Muhajirism: the expulsion of Chechens to the Ottoman Empire, the ban on return, and population replacement (1858-1872)
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[1][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[3]. 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"[4]. 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!"[4]. 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"[1].
Actors
| ID | Name | Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| G0009 | Russian Empire | 7 |
Instruments Applied
| ID | Name | Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| S0008 | Government | 7 |
Procedures Carried Out
In the summer of 1865 a fifth of the Chechen people left Chechnya - and almost half of those who left perished. The first families set out from Vladikavkaz on 28 May 1865; the last crossed the border on 10 September[4]; the historian D. A. Khozhayev draws up the tally: "23,057 people (5 thousand families) of Chechens, Karabulaks and Ingush leave their native land for Turkey"[1]; historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov reckon "up to 23 thousand Chechens," of whom more than 4.5 thousand families were inhabitants of Lesser Chechnya and the Ichkerinsky okrug, and in all in the 1860s "up to 20% of the total number of Chechens" were expelled[2]. The dying began at once: the historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova writes - "In the course of the resettlement about 40,000 highlanders of the Terek oblast perished, which was slightly less than half of all those who had left"; according to the dispatches of the Russian consul, in Trebizond in 1864 some 180-250 people were dying each day, in Samsun - 200[4]. The lands allotted for settlement "were unfit for agriculture – stony and barren"[4]; the colony of Ras al-Ayn, where mainly Chechens had been settled, shrank by 1878 from 4-5 thousand families to 500[4]. The muhajirs themselves - as those who left were called, from the Arabic "muhajir," a migrant - wrote to the head of the Terek oblast: "We have learned that Mussa deceived us... A third of us have already perished as it is" (Mussa is General Kundukhov; they called him by his first name)[4].
The head of the Terek oblast, General Loris-Melikov, set out the plan: "...the Chechen population had to be herded into one place... This population, cut off on one side from the mountains by the new stanitsas... would no longer dare to threaten us with an uprising and would not escape the most vigilant surveillance"[2]. The land of those who left was taken by the treasury: "many auls emptied completely; the untended lands became overgrown with weeds. These lands were confiscated for the benefit of the treasury"[4], and it was allotted "to Russian officers, the local nobility and, chiefly, to the Cossack hosts"[4]. The replacement proceeded stanitsa by stanitsa: in 1861-1865 alone, 81 Cossack stanitsas were founded on the emptied lands of the North Caucasus[3]. In Chechnya this can be seen step by step: in 1868 the resettlement of the Chechens was directly subordinated to the stationing of the Sunzha Cossack regiments - there was an option of leaving the inhabitants on the right bank of the Sunzha, "but the Cossack host laid claim to these lands, so the Chechens were moved to the left bank of the Terek and the Sunzha, and their lands were taken by the 1st and 2nd Sunzha regiments"[4]. From 1863 to 1885, 112 settlements were founded in the Terek oblast, mostly of Russian settlers, while the Terek Cossack Host occupied a third of the oblast's area while making up a fifth of its inhabitants[4]. The difference shows in the allotments: a Cossack family received on average from 57 to 90 desiatinas (a desiatina is slightly more than a hectare)[5], whereas in the Chechen auls a family had "0.5 – 10 desiatinas... that is, no more than 2 desiatinas per head"[3].
Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "The principal means of driving out the highlanders became depriving them of their main source of existence – the land. The transfer of vast lands on the plains to Cossack stanitsas left thousands of highlanders without means of subsistence"[2]. Imperial statistics recorded the result: "each family in the auls has 0.5 – 10 desiatinas... With such crowding not only the development of farms, but even the existence of the people cannot be considered secured" (a desiatina is slightly more than a hectare)[3]. Meanwhile the operation's own executors were reporting the opposite. The head of the Argun okrug, Major A. Ippolitov, wrote to the head of the Terek oblast, General Loris-Melikov: "I can positively tell Your Excellency that the people are not even thinking of voluntary resettlement to Turkey; at a general assembly they declared to me that they would go only when the whole of Chechnya leaves to the last man, or when they are ordered to go"[4]. Colonel Bellik on 25 March 1865 reported to the same Loris-Melikov the words of a Chechen: "we will not go to Turkey and will not let those go who are preparing to; in Turkey death awaits us, and it awaits us here too, but here it is more pleasant, because here is our homeland and here lie our fathers, slain by the Russians"[4].
The Viceroy of the Caucasus and commander-in-chief of the Caucasus Army Baryatinsky - on the Chechens who wished to leave: "...it is perhaps no bad thing that all this rabble, which is only a burden to us, will leave. Do not stop them, let them go to Mecca or wherever they wish. And I will take care to present this matter to the Sovereign in the proper light..." - to the emperor the matter was presented as "a voluntary movement of the Chechens themselves"[2]. The head of the Kuban oblast, General Yevdokimov, who carried out the expulsion of the highlanders of the Western Caucasus, formulated the principle: "Philanthropy first of all to our own; as for the highlanders, I consider myself entitled to grant them only what remains for their share after the last of Russian interests has been satisfied"[2]. The optic in which such decisions were taken was also articulated by imperial scholarship: Berzhe, who headed the Caucasus Archaeographic Commission for 22 years and compiled the first ten volumes of the "Acts"[6], grounded distrust of the highlanders in their nature: "The eight-hundred-thousand-strong highland population of the Terek and Dagestan oblasts forms here an almost solid mass... Permeated by Muslim fanaticism, inflamed by the long war, it continues to hate us as still-recent sworn enemies, as infidels, and will preserve this feeling as long as we remain giaours in its eyes"[3]. This is not an order but the voice of the epoch - the language in which the expulsion looked natural.
The head of the Terek oblast, General Loris-Melikov, stressed in a special dispatch to the Main Staff of the Caucasus Army: "For the success of the affair it is necessary that the highlanders not only not know of our desire to assist the resettlement, but the local authorities must, on the contrary, as it were dissuade them from this intention"[2]; its execution was entrusted to the head of the Middle Military Division, Tumanov, and he reported on it to Loris-Melikov himself: "The first and indispensable condition for arousing in the Chechens the desire to resettle to Turkey I consider to be not revealing that this desire comes from the government... consequently, all this must remain in the deepest secrecy; on our skill it will depend to complete the great [work] without bloodshed or particular disorders…"[4]. In Chechnya "forged proclamations were circulated, purporting to come from the Turkish government, in which the migrants were promised a cordial welcome and good material provision"[2] - Loris-Melikov himself asked in writing to be sent samples of Turkish proclamations "for circulation among the population"[4]. Agents frightened the people with the future: they "spread provocative rumours that not a single Chechen would receive a scrap of land, that all the young men would be given up as soldiers, that the Muslim religion would sooner be banned and everyone would become Christians"[4].
General Kundukhov, until then himself head of the Chechen okrug, received from the Viceroy "a most delicate assignment – to conduct unofficial negotiations with the Turkish government on carrying out a mass resettlement of the Chechens" and a written instruction "to proceed to arouse among the Chechen population a striving to leave for Turkey"[2]. For the agitation he received 5 thousand rubles from the treasury[2]; the historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova writes of 10 thousand "for the 'discreet remuneration' of three or four persons most popular among the population, that is, for bribing influential figures"[4]; Kundukhov personally was paid 45 thousand rubles "ostensibly for property left behind in Russia," with the treasury's total expenses exceeding 130 thousand[2]. Kundukhov himself described in his memoirs the recruitment of the Chechen leadership in February 1865: having invited the naib (an administrator of a district installed by the authorities) of Lesser Chechnya Sadulla Osmanov (in other sources - Saadula Osmayev) and the elder of the Karabulak society Tsugov, he achieved that "They all agreed to resettle without the slightest objection... and swore to prepare for resettlement"[1]. Osmanov was no outside appointee: in the consolidated list of the Imamate's naibs he stands as "Saadulla Osmanov of Nikhaloy (naib of Lesser Chechnya)"[2] - a man who had fought alongside Shamil, and who for an imperial salary and land drove his own people to Turkey. The price of the purchase is visible on him too: he governed his naibstvo for eight years, received 550 desiatinas of land for his service, swore on the Quran to assist the resettlement "to the end" and undertook to lead the second wave of those departing - going ahead of the first was a condition of payment of the reward[4]. He worked in such a way that even the head of the Terek oblast, General Loris-Melikov, admitted the naib was "overdoing it," spreading distorted rumours, and wanted to rid himself as soon as possible of the too-hotheaded agitator[4].
The empire's answer to the pleas of those who returned was fixed in a formula "at the very highest level": "Of any return migration of the highlanders there can be no talk"[2]. Under the rules approved in June 1861 by the chief of the Main Staff of the Caucasus Army, General Kartsov, highlanders who had entered Turkish subjecthood or overstayed their passports were "resolutely forbidden" to return[4]. By November 1865, 2,600 people had gathered at the border, ready to accept Orthodoxy for the sake of returning - "However, the Russian leadership even on such terms was in no hurry to let them through the border... they no longer had anywhere to return to; their ancestral lands had been either confiscated or sold"[4]. Those who tried to return secretly were caught for years: in 1867, 162 people were detained; in 1868 - 663; in 1869 - 369; in 1870 - 1,263; "Over ten years, from 1862 to 1872, 5,964 highlanders (mostly Chechens) managed to return to the Terek oblast, of whom 2,315 the authorities forcibly expelled to Turkey once again"[2]. Even those permitted were not allowed home: the returning Karabulaks (a Vainakh society kindred to the Chechens) "were not admitted to their native lands, but settled as a single aul, Sagopshi, on the lands of the Chechen village of Psedakh"[2].