Forced Disarmament

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), included the systematic confiscation of weapons from the inhabitants of the seized auls of Chechnya. Pullo in a memorandum of 1840 called it a program of his own: "the power of the pristavs was consolidated, and at the same time a beginning was laid to the system of disarming the highlanders, by exacting from all auls one gun from every 10 saklias. In all, upward of 1900 guns were collected - a circumstance important both for the quantity of weapons collected and especially because for the first time the thought was instilled in the highlanders that the government has the right to deprive of weapons those who have used them for evil" (saklia - a highlander's house; pristav - a superintendent over the auls appointed by the empire; the figure of 1900 is Pullo's self-report; the historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov count about one and a half thousand from the archives)^[1]. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes: "The expeditions of general Pullo in December 1839 and January 1840 to uphold Russian administration, and the disarmament of the Chechen lowland auls that had begun, when Pullo demanded the surrender of one gun from every ten houses, aroused indignation in broad layers of the Chechen people"^[2]. The historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov name disarmament the trigger of the uprising: "The fear that after the disarmament the authorities would introduce in Chechnya the all-Russian serfdom order, shameful for people of noble standing, which practically all Chechens considered themselves to be, made the highlanders take up arms"^[3].