in the campaign “Forcing Chechnya into submission after the fall of Akhulgo and suppression of the general uprising of 1840 (1838-1840)”
In spring 1840 the empire imposed a grain blockade on Chechnya amid famine that was already documented. On 14 March 1840 general Piryatinsky, commander of the centre of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), reported: "throughout Chechnya there is no grain at all, the people suffer great extremity from famine"[1]. Three weeks later, on 8 April 1840, general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line, by an instruction to general Galafeyev sanctioned the ban the latter had introduced: "Your directive concerning the prohibition of the sale of grain I fully approve, and I permit you to extend this prohibition to all those parts of the region entrusted to you where you deem it necessary"[1]. In summer the troops destroyed the harvest where it stood: the journal of military operations of general Galafeyev's detachment (6-17 July 1840) names the goal outright - "the punishment of the mutinous villages by annihilating them and destroying their means of existence, for now a certain shortage in the inhabitants' food supply can be foreseen"[2]. In autumn the stores were annihilated just before winter: the imperial survey of 27 October 1840 records that the troops marched, "having annihilated on their way a very considerable quantity of stores of food and hay"[1]. General Golovin, commander of the Separate Caucasus Corps (head of the empire's troops and administration in the Caucasus), admitted the calculation in a memorandum of 26 April 1841: "In vain did we expect that after the annihilation, in last year's expedition, of the highlanders' food stores, their villages and various property, famine, cold and extreme destitution would shake the fierce power of the instigator" ("instigator" - the empire's label for Shamil, leader of the highlanders' resistance)[3].