) about the land of Chechnya, its people, etc, leaving the modern Chechens and modern historians with a destroyed and no longer existent historical treasury of writings [27][28]) in places that were renamed to be given Russian names. Tombstones of Chechens with a history of hundreds of years have been used by soviets for the construction of pedestrian footpasses, foundations of houses, pig pens, etc.[29]. In 1991, Dzhokkar Dudayev made political capital by, in a symbolic move, sending out officials to gather these lost gravestones, many of which had lost their original inscriptions, and construct out of them a wall. This wall was made to symbolize both Chechen remorse for the past as well as the desire to, in the name of the dead ancestors, fashion the best possible Chechen Republic out of their land and work hard towards the future. It bears an engravement, reading: "We will not break, we will not weep; we will never forget"; tablets bore pictures of the sites of massacres, such as Xaibach. [30] [31] It has now been moved by the Kadyrov government, sparking mass controversy. [30]
In 1957, four years after Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet of Ministers, passed a decree allowing repressed nations to freely travel in the Soviet Union. Many exiled Chechens took this opportunity to return to their ancestral land. This caused talk of restoration of a Chechen autonomy in the Northern Caucasus, the first secretary of the Grozny Oblast CPSU committee, Alexander Yakovlev, supported this idea, but pushed for a temporary autonomy in Kazakhstan, citing the insufficient resources in the province to house the re-patriated peoples (most of the former Chechen houses were settled by refugees from western USSR). However in 1958 officially the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was restored by a decree direct from Moscow, but in previous 1936 borders. For example South Ossetia kept the Prigorodny District, instead the republic was "compensated" with ethnic Russian territory on the left-bank Terek, Naursky district and Schelokovsky Districts.
Many returning Chechens were settled in the lowland steppe regions, and in Grozny itself rather than the historical mountainous districts. This caused extensive friction with the Russian population over land ownership which erupted into the 1958 Grozny riots.[32] The Russians seized the central government buildings and demanded either a restoring of Grozny Oblast, or a creation of a non-titular autonomy, like the neighbouring Dagestan ASSR, before Soviet law-enforcement desperesed the rioters.
In the 20th century, some lowland territories of Chechnya changed their owners several times. After the Russian Civil War, lands populated by Terek Cossacks and Russian colonists were granted to Chechens and Ingush as a reward for their support of the Bolsheviks against the White movement. Later these lands were partially returned to the Russians or Ossetians.[33]
Chechens were greatly disadvantaged in their homeland even after being allowed to return.[citation needed] There were no Chechen-language schools in their own homeland until 1990.[citation needed] According to sociologist Georgi Derluguyan, the Checheno-Ingush Republic's economy was divided into two-spheres, much like French occupied Algeria- and the Russian sphere had all the jobs with higher salaries.[34], and non-Russians were systematically kept out of all government positions. Due to rapid population growth combined with unfavorable economic conditions, the non-Russian population frequently engaged in the practice known is Russian as "shabashka", the unofficial migration of republic minorities for economic reasons. This diaspora often later engaged in organized crime partly due to poverty and job discrimination, and the justification that they were only regaining the money that was stolen from them by the Russian elite in their homeland by its institutionalized discrimination. Derluguyan (see citation above) describes this further as one of the main causes of the rebirth of the concept of Chechen nationalism in a much more unity-oriented form (that is, unity between Chechens, and Ingush if they want to be part of it).
The experience of Holodomor in the 1930s, of Aardakh in 1944 and of the ethnic conflict with the Russian populace after the return from exodus had, according to Derluguyan, Wood and others, allowed for the unification of loyalties. Bridges were made between taip, vird, and the like, and relationships were forged with prisonmates, partners in crime, among members of Chechen mafias in Russia, among members of labour teams, while the importance of taip and vird diminished due to the pressures of modernization. The Chechen narrative increasingly took the stance of a united Chechen struggle to escape once and for all the perceived oppression by the Russian state and to escape future hardships. The answer to this "Question" came as independence in the perestroika period when the first Caucasian nationalist movement, named Kavkaz was established in 1988. Explicitly Chechen movements were established a year later, notably including the Vainakh Democratic Party (VDP, though its goal of a unified Vainakh state ended in 1993 with Ingushetia's secession), and its trade union, named (of all things) Bart (unity in Chechen), established in 1988 [35]
Forced deportation constitutes an act of genocide according to the IV Hague Convention of 1907 and the Convention on the prevention and repression of the crime of genocide of the UN General Assembly (adopted in 1948) and in this case this was acknowledged by the European Parliament as an act of genocide in 2004.[36][37][38]
After the demise of the Soviet Union, the situation in Chechnya became unclear. Below is the chronology of that time:
According to Russia, from 1991 to 1994 tens of thousands of people of non-Chechen ethnicity left the republic amidst reports of violence and discrimination against the non-Chechen population (mostly Russians, Ukrainians and Armenians).[43][44][45] In total the more than 300,000 strong non-Chechen minority, primarily ethnic Russians as well as Armenianswere left the republic.[46]
However, regarding this exodus, there are opposing views. First of all, the mass depopulation of Russians in ethnic republics occurred throughout virtually the whole Soviet Union, and is not distinct for Chechnya/Ichkeria in any way. Second, while the departure of Russians from Chechnya was swift (26 left per 1 entrance in 1990, for example, the peak of the exodus [47]), this was relatively low in fact, indicating the more hospitable environment in Chechnya than others. In general, the view that the Chechens were especially prone to racism against Russians and other Christian groups is often rejected, even by academic Russians. As noted by ethnic Russian economists Boris Lvin and Andrei Iliaronov,
The Chechen authorities are regularly accused of crimes against the population, especially the Russian-speaking people. However, before the current war the emigration of the Russian-speaking population from Chechnya was no more intense than that from Kalmykia, Tuva and Sakha-Yakutia. In Grozny itself there remained a 200,000 strong Russian-speaking population which did not hasten to leave it.
According to this view of the ethnic situation in Ichkeria, provided by notably even Russian sources, the real end of the presence of Russians occurred during the First Chechen War, where Grozny was bombed extensively by the state run by their ethnic kin (i.e., the Russian federation). Most Russians in Chechnya were mainly oil workers living in the capital (Grozny), and thus, their homes having been destroyed and with relatives in their homeland, they returned to their own fatherland. The sense of mass crimes against non-Nakh peoples is also somewhat flawed: if one belongs to a clan in Chechen society, they are, for the most part, safe from such hooliganism. Clans are not only for Nakhs (see Nakh Peoples); there are in fact many non-Chechen/Ingush clans recognized as clans by others. There is a German clan, two Russian clans, a Jewish clan, a Polish clan, an Armenian clan, etc. These clans house individuals that are simultaneously the non-Nakh ethnicity, and, after time, Chechen/Ingush as well due to adoption of the Chechen language and the custom of interclan marriage. Only those without clans (i.e., those who did not join the clan system) were without the traditional legal protection from the theft, and thus fell victim to those needing food for their families.
The Russian federal government refused to recognize Chechen independence and made several attempts to take full control of the territory of the Chechen Republic. Russia actively funded the Chechen opposition to Dudayev's government, but nonetheless, even the opposition stated that there was no debate on whether Chechnya should be separate from Russia; there was one option: secession.[49] The federal government supported a failed coup designed to overthrow Dudayev in 1994.
Russian federal forces overran Grozny in November, 1994. Although the forces achieved some initial successes, the federal military made a number of critical strategic blunders during the Chechnya campaign and was widely perceived as incompetent. Led by Aslan Maskhadov, separatists conducted successful guerrilla operations from the mountainous terrain. By March 1995, Aslan Maskhadov became leader of the Chechen resistance.
Russia first appointed in early 1995 a government with Khadzhiev as ruler and Avturxanov as deputy. Gantemirov was also restored to his position as mayor of Grozny. However, later in the fall of that year, Khadzhiev was replaced with Doku Zavgaev, the former head of the republic who had fled after the Dudayev-led revolution in 1990-1991. He was extremely unpopular not only among the Chechens, but also among even the Russian diaspora, who nicknamed him "Doku Aeroportovich" because he rarely ever left the Russian-run airbase in Khankala [50] By statistics given by the Russian government itself's Audit Committee, he was allocated 12.3 trillion rubles in the first two months alone in a republic now impoverished by war and bloodshed.[51]
Although at first, the Russians had the upper hand despite determined homegrown Chechen civilian resistance (see Lieven's remarks on this as a Chechen cultural phenomemon traceable even as far back as the invasion by the Mongols, as well as Woods in Chechnya: the Case for Independence), half way through the war, the separatist Chechen government released a statement calling for help. They received it both from the Islamic world (with numbers of Arabs streaming in), but more prominently from former Soviet states and satellites, with Baltic peoples, Estonians, Romanians, Azeris, Dagestanis, Circassians, Abkhaz, Georgians, Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Hungarians, and even a few Russians streaming in to aid the so-called "cause of freedom" that the Chechen government professed.[citation needed] Diaspora Chechens also returned, as parallel to the Karabakh war, to aid their "daymokhk"(fatherland). With the new troops also came new weaponry, and from this point forward, the tables were turned, with the Russian army becoming more and more mutinous and lacking of morale, while the anti-Russian side growing stronger and more confident[citation needed] (see also: First Chechen War, on this phenomenon).
In June, 1995, Chechen guerrillas occupied a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk (in Stavropol Krai), taking over 1,000 hostages. Federal forces attempted to storm the hospital twice and failed; the guerrillas were allowed to leave after freeing their hostages. This incident, televised accounts of war crimes and mass destruction, and the resulting widespread demoralization of the federal army, led to a federal withdrawal and the beginning of negotiations on March 21, 1996.
Separatist President Dudayev was killed in a Russian rocket attack on April 21, 1996 and the Vice-president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev became president. Negotiations on Chechen independence were repeatedly finally tabled in August 1996, leading to the end of the war and withdrawal of federal forces.
In 1997, Aslan Maskhadov comfortably won the election, campaigning as a moderate who would unite the various factions within Chechen society, but establish Chechnya as an independent and secular (which turned off some support for him) state, aligning itself with the West more than with the Middle East, as well as keeping Ichkeria safe from Russia by remaining on relatively positive relations (which look especially snuggly when he is compared to his opponents Basaev and Yandarbiev). Yandarbiev's platform was an explicitly is Islamic state with some implementation of sharia law (which was unpopular with many Chechens who supported Maskhadov and Basayev because it was seen as a threat to adat, the indigenous interpretation), and a largely Islamophilic foreign policy (Yandarbiev also refused to concede that requesting help from Islamic terrorist groups was unwise, as both Maskhadov and Basaev (who hadn't yet warmed to such groups as he would later) heavily criticized him for). Yandarbiev's affinity towards Arabia contrasted with Maskhadov's affinity towards Europe. Basaev, finally, insisted on focusing less on gaining foreign support and recognition and more on rebuilding Ichkeria's own military. Basaev, despite criticizing (although, only after Maskhadov did so) Yandarbiev's policy towards radical Islamic groups, stated that attacks on Russian territory outside Chechnya should be executed if it is necessary to remind Russia that Ichkeria was not a pushover. At the point of 1997, as evidenced from the election, Maskhadov's policy of relative moderation and looking West for help was most popular, though he gained considerable following because of his status as a war hero.[52][53] The results of the election were a 79.4% turnout, with 59.3% voting for Maskhadov, 23.5% voting for Basaev and 10.1% voting for Yandarviev.[52]
Aslan Maskhadov was elected President in 1997, but was unable to consolidate control as the wartorn republic devolved into regional bickering among local teip leaders and factions. One major source of his unpopularity was the perception of him being "weak" in dealing with Russia, which was exploited by the more militaristic opposition
In the later stages of the First Chechen War, a large exodus of non-Vainakhs occurred. In the case of the originally 200000 strong Russian minority, this is usually cited as a result of growing anti-ethnic-Russian sentiment [54] among the Vainakh populace, which had been suppressed during the rule of Dudayev (who, despite appealing to Chechen nationalism and secession, was a native speaker of Russian, and most importantly was married to a Russian), who in some cases actively collaborated with the Russian troops.[55]
In August 1999 renegade Chechen and Arab commanders led a large group of militants into Dagestan. Headed by Shamil Basayev and Amir Khattab, the insurgents fought Russian forces in Dagestan for a week before being driven back into Chechnya proper. On September 9, 1999, Chechens were blamed for the bombing of an apartment complex in Moscow and several other explosions in Russia.
These events were viewed by Russia's new prime minister Vladimir Putin as a violation of the Khasav-Yurt Accord by the Chechen side. Thus, on October 1, 1999, Russian troops entered Chechenya. Much better trained and prepared than in the first war, by December all of the northern steppe regions were conquered, and Grozny was encircled, which finally surrendered in early February 2000. By late spring all of the lowland, and most of the mountainous territory was successfully re-claimed by the federal forces.
After several years of military administration, in 2002, a local government was formed by Russian-allied Chechens headed by Akhmad Kadyrov. In 2003, referendum on constitution and presidential election were held. However, it was widely criticized, and in some cases, the vote recorded was not only vastly more than the actual population living there, but the majority of "voters" were Russian soldiers and dead Chechens (who of course were "loyal" pro-Russians, according to the results).[56][57]
The Chechen separatists initially resisted fiercely, and several high-profile battles resulted in their victories such as the Battle of Hill 776 and Zhani-Vedeno ambush. Nonetheless the success in establishing a Russian-allied Chechen militia and the actions of Russian Special Forces meant that in 2002 Putin announced that the war was officially over.
However the Insurgency continued, and has spread to neghbouring regions with high profile clashes such as the Battle of Nalchik and the Beslan School siege. Yet after the deaths of prominent leaders Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev, the insurgency has become less visible to the media.[citation needed]
Both the federal and separatist armies have been widely criticized by human rights groups such as Amnesty International for alleged war crimes committed during the two Chechen wars, including well-documented accusations on both sides of rape, torture, looting, and the murder of civilians. The Russian military has been repeatedly reported to have used vacuum bombs and bombed white-flag bearing civilian vessels (see the Katyr-Yurt Massacre; Attacks on humanitarian corridors in Chechnya) by international charity groups.
The two wars have left millions of people living in poverty, up to half a million refugees (particularly ethnic Russians), and most of the infrastructure destroyed. Kadyrov claims that since then Northern Chechnya and Grozny have been rebuilt. These claims have been refuted by most other sources (such as Tony Wood[58]), who note that most of the revenue has gone to the construction of Kadyrov's private mansion for his clan and his expensive birthday celebration. [59] In a CNN interview, Kadyrov once compared the Chechen people to a pet lion cub, stating that "...[they] will either learn to be obedient or it will kill me".
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   | FIDH: Terror and Impunity : A Planned System - Terror and Impunity : A Planned System-FIDH > Human Rights for All / Les Droits de l'Homme pour Tous |
| | Chechnya: the empire strikes back - Chechnya: the empire strikes back |
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