The Great Terror in Chechen-Ingushetia (1937-1940)

The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, writes: "At the beginning of October 1937, accompanied by a large Chekist staff, there arrived in Chechen-Ingushetia a candidate member of the Politburo, chairman of the Party Collegium of the KPK under the TsK and Yezhov's deputy – Shkiryatov"^[5]. Shkiryatov convened an enlarged plenum of the oblast committee of the party in the Lenin House of Culture in Grozny - by the archival protocols the plenum ran on 8-10 October 1937, with 194 participants^[3] - and summoned there also the senior officials of the city and the districts. Avtorkhanov continues: "Shkiryatov gave the order to arrest all Chechens and Ingush who were members of the Chechen-Ingush oblast committee"^[5]. The Chekists arrested them right there, in the hall of the plenum. Avtorkhanov writes of what followed: "Then Shkiryatov's order was extended to all Chechen-Ingush officials, from the chairman of the republic's government down to the chairman of a village soviet"^[5]. In October and November 1937 the NKVD (a predecessor of today's FSB) arrested Ali Gorchkhanov, chairman of the government of the republic; Abdul-Khalim Salamov, his deputy; Khasi Vakhayev, second secretary of the oblast committee; Magomed Mamakayev, head of the culture and propaganda department of the oblast committee; Khamid Okuyev, People's Commissar (minister) of education; Musa Khaniev, chairman of the Supreme Court; Khasan Mekhtiev, prosecutor of the republic; and Said Baduev, chairman of the Union of Soviet Writers. Avtorkhanov writes also of the lower floors: "Arrested were also the chairmen of the district executive committees (in the Chechen-Ingush republic there were up to 28 districts), almost all chairmen of village Soviets, of kolkhozes, and their party organizers"^[5]. Of the 23 heads of the district NKVD departments only Goytiev was a Chechen, and the NKVD arrested him too. The NKVD arrested, and the party organs removed from office - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "In all, in October 1937, 30 of the 76 members and candidate members of the Chechen-Ingush obkom were repressed, including all the Chechens and Ingush; 20 of the 28 secretaries of district party committees; 77 members of district committees and 192 senior officials of the rural districts of the republic"^[4]; in 1938 the colonizer removed almost all heads of the district land departments, 19 chairmen of district executive committees and 22 secretaries of district committees^[4].

From the summer of 1937 to November 1938 the NKVD (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) arrested people in the republic by the categories and numbers assigned in operational order No. 00447 of Yezhov, the People's Commissar (minister) of Internal Affairs of the USSR, of 30 July 1937. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, described the beginning of the operation: "On the night of 31 July to 1 August 1937, by lists drawn up beforehand by the NKVD, the so-called 'general operation for the removal of anti-Soviet elements' was carried out across all auls and districts"; the Chekists hauled the arrested to Grozny - to the central garage of "Grozneft", to the Stalin club, to the pre-trial detention house of the republic's militia^[5]. Avtorkhanov names "up to 14 thousand people" arrested in the first wave; the published operational summary on the course of the operation gives, for mid-August, about 2.4 thousand arrested across the whole republic, divided in it by the assigned categories: 888 "kulaks" (peasants whom the colonizer deemed "well-off"), 831 "criminals", 682 of the "counter-revolutionary element"^[3]. Gridasov, head of the Gudermes district department of the NKVD, answered an officer who asked how to arrest a man when there was no material on him: "Material will always be found, so long as he wears a Caucasian hat!"^[5]. The arrests went on until November 1938: in the autumn of 1937 Moscow raised the number assigned to the republic to 3,200 people, and on 1 March 1938 assigned a new one - 10,108 people, of whom the troika convicted 6,767^[3]. On 8 September 1937 the newspaper "Pravda" printed an article by its special correspondent Kuzovkin under the headline: "The Bourgeois-Nationalist Tangle in Chechen-Ingushetia"^[3]. Avtorkhanov relates its content: the author of the article "proved that in Chechen-Ingushetia 'bourgeois nationalists' sit in the party leadership and at the head of the government, leading the Chechen-Ingush people down an anti-Soviet path", and the newspaper and the author called on a judge not named by name: "to untangle the bourgeois-nationalist tangle to the end"^[5]. Avtorkhanov writes of what the investigators manufactured out of the arrested: "Over the course of three years the Chekist investigators created the case of a 'bourgeois-nationalist, counter-revolutionary-insurgent, Bukharinite-Trotskyite, terrorist-espionage, anti-Soviet, wrecking organization' – literally so ran the many-storeyed formula of the charge for the top layer of the arrested"^[5]. Into this "top layer", which the Chekists named the "bourgeois-nationalist center of Chechnya and Ingushetia", the investigation wrote 137 former senior officials of the republic. The investigation entered among these 137 also Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, who was then studying in Moscow: it wrote people into the case regardless of where they were and what they did^[4]. To each of them the investigation imputed Article 58 - treason against the Motherland, preparation of an armed uprising, wrecking, terrorist acts, diversion, anti-Soviet agitation, membership in an anti-Soviet organization, and sabotage. According to the charge, the "center" acted in alliance with identical "centers" of Dagestan, Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay, Adygea and Circassia and was preparing, as Avtorkhanov writes, "the proclamation of a 'North Caucasus federative republic' under the protectorate of Turkey and England", with the "Moscow inter-national center" holding the liaison between them all^[5].

The colonizer repressed almost the entire Union of Writers of Chechen-Ingushetia. On 20 November 1937 the bureau of the oblast committee of the party (the "obkom VKP(b)") dissolved the board of the writers of the republic - the resolution's wording: "as having proved clogged with hostile bourgeois-nationalist elements /Arsanov, Mamakayev, Aiskhanov and others/"^[3]. One of the convicted, Khalid Oshaev, wrote in 1961 to the Ossetian writer Khadzhi-Murat Muguev: "of the 12 members of the union of writers of Chechen-Ingushetia 9 people were arrested, 7 convicted, 4 shot. I myself, a member of the Union of Writers since 1934, spent 13 years in confinement, and for 2 years was held in solitary confinement"^[6].

On 13 November 1937 the bureau of the oblast committee of the party (the "obkom VKP(b)") approved two lists not subject to disclosure: No. 25/97 - on the removal of literature published in the republic - and No. 31/107 - on the mandatory removal of books from libraries and the book trade; the ban covered the works of 29 authors, among whom the historian K. G. Dendiev names D. Madayev, Kh. Yandarov, N. Muzayev, D. Malsagov and Kh. Oshaev^[3]. The first Chechen literary works had appeared in the early 1920s^[4] - the colonizer was removing and banning a literature not yet twenty years old.

Torture of the arrested was officially sanctioned by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party (the TsK VKP(b)). Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "...against all those arrested under political articles torture was widely applied, officially permitted as measures of 'physical influence'"; Stalin's letter, circulated to party organs in January 1939, said: "The TsK VKP(b) explains that the application of physical influence in the practice of the NKVD was permitted from 1937 with the sanction of the TsK VKP(b)"^[4]. One of the executors in the republic was Porubay, named in a 1938 memorandum of the oblast committee of the party as deputy People's Commissar (minister) of Internal Affairs of the republic. After the change of course he was put on trial - the charge: he "applied perverted methods of conducting the investigation and coerced the arrested into giving knowingly false testimony", and on the cases he falsified the troika passed death sentences^[3]. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, writes that the investigation of the case of the "bourgeois-nationalist center" lasted three years, and describes its methods: "The investigation was conducted with the application of the physical tortures usual for the whole USSR, with a certain supplement for the specific 'national character'"^[5]. Avtorkhanov names those whom the Chekists tortured to death: "During this investigation there were tortured to death: the former chairman of the oblast executive committee D. Machukayev, the former head of the obkom culture-and-propaganda department M. Gisayev, the former secretary of the Ingush obkom VKP(b) Idris Zyazikov, and others"^[5]. He writes also of those whom torture drove to suicide: "Unable to endure the regime of torture, the following committed suicide: the chairman of the planning commission of the republic M. Islamov, the secretary of a district party committee M. Bektemirov"^[5]. Avtorkhanov writes of the result: "By way of this unheard-of inquisition, named the 'preliminary investigation', the Chekists forced up to 90 percent of the members of the 'bourgeois-nationalist center' to sign and even to compose 'sincere confessions' of crimes they had, of course, not committed"^[5]. Abdul-Khalim Salamov, deputy chairman of the government of the republic, under torture signed "sincere handwritten testimony" about the delivery into the republic from England through Turkey of 50 mountain guns, 1,000 machine guns, 200 thousand rifles, 5 million cartridges, 10 thousand shells and grenades for an armed uprising; there too he wrote that England had promised to support that uprising from the air. He also named the exact place where the weapons were buried in the mountains; Avtorkhanov writes: "the Chekists dug up all the indicated mountain gorges. Naturally they found nothing, but the beatings continued, with demands to point out the true place where the weapons were buried"^[5]. The defendants showed the tribunal the marks of torture; Avtorkhanov writes: "The defendants, pointing to the scars of inflicted wounds, to knocked-out teeth, to mutilated parts of the organism (one had even been castrated during interrogation), declared that they had signed their false testimony under the influence of these physical tortures and in the hope that the day of trial, or of death, would thus be brought nearer"^[5].

An extrajudicial organ - the "troika" - passed sentences in Chechen-Ingushetia under operational order No. 00447 of Yezhov, the People's Commissar (minister) of Internal Affairs of the USSR, of 30 July 1937, and Yezhov confirmed the troika's composition in the text of the order: "I confirm the following personal composition of the republican, krai and oblast troikas: ... Chechen-Ingush ASSR: chairman - Dementyev; members Yegorov, Vakhayev"^[2] - Dementyev, People's Commissar (minister) of Internal Affairs of the republic; Yegorov, first secretary of the oblast committee of the party; and Vakhayev, second secretary. The historian G. I. Kakagasanov describes the institution: "An extrajudicial organ created for carrying out punitive policy... Its composition included: the head of the OGPU, the secretary of the party organization, the prosecutor of the republic, krai or oblast"^[1]. The troika's procedure and its regime of secrecy are prescribed in the text of the order: the troikas examine "the materials on each arrested person or group of arrested persons", and first-category sentences are carried out "with the obligatory full preservation in secrecy of the time and place of the carrying out of the sentence"^[2]. The NKVD (the People's Commissariat (ministry) of Internal Affairs - successor of the OGPU and a predecessor of today's FSB) did not inform the families of the condemned of the execution; Kakagasanov writes: "More often this took place under the formula 'convicted without the right of correspondence', which meant 'execution by shooting'"^[1]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov describe also "conviction by albums" - sentencing in absentia on a brief docket, "without acquaintance with the criminal case itself"^[4]: that procedure was set by the orders of the "national lines" of the terror, beginning with NKVD order No. 00485. The investigation of the case of the "bourgeois-nationalist center" lasted, by the count of the Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov - a contemporary of the events who wrote in emigration - exactly three years^[5]. The Chekists chose not to try 137 people in a single trial and split the "center" into three groups: into the first they gathered the Soviet-party leadership of the republic - Ali Gorchkhanov, Abdul-Khalim Salamov, Khasi Vakhayev, Khamid Okuyev and Tuchaev; into the second - non-party men whom the investigation called the cultural-ideological leadership - Khalid Yandarov, Akhmat Matsiev, Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, D. Malsagov, Magomed Mamakayev; into the third - a "terrorist group", into which "the Chekists gathered, by the logic of things, young people alone"^[5]. The groups came before the military tribunal of the North Caucasus Military District; Avtorkhanov writes: "of the roughly 120 people who reached the trial alive, only one - the former mullah Akhmat Tuchaev - admitted his guilt. All the rest declared with one voice that all the crimes imputed to them were an invention, and their 'sincere confessions' false and fabricated from beginning to end", "The entire charge and the evidence in the case were built exclusively on this personal testimony extracted by torture", "There was no other material evidence or witness testimony to substantiate the charge" - and the tribunal passed its guilty verdict on the first group "solely on the basis of the testimony of one defendant – A. Tuchaev"^[5]. The tribunal sentenced Abdul-Khalim Salamov, Ali Gorchkhanov and Tuchaev to be shot, the rest - to prison terms of 7 to 25 years^[5]. From the death cell Tuchaev submitted a petition for clemency addressed to Kalinin, chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and wrote in it: he had confessed to crimes he had not committed because only so had the NKVD promised to free his family and spare his life^[5]. Moscow commuted the death sentences of all three and reduced the terms of the others; the "terrorist group" the same tribunal released in its entirety, the case of the "culture-ideologists" it "did not accept for proceedings at all", and those who sat without "cases" the Chekists put through the Special Board - the NKVD's own departmental "court", which passed sentences with no trial and no defendant present^[5].

On the morning after the night arrests of 31 July 1937 the bureau of the oblast committee of the party resolved: to hold meetings in all kolkhozes "with an explanation of the political situation in the countryside", and by 5 August - district and Komsomol meetings "on the results of the operation"^[3]. On 3 August 1937 the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party (the TsK VKP(b)), by telegram No. 1178, obliged the oblast committees of the party: to organize "in each oblast, by districts, 2-3 open show trials" of assigned "wreckers of agriculture" - "covering the course of the trials widely in the local press"^[3]. The newspaper "Groznensky Rabochy" ["The Grozny Worker"] covered the open trials from August 1937 - on 20 August under the headline: "The Trial of the Former Managers of Chechingtorg"^[3]. From 11 September 1937 the same newspaper printed denunciations in waves, day after day: 11 September: "Untangle the Bourgeois-Nationalist Tangle" - with a report on a meeting at which "of the 587 members and 132 candidate members of the party present at the meeting... 520 people spoke"; 15 September: "Enemies of the Chechen-Ingush People: Root Out and Smash to the End the Band of Bourgeois Nationalists"; 16 September: "Enemies of the People Have the Run of Chechingizdat: the Wolf Pack Is Headed by the Dyed-in-the-Wool Nationalist Arsanukayev"; 17 September: "Expose and Smash the Vile Band of Bourgeois Nationalists! - Such Is the Common Voice of the Party Organizations of Chechen-Ingushetia"; the newspaper denounced people by name - Gorchkhanov, Salamov, Mekhtiev, Vakhayev, Okuyev, Khaniev, Matsiev, Yandarov^[3]. On 27 September the newspaper printed an announcement: "Wreckers of Grain: Toward the Coming Trials" - three days before the report on the trial itself; on 12 October, under the headline: "The Trial of the Wreckers from the Artemovsky Elevator" - the newspaper reported: "the workers and housewives who filled the hall met the verdict with stormy applause"; on 3 November, under the headline: "The Trial of the Wreckers of the Second Oil Refinery"^[3]. In March 1938 the participants of a rally in the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny demanded of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR the shooting of "rabid fascist dogs"^[3], "Groznensky Rabochy" on 11 March printed an open letter of the Pioneers of Grozny school No. 3 demanding "the physical annihilation of the bestial enemies of the people"^[7], and of the trial of 16-26 March the historian K. G. Dendiev writes: the proceedings in the case of the "Bourgeois-nationalist Trotskyite-Bukharinite counter-revolutionary group of Abastov, Kebiev, Zarmayev and others" "were heard in open session, with the participation of a state prosecutor and an organ of the defense", and the indictment was printed by "Groznensky Rabochy"^[3].

On 11 July 1937 the occupation authorities approved the number of people "subject to shooting" in Chechnya: 862 "kulaks" (peasants whom the colonizer deemed "well-off") and 555 "criminals" - 1,417 people in all^[3]; operational order No. 00447 of Yezhov, the People's Commissar (minister) of Internal Affairs of the USSR, of 30 July records for the ChIASSR: 500 people - to be shot (the order's "first category")^[2]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write of the executed writers: "of the 12 members of the Chechen-Ingush Union of Writers 9 were arrested, 7 convicted, among them four - S. Baduev, A. Dudayev, Sh. Aiskhanov, S. Oziev - sentenced to be shot"^[4]. The NKVD (a predecessor of today's FSB) arrested one of those four - the writer Abdi Dudayev - on 24 November 1937 "without the prosecutor's sanction", on the standard charge of "anti-Soviet agitation", and on 2 December, by decision of the "troika under the NKVD of the ChIASSR", the Chekists shot him - eight days from arrest to killing; the finding on his case of 13 May 1958 states: "The investigation of Dudayev's case was conducted in violation of the law; confrontations with witnesses were not held"^[3]. Moscow personally confirmed the lists of detainees for shooting: Stalin, Molotov and Zhdanov signed the list of 7 December 1937, and on 28 December the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR passed 32 death sentences on it^[3]; on 12 September 1938 the Politburo confirmed a new list of those subject to its court: of the 61 under investigation, 50 went under the case of the "bourgeois-nationalist center", and 55 of them stood "in the shooting article"^[3]. On 29 June 1938 the Military Collegium sentenced a large group of the republic's technical intelligentsia to various terms, and 30 people to be shot - the Chekists shot them the same day^[3]. The indictment in the case of Porubay - deputy People's Commissar (minister) of Internal Affairs of the republic, put on trial after the change of course - states: "Falsified the investigative cases of Khamzatkhanov, Aliev, Khasiev, Kadilov, Ukhuev, Mutushev; all these persons were sentenced by decision of the troika to VMN" - "VMN" meant execution by shooting^[3]. The Chekists dumped the bodies of the killed into two trench-pits at the central cemetery of Grozny - the historian T. U. Elbuzdukayeva writes: there, "in October, November and December 1937", they dumped "the bodies of the shot"^[3]. A. Bozhedomov opened the burial in the summer of 1990 - by excavations with the participation of members of the Chechen-Ingush "Memorial" and staff of the museum of local history^[3].