Colonial oil: the seizure of the Grozny subsoil and the rent of the Cossack host (1845-1917)
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"[1]. 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[1]), 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[1]. 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[1], 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[1]. To all the other Chechen communities the law left nothing - their share was collected by the Cossack host.
Actors
| ID | Name | Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| G0009 | Russian Empire | 3 |
Instruments Applied
| ID | Name | Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| S0012 | Occupation and Controlled Administrations | 3 |
Procedures Carried Out
The Russian Empire took the oil wells near the Groznaya fortress away from the Chechens and on 16 February 1845 sealed the seizure by law: paragraph 154 of the "Regulations on the Caucasus Line Host", confirmed by Emperor Nicholas I, read: "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"[1]. Before the seizure the oil fed the Chechens themselves - historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova writes from the documents: in 1788 the Chechen ruler Kazbulat "traded and had a certain income from the oil wells located in his domains"; the Mozdok Cossacks recalled in a petition of 1811 how oil "was brought for sale... and sold at a free price"; "Later, the oil was taken away from the Chechens and became the property of the Caucasus Line regiment, which farmed it out"[1]. Over the 57 years of the tax-farming system, from 1833 to 1890, the host received 152,500 rubles in silver of net income[1][2].
By orders for the Terek oblast of 15 August 1890 and March 1897 the Russian Empire forbade the Chechen village communities "to enter into any agreements with mining industrialists" without the government's permission - "The guilty, in the person of village officials, were brought to account, and suits were brought in the courts to annul the concluded contracts"[1]. The ground of the ban is formulated by historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova: "The aul communities were deprived of the right to lease out oil-bearing plots - the land was granted to them not by right of property but only into use with the right of surface working; its subsoil was considered the property of the treasury"[1]. When the Ministry of Agriculture confirmed rules that allowed peasant communities to lease out their own land for the working of the subsoil, the head of the Terek oblast, General Kakhanov, in 1894 "categorically objected to the extension to the Chechen lands" of these rules - and demanded that, even if the communities' rights were recognized, the resolution on leasing the land be confirmed by the uchastok chief and a third of the income go "to pay the podymnaya tax of the communities concerned"[2]. For the Cossacks the opposite rule was in force: from 1891, when subsoil passed to the treasury, stanitsas were entitled to replacement land or compensation - "For the Chechen communities no reserve land allotments were provided by the state. Still less was there any question of material reward"[1].
The Terek Cossack Host of the Russian Empire leased out the seized Chechen lands to oil companies and lived on rent from another people's subsoil: in 1899 about 21.9 million of the 26.22 million puds of total output were extracted on the host's lands, and in that year alone the companies paid the host 631.8 thousand rubles[2]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: the largest owner of the oil-bearing plots turned out to be the host itself; it did no extraction of its own, and the usual terms of a lease were 150 rubles a year per desiatina (a desiatina is a little over a hectare) plus "from 2 to 6 kopecks for every pud of oil extracted"[2]. Historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova records the dynamic: the host's capital grew from 400 thousand rubles in 1877 to 3 million in 1900 - "This was the result of receiving income from the oil-bearing lands"[1]. The scale was set by the field itself: on 27 August 1895 well No. 7 of Akhverdov's company gave "a gusher of incredible force, yielding up to 1 million puds a day... The roar and the smell of oil could be sensed 15 versts from the field"[3].