Economic Blockade

Part of 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), was a regime of economic blockade of the auls of Chechnya that had not submitted. Pullo in a memorandum of 1840: the overseers appointed by the empire over the auls (the pristavs) and the troops "cut off the relations of the submitted with the unsubdued and forbade the former to sell bread to the nemirnye and to pasture their cattle on their fields" ("nemirnye" - in the imperial lexicon, auls that had not submitted to the empire)^[1]. The permitted trade was driven under control: "In Kizlyar and at some other points trading fairs opened" - exchange took place only at points controlled by the empire^[1]. The workings of the blockade were admitted by its own authors: general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line and Pullo's superior, in a report to the empire's Minister of War Chernyshev of 23 March 1840, wrote that the mountain auls "could no longer have tillage and pasture on the plain", which "further aggravated the distressed condition of the inhabitants of highland Chechnya"; some of the inhabitants thought of submitting "to avert famine", others resolved "to rid themselves of the Russian yoke"^[2]. In a plan for the conquest of the highlanders of the left flank drawn up in 1840 (the "Proposition... for the subjugation of the tribes"), Grabbe formulated how the blockade worked: the pristavs' surveillance "threatened the unsubdued with famine. Shamil took advantage of this disposition of minds" (Shamil - imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest)^[2].