Hostage-Taking

In 1836-1840 Pullo, commander of the Sunzha Line and then of the left flank of the Caucasus Line (a chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), made hostage-taking the load-bearing institution of the amanat-and-tribute system in the auls of Chechnya seized by the empire. An amanat is a person whom the empire took away from a family or community as a hostage; the threat of reprisal against the taken one held the relatives and the whole aul in subjection. In a memorandum of 1840 Pullo described the method: "I took amanats not indiscriminately, as was done before, but from the most respected or least reliable families, and by this means many auls plotting revolt were repeatedly kept in obedience" - and the scale of the institution: "up to 20 thousand rubles... were spent yearly on the upkeep of amanats"^[1]. The taking of hostages went in waves as the troops advanced: the imperial historian Yurov recorded of December 1839 that under the pressure of the detachment even the villages that barred the entrance to the Argun gorge "humbled themselves, handed over amanats" - the troops took people as a "token of submission"^[2]. Yurov described the conditions in which the hostages were kept: "prisoners and even amanats were treated inhumanly, kept in a damp pit, where they often fell ill"^[2]. In the same memorandum Pullo demanded that hostageship be made perpetual: for the offenses of those under warranty, amanats "must without fail, according to their age, be transferred into cantonists or convict companies, replacing the departed with other amanats" - child hostages to be handed into the cantonists (a military estate into which the empire forcibly enrolled minors), adults into convict companies (forced labor under military escort); in the memorandum of 1840 this is recorded as a plan^[1].