Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936)

A "kulak" was what the colonizers called a peasant they deemed "well-off". In Chechnya officials entered a person into the "kulaks" without any trial, and the colonizer then stripped him of his rights. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "To limit the political influence of the kulaks such a measure was applied as deprivation (temporary or permanent) of voting rights. In 1926, 1.3% of the voters were thus barred from taking part in the elections, and in 1927 - already 4.5%"^[3]. The report on the inspection of the party organization of the Chechen Autonomous Oblast, sent on 7-9 March 1931 to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - the supreme organ of the occupation power of the RSFSR, states: "The lishentsy [people stripped of the vote] in the re-election campaign of 1928/29 numbered 11,279 people, on average 6.8% across the oblast; in some settlements of the okrugs the percentage reached 30, and in the Galanchozh okrug up to 40%"^[5]. In January 1930 the leadership of the krai committee of the party (the "North Caucasus kraikom VKP(b)"), preparing a resolution on the expulsion of peasant families, wrote into the draft: "subject to expulsion are exclusively those deprived of voting rights, and also kulaks who by chance have not been deprived of voting rights"^[2]. Officials drew up the lists of "kulaks" at random, and the party's own oversight admitted it. Larin, chairman of the North Caucasus krai control commission, reported in February 1930: in Avtury and Shali, "of the 18 households listed for individual taxation [a punitive higher tax], 4 households turned out to be not kulak at all: one poor-peasant and three middle-peasant"; in Kurchaloy 12 poor-peasant and 7 middle-peasant households were entered into the "kulak list", while 89 households that the colonizer himself counted as well-off in his own tax rolls did not make it into the "kulak list"^[6]. Larin also named the purpose of the "grain assignments" - the quotas of grain the colonizer ordered the auls to hand over: "The aim was benign: to introduce stratification into the mountain auls by these assignments, but what came of it was exactly the opposite"^[6]. Peasants entered as "kulaks" and middle peasants were put on trial by the colonizer for failure to deliver grain and pay taxes - and even the imperial courts found no guilt in those cases: by Larin's count, 40% ended in what amounted to acquittal. Up to November 1929 "265 cases against kulaks were heard, and 132 against middle peasants"; of the 265 cases against "kulaks", "30 were acquitted and 26 sentenced conditionally", another 58 people received forced labor, and such verdicts Larin also counted among the acquittals: "40% were acquitted"^[6]. The empire vetted even its own village soviets - the organs it had planted in the auls in place of Chechen self-government - and expelled from them Chechens with the "wrong" past. Larin reported: "In 5 mountain okrugs, 215 persons of clearly alien element have been found in the composition of the village soviets. There are kulaks, and traders, and former elders, and former policemen, and former bandits, and clergy"; the resolution of the oblast party conference, which had proclaimed "the complete cleansing of the composition of the village soviets from alien and kulak elements", he corrected: "To put it mildly, that was said incautiously"^[6]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "If in 1928 62 kulaks were repressed across the whole of Chechnya, a year later the number of the repressed reached 356 people... As a result of these repressions, by the end of 1931 the number of kulak households in Chechnya had shrunk threefold compared to 1929"^[3]. Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District, who fought against the insurgent Chechens, in his report to the krai committee of the party named among the causes of the uprising "the incorrect disenfranchisement of middle peasants, and in a number of cases of poor peasants as well", which in the Itum-Kali okrug had become mass practice^[5].

The colonizer outlawed the Chechen courts by legislative acts and installed its own judicial system. Until 1927 the sharia courts - courts of Islamic law - were the judicial system of the Chechen people and heard all its cases: criminal, land, labor and family. The occupation power at first recognized the Chechen court: in April 1921 the congress of Soviets of the Mountain Republic - the Soviet autonomy into which the empire had then included Chechnya - resolved to recognize the sharia court system. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov call this "a manifest (and temporary) concession to the Muslim clergy"^[3]. Just a month later, in May 1921, the leadership of that same republic stripped the sharia courts of budget money and of the support of its organs^[3]. But the courts went on working. In December 1925 the party leadership in Chechnya set out to discredit them, and, as historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write, that attempt "failed completely"^[3]. And in 1927 "the sharia courts were curtailed in their rights by an act of will, at the direct demand of the procurator of the Supreme Court of the USSR... Criminal and land cases and labor disputes were removed from their competence, state financing was terminated, and Soviet organs were directly forbidden to apply to the sharia courts"^[3]. In their place the colonizer installed its own organs: historian K. G. Dendiev writes that in the Chechen Autonomous Oblast "the all-Union judicial system is introduced, with the subsequent abolition of sharia legal proceedings"^[7]. Despite this, the Chechens preferred to settle disputed cases in their own courts. Larin, chairman of the North Caucasus krai control commission, reported in February 1930 that in the Urus-Martan okrug "land disputes are resolved not in the judicial-land commissions" but before the aul elders, of whose influence he said: it is "still not undermined to any more or less significant degree"^[6]. In December 1929 the insurgents in Benoy established their own organ of power and sent their demands to Moscow. The fourth point there read: "Abolish the 'people's' courts introduced by order from above, and restore the sharia organs of justice"; the fifth - "End the interference of regional leaders and figures of the central organs of power in the internal affairs of the 'Chechen Autonomous Oblast' and restore the powers of political decision of the Chechen Congress"^[7].

The colonizer took from the Chechen clergy the donations of their congregations and closed their houses of worship. In the autumn of 1929 in Goity the colonizers were confiscating a mosque over an unfulfilled "grain assignment" - a quota of grain owed to the empire; Shita Istamulov, leader of the uprising in Shali, spoke of it: "Look what an outrage they are committing in Goity; they have announced: until you deliver the grain, we will take away the mosque for that time. What good is this, when the Chechen people is being robbed of its last faith..."^[7]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that in 1929 in the Nadterechny district "an experiment begins in removing the mullahs from the distribution of the voluntary donations of Muslims for the benefit of the poor and the clergy - the zakat" - the empire handed the distribution over to its own peasant mutual-aid committees^[3]. The colonizer destroyed the greater part of the mosques of Chechnya - the before-and-after count is given by historian K. G. Dendiev: before the Russian revolution Chechnya had "2,675 mosques, 60 thousand murids [disciples of sheikhs], members of various religious organizations, 38 sheikhs, 850 mullahs and 140 religious schools", - and the count of mid-1937: "401 mosques, not counting the kub ones [small neighborhood mosques]", at which "406 mullahs worked"^[7]. Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District, in the district command's report to the krai committee of the party (the "North Caucasus kraikom VKP(b)") on the results of the military operation of spring 1930, named the closing of mosques on the colonizers' orders among the causes for which the Chechen auls had risen in arms^[5].

By prohibitive acts of 1925-1929 the Russian colonizer destroyed the children's schools of the Chechen people. The khyuzhar is the elementary school at the mosque: a mullah (clergyman) or a qadi (judge of Islamic law) taught children to read the Quran, to write in Arabic and to count; no permit was needed to open one, and the school lived on parents' money and believers' donations^[8]. Such a school stood in nearly every settlement, and the people had no other. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "Literally at every mosque there operated schools teaching the Arabic language and script, as well as the basics of arithmetic"^[3]; and of the first Soviet years: "while religious schools at the mosques existed in the overwhelming majority of settlements, the secular school had yet to be created anew, since the few 'highlander' schools that had existed in the Terek oblast before the revolution had closed"^[3]. The ministries of internal affairs and of education of the RSFSR, by a secret instruction on the teaching of the Muslim creed of 21 August 1925, permitted the Muslim creed to be taught "only in mosques" and "exclusively to persons who have reached the age of 14", with a separate permit from the local imperial organ for each case and with particulars on every teacher - down to his social estate before the revolution; as for the teaching of general subjects under the guise of the creed, the ministries ordered it watched for and prevented^[9]. For a school that took children and taught them writing and counting, this was a ban on working. The Chechens did not submit and went on building schools. Nagayev, chairman of the krai commission that inspected the Chechen oblast, in a secret memorandum to the presidium of the North Caucasus krai executive committee of 4 August 1928 cited the tally: on 1 January 1927 Chechnya had 138 Arabic schools with 2,068 pupils, on 1 January 1928 - 180 schools with three thousand pupils, against 105 Soviet schools; the growth of the Arabic schools Nagayev called "the most serious political question"^[5]. The Chechens also thwarted closures by force - Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "attempts to close the schools at the mosques by force provoked protests of the population, often accompanied by a refusal to build Soviet schools, as happened in the auls of Gudermes and Achkhoy-Martan"^[3]. The supreme organ of the occupation power and the government of the RSFSR, by the resolution "On religious associations" of 8 April 1929, forbade religious associations to hold children's gatherings, groups and circles "for the teaching of religion" and resolved: "The teaching of any religious creeds whatsoever in state, public and private educational and upbringing institutions is not permitted"^[10]. Displacing the khyuzhar at once did not succeed: by May 1930, 168 religious schools were still operating in Chechnya and Ingushetia^[3]. In the khyuzhar's place the USSR installed its own school and shifted it to the Russian language - Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "If in the 1928/29 school year 79.8% of all schoolchildren in Chechnya were taught in their native language, in 1930/31 it was already only half"^[3]. Historian K. G. Dendiev places the closing of the religious schools in one row with the imposition of income tax on the mullahs, the abolition of the sharia courts and the handover of mosques "for economic needs"^[7]; the colonizer also handed over the zakat - the Muslims' donations on which the school lived - from the mullahs to its own committees in 1929.

The USSR took livestock and land from the Chechen peasants. In one year of the forced merging of households into kolkhozes ("collectivization") Chechnya lost 184 thousand head of livestock. The report on the inspection of the party organization of the Chechen Autonomous Oblast, sent on 7-9 March 1931 to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) - the supreme organ of the occupation power of the RSFSR, carries a table of oblast statistics: total livestock in the oblast in 1929 - 993,200 head, in 1930 - 809,063. The report admits: "The growth of livestock numbers in all categories that had begun in 1929 found no continuation in 1930; on the contrary, a significant decline in numbers occurred, sparing only the horses"^[5] - and the cause is named right there: the decline occurred "chiefly in the spring of 1930, when the kulaks, offering frenzied resistance to the growth of kolkhoz construction, predatorily destroyed the livestock"^[5]. That is how the colonizers described the peasants' actions: people slaughtered their own livestock rather than hand it over to the kolkhozes. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov put the loss higher still: "Forced to join the kolkhoz, the peasants strove to shelter at least part of their household from socialization, and if that failed, simply rid themselves of it. Thus collectivization was accompanied by a sharp reduction of livestock numbers - in the single year 1930 they shrank in Chechnya by almost 300 thousand head"^[3]. The Central Committee of the party (the "TsK VKP(b)") likewise admitted that the livestock was being taken by force: in the resolution "On the forced socialization of livestock" of 26 March 1932 it recorded that "in a number of districts a practice is observed of socializing the cows and small livestock of individual kolkhoz members by in fact coercive methods", and demanded that such attempts be "cut short"^[11]. The colonizer took land from the Nokhchi as well. In the redistribution the Russians called "land settlement", write Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov, "in the Vedeno, Itum-Kali and Shatoy okrugs about 1.5 thousand hectares of land were seized from the kulaks and the mosques"^[3]. The directive to "curtail" the Chechen peasants declared well-off when seizing land stands in the same VTsIK report^[5].

The USSR ruined the Chechen peasants with taxes and forced deliveries of grain and meat. Officials taxed those entered as "kulaks" at a higher rate by a special list ("individual taxation"), and Larin, chairman of the North Caucasus krai control commission, held in February 1930 that too few households made the lists: in the Vedeno okrug, "of 8,513 households only 80 households were taxed on the individual basis"; in Tsentoroy "of 464 households, 406 are exempted from the unified agricultural tax", in Belgatoy 295 of 335, in Dargo 439 of 501. The tax struck at random, to the point of absurdity - of the village of Day Larin said: "a kulak in Day was assessed at 4 kopecks, while a Komsomol member there was assessed at 4 rubles 39 kopecks"^[6]. The colonizer laid "grain assignments" - delivery quotas of grain - on the mountain auls, though there was hardly any grain there. Larin reported: the oblast committee of the party gave the Nozhay-Yurt okrug an assignment of 15,000 poods - about 240 tonnes of grain; further in Larin: "and on the spot they raise it to 25,000, and on the single aul of Benoy, where there are hardly 5 thousand poods to be had at all, fall 5 thousand poods"; for non-delivery the colonizers inventoried property for confiscation and imposed fines - in Shali, Larin reported, "a decision was passed to fine 60 households"^[6]. In 1932, write historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov, on top of the confiscated livestock "a meat procurement plan was also handed down, which meant, in essence, the confiscation of a significant part of the livestock"^[3]. The colonizer taxed the clergy as well: historian K. G. Dendiev places the imposition of income tax on the mullahs as the first step of their displacement from the life of Chechnya^[7].

From 1930 to 1936 the USSR expelled peasant families from Chechnya by the orders and lists of the krai committee of the party (the "North Caucasus kraikom VKP(b)"), of the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) and of the NKVD that replaced it. In January 1930 the leadership of the krai committee of the party, apportioning among the okrugs the expulsion of 20 thousand households of peasants declared well-off, assigned Chechnya 500 households; a household was expelled whole - the family with all its members^[2]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write of the same expulsions counting people, not households: "At the beginning of 1930, 1,500 peasants declared kulaks are expelled from Chechnya"^[3]. Historian G. I. Kakagasanov gives, from published documents, the count for the first half of 1935 - 1,553 families were expelled from the national districts of the North Caucasus krai, and he specifies: "Of these, 473 families (2,112 people) were expelled from Chechnya" - four to five people per family^[12]; for 1935 the count of Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov is briefer: "in 1935, 450 kulak families were expelled from Checheno-Ingushetia, another thousand families were expelled from Chechnya and Dagestan in 1936"^[3]. On 22 May 1936 the head of the NKVD of the USSR Yagoda, by telegram No. 56379, ordered Dagin, head of the krai NKVD directorate: "to carry out the resettlement beyond the borders of the krai" of five hundred peasant households from the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Oblast and five hundred from Dagestan, finishing "no later than October 1936". In the telegram this thousand families is divided between the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (today's Uzbekistan) and the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (today's Kyrgyzstan). Yagoda also wrote the norms into the telegram: belongings per family - "of a total weight up to thirty poods per family" [about 490 kilograms], loading "from 32 to 35 people" per railcar; able-bodied men he permitted to be arrested "10 days before their dispatch" - "with the aim of preventing their flight"^[13].

The Nokhchi rose in arms three times against the forced merging of households into kolkhozes ("collectivization"), and all three times the USSR sent troops against the auls. In December 1929 Shali, Goity and Benoy revolted. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, names the leaders of the uprising: in Shali it was headed by Shita Istamulov, in Goity - by Akhmat-Mullah and Kuriev, in Benoy - by Yaroch and Khodzhas. Shita Istamulov explained why he was taking up arms: "we cannot look on while the Chechens' grain is taken away, while they are ruined and their last property is taken. Fines, searches - if the authorities keep all this up, they will force me to come out with weapon in hand... If we keep looking on at this, they will take everything, down to your last trousers, and kill you naked. Better to die, at least you will know you will be buried in trousers"^[7]. Avtorkhanov writes of the first days of the uprising: "The insurgents occupied all the village and district institutions, burned the state archives, arrested the district authorities, including the chiefs of the GPU [the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB], in Benoy they also seized the oil fields, and established a provisional people's power"^[4]. The insurgents sent their demands to Moscow. As the first point they demanded "Stop the unlawful confiscation of peasant property", as the second - "End the trial-less arrests of peasants", as the third - "Recall the heads of the GPU from Chechnya, replacing them with a civil administration"; by two more points - to abolish the "people's" courts introduced by the Soviet power, with the return of sharia justice, and to restore the powers of the Chechen Congress. They agreed to lay down arms if these conditions were met^[7]. The first attempts of the Soviet troops to seize the auls failed - Shali and Goity fought them off; the staff of the North Caucasus Military District admitted in its memorandum on the first operation of 30 March 1930 that "the successful armed resistance to the local authorities in the auls of Shali and Goity during the seizure of inventoried property served as the final push" toward calling in field units^[5]. The OGPU recorded in its survey of the political condition of the USSR for December 1929: on 7 December "two teips [clans] of the aul of Goity, led by the son of Sheikh Khadzhiev, shut themselves in their quarters, posting an armed guard", and "on 8 December in the village of Shali, over the inventorying of the property of kulaks [peasants declared well-off], the militia was disarmed"; the OGPU calls Shita Istamulov "the former Minister of War of the government of Uzun-Haji" [the North Caucasus emirate of 1919-1920]; the arrest count in the same survey: "220 people arrested in Shali and 144 in Goity. The leaders of the Shali and Goity outbreaks Istamulov, Khadzhiev and Kuriev have gone into hiding"^[14]. The Russian command moved against the peasants, disarmed four years earlier, a detachment formed in Grozny. At its head stood Burichenko, former head of the Vladikavkaz infantry school. After the first failures the command reinforced the detachment with battalions, an artillery divizion and a "detachment of airplanes". On 11 December the troops seized Shali, on the morning of 12 December - Goity, and from 20 to 27 December they attacked the mountain auls of Benoy, Tsentoroy and Zandak. The staff memorandum states: "in the operation as a whole there took part, together with the units of the VOGPU [OGPU troops], 1,904 fighters with 75 heavy and light machine guns"; artillery pieces and seven airplanes are named there as well; the outcome, in the same document: "Over the operation 450 bandits were seized. Up to 60 people killed and wounded"; the troops' losses - 43 men, of them 21 killed or dead of wounds^[5]. On the end of the uprising the sources diverge: in the staff memorandum the seizure of Shali and Goity is dated 11 and 12 December 1929, while the historians place the fall of both centers in mid-January 1930; of the leaders' fate some sources write that they escaped, others - that the insurgent staff in Goity perished^[4]. In the spring of 1930 the mountain okrugs rose again, and the Soviet troops again marched on the auls, now in greater force. The occupation command of the district admitted the scale of the outbreak in its report to the krai committee of the party (the "kraikom VKP(b)"): "In Chechnya, as in Karachay, we had not isolated bandit counter-revolutionary outbreaks, but a direct uprising of entire districts (Galanchozh), in which almost the whole population took part in the armed action"^[5]. By the district staff's memorandum on the second operation in Chechnya, by 14 March rifle battalions with batteries, cavalry divizions and an aviation flight had been massed into Chechnya: "in all, 3,920 fighters with 16 [artillery] pieces were drawn into the operation"^[5]. By the final report of Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the district, to the krai committee of the party, 1,500 units of weapons were seized across Chechnya, 122 people arrested, 19 insurgents killed^[5]. Avtorkhanov describes the end of the march on Benoy: "At the end of March 1930 Belov, having received fresh units from Transcaucasia, unfolded a large mountain offensive with the task of taking the insurgents' last point - Benoy. After two months of heavy fighting and great losses, in April 1930, Belov entered Benoy, but found not a single inhabitant in the aul: all of them, including women and children, had evacuated further into the mountain wilds. The victor Belov sent envoys to the insurgents with an offer of honorable peace: to all who voluntarily returned to the aul with the surrender of weapons, an amnesty was declared. The insurgents replied that they would return to their auls only when Belov left with his troops"^[4]. In March 1932 the Nozhay-Yurt district revolted; the uprising was led by Mutsu Shamilev (the Nokhchi know him as Motsu of Shuani), Ibragim Ninakhadzhiev, Usman Ushkhaev, Khusein Istamulov and Dada Kebetov; on 20 March, 300-400 insurgents attacked the oil extraction site on Mount Sterch-Kertch, another 700-800 dug in on the mountain ridge, covering the uprising's district from the direction of Khasav-Yurt, a town in neighboring Dagestan^[3]. Kashirin, commander of the occupation troops of the district, in a memorandum of 31 March 1932 reported to the Minister of War of the USSR Voroshilov: "The band is headed by a certain 'imam' Mutsu from the aul of Shuani"^[5]. For nine days the district remained in the insurgents' hands. Units of the 28th Mountain Rifle Division and the national cavalry regiment approached the district on 26-27 March, fighting began at midday on 28 March, and by 29 March the Soviet troops had seized the district. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "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 and 30 wounded"^[3].

Hostages figured as a separate accounting line in the final report on the punitive operation of 1930: Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District, reported to the krai committee of the party (the "kraikom VKP(b)") verbatim: "Seized across Chechnya: of active counter-revolutionary and bandit element, 122 people, of them ringleaders - leaders of the movement - 9; ringleaders who appeared voluntarily - 7; hostages - 35. Rank-and-file participants who appeared voluntarily are not counted, they number hundreds"^[5]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov quote this line of the report: among those arrested in the course of the operation - "leaders of the insurgent movement - 9, hostages - 35"^[3]. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, described why the Chekists took hostages and what awaited them: "To the old tsarist system of taking 'amanats' (hostages) to force 'bandits' to surrender the Chekists resorted constantly, and on a wider scale", but "in the history of Soviet Checheno-Ingushetia there was not a single case of the 'amanats' being released when the 'bandit' appeared"; of the fate of both Avtorkhanov writes: the man who appeared voluntarily, "contrary to the solemn promise to spare his life, - was shot, while the 'amanats' were exiled to Siberia, including women and children"^[4].

The USSR arrested, exiled, disenfranchised and hounded the authorities of the Chechen people - the sheikhs, the mullahs, the revered elders. The national commission of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party resolved on 28 June 1927: "The sheikhs in most cases are themselves kulaks and traders... they not only economically enserf the poor and middle peasants but, using the religious prejudices of the masses, exercise their political influence as a kulak stratum over a significant part of the toiling masses"^[15] - thus the party designated the people's spiritual mentors "kulaks", class enemies. In the summer of 1927 the USSR broke off relations with Great Britain and expected war - and 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, in his secret report for 1927 tied the arrests to the war scare: "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", - and explained the operation thus: "The c/r [counter-revolutionary] propaganda of the clergy, which was shaping a panicky-defeatist mood in the Chechen peasantry, obliged our organ to be forestalled into a mass operation against the most active religious top layer. Rarely subjected to repressions and confident in the strength of his influence over the broad public - the Chechen mullah found himself caught unawares. The removal of 16 reactionary representatives of the Chechen religious world therefore made an enormous impression on him and for a time paralyzed his activity"^[1]; "removal" was what the empire called a person's arrest. Yevdokimov measured success by the disintegration of the spiritual stratum: "a whole series of mullahs began to renounce their rank (up to 30 cases), and a number of religious authorities, compromised by a/s [anti-Soviet] sabotage in the past, to hide from the authorities"^[1]. The Chechens answered with intercession, and the report admits: "the campaign for organizing public petitions on behalf of the arrested had significant success"^[1]. Among those under arrest was Sheikh Gaysumov of Shali - one of the most revered men of Chechnya; Yevdokimov wrote: "The exception was the sect of Sheikh Gaysumov, whose activists, in connection with the latter's arrest, acted very energetically in the field of mobilizing public sympathy"^[1]. The assembly of the village of Shali - 800 people - vouched for the arrested man: "to confirm that citizen Gopsumov Sungant [thus is Gaysumov recorded in the document], aged 107, has been an honored elder in the present village and has never been noted in anything discreditable, either criminal or political"^[5]; Nagayev, inspector of the North Caucasus krai executive committee, filed this assembly into his report as evidence - "in the person of these 'assemblies', led by the kulaks and the clergy, the outlines of a real organization opposing our party are beginning to crystallize"^[5]. The empire entered the intercession for an old man into its own file of incriminating material. In the autumn of 1927 the Prague journal "Volnye Gortsy" ["The Free Highlanders"] printed a letter from the Caucasus about the same wave: "The Bolsheviks, striking the pose of saviors of our national freedom, are in fact little by little killing all the living forces in the country, tearing from our ranks the most capable - our intellectual forces"; "Such an explosion of new terror took place here after the Anglo-Soviet rupture. Numerous arrests of the intelligentsia, the clergy and even whole families took place in almost every locality on the highlanders' territory. The GPU is working flat out"^[16]. The OGPU in the same report named the next target as well: "the national-democratic movement appears to us as that new kind of highlander c/r [counter-revolution] with which we shall have to contend in the coming years and months"^[1]. The empire struck at the authorities' rights as well: at the elections of 1928/29 in the Chechen Autonomous Oblast it disenfranchised 11,279 people, and in the breakdown of the lishentsy stand the lines: "Servants of religious cult, 1,569" and "Members of lishentsy families, 5,658"^[5]. By 1930 the colonizer had counted the whole stratum head by head - the report on the inspection of the oblast party organization, sent in March 1931 to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - the supreme organ of the occupation power of the RSFSR, states: "The strength of the mullahs in the Chechen aul is still enormous. On 1 May 1930 there were in Chechnya... communal mullahs - 450, kub mullahs - 800, sheikhs - 34... descendants of Muhammad and other religious authorities - 250, folk healers - 150"; the conclusion, in the same place: "In order to wage a struggle against such a huge army of mullahs, sheikhs and the like, it is necessary to have trained cadres"^[5]. In the autumn of 1931, after the killing by the Chekists of Shita Istamulov - leader of the 1929 uprising in Shali, - the arrests of the authorities became mass; the Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, writes: the killing "was the beginning of a large GPU operation in Chechnya for the liquidation of 'kulak-counter-revolutionary elements and mullah-nationalist ideologues'"^[4]. The Grozny and Rostov krai GPU, Avtorkhanov writes, set the arrest quotas, and the government of the USSR confirmed those quotas^[4].

The USSR fought the auls that revolted in December 1929 not only with troops but with false promises; the Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and wrote in emigration, described this mechanism. For the "peaceful liquidation" of the uprising a government delegation arrived from Moscow - it included Nikolayeva, member of the Central Committee of the union party (the "TsK VKP(b)"), and Ryskulov, deputy head of the government of the RSFSR, - and the "peace commission" of religious authorities it created declared to the insurgents in Shali: "responsibility for the events that have occurred lies exclusively with the local functionaries, who acted contrary to the directives of the party and the government", and in the name of the government delegation an address to the Chechen people was read out: "the internal Chechen affairs will henceforth be decided by the Chechen people itself"^[4]. The insurgents, Avtorkhanov writes, "found these explanations satisfactory and agreed to return to their homes"; the GPU detachment (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) that arrived next spent three days arresting local Soviet functionaries - just as had been promised; Avtorkhanov continues: "and toward one o'clock in the morning of the fourth day they surrounded the house of the former leader of the insurgents, Shita Istamulov"^[4]. The seizure failed - the Chechens fought Shita Istamulov free; Avtorkhanov writes: "To the ultimatum to surrender without a fight, however, Shita and his brother Hasan replied with fire. Part of Shita's house was engulfed in flames and Hasan gravely wounded when, toward dawn, help arrived: about a hundred armed Chechen horsemen surrounded the very part of the GPU troops that had invested Shita's house. After perhaps an hour of hand-to-hand fighting the GPU detachment, numbering up to 150 men, was almost entirely destroyed"^[4]. Avtorkhanov continues: "Freed by his friends, Shita Istamulov called all Chechens to a 'holy war' for the restoration of the 'Imamate of Shamil' and the expulsion of the 'infidels' from the Caucasus. Following this call, Shali, Goity and Benoy rose again"^[4]. The second deception was the amnesty; Avtorkhanov writes: "To all participants of the uprising, including the leaders of the uprising, an amnesty was declared in the name of the central government" - Shita Istamulov returned to Shali and "on instructions from above" was even appointed chairman of the Shali rural consumers' society (a cooperative for manufactured goods)^[4]. Avtorkhanov describes the denouement thus: in the autumn of 1931 Shita Istamulov "was summoned to Baklanov, head of the district GPU, to be handed the official act of amnesty from Moscow. Handing him the act with one hand, Baklanov with the other, from under the counter, emptied an entire Mauser clip into him. The gravely wounded Istamulov managed to stab the treacherous Baklanov to death with his dagger. The outside guard finished Istamulov off"^[4].

The OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) fabricated the "Chechen nationalist center" - an underground organization that did not exist - and convicted thousands of Chechens in the case. Thus the empire "explained" the uprisings against the forced merging of households into kolkhozes ("collectivization"): it was not hunger and devastation that raised the people, but a secret conspiracy. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, described the mechanism of the fabrication: "The logic of the Chekists suggested that the culprits and organizers of all the anti-Soviet uprisings should be sought in some single 'nationalist center', into which, undoubtedly, by the same logic, representatives of the internal and foreign Chechen emigration must belong"^[4]. The work, by his words, was taken up by the krai organ of the OGPU under Kursky and Fedotov and the Chechen oblast department of the OGPU under Kraft: "They created this 'counter-revolutionary nationalist center' so skillfully and plausibly that even many of the Chechens believed in its existence"^[4]. The "evidence" was letters in the name of the Chechen émigré, oil industrialist Tapa Chermoev - with calls to prepare an uprising; they came to Chechen public figures in Grozny from Istanbul, Paris and London through intermediaries whom the OGPU had obliged to hand the letters over to it. Avtorkhanov concludes: "the version of Chermoev's letters was a lie, and the letters themselves - forgeries of the OGPU. But it was precisely these letters that served as 'material evidence' against the 'nationalist center'"^[4]. In the autumn of 1932 the OGPU arrested the entire "group" of the addressees, followed by mass arrests across the Gudermes and Nozhay-Yurt districts - the very one that had revolted against the kolkhozes in March 1932; Avtorkhanov writes: "In all, up to 3 thousand people were arrested in the case of the 'Chechen nationalist center'. The arrested were charged with creating a 'counter-revolutionary nationalist center of Chechnya for the preparation and carrying out of an armed uprising'"^[4]. There was no trial - Avtorkhanov writes: "Almost all the arrested were convicted through the collegium of the GPU. Of the members of the 'center', Abdulkadirov, Shamilev, Kurbanov, Motsa-Hadji Sotaev and Beymurzaev were shot. Others received 10 years each. How many of the rank and file were shot is impossible to establish"^[4]. With the fabricated case the empire justified itself publicly as well: Yevdokimov, secretary of the krai committee of the party, at the krai party conference of 1934 cited "the letters of the millionaire Chermoev" as proof of the preparation of an uprising with the money and weapons of the Western powers^[4]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov confirm the scale: repression "in connection with the case of the so-called 'Chechen nationalist center'" befell, "by some data, up to 3 thousand people"^[3].

The OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) passed sentences on arrested Chechens by "troikas" - commissions of three: without trial, without defense counsel, up to execution by shooting. In Chechnya the extrajudicial procedure had operated since the 1920s: Kraft served as deputy head of the Chechen oblast department of the GPU - the oblast link of the political police - and worked with troikas as early as 1924: on 20 August the leadership of the Chechen oblast executive committee, on his report, resolved "to deem necessary the extension of the term of functioning of the troika for extrajudicial hearing by two months"^[7]. 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" - "kulaks" was what the colonizers called peasants they themselves declared well-off^[2]. Under this order the OGPU created troikas: cases in them were examined without trial, and the panel was made up of representatives of the krai committee of the party, of the procuracy, and Chekists^[7]. The troikas received the cases of the "first category" - the peasants whom the supreme organ of the occupation power (the "Politburo of the TsK VKP(b)"), by its secret resolution of 30 January 1930, had consigned to concentration camps, up to execution by shooting^[2]. In the autumn of 1931, after the killing by the Chekists of Shita Istamulov - leader of the 1929 uprising in Shali, - the GPU carried out a wave of mass arrests across Chechnya. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, writes of the trial of the arrested: "The arrested were convicted by an extraordinary 'troika' of the GPU specially created for the purpose, chaired by its chief G. Kraft", and "few of them ever returned to freedom"^[4]. The count of the arrested diverges among the sources: the historians give up to 35 thousand, while by the OGPU's own memorandum of 31 July 1931, 20,230 people passed through the extrajudicial troikas of the whole North Caucasus krai in 1930^[2]. The troika worked after the March 1932 uprising in the Nozhay-Yurt district of Chechnya as well: Yevdokimov, head of the OGPU for the North Caucasus krai, at a secret conference of the secretaries of the national oblast committees of the party in Rostov on 15 December 1932, reported the tally of the Chekists' "work" on the results of the uprising: "...745, of them 386 screened out, 359 brought before the troika, 100 people sentenced to 10 down to 3 years, 188 conditionally, 166 released"^[7].

The USSR shot arrested Chechens - including captured leaders of the uprisings. In March 1932 the Nozhay-Yurt district of Chechnya revolted against the forced merging of households into kolkhozes ("collectivization"); historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "The five captured leaders of the uprising were soon shot"^[3]. Next the Chekists came for the clergy - Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov continue: "Arrests befell some well-known Chechen sheikhs, and Kana-Sheikh Khantiev was shot in April 1933"^[3]. Kana-Sheikh Khantiev was a spiritual mentor of Muslims (a sheikh) from the village of Lakha-Nevre, today's Nadterechnoye; researcher A. Dukhaev, quoted by historian K. G. Dendiev, writes of him: "He was arrested for the last time on 17 March 1933, at the age of 85... and on 9 April of the same year sentenced to the supreme measure of punishment. The sentence was carried out on 10 May 1933. In 1990 Kana-Sheikh Khantiev was rehabilitated"^[7]. The sources diverge on the date of the execution: April or 10 May 1933. The count of those shot is not limited to the top: the Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, writes that in the case of the "Chechen nationalist center", fabricated by the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB), rank-and-file people were shot as well - how many, it is impossible to establish^[4].