Campaigns

In the autumn of 1941 the Second World War was underway: Germany was advancing on the USSR, and the front was moving toward the Caucasus. 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^[1]. In October they took another 4.4 thousand - 362 did not report to the recruitment stations^[1]. The commissariats sent up to 13 thousand more men, unfit for combat service, to the "labor army" - construction battalions^[2]. Already in September 1941 the labor-army trains found themselves in the frontline zone, where more than 10 thousand of these men died^[2]. The colonizer recorded as "deserters" those who fled death in the "labor army", those who evaded mobilization into it, and even those who failed to appear at a recruitment station because of disability or their own death; the Chechen historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "The unfortunate citizens were forced either to hide from arrest or to pay bribes to the officials of the military commissariats and the NKVD" - and add: "Mass bribes taken from the highlanders became the everyday practice of the military commissariats"^[2]. 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^[1]. Even by the data of the secret services this was an economic protest: the population of the mountain villages "proceeded to a spontaneous division of collective-farm property" - property the colonizer had merged into collective farms during collectivization (campaign C1178); the same records charged the people with mass non-payment of taxes and evasion of mobilization; Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov likewise see "features of social protest" in the events^[2]. The USSR's response was a military operation across the mountain districts, the declaration of this protest a "kulak-bandit uprising", and operational groups and NKVD troops left behind in the mountains. The historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that, "besides the operational groups and internal troops, three flights of combat aircraft were brought in" for the suppression, and "Bombs rained down on auls whose population did not even suspect any 'uprising'"^[2]. "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^[1].

In 1840-1846 the empire constricted Chechnya from all sides at once: by trade blockade and hostage-taking, by secret war - contract killings, agents and bribery, - by punitive expeditions and by building the Sunzha Line of fortresses with the eviction of the inhabitants. The programme was named by general Golovin, commander of the Separate Caucasus Corps (head of the empire's troops and administration in the Caucasus), in a report to Minister of War Chernyshev of 24 February 1841: ""the constriction of Chechnya in this way from all sides will place the chiefs of this populous tribe in the most disadvantageous position for them... It is quite probable that the Chechens, having remained inactive for a long time, will become tamer""^[3]. Historian N. I. Pokrovsky formulates the policy's calculation from the documents: ""Starving Chechnya, by tsarism's reckoning, was to surrender in order to restore trade relations and obtain grain""^[4]. The empire supplemented armed force with secrecy: in a secret letter to Golovin of 19 July 1842 Chernyshev named the model - ""The English knew how to establish their dominion in India by political means. By this path they spared their troops and gained time in the subjugation of the country. Should not we too try this system?""^[3]. The result of the six years was summed up by the imperial officer Poltoratsky, a participant in the December 1846 expedition: ""the plain of Lesser Chechnya in the triangle between the fortresses of Groznaya, Vozdvizhenskaya and Zakan-Yurt has been cleared completely of dwellings and forests""^[5].

In 1847-1851 the empire destroyed the auls of Lesser Chechnya (the lowland-piedmont western part of Chechnya) and forced out its population: it cut forest clearings (prosekas) through the woods, built fortresses, struck the auls with short blows annihilating their inhabitants. The policy was named by its participant, imperial officer Poltoratsky, who wrote of the winter expedition of 1847-1848: by the building of the Sunzha Line "we greatly constricted Lesser Chechnya," and by the construction of fortresses "we were finally carrying out her death sentence" - the sentence on Lesser Chechnya^[5]. On 6 March 1847 an imperial detachment slaughtered the hamlet of naib Duba (a deputy of Imam Shamil, leader of the highlanders' resistance to the Russian conquest) - Poltoratsky wrote: "old and young, women, children and nursing infants, drowned in their own blood from the sharply honed bayonets that pardoned no one, spared no one"^[5]; historian N. I. Pokrovsky gives the frame: "the Russian command did not renounce separate short strikes aimed at terrifying the Chechens... What took place was an outright massacre"^[4]. General Sleptsov summed up the result in a report of 4 October 1850: "the rich lands between the Sunzha and the Russian road have passed into the unaccountable possession of the government, so that the entire plain of Lesser Chechnya is now completely cleared of the hostile population"^[6]. Imperial historian Volkonsky wrote of Sleptsov in retrospect: he "annihilated the entire enemy population nesting in the gorges from Bumut... to Roshnya"^[7]. On the sites of the burned auls the empire planted Cossack stanitsas - seven stanitsas in 1847 and 1851^[2].

The legal legitimation of the partition of territories between the Tsardom of Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth behind the Hetmanate's back, definitively turning Ukraine into a rightless object of bargaining. The deal was sealed financially – under the text of the 1686 treaty Moscow undertook "for eternal peace to count out a genuine sum of money, that is, one hundred forty-six thousand Muscovite rubles, and hand it over to the Commonwealth"^[8]. "Russian historians usually assess the Eternal Peace as Golitsyn's great diplomatic success, Polish ones – as their major defeat, and contemporary Ukrainian ones – as a national tragedy of Ukraine"^[9].

In 1858-1917 conquered Chechnya lived under a regime the empire itself named "military-popular administration": administrative power over the people lay in the hands of officers of the active army. The system was named by Baryatinsky, viceroy in the Caucasus - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "A. I. Baryatinsky called the system of governing the highlanders that he was creating 'military-popular' and considered it temporary", and add what the name contained: "Contemporaries, without embarrassment, called this system of administration 'military'"^[2]. The system was defined by a later viceroy, Vorontsov-Dashkov: it was "based on the concentration of administrative power in the hands of individual officers, under the supreme direction of the commander-in-chief of the Caucasus Army, and on allowing the population to manage its internal affairs according to its own adats" (adats - the customary law of the highlanders)^[10]. The imperial general Chernyavsky explained why the regime was needed: "for these savage peoples such privileges are still premature... What is needed here is a power that commands, bridles and governs"^[10]. Historian D. A. Khozhaev writes of the order thus imposed: "In the restless Terek oblast a 'military-popular' regime was established, which was in essence a state-of-emergency regime"; the outcome of the war he states separately: "A colonial 'military-popular' regime was established in the land"^[11].

The uprising of 1877 - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov call it a peasant war - was suppressed by the empire through the annihilation of everything that could sustain the insurgents. The methods were summed up by historian A. I. Ismailova: "The burning of auls, the deportation of the population, the destruction of crops - these are the main methods of struggle that the tsarist command applies with merciless consistency"^[12]. The tone of the orders was set by Svistunov, head of the Terek oblast - in his instructions to General Smekalov, according to historian A. I. Ismailova, one demand was invariably repeated: "For God's sake, just do not fall back, but advance at least little by little, mercilessly destroying everything and everyone before you... Our forces will keep arriving; just mow down everything without pity, beat and hang without mercy"^[12]. The principle of punishment was formulated by the viceroy in a memorandum: "so that punishment falls not only upon the fanatics seeking the feat of self-sacrifice, but also upon the guilty milieu surrounding them, so that by the fear of inevitable collective punishment... the mass is induced to counteract them"^[13]. The people's answer was recorded by the same imperial side - the inhabitants of Mekhkety refused the head of the Terek oblast, who threatened to deport the aul, the surrender of Uma Duev, leader of the uprising in mountain Chechnya: "...only the possible should be demanded of a people. You know how hard it is for us to part with the graves of our fathers and with our homeland, yet we submit without protest. But we cannot hand over Uma. He was our guest"^[2].

In 1852-1857 the empire used famine to force Greater Chechnya (the lowland eastern part of Chechnya) into submission or off its land. The period was opened by the winter expedition of Baryatinsky, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi) - imperial historian Volkonsky, its participant, published his account under the title "The Pogrom of Chechnya"; the task of the detachment of more than ten thousand bayonets he recorded thus: "to smash the enemy hordes, destroy all means of subsistence of the inhabitants and the enemy, and then act according to circumstances"^[7]. The destruction of food became doctrine: Vorontsov, viceroy and commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, in an official letter (otnosheniye) to Minister of War Chernyshev of 28 August 1852, reported that the Chechens, deprived of crops and hay, "must - either resettle into our bounds, or go into the very depth of the mountains"^[6]. Back in March Vorontsov wrote to Baryatinsky: "we will not allow them to sow or to mow, unless they declare submission" - the letter of 21 March 1852 is cited by historian N. I. Pokrovsky^[4]; historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov convey the same policy in the formula of the proclamations - the command warned the Chechens that it would let them "neither plow nor sow," and conclude: "This promise was kept in the literal sense, and in 1856-1857 a famine set in in Chechnya such as the Chechens had almost never known"^[2]. In the same period the empire was buying up the leadership of the resistance - Bata Shamurzayev, a naib of Shamil (deputy of the Imam, leader of the highlanders' resistance of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest), who went over to the empire in the autumn of 1851, received a rank, a pension and land "as an example for other potential defectors"^[2] - and was building institutions of subordination: in 1852 in the Groznaya fortress the "Chechen People's Court" was instituted, which worked out the "Rules for the Governance of Submissive Chechens"^[2].

The abolition of the traditional system of municipal self-government: "The final liquidation of Magdeburg law on the western Ukrainian lands took place in 1786, and in the cities of Central and Left-Bank Ukraine – in 1831 (in Kyiv – 1834)"^[14] – the final stage of embedding the cities into the imperial administrative-judicial system, begun as early as the reforms of the 1780s.

An imperial reform to liquidate the military-social structure of Sloboda Ukraine: "The conclusions of this investigation, with the participation of a Senate commission, led to the verdict of the Governing Senate on the liquidation of the autonomous order on December 16, 1764, and a series of experimental innovations approved by Catherine II's manifesto of July 28, 1765. On the basis of the Sloboda regiments the Sloboda-Ukrainian Governorate was formed, out of the military forces – 5 hussar regiments of the same names (see Hussars), and the bulk of the Cossack population was transferred to the category of military settlers"^[15].

The execution of Catherine II's secret instructions for the institutional and cultural assimilation of the land: the liquidation of the regimental order and the introduction of imperial viceroyalties – the Kyiv Viceroyalty was established by the nominal decree to the Senate of September 16, 1781 (PSZRI, coll. 1, vol. XXI, no. 15,228; execution ordered from November)^[16][17], "which finally abolished the remnants of the Hetmanate's autonomy and its regimental-sotnia administrative-political and military order"^[18]; the secularization of monastery lands in 1786 and the legal binding of peasants by Catherine II's decree of May 3, 1783: "each of the villagers is to remain in the place and station where he is registered by the current last revision"^[19].

The empire conducted the general census of 1897, embedded in the doctrine of the "triune Russian people". The linguist Sergei Bulich, in his article for the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, classified Ukrainian speech thus: "the Little Russian dialect of the Russian language"^[20]. Historians of the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences note: "The census of 1897 recorded not nationality but the respondents' native tongue, and since many Ukrainians named Russian as such, there were in fact more ethnic Ukrainians than indicated in the census"^[21]. The census also recorded the reach of the Ukrainian language. According to its consolidated volume, the "Little Russian dialect" - the imperial name for the Ukrainian language - was named as their native tongue by 22,380,551 people out of 125,640,021 counted in the empire, that is 17.8%: the empire's second language by number of speakers after Great Russian (Russian)^[22]. Nearly one in four speakers lived outside the nine Ukrainian governorates, and in the Kuban region (now mostly Krasnodar krai of Russia) Ukrainian was the most widespread native language^[22].

The collusion of two totalitarian regimes (the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), which led to the USSR's invasion of Poland and the seizure of Western Ukraine. To legitimize the occupation, the "People's Assembly of Western Ukraine 1939" was staged, which "on October 27 in Lviv… adopted the Declaration on the reunification of Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian SSR"^[23]. Then came the mass deportations: "Between September 1939 and June 1941, up to 1,250,000 people (about 10% of the population) were removed from these lands and Western Belarus… to remote regions of the USSR"^[24].

The annexation of the independent Ukrainian church through diplomatic pressure and corruption. Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem directly accused the Muscovite envoys of simony: "What fault is it to tear away another's eparchy? Is it not a shame before people, is it not a sin before God! You send money and lead people out of their minds, you take charters contrary to the church and to God"^[25]. The subordination of the church was justified by geopolitics: "Golitsyn's main project… was the reform of the Ukrainian Orthodox church, or rather – the subordination of the Kyiv metropolitanate to the Moscow patriarch"^[9].

On 23-29 January 1837, the command of the Russian Caucasus Corps sent from the Groznaya fortress into Lesser Chechnya (the lowland-piedmont western part of Chechnya) a detachment under General Feze - 3249 men with 12 guns. Rozen stated the purpose of the campaign in a report to Minister of War Chernyshev of 11 February 1837: "to punish the Chechens of the western part of Chechnya who have evaded obedience"^[26]. The expedition journal appended to the report records the week day by day: on the night of 24 January Shalazh-yurt was surrounded - the village was taken "without a shot, laying 14 souls on the spot", 67 inhabitants were led away into captivity, and the village was burned; on 25 January Feze dispatched columns "to discover and destroy the population in the dense forests up both banks of the Shalazha river"; in all, 92 people were taken captive over the campaign, "on the way back more than a thousand saklias were burned along the Martan and Tengin gorges" (saklia - a highlander's house), and the stores of grain and hay were destroyed in the middle of winter^[26]. Within the detachment the empire led highlanders against highlanders - 800 horsemen of the Ossetian and Ingush militia (militia - auxiliary units of highlanders in the empire's service): the expedition journal lists in Colonel Shiroky's column "a hundred Cossacks and 800 horsemen of Ossetians and Ingush"^[26]. From the aul of Achkhoy, which the troops entered on the fourth day of the annihilation of its neighbors, by the record of the same journal an oath "of submission" and six hostages-amanats were taken (amanat - a person whom the empire took from a community as a guarantee of subordination)^[26].

In 1732, the lowland part of Chechnya became the center of large-scale armed resistance. The uprising was provoked by the direct discontent of the indigenous population: historian Sh. B. Akhmadov states that those assembled, «openly expressing their discontent with the actions of the tsarist authorities, began to threaten attacks on their fortifications»^[27]. Researcher Ya. Z. Akhmadov adds that «in 1732 lowland Chechnya once again turns into the center of a major insurgent movement», and «around 10 thousand highlanders gathered in Chechen-Aul», intending to set out «to destroy the tsarist fortifications»^[28]. In response, the occupation apparatus applied military force: the first author indicates that «on July 4, 1732, the tsarist authorities dispatched to Chechnya a military detachment headed by General Douglas, who commanded the troops in the fortress of the Holy Cross»^[27], which, according to the cited report, resolved, regarding the insurgents, «without allowing them to multiply, to avert and destroy them by the dispatched detachment»^[28]. The punitive action was coordinated with the loyal local elite: Sh. B. Akhmadov notes the participation of Prince Kazbulat, «who led the detachment of tsarist troops headed by Douglas to the village of Chechen-Aul to suppress the highlanders' uprising»^[27]. However, the insurgents avoided a direct clash with the empire's main forces: Ya. Z. Akhmadov records that «General Douglas, who had already set out on the campaign, received word that the highlanders had dispersed»^[28]. After this, the general sent Colonel Koch's dragoon detachment to punish the inhabitants, which, as stated in the sources, «on July 7 entered the village of Chechen, burned it down completely, and began hastily withdrawing»^[27]. The historical episode ended that same year with the complete physical destruction of the punitive forces: Ya. Z. Akhmadov summarizes that during the withdrawal Koch's detachment «was surrounded in dense forests, defeated, and annihilated», and that in the course of the battle «the senior Chechen prince Kazbulat also perished»^[28].

Having been forced to recognize Ukraine's independence under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the government of Soviet Russia attempted to retain control over the eastern industrial regions. To this end, a separate separatist entity (the Donetsk–Kryvyi Rih Soviet Republic) was artificially constructed on the territory of the Donbas and the Kryvyi Rih region, with the aim of directly subordinating these lands to the central Russian authorities, bypassing the UNR^[29][30].

After his escape from surveillance in the fall of 1830, the leader of the Chechen resistance Beibulat Taimiev — bound by his oath to Paskevich, by fractures of both legs, and by illness — took no part in hostilities, but his name alone inspired the insurgents. The historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "The tsarist command several times intended to do away with Beibulat, but feared to repress him openly, since this could provoke an undesirable resonance throughout Chechnya. And yet the continued presence of a man like Beibulat in insurgent Chechnya was becoming dangerous for the tsarist command. Preparations began for the murder of Beibulat, which was soon carried out"^[11]. On July 14, 1831, not far from the fortification of Tashkichu, Beibulat was killed from ambush by Prince Sali, who was in imperial service. D. A. Khozhaev recorded the official version — the murder was presented as a blood feud — and its exposure: "Prince Sali, who was in tsarist service, was not punished, whereas the other cases of blood vengeance were cruelly prosecuted by the tsarist command. Paskevich wrote of the slain Beibulat that he had been a traitor to the end, and that therefore the killer should not be punished"^[11].

In September 1837, ahead of Nicholas I's visit to the Caucasus, the empire tried to buy the leader of the highlander resistance: Shamil (Shamil - imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest) was offered "pardon", honors and power in exchange for appearing before the emperor in Tiflis. General Adlerberg conveyed Nicholas I's will to general Rozen in a letter of 10 August 1837: "that Shamil and his chief accomplices Tashav-Hadji, Kibit-Magomet and the Qarakh qadi Abdurrahman be given suggestions to take advantage of His Majesty's arrival in the Caucasus region and to beg the mercy of appearing before the face of the Monarch Himself"^[31] - Tashu-Hadji (sheikh, in 1834-1836 the imam of Chechnya, spiritual and military leader of the Chechen resistance) is named first among the "accomplices". General Klugenau obtained a personal meeting with Shamil on 18 September 1837 at a spring near the aul of Karanay; Shamil's chronicler Muhammad Tahir al-Qarakhi recorded the essence of the offer: "Kluki von Klugenau began to speak, asking Shamil to come for a meeting with the Russian Nicholas. He asserted that the emperor would exalt him, Shamil, show him honor, and make him the administrator of the affairs of all Dagestani Muslims. From the emperor, he said, there would be no treachery"^[32]. At the same time colonel Pullo demanded of Shamil by letter that he send "to the Groznaya fortress two deputies to be presented to the Sovereign" - and this competing demand, as the imperial historian Yurov admits, "greatly hindered the success" of the recruitment^[31]. Shamil refused in a letter to Klugenau of 28 September 1837: "I have resolved not to go to Tiflis even if I am cut to pieces, because I have many times seen treachery from you"^[31] - neither he nor Tashu-Hadji appeared before the emperor.

An armed mutiny by the conservative wing of the Soviet leadership, the KGB, and the army aimed at halting the USSR's disintegration and holding the republics by force. The State Committee for the State of Emergency declared: "to introduce a state of emergency in particular localities of the USSR for a term of 6 months from 4 a.m. Moscow time on August 19, 1991… to form the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR"^[33]. The putsch's failure opened the way to independence: the Act of Declaration was adopted "proceeding from the mortal danger that had loomed over Ukraine in connection with the coup d'état in the USSR on August 19, 1991"^[34].

The use of the autonomy as a free resource and labor base for Peter I's ambitions in the south. The population bore extremely heavy logistical obligations: "Provisions for the volunteer troops were supplied by the commoners, who also stocked hay for the winter for the army's artillery." In addition, Moscow established military control by deploying a network of bases near the Zaporizhian Sich: "The Zaporozhians... put forward the demolition of Kamianyi Zaton as a condition for any oath... Mazepa was furious"^[35].

The Russian Empire continued destroying the indigenous people's culture on the eve of the war: the curator of the Kyiv school district, Derevytsky, in 1913 "issued an instruction in which he declared students' attendance of Ukrainian theatrical performances as inadmissible as spending time in billiard halls or beer houses, and in 1914 categorically forbade all educational institutions of the Kyiv district to mark the 100th jubilee of Taras Shevchenko"^[36]; with the outbreak of the war, Nicholas II by a personal decree of 20 July 1914 introduced military censorship with the command's right "to suspend periodical publications"^[37] - and that very day the military authorities of the Kyiv military district closed the only Ukrainian daily newspaper, "Rada"^[38].

A state campaign to drive the language out of public space and literature: in 1892 the Main Administration for Press Affairs directed the censorship committee to suppress translations into Ukrainian, "reducing the number of such talentless works for purely state purposes"^[39]; at the archaeological congress in Kyiv in 1899, scholars from Austrian-ruled Ukraine were forbidden to read papers in Ukrainian - in protest they withdrew from participation^[38]; at the unveiling of the Kotliarevsky monument in Poltava on 30-31 August 1903, only guests from Galicia were allowed to speak Ukrainian, while the mayor forbade the locals to do so, citing an order of the ministry of internal affairs^[38]. Even children's literature fell under the ban: the 1895 circular prohibited Ukrainian books "for children's reading"^[40].

A campaign to introduce censorship and institutional linguistic assimilation. Peter I's decree of October 5, 1720 banned the printing of books in the indigenous people's language at the key printing houses: "In the Kyiv-Pechersk and Chernihiv printing houses no new books whatsoever are to be printed except previous church editions, and even those old church books are to be corrected before printing for complete conformity with the Great Russian church books, so that there be no discord or distinct dialect in them"^[41].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy imposed vassalage on the Nokhchi elite under the guise of a military alliance through the procedure of oath-taking (shert). As historian Murat Yasar notes, to the Nokhchi this looked like a military pact: "many local rulers in Muscovy's southern and eastern borderlands, especially in the North Caucasus, regarded the shert more as a military alliance between themselves and one of their potential allies"^[42]. The administration, however, unilaterally interpreted this act as unconditional submission: historian Michael Khodarkovsky points out that "in Moscow's eyes the shert now meant an oath of allegiance by the tsar's new and loyal subjects"^[43]. Historian Murat Yasar adds that consent was incentivized through bribery: "the signing of the shert went hand in hand with the monetary allowances and gifts that the tsar gave to the local rulers"^[42]. To maintain control, the forcible seizure of relatives of Nokhchi leaders was employed: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of a collection of documents, writes that "his nephew Batai was left as a hostage (amanat) in the Terek town"^[44]. The subordinated Nokhchi communities were obligated to take part in the military operations of the occupation administration: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of a collection of documents, points to documents "on the possibility of the participation of Murza Shikh... in a campaign of Russian fighting men"^[44].

A covert military invasion and the occupation of Crimea, the beginning of Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine: the seizure of administrative buildings by troops without insignia, the installation of a controlled prime minister, and a sham referendum that the UN General Assembly declared void: "the referendum held in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol on 16 March 2014, having no validity, cannot form the basis for any alteration of the status"^[45]. The legal formalization of the seizure was completed in Moscow by the law of March 21, 2014^[46].

The imperial authorities sponsor and cover for radical Russian nationalist organizations for the suppression of the revolution and for terror. The "Union of the Russian People" was "a Black-Hundred organization… The organization received financial support from the state and was patronized by Russian emperor Nicholas II… Mass Jewish pogroms provoked by the 'Union' took place, particularly in Ukraine, in the 'Pale of Settlement'"^[15]; of its 400 thousand members, nearly half were in Ukrainian cities^[15].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy expanded legal control over the societies of the Nokhchi, bribed loyal elites, and coerced the mountain societies into vassalage. The metropole officially rewarded the leaders who served it, granting them privileges and power over dependent people: the register of files of the Ambassadorial Prikaz for 1645 records a petition from the serving Okotsk murza Chepan Kokhostrov to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and a report memorandum of the central apparatus «on granting him an increase to his salary and ownership of the uzdens and «people» of his brother, murza Albir Kokhostrov»^[44]. In parallel, the administration forced the mountain societies of the Nokhchi (the Shibutians and the Michkizians) into legal subordination. In 1647, under pressure from the Terek voivodes, the Shibutians «placed themselves under your lofty sovereign hand in direct servitude... and swore the shert on the Quran»^[44], while the Michkiz people «together with the entire Michkiz land placed themselves in servitude under your lofty sovereign hand... and swore the shert on the Quran»^[44]. To guarantee the fulfillment of the imposed obligations, the representatives of the metropole demanded hostages: a dispatch from the Terek voivode Prince Venedikt Andreevich Obolensky and his associates to the Ambassadorial Prikaz of 1647 dryly records the fact of «the giving of an amanat to the Terek town»^[44]. The documents record that the metropole instructed the voivodes «to order that amanats be taken from among their kin, men of note... to order that they be kept and given food and drink in the same way as other such amanats»^[44], as a result of which the mountaineers «gave a good amanat to the Terek town, Kasa»^[44][47].

In 1735, following the large-scale invasion by the forces of the Crimean Khanate, the diplomatic and administrative apparatus of the Russian Empire used the new balance of power to consolidate its influence among the Nokhchi elites. Historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that during this period «the pro-Russian political orientation of the lowland part of Chechnya intensifies»^[28]. To bind the local aristocracy, the occupation administration employed institutional bribery: the researcher records that the senior prince Aidemir «was accepted into Russian subjecthood and was assigned a permanent tsarist salary»^[28], and, on the whole, «The princes and their uzdens even began to receive monetary allowances from the Russian government»^[28]. In parallel, the empire entrenched the system of holding relatives of the nobility: Akhmadov indicates that Prince Aidemir «as a pledge of fidelity to his obligations gave his son Bardykhan as an amanat, while another influential Chechen prince, Alisultan Kazbulatov, gave his brother Bamat as an amanat»^[28]. He also adds dry statistical confirmation: «In 1735, two amanats from the Chechen domain were already being held in Kizlyar»^[28].

In February–April 1807, the Russian Empire undertook a punitive expedition deep into Greater Chechnya under the command of General Bulgakov, commander of the Caucasian Line, devastating Nokhchi villages and coercing them into allegiance. Historian D. A. Khozhaev writes of General Bulgakov's troops as having «come with fire and sword to the Chechen land»^[11]. The plan of the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General Gudovich, was to strike suddenly, before the inhabitants could shelter their families in the mountains: «you would have caught them all by surprise, their cattle and families could not yet have been hidden by them in the mountains, and therefore their punishment and complete success in the matter would have been surer and more convenient»^[48]. General Bulgakov, commander of the Caucasian Line, broke through the fortified Khankala Gorge by storm and put villages to the torch; General Ivelich reported that Greater Chechen Ataga had been «consigned to fire», and its inhabitants had submitted, «whose villages were destroyed by fire»^[48]. Displeased that instead of a sudden reprisal a bloody war had resulted, General Gudovich, in a directive of March 20, 1807, refused to accept the storming of Khankala «on his own account» and emphasized the punitive, rather than military, character of the assignment: «you were sent not to wage war with the Chechen peoples, but to punish them and bring them into complete submission»^[48]. Summing up the expedition, General Bulgakov, commander of the Caucasian Line, reported that by force of arms the Chechens had been «brought to such a state that they will long feel the blow dealt to them, and, of course, will not soon regain strength»^[48].

In the fall of 1830, General Velyaminov, who had taken command of the troops operating against Chechnya, began with collective property exactions from the Chechen villages standing on the Terek River near the imperial border. The imperial historian Potto admits: for the driving off by Chechens of ten head of cattle from the stanitsa of Chervlennaya, Velyaminov "immediately ordered that ten head of cattle likewise be taken from the inhabitants of the two villages of Braguny and Novy-Yurt, past which the raiding party had gone, and returned to the Cossacks," and after a herd of horses was driven off in the Nogai steppe, "Braguny again paid with exactly the same number of head"; the owner of Novy-Yurt, Shah-Girei, was summoned to Groznaya and confined in a casemate — a prison cell inside the fortress^[49]. On December 18, 1830, a detachment assembled in Groznaya consisting of four infantry regiments — the Moscow, Butyrsky, Tarutino, and Borodino regiments — a composite battalion of the 43rd Jaeger Regiment, five sotnias of line Cossacks, and twenty-two guns, and at night the troops moved on the village of Dzulgai-Yurt, where the Karabulak leader Astemir lived. Potto wrote: the Cossacks, bursting into the village at dawn, rushed to Astemir's house; he himself managed to escape, "but his family — a young son, a daughter, a grandson, and a female cousin — fell into the hands of the Cossacks. Besides them, thirty-nine people were taken prisoner, and about twelve were cut down"^[49]. Then the villages of western, Lesser Chechnya were destroyed one after another: Kiter-Yurt "was given over to the flames," Pkhan-Kichu was burned down, at the village of Daut-Martan "the inhabitants managed to flee, but all their property remained the booty of the detachment," Edin-Yurt and Daut-Yurt were burned, "enormous stores of harvested hay" were destroyed, Martan-aul and Dzhargan-Yurt were occupied, the aul of Engeli was exterminated^[49]. Between campaigns, the troops cut a clearing through the forest between the village of Aldy and the fortress of Groznaya. In January 1831 the blow was shifted to eastern, Greater Chechnya: Uzeken-Yurt was burned, Besenber with all its hamlets was destroyed. The villages of Avtury, Geldigen, and Mairtup sent their elders with an offer of submission and hostages, but Velyaminov rejected them, demanding the surrender of all Russian captives and deserter soldiers. The condition was a double impossibility, and Potto himself deciphers this: they "could not have had many" captives — captives did not settle in the villages but left through exchange and ransom, which both sides practiced; as for deserters, the Nokhchi did not hand them over — the Chechens, by Potto's admission, "regarded them... as men who had given themselves under the protection of their hearths, and therefore never surrendered them"^[49]. Hospitality is a value celebrated in Chechen illi (heroic songs) on a par with courage and fidelity to one's word, and handing over a fugitive meant sending a guest to his death: the historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote of the marching gallows "on which the general [Yermolov] hanged highlanders and fugitive Russian soldiers and Cossacks who were hiding in mountain auls," and recorded that the demand for "the surrender of fugitive Russian soldiers and Cossacks living in the mountain auls" was a constant instrument of the imperial bailiffs (pristavs)^[11]. By demanding simultaneously the nonexistent and the inadmissible, Velyaminov engineered a refusal: "this belated and forced submission was not at all part of Velyaminov's designs; he understood the necessity of punishing these auls cruelly, and perhaps that is why he set before them conditions which, in the view of the highlanders, were unthinkable"^[49]. Avtury was taken by storm and burned, Geldigen was consigned to the flames with all its stores, and on January 21 Mairtup "with its luxuriant gardens and plantations" was destroyed together with the surrounding auls^[49]. Potto sums up the result with an admission: "all of lowland Chechnya, traversed through and through as far as the Kochalykovsky ridge, was given over by Velyaminov to fire and sword"^[49].

In February-April 1837, the command of the Russian Caucasus Corps conducted a series of expeditions under General Feze across Chechnya, coercing community after community into an oath to the empire. Rozen stated the sanction in a dispatch to Minister of War Chernyshev: a campaign "beyond the Argun" would be useful "for diminishing the Chechens' trust in the instigators and turning them away from the intention of joining Shamil" (Shamil - imam, leader of the Dagestani and Chechen highlanders' resistance to the Russian conquest)^[26]. Rozen's reports to Chernyshev describe the mechanism themselves: after the annihilation of the auls of Akhoy-yurt, Lyumik-yurt, Seid-yurt and Avtur, "the Chechens, gripped by fear from the preceding actions... fell into great despondency" - and the troops took oaths with amanats (amanat - a person whom the empire took from a community as a guarantee of subordination) from Shali on 6 February, Germenchuk on the 8th, Geldigen on the 15th, six auls of the Michik on the 21st, the auls along the Yaman-su and the Aksai on the 25th, and, at the end of March, from the elders of the Goyta forest and the Martan gorge^[26]. The summary in the report of 4 March 1837 counts, for eleven February days: "52 souls of inhabitants who did not submit voluntarily were taken captive by our troops... and 52 amanats were taken"^[26]. General Feze stated the calculation openly - he acted "with the intention of making use, as far as possible, of the panic fear" (report to Velyaminov of 15 March 1837)^[3]. In March the troops passed up the Dzhalka: "the four auls they had abandoned were occupied and annihilated without resistance", and the kutans (winter shelters for livestock) with their grain stores were destroyed^[26]. At the end of April a night raid on the Gertli settlement took "18 souls belonging to the families of the brigands" and 465 head of livestock, and "a fine of 132 head of livestock was imposed on the settlement"^[26]. The voice of the Nokhchi records the tour as an invasion - the historian D. A. Khozhaev writes: "at the end of February-beginning of March the enemy again invaded Ichkeria. On 1 March, at the village of Aleroy, a battle took place between the detachment of Tashu-Hadji's companion Udi-mullah and the troops of General Fezi" (Tashu-Hadji - sheikh, imam of Chechnya in 1834-1836, spiritual and military leader of the Chechen resistance)^[11].

On 23 August 1836, the detachment of Colonel Pullo devastated the aul of Zandak on the Yaman-su river, taking inhabitants captive and driving away livestock (campaign C1156). The village's subordination was engineered by the devastation itself: Pullo calculatedly left some of the houses unburned so that the crushed village would have somewhere to return to beg for "submission". In a report to General Petrov dated 27 August 1836 he admitted: "Being certain that the inhabitants of Zandak, following the common custom of the Chechens, would ask for submission after punishment, and considering such submission useful for the government, I did not order the village burned"^[3]. The same report recorded the mechanism of coercion: the devastation of Zandak, which had been considered impregnable, "brought both the inhabitants of the village and all those living in its vicinity into fear and despondency"^[3]. Under this fear, as early as 27 August 1836 the elders of the devastated village came to the Groznaya fortress with a forced plea to be accepted into subjecthood; Rozen reported to the Minister of War: "On 27 August the Zandak elders appeared before the commander of the Sunzha Line declaring their submission, which was accepted from them in the established order"^[26]. "Submission" was accepted only on the empire's terms: loyalty, a complete break with Tashu-Hadji, the leader of the Chechen resistance, a ban on assemblies, the handover of Russian captives in exchange for the inhabitants of Zandak seized by the troops during the devastation of the village, and payment of tribute at the rate established by the empire for the societies it deemed "submissive". Pullo enumerated: the people of Zandak "pledge for the time to come to remain loyal to us, allowing the inhabitants not the slightest contact with Tashav-Hadji... not to permit rebellious gatherings among themselves, to deliver our captives in exchange for their own taken during the devastation of Zandak, and to pay, on a par with the Aukhovites and other submissive tribes, the established tribute"^[3]. Pullo assessed the outcome as the conqueror's gain: "All the above-stated consequences arising from the devastation of the Zandak people have produced important advantages for us"^[3].

In 1905-1913 the Russian Empire dealt reprisals to entire Chechen villages: it fined them, quartered troops at the residents' own expense, exiled relatives and hundreds of families, demolished hamlets. There were two pretexts - the revolution of 1905 and the abrek Zelimkhan. By the beginning of the 20th century forty years had passed since the end of the Caucasus War, but, as historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write, "Chechnya was governed by measures characteristic of a state of martial law", a "military-occupation regime" persisted in the land, and the restrictive measures only grew^[2]. Onto this background fell the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907: on 24 October 1905 martial law was imposed across the whole of Chechnya, and from January 1906 field courts-martial went to work^[2]. The second pretext was the abrek phenomenon - "abrek" was the empire's word for a highlander declared an outlaw who had gone to the mountains with a weapon. The most famous of them was Zelimkhan from the village of Kharachoy: in 1901, by his own words, he was a family man from a well-off household with a mill and an apiary, but after a quarrel between two families over a betrothal the authorities arrested him together with his old father and relatives; Zelimkhan escaped from the Grozny prison and until his death in 1913 remained the administration's chief enemy in the land^[2]. The authorities answered not him but everyone - on top of that there was the weapons ban, which "applied exclusively to the highlanders and the out-of-town settlers and did not extend to the Cossacks"^[2]. Against individual villages and entire aul districts, the same historians record, "collective punishments were widely practiced"^[2]. Such reprisals were lawless even by the empire's own standards: Article 50 of the Hague Regulations on the Laws and Customs of War on Land - a convention signed and ratified by the Russian Empire - laid down: "No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible"^[50]. And a military directive of late 1907 prescribed, in the event of an uprising, to act by "scattering the bands to the point of total annihilation, and likewise wiping off the face of the earth the villages that sheltered them, bearing in mind that such a method will be not only more effective but also more humane"^[2]. The Chechen revolutionary Aslanbek Sheripov summed up the outcome: "The authorities terrorized the peaceful population, and the abreks terrorized these authorities..."^[2].

In 1927, after stripping the Chechen people of their weapons (campaign C1177), the USSR began forcibly merging the peasant households of Chechnya into kolkhozes - collective farms controlled by the Russian state ("collectivization"). That same spring the USSR broke off relations with Great Britain and expected war - and its first move was to purge the Chechen "rear": in the summer of 1927 the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) arrested sixteen religious authorities across Chechnya. Yevdokimov, the OGPU plenipotentiary in the North Caucasus, recorded in a secret report: "The days of military danger of the summer period unusually inspired the Chechen musduh [Muslim clergy] in the sense of bold and open agitation for aid to external forces, for the preparation of an uprising"^[51]. Thus the empire ascribed to the Chechens an uprising that did not exist; the real uprisings it provoked itself two years later - with kolkhozes, devastation and the closing of mosques. On 30 January 1930 the supreme organ of the occupation power (the "Politburo of the TsK VKP(b)") adopted a secret resolution "On measures for the liquidation of kulak households in districts of wholesale collectivization"; "kulaks" was what the colonizers called peasants they deemed "well-off". The Politburo resolved to ruin on average three to five percent of peasant households across the USSR and divided their owners into three categories: the first - to concentration camps, up to execution by shooting; the second - to exile in remote places; the third - to resettlement on the worst plots within their own district; across the country it ordered 60 thousand people sent to the camps and 150 thousand expelled from their land, with 6-8 thousand and 20 thousand assigned to the North Caucasus with Dagestan. The Politburo entrusted the reprisal against the first and second categories to the OGPU, and on 2 February 1930 deputy chairman of the OGPU Yagoda signed order No. 44/21 "On measures for the liquidation of the kulaks as a class"^[52]. From thousands of Chechen families whom the colonizer deemed well-off it took away voting rights, livestock and land, and expelled the people themselves beyond the borders of their native region. The USSR struck at the religious life of the Chechens as well: it squeezed out the sharia courts - they decided Chechens' cases by Islamic law, - stripped those courts of treasury money and closed mosques. The Nokhchi did not submit and rose in arms three times: in December 1929 Shali, Goity and Benoy revolted, in the spring of 1930 - the mountain okrugs, including Galanchozh, in March 1932 - the Nozhay-Yurt district. All three times the USSR sent troops with artillery and aviation against the insurgents; the toll of the year 1932 alone, from historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov: "the number of killed reached 333, of wounded - 150. The units of the Red Army and the operational groups of the GPU lost in all 27 men killed..."^[2]. After the uprising of 1932 the OGPU fabricated the "Chechen nationalist center" - an underground organization that did not exist: thus the empire passed the uprisings off as the fruit of a secret conspiracy^[53]. In the case of the "center" the OGPU arrested up to 3 thousand Chechens^[2], shot five captured leaders of the uprising and the "members of the center", whom the Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov names one by one; the count of the rank-and-file shot is unknown^[53]. Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District (SKVO), wrote in the district command's secret report to the krai committee of the party (the "North Caucasus kraikom VKP(b)") on the results of the military operation of spring 1930: "The causes of the outbreak are... The gravest errors of the old party leadership of the oblast, which pursued a completely incorrect line of wholesale collectivization, without regard for the particularities and the level of development of the national oblast", and further listed: "The administrative imposition of kolkhozes, attempts at collectivization in the mountain districts, the incorrect disenfranchisement of middle peasants, and in a number of cases of poor peasants as well... the attempt at the administrative closing of mosques"^[1]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov named this policy in the title of their chapter: "The collectivization of agriculture. The enserfment of the peasantry by the state"^[2].

In 1845-1917 the Russian Empire took Grozny's oil away from the Chechens: it assigned the income from the subsoil to the Cossack host by law and barred the Chechen communities from the industry - neither as owners nor as recipients of rent. On 16 February 1845 paragraph 154 of the "Regulations on the Caucasus Line Host" gave the Cossack host the income from the oil springs near the Groznaya fortress: "as a mark of special favor…the host is granted the income most graciously bestowed upon it from the oil springs near the Groznaya fortress"^[13]. The wells from which Chechen owners had once sold oil became a line in the host's budget, and when on 6 October 1893 the first industrial gusher burst from a well of the company of oil industrialist Akhverdov - "in the first two weeks alone it yielded 150 thousand puds of oil"^[2] - it turned out that the richest field lay beneath land taken from the Chechen auls. The legal frame was formulated in 1894 by the head of the Terek oblast, General Kakhanov (he headed the oblast from 1889 to 1900^[13]), when he refused to extend to the Chechen lands the rules on peasant leasing of the subsoil: "...the state lands populated by the mountain inhabitants were given to them not into ownership by right of property, but only into use..."^[2]. Historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova sums up the distribution: "If the total income from the oil industry is taken as 100%, the industrialists received 35%, the treasury 32%, the owners of the land 24% and the middlemen 9%" - the owner of the land was deemed to be the Cossack host, and the Chechen community had no share^[13]. Only two villages - Aldy and Novye Aldy - managed to strike deals with the industrialists directly, and these deals show the real price of the subsoil: on 18 April 1915 the assembly of Novye Aldy - a village of 520 households - leased 20 desiatinas to the oil industrialist Stepan Lianozov for 24 years at 5 thousand rubles per desiatina plus 2 kopecks to the community for every pud of oil extracted^[13], while the oil industrialist Tapa Chermoyev paid the community 30 thousand rubles up front for the plots near Aldy and by contract guaranteed it a quarter of the income from the extracted oil^[13]. To all the other Chechen communities the law left nothing - their share was collected by the Cossack host.

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy gathered military-strategic and economic intelligence on the mountain societies of the Nokhchi (the Shibutians) and made attempts at their forcible subjugation. In 1658, the central apparatus of the Ambassadorial Prikaz instructed the Terek voivodes to send a mission into the mountains, in order «concerning those little lands... to order that they be examined and truly scouted out — how many of them there are and what kind of people they are... and what fighting capability they have... and what grows in their land, and what craftsmen there are»^[44]. The document of the central authority also directly stated «to order that amanats be taken from among their kin, men of note»^[44]. To carry out the order, in 1659 the Terek voivodes Melenty Kvashnin and his associates dispatched a military emissary: an extract for the report of the Ambassadorial Prikaz to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich of 1660 states that the voivodes «sent a streltsy head into the Shibut land and ordered him to inspect in the Shibut land the Christian faith, and church building, and towns, and places, and to bring them to the faith, and to take an amanat to the Terek»^[44]. The emissary carried out the reconnaissance, reporting that «they have no church building, nor to]wns, nor any fighting forces»^[44], but he was unable to subjugate the population: «he did not brin[g] the inhabitants of the Shibut land to the faith»^[44]. The seizure of new hostages likewise ended without result; the emissary merely stated that the mountaineers «wish [to be] under the lofty sovereign hand, and on the Terek they [have an amanat]»^[44].

In 1809-1811, the Russian Empire consolidated its power over the lands of the Nokhchi through the bribery of elders, control over the sale of grain and salt, and the setting of neighboring peoples against the Chechens. To incline the Chechens to submission, the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General Tormasov, ordered that Chechen elders and clergy be paid «250, and others 150 silver rubles each, as a one-time payment, for which the required sum, 1,400 r. in total»^[54]. The empire funneled the sale of grain and salt to the Chechens through controlled barter yards under quarantine, established «for the peaceful Chechens in Naur… for the mountain Chechens in Lashchurin»^[54][27]. In a proclamation to the inhabitants of the Chechen land, General Tormasov laid the blame for the devastation of 1807 on the inhabitants themselves — «you yourselves were the cause of the misfortune that befell you the year before last» — and threatened a new invasion, «to bring sword and flame upon the guilty»^[54].

In the period from 1736 to 1740, the diplomatic and administrative apparatus of the Russian Empire maintained control over the borders of the Nokhchi societies through infrastructure construction and hostage-taking. The established evidence base demonstrates that the metropole began by erecting new fortifications: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov records the establishment in 1736 of fortified posts, among them «three new Cossack stanitsas: Borozdinskaya, Kargalinskaya, Dubovskaya»^[28]. Historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova emphasizes their engineering-defensive status, recording that each such stanitsa «was, as it were, a small fortress serving for protection against enemy raids»^[55]. The construction of infrastructure was followed by the physical settlement of military contingents: the first researcher indicates that garrisons were placed on these frontiers, «and from Kizlyar toward the sea another 430 Cossack families are being settled»^[28]. In parallel, the occupation administration continued to physically hold relatives of the local elite seized in previous years: Akhmadov notes, in a list of archival documents, a paper from 1738 identified as «Letter of the Chechen lord A. Bartykhanov to Lieutenant Colonel Bunin about his faithful service to Russia and with a request to release his sister from Kizlyar»^[28].

In 1722–1724, the Russian Empire carried out military-infrastructural colonization and demographic manipulation on the seized frontiers. In the autumn of 1722, construction of a new military base began: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that Peter I «founded the fortress of the Holy Cross on the Sulak»^[28]. To ensure forcible control over the territory, the metropole carried out settlement by loyal troops: the researcher indicates that at the fortress «1 thousand families of Cossacks from the Don are being settled»^[28]. At the same time, the occupation administration liquidated the former administrative center and forcibly relocated the subordinated Nokhchi societies: the author records that «the Terek town had been razed by 1724, and its entire population, including the Okotskaya sloboda, populated by natives of Chechnya... was transferred to the new fortress»^[28]. A controlled buffer zone was taking shape around the new fortification: historian Sh. B. Akhmadov notes that «next to the fortress of the Holy Cross, slobodkas populated by Circassians, Chechens, Ingush, Kabardians, and others very quickly began to appear»^[27].

The expansion of Russian aggression through the seizure of administrative buildings in eastern Ukraine by armed detachments: "groups of armed men unlawfully carried out a well-organized and coordinated seizure of public buildings and police and security service offices in towns and villages of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions"^[56]. The commander of the detachment that crossed the border, I. Girkin ("Strelkov"), later admitted his own role: "It was I, after all, who pulled the trigger of the war. Had our detachment not crossed the border, it would all have ended as in Kharkiv, as in Odesa"^[57]. The campaign was accompanied by terror against the local population, the downing of flight MH17, and massive disinformation^[58]. In the summer of 2014, the Russian Federation brought in regular troops, which led to the battles near Ilovaisk and Debaltseve. The UN monitoring mission recorded bussed-in crowds from the outset: "people were brought in buses and paid to take part in protests and conduct them according to specific scenarios, including causing violent incidents," while "some protesters allegedly come from the Russian Federation"^[59].

In 1835–1836 the empire combined systematic punitive expeditions in Chechnya with covert reconnaissance of the territory. Corps commander Rosen, in a report to the emperor, admits the practice of clandestine study of unsubdued lands: the undertakings "consisted either in the collection of topographical information... or in covert surveys of the lands of the mountaineers hostile to us"; "in 1836, to survey the direct route leading from Kakheti to Chechnya, a topographer was sent, who, having crossed the snowy ridge, came out onto the Caucasian Line at the fortress of Groznaya, and from there, through Chechnya and the lands of the Kists and the Didoi, returned to Kakheti"; at the same time "I sent from Vladikavkaz Ensign Prince Utsmiev of the Life Guards Grenadier Regiment with a topographer, through Chechnya, to Andia"^[26]. Against the movement of Imam Tashu-Hajji, Colonel Pullo, commander of the Sunzha fortified line, conducted constant expeditions; the imperial review of military operations admits: Tashu-Hajji's attempts "were forestalled in good time by the expeditions of the commander of the Sunzha Line, Colonel Pullo, which inflicted total ruin on the inhabitants"^[26]. On August 23, 1836, Pullo's detachment, in a covert night march, reached the aul of Zandak on the Yaman-su River, where Tashu-Hajji was staying. Rosen reported to the minister of war: Pullo, "in order to shake the influence of Tashev-Hajji, to quell the unrest among the Chechens, and to instill fear in them, resolved to undertake movements to punish the inhabitants of the village of Zandak"; "the sudden appearance of our troops struck terror into the inhabitants"; the infantry, having driven out the defenders, seized "31 souls of male and female sex as prisoners. In addition, the property of the inhabitants and 384 head of horned cattle fell to our troops as booty"; before the withdrawal, the houses of the murids and of "other principal adherents of Tashev-Hajji" were annihilated^[26]. The Chechen writer Abuzar Aydamirov, in his "Chronology of the History of Checheno-Ingushetia," recorded: "Punitive expedition of Colonel Pullo to the auls on the Yaman-Su River. Destruction of the aul of Zandak. Retreat of Pullo's detachment, under the pressure of Tashav-Hajji, to the fortress of Vnezapnaya"^[60].

The USSR's official campaign to erase national distinctions: The start was given by the USSR Law "On Strengthening the Connection of School with Life and on the Further Development of the System of Public Education in the USSR" of December 24, 1958: it contained no direct norm on language, leaving the matter to the republics^[61]; the republican Law of the Ukrainian SSR of April 17, 1959, by its Article 9, made the choice of the language of instruction a matter for parents^[62]. The Third Program of the CPSU, adopted by the 22nd Congress in October 1961, proclaimed "a new stage in the development of national relations in the USSR, characterized by the further drawing together of nations and the achievement of their complete unity" - up to and including "the effacement of national distinctions, especially of language distinctions"^[63].

Administrative absorption: "the LITTLE RUSSIAN GOVERNORATE-GENERAL – an administrative-territorial and political unit of the Russian Empire, created in 1802 for the incorporation and integration of Left-Bank Ukraine into the Russian Empire"^[14]. The outcome is recorded there as well: "During the existence of the governorate-general, the remnants of the Hetmanate's autonomy were finally liquidated"^[14].

Institutional substitution: Ukrainian affairs were handed over to a special agency in Moscow. The Little Russian Prikaz was founded "as one of the departments of the Ambassadorial Prikaz to administer Ukrainian affairs," and through it the tsarist government "exercised control over the political-administrative activity of the hetman's administration and the tsarist voivodes in Ukraine"^[14] – the Hetmanate fell under the permanent departmental oversight of the metropole.

The secret police's blow against the intellectual elite of the indigenous people: "In March 1847 the society was crushed by the gendarmes. The police managed to identify 12 members of the clandestine organization… The tsarist authorities judged the society's program documents a serious threat to the foundations of autocracy"^[18]. The sentences for all the accused were proposed by the chief of gendarmes Orlov in his report to the emperor of May 26, 1847, on which Nicholas I inscribed "Execute"^[64]. It was accompanied by trials, exiles, and Shevchenko's dispatch into the army "with the institution over the poet of 'the strictest surveillance with a prohibition on writing and drawing'"^[65].

The abrupt rollback of the policy of "Ukrainization." The start of the physical extermination and political defamation of the intellectual elite - writers, scholars, film directors, as well as the old national communists (M. Skrypnyk was driven to suicide)^[30]. In parallel with the physical terror came the destruction of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, large-scale censorship, the rewriting of history, and the artificial convergence of the Ukrainian language with Russian; works published in the Ukrainian SSR before 1933, in the words of the compiler of the anthology "Executed Renaissance," were "destroyed as a result of Moscow's new course toward the rout and colonial provincialization of Ukraine"^[15].

The Regular Army of the Tsardom of Muscovy carried out the cyclical elimination and renewal of its military presence on the lands of the Nokhchi at the mouth of the Sunzha River. The first military base, erected in 1567, was soon destroyed: historian E. N. Kusheva notes that "the town of 1567 was demolished around 1571"^[47]. Military historian V. A. Potto indicates the reason for the base's elimination: it "was soon destroyed to appease the Turkish sultan"^[66]. Later, the military presence on the lands of the Nokhchi was renewed: historian E. N. Kusheva writes that "in 1577-1578... the Russian town was restored on the Terek River at the mouth of the Sunzha"^[47]. However, the second military base was also eliminated: historian E. N. Kusheva indicates that this "Russian town was likewise soon destroyed at the demand of the khan"^[47]. The subsequent fortification was rebuilt many times: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of a collection of documents, indicates that the military forces of the Tsardom of Muscovy "rebuilt the ostrog in 1590 and 1635"^[44], and also notes that in the intervals "the fortress was abandoned for political reasons in 1605"^[44]. Another attempt to gain a foothold on the lands of the Nokhchi took place later: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of the collection of documents, records that "in 1651 a Russian ostrog was built anew on the left bank of the Sunzha"^[44]. However, it was soon eliminated for good: compiler E. N. Kusheva indicates that "in 1653 the ostrog was burned by Persian troops and was never rebuilt"^[44].

After Yermolov's punitive campaign of 1826 and the ebbing of the uprising of 1825-1826, the empire, having failed to subdue Chechnya by force of arms, turned to deception, division, and hostage-taking. The historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "Paskevich, trying to lure the principal leader of the Chechen insurgents out of Chechnya, throughout the whole of 1828 offers Beibulat, through intermediaries, a return to 'Russian service.' He is promised the rank of captain, pardon, and honors"^[11]. On March 6, 1829, Beibulat Taimiev and 120 elders of Chechnya were forced to accept nominal allegiance in Tarki through the Shamkhal of Tarki. D. A. Khozhaev recorded the motive: the elders "sought to avoid subordination to the tsarist pristavs (superintendents), to avert from Chechnya the threat of constant raids"^[11]. Emanuel, commander of the troops on the Caucasus Line, set a condition in his report to Paskevich: "the submission of Bey-Bulat and the other unsubdued Chechens will be recognized as well-intentioned only when they unconditionally take the oath and hand over amanats (hostages)"^[67]. In his instruction to Emanuel, Paskevich revealed the calculation of splitting the people: "it is not without use for us to have two factions in Chechnya, which, both remaining submissive to our government, will by internecine discord be restrained from hostile designs against the Russians"^[67]. Having summoned Beibulat and the elders of his faction to Tiflis ostensibly for negotiations, Paskevich detained them with the army in the field for the entire Turkish campaign. D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "Realizing that he had been deceived, he tries to return to Chechnya immediately, but he is detained in Tiflis by force"^[11]. Paskevich himself acknowledged the scheme in his instruction to Emanuel of August 2, 1829: "I at once resolved to summon to me, under the guise of explanations, their elders and the elder Bey-Bulat known to you, so that, having drawn them away here, I would deprive this tribe of the possibility... of undertaking anything hostile"; "Having kept them in this way for the whole summer, I secured tranquility for the Line on their part"^[67]. The same instruction confirmed the regulation on Chechnya: amanats from every elder's district "as a pledge of submission" in the fortress of Groznaya, the son of the Shamkhal as commissar over the Chechens, and travel into imperial territory only with tickets (written passes) from the commissar^[67]. The oath was signed by a people that had lived through a wave of arrests, executions, and exiles at the hands of the imperial command. The Chechens wrote to Paskevich in April 1829: they "arrested, took captive, hanged, and exiled to Siberia and other places many of those who, being submissive, served the great Sovereign"^[67].

After the erection of the Groznaya fortress on the Sunzha in 1818, General Yermolov continued, as historian D. A. Khozhaev writes, to "squeeze unsubdued Chechnya with new fortresses and fortifications," and among these, in 1819, appeared the fortress of Vnezapnaya^[11]. Imperial historian Potto names its purpose outright: founded on the eighteenth of July 1819, it "separated the Chechens from the Kumyks" and "blocked [the Chechens'] path through the Salatau mountains"^[68]. Potto writes that Yermolov "decided to clear the entire Kumyk plain… by making the Chechens leave it for beyond the Kachkalyk mountain ridge," and getting them to take their families away themselves "was possible only by an example of terror"^[68]. The Nokhchi aul of Dadi-Yurt was chosen as the demonstrative victim. Historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that the aul of 200 households was "one of the richest in Chechnya" and "was famed for its brave and industrious inhabitants and for the beauty and nobility of its girls"^[11]. Yermolov ordered Major General Sysoev to surround the aul and, "should they resist, to punish them with arms, giving quarter to no one"^[69]. On the fifteenth of September 1819 the aul was surrounded by six Kabardian companies and seven hundred Cossacks, who took it by storming each household under artillery fire^[68][11]. Yermolov himself admits the outcome in his "Notes": "all who bore arms were exterminated, and their number could not have been fewer than four hundred men"; of women and children "up to one hundred and forty were taken prisoner… but a far greater number were slaughtered or perished in the houses from the effects of artillery and fire," while the village "consisted of 200 houses" and was "razed to its foundations"^[69]. The surviving women and children were led away as prisoners beyond the Terek; historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that during the river crossing 46 captured girls, "unwilling to endure abuse in captivity," perished, "dragging their guards with them into the turbulent river"^[11]. After the destruction of the aul, Yermolov finished off the Kachkalyk villages with almost no resistance left; he himself admits: "the example of Dadan-Yurt spread terror everywhere"^[69].

In 1919 the Volunteer Army of General Denikin conquered Chechnya with ultimatums, assaults and the burning of villages - the year it left behind ended with 21 destroyed auls and 15 thousand dead. After the fall of the empire (campaign C1189) the peoples of the North Caucasus tried to live in a state of their own: in May 1918 the highland political forces proclaimed the independent Mountain Republic from the Black Sea to the Caspian; its first government was headed by the Chechen Tapa Chermoyev, an oil industrialist (campaign C1173), its parliament by the Ingush Vassan-Girey Dzhabagiev^[2]. In February 1919 the Terek oblast was occupied by the Volunteer Army - troops of former imperial officers under the command of Denikin, fighting the Bolsheviks for the return of Russia within its former borders; historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "The main force of the Volunteer Army was made up of Cossacks, and therefore the actions of the Denikinites in the Terek oblast were aimed, first of all, at restoring the privileged position of the Cossacks"^[2]. Denikin did not recognize the Mountain Republic: he refused to receive the delegation of its government; General Lyakhov, appointed ruler of the Terek oblast, agreed to regard the republic's parliament as no more than "a consultative organ attached to his person", and as ruler of Chechnya the Volunteer Army appointed General Aliev^[2]. At the negotiations with the Mountain government Lyakhov declared: "...There cannot be two masters in one house. Where I pay, I shall be the master. I demand submission to my authority, and whoever does not submit to it, let him blame himself for what will come of it"^[2]. The Denikin command recorded of the resistance: "The bitterness of the Chechens and their daring reach the utmost degree"^[2]. The year's total was drawn by the Soviet survey of 1920, which historian E. F. Zhupikova cites: "21 destroyed auls and 15 thousand dead Chechens is what the Denikin army left behind it"^[70].

The occupation administration of the metropole liquidated the autonomy of the Nokhchi communities (the Okochans) in the Terek town, establishing alien governance over them and beginning to exploit their resources. Historian E. N. Kusheva states that in 1614 Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich ordered the Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky "to be prince over all the Okochans..., to judge them and to have charge of them in military organization and in all matters"^[47]. The appointed ruler proceeded to the physical and economic exploitation of the indigenous population. Kusheva points out that he forced those under his rule "to perform all manner of labor for him, to plow the fields and to mow the hay"^[47]. Facts of administrative extortion and slave trading are documented: in a petition to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the service Okochans of the Terek town reported that the ruler "having taken from us by force 8 good horses from the herd, sent them off to his kabaks in Kabarda"^[71][44], "wrongfully sold four of our Okochan comrades"^[71][44] and "took a wife into bondage and sent her off to his kabaks in Kabarda"^[71][44]. The document adds that he subjected the Nokhchi to corporal punishment: "he orders us to be thrown into prison and beaten with the knout without thy sovereign knowledge and without guilt"^[71][44]. The administration of the metropole itself for years compelled the Nokhchi to serve without pay: a report from the Terek voivode Pyotr Petrovich Golovin to the Astrakhan voivode Ivan Nikitich Odoevsky records that they "serve the sovereign tsar... in all manner of the sovereign's Terek... services... yet for the tenth year have not been granted the sovereign's monetary and grain salary"^[71]. The indigenous population was also forced to fight against their own compatriots: E. N. Kusheva, compiler of an academic collection, indicates in the heading of a primary document that there took place "a campaign of the Terek fighting men and the Terek Okochans... against the Endirey ruler Saltan-Magmut and the people of the Okotsk and Michkiz kabaks who had joined him"^[44]. In parallel, the metropole imposed tribute on the mountain communities of the Nokhchi: an extract from the book of the Terek town's Prikaz office records that the administration sent men "to the Michkiz lands for the sovereign's yasak"^[44]. The compilers of the academic collections dryly state the outcome of the Nokhchi protests: "The petition of the 'Okochans' was not granted"^[71].

Economic and political pressure by V. Putin on V. Yanukovych in the autumn of 2013 aimed at derailing the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU. The price was formalized publicly on December 17, 2013: "Ukraine will receive 15 billion dollars from Russia and gas at a reduced price" - the gas price was lowered "to 268.5 dollars per thousand cubic meters" instead of the previous 410, and the money came "from the Russian National Welfare Fund" in exchange for Ukrainian government securities^[72]. The refusal to sign the agreement triggered the protests: "between 21 November 2013 and 22 February 2014 large-scale street protests took place, provoked by the decision of then-President Viktor Yanukovych not to sign the association agreement with the European Union," and their suppression ended in shootings - on the Maidan "between January and February 2014 more than 100 people were killed, including by snipers"^[56].

A covert operation (sabotage) by Muscovite emissaries disguised as monks, aimed at the physical destruction of historical archives. According to testimonies preserved by the Kyiv scholar Lebedyntsev, "the Lavra was set on fire by emissaries from Moscow dressed as monks. The enormous archive and library burned down; the charters and grants… of princes, magnates, and hetmans perished"; historian Hyrych sums up: "The fire destroyed the written memory of the Lavra's independent Ukrainian political and spiritual life"^[73].

Between 1817 and 1818, the Russian Empire forcibly moved the fortified line from the Terek to the Sunzha and secured the seized territory of the Nokhchi communities by building a fortress, accompanying this with the driving off of the population, the taking of hostages, and coercion into submission. Historian D. A. Khozhaev records that the relocation of the line "squeezed unsubdued Chechnya with new fortresses and fortifications," while the fortress of Groznaya was built "on Chechen land," where "eight flourishing Chechen villages… were destroyed, and the population driven off its lands"^[11]. Imperial general Yermolov, commander of the Caucasus Corps, testifies in his "Notes" to the deployment of troops ("on May 24 the entire detachment crossed over… moved from the Terek to the Sunzha River"), to the demand that the elders "renew their long-standing oath of submission," and to the taking of amanats (hostages) "from their villages"^[69]. Imperial historian Potto confirms the founding of the fortress on June 10, 1818, "with six bastions, which Yermolov named Groznaya"^[68].

After Yermolov's punitive campaign, which devastated the lowland villages of the Nokhchi in 1826, some inhabitants of the destroyed villages refused to resettle under the conqueror's control and took refuge in the forests. The imperial historian Potto admits: "the inhabitants of some auls destroyed by Yermolov took refuge in the forests and, unwilling to resettle, abandoned even their fields sown with grain"^[49]. The village of Uzeni-Yurt on the bank of the Argun became a refuge for these people and a stronghold of the Karabulak leader Astemir, an associate of Beibulat Taimiev in the uprising of 1825. On the night of January 10, 1827, General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line, covertly led against the village a detachment of 350 line Cossacks with two horse-drawn guns, forcing four hundred Chechens from subordinated communities to take part as well. Potto wrote: they "swam across the Argun and had to take a roundabout route in order to cut off the inhabitants' retreat to the forest"^[49]. Warned by a horseman, the inhabitants fled across the Argun. Potto recorded: the Cossacks, overtaking those fleeing, "seized... three women and killed and wounded some fifteen people," after which "the village of Uzeni-Yurt, with all its property and even its livestock, was destroyed to the ground"^[49]. That same winter Laptev exacted hostages from the village of Geldigen, rejecting a ransom for a captured young man of Geldigen. Potto wrote: "Laptev rejected all offers and demanded one thing - amanats (hostages)"^[49]. In the summer of 1827 his successor, General Engelhardt, set an ambush during the harvest near the aul of Samashki. Potto admits: the inhabitants were freely allowed onto the fields, and then "everything that was in the field turned out to be encircled by a dense Cossack cordon"; the population was released, while the leader Tara-Adzuev and the family of the resistance leader Bakar-Bulatov were taken prisoner, and the grain of the Galgai, who lived by the aul, was "burned... standing in the field"^[49].

A campaign to suppress the legal civic activity of the indigenous people: in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions the "Prosvita" societies were banned from their very founding, and in 1908–1910, under Stolypin, virtually all "Prosvitas" were closed, except the branches of the Katerynoslav governorate^[38]. Justifying the crackdown, Stolypin declared in an address to the Senate that the revival of Ukrainian cultural life was undesirable, for "the three principal branches of Eastern Slavdom, both by origin and by language, cannot but constitute one whole"^[38]. Stolypin's circular of 1910 classed Ukrainians among the "aliens" and prescribed "to refuse without fail the registration" of their societies^[74].

After the demonstrative destruction of Dadi-Yurt, General Yermolov moved on to devastate the remaining Nokhchi villages of the Kachkalyk plain and drive their inhabitants off the land. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that under Yermolov "cruel punitive raids on peaceful Caucasian auls — with the annihilation of the population, houses, crops, orchards, and forests, the driving off of livestock, and the plundering of property — which disgraced Russian arms, became the rule," and following Dadi-Yurt the Kachkalyk villages of Isti-Su, Noiberdy, Alleroi, and others were "taken by storm and destroyed"^[11]. Yermolov himself describes the campaign in his "Notes": on September 30, 1819, he "himself set out with 6 battalions and 16 artillery pieces toward the Kachkalyk villages"; on October 2 he attacked "the village of Goryachevskaya, the strongest of them" (also known as Isti-Su), and a day later devastated Noen-Berdy and Allayar-Aul: "from the first the Chechens were driven out by heavy cannonade, the latter was abandoned by them… Both were utterly devastated"^[69]. At the same time, Major General Sysoev invaded Chechen land from Groznaya through Khan-Kale, drawing the forces of the Chechens away from the Kachkalyk plain^[69]. The imperial historian Potto confirms: the Apsheron men "went in with bayonets without firing a shot, burst into the aul and committed it to the flames," while Noim-Berdy and Allayar-Aul "were utterly devastated"^[68]. One village survived by submitting: Yermolov writes that "the village of Khangeldy begged for mercy… The Aksai owners vouched for its inhabitants, and mercy was granted them"^[69], while Potto adds that "the aul of Khosh-Geldy met Yermolov with bread and salt and was spared"^[68]. The remaining villages the punitive forces found empty, because the Dadi-Yurt terror had driven the inhabitants off the plain in advance. Yermolov admits that "in none of the villages were there wives and children; the property had likewise been carried away," for "the example of Dadan-Yurt spread terror everywhere"^[69]. Potto writes that "the remaining auls were empty, their inhabitants had fled beyond the mountains," and "within a few days the Kumyk plain was completely cleared of the predatory Chechens"^[68]. On October 5 the troops returned to Vnezapnaya^[69].

In January-May 1826 the Russian Empire conducted a large punitive campaign against the Nokhchi, devastating lowland villages for participation in Beibulat Taimiev’s uprising and forcing the inhabitants into submission. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that "in January 1826, having waited for a period inconvenient for the inhabitants of Chechnya, when the frosts made it difficult to shelter families, Yermolov begins a large punitive campaign into Chechnya," occupying the aul of Bolshaya Ataga on January 26 and burning settlements one after another^[11]. General Yermolov himself, in a report to Emperor Nicholas I of May 28, 1826, admits the course of the devastation: during the storming of Urus-Martan "the village was burned and its splendid orchards cut down," at Stavna-Kul "16 souls of both sexes were taken prisoner, several people killed," and the village of Shali he "ordered to be exterminated… and its orchards cut down"^[75]. The historian D. A. Khozhaev sums up: by May 18, 1826, "flourishing settlements had been destroyed, splendid fruit orchards cut down, fields burned, livestock driven off. People were killed, women and children taken prisoner… People were dying of hunger, cold, and disease"^[11].

Diplomatic blackmail by V. Putin around the NATO summit in Bucharest aimed at blocking the granting of a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Ukraine. Two days after the summit, at a meeting with G. Bush in Sochi, the Russian leader denied Ukrainian statehood - Ukraine, in his words, "is not a nation built in a natural manner" but "an artificial country created back in Soviet times"^[76] - and directly threatened its rupture: "the country could just split apart," adding that, relying on anti-NATO forces, "Russia would be creating problems there all the time"^[76]. At the summit itself, as retold by Kommersant's source, Putin told Bush: "You understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state!" - in effect threatening "that Russia could begin the severance of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine"^[77].

The union center's use of international levers to keep Ukraine within the USSR. The culmination was US president Bush's visit to Kyiv, where from the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada he warned against independence: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred"^[78].

In the period from 1726 to 1731, the Russian Empire exerted routine administrative and economic pressure on the Nokhchi societies while avoiding large-scale military interventions. The occupation administration imposed harsh taxes on commercial travel by the indigenous population: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov cites customs documents, stating that in 1726 «from the travel document of the Terek resident, the Okochan Kurman Bogomatov... duties of 24 altyns in money were collected by decree»^[28], and also that «a report of February 15, 1726 states that duties were collected from the Terek Okochans Surkai Usmanov...»^[28]. The economic strangulation provoked armed resistance: Akhmadov indicates that the highlanders «carried out attacks on the tsarist fortifications, kept the fortress of the Holy Cross «in great oppression»»^[28]. In addition, the empire conducted the gathering of military-strategic intelligence: historian Sh. B. Akhmadov notes that in 1728 the officer I. G. Gerber «on the government's assignment... compiled a description of the localities and population... as well as a map of this district»^[27].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy in the town of Terki used the subordinated Nokhchi (Okochans) to carry out state tasks while artificially keeping them in a state of economic dependency. In their petition to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the Okochan murza Kokhostrov Biytemirov and the serving Okochans of the town of Terki reported constant coercion into military action: «against your sovereign's disobedient ones we fight, we, your sovereign's kholops, not sparing our heads; for you, sovereign, we shed our blood and lay down our heads»^[44]. At the same time, the metropole deliberately withheld basic subsistence resources from the Indigenous population for five years. A memorandum from the Ambassadorial Prikaz to the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace records: «the sovereign's grain allowance for the past years — for the 125th, and the 126th, and the 127th, and the 128th, and the 129th year — was not given to them»^[44]. The result was the exhaustion of the population: Biytemirov reported that they «have been left without grain, have utterly perished from hunger and every hardship and have fallen, sovereign, into great debt, and we are dying a death of starvation together with our wives and children»^[44]. To resolve the crisis, the leader of the Nokhchi set out for Moscow, but perished while returning to the Caucasus. A memorandum from the Ambassadorial Prikaz states that «Kokhostrov-murza together with his man drowned in the Oka River»^[44], while representatives of the metropole resolved to confiscate the property of the deceased: «his clothing and all his belongings were taken into our treasury»^[44]. The delegate's death was used to further curtail the rights of the Nokhchi. In a petition submitted to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the Okochan murza Chepan Kokhostrov indicated that in the incident «the sovereign's charter of grant was lost together with him»^[44], as a result of which the occupation administration artificially lowered the status of his family in order to impose obligations upon it: an official extract of the Ambassadorial Prikaz records that the heirs were «made equal in everything with the Okochans, with the plowing people, and carts and wagons are taken from them», whereas previously from them «no taxes whatsoever had been taken»^[44].

Direct interference by the Russian Federation in the presidential election of a sovereign state in order to impose a loyal candidate (V. Yanukovych): two weeks before the first round, the head of the Russian state, live on three Ukrainian television channels, campaigned for the incumbent prime minister, declaring that "V. Yanukovych's government achieved more: they managed to fill this growth with good quality"^[79]. Chemical poisoning was used against the leader of the democratic forces, V. Yushchenko: the dioxin levels in his blood "were more than 50,000-fold greater than those in the general population"^[80]. In response to the protests, Moscow instigated the threat of splitting the country apart - at the Sievierodonetsk congress (28 November 2004) Regions faction leader R. Bohatyriova's words "we will hold a referendum on the creation of a South-Eastern state" were met with applause, while the mayor of Moscow Yu. Luzhkov sat as an honored guest in the presidium^[81].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy maintained a regime that deprived the subordinated societies of the Nokhchi (the Okochans) of autonomy in the Terek town, prolonging the power over them of a loyal foreign ruler for their subsequent mobilization. In 1661, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich issued a charter of grant to the Kabardian prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky, officially prescribing that he «be prince over the Okochans and over the Cherkasses who serve us, the great sovereign, on the Terek, and administer and judge them in military organization and in all our affairs»^[44]. Having received control, the appointed ruler became an instrument for implementing imperial objectives: in 1676, the central apparatus of the Ambassadorial Prikaz sent an instruction to Prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky on the need to arrive at the Terek «to administer the oath of allegiance of the population of the North Caucasus to Tsars Ivan and Peter Alekseevich»^[71]. In the same period, the subordinated Nokhchi were forcibly thrown into the metropole's military campaigns against the Crimean Khanate. A dispatch from Prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky to the Ambassadorial Prikaz of 1675 states that for the campaign into the Crimean uluses he had at his disposal various fighting men, including «190 Okochan men»^[71], and the historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova confirms that in 1675 detachments fought in Crimea that included men «with uzdens, with the newly baptized, and with «Okochans»»^[55].

The introduction of discriminatory legislation that territorially restricted the rights of the Jewish population: decree No. 17,006 of December 23, 1791 confirmed the ban on Jews enrolling in the merchantry in the internal Russian cities and ports, extending the rights of citizenship and burgher status only to the Ekaterinoslav Viceroyalty and the Tauride region^[82]. From the totality of such acts emerged the Pale of Settlement, running predominantly through colonized Ukrainian territories.

The Regular Army of the Tsardom of Muscovy erected the first military base on the lands of the Nokhchi with the support of regular troops. As historian E. N. Kusheva writes, "at the request of Temriuk, conveyed in Moscow in December 1566 by his son Matlov or Mazlov, to build a town 'on the Terek River at the mouth of the Siuiunchi River' 'for protection from his enemies,' in the spring of 1567 voevodas were sent from Moscow for the town-building work — Prince A. S. Babichev and P. Protasyev 'with many men, as well as ordnance, cannons, and arquebuses'"^[47]. Historians A. S. Kulikov and V. A. Runov add that the voevodas were sent "with firearms and many men"^[83]. Historian E. N. Kusheva states the fact that the base was erected on the lands of the Nokhchi: "The Russian town... was built that same year"^[47].

In the 1740s, the diplomatic and administrative apparatus of the Russian Empire scaled up the application of institutional colonial mechanisms to new territories of the Nokhchi. Historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that in 1741–1748 there was an «intensification of Russian-Chechen political and trade ties»^[28]. The occupation administration expanded the practice of institutional bribery: the researcher records «the granting of Russian salaries to 4 Chechen princes and their uzdens»^[28]. This process was accompanied by the legal subordination of new territories through the issuing of ultimatum demands. The author points out that, in response to the highlanders' requests for access to the plain, the empire gave its consent exclusively «on the condition that the highlanders take an oath of Russian allegiance»^[28], which led to the formalization of oaths «by new societies of Chechnya, including mountain ones»^[28]. Overall, as Akhmadov summarizes, «The process of formalizing relations with Russia at the official level covers the main districts of Chechnya», while, as rigid guarantees of obedience, «amanats (hostages) are handed over as a pledge of fidelity to the oath to the Russian authorities»^[28].

In 1818, after the fortress of Groznaya had already been erected on seized land, the Russian Empire used the nearby village of Solzha (Sunzhenskaya) as a resource base for the garrison, and then devastated it when its inhabitants refused to hand over a fellow villager and took up arms. Historian D. A. Khozhaev records the devastation of Solzha (Sunzhenskaya), as a consequence of which "most of the peaceful surrounding auls fled to the mountains, and the flourishing riverbanks stood deserted for a long time thereafter"^[11]. Imperial general Yermolov testifies in his "Notes" that he had previously ordered the troops to spare the village so that the fortress "could obtain from it all the necessary provisions." When soldiers were taking away from a villager an ox "which he called his own," the man shot at a soldier; the inhabitants refused to hand him over, declaring "that they would not give up the man who had shot at the soldier and would defend themselves if the troops came." When the chief of the corps staff "went himself with several companies," he "was met with gunfire." The families and property had been sent away in advance; the defense was held by the men alone. The troops were ordered to cut off the retreat — "to intercept the withdrawal in the forest" — but the defenders had pulled back earlier. Only after this did the troops enter the abandoned village, spending several days carting away from it "grain, forage, and timber fit for construction"^[69].

In August 1832, corps commander Rosen led a ten-thousand-strong detachment on a campaign through Chechnya and Ichkeria — the mountainous southeastern part of Chechen land, into which imperial troops had never before penetrated. The historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "Rosen's ten-thousand-strong tsarist detachment invaded mountainous Ingushetia and Chechnya, ablaze with the fire of a people's war of liberation. Despite the steadfast resistance of the inhabitants of mountainous Chechnya, who courageously defended every inch of their land, the tsarist troops destroyed several dozen auls and hamlets"^[11]. On August 22, after crossing the Argun River, the villages of Belgatoy and Dzhan-yurt were annihilated. On August 23, Germenchuk — the richest village of Chechnya, numbering 600 households — was taken by storm. Rosen reported to Minister of War Chernyshev: "more than 100 bodies were left by them in the village itself," while a group "numbering about 60 men, for the most part people sent by Kazi-Mulla to hearten the inhabitants of Germenchuk," led by Mullah Abdurakhman, "was cut off and surrounded by us in one large house"^[26]. The surrounded men refused to surrender and, on the order of General Volkhovsky, were burned alive. The imperial historian Volkonsky, writing from Rosen's dispatches, admits: "Major General Volkhovsky ordered burning firewood and hay to be thrown into the chimneys. This had its effect... but the greater part, together with Mullah Abdurakhman, perished in the flames, continuing to sing verses of the Quran"^[84]. For two days "the troops annihilated the houses of the village of Germenchuk"; on August 26, Shali was destroyed "with the exception of 11 households that had paid the fine and the tribute"^[84]. Rosen himself acknowledged the pattern of the campaign: the villages, "having been unable to agree among themselves on the release of our prisoners, were punished by the annihilation of their dwellings and plowlands, for which purpose, on the 27th and 28th of this past August, Colonel Shumsky was dispatched... He annihilated Alkhan-yurt, Sala-yurt, Katar-yurt, Lyalsin-yurt, Nazari-yurt, Uzden-yurt, Uruzbey-yurt, and Khyzin-Erzo-yurt"^[26]. Further annihilated were Anzeli-yurt and Chingaroy-yurt, the crops and dwellings of Avtury, Said-yurt, the plowlands and houses of Geldigen, Anto-yurt, Askhor-yurt, Taba-yurt, and Kudish-yurt; Mairtup was burned, and in Ichkeria — Shoni, Tsentoroy, Belgatoy, the hamlet of Khamer, Ali-yurt, Bey-Bulat-yurt, Bachin-yurt, Khelboyn-yurt; Benoy was burned^[84][26][11]. Rosen summed up the results in his report to Chernyshev of September 27, 1832: "In all, up to the present time, more than 80 Chechen and Ichkerian villages have submitted, a quarter of which had never been in dependence on us; 30 of our prisoners, men and women, have been returned; tribute and fines in money and livestock have been paid... about 5 th. r. s. [five thousand rubles in silver]. 61 unsubmitted villages have been annihilated, many of which, after punishment, declared their submission and fulfilled all demands"^[26].

In late December 1836, Colonel Pullo, in a covert winter raid, exterminated the Chechen village of Kishkeroy-Yurt (Keshkeroy) beyond the Gudermes river. Sanction had been given in advance: on 10 December 1836 Rozen reported to the Minister of War Chernyshev that he "had authorized Col. Pullo to act at once against the unsubmissive Chechen villages"^[26]. The pretext for the punishment was declared to be hospitality: the village's inhabitants "had harbored the rebel Tashov-Hadji"^[3]. Surrounded at dawn, the village was exterminated together with its people: those fleeing "were caught or exterminated", while "the inhabitants, having barricaded themselves in their houses with their families, were put to the bayonet"^[3]; an attempt by Tashu-Hadji to come to the village's relief was repelled by artillery. Rozen himself summed up the outcome: "Upon the occupation of the village of Kishkeroy-Yurt, 76 bodies of the slain were found in it, and 40 souls of both sexes were taken captive; all the property of the inhabitants and the weapons taken from the slain fell to our troops"^[3][85]. The village of 63 households, "with a considerable stock of grain and hay," was put to the torch in the middle of winter^[3]. Dating: the dispatch is dated in the collection "9 January 1836," but the compilers placed it among documents from late 1836 to early 1837; the raid almost certainly took place on 27-31 December 1836, while the historian Sh. A. Gapurov dates it to December 1835^[85].

In 1836, the command of the Russian Caucasus Corps under General Rozen put forward a project to subordinate the entire Sunni clergy of the Caucasus to a "spiritual leader" appointed by the empire: for this role they hired the Kazan efendi (Muslim theologian) Taj ad-Din Mustafin and kept him on the treasury's payroll for about six years. The preacher's task was formulated openly: "to turn the highlanders onto the true path, subordinate them to the Russian government, and destroy or hand over Shamil to us alive" (Shamil - imam, leader of the Dagestani and Chechen highlanders' resistance to the Russian conquest)^[4]. In Chechnya, Mustafin was sent to the Groznaya fortress to undermine the spiritual influence of Tashu-Hadji (sheikh, imam of Chechnya in 1834-1836, spiritual and military leader of the Chechen resistance). After a letter from Tashu-Hadji, who under threat of death forbade the preacher to appear on Chechen land, he acted only under military escort and did not show himself in the mountains. The project failed: Golovin, who succeeded Rozen, agreed to release the preacher based on a report by Minister of War Chernyshev of 13 November 1841 - "the teaching of Tajudin Effendi over the course of 6 years did not change the highlanders' attitude toward us in the slightest"^[4].

The Russian Empire, through the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General Gudovich, addressed the Nokhchi elders with a proclamation offering economic benefits in exchange for accepting allegiance and ceasing armed resistance: for submission, the elders were promised access to salt, so that they «will be permitted to take from the local salt lakes by tickets, irrevocably, with payment of a very small fixed price», and the right «to drive cattle to this side of the Terek and freely use the vacant pasture lands»^[48]. Allegiance was not accepted; by the end of the year the empire moved to preparing an armed invasion, which began in February of the following year.

The first attempt by Soviet Russia (the Russian Soviet Republic) to liquidate Ukraine's independence by hijacking power at the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets. The Bolshevik government (the Sovnarkom) planned to plant its delegates, artificially create a majority, and legally vote to transfer power to the Soviets under its control. The Ukrainian leadership recognized the threat and mobilized its supporters, leaving the aggressor's delegates in an absolute minority and thwarting the takeover^[30][29].

The Soviet Union introduced a system of direct material incentives for assimilation: pursuant to the resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of 13 October 1978 No. 835 "On measures for the further improvement of the study and teaching of the Russian language in the union republics," the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, by its resolution of 2 November 1978 No. 518, introduced the study of Russian from the first grades of Ukrainian schools starting with the 1980/81 school year^[86]; the all-Union conference "The Russian Language — the Language of Friendship and Cooperation of the Peoples of the USSR" (Tashkent, 22–24 May 1979) spelled out Russification measures down to kindergartens^[40]; the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers of 26 May 1983 No. 473 "On additional measures for improving the study of the Russian language in general-education schools and other educational institutions of the union republics" and the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR of 10 June 1983 raised the salary rates of Russian-language teachers by 15 percent from 1984^[40][87].

In 1914-1917 the Russian Empire waged the world war both with Chechen hands and at Chechen expense: it carried off to the front, in the "Savage Division", those it considered dangerous, laid the upkeep of the Chechen regiment on the Chechen communities themselves, introduced "extraordinary security" with military courts and censorship in the Terek oblast, and sent striking workers into the army. By 1914 Chechnya had lived for half a century under "Military-Popular Administration" - the colonial regime of the Terek oblast (campaign C1170), without the land taken away for Cossack stanitsas (campaign C1171), and under collective punishments for the abrek phenomenon - the empire's name for a highlander's going into the mountains with a weapon after being declared an outlaw; for a single abrek the empire fined and deported entire villages (campaign C1175). The empire did not extend military conscription to the Chechens: a commission of the Caucasus Military District found it desirable to bring the Muslims of the Caucasus into service "...on the same grounds as the indigenous population of the Empire...", but to exempt the Chechens and the neighboring Kumyks temporarily, since the Chechens were not yet sufficiently "pacified"; the commander of the Caucasus Military District objected: "The exemption of the Chechens from military conscription, even a temporary one... will be as it were a recognition of privileges for the Chechens for their robberies and brigandage, and in the cause of the pacification of the North Caucasus will bring harm rather than benefit"^[2]. The decision on the gradual introduction of conscription for the Muslim highlanders the empire took only in 1913, but by the start of the war the administration of the Terek oblast had not even begun to compile the family lists - a kind of household census - and did not dare to declare mobilization: it confined itself to recruiting volunteers^[2]. The only mobilization the Russian Empire declared was not for the war but against a strike: in May 1916 it mobilized Grozny workers who held military service deferrals, for taking part in the strike^[2].

An assault on the traditional way of life of the Ukrainian village, which remained the principal bearer of national identity and economic independence. Under the slogans of socialist modernization, Moscow proclaimed the course of "the liquidation of the kulaks as a class": the secret Politburo resolution of January 30, 1930 ordered "to confiscate from the kulaks of these districts the means of production, livestock, farm and residential buildings, processing enterprises, fodder and seed stocks" and to send "60,000 to concentration camps and subject 150,000 kulaks to deportation to remote districts," of which for Ukraine - 15 thousand to concentration camps and 30–35 thousand to deportation^[88]. Peasants who put up resistance were dispossessed en masse and deported to Siberia and the North^[30].

The physical and economic exhaustion of the region through the transformation of the Cossack host into unpaid labor for imperial construction projects. The chief of these was the Ladoga Canal: Peter I handed the direction of the works to Münnich, while the digging itself "was carried out chiefly by the hands of Ukrainian Cossacks," and "on the construction works, tens of thousands of people perished from back-breaking labor, hunger and the harsh climate"^[14]. In 1721 the acting hetman P. Polubotok "headed a 10,000-strong Cossack corps dispatched by order of Tsar Peter I to the construction of the Ladoga Canal"^[89]. For the defiant there were also the Neva construction sites - as hard labor: captured Zaporozhians were "exiled to Sankt-Piterburkh to hard labor forever"^[35].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy made mass use of the subordinated Nokhchi (the Okochans) as a military resource in conflicts with the Ottoman Empire on distant fronts. In 1678, the Kabardian prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky received a tsarist charter in which the historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova records a reward «for his «many services», for having taken part in the Crimean and Chyhyryn campaigns»^[55]. The registers of archival documents for 1678 record a dispatch from the Chuhuiv voivode Ivan Rykhtarov to the Razriad Prikaz «on the march of the regiment of Prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky to Chuhuiv»^[71]. The exploitation of military potential continued the following year as well: in 1679, Tsar Fedor Alekseevich issued a decree to the Ambassadorial Prikaz on sending Prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkassky a charter «on his regiment's performance of guard duty in the vicinity of Chuhuiv and Kharkiv»^[71], while a dispatch from Kaspulat Cherkassky himself to the Ambassadorial Prikaz for the same year states «on the arrival of his regiment at Valuyki»^[71].

In November 1838 general Golovin, commander of the Separate Caucasus Corps (the head of the imperial troops and administration in the Caucasus), secretly ordered the assassination of Shamil (Shamil - the imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest), and in May 1839 the troops of general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), invaded Ichkeria (mountainous south-eastern Chechnya). After the rout of Akhulgo (Shamil's mountain residence in Dagestan, August 1839) the empire considered the resistance finished off and pressed Chechnya with winter expeditions - armed marches for money, weapons and people through auls already held since 1836 by the system of amanats, tribute and pristavs (campaign C1163). Muhammad-Tahir al-Qarakhi, Shamil's chronicler, named the reason why the Chechens called for Shamil: "The reason for this was that even before Shamil's coming the Russians had taken from these lower Chechens, as a tax, one ruble (kurush) from every house and one gun from every ten houses"^[32]. In February-March 1840 Chechnya rose - the historian D. A. Khozhaev writes: "All of lowland Chechnya was stirring. On the lowland territory of Chechnya occupied by the tsarist colonial troops and subordinated to the Chechen pristav, preparation of an armed uprising began"^[11]. The empire answered with punitive marches throughout 1840: the troops of general Galafeyev, who had taken over the left flank of the Caucasus Line, and of general Grabbe burned dozens of auls of Lesser and Greater Chechnya, destroyed crops and stores before winter, and dictated to the insurgents the "Conditions prescribed to submitting highlanders" - hostages, an oath, fines, surrender of weapons. The calculation of the campaign was admitted by general Golovin himself - in a memorandum of 26 April 1841 on the results of the previous year's expedition: "In vain did we expect that after the destruction, in last year's expedition, of the highlanders' food stores, their villages and various property, hunger, cold and extreme poverty would shake the fierce power of the instigator" ("instigator" - the imperial label for Shamil)^[4]. The result of the year was summed up by the imperial historian Yurov: "The results of the exhausting expeditions of 1840 on the left flank of the Caucasus line fell far short of the expectations of His Majesty the Emperor and the high command; even more - we did not manage to improve the ominous situation one whit, and our prestige fell in this part of the region"^[90].

In 1857-1859 the empire completed its conquest of Chechnya: forest clearings (prosekas) cut the country into pieces, auls and food stores were burned, exhausted societies were forced into capitulation one after another, and those who surrendered were herded down to the plain under surveillance. The method was formulated by General Yevdokimov himself, who commanded the Chechen Detachment - in a report to Minister of War Sukhozanet of 25 March 1857 he explained the purpose of the clearing: it "took away from the unsubmissive their broad fields, the places of their crops, and, having cut apart, so to speak, the unsubmissive population that nested in forests hitherto inaccessible, put it under the necessity of seeking salvation either by flight into the mountains or by coming out to us onto the glades"^[91]. The imperial historian Volkonsky distilled the formula of the period: "wherever our foot steps – impassable forests are cut through, clearings are made... redoubts and fortifications are laid down: nature is overpowered – the Caucasus surrenders"^[92]. What subordination would bring, imam Shamil (leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest) told the Chechens at a gathering in Shali in the autumn of 1858 - the speech was written down by his companion and chronicler Hadji-Ali: "they will take away your weapons and will not allow you even to have a knife, All your honored men they will exile to Siberia, and after that you will be like muzhiks"^[93]. The condition of the country was conveyed to the imam in a letter by Talkhig Shalinsky, naib of Greater Chechnya: "Chechnya is burning, imam, come put it out"^[11].

Against the backdrop of large-scale territorial conquests, the empire conceptualizes its superiority over the colonized peoples. The ideologue Katkov formulates: "to recognize some element as a distinct nation does not mean granting it freedom, but giving it power, endowing it with binding force. In the recognition of a nation the question of power, of government, of the state is decided"^[94] – the recognition of Ukrainians as a nation was ruled out as a question of power.

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy established a new military base at the mouth of the Terek River to control the adjacent territories, including the lands of the Nokhchi. Historian E. N. Kusheva writes that the base "was built in 1588–1589... by Mikhailo Burtsev and Kelar Protasyev... the main force of its garrison consisted of streltsy armed with 'fire combat' — pishchal firearms"^[47]. The base's infrastructure was systematically expanded: historians A. S. Kulikov and V. A. Runov note that "by the beginning of the 17th century... the Terek fortified town had turned into a rather powerful fortress. Its artillery numbered 40 large guns, and its garrison — more than a thousand streltsy and Cossacks"^[83]. To hold its positions, the administration brought in additional military personnel: historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova notes that "in 1589, soon after the town was built, 800 streltsy and Cossacks were to be sent there from Astrakhan, but the Astrakhan voivode sent only 600 men"^[55]. A permanent military contingent on state provision was entrenched in this territory: historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova cites a tsar's decree according to which "in 1623, 'upon the petition of the Terek and Greben Cossacks,' a tsar's decree was sent to the Terek ordering the payment of salaries to 30 atamans and 470 rank-and-file Cossacks"^[55].

On 24 February 2022, the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with its regular army from several directions at once - from the north through Belarus towards Kyiv, from the east, and from the south out of Crimea - unleashing the largest war in Europe since the Second World War. The aim of the campaign is the complete destruction of Ukrainian statehood and the erasure of Ukrainian identity.

The UN commission recorded the opening this way: "On the same day, Russian troops crossed various border points into Ukraine, including through Belarus, and launched attacks by land, air and sea"^[95]. The commission qualifies what it established as follows: the violations "amount to war crimes and include wilful killings, attacks on civilians, unlawful confinement, torture, rape and the forced transfer and deportation of children"^[95]. On the character of the strikes the commission writes: they were carried out "with an apparent disregard for civilian harm and suffering"^[95]. The OSCE mission puts its finding this way: in the Russian forces' conduct of hostilities there are "clear patterns of IHL violations"; and the mission adds: had they respected "their IHL obligations in terms of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack," civilian casualties would have been far lower^[96]. The campaign is accompanied by the destruction of entire cities (urbicide), ecocide, and a systematic policy of assimilation in the occupied territories^[97]. As of May 2026, about 20% of Ukraine's territory remains under occupation^[98].

This is the head campaign of the war. Individual sieges, occupation regimes, episodes of mass killing, and cross-cutting policies are carried in campaigns of their own - from the siege of Mariupol and the Bucha massacre to the deportation of children, the filtration system, and the war on the power grid.

The use of the state monopoly Gazprom as a political weapon against Kyiv's independent course. Gas supplies were cut off at the height of winter: "at 10.00am Moscow time on January 1, 2006, Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Ukraine"^[99], and three years later "Russian exports to Ukraine were cut off on 1 January. Exports to 16 EU member states and Moldova were drastically reduced on 6 January and cut completely from 7 January"^[100]. Supplies ran through opaque intermediaries (RosUkrEnergo), whose use "was long criticized in European government circles and by corporate governance bodies"^[100], while RUE's co-owner Dmytro Firtash admitted to the US ambassador that "he needed Mogilevich's approval to get into business in the first place"^[101].

A period of intensive ideological conditioning of Russian society and the political elite to justify the complete destruction of Ukrainian statehood. The head of the Russian state published a programmatic article declaring that "Russians and Ukrainians are one people, a single whole," and wrote of the Bolsheviks that "the Bolsheviks' actions in severing from Russia its historical territories are not considered a criminal act"^[102]. Deputy Security Council chairman D. Medvedev (Kommersant, 11 October 2021) declared negotiations with Kyiv pointless: "it is pointless for us to deal with vassals. One must do business with the suzerain"^[103]. In parallel came the indoctrination of the army and military blackmail through the massing of troops near the borders under the guise of exercises^[97].

In the 18th century, the governmental apparatus of the Russian Empire began employing Enlightenment ideas and the construction of historical myths to ideologically justify the absorption of territories. Historian Michael Khodarkovsky states that by the mid-18th century officials had come to perceive their advance as a mission preordained by destiny to "bring both Christianity and civilization to the ‘wild and uncivilized’ peoples along its borders"^[43]. The local population was deliberately assigned an image of backwardness: the researcher points out that in the administration’s documents the Highlanders were described as "inconstant and treacherous," and their actions were explained by references to their "predatory craft, to which they are predisposed by their very nature and upbringing"^[104]. In parallel, fictitious grounds for control were being constructed: the author records that in 1748 and the 1770s the Collegium of Foreign Affairs fabricated reports claiming that the Indigenous population of the Caucasus had allegedly professed Christianity in the past, in order to contest the claims of other powers and "legitimize its efforts at their ‘re-Christianization’"^[104]. Building on this foundation, in 1784 the imperial governors asserted that, with the dispatch of missionaries, they would be able to spread their influence and shed "the light of divine bliss among all the peoples scattered in the mountains"^[104].

At the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire turns the Ukrainian lands into a raw-materials colony, exploiting the resources of the Donbas and deliberately importing labor: "42 percent of the 425,413 workers counted in the census were born outside Ukraine," and "in 1892, 80 percent of the workforce at the mines and plants of Yuzivka… had arrived from the Moscow region"^[105].

The ultimate manifestation of the colonial administration's disregard for the lives of the local population. After the explosion at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the union center concealed the scale of the radiation threat: "the concealment of information about the catastrophe from the public was initiated by the country's leadership," and "the maps of radioactive contamination of lands remained classified until 1990"^[106]. People were deprived of the right to protection - "the population was not warned of the danger and was given no recommendations," and, "despite the fact that in Kyiv the radiation dose rate increased more than a hundredfold, neither the May Day demonstration nor the Peace Cycling Race was cancelled"^[106][107].

The final destruction of Ukrainian sovereignty through the imposition of treaties on a so-called military-political union. While formally preserving the status of an independent republic, the leadership of the RSFSR de facto brought the key Ukrainian agencies — military, financial, economic, and transport — under its direct control. On March 18, 1921, Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine signed the Treaty of Riga with Poland and divided the Ukrainian lands. Poland, the ally of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) under the Treaty of Warsaw, signed peace with Soviet Ukraine, recognizing it as a state^[15][30][29].

At the end of February 1830, the Caucasus was struck by a devastating earthquake that lasted more than a month and caused panic among the mountain peoples. The empire turned the disaster into a weapon of indoctrination and delivered this lie to the people. The historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov wrote: "supporters of the Russian orientation claimed that the earthquake had been caused by the wrath of Allah over the attempt at an armed uprising"^[2]. The mechanics of the indoctrination are acknowledged by the colonizers themselves. The imperial historian Volkonsky wrote: "the commander-in-chief accordingly ordered General Rosen 4th to spread entirely opposite rumors among the people, namely, that the earthquake had been sent down by God upon the mountain peoples for their ill-intentioned acts against the Russian government, and hoped by this means to tear his followers away from Kazi-Mulla"^[84]. The imperial historian Potto admits that the order was carried out: General Rosen 4th, who commanded the troops on the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the eastern section of the empire's fortified frontier along the Terek and the Sunzha), "resorted to proclamations in which he strove to assure the people that the earthquake had been sent down upon them as punishment for their treason and ill-intentioned acts against the Russian government"^[49].

Systematic exploitation of the Hetmanate's potential in a grueling war combined with the simultaneous launch of administrative absorption (the reforms of 1707). The Cossacks dispatched to distant fronts were «wearied, destitute, left horseless, and ruined by year-round military service». Orlyk relayed the starshyna's account of the plans to recut the autonomy: the empire was preparing «to convert the Cossacks into a regular army... to break the military rights and liberties» and «to take the Little Russian towns into its own domain»^[35].

A campaign to turn the free population into rightless military settlers. "The trigger was the order abolishing the Buh Cossack Host and turning the Cossacks into military settlers"^[23] – the Buh Cossacks' uprising of 1817 was brutally suppressed. There were two acts, on opposite sides of the uprising: the nominal decree of April 17, 1817 transferred the Buh Host's district "into direct military administration" (PSZRI, vol. XXXIV, no. 26,802) - this was the trigger; the decree of October 8, 1817 (no. 27,081), issued after the suppression, formalized the liquidation: "the name of the Buh Cossack Host is abolished"^[108]. Later, kish otaman Hladky with part of the Danubian Cossacks "on May 30 (18), 1828 crossed the Kiliya mouth of the Danube, entered the port of Izmail, and joined the Russian army"^[109] – this was the end of the last free host: the Danubian Sich "existed from the last quarter of the 18th century until 1828"^[109].

Another stage of the assault on autonomy: a treaty with Moscow that eliminated independent diplomacy ("a hetman shall not be elected... nor shall they write anything to anyone on their own behalf"), prohibited declaring one's own subjecthood, and demanded: "to unite the Little Russian people with the Great Russian people by all measures and means... through marriage"^[35].

In 1860-1917 the empire recut the land of Chechnya in favor of the treasury, the Cossack host and loyal notables. The conquest came with a written promise. In January 1859, advancing on Vedeno, the command circulated among the Chechens, in Arabic and Russian, a "Proclamation to the Chechen People": "I declare to you in the name of the Sovereign Emperor, 1) that the Russian government grants you complete freedom to practice forever the faith of your fathers; 2) that you will never be called up as soldiers and will not be turned into Cossacks... 5) that the rights of each of you to the property belonging to you will be inviolable. Your lands, which you own or with which you have been allotted by the Russian authorities, will be confirmed to you by deeds and plans in inalienable possession..."; the document was signed by Baryatinsky, commander-in-chief of the Caucasus Army and viceroy^[11]. The land clause of the promise, as historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov render it, ran: "All the lands and forests on the plain where the Chechen people lived before the disturbance of 1839 will be given over to you for eternal use, excepting those occupied by fortifications... but neither Cossack stanitsas nor Chechen auls are to be settled on them"^[2]. Historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova writes: "The Chechens treasured and kept this proclamation as the apple of their eye and always appealed to it"^[13]. It came out the other way round: historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov draw the balance for lowland and piedmont Chechnya - "100% of the forests (259 thousand desiatinas) and 300 thousand desiatinas out of the 643 thousand desiatinas of the country's agricultural zone were taken away in favor of the treasury, the army and the Cossack host. All this cannot but be considered typical colonial plunder" (a desiatina is a little over a hectare)^[2]. The outcome for the people was named from the Duma tribune by deputy Maslov: "You cannot imagine how negligible the landholdings of the Chechens are, especially in the mountains – one tenth, one fifth, a quarter, a third of a desiatina…"^[13].

Formal consolidation of the seizure of Ukraine by dragging it into the so-called Union of SSRs. The unification of equal republics with the right of free secession was declared, but in practice the union treaty (December 1922) and the Constitution of the USSR (1924) became instruments of rigid centralization. The Ukrainian SSR was definitively stripped of control over foreign policy, the army, foreign trade, transport, and communications — all these spheres passed to the jurisdiction of union-level people's commissariats in Moscow^[30][29].

The destruction of the Cossack regimental order on the Right Bank by a decision of the Polish Sejm of 1699, on lands that Moscow and Warsaw had divided along the Dnipro by the "Eternal Peace" of 1686. Colonel Palii "did not accept the decisions of the general Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of 1699 banning the Cossacks on the Right Bank" and "contrary to the terms of the 'Eternal Peace' of 1686 pursued a policy of uniting the Right Bank and the Left Bank"^[89].

Institutional seizure and spiritual unification: the empire liquidates the independent Uniate church on the Right Bank, transferring the flock and property under the control of the state church. The mechanism is recorded in the fates of monasteries: "in connection with the tsarist regime's liquidation of the Union in this region (1839), the monastery was closed, and its buildings destroyed"^[15]; "By the mid-19th century all monasteries of the Basilian order on the territory of the Russian Empire had been liquidated"^[110].

The final abolition of political autonomy. Catherine II forced hetman Rozumovsky to renounce his office and by the decree of November 10, 1764 established an occupation administration: "we command our Senate, for the proper governance of Little Russia, to establish there a Little Russian Collegium, presided over by our general, Count Rumyantsev"^[111]. The program had been set in advance in a secret instruction: "so that they become Russified and cease looking to the forest like wolves"^[112].

A military operation of Muscovite troops to completely destroy the Zaporozhian (Chortomlyk) Sich as an autonomous military center in revenge for its support of Charles XII: "Having lost the proxy battle for Zaporizhzhia, Peter decided to follow the path of Baturyn — to destroy the Sich"^[9]. Contemporaries recorded the empire's goal directly – Orlyk wrote that Moscow intended "to eradicate the Zaporozhian Host of the Lower Dnipro and to efface its very name forever"^[35].

Moscow's attempt to legitimize the preservation of a disintegrating empire. The all-Union ballot contained the question: "Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedoms of a person of any nationality will be fully guaranteed"^[113]. The Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR added its own question – on Ukraine's membership in the Union "on the basis of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine"^[114], which is what made the outcome ambiguous. The ambiguous wording was approved by the USSR Supreme Soviet in a resolution signed by its chairman Lukyanov^[113].

In July 1825, at the height of Beibulat Taimiev’s uprising, the Russian Empire exterminated elders summoned under the pretext of an inquiry. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that after the insurgents’ five-day siege of the Gerzel-Aul fortification, "the tsarist generals decided to stage a demonstrative execution to intimidate the highlanders": summoned to the fortification were "318 respected men of the Aksai (Kumyk and Chechen) villages," whom General Lisanevich, "calling out those assembled one by one, threatened in the Kumyk language and subjected to insults"^[11]. When General Grekov attempted to "inflict a physical insult" on the Chechen mullah Uchar-Hadji from the village of Mairtup, the latter killed Grekov with a dagger and mortally wounded Lisanevich, after which, "upon Lisanevich’s command ‘Stab them!’, the mass extermination by the soldiers of all the unarmed highlanders present in the fortification began"^[11]. The imperial historian Potto confirms that both generals "fell at the hand of a fanatic," after which "the mutiny flared up again with redoubled force"^[68].

In response to the autonomy's attempt to break vassalage, the regular Muscovite army destroyed the hetman's capital, Baturyn. Peter ordered: "and Baturyn, as a sign to the traitors (since they resisted), burn down entirely as an example to others"^[9]. The reprisal was accompanied by terror against the civilian population: "Funck slaughtered more than a thousand people in the small town of Terey (Tereyska sloboda) and burned the town down"^[115], and in total "about 15 thousand Ukrainians died in the Baturyn tragedy, including all the women and children"^[9]. The massacre ran in parallel with propaganda: "Tsarist letters were circulated among the people claiming that Mazepa had gone over to the Swedes in order to hand Ukraine to Poland, to introduce the Union in Ukraine and eradicate the pious faith; that he was an apostate, a secret Catholic"^[116].

The seizure of the Crimean Khanate and its forcible incorporation into the Russian Empire: "WE have resolved to take under OUR dominion the Crimean peninsula, the island of Taman, and the entire Kuban side"^[117]. With regard to Ukraine, the annexation was secured through the forced mobilization of Cossacks as a military resource, the colonization of the adjacent southern steppes to create a loyal rear, and the erasure of Cossack toponyms: the lands of the destroyed Sich were assigned by Catherine II's manifesto of 3 August 1775 "as convenient to the Novorossiysk Governorate"^[118]. For Crimea this meant the liquidation of the state and its ruling dynasty: "in the spring of 1782 Khan Shahin Girey was forced to flee under Russian protection"^[119], the manifesto on the taking of Crimea was signed by Catherine II on April 8, 1783 (PSZRI, coll. 1, vol. XXI, no. 15,108)^[17], and the khan was exiled to Kaluga; the indigenous population was being squeezed out in waves of emigration - "if before 1787 only 8 thousand had emigrated, by 1792 it was already tens of thousands"^[119].

The military encirclement and destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich immediately after a joint war. Catherine II's manifesto of 3 August 1775 (PSZRI, coll. 1, vol. XX, no. 14,354) declared: "the Zaporozhian Sich has been utterly destroyed, with the extirpation for the future of the very name of the Zaporozhian Cossacks"^[118][120]. The last kish otaman, Kalnyshevsky, "was arrested and sent to the prison of the Solovetsky monastery"^[18], where he spent more than 25 years. Hrushevsky describes the mechanics of the treachery: the government "went about the affair slowly, in secret, to catch the Zaporozhians entirely unprepared," and general Tekeli "entered the Zaporozhian lands as a good friend" - then suddenly laid siege to the Sich. The Zaporozhians were even faulted for their own husbandry: they "were establishing their own tillage and thereby severing their dependence on the Russian state"^[116].

In 1858-1872 the empire pushed the Chechens out into the Ottoman Empire and kept the road back closed. Muhajirism comes from the Arabic "muhajir," a migrant who leaves for the sake of faith: that is what those who left were called, and the same name became attached to the whole wave of expulsion. In the summer of 1865 more than 23 thousand people left Chechnya, a fifth of the Chechen people; they left in waves that the imperial chancellery counted as "parties" - there were 28 of them; the operation was led by General Kundukhov, former head of the Chechen okrug, whom the imperial authorities tasked with the expulsion^[11][2]. The Chechen expulsion was part of a wider operation: according to official data, in 1858-1865 a total of 493,194 people were expelled from the North Caucasus, of whom 443,082 were members of the Adyghe peoples and Abkhazians^[121]. In the west of the Caucasus the instrument was war; in the east - economic strangulation and covert agitation. The goal was formulated in the correspondence of the command of the Caucasus Army on ending the war in the Western Caucasus: "...the question of when the war will end, under the present circumstances, comes down to this – how soon we will manage to send off to Turkey the population hostile to us"^[2]. The chief of staff of the Caucasus Corps, Milyutin, admitted the nature of the policy in writing as early as 1857: "our duties to the human race require that we take measures in advance to secure the existence even of the tribes hostile to us, whom we are forcing out of their lands out of state necessity"^[13]. A Chechen folk song kept the tally of the culprits: "The Muslim tsar calls us to him, / The Russian tsar begs us to stay! / Without fire or wind Chechnya burst into flame: / The fire was Alkhasov Musa, / The whirlwind's blast was Osmanov Sadulla... / Here it is, the day of the Last Judgement!"^[13]. Both are named in the Chechen manner, and both were organizers of the expulsion: Alkhasov Musa is that same General Kundukhov, and Osmanov Sadulla was his assistant, the naib of Lesser Chechnya (a naib is an administrator of a district installed by the authorities). The historian D. A. Khozhayev places the expulsion in the same line as the deportation of 1944: "The genocide against the Chechen people was carried out in the 19th century, during the Caucasus War and after it, during the expulsion to Turkey"^[11].

Open military aggression by the Tsardom of Muscovy in response to the hetman's attempt to break vassalage. It was accompanied by the fomenting of civil war through sponsorship of the opposition – the revolt of Pushkar and Barabash against Vyhovsky^[15] – and by a direct invasion of the Muscovite army, which suffered catastrophic losses at Konotop: "The flower of the Muscovite cavalry, which had made the fortunate campaigns of '54 and '55, perished in a single day"^[122].

In the spring of 1820, General Yermolov and Grekov, commander of the left flank, moved troops to cut a road-clearing through the forests of the Nokhchi to the aul of Germenchuk, killing inhabitants and burning auls along the way, while rounding up the neighboring villages to fell this clearing through their own forest. The imperial historian Potto describes how, on the night of March 6, 1820, Grekov’s detachment secretly crossed the Sunzha and suddenly attacked the sleeping aul of Topli: the Grebensky Cossack regiment "burst without resistance into the aul, still sunk in deep sleep," the Cossacks "rushed through the saklias with daggers," and "part of the inhabitants were slaughtered before they could rise from their beds; the others begged for mercy"^[68]. Potto then writes that Grekov "gathered the elders of the surrounding villages and ordered them to send workers with axes at once for the felling," and "the smoldering ruins of the village… compelled the Chechens to obey" — the Nokhchi, rounded up under threat of the same reprisal, cut the clearing through their own "dense forest"^[68]. Three days later the clearing was ready, and the troops "advanced, burned Germenchug, and drew back to Groznaya," although the aul stood empty and its inhabitants had already left^[68]. Yermolov himself, in an instruction to Grekov of March 15, 1820, confirms and sanctions this design of strangulation: "only the squeezing of the Chechens in their essential needs can make plain to them the advantage of submission, and I long ago authorized you to employ every possible means to that end," noting that Grekov had "opened a road even onto the plain"^[75].

The total purge of ethnic minorities (Poles, Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians) during the Great Terror through targeted national orders of the NKVD. In parallel, in 1938, Moscow officially liquidated every single national district and minority school - by resolutions of the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) of 24 January 1938^[123][124] - and by the resolution of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) and the USSR Council of People's Commissars of 13 March 1938 No. 324 made the study of the Russian language compulsory^[125]; Kyiv executed the decision by the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the KP(b)U of 10 April 1938^[126], returning to overtly imperial practices of assimilation^[127][128].

On 23 February 1944 the USSR deported the entire Chechen people from their native land to Kazakhstan and Kirghizia (today's Kyrgyzstan). The deportation was total - the numbers show it: the 1939 census counted 387.5 thousand Chechens in Checheno-Ingushetia^[1], and by 1 March 1944 the Soviet NKVD (predecessor of today's FSB) reported 387,229 deported Chechens - 478,479 people together with the Ingush^[129]. The colonizer named this expulsion Operation "Chechevitsa" ("Lentil"): historian P. M. 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)"^[1]. The supreme organ of the occupation authority (the "Politburo of the TsK VKP(b)") had been discussing the deportation a year before the announced pretext - the accusation that the people had aided the Germans: on 11 February 1943 the talk was already about timing, and Stalin "leaned toward the second proposal" - to deport after the Germans had been driven from the Caucasus^[129]. Albogachiev, the former People's Commissar (Minister) of Internal Affairs of the republic, admitted in 1963: "I repeat once more - there were no grounds whatsoever for the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush. This was confirmed by Beria himself during his trial in 1953"^[2]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "All of the above allows us to qualify with confidence the deportation, in this case of the Chechens and Ingush, as the gravest of crimes - genocide"^[2]. Historian D. A. Khozhaev writes: "the second attempt to annihilate the Chechens was undertaken in 1944, when the entire people was driven from its native land and deported to Central Asia and Kazakhstan"^[11]. On 26 April 1991 the colonizer acknowledged the genocide by its own law - Article 2 of the RSFSR law "On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples" states: "Repressed peoples are recognized to be those peoples... against whom, on grounds of national or other identity, a state-level policy of slander and genocide was carried out, accompanied by their forcible resettlement..."^[130]. In 2004 the European Parliament recognized in a resolution: "the deportation of the entire Chechen people to Central Asia on 23 February 1944 on the orders of Stalin constitutes an act of genocide within the meaning of the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 and the Convention for the Prevention and Repression of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948"^[131]. In its resolution of 18 October 2022 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine condemned "the international crimes committed by the russian federation during the first (1994-1996) and second (1999-2009) wars against the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, the policy of genocide of the Chechen people, following the criminal actions of the tsarist regime of 1817-1864 and of the soviet authorities of 1944"^[132].

The imposition of a new enslaving treaty on Yurii Khmelnytsky under the pressure of Muscovite troops. The treaty abolished independence: "the Ukrainian state lost its independence and acquired the status of a political autonomy within the Russian state"^[89].

The oath of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the starshyna to the tsar. Establishment of control over the Hetmanate through a legal trap: the treaty was asymmetric by design – in response to the demand for a mutual oath, envoy "V. Buturlin, citing the autocratic character of the Russian monarch's power, refused to do so"^[89]. The very language of "reunification" is a later imperial overlay: Tsar Aleksei's charter to the Zaporozhian Host (27 March 1654) speaks only of subjects who "have come under our sovereign's high hand"^[133].

In 1718, the government of the Tsardom of Muscovy organized a large-scale invasion of the lands of the Nokhchi: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that there occurred "a predatory expedition of detachments of Don Cossacks and Kabardian princes allied with Peter I into the ‘Chechen district’ along the Sunzha and the Argun"^[28]. As a result of the raid, "800 captives were taken, not counting ‘belongings’"^[28]. In 1721, the armed actions continued: the researcher points out that the Astrakhan governor A. P. Volynsky "invited the Don Cossacks and, together with the Terek Cossacks, organized raids to the Agrakhan and Aksai rivers against the Kumyks and Chechens"^[28].

The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy introduced rigid statistical control and restricted the right of the Nokhchi societies (Okochans, Michkiz, and Shibut) to free movement within the controlled territory. In 1631, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich issued a decree to the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace on a census of the newcomer population of the town of Terki, directly prohibiting the free residence of unsanctioned migrants. The document prescribed identifying persons «whom it will not be possible to trust», and such people were «to be ordered sent out of the town of Terki, and ordered to go back to wherever each had come from, so that no harm would come to the town from them»^[71]. To implement this mechanism, the metropole regularly conducted a total demographic accounting. In the state register of serving people for the region of the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace for 1637, the central authorities recorded in detail the number of inhabitants, including 350 serving «Okotsk people» and 680 newcomer «Okochans, and Tatars, and Michkiz, and Shibut»^[44]. In 1640, on the orders of the Terek voivode, the Terek syn boyarsky P. Lukin and the clerk F. Belkov compiled a detailed name-by-name register of the population of the slobodas, rigidly documenting every household of the subordinated Nokhchi (Okochans) to ensure constant surveillance^[71][44].

A return to total control over culture after the relative relaxations of the war years: the rout of the Ukrainian creative intelligentsia, accusations of "bourgeois nationalism" (attacks on Rylsky, Yanovsky, the persecution of Sosiura for the poem "Love Ukraine"). In parallel ran a state antisemitic campaign: "On July 18, 1952 the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court passed death sentences on 13 people, including 5 natives of Ukraine… on August 12, 1952 they were all executed"^[109], and in January 1953 the "Doctors' Plot" began.

In the 19th century, the occupation administration of the Russian Empire and its propaganda apparatus used inversion of roles and the broadcasting of a logic of superiority to legitimize military aggression. Historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that «The anti-colonial and anti-feudal uprisings of the population of Chechnya, referred to in official documents as 'mischief', 'robberies' and 'murders', were perceived by the Russian autocracy as a challenge and an insult... All of this provoked cruel punitive actions incommensurate with the apparent cause»^[28]. The practical application of this mechanism is recorded in reports: in 1800, the commander-in-chief of the troops, General B. F. Knorring, justified expeditions against the Indigenous population as protection from their «predatory plunder, villainous brigandage»^[28]. In parallel, official historiography constructed an image of backwardness: the researcher points out that pre-revolutionary military science was characterized by an «apologia for the tsarist policy of conquest», under which the defensive struggle of the local population was labeled «the actions of barbarians devoid of 'civilized' notions of independence and freedom»^[27]. Literature was used to broadcast chauvinism to the masses. The imperial historian and participant in the events V. A. Potto records that the poet A. S. Pushkin proclaimed in verse: «Submit, Caucasus — Yermolov comes!»^[68], while the poet V. A. Zhukovsky glorified the destruction of villages: «Toward the villages — the villages blaze»^[66]. Relying on this foundation, General A. P. Yermolov justified repressions on the grounds that «the proconsul of the Caucasus cannot tame the cruelty of the local mores with mercy»^[68].

The creation of the first large-scale ideological justification for the seizure of lands by the Muscovite tsars – the "Synopsis, or a Brief Collection from Various Chroniclers on the Origin of the Slaveno-Rossian People," published by the printing house of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in 1674^[15]. The author's calculation was political: "to give the Muscovite tsar the motivation to continue the struggle with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for the liberation from Catholic rule of the remaining part of the 'single Orthodox people'"^[134].

The occupation administration of the town of Terki undertook an armed invasion of the mountain lands of the Nokhchi. Historian E. N. Kusheva states that the 1618 military campaign of the Terek detachments into the mountains took place «at the request of «the Uvar Nutsal prince and his brother Suleman-murza and the Cherny prince's son Turlov-murza»»^[47]. Kusheva adds that «In 1621, the serving Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky and his son Prince Sholokh referred in their petitions to their participation in the campaign of the Terek fighting men into the mountains that took place in 1618»^[47]. Preparation for the operation included forced mobilization: in a petition to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the Kabardian prince Sholokh reported that «voivode Mikita Dmitreevich Velyaminov sent me... together with my father on your sovereign's service... against your sovereign's disobedient ones, the Michkiz people, against their kabaks»^[44]. Having made the crossing «through the mountains and along mountain crevices, through impassable places»^[44], the detachments descended upon the settlements. In a similar document, the Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky reported that they «burned down and utterly devastated many Shibut, and Kalkan, and Erokhan, and Michkiz kabaks, and took many captives, and killed many other peo[ple]»^[44]. Kusheva states that after the detachments «had made war upon «the Shibut, and Kalkan, and Erokhan, and Michkiz kabaks»», the Indigenous population was forced into submission: ««the Shibut, and Kalkan, and Erokhan, and Michkiz people... acknowledged their guilt»»^[47], as a result of which the mountaineers «petitioned in submission and gave the shert (oath) and amanats to the town of Terki»^[44].

In 1812-1814 Russia was at war with Napoleon and conducted no major campaigns deep into Chechnya. The troops on the Terek were commanded by General Rtishchev, who avoided large campaigns, but raids across the Terek continued under him. Colonel Eristov twice crossed the Terek and devastated Chechen villages; the second time he "exterminated several villages along the Sunzha" and forced the Nokhchi to give up amanats (hostages)^[66]. Even the imperial leadership itself condemned these raids. General Rtishchev demanded that the highlanders be won over "not by arms, but by kind treatment"^[66], and Emperor Alexander I, upon learning "of yet another raid on peaceful Chechnya by Colonel Eristov," ordered by special rescript "to establish tranquility on the Caucasus Line through friendliness and kind indulgence," that is, he deemed the raid unjustified^[11]. The raids did not stop because of this. Beyond the raids, the empire incited neighboring peoples against the Chechens. In 1816 the Nokhchi, led by Beibulat Taimiev, took Major Shvetsov prisoner^[11], and in response the commander on the Terek, General Delpozzo, by letter compelled the Kumyk lords of Endirey, Aksai, and Kostek to go to war against the Chechens, demanding that they "put an end to the brigand people"^[135]. The Kumyk lords signed "Obligations" in which they undertook to make war on the Chechens, to kill them or hand them over to the Russians, and to let no goods through to them^[135]. At the same time Delpozzo did not withdraw his own troops, and in the same report proposed keeping them on the Sunzha "until I exterminate their beastly freedom and independence"^[135].

At the end of the 17th century, the Tsardom of Muscovy exerted continuous military, diplomatic, and economic pressure on the societies of the Nokhchi. In response to the alliance of the Indigenous population with Russian Old Believer Cossacks, the regular army conducted armed operations: the historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that in 1691–1700 «punitive expeditions were carried out in retaliation by the tsarist authorities against the rebel Cossacks and their mountaineer allies»^[28] and records «retaliatory punitive raids by tsarist forces»^[28]. In parallel, the diplomatic apparatus expanded legal control over the region, formalizing in 1696 «an expression of Russia's protection over the Braguny principality in Chechnya»^[28]. Military methods were supplemented by official fiscal pressure: the historian Sh. B. Akhmadov emphasizes that «the Okochans (Akkin Chechens) living in the town of Terki were obligated without exception to pay duties on the various goods and wares they took out for sale to their compatriots in Chechnya and Ingushetia»^[27]. The economic strangulation was aggravated by the arbitrariness of the local occupation administration: he adds that «the venality and bribe-taking of the voivodes, who permitted themselves great abuses — all this was a phenomenon far from new»^[27].

A military-diplomatic attempt to restore Ukraine's independence by the forces of the emigration with the support of allies. The campaign failed because of a stab in the back: "the Tatars, disobeying Orlyk, scattered in raiding parties and began taking yasyr captives across Ukrainian villages"^[136].

From the mid-16th century until 1721, the diplomatic apparatus of the Tsardom of Muscovy justified military expansion into the North Caucasus with theological rhetoric and invented historical rights. Historian Michael Khodarkovsky states that the government apparatus positioned the tsar as a "universal Christian ruler, who 'upheld the true Christian faith'"^[43]. Invasions were motivated by a "divine obligation to rescue Orthodox Christians from infidel captivity"^[43]. As a result, as the researcher summarizes, "Moscow's military and political interests could no longer be separated from the ideological and theological rhetoric of expansion"^[43], and the North Caucasus "became a religious frontier"^[104]. In parallel, fictitious grounds for territorial claims were being constructed: the author records that officials produced false reports for foreign rulers claiming that the indigenous peoples of the Caucasus had allegedly been Muscovite "subjects in the Riazan region since ancient times, and then fled from Riazan and settled in the mountains"^[43], which gave the metropole a formal pretext to legalize the absorption of their lands and the construction of its fortifications.

A systematic campaign of the Russian Empire to root out the indigenous people's language from education and religion: "in 1769 the Holy Synod not only refused permission to print South Russian primers, but ordered the confiscation of those already in people's hands"^[39]; by an order of 26 October 1784, the Kyiv metropolitan Samuil Myslavsky directed the rector and prefect of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy "to take unremitting care of the unfailing and unomitted observance, by teachers and students alike, of the rules of Russian orthography," under the threat of expelling students from the clerical estate^[137]; in 1786 the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was prescribed the empire-wide mode of instruction^[40].

The use of the inhabitants of the Ukrainian governorates in yet another geopolitical war in the Balkans. Imperial expansion was justified by religion and the ideology of Pan-Slavism – Dostoevsky formulated it as a mission: the Slavs "for a long time… will be unable to recognize Russia's selflessness and her great, holy raising, unheard of in the world, of the banner of the greatest idea"^[138].

The use of Ukrainian resources in yet another geopolitical war of the empire, which ended with the severing of Bessarabia from the Ottoman Empire: "After the incorporation of Bessarabia into Russia on May 16, 1812 (see the Treaty of Bucharest of 1812), Ukrainian Cossacks of the volunteer regiments, of the Ust-Danube Budjak Cossack Host, and of the Danube Cossack Host actively settled the Budjak"^[23].

The use of Ukrainian resources and Cossack regiments for victory over the Ottomans on the Danube. The diplomatic severing of Crimea from the Ottoman Empire through the recognition of a fictitious "independence": under Article III of the treaty, "All the Tatar peoples: the Crimean, Budjak, Kuban, Yedisan, Jamboyluk, and Yedichkul, without exception, are to be recognized by both empires as free and entirely independent of any outside power"^[139] – this "independence" became the prologue to the annexation of the peninsula nine years later.

The Soviet authorities' treatment of Ukraine as a colonial resource during the war. During the 1941 retreat the directive of the USSR Sovnarkom and the Central Committee of 29 June 1941 was in force: "In the forced withdrawal of Red Army units… leave the enemy not a kilogram of grain, not a liter of fuel… All valuable property… that cannot be evacuated must without fail be destroyed"^[140]. In 1943–1944, on the liberated territory, the mobilization of the "chornosvytnyky" was carried out: they were "thrown into combat often at once, without undergoing military training… sometimes unarmed, not even changed into military uniform"^[141].

The Russian Empire's collusion with the Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies to dismember a neighboring state. Under the second partition, "Russia received the central part of Belarus, the Kyiv, Bratslav, and Podillia voivodeships, and the eastern half of the Volhynian voivodeship – in total 250 thousand km2 and over 3 million inhabitants," and after the third, "the Polish state ceased to exist"^[89].

In December 1917, Soviet Russia began its first armed invasion of Ukraine, disguising it as an internal war. Defeated in Kyiv, supporters of the Bolsheviks moved to Kharkiv, held an alternative congress there, and created a puppet government - the People's Secretariat: "the first Soviet government of Ukraine," created "as an alternative to the Ukrainian Central Rada and the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian Central Rada"^[142]. Thus began the Soviet-Ukrainian War (1917-1921): Soviet Russia passed off the invasion by its own troops as an internal civil war^[29][23]. In February 1918, RSFSR troops under the command of Muravyov captured Kyiv and carried out a massacre there; historians call Muravyov "the initiator of mass executions in the city"^[142]. The invasion was stopped by the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty (9 February 1918) - the first international act to recognize the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) as a subject of international law. At the request of the UNR government, German and Austro-Hungarian troops entered Ukraine, and by the end of April 1918 they had driven the RSFSR troops from all Ukrainian land^[23]. After Germany's capitulation in November 1918 these troops left - and Soviet Russia invaded again (campaign C0074).

After Germany's capitulation in World War I, the German and Austro-Hungarian troops that had occupied Ukraine since the spring of 1918 left^[23] - and in January 1919 RSFSR troops invaded Ukraine for the second time: the Soviet-Ukrainian War went on^[23]. The cover had been prepared in advance: as early as 28 November 1918, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party (CC RCP(b)) created a "Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine" in the Russian city of Kursk to provide political cover for the invasion^[143]. The goal was the resources of the captured land: the head of the RSFSR government, Lenin, advised Petrograd workers to go to Ukraine for provisions and fuel - "It is foolish to starve and perish in Petrograd when you can win back bread and coal"^[144]. The villages answered the grain seizures with uprisings, and the Russian command treated the war against them as frontline work^[145]. In the summer of 1919 a second Russian army came to Ukraine - the Armed Forces of South Russia under General Denikin (the "Whites"), who likewise denied Ukrainian statehood^[146]. On 30 August 1919 Ukrainian troops took Kyiv, abandoned by the Bolsheviks, but on 31 August the Whites pushed them out - the day went down in history as the "Kyiv Catastrophe"^[18]. By the autumn of 1919 the Whites had driven out the RSFSR troops and established their military dictatorship over most of Ukraine^[147]. In December 1919 Soviet Russia invaded for the third time (campaign C0104).

In December 1919, having defeated the White army of General Denikin, the troops of Soviet Russia (RSFSR) invaded Ukraine for the third time in two years of the Soviet-Ukrainian War: on 16 December they captured Kyiv - Soviet troops had previously taken it in February 1918 (campaign C0072) and in February 1919 (campaign C0074)^[30][148]. The Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), no longer able to hold a continuous front, went on a raid behind the lines of the Soviet and White forces - the First Winter Campaign (6 December 1919 - 6 May 1920)^[89], while the UNR government concluded an alliance with Poland. In May 1920 Polish troops and the UNR Army liberated Kyiv, but on 12 June Soviet troops captured it again, and by autumn - most of the lands west of the Dnipro^[149]. In November 1920 the UNR Army and government were pushed beyond the Zbruch River and retreated to territory under Polish control^[150]. The last attempt by Ukrainians to raise an uprising against the Russian invaders was the Second Winter Campaign of the UNR Army: in November 1921 its detachments returned to Ukraine, were encircled, and 359 prisoners were executed near the village of Bazar^[147][151]. Thus Soviet Russia, and from 1922 the USSR, entrenched itself on the captured lands of Ukraine until 1991^[30][29].

In 1920-1924 Soviet Russia imposed its control over Chechnya: it installed unelected revolutionary committees (revkoms) in place of elected Soviets, conducted military disarmament operations with the use of aviation, shot people without trial by the hands of the Cheka and took hostages. Seven years earlier Chechnya had gone through the First World War, the two revolutions of 1917 and an attempt to live in a state of its own - the Mountain Republic, proclaimed in May 1918. In 1919 Chechnya was held by the Volunteer Army of General Denikin - troops of former imperial officers who fought the Bolsheviks for the return of Russia within its former borders; its terror left behind 21 destroyed auls and 15 thousand dead (campaign C1174). By the spring of 1920 the Denikinites had rolled back from the North Caucasus, and the emirate of Sheikh Uzun-Haji, which had fought against them, fell apart on its own: the emir died, "The emirate went into the grave with him, without any political consequences for Chechnya and Dagestan"^[2]. Power in the land was taken by the Bolsheviks, whom the Chechen villages had until then supported against Denikin. An order of the staff of the North Caucasus Military District prescribed: "The disarmament must begin with lowland Chechnya, so as to secure the Grozny area. The operation must be conducted in real earnest, up to the destruction of the unsubmissive auls"^[2]. Commissar of the Caucasus Labor Army Vrachev complained about his own punitive apparatus: the army's special department was carrying out mass shootings of which "... almost nothing is known not only to the Revolutionary Tribunal or the Political Department of the army, but to me or the army commander either"^[2].

The suppression of the national revival in the USSR: the resolution of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) and the Council of People's Commissars of 14 December 1932, signed by Stalin and Molotov, declared that "Ukrainization was carried out mechanically" and ordered "to immediately transfer in the North Caucasus the record-keeping of the soviet and cooperative bodies of the 'Ukrainized' districts, as well as all published newspapers and journals, from the Ukrainian language to Russian"^[152]; the annihilation of most Ukrainian writers of the 1920s-1930s went down in history as the "Executed Renaissance"^[15]; the resolution of the USSR Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the VKP(b) of 13 March 1938 No. 324 ordered "to introduce the teaching of the Russian language as a subject of study in the schools of the national republics and regions from September 1, 1938"^[125].

The conservative party apparatus under the leadership of V. Shcherbytsky attempted to contain the growth of the national liberation movement. Because of KGB pressure and the threat of an immediate ban, the founders of the Ukrainian independence movement were initially forced to disguise their goals, naming the organization the "People's Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika": "at first it supported the official course of perestroika, without formally raising the demand of Ukraine's independence," and its program "lacked the demand for a new union treaty and contained a formal provision recognizing the 'guiding role' of the communist party"^[142]. Only in 1990, having proclaimed that "what is needed is not perestroika but the complete dismantling of the totalitarian system," did Rukh remove the words "for perestroika" from its name^[142].

The suppression of protests and an agrarian reform that economically squeezed Ukrainian peasants off their native lands: "The resettlement movement gained great momentum, and during 1906–12 about 1 million people left Ukraine for Asiatic Russia… The majority of migrants were landless and land-poor peasants (67%)"^[15] – nearly a quarter of the resettlers, failing to take root, returned.

The metropole temporarily reduced the intensity of direct military strikes, shifting to infrastructural fortification and the study of the region. Historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that, owing to the foreign policy situation, "issues related to the mountain peoples ceased to be of primary importance to them"^[28]. Nevertheless, the occupation apparatus continued preparations for further expansion. In 1711–1712, the government consolidated the military lines on the border with the lands of the Nokhchi: the researcher points out that "the small Greben Cossack towns along the Terek were consolidated, by order of Tsar Peter I, into 5 stanitsas — from Chervlyonnaya to Kurdyukovskaya"^[28]. In parallel, conceptual and economic reconnaissance was under way: in 1714, the tsar’s adviser A. Bekovich-Cherkassky submitted a report in which he considered "drawing the Highlanders over to Russia’s side" to be "in keeping with the vital interests of the Russian state"^[28]. In 1717, to inventory the potential of the Nokhchi lands, the government dispatched a specialist: the author records "the survey of mineral springs and other natural riches of the Terek River (including the Bragun warm springs) by Doctor Gottlieb Schober on the assignment of Peter I"^[28].

For twenty-five years the Chechens and Dagestanis held their own state against the empire - the Imamate created by Imam Shamil: with sharia courts, taxes, an army, and naib governors in the districts. In 1859 the Imamate fell: in April the troops took its capital, Vedeno; in August, near the Dagestani aul of Gunib, Shamil himself surrendered. He was taken to Russia under surveillance: Emperor Alexander II designated Kaluga as his place of residence, where the imam and his family were given a mansion and twenty thousand rubles a year in upkeep - a captivity the sources call "honorable". More than ten years later he was allowed a pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj); in 1871 he died in Medina (the Arabian Peninsula, now Saudi Arabia) and was buried there^[32]. After that, Chechnya was held by force. In 1860-1861 uprisings broke out in Ichkeria and the Argun district - they were suppressed by expeditions with the destruction of auls and the eviction of the inhabitants, and those who led them were executed or sent into exile - to the inner provinces of Russia, to Siberia, and to fortresses: Baysangur of Benoy was hanged by sentence of a field court-martial; naib Atabi-Mullah Atayev and Uma Duyev were sent off to different provinces; Sheikh Kunta-Haji - indefinitely, to Ustyuzhna in Novgorod province; his brother - to the Vyborg fortress; rank-and-file followers - to fortress labor with settlement in Siberia. In January 1864, near the village of Shali, troops shot down an unarmed procession of followers of Sheikh Kunta-Haji - a Muslim preacher who taught that God must be remembered aloud, in chorus, with singing and circling in a ring. Such remembrance is called zikr - hence the imperial nickname of his followers, the zikrists. What moved the insurgents was recorded by the imperial side itself: Colonel Belik reported to the head of the Terek oblast in late May 1860 about the Benoy people who had returned to their burnt-out homes - they "earnestly begged permission to settle in their old places, - otherwise they had all sworn to die rather than submit"^[2]. The program of the period was set down by the chief of the Main Staff of the Caucasus Army, Kartsov (Kartsev in other sources), in a secret memorandum of 1864: "the only sure means of securing the lasting submission of the Chechens is to organize their mass resettlement, partly to Turkey, partly to the plain, far away from the mountains"^[2]. The outcome of the massacre near Shali is summed up by the historian D. A. Khozhayev: "the tsarist authorities provoked the highlanders into an action and staged a slaughter, gunning down with cannon the crowds of murid-zikrists who had advanced on the soldiers' squares with nothing but daggers and empty scabbards"^[11] - murids are a sheikh's disciples.

After Stalin's death, the amnesty did not extend to political prisoners, among whom Ukrainians made up an enormous share. This provoked large-scale uprisings within the concentration camp system (Vorkuta, Norilsk, Kengir). In Kengir, the insurgents created a system of self-government, a radio station, and workshops for making weapons, demanding the arrival of a commission of the CPSU Central Committee. During the suppression of the Norilsk uprising, "about 100 people were killed and more than 200 wounded"^[153]. In Kengir, the authorities sent in the army: "1,600 soldiers, 3 fire engines, and 5 tanks moved into the zone. It was the only suppression of camp uprisings with tanks in Soviet history"^[154].

A years-long punitive campaign of the Russian Empire against the uprising of rightless Ukrainian peasants led by Karmaliuk. He himself "was captured more than once, four times sentenced to Siberian hard labor, from which he escaped, covering thousands of versts on foot," and was "killed by a shot from ambush"^[18].

The armed suppression of the liberation uprising on the Right Bank: "The Russian government dealt brutally with the participants of the uprising: hundreds of Poles were executed, thousands exiled to Siberia or given over to the army, and their property confiscated"^[89]. That same summer of 1863 came the blow against Ukrainian enlightenment – the Valuev circular suspended the printing of Ukrainian books for the people^[155], and the hromadas were driven to self-dissolution^[21].

In 1821-1822 the Nokhchi rose up against the Russian Empire’s imposition of a fortress line on the Sunzha River and the driving of the plain’s inhabitants into the mountains. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that in early 1822 Beibulat Taimiev, with the help of the qadi Abdul-Kadyr of Germenchuk and mullah Mustafa, who had fled the burned Sunzha aul, "attempted to raise a general uprising in Chechnya"^[11]. Grekov, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, suppressed this resistance with punitive devastations of villages and the forced cutting of clearings through the forests of the Nokhchi by the hands of the inhabitants themselves. The historian D. A. Khozhaev cites Grekov’s report, in which he himself set out his aim: to drive the Chechens into the forests, where "only snow and cold weather were lacking for the Chechen people to experience all the calamities inevitable in such cases and to feel the necessity of submitting"^[11]. The imperial historian Potto confirms the course of the suppression from the conqueror’s side: on March 1, 1821, the troops "surrounded the village of Oisungur… and, as punishment of the inhabitants, who had fled before their arrival, destroyed it completely," felling the forest "in one direction as far as Isti-Su, in the other — as far as the Michik"^[68]. In February 1822, when the qadi Abdul-Kadyr met the troops on the Argun with arms in hand, "a cannonball tore off Abdul-Kadyr’s leg… he died on the third day," after which Grekov "burned the villages of Shali and Malye Atagi"^[68].

The Russian Empire's regular army suppresses a national liberation uprising: the insurgent detachments in Volhynia, the Zhytomyr region, Podillia, and the Kyiv region "were routed by the tsarist troops in April–May 1831," after which "the tsarist government resorted to brutal repressions against the participants of the uprising"^[89]. The era of tightening the screws on the Right Bank begins.

The forcible suppression of a mass anti-serfdom uprising in Sloboda Ukraine that broke out within the system of military settlements: "The servile condition of the military settlements' inhabitants caused the Buh Cossacks' uprising of 1817, the Chuhuiv uprising of 1819, the Shebelynka uprising of 1829, and others"^[23]. The scale is recorded by the EHU: "Up to 3 thousand peasants gathered in Shebelynka," and "on May 30, 1829 a bloody reprisal against the defiant began, during which 109 people died"^[143].

In 1708, the Tsardom of Muscovy employed radical violence to suppress an armed uprising of the Indigenous population. The revolt was caused by the methods previously laid down by the metropole within the campaign C1124: Punitive Raids and Economic Strangulation of the Nokhchi, 1691–1700: systematic abuses by the voevodas and a discriminatory economic policy. Historian Sh. B. Akhmadov states that, because of the duties, "the economic interaction of the Vainakhs with Russia... was practically paralyzed"^[27]. In response to the siege of the town of Terki by detachments led by Murat Kuchukov, the government organized large-scale operations: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that "the measures taken by Peter I to combat the Bulavin ‘rebellion’ and other uprisings, including on the Terek against Chechnya, were, in essence, punitive"^[28]. The Regular Army carried out sweep operations: he emphasizes that "military detachments were sent to the Terek that physically exterminated any population showing the slightest disobedience"^[28]. Military pressure was supplemented by collusion with a third party: the researcher adds that on September 30, 1708, the diplomatic apparatus concluded an agreement with the Kalmyk khan Ayuka that included a clause "on the persecution of Chechens and Nogais"^[28]. To neutralize the opposition, the metropole took the leader of the insurgents captive: Akhmadov points out that the tsar "personally decided the fate of the rebel leaders"^[28], as a result of which the leader, "taken prisoner while wounded, was hanged"^[28]. Total intimidation was ensured through demonstrative terror: the author records that the execution was carried out "by the rib on a hook, in accordance with Peter I’s order to P.M. Apraksin (‘inflict a cruel death penalty’)"^[28].

In 1722, the Russian Empire employed the regular army for the physical suppression of the armed resistance of the Indigenous population. The uprising was caused by the economic policy of the occupation administration: historian Sh. B. Akhmadov states that "the mountain peoples continued to motivate their discontent by the discriminatory measures of the administration of the town of Terki toward trading Highlanders"^[27]. As a result of this pressure, "the Chechen and Enderi lords and their subjects refused to swear an oath of submission to the tsarist authorities"^[27]. In response, the metropole organized punitive measures: within the framework of Peter I’s Persian campaign, the government dispatched troops to the territories inhabited by Nokhchi communities. Historian Sh. B. Akhmadov records that "on July 23, 1722, a tsarist detachment led by General Veterani... approached the village of Enderi"^[27]. Because of the Highlanders’ resistance, a new strike followed: he points out that on August 4, 1722, by decree of Peter I, "a punitive expedition was carried out a second time against the insurgent Chechens and the Enderi people"^[27]. Military pressure was accompanied by the total destruction of infrastructure: the researcher states that one of the tsarist detachments "came to Enderi and completely ravaged and burned it, leaving nothing but ashes behind"^[27], while in the course of the August raid "3,000 houses were destroyed and the grain in the fields was burned"^[27]. The operation was carried out in collusion with a third party: Akhmadov adds that the forces included "an armed detachment of Kalmyks numbering 3,730 men, sent by Ayuka Khan at the tsar’s request"^[27]. The radical violence led to the legal subordination of the borderland territories of the Nokhchi: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that after the defeat the local princes swore an oath, "‘including in it, for the first time, their Chechens as well’"^[28].

A war waged by NKVD/MGB troops against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in western Ukraine: chekist-military operations, mass repressive actions, and the forced removal of insurgents' families to Siberia - in 1944–52 "203,662 people were deported from the territory of Western Ukraine to special settlements in remote regions of the USSR"^[24]. Its finale was the use of collusion with a third party - Operation "Vistula" (1947), coordinated with the pro-Soviet government of Poland, "the concluding stage of the forced deportation of Ukrainians" "from the ancestral lands of Lemkivshchyna, Nadsiannia, Kholmshchyna, and Pidliashshia," carried out to deprive the UPA of its social base^[23].

The use of artificial famine as a weapon of mass destruction for the physical and psychological suppression of national resistance. The launch of a merciless grain-procurement machine, the confiscation of absolutely all food, the introduction of the "blackboard" regime (a total blockade of settlements)^[156], and a ban prohibiting peasants from leaving the starving districts: the directive of Stalin and Molotov of January 22, 1933 ordered "not to allow the mass departure of peasants from Ukraine to other regions," declaring the flight of the starving "for bread" a plot "organized by enemies of Soviet power, SRs and agents of Poland"^[157]. Physical extermination was accompanied by total psychological terror and show trials^[30].

The apogee of repressions under V. Shcherbytsky. Mass arrests of members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and of dissidents: emblematic is the fate of the poet Vasyl Stus, arrested in 1972 "together with other Ukrainian writer-human rights defenders" and a second time in 1980 - for his participation in the Helsinki Group^[15]. To neutralize dissenters, punitive psychiatry was applied on a mass scale - declaring healthy people insane in order to isolate them indefinitely and subject them to torture by medication^[158]. Many human rights defenders never regained their freedom: Stus "died in the punishment cell of special-regime camp VS-389/36" on the night of September 3–4, 1985^[15].

The Kyiv section of the Imperial Russian Military-Historical Society was filling central Kyiv with monuments to "figures of Russian history" and pushed the Shevchenko monument, which the city had already decided to erect, off its allotted site. The queue of eight imperial monuments - from princess Olha to Nestor the chronicler - was submitted in a memorandum of 7 April 1910 by colonel Steletsky, the section's secretary^[159]. The "historical path" program grew out of a letter from Zilov, the trustee of the educational district, to governor-general Trepov: Shevchenko should not be placed opposite a "Russian governmental institution," and "it would be necessary to erect a monument to one of the figures of Russian history"^[159]. The only monument of the queue actually erected was princess Olha (4 September 1911) - on the site the city had allotted in 1909 for the Shevchenko monument and which the duma gave to the society in 1911, overturning its own decision^[159].

In 1911 the Russian Empire erected in central Kyiv the largest monument to Alexander II in the entire empire. The gratitude on the pedestal was voiced not by Ukraine and not by Kyiv but by the "Southwestern Krai" - the empire's official name for the Ukrainian lands west of the Dnipro^[160][161]. The monument was unveiled on 30 August 1911 on Tsarskaya Square; the money was raised by an all-Russian subscription, 200 thousand rubles; the central pedestal bore the coat of arms of the empire, the double-headed eagle, and the inscription "To the Tsar-Liberator, the grateful Southwestern Krai. The year 1911"^[162][160].

From September 1836 to February 1840 Pullo, commander of the Sunzha Line and then of the left flank of the Caucasus Line (a chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), built in the auls of Chechnya seized by the empire a system of coercion made of seven interlocking institutions: amanat hostages taken from the most respected families, a tribute of one silver ruble per saklia (house), pristavs - superintendents appointed by the empire, a ban on selling bread to the "nemirnye" (auls that had not submitted to the empire) and on pasturing their cattle on the plain, confiscation of weapons, forced felling of forests and clearings stretching 165 versts, and punishments "according to the degree of guilt" - up to the destruction of the villages themselves. Handing over the command, Pullo summed it up in a memorandum of 1840: "by threatening all the unsubmissive communities with the annihilation of their property, I instilled in them such fear, brought them to such a state, that one after another they began to submit"^[3]. The system ended in an uprising. Hadji-Ali, a companion and chronicler of Shamil (Shamil - imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest), recorded: "As the oppressions of general Pullo over the Chechens intensified, so grew the requests of the latter to Shamil to come and free them"^[93]. The imperial historian Yurov admitted both the cause and the culprit: "we ourselves assisted Shamil as only his true friends could have done"; "Rumors about the true causes of the uprising of Chechnya reached the attention of the Sovereign Emperor", after which general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line and Pullo's superior, deemed it necessary "to immediately remove, under a plausible pretext, major-general Pullo from the administration of the left flank"^[90]. In February 1840 lowland Chechnya rose and called upon Shamil - the system collapsed together with the career of its builder.

In late December 1917, as the troops of Bolshevik Russia were advancing on Kyiv, a detachment of yunkers - cadets of the 1st Kyiv Youth Military School named after Bohdan Khmelnytsky (four companies of 150 cadets each, 20 officers, 18 machine guns) - under the command of Sotnyk Averkii Honcharenko took up the defense of Bakhmach station, a railway junction on the border of the UNR and the RSFSR^[119]. On January 27, 1918, reinforcements arrived from Kyiv - the first company of the student volunteer battalion under the command of Sotnyk Omelchenko, 115-130 volunteers: students of the Ukrainian National University and Kyiv University and senior-grade pupils of Ukrainian gymnasiums - teenagers, many of them 17 years old^[119][163]. The Ukrainian forces took up defense near Kruty station (now the village of Pamiatne in Chernihiv oblast)^[119]. On the morning of January 29 a six-thousand-strong detachment of Petrograd and Moscow Red Guards led by Yegorov attacked the positions; the fighting lasted until evening, the defenders repelled several attacks and, on the order of Sotnyk Averkii Honcharenko, withdrew to their echelon - the detachment's train waiting two kilometers away; their losses came to as many as 300 killed, wounded, and captured^[119]. A platoon of the student company lost its bearings at dusk and came out at the station already held by the Red Guards; 27 prisoners were shot - among them, according to testimony in the investigation file of commander-in-chief Muravyov, "there were many gymnasium pupils of about 17"; Yegorov, commander of the First Revolutionary Army, authorized the shooting^[163]. The teenage cadets managed to delay the offensive: explaining the heavy losses at Kruty and the delay in the advance on Kyiv, Muravyov claimed in his report that the Ukrainian forces had been commanded by "S. Petliura himself" - as the compilers of the collection of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory note^[164]. In February Muravyov's troops approached Kyiv from the Darnytsia side, shelled the city with heavy artillery for five days, and captured it on February 8, 1918^[165]. After the UNR concluded the Peace of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, German and Austro-Hungarian troops entered Ukraine, with Ukrainian units in the vanguard; the Bolsheviks abandoned Kyiv, and in early March the Council of People's Ministers returned there, followed a few days later by the Ukrainian Central Rada^[166]. On March 19, 1918, by decision of the Ukrainian Central Rada, the bodies of those killed at Kruty were brought to Kyiv and ceremonially buried at the Askold's Grave cemetery^[119].

The decisive battle of the Great Northern War, in the course of which the military backbone of Ukrainian autonomy was finally eliminated. The defeat of the Swedish-Cossack alliance allowed Moscow to move from suppressing uprisings to the systematic dismantling of the Hetmanate's political agency^[35].

In 1888 the Russian Empire erected in central Kyiv a monument to Bohdan Khmelnytsky - a sign of the city's belonging to the empire and of "unity" with Moscow. The pedestal bore programmatic inscriptions: "We will to be under the tsar of the east, the Orthodox one" and "To Bohdan Khmelnytsky – one and indivisible Russia"^[167]. The monument was unveiled on 11 July 1888 on Sophia Square; the committee for its construction was headed by Mikhail Yuzefovich - an official of the Kyiv educational district and author of the memorandum that formed the basis of the Ems ukase of 1876^[167][168].

Peter I's establishment of the First Little Russian Collegium to seize governance from the hetman's administration: the collegium was created "as the highest appellate instance and the administrative-controlling organ of the Russian state structure in Ukraine"^[14]. It was accompanied by the arrest of acting hetman Polubotok and the officers for defending the autonomy: "the officers submitted to Emperor Peter I yet another petition to close the Little Russian Collegium. After this, interrogations of Polubotok began in the Secret Chancellery, and on November 10, 1723 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress"^[89], where the hetman died. The arrest order itself was never published as a separate act - the case was run by the Secret Chancellery; the circumstances were retrospectively set out in Empress Catherine I's manifesto of 8 February 1725: "it was ordered that the General Starshyna - Polubotok, Chernysh and Savych - be in St. Petersburg to answer for it"^[169].

A grueling geopolitical war of the empire, accompanied by the mass mobilization of the Ukrainian peasantry. Nicholas I's manifesto on the state militia and the decrees on its levy of 29 January 1855 (Nos. 28.991–28.993) gave rise to hopes of freedom - even though the Kyiv governorate was not on the list of governorates called up at all^[170]: "the movement for re-Cossackization in March–April engulfed over 500 villages and towns in 8 of the 12 districts of the Kyiv governorate… To suppress the 'Cossack movement' the government threw in regular troops and police"^[18].

A unilateral imperial act imposed on hetman Danylo Apostol instead of the traditional bilateral treaty. While formally softening the regime of the Little Russian Collegium, the document entrenched harsh imperial restrictions on key points: "Article 19 forbids the hetman relations with other countries"^[15], customs revenues went to the tsar's treasury, and personnel appointments were placed under the metropole's control.

By 1925 Soviet power had stood in Chechnya for its fifth year and remained largely nominal: five years of Sovietization (campaign C1176) - revkoms (revolutionary committees) instead of elected Soviets, arrests of sheikhs, two partial disarmaments - had not given Moscow control over the people, imam Nazhmuddin Gotsinsky, the spiritual head of the armed resistance in Dagestan and Chechnya, was sheltering in the mountains, and the profile of the Mountain district drawn up by the staff of the future operation admitted: "Beyond the Sharo-Argun Soviet power does not exist"^[171]. Moscow, meanwhile, was steering a course toward taking power away from the autonomies - historian T. U. Elbuzdukayeva writes: "The unceasing banditry and insurgent movements in the North Caucasus were perceived by the Moscow authorities as a convincing argument in favor of its centralizing efforts, the process of transferring autonomous sovereignty from Caucasian into Moscow hands"^[172]. The operation of 1925 became that course in action: the USSR took away the weapons of Chechnya's population with the forces of the army and the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) - from 25 August the troops passed through 242 settlements, shelled 101 of them with [artillery] guns and machine guns, bombed 16 from aircraft, arrested more than 300 people and shot nearly all of them without trial. Under the guise of maneuvers the troops entered the oblast, surrounded aul after aul, convened the village assembly, presented an ultimatum to surrender weapons according to a ready-made quota, and opened fire on the settlement if it was not met; of the aims Elbuzdukayeva writes: as the centers of the operation the staff had designated in advance the mountain societies "where N. Gotsinsky [the head of the resistance] was presumed to be"^[172]. The instruction of 4 August 1925, approved by Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District (SKVO), prescribed, should the ultimatum not be met, opening artillery fire on the settlement for ten minutes, and allowed repeating it several times^[173]. The deception, too, was assigned by document: by an order of 31 July 1925 the staff of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA) approved Uborevich's maneuvers in Chechnya and with the same document assigned the disarmament: "At the same time," the order said, "taking advantage of the concentration of a significant number of troops on the territory of Chechnya (the district of the forthcoming maneuvers), the command of the SKVO, in coordination with the PPOGPU [the plenipotentiary representation of the OGPU] in the North Caucasus, plans to carry out a disarmament and a removal of the bandit element, which by a number of political indications is highly timely"^[70]. The sanction was given by Stalin personally: in July 1925 Mikoyan, secretary of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party^[174], met him in Sochi and after the conversation telegraphed to Molotov in Moscow: "The political situation in Chechnya has become aggravated. Stalin has given his personal consent to the necessity of the operation"^[172]. Many years later Mikoyan summed it up in his memoirs: "This operation fundamentally cleared the air of Chechnya"^[175].

The complete displacement of the language from the cultural and literary sphere. The Ems ukase prescribed: "Not to permit the import into the empire… of any books whatsoever published abroad in the Little Russian dialect," "To forbid in the empire the printing, in the same dialect, of any original works or translations whatsoever," and "To forbid likewise any stage performances, texts to musical scores, and public readings in the same dialect"^[176]. The permitted dictionaries were allowed only "on condition of their being printed in conformity with all-Russian orthography"^[40].

Five years later the rules were revised by a Special Conference - it included Solsky, Ostrovsky, the chief procurator of the Synod Pobedonostsev, and Viazemsky, - and the minister of internal affairs Ignatiev reported the result to the emperor on 3 October 1881; assent followed on 8 October^[177]. There were no plans to publish the revision, and Ignatiev explained why: "the rules on the use of the Little Russian dialect established in 1876 were not promulgated, and therefore it is not intended to make the projected clarifications known to the general public"^[177]. The circular went out to governor-general Drenteln on 16 October stamped "Confidential"^[177] - that is, people were judged by rules they were never shown.

The KGB's response to the emergence of a resistance movement among the new Ukrainian intelligentsia. It includes the suppression of the 1965 protests (the public statement by Stus, Dziuba, and Chornovil at the premiere of "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors") and the pressure on the signatories of the "Letter of 139" in 1968, in which prominent cultural figures spoke out against unlawful political trials^[178]. This also includes the crushing of the underground Ukrainian National Front: "in 1967 the UNF was uncovered by the state security organs," and eight of its members received long prison terms^[179].

A long period of direct rule over the Left Bank without the election of a hetman. "The GOVERNANCE OF THE HETMAN'S GOVERNMENT was an organ of power created by the government of Russian empress Anna in 1734 after the death of hetman D. Apostol to govern Left-Bank Ukraine (the Hetmanate) and to prevent new hetman elections"; "in essence its head was the tsar's resident"^[89]. At the same time the empire brought Zaporizhzhia back under control: "Anna amnestied the Zaporozhians and allowed them to return to the old Sich grounds (1734) and found the New Sich"^[23] – on the eve of war with Turkey the Cossacks were being brought back as a military resource of the crown.

By 1937 Chechnya had been through disarmament (campaign C1177) and the forced merging of peasant households into kolkhozes ("collectivization") with punitive expeditions against insurgent auls (campaign C1178). In 1934 the colonizer merged the oblast with Ingushetia into the united Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Oblast, and in 1936 renamed it the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ChIASSR); today the occupier calls these lands the Chechen Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia within Russia. Through this republic, as through other parts of the USSR, passed the Great Terror: that is what historians call the mass arrests and executions of 1937-1938, for which Moscow assigned each republic and oblast its own number. The repressions began with the resolution of the supreme organ of the occupation power (the "Politburo of the TsK VKP(b)") "On anti-Soviet elements" of 2 July 1937, signed by Stalin^[180]. On 11 July 1937 the Politburo, by a separate decision, approved the number of people to be shot in the republic - separately for peasants whom the colonizer deemed "well-off" ("kulaks") and for "criminals"; the historian G. I. Kakagasanov cites it thus: "kulaks - 862 pers., criminals - 555 pers."^[180]. On 30 July Yezhov, the People's Commissar (minister) of Internal Affairs of the USSR, issued operational order No. 00447 "On the operation to repress former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements"; for the ChIASSR it records: 500 people - to be shot (the order's "first category"), 1,500 - to be confined in camps (the "second category")^[181]. Already by mid-August 1937 the arrested were more numerous than recorded in the order, and on 1 March 1938 Moscow assigned the republic a new number - 10,108 people ordered arrested and convicted^[182]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "by various estimates, in the '30s - early '40s no fewer than 30-40 thousand Chechens and Ingush became victims of the Stalinist terror"^[2]. The case of the "bourgeois-nationalist center" - 137 former senior officials of the republic - the Chekist investigators, as the Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov writes, spent three years fabricating; the military tribunal tried the arrested in 1940^[53].

A state propaganda operation: to mask Ukraine's colonial status, the empire celebrated with pomp the anniversary of the Pereiaslav Council, constructing the myth of a "single people." As part of the same campaign, Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR – the decree of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium of 19 February 1954 motivated it thus: "Taking into account the commonality of the economy, territorial proximity, and close economic and cultural ties between the Crimean oblast and the Ukrainian SSR"^[183]. The real context of the decision: "After the Second World War, the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people and mass resettlements from other regions of the USSR, the peninsula is in a deep socio-economic crisis," and "Moscow admits ever more openly: the Crimean region is a problem territory that the union center does not know how to sustain"^[184].

An attempt by pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine to institutionalize the displacement of the state language from the public sphere, education, and record-keeping through the adoption of the law "On the Principles of State Language Policy" of July 3, 2012, No. 5029-VI, which expanded the rights of so-called regional languages^[185]. By its decision of February 28, 2018, No. 2-r/2018, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared the law unconstitutional^[186].

A further curtailment of the Hetmanate's political agency and interference in the autonomy's internal affairs: "Overall, the Konotop Articles limited the hetman's power in favor of the officer oligarchy, and also narrowed the autonomy of the Hetmanate"^[119]. The weakening of the hetman's power laid the ground for the growing influence of the Muscovite government over the autonomy's elites.

A punitive campaign against Mazepa's supporters after the hetman went over to the Swedes. In January 1709 the headquarters of the tsar and Menshikov were at Lebedyn and Sumy, from where the investigation of the Cossack officers was conducted^[35]. The model of intimidation was the destruction of the hetman capital: on 2 November 1708 Baturyn was taken by Menshikov's troops, "the town was razed to the ground and its inhabitants annihilated," and when in July 1709 the tsar permitted it to be resettled, he obliged the inhabitants to pay a special tax to the treasury "for treason"^[23]. The punishment fell on everyone: "in the bloody massacre and fire a multitude of the town's defenders and inhabitants perished"^[35].

The treaty that became the point of no return in the political, economic, and military absorption of the autonomy: "Under the Moscow Articles, direct control over the military-administrative and financial-economic life of Ukraine (except for the Cossack estate) passed into the hands of the tsarist voivodes"^[142]. Garrisons headed by voivodes were introduced into new cities as far as Kodak, taxes went directly to the tsar's treasury, and the Kyiv metropolitanate was to be subordinated to the Moscow patriarch^[142].

The first systematic campaign to dismantle treaty-based agency: instead of an equal interstate treaty – the tsar's "decisive" resolutions upon the hetman's petitionary articles. "The joint document, drawn up as a decree, was signed by state chancellor Count G. Golovkin"^[15] - the signature "State Chancellor, Count Golovkin. Given at Kyiv, 31 July 1709" stands under the published act itself^[187]. The articles "fully preserved the previously established control of the tsarist regime over local financing, the functioning of the administrative apparatus, the Cossack army, and foreign policy"^[15].

A state campaign to destroy the Ukrainian language and culture: in 1862 the authorities closed the Sunday schools that taught in Ukrainian - "for the alleged presence of revolutionary propaganda"^[142], the ban on the national press, the official denial of the language's existence – the Valuev circular: "there was not, is not, and cannot be any distinct Little Russian language"^[155] – and bonuses to officials "in the ten South-Western governorates for persons of Russian origin, excluding, however, local natives," fixed by the decrees of 1869 and 1886^[188].

An agreement on the partition of the Hetmanate along the Dnipro between the Tsardom of Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth without Ukrainian participation: "The Russian state received significant territorial acquisitions… However, Right-Bank Ukraine, Polotsk, Vitebsk, and other Belarusian cities with Russian garrisons remained with the Commonwealth"^[189]. The legal entrenchment of Ukraine's split and the transformation of Zaporizhzhia into a buffer zone: "under the treaty of 1667 it was under the joint rule of Moscow and Warsaw"^[35]. Hrushevsky records the reaction to the partition: "there was great resentment against the Muscovite government for agreeing to cede Right-Bank Ukraine to Poland in the armistice of 1667: it divided Ukraine with Poland and did not keep what it had promised when taking Ukraine under the tsar's hand"^[116].

Separate peace negotiations between Moscow and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on ending the war and dividing spheres of influence, held in complete isolation from the Ukrainian side: "The plenipotentiary representatives of the Ukrainian Cossack state, headed by R. Haponenko, were not admitted to the negotiating table"^[23]. The hetman asked that the Cossack envoys be given mandates as full participants of the congress - "but the tsar's government once again let this request pass unheeded," and the delegates "sat idle beside the commissioners, not admitted to the official sessions"^[190].

The occupation administration of the metropole and forces loyal to it used the subordinated Nokhchi (Okochans) in armed conflicts and carried out military interventions into the mountain territories. Historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova states that in 1626, to support allied feudal lords, the voivodes sent «Terek uzdens and Cherkasy and newly baptized ones and Okochans, 252 men, as well as Terek atamans and Cossacks with the Terek mounted streltsy head Fadey Voloshenin and with sotniks, 500 men»^[55][71]. In 1628, after mountaineers killed five Cossacks, a retaliatory invasion followed: Tkhamokova indicates that during the armed campaign the Kabardian murza Konshov-murza Bitemryukov «went against these «mountain people» together with the «free» atamans and Cossacks and with the «Okochans»»^[55]. In parallel, the metropole coerced the mountain societies of the Nokhchi into legal subjugation and payment of tribute in kind. A dispatch from the Terek voivodes Ivan Andreevich Dashkov and Bogdan Gerasimovich Priklonsky to the Ambassadorial Prikaz records information about «the oath given by the Shibut men Lavarsan Yazyev and Zatyshka Lavarsanov on behalf of 20 households in 1627»^[44]. The document dryly states the administration's demand that the mountaineers «not fall away from the sovereign and remain under the sovereign's hand in direct kholopstvo (servitude)»^[44] and undertake to «pay yasak of one kul of honey per year»^[44].

In December 1831, General Velyaminov, without disbanding the detachment encamped near the fortress of Groznaya, switched to a tactic of raids on Chechen settlements. The imperial historian Volkonsky wrote: Velyaminov "decided to harass the enemy and divert his attention from our borders. Thus, on December 23, 1831, he sent on a raid the commander of the Mozdok Cossack Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Zass, who devastated several Chechen hamlets on the right side of the Sunzha, lying opposite the village of Chertugai, and delivered to the camp three captive women and up to 250 head of cattle. In this raid the enemy left 7 bodies on the spot"^[84]. In February 1832 the raiding tactic grew into an expedition through the villages standing along the Sunzha River above the fortress of Groznaya. The imperial review of military operations admits: "Lieutenant General Velyaminov in February 1832 undertook an expedition to punish the Chechen villages lying up the Sunzha from the fortress of Groznaya"^[26]. The historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov wrote of the same strike: "Another large expedition was directed against the Chechen auls located along the banks of the Sunzha"^[2].

The authorities' false promise to return the lost Cossack liberties to the indigenous population in exchange for blood. The empire squeezed the maximum out of the land: "on both of its banks, Ukraine was used for the recruitment, equipping, and movement of troops… including a 75-thousand-strong militia from the Kyiv, Podillia, Chernihiv, and Poltava governorates"^[23], and after the war the formations were disbanded and the promises forgotten^[142]; when the Buh Cossacks refused to be turned into military settlers in 1817, their uprising was crushed by four regiments with artillery^[23].

The empire mass-mobilizes Ukrainians in the world war: "During the war years, 3.5 million Ukrainians were mobilized into the ranks of the Russian army (by other data – 4.5 million)"^[89]. In the course of the offensive Galicia was occupied: "As a result of the operation, Galicia and Bukovyna were taken, out of which the Galician governorate-general was formed"^[147] – with a policy of destroying Ukrainian institutions.