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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Mairbek VACHAGAEV
Doctorate candidate at Sorbonne IV (Paris, France), fellow at the Jamestown Foundation (Washington, U.S.).
REHABILITATION OF THE NORTH CAUCASIAN PEOPLES: THE PROBLEMS IT CREATED FOR THE CHECHENS AND INGUSHES BETWEEN 1957 AND THE BEGINNING OF THE 1990S
Abstract
T
he author takes an in-depth look into some of the problems created by the rehabilitation of the Chechens and In-
gushes (when the Soviet government allowed these peoples deported in 1944 to return to their homelands) and not resolved
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upon their return. The new conflicts, which added to the social and political tension in the region, call for detailed investigation. We
must take a closer look at the past in order to get to the heart of the current political problems of the two republics.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Some members of the Russian academic community are still convinced that the Chechen and Ingushes were “partly responsible” for their deportation; they base these convictions on the numerous facts of resistance of individuals to the authorities and try to pass them as acts of mass cooperation with the Germans.1 The Chechens and Ingushes had opposed Soviet power before the war—therefore wartime was no exception. On the whole, acts of resistance were scattered and could not be described as organized actions.2 Meanwhile, it was entire peoples who were accused of cooperating with the Nazis. Few people know that the Chechens and Ingushes learned about the developments on the fronts from newspapers and newsreels. In the North Caucasian direction the Germans were stopped at the city of Malgobek on the administrative border of Ingushetia and North Ossetia-Alania. This means that neither the Chechens nor the Ingushes could have cooperated with the Nazis for the simple reason that most of them had never seen a live German.3 There could be no total cooperation, yet the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. was liquidated precisely for this reason.4 It seems that the Soviet government merely exploited the thesis to convince the nation that was fighting the Nazis at a huge material and human price. This was and remains ignored as well as the fact that the Germans were stopped outside the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R.
However, at the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. First Secretary of the C.C. C.P.S.U. Nikita Khrushchev admitted that the accusation was absurd: “No Marxist-Leninist, no man of common sense can grasp how it is possible to make whole nations responsible for inimical activity, including women, children, and old people... to use mass repressions against them, and to expose them to misery and suffering for the hostile acts of individuals or groups of people.”5
The Vaynakhs were fighting heroically at the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. Speaking at a forum called Russia at the Turn of the Century: Hopes and Realities, President Putin admitted: “Few people know that about one third of those who defended the Brest Fortress (the fortress on the western Soviet border that became the symbol of resistance of the Soviet people.—M.V.) were Chechens.”6 In fact, there were more than 250 Chechens fighting in the fortress.7 The names of three Chechens and one Ingush are commemorated in the Brest Memorial. The 255th Chechen-Ingush regiment and a separate cavalry battalion defended the Brest Fortress together with other Red Army units.
Magomed Uzuev was one of those who fought until the end, but it was only in 1996 that he was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation Order by the Decree of the RF President. Khanpasha Nuradilov personally killed 920 Nazis, captured 7 enemy machineguns, and took 12 prisoners.8 In April 1943 his feats were posthumously rewarded with the Hero of the Soviet Union Order.
54 pp.
1 See: N.F. Bugay, A.M. Gunov, Kavkaz: narody v eshelonakh, Moscow, 1998, pp. 133-138.
2 See: M. Iandieva, Deportatsia ingushey. Fal’sifikatsia i podlinnye prichiny, Elbrusoid, Moscow, Nazran, 2008,
3 See: A.A. Grechko, Bitva za Kavkaz, Voenizdat, Moscow, 1967, p. 86.
4 Ot deportatsii k integratsii: dokumenty i materialy, posviashchennye 60-letiu deportatsii chechentsev i ingushey v Kazakhstan, Almaty, 2004, p. 101. Ukaz Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR ot 7 marta 1944 g. No. 116/102 “O
likvidatsii Checheno-Ingushskoy ASSR i ob administrativnom ustroystve ee territorii.”
5 [http://www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/24.htm].
6 S. Bitsoev, “Ubity i zabyty,” Novye Izvestia, 1 July, 2005.
7 See: Kh. Oshaev, Brest—oreshek ognenny, Grozny, 1990.
8 See: Z. Shakhbiev, Sud’ba checheno-ingushskogo naroda, Moscow, 1996, p. 216.
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Chechen Movladi Visaitov was one of the first to reach the Elbe, a feat rewarded with the American Legion of Honor Order.9 Alavdi Ustarkhanov, known as Commander Andre, fought in the French Resistance Movement; and Magomed Yusupov fought together with Italians in the 51st Arturo Ca-petini strike brigade of the Italian Resistance.10 During the war, 10 Vaynakhs became Heroes of the Soviet Union; and 2,300 Chechens and Ingushes lost their lives in the war. This was kept secret, the heroes lived and died unrecognized and unrewarded because they failed to adjust to the official ideology that described the Chechens and Ingushes as “enemies of the nation.”
Deportation was the Vainakh Holocaust; Chechens and Ingushes never tire of talking about this and even the recent developments have not pushed the issue to the back burner.
The Rights of the Chechens and Ingushes to the Homeland Restored
On 9 January, 1957 the Soviet government denounced the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R on deportation of the Chechens and Ingushes. Two decrees on the deported peoples appeared simultaneously: the Decree of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet annulled its own earlier decision of 7 March, 1944, which liquidated the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R., while the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the R.S.F.S.R. outlined the new administrative borders of the restored republic without the Prigorodny District (the historical homeland of the Ingushes), which was transferred to North Ossetia. The Chechen-Ingush republic was rewarded with the mainly steppe and semi-desert lands of three districts of the Stavropol Territory (the Naurskiy, Kargalinskiy, and Shelkovskoy districts) bordering on Chechnia along the Terek River. Later they were rearranged into two districts (Shelkovskoy and Naurskiy). The decree deliberately ignored the rights of the tens of thousands of Chechens who had lived in the Republic of Daghestan.
For objective reasons the process took a long time. In 1957 about 140 thousand Chechens and Ingushes (about a third of the total number of those deported) returned.11 The process stalled because the places they had lived before deportation were closed to them (the Chechen villages in the former Aukh District in Daghestan and the areas adjacent to Vladikavkaz). In anticipation of dramatic political developments people wanted to leave Kazakhstan and Kirghizia as promptly as possible. This explains why most of the Chechen and Ingush settlers arrived during the first couple of years while others trickling back over at least twenty years.
The government, which never expected the Chechens and Ingushes to move back home on their own without waiting for organized resettlement, was taken unawares.12 Those who came back found their homes occupied by people moved from central Russia and Ukraine who had been living in their homes and tilling their land for the last 13 years. They were obviously unwilling to return the houses and landed plots to their former owners. In the Caucasus they were what Chechens and Ingushes had been in Kazakhstan and Kirghizia. Not infrequently the former owners merely bought their property back. The circumstances forced the Chechens and Ingushes to resort to all means and methods to drive the Ukrainians and Russians from their homes.13 Under the pressure of the huge mass of Chechens and Ingushes resolved to get their homes back, the Russians lost faith in the government and its ability to protect them. The local Communist Party structures that wanted to retain as many Russians and
9 See: M. Geshaev, Chechenskiy sled na rossiiskom snegu, Moscow, 2003, p. 50.
10 See: Yu. Aydaev, Chechentsy: istoria i sovremennost’, Moscow, 1996, pp. 241-242.
11 The Chechen State National Archives, Record group 1, Inventory 1, File 1837, pp. 4-5.
12 See: N.F. Bugay, A.M. Gunov, op. cit., p. 291.
13 See: Z. Shakhbiev, op. cit., p. 265.
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Ukrainians in the districts to somewhat dilute the autochthonous population could not stop the Russian and Ukrainian outflow. The republic’s party and state structures completely failed: by the early 1970s non-Chechens in the republic’s countryside were few and far between.
This did not happen everywhere: in the past and today the Chechens and Ingushes treat the Jews, Andis, and Khevsurs (Georgian highlanders) with respect. They had not merely saved their original homes but also preserved all the domestic utensils: those who came back found their homes as they had been in February 1944.
Caught unprepared, the authorities were indirectly responsible for the first clashes between the Chechens and Ingushes pouring into their homeland in large numbers and those who realized that they would have to part with everything they had regarded as their homes in the Chechen and Ingush villages abandoned after the deportation. In Grozny with its exclusively Russian population (with the exception of small Armenian, German, and Jewish communities) all, even minor everyday, conflicts developed into ethnic confrontations. On 23 August, 1958 in Grozny Chechen Lulu Malsagov stabbed two Russians during a drunken brawl wounding one and killing the other. His arrest, however, did not prevent mass rallies on the funeral day and unrest on 25 and 26 August, 1958. Thousands of people rushed into the streets to tell the authorities what they thought about their policies. Workers demanded that the culprit be publicly executed and that the quarters populated by workers be freed from all Chechens. In the afternoon the building of the Chechen-Ingush C.P.S.U. Regional Committee remained in the hands of the crowd for a while. Top officials tried to talk to the enraged people and failed. The mob shouted that it wanted to talk to Khrushchev and chanted “Long Live the Grozny Region!” (instead of the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R.) and “Bring More Russians to the Grozny Region!” The next day the crowd swelled to 10 thousand and took the building of the Regional Committee, the post office, and the two lower floors of the republic’s Ministry of the Interior by storm. Hundreds were beaten up by the unruly crowd. The authorities moved in troops; by the night of 27 August, 1958 the revolt was suppressed, the crowd dispersed, and the most active instigators arrested.
Many of the Russian settlers who stayed behind in the republic remained wary of, not to say hostile to, the Chechens and Ingushes. Here I do not have in mind the locally-born Russians and Cossacks. The Chechens and Ingushes, in turn, have never forgotten that the Russians demanded they should be kept outside their homeland and the Chechen-Ingush Republic not be restored.14 This problem, together with numerous infringements on the local people’s culture and career chances, remained very much alive throughout the entire history of the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. (until the mid-1980s).
Crisis Points of the Chechen-Ingush Homecoming
The Aukh District Issue, or a New Ethnic Conflict in Daghestan. The Chechens who before deportation had been living in Daghestan were not welcome home either. Back in 1922, when the Soviet Republic of Daghestan came into being, a Chechen-populated area was made a part of it without the slightest reason. The area is called Aukh and the local Chechens are known as Aukh Chechens (or Chechen-Akkintsy according to the tukhum they all belong to). Those Aukh Chechens who came back home in 1957 were kept away from their former homes in the mountains. Instead they were invited to settle around the Daghestanian city of Khasaviurt. Here, too, the Chechens found Lakhs (one of the ethnic groups of Daghestan) living in their former homes. In fact, the Lakhs had been forced
[ See. O. Matveev, “Russkiy bunt,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 August, 2000.
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from their mountains down to the lands previously populated by Chechens. For a long time this remained one of the most volatile issues. Not only Chechens and Lakhs but also other peoples of Daghestan were involved. To resolve the Chechen-Lakh conflict the republican authorities had to resettle the Lakhs elsewhere. Land could be found in the valley alone, the historical home of the Kumyks, therefore all efforts to move the Lakhs to the Khasaviurt area caused confrontations with the Avars, Andis, and Darghins who were already living there and refused to be crammed. The problem infringed on the interests of six peoples in Daghestan. This caused numerous fights between the Chechens and the Lakhs, the Chechens and the Avars, and the Chechens and the Kumyks that threatened to develop into ethnic clashes. The last of such fights between the Chechens and the Lakhs took place in 2007 when the Chechens demanded that the members of all other ethnic groups leave the Aukh area.15 One after another the conflicts were defused by promises of the republic’s leaders to resolve the conflict in favor of the Chechens.
On 12 May, 1991 the 3rd Congress of the People’s Deputies of Daghestan discussed the practical measures to be taken to execute the Law of the R.S.F.S.R. “On the Rehabilitation of the Repressed Peoples.” It ruled to restore the Aukh District (minus the lands transferred in 1944 to the Kazbek District) and move the Lakhs of the Novolakskoe District to the lands to the north of Makhachkala, a newly created Novolakskoe District. The decision “On Land Allocation for the Newly Formed Novolakskoe District” was passed as a follow-up. Late in the 20th century Daghestan finally resolved the conflict by allowing the Chechens to return to their homes. The Lakhs who had lived in the former Chechen homes were offered land outside Makhachkala. Late in 2007 it was announced that the first Lakh families had left the Chechen villages for the new settlements being built outside the capital of Daghestan. The government of Daghestan planned to complete resettlement in four years.16 This meant that after more than 60 years the Chechen-Akkintsy would finally return to the homes they left in 1944.
The Ingush Protest Rally of 1973. The fact that the returning Ingush families were kept away from the villages that used to belong to their clans and their family homes was another potentially hot issue. The villages had been transferred to the Republic of North Ossetia and settled with Ossets from Ossetia’s southern part (which belonged to Georgia). The 1973 events showed the republican authorities that the Ingushes were determined to defend their right to live in the area of Darial, Jeyrakh, and Tsori, as well as in the right-bank quarters of Orjonikidze (now Vladikavkaz)—the historical homeland of the Ingush nation. The issue was further complicated by the fact that the Ingushes of this part of Ingushetia (bordering on Ossetia) believed that their ancestors were the forefathers of all the Ingushes as distinct from the Ingushes in the republic’s eastern part (bordering on Chechnia), some of whom (for instance, the Orstkhoys) regarded themselves as Chechens and others as Ingushes.
Having returned to their homeland and resolved to restore their rights to the districts liquidated in 1944, the Ingushes, however, knocked in vain at the doors of the Communist Party and Soviet offices in Moscow. Early in 1972 Jabrail Kartoev, Idris Bazorkin, Sultan Pliev, Akhmed Gadziev, and Akhmed Kushtov sent a letter to Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the C.C. C.P.S.U., a no mean feat at that time. They were promptly branded enemies of the party and the state; the press was awash with denunciations; they risked their jobs. Undaunted, they sent one letter after another; they refused to accept all the answers as the final decision. On 8 December they were received in the Kremlin to be informed that there was no Ingush question in the Soviet Union, there was only the private opinion of a small group with no support from the people. In response, the Ingushes staged a huge rally to demonstrate that the small group had the entire nation behind it.
15 See: T. Isaev, “V Daghestane izuchaiut prichiny konflikta mezhdu chechenskoy i lakskoy molodezhiu,” available at [www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1188892.html], 30 October, 2008.
16 See: R. Gazimagomedov, “Vitse-premier Daghestana: Pereselenie lakskogo naroda mozhet zavershitsia cherez chetyre goda (Daghestan),” available at [www.regnum.ru/news/936960.html], 25 December, 2007.
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On 16 January, 1973 people spontaneously flocked to Lenin Square in Grozny; by noon the square in front of the Chechen-Ingush Regional C.P.S.U. Committee was packed. The rally, which started spontaneously at 10 a.m., went on until 4 a.m. on 19 December, 1973. The slogans, which confirmed unity with the Communist Party and the Soviet leaders, “Let Justice Triumph!” “Long Live Red Ingushetia, the Vanguard of Soviet Power in the Northern Caucasus!,” were flanked by portraits of Lenin, Oijonikidze, Kirov, the Politburo members, etc.17
It had to be decided: either the Prigorodny District would be transferred to the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. or the Ingushes should be allowed to settle freely there. The peaceful meeting was perfectly organized, which did not save it from repressions. When it became clear that the meeting would not disperse on its own and that the Party and Soviet officials carried no weight with the demonstrators, it was decided to use force. Early in the morning of 19 January, 1973 the crowd was dispersed with truncheons and water jets. Frost-bitten and wounded people were arrested; pressure was used to force them admit that the meeting had been instigated by anti-Soviet agitators. Some of the local Party and Soviet officials were replaced with Russians. Several of those who had organized the rally were sent to prison. The events just fanned the fire. It had become clear that the authorities wanted no part in the conflict and were determined to let the events take their course. They refused to admit that there was a land issue. The next plenary meeting of the Chechen-Ingush Regional C.P.S.U. Committee chaired by its First Secretary S. Apriatkin described the January rally as a nationalist event that “undermined friendship among nations.” It remained a bleeding wound of the Ingush nation and a symbol of the struggle for the right to live on their lands.
Ban on Living in the Republic’s Mountainous Part. The ban that kept Chechens out of the highland villages in the Cheberloy, Sharoy, and larger part of the Itum-Kale districts created another “territorial” problem.18 Dozens of homesteads and villages remained abandoned. In the past they had supplied at least half of Chechnia with meat, milk, butter, honey, wool, etc. The lands high in the mountains formally belonged to the valley sovkhozes (Soviet farms), which pastured their cattle up in the mountains during the summer. These lands comprised nearly a quarter of the republic’s territory. By keeping the Chechens in the valley the authorities aspired to preserve their control over the people who even before deportation had only formally recognized Soviet power. This explains why the Chechen diaspora in Kazakhstan and Kirghizia consists of Chechen highlanders (who used to live in the Cheberloy, Sharoy, Galanchozh, and Itum-Kale districts) who could not return to their native parts.
For the same reason Jeyrakh (the mountainous part of Ingushetia) remained unpopulated; it became an Ingush enclave to be reached via North Ossetia, a dangerous trip for those who would have wanted to settle in Jeyrakh.
Discriminatory Policies
Political rehabilitation did not improve the political image of both nations in the republic and outside it: the authorities still looked at them as politically unreliable and lacking in loyalty toward Russia. This went back into history: at the early stages of Russia’s presence in the North Caucasian piedmont area, the Russians noticed that it was the Chechens who put up fierce resistance to the Russians and inspired others to reject Russian power. Since the Caucasian War of the 19th century the Chechens have been regarded as the enemies of Russia. It was admitted that they could not be subju-
17 See: S. Mamatiev, “Eto bylo 26 let nazad,” Serdalo, 26 March, 1999.
18 See: M. Prozumenshchikov, “Natsionalisticheskie elementy postoianno provotsirovali vystuplenia. Kak naka-lialas’ obstanovka v Checheno-Ingushetii,” Istochnik, No. 4, 1997, pp. 48-64.
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gated, which meant that they should be exterminated as a nation and a source of all troubles19 to defuse their influence in the Northern Caucasus.
The Chechen and Ingush languages were ignored; they were not taught in the republic’s capital, while in village schools they were taught as optional subjects. In public transport and offices anyone talking in the local languages could merely be told to stop. This was limited to the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R.; in the other ethnic republics of the Russian Federation the situation was different. In Daghestan, for example, children learned the local languages; the primary schools used them as the language for teaching.
During the thirteen years of deportation the Chechens and Ingushes lost much of their former culture. They had to start from the very beginning. Since spiritual renaissance called for an all-out effort, the Chechens and Ingushes made higher education their priority. It became one of the family values: starting in the 1960s the number of Chechens and Ingushes in higher educational establishments rose every year. Ten years later they could compete with the Russian speakers in terms of numbers. In the 1980s the republic’s student body was mainly Chechen and Ingush. Thousands of Chechens and Ingushes went to Moscow and Leningrad to study at the country’s best universities and institutes. There were large Chechen and Ingush student communities at Moscow State University, the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy, the Moscow Motor Road Institute, etc. It was they who started the Vaynakh diaspora in Moscow that produced many illustrious personalities. Suffice it to mention Academician R. Khas-bulatov (economics and politics); Academician S. Hajiev (petrochemistry); Prof. M. Israilov (nuclear physics); Prof. Kh. Salavatov (medicine); great dancer Makhmud Esambaev, writer Abuzar Aydamirov, prominent artists, poets, musicians, and thousands of other talented people.20
Not infrequently, in their desire to incorporate the local peoples into the Russian culture, the authorities went too far: the Vaynakh dance ensemble had to dance a waltz to Chechen music, which the local people never appreciated. Chechen and Ingush traditions do not allow the bridegroom to appear in front of the parents, but in their misplaced zeal the local authorities organized so-called “Komsomol weddings” at which the bridegroom sat next to the bride at the table where liquor (strictly banned by the Chechen customs) was served. This was done to replace the customs and rites of the “ignorant and wild” Chechens and Ingushes with “progressive” Komsomol ones.
Chechen and Ingush students were discriminated against in the republic’s institutes: the subject of colonization of Chechnia and Ingushetia in the 18th-19th centuries was banned for Chechen and Ingush history students. It was reserved for Russian students ostensibly capable of an international approach. Suspicion and mistrust guided those Soviet officials who were engaged in staffing the highest republican posts. The republic was invariably headed by a Russian appointed from Moscow; all important ministerial positions (minister of the interior, KGB chairman, Public Prosecutor, chairman of the republic’s Supreme Court, minister of justice, heads of petrochemical enterprises and higher educational establishments) could not be filled by either Chechens or Ingushes.21
In a country of militant atheism people had to keep away from all religious events under the threat of imprisonment. To prevent schoolchildren from fasting for religious reasons schoolmasters forced them to drink water at the beginning of the school day; no praying in public was permitted. Top officials even had to miss Islamic burials.
The Sufi brotherhoods were persecuted; places of prayer were closed down, destroyed or transferred to leisure (that is, entertainment) centers. All village mosques were used as libraries, administrative buildings, clubs, etc. Two mosques (in the Novye Atagi village and the city of Gudermes) survived to demonstrate that there was freedom of conscience in the Soviet state. All the local Mus-
19 For more detail, see: M.Vachagaev, Chechnia v kavkazskoy voyne XIX v.: sobytia I sud’by, Kiev, 2003, p. 82.
20 See: Z. Khamidova, “Bor’ba za yasyk. Problemy stanovlenia i razvitia chechenskogo yazyka,” in: Chechnia i Rossia: obshchestva i gosudarstva, Collection of articles, Moscow, 1999.
21 See: M. Rywkin, “Power and Ethnicity: Party Staffing in the Autonomous Republics of the Caucasus in the Middle 1980s,” Central Asian Survey, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1993, pp. 347-364.
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lims knew that there was a Christian Orthodox church in Grozny and several churches elsewhere in the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. Several Protestant organizations (Baptists, Seven-Day Adventists, etc.) were registered in the republic while the Chechens and Ingushes could not open or register religious organizations of their own.
The older generation accused the authorities rather than any of the Soviet nationalities. People could not rebel against the authorities, yet they could ignore them in their everyday activities. On frequent occasions Chechens and Ingushes preferred to deal with crimes and petty offences beyond the bounds of the Soviet laws. The very fact that a case was brought to court was disgraceful; it was even more disgraceful to go to the militia—this marred the reputation of the culprit and his next of kin. Marriages were registered years after the fact merely to get money from the social security funds; despite the official bans most marriages were registered by mullahs. Quarrels and conflicts were settled by the teyp and the most respected Sufi leaders. In short, Chechen and Ingush society was living in three different legal dimensions: Soviet law (official but hardly obeyed); the Shari‘a (respected yet, in the absence of really knowledgeable people, nothing more than an anachronism), and Adat (the customary law of the mountain people used to resolve conflicts). This made the local society incomprehensible for those who lived according to Soviet laws.
It is no wonder that in 1982 (60 years after the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic was formed) First Secretary of the Chechen-Ingush Regional C.P.S.U. Committee A. Vlasov said: “Soviet power is limited to the city of Grozny; beyond it there is the power of the mullahs and the Sufi authorities.”22 The best summary of the 60 years of Soviet power in Checheno-Ingushetia, it was never published for obvious reasons yet was known to each and everyone. In the capital people lived according to Soviet law; in the countryside they lived according to the Sharia and Adat. Conflicts between Russians and Chechens were regulated by Soviet law while conflicts between the local people (Chechens and Ingushes) were regulated by traditional law.
Were there negative feelings about Russians, were they blamed for the deportation? The answer is “No.” People high up in the mountains treated those who came to help them with respect; this was particularly true of teachers and doctors. They lived in a special and highly comfortable atmosphere. A Russian teacher in a mountain village who spoke the language, accepted the national traditions, and lived among the local people as one of them was a common sight.
In fact, even during the hostilities in Chechnia in the 1990s Russian doctors and teachers in the city of Argun stayed behind at the request of the local Chechens and shared with them their grief and joys. Most Russians had left Chechnia even before the hostilities began (those who write that the exodus began early in the 1990s are wrong).
■ The first Russian outflow began early in the 1970s when the center of petrochemistry shifted to Siberia: tens of thousands of high-ranking professionals employed by the industry left the republic. Gas processing and oil refinement dropped ten-fold and left thousands without jobs. According to Alexander Cherkassov of the Memorial Human Rights Organization, in the 1970s-1980s Vaynakhs were as eager to seek jobs outside the republic as Slavs. This increased the number of Chechens permanently registered in the Stavropol Territory 3.4-fold; in the Astrakhan Region 5.5-fold; in the Rostov Region 6.8-fold; in the Volgograd region 13.7-fold; and in the Tiumen Region (a new center of oil and gas production) 33.7-fold.23 In the republic at least 40 percent of the Chechens and Ingushes had no jobs24; they had to seek temporary employment elsewhere in the Soviet Union.
22 Information supplied by Communist Party Secretary of the History Department of the Chechen-Ingush State University Abdulla Bugaev who attended the meeting.
23 See: A. Cherkasov, Kniga chisel. Kniga utrat. Kniga strashnogo suda, Moscow, 2004, available at [http:// www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/chechen/1cherk04.htm], 30 October, 2008.
24 See: I.G. Kosikov, L.S. Kosikova, Severny Kavkaz. Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskiy spravochnik, Moscow, 1999,
p. 178.
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■ The second stage began in the 1980s when career party and Soviet officials, for whom the republic was but a step toward better positions, moved to central Russia; some of them ended up in Moscow: Checheno-Ingushetia was too provincial for them.
■ The third outflow of Russian speakers (Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Jews, Tatars, and Ossets) turned into a mass movement when the republic declared its independence from the Russian Federation in 1991. Political instability, the obvious threat that force would be used against the rebel republic, rampant unemployment, and crime were the main reasons for the vast migration process.
■ The fourth stage was provoked by the hostilities of 1994-1996 in Chechnia when Grozny, with a population of 400 thousand (where most Russian speakers lived), was razed to the ground. Sixty thousand Russians left Chechnia for Stavropol in January 1995 alone.25 Back in the early 1990s Chechens and Ingushes with families had moved elsewhere (to Russia and the former Soviet republics) in search of jobs; many of them rejected the ideas of separatism.
The confrontation between the Ossets and the Ingushes that began in 1992 can be described as one of the echoes of the 1944 deportation. For decades even the smallest disagreements and everyday conflicts between members of these nations ended in mutual reproaches and insults. Occasional deaths led to mass rallies that demanded punishment of the offender and the entire nation along with him. This happened in particular on 24 October, 1981 in Orjonikidze where a huge crowd of several thousand gathered after Ingushes murdered an Osset taxi driver.26 This echoed in an open confrontation between Ossets and Ingushes, which later developed into armed clashes between the two ethnic groups in 21 October-4 November, 1992.
The Prigorodny District became the scene of armed clashes, the causes of which remain unclear. The Ossets insisted that Ingushes had killed someone who lived in the district and opened fire on the militia who arrived at the scene of crime. The Ingushes, naturally, told a different story: they merely responded to the killings of peaceful people and had to take up arms to defend their families against those who, supported by the military, were moving toward the Ingush villages. This was the bloodiest ethnic conflict between the two peoples: it claimed 583 lives and left 939 wounded; tens of thousands of Ingushes were driven from their homes. This triggered many years of enmity between two ethnically close and in fact fraternal Caucasian peoples.
Is this enmity rooted in the past? No, it is not: from time immemorial the Ingushes and Ossets have been living side by side and resolved their conflict according to the Caucasian traditions, by way of a dialog and frequent marriages between the members of these ethnic groups.
C o n c l u s i o n
The local peoples have always regarded land as a source of life. This made the territorial issue the main stumbling block of the post-rehabilitation period. For those who lived in the countryside and fought for the land on which they lived the ban on their continued living on their land determined their attitude toward the authorities. The authorities, in turn, were baffled by the vehement response from the Chechens and Ingushes. They knew nothing about the psychology of the mountain peoples and, therefore, ignored their interests. They tried to reduce the conflict to the easily predictable responses of common Russians and in return got the unpredictable responses of the Chechens and Ingushes. The
5 See: V.A. Kuznetsov, Polozhenie russkogo naselenia na Kavkaze. “Vvedenie v kavkazovedenie,” Vladikavkaz, 2004.
25 S
26 See: O. Allenova, “Prigorodny tupik,” Kommersant-Vlast’, No. 17(620), 2 May, 2005.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
current developments in Ingushetia and Chechnia are the consequences, not the causes, of the numerous post-rehabilitation problems.
It should be said that the Soviet (later Russian) government was taken unawares: it could not cope with the problems created by the restoration of the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria are plagued by more or less similar problems. One should not expect effective results from the use of the national elite: it can merely freeze the conflict. The problem will remain.
