The disarmament of Chechnya: a military operation with artillery shelling and bombing of auls (1925)

On 31 July 1925 the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR explained the operation being prepared by the properties of an entire people - the order says: "The Chechen oblast is a hotbed of criminal banditry spreading to the districts neighboring Chechnya... In their mass the Chechens are inclined to banditry as the main source of easy gain, which is furthered by the presence of a large quantity of weapons. Mountain Chechnya is a refuge for the most hardened enemies of Soviet power"^[2]. The label from the order passed into the operation's working nomenclature: the instruction of 4 August 1925, approved by Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, Volodin, member of the district's Revolutionary Military Council, and Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) for the krai, puts people in one row with rifles and "removes" them with a single verb - point 8 of the instruction reads: "If the conditions of the surrender of weapons are fulfilled, no house-to-house search is conducted, and only the bandit and vicious element is removed"^[3]. Thus criminality was declared a property of the people, and its men - an "element" subject to removal.

On 31 July 1925 the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, in the order justifying the operation to disarm Chechnya, declared the Chechens incapable of proper farming: "The rich lands granted to the Chechens on the plain after the revolution are not used by them in full; they run their agriculture in backward forms, are not industrious"^[2]. The accusation stands in a military order as one of the grounds for sending in troops: the lands were "granted" to the people by the authorities themselves, their way of farming was declared backward by the same authorities, and the conclusion drawn from this assessment was a military operation. Historian T. U. Elbuzdukayeva, who publishes the order, also cites its continuation: "political indications" had ripened - the population's weariness of war and the demand to fight "banditry"^[2] - that is, even by the document's own logic the war was to be waged not on economic backwardness, yet it is backwardness that is set down as a justification.

The documents of its staff described a military operation with artillery shelling as the bringing of peace: the "Main Tasks of the Special Operational Groups of the OGPU in the Operation in the Chechen Autonomous Oblast", approved by Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) for the krai, Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, and Volodin, member of the district's Revolutionary Military Council, open with the words that the mass operation "in its final result must bring general pacification to Chechnya and create the appropriate conditions for the peaceful Soviet-economic construction of the oblast"^[3]. The same frame was prescribed to be spoken aloud in every aul: under the disarmament instruction of 4 August 1925 the representatives of the authorities, having entered a village surrounded by troops, announced to the assembly the purpose of their coming - "the removal of weapons with a view to the Chechen authorities securing a normal working life for the toiling population", and the artillery shelling was given a name within this frame: "warning fire as a measure of influence"^[3]. The organizer of the operation, Mikoyan, secretary of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party, brought this picture to its final formula in his memoirs: "It was a brilliant operation without any bloodshed"^[6] - in the same chapter he himself describes the Chechen old men taken hostage by the Chekists and the shelling of a Chechen village by the troops of the USSR.

On 25 August 1925 the USSR sent troops into the Chechen Autonomous Oblast to take away the weapons of its inhabitants; the operation was conducted by the army and the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) under the overall command of Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, and Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU for the krai^[2]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write of the forces gathered against the Chechen villages: "In all, about seven thousand Red Army men with 240 machine guns and 24 [artillery] guns were brought in to take part in it. In addition, two aviation detachments and an armored train were at the disposal of the operation's commander. Tactically the troops, as well as the operational groups of the GPU, were divided into seven groupings"^[7]. Historian T. U. Elbuzdukayeva gives, from the military documents, a different count: 6183 Red Army men with 137 heavy and 102 light machine guns, 14 mountain and 10 light [artillery] guns, and beyond that 341 OGPU officers assembled from across the whole North Caucasus^[2]. Mikoyan, secretary of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party and one of the operation's organizers, recalled that "It was agreed to send two divisions into Chechnya 'for exercises'. The exercises were to include contact with the population, amateur performance evenings, concerts, closeness with the local youth, which was to strengthen still further the trust in Soviet power"^[6]; the same legend was scattered from the air - the account of a surviving companion of imam Nazhmuddin Gotsinsky, printed in 1936 in the Warsaw journal Severny Kavkaz, says: "To calm the population, proclamations were scattered from aeroplanes, in which it was written that ordinary maneuvers were taking place and the inhabitants were asked not to worry and to stay in their homes"^[8]. The head of Chechnya itself - Eldarkhanov, chairman of the Chechen TsIK (the highest organ of power of the autonomous oblast) - was not informed of the preparations: "The center and the organs of the OGPU did not consider it necessary to inform even the chairman of the Chechen TsIK, T. Eldarkhanov, of the action being prepared. The concentration of troops in Grozny was explained by forthcoming maneuvers"^[2]. At the same time the disarmament instruction of 4 August 1925 wrote the Chechen TsIK into every step of the execution: its representatives enter the surrounded aul together with the command and convene the assembly, sit on the weapons-reception commissions, are obliged to provide profiles of the districts, and after "all the enumerated measures of influence" receive the authority to dissolve village executive committees and install revkoms^[3]. Even before the troops went in, the OGPU had described every village: historian E. F. Zhupikova relates - "The organs of the OGPU gathered information about the most influential mullahs and sheikhs, about the honored elders, about the guides without whom it was impossible to penetrate into the mountains"^[9]; for every settlement a questionnaire was drawn up with the number of inhabitants and households, the composition of the population by taips (clans) and the quantity of weapons planned for removal^[3].

Over the three weeks of the operation, from 25 August to 12 September 1925, the troops of the USSR took from the inhabitants of Chechnya 25299 rifles, 4319 revolvers and pistols, a machine gun and about 80 thousand cartridges^[7]; the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) reported to Stalin in rounded numbers: "In Chechnya during the operation 24000 rifles, 4000 revolvers, about 70000 cartridges, 2 machine guns were removed"^[10], while Mikoyan, secretary of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party and one of the operation's organizers, counted in his memoirs "more than 30 thousand rifles, more than 10 machine guns"^[6]. By the assessment of historian E. F. Zhupikova, what was removed amounted to "approximately 75% of what the population had before the start of the operation and approximately half of the weapons removed in all the highland oblasts"^[9]. Under the disarmament instruction of 4 August 1925 the inhabitants were announced "the exact figure of the firearms and ammunition subject to removal", taken from the OGPU questionnaires, and given no more than two hours to surrender them^[3]; Mikoyan describes the same quota with the words "they would present each village with the demand to surrender all weapons in the quantity known from agent intelligence"^[6]. The taking of weapons began even before the troops went in, with the inhabitants divided up by lists: from those entered in the lists of the "vicious element" and their relatives "the local revkoms took the weapons away, while registering those of the remaining inhabitants"^[9]. The inhabitants themselves asked to give up their weapons without shelling: in early September 1925 the delegates of the Goity society Eski Karlagov, Khatu Dobriyev and Dzhabi Otgayev appealed to the district's Revolutionary Military Council with a request: "Now, at the disarmament, which we consider right, we ask that this be taken into account and petition that an exception be made by allowing the voluntary surrender of weapons without the taking of repressive measures"; the answer came by telegram, "most urgent", over the signatures of Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, Volodin, member of the district's Revolutionary Military Council, and Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU for the krai: "The Red Army knows well the revolutionary services of the village of Goity. The surrender of weapons must be carried out voluntarily on 9 September with delivery of the weapons to Grozny. The weapons necessary for self-defense will be left to the aul of Goity"^[1].

The targets of the artillery and aviation were often not military objectives but inhabited settlements as such: the instruction of 4 August 1925, approved by Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, Volodin, member of the district's Revolutionary Military Council, and Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) for the krai, prescribed - "If the population of the aul does not fulfil the demand to surrender weapons in the established time in full, or fulfils it partially, the detachment command, by way of threat, opens artillery fire (or, in the absence of artillery, machine-gun fire) for 10 minutes with high bursts and half-strikes", and added: "depending on the situation the warning fire, as a measure of influence, may be opened several times as well"^[3]; the document names no military objective and no target inside the village at all. Of the 242 disarmed settlements 101 came under rifle, machine-gun and artillery fire, 16 under strikes from the air^[7]; by the count of historian E. F. Zhupikova, "104 one-pud bombs [about 1.7 tonnes] were dropped on the 16 auls where the leaders of the insurgents were hiding"^[9]. A one-pud aerial bomb is about 16 kilograms, the weight of a round of a modern 120 mm mortar; on average six to seven such bombs fell per aul. The aviation was directed by Petrozhitsky, chief of the district's air force, and historian T. U. Elbuzdukayeva lists the targets by name: "In the course of the operation the aircraft of the 3rd, and from 6 September also of the 5th aviation detachments delivered air strikes on the auls of Zumsoy, Dai, Tagir Khoy, Akki Bougi, Oshni, Khimoy, Nizheloy, Ragekhoy, Urus-Martan and Nozhay-Yurt"^[2]. What the "warning fire" looked like in a single aul can be seen from the dispatch on Achkhoy-Martan of 25 August 1925: "15 shrapnel rounds were fired at the aul, first four with a high burst, then to strike. After two Chechen women had been wounded, the inhabitants began to hand over their weapons"^[11]. Historian A. Yu. Lashkov writes of the strike on the aul of Dai: "Initially, because of heavy fog, the neighboring settlement of Chubakhkimeroy was mistakenly subjected to the air strike"^[12].

Through the resisting villages the troops moved in raids with house-to-house searches and arrests. The instruction on mass searches, issued for the operation by the staff of the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB), ordered houses to be cordoned off and everyone found in them to be detained and searched, and speaks of arrests in points 7 and 8: "All who counteract in one measure or another the successful conduct of the mass operation are brought to account and arrested", "Malicious concealers of weapons are arrested"; of what was taken during a search the same document says: "During searches and arrests only all correspondence is taken, including correspondence in the Arabic language, as well as all weapons found during the search"^[3]. The information department of the OGPU, in its "Survey of the Political Condition of the USSR for September 1925" stamped "Top Secret", summed up the operation with the words "On our side losses are 20 men"^[10], and reported nothing about the killed and wounded in the shelled and bombed auls. The count of losses for the operation as a whole is given by historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov from a journal publication of 1995: six killed civilians, 30 wounded, a further 12 killed assigned to the "bandits", with the troops' own losses at five killed and nine wounded^[7].

Disarming Chechnya, the troops of the USSR destroyed the villages that had not met the ultimatum, up to complete demolition: the aul of Khakmedy - more than 300 households - was destroyed entirely, in the aul of Dai 20 houses were destroyed, Urus-Martan stood for three days under artillery fire and air strikes. A surviving companion of imam Nazhmuddin Gotsinsky - the spiritual head of the resistance in Dagestan and Chechnya, whom the troops pursued into the mountains - related in 1936 in the Warsaw journal Severny Kavkaz: "Then the fire was transferred to the nearest auls, of which the aul of Khakmedy (more than 300 households) was completely destroyed"^[8]. The aul of Dai, the center of resistance of the fifth combat sector, historian A. Yu. Lashkov describes from the documents of the military archive: "From the shelling and bombings the aul of Dai suffered substantially: 20 houses turned out destroyed, there were a small number of human casualties"^[12]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "...the aul of Urus-Martan was subjected to artillery shelling and air strikes for three days, the aul of Dai was bombed three times, for two days artillery shelled the auls of the Zumsoy society"^[7].

Even before the operation the village assemblies together with the revkoms (unelected committees installed in place of elected Soviets - campaign C1176) drew up lists of the "vicious element" - inhabitants noted in robberies; historian E. F. Zhupikova writes: "They and their relatives bore material responsibility for all cases of theft on the territory of Chechnya"^[9] - the relatives paid for others' thefts by the fact of kinship and an entry in the list. One could leave the list only by an oath with an obligation to inform: "If the 'vicious element' took an oath that for a year he would not rob and would inform on thieves, he was struck from the list"^[9]. When the troops reached the mountains, the destroyed was counted by the same category: as the result of the bombing of 16 auls "119 houses of the 'vicious element' were blown up"^[9]; historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov confirm the number - "119 houses were blown up"^[7]: a house was blown up because its owner was entered in the list.

To get at imam Nazhmuddin Gotsinsky, who was sheltering in the mountains of Chechnya, the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) took old men from the villages and held them hostage under the threat of destroying the villages with artillery. Mikoyan, secretary of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party and one of the operation's organizers, described it himself: "to catch him, the Chekists invited to their quarters old men from the villages where he might be hiding and, declaring them hostages, warned them that if they did not say where Gotsinsky was, they would destroy the villages with artillery, and would arrest them and put them on trial. For a whole day they tried to persuade the old men, but all was without result. Then an aeroplane was sent to that district. They were terribly afraid of the aeroplane. Only after several shells had been fired at the village so that, without destruction of the houses, the inhabitants should feel its power, did the old men say in which gorge Gotsinsky was hiding"^[6]. The word "hostages" is also in the documents of the operation itself: on 4 September 1925 Mironov, head of the Chechen oblast department of the OGPU, reported: "I report: the population is giving up Nazhmudin. I am now conducting negotiations with the representatives. The matter is being conducted through the hostages I have released... Let aeroplanes appear at 15 hours, but not strike. For effect let some 6-7 of them come"^[1]. For the Sharoy district the count of hostages is known from the documents of the military archive: historian A. Yu. Lashkov writes that "the command of the military grouping demanded of the population of the Sharoy district the surrender of the well-known bandit Gotsinsky. In doing so, 40 men from among the honored elders were taken hostage. However, the demand to surrender Gotsinsky was not satisfied within the appointed time, and therefore the troops resorted to intensified repressions. In two days 22 puds of bombs [about 360 kilograms - like 22 rounds of a modern 120 mm mortar] were dropped on the district"^[12]. The surviving companion of Gotsinsky names a different number and adds what is not in the Soviet papers: from the destroyed aul of Khakmedy "105 hostages were taken", and the hostages were threatened with shooting - his account says: "the Bolsheviks wrote of the shooting of the hostages in the event of resistance in their proclamations"^[8]. The word "hostages" is not in the disarmament instruction of 4 August 1925, approved by the operation's commanders, - it allows only arrests of "influential persons of the aul" as an extreme measure: the hostage-taking was done over and above what was written, and its traces remained in the dispatches of the executors and the memoirs of an organizer.

On 8 September 1925 Soviet aviation dropped eight one-pud bombs - 16 kilograms each, like a round of a modern 120 mm mortar - on Nozhay-Yurt, to force the village to hand over Gibertiev, the former head of the district militia^[13]. Urus-Martan was coerced in the same way: historian A. Yu. Lashkov writes that after artillery fire and bomb strikes "the leadership of Urus-Martan yielded and handed over the bandits on 9 September"^[12]. Of the representatives of the local authorities the instruction on mass searches, issued for the operation by the staff of the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB), says: they are brought into the removal as those "obliged to point out the dwellings of persons subject to removal, as well as those persons (relatives and others) with whom the person subject to removal may be hiding"^[3] - the community itself was made the executor of the removal. The price of this demand is named by historian E. F. Zhupikova: "By force of the highland custom of hospitality, the population of Chechnya, even if it was hostile to the leaders of the insurgents and the chiefs of the bandits, could not hand them over to the authorities. Breaking the custom would have disgraced the highlander for many generations and would have threatened his clan with blood vengeance from the man he had handed over"^[9].

In the two months of the operation of 1925 the USSR arrested and shot the leaders of the resistance of Chechnya and Dagestan. Imam Nazhmuddin Gotsinsky, the spiritual head of the resistance in Dagestan and Chechnya, was arrested by the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) on 5 September 1925. His hiding place was given up by the old men held hostage in the Sharoy district under the threat of the shelling of their villages. On the same day Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU for the krai, and Volodin, member of the district's Revolutionary Military Council, reported to Moscow: "The operation in the Sharoy district has ended successfully. After 5 days of repressions and agent work, today at 14 hours a report was received through the aircraft that Gotsinsky has been taken"^[12]; he was arrested by an operational group of the GPU under the command of M. Ushaev^[7]. Historian T. U. Elbuzdukayeva writes: "N. Gotsinsky was urgently taken to Rostov-on-Don, where on 15 October 1925 he was sentenced to be shot"^[2]. Arrests are provided for by the disarmament instruction of 4 August 1925 as well - it allows "the conduct of arrests of influential persons of the aul, reactionarily disposed", with the proviso to resort to this measure "as an extreme one, with the observance of maximum tact"^[3]. Under shelling even the innocent surrendered: historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that in Urus-Martan, "after the artillery and aviation shelling of the settlement, the sheikhs Solsa-Haji Yandarov and Bilu-Haji Gaytayev surrendered to the authorities - soon, incidentally, released owing to their complete innocence"^[7].

The instruction on mass searches, issued for the operation by the staff of the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB), establishes that until the end of the investigation the arrested are concentrated at the staffs of the OGPU district groups, and of what follows point 19 says: "The procedure for conducting the investigation and the further routing of the arrested is provided for in the regulations on the troikas for the extrajudicial examination of cases"^[3]. The "Main Tasks of the Special Operational Groups of the OGPU", approved by Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU for the krai, Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, and Volodin, member of the district's Revolutionary Military Council, include the same procedure directly in the list of tasks: "The removal of the counter-revolutionary, bandit and other criminal anti-Soviet element... the registration of the same, the conduct of the investigation and the extrajudicial examination of their cases and their transportation to the place of destination"^[3]. Through this procedure passed 183 of the more than three hundred arrested in the course of the operation - the investigation of their cases ended in extrajudicial shooting^[7]. The OGPU had received the right of extrajudicial reprisal a year earlier - by a secret resolution of the Presidium of the TsIK of 9 May 1924 (campaign C1176); the operation's instruction applied it to the arrested.

The USSR shot nearly all those arrested in the course of the operation of 1925 - people already in the hands of the troops and the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB). Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "The total number of arrested exceeded 300. Of the total number of arrested, 105 were shot on the spot; against 183 an investigation was opened, which also ended in extrajudicial shooting; 21 were exiled"^[7]. Even the OGPU's own count found few "active" ones among them: the survey submitted to Stalin names 50 "active bandits and prominent counter-revolutionary figures", while "In all, 400 bandits and elements abetting them have been arrested"^[10] - those shot were mostly not leaders but rank-and-file detainees whose guilt was established by no court. So was killed the operation's chief prisoner as well: imam Nazhmuddin Gotsinsky - the spiritual head of the resistance in Dagestan and Chechnya, detained on 5 September 1925 and sentenced in Rostov-on-Don - was shot, in the words of a highlander emigre writing in the Paris journal Prométhée in 1930, "Il fut fusillé sans jugement dans les souterrains du Guépéou de Rostov" - without trial, in the cellars of the GPU in Rostov^[14].