in the campaign “"Neither plow nor sow": the pogrom of Chechnya, organized famine, the buying-up of elites and the institutions of subjugation (1852-1857)”
The bought-over naibs conducted reconnaissance for the empire and took part in planning the marches. Imperial historian Volkonsky writes of Bata Shamurzayev, a naib of Shamil (deputy of the Imam, leader of the highlanders' resistance of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest) who had gone over to the empire: Bata "had his agents everywhere, informing him of all Shamil's movements," and the winter expedition of 1852 "was undertaken and conducted by Prince Baryatinsky" on Bata's directions; "The chief of the detachment did not conceal that for the successful taking of the auls he owed much to Bata as well"[1]. Baryatinsky, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), in a letter to Vorontsov, viceroy in the Caucasus, of 4 June 1852 confirmed: "Bata has passed on to me much of interest concerning Shamil's secret intrigues among the Ossetians"[2]. In July 1856 Yusuf-Hadji Safarov, a former counselor of the Imamate, defected to the empire and offered his knowledge to Baryatinsky in writing: "I know much about Shamil and his troops... I hope to be useful to the Russian government and I guarantee to destroy everything I made at Shamil's, because the master of the house knows best what goes on in it"[3].