in the campaign “The amanat-and-tribute system of colonel Pullo in the seized auls of Chechnya (1836-1840)”
The amanat-and-tribute system of Pullo, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line (a chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), rested on punitive sorties of the troops against the seized auls of Chechnya. Pullo described the practice in a memorandum of 1840: "I would appear unexpectedly before the astonished population of the most remote auls and, according to the degree of the village's guilt, either annihilated it or contented myself with imposing a fine, taking amanats and arresting the most guilty persons" (a fine here is a monetary penalty; amanats - hostages whom the empire took away from the auls; the "annihilation" of a village in the imperial lexicon means the destruction of its buildings and property, not of its inhabitants); auls suspected of ties with the resistance "were immediately punished with fines, with the arrest of ill-intentioned people, and in extreme cases even with the annihilation of auls"[1]. Punishment is the administrative routine of the system: the destruction of a village stands in one row with fines and arrests as a grade of punishment.